Amateur Night

by K. K. Beck

  “You know. Sean,” said the man.

  “Oh,” said Calvin, getting slowly to his feet. “Sean. I'd like to find him myself.” He smiled. Maybe he and this gorilla could work together. Whoever he was, he was highly motivated.

  “Get that damn grin off your face,” said the man, his face turning red and blotchy. “We're gonna drag your ass and his through the courts, but I'm going to kick the shit out of both of you first.”

  Calvin shook his head. He was still woozy. “If you want to go to court, you'll need a lawyer,” he said, reaching into his pocket. He handed over a business card.

  “Don't give me that,” said the man, peering down at the card. You're a dentist. A rich dentist.”

  “You think I'm a dentist?” said Calvin. “Did you follow me?” It slowly dawned on Calvin. This big thug had seen him pull out of the parking space marked Carlisle. If Calvin hadn't parked in Carlisle's spot, this jerk wouldn't be thinking about working him over. Guys like Carlisle always managed to wriggle away from trouble and make sure someone else got nailed in their place.

  “I just stole the dentist's parking space,” said Calvin. “I'm a lawyer, honest.” Slowly his faculties began to return to him, and he started to get red in the face himself. What was he doing handing business cards to some jerk who'd sneaked up and bashed him in the head? Some weird instinct had taken over while his mind was inoperable. “If anyone's getting dragged through the courts, it's you,” he shouted. “You can't go around assaulting people. I'll call the cops and sign a complaint, then I'll sue you in civil court. Jesus, a head wound like this, I'll have neurologists on the stand saying I'm practically a vegetable and it's all your fault. What assets do you have, and is that your car over there? Whatever you own, I can get it in a lawsuit, you know.” Calvin gestured to an elderly Datsun.

  A look of fear came over the man's face and he turned and ran. Calvin took off after him up the sidewalk. Feeling was coming slowly back into his body, and it now seemed that his mind was reconnected.

  Unfortunately, the guy was pretty fast for a big guy. Calvin was gaining on him, though. For a while, it looked like he could catch up with him, which of course meant he'd have to tackle him, but Calvin decided he'd worry about that later.

  But it never came up. Calvin dashed in front of the hilly lawn where the gardeners were working. The little woman was dragged into Calvin's path by gravity and the huge mower she was operating. He tried to run around her but he knocked her over, got tangled up in a big canvas catcher, managed to twist it half off the mower with his foot, and emerged covered with damp grass clippings into the cloud of blue smoke coming out of the snarling, overturned machine. By the time he got the small woman up on her feet and wrenched her equipment back up on its tires, the guy had managed to get into a car—not the Datsun Calvin had spotted, but something that looked blue—and raced down the street.

  “Damn,” said Calvin, picking off grass clippings from his jacket.

  Chapter 20

  “Damn,” she thought as she removed her underwear, hoping it wouldn't leave unattractive red impressions of straps and elastic on her skin. She folded her clothes neatly, as if she were at the doctor's office, and set them in a pile on a rock, then wrapped herself in the towel.

  The hot springs, which she had somehow imagined as a bubbling and miniature version of Old Faithful, surrounded by picturesque ferns, were instead a series of steaming natural hot tubs in which people soaked. She had forgotten about the conversation she had overheard between the German tourists and the desk clerk about bringing towels.

  She and Steven Johnson had set out on this excursion as soon as she arrived back at the hotel. He had the amiable, take-charge manner of a good traveler, which she appreciated, and he seemed refreshingly interested in the surroundings, rather than in her, which had made it all seem less like some awkward high school date. Until now, of course.

  They had come up in a rubber Zodiac manned by a laconic hippie guide, battering over the water with a lot of thumps and wind and salt in their faces. They cruised past rocky reefs that emerged and vanished with the tides, full of barnacles and kelp and gulls—past vast deserted beaches, full of pale logs, bleached by the salt.

  The bits of land seemed alien and incidental in the expanse of water—a gray-blue-green northern sea, where the water looked thicker and more dense than the shiny waters of the tropics.

  When they arrived on the dock, the guide told them he'd catch up with them later at the hot springs in an hour or so, and they set off on the path that led to the hot springs.

  Jane forgot her mission entirely. Worming the truth out of Johnson seemed like something better done in a smoky bar over some stiff drinks, with maybe a languorous hand drifting over to his at some point.

  The sense of being at the edge of the world, the vast sky and water, drove sneaky thoughts out of her mind entirely. She felt too pure and fresh, and too happy with him for having brought her here.

  They walked as they had come over on the Zodiac, in companionable silence, with Jane murmuring “gorgeous” once in a while, just to be polite. Anything more would have been obtrusive.

  Jane had thought of northern rain forests as dark, forbidding, sinister places, where life was too rampant— plants sucking the life out of one another, competing for every inch, as if drunk and disorderly on the constant water from above.

  This trail looked instead young and crisp and green, landscaped with neat, overlapping ground cover. Brilliant green moss bristling with reddish spores enveloped rock and wood like soft, muffling fabric. Tall, straight tree trunks branched above into a canopy that cast dappled light on the springy trail, cushioned with rust-colored needles.

  Each bend in the trail provided a distinct, harmonious vista. The cool damp air smelled of cedar—sweet and slightly spicy.

  Every once in a while a creek would appear. Water rushed white and silver over smooth oval stones, making an urgent, musical, lovely sound—a continuous sound that seemed to be ignoring the noise of their feet on the wooden bridge above.

  Finally, the trail took a turn through a dark patch of old-growth forest, emerging onto a rocky beach.

  To the left was a huge rock wall, like something painted on canvas for an old production of a Wagner opera. To the right were more rocky outcroppings, and in front of them was the water.

  Jane walked without thinking to the water's edge, where waves washed frothily on kelp-covered rocks, fingers of tumbling water rushing into the spaces between stone before being sucked back into the sea, leaving the glistening seaweed bare again, except for the tide pools. These bowls of rock were lined with wine-colored spiny urchins, and clinging purple and orange sea stars, their fluid arms embracing the shape of the pool, huddled together like puppies beneath the clear water.

  Johnson came up beside her, slipping one arm out of the pack he'd brought with their lunch, and looked out over the water. They stood there in the breeze for a moment, then looked at each other and smiled.

  He pointed to the huge rock wall, a sort of ziggurat, terraced here and there. “Shall we climb up there?” he said.

  She started to say “sure.” It seemed natural to want to reach the highest point, and look out to yet another spectacular vista. But then she remembered why she was here, who Johnson might be. It would be easy for him to push her off and say it was an accident. She couldn't take the chance.

  “I don't think so,” she said, trying to look as if she were happy enough with her surroundings. Then she worried he'd think she was a sissy. “I hate heights,” she lied.

  They heard voices and turned toward the sound. From between two tall rocks, a man and a woman emerged. They were both dripping wet, stark naked, quite pink and definitely out of shape. What they weren't, was self-conscious. They smiled as they strolled past, and went up the beach to a cluster of small tents. They both had long hair, and the man had a beard. They looked rather like time travelers from some bucolic sixties be-in.

  “Aha! The hot springs,�
�� said Johnson. “Did you bring a suit?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Well you're in luck,” he said, looking vaguely amused. “Neither did I. But the desk clerk did press some towels on me as we left the hotel. Want to go in?”

  “Maybe,” she said, walking over to the rocks. She looked into the crevasse from which the two nature lovers had made their appearance. Rising up from the water's edge, between two rock walls, was a staggered series of pools. A cascade of water fell in a cloud of steam into the first one, and each one overflowed into the one below. The last pool was filled from above by the stream of water, and from below by waves from the sea.

  “It looks fabulous,” said Jane, trying not to look self-conscious about tearing off her clothes with a handsome stranger. But personal modesty seemed trivial in this Eden-like setting.

  He handed her a towel. “We can take turns if you want.” He had rather a sweet, apologetic expression, as if he were trying to make her feel comfortable, which naturally brought out the same reaction in her.

  “It's all right,” she said breezily. “I'm a graduate of a half dozen European topless beaches, and plenty of coed hot tub immersions.” She realized it would have been easier if he hadn't been so attractive. That took it all out of the realm of simple communion with nature.

  “Well, there are a bunch of campers up there, so if I go berserk or anything, you can scream,” he said gesturing behind them to the cluster of tents, and managing to make her feel self-conscious again.

  “And so can you,” she said, smiling and taking the towel. “I'll leave my clothes somewhere where I know they'll stay dry,” she said, climbing away and finding a grassy little spot behind a rock. She drew the line at tearing off her clothes in front of him.

  Wrapped in the towel, picking carefully with bare feet over the rocky terrain, she regretted having sloughed off the last few weeks lately on her workouts. She was coasting on past effort. A certain amount of exercise was required to keep her stomach reasonably flat and her butt reasonably unflat. Coming from California, he was probably used to aerobicized hard bodies with breast implants and tucked stomachs. Anyway, she told herself smugly, at least her breasts were real and her legs were long, and recent intense scrutiny at the backs of her upper thighs had revealed no sign of the dreaded cellulite. All in all, she was in pretty good shape for her age, which was the result, she realized with humility, of incredibly good luck more than anything else. She supposed she could fall apart at any moment, but it hadn't happened yet.

  Her companion, she knew, probably hadn't inventoried his own physical charms as she had. It was ironic that in any naked encounter, women were usually more concerned about their own bodies than about their partner's, and were more than willing to put up with an out-of-shape lover if he was sufficiently appreciative of her body. In fact, the act of love could take on aspects of a mutual worship of the woman's body.

  She told herself to stop thinking about sex, just because she had her clothes off, and went to the edge of the first pool, the one being fed by the steaming waterfall, where Johnson was now submerged up to his chest, his arms stretched out on the rock ledge, his eyes closed in a blissed-out attitude, his head back and his hair wet and curling. He opened his eyes just a crack as she unfurled the towel and stepped into the water. Then closed them again in a gentlemanly fashion.

  The water was very hot.

  “Start under the waterfall,” he said sleepily. “It's fantastic. I had this little kink in my neck from sleeping funny on the hotel mattress and I blasted it with that water.”

  She stood under the waterfall. It was actually just a little too hot, but she soon got used to it. She realized her neck and shoulders had been tense. All that driving hadn't helped. She sighed happily, and felt the force of the water push the heat into her muscles.

  “A hundred and ten degrees, they say,” he murmured.

  After about a minute, she sat down opposite him. The heat, and the way the steaming cascade agitated the water, made the whole thing into a natural Jacuzzi.

  “Great stress reliever,” he said. “You are stressed, aren't you? You're nobody if you're not stressed, these days.”

  “Lack of stress can be stressful too,” she said.

  “Aha! Another adrenaline junkie. I knew it.”

  “Maybe I am. I always think I'm calm, but I like being around energetic people and new situations.” It occurred to Jane this sounded like a line from a skimpy résumé.

  “A thrill-seeker,” he said. His eyes were still closed.

  “Maybe a vicarious thrill-seeker,” she said. She wasn't sure she wanted to be some over-the-top nutcase, but there had been times when she suspected she was. “Does that mean you won't try and sell me a policy? Because I look like a secret hang glider or something? What about you? Do you like the idea of leaping off cliffs, attached to life by only a fraying bungee cord?”

  “No,” he said, “but I used to be a police officer.”

  She tensed up. A police officer? Good cop gone bad? Somehow, she couldn't see him strangling anyone, but having been a cop put him in an entirely different category. He had looked like a businessman. “Was it thrilling?”

  “It had its moments. But mostly you spend time trying to get a bunch of stupid drunks to shut up and calm down. What do you do for a living, if you don't mind my asking?”

  She thought for a second. She couldn't tell him the truth. After all, she was here to find out what he was up to. And in any case, the Foundation for Righting Wrongs was supposed to be kept secret. The board members said Uncle Harold didn't believe in doing good in a flashy way. Jane suspected this was also because the board didn't want anyone from the government telling it how to spend Uncle Harold's money, and asking for tedious reports. Besides, her work for the foundation had so far been a failure. A few charitable advances could hardly be construed as a living.

  But Jane knew also that a weak part of her wanted Johnson to admire her and think she was a competent, interesting person. She racked her brain for some plausible lie that would hold up under further scrutiny, and came up with absolutely nothing. Great, she thought to herself, not only am I an unemployed flake, I can't even make anything up.

  “Did you forget?” he said gently.

  “Actually, at the moment I don't do a damned thing,” she said. “I suppose I'm having some kind of midlife crisis.” It occurred to her this was close to the truth.

  “Premature midlife crisis, I'm sure,” he said gallantly.

  “Like those skin care ads for premature aging,” said Jane, laughing. “I hate that. Aging is aging. How can it be premature?”

  “I've been accused of suffering from midlife crisis,” he said.

  “Actually, I thought I was still having adolescent adjustment problems.” Jane imagined some outraged woman, nattering at him that he couldn't commit.

  “I suppose they can sort of fuse together,” said Jane. “If you work it right you can be maladjusted forever. Maneuver your way right into senility that way.” She moved her arms back and forth below the surface of the water, and caught him glancing for a millisecond at her breasts. She didn't mind, because they were floating and looked their best.

  “Tell me about being a cop,” she said. “Did you ever kill anyone?” She may as well get right into it.

  “I hate to disappoint you,” he said, “but I never did. Never fired my weapon off the range.”

  “I'm not disappointed,” she said. But she was because she wasn't getting anything out of him to explain what he was doing looking for Brenda MacPherson.

  “What exactly brings you up here?” she asked.

  “The waters,” he said lazily, stirring them a little with his hand as if to demonstrate. “I came for the waters.”

  “And Brenda,” she said. “Wasn't that her name?”

  “That's right.” His eyes opened. They were a darkish blue. “Tell me how it went with your old family friend.”

  “Just fine,” she said. “Of course,” she
added, “he is getting on in years. But really a fascinating old guy,” She leaned back against the warm rock, closed her eyes and continued, knowing it all sounded inane but, driven on by nerves, finding herself unable to stop as she got comfortably into the lie in any case. “Speaks seven languages. And he's an authority on Persian miniatures.”

  “And just think,” he said. “He lives right next door to Brenda MacPherson.”

  She heard sarcasm in his voice, and opened her eyes. He was smiling.

  “In fact, our friend Brenda told me all about him. He's teaching her Urdu. Or is it Croatian.”

  “I don't think Croatian is in his repertoire,” she said coldly. “Maybe you're mixing it up with Serbian.” Damn, damn, damn, she thought.

  “Why don't you tell me what you're up to,” he said. “We seem to be looking for the same person.”