by Boston Teran
As Essie left the office Flesh waved. Roy looked at the file. He used his crutch to move it around to read which file it was, though in his heart he knew. He eyed Flesh. "What was that all about?"
"I was doing her a favor."
Roy's head bent around to watch Essie through the open doorway walk toward the elevator. "What kind of favor?"
Flesh stepped around him and kicked the door shut, killing the view. "I was doing my best to make her hate you a little more than she already does."
Flesh went back to her desk and sat. Staring at Taylor's file she asked, "What do you want, Roy?"
"Charles Gill called."
Flesh kept staring at the file while her mind did curious little turns. "What did he want?"
"He wants to have lunch with me tomorrow."
On this Flesh looked up. Roy crossed his fingers. "I see a state senator in your future," he said.
"Elected… or convicted?" she asked.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
ESSIE SAT AT Taylor's desk with the sunset all about her, waiting on Dane to return. An evening harvest of colors was being carried on the waters of Disappointment Slough toward some indigoed distance. She had seen that very same dusk before carried by the slough from this very same desk as she waited for two different men.
That this too might not come to be, found her. It swept through her heart with a fearful cruelty, a fearful certainty. That did not surprise her. She had been battered by that before. But what did surprise her was something else she discovered in that wave of loss.
It was tiny as a creek would be when compared to the arc of a universe, but it was there. She could sense it, smell it, feel it, not really see it, but it was moving through her body toward her very being.
She could endure. She had in fact, endured. She looked at her wounded, bandaged hand. Even with what she had been through up to now, she had endured. And just as water always finds its way, this apparitional creek of a feeling would find its way. It would seek her out. It would lead somewhere, lead her somewhere.
And she wanted with her heart to believe it would make as deep and indelible a mark upon her as Disappointment Slough did moving toward that indigoed distance and carrying on its back, for her to see, the sunset and sunrise of centuries.
* * *
WELL AFTER dark Essie saw headlights through the high bulrushes on the opposite shore where the road came down from King Island.
When the car pulled off the road Essie reached for binoculars sitting on the desk. Where the car had stopped dust filled the air and she couldn't see anything in the black space above that halogen set of eyes, until the shotgun door opened and the interior lit.
* * *
AS DANE stood back from the dust and rocks kicked up by Nathan's tires he heard an outboard crossing the slough.
He walked to the dock. He watched where the river beacon on the windmill above the house sent a shimmering tunnel of light along the water.
It was only an instant, the boat passed through that incandescent breath of white, and she waved. He waved back, but was certain he could not be seen.
The darkness, the sound of the boat's motor, the water, the beacon of light. It was the alchemic opposite of the night before.
* * *
SHE PUT out her good hand and he pulled her up to the dock in one sweep.
Maybe it was because of the darkness or the stark way the water reflected the night sky up through that warped lattice of dock-boards. Maybe it was because he was tired and unshaven, or that she herself had been through so much in the last day and night, but she saw now what was there in his face, and beyond.
The raw youth of before looked more cut with finitudes. As if it had been at war with something and neither side had won, but neither side was finished.
She touched his face and he kissed her. They crowded against each other in the narrows of that moment with all the unnameables of time and emotion moving through and around them. And then before she could ask if he were all right, before she spoke at all he saw her bandaged hand. He took it in his and he asked, "What happened? Are you all right?"
And with that she clutched his shirt with both hands and broke down crying, not just because he was safe, not just because she had gotten through her own nightmare, but because he had a human concern for someone else that overrode his own, when he probably needed it more.
* * *
AS THEY walked up the stone pathway toward the house, Essie stopped where she had fallen that night into the railing and broken her wrist. Dane turned to see why she'd stopped.
The front door was open and its light fell across the spot she'd found Taylor dying, then on through the low bowers to where Essie stood staring in silence.
"What?" said Dane.
"I'm sure of at least one person who had to be involved in the murder."
* * *
NATHAN SAT in the steam shower on the tile floor with a bottle of whiskey and a glass beside him. "I'm nothing," he said. "Nothing."
He reached for the bottle but knocked it over. He was drunk that fast. Ivy grabbed the bottle as the liquor spilled out into a stream of water heading toward the drain. She could barely see his face.
Nathan was trying to deal with the utter fear that he was going to die inside that box and how deathly afraid he was of being dead. And what desperate things he would do to avoid it. "I'm getting old," he said. "Fuckin' old."
Ivy wanted to ask him why he had lied to her about Dane but didn't know how to get to that without opening a door to Charles. She asked only, "Is Dane all right?"
"Dane." Nathan said the name with pointed jealousy. "That fuckin' kid can hack it."
"What happened in Mexico?"
"We paid. Everything is back to status quo."
"That's all?"
"That's enough."
She had seen this part of him to know there was more. He started to rock, very slightly. Back and forth, with his legs crossed, like some primitive chief, or a child. Then he said, "We should have a baby. Maybe… we could even adopt one."
He couldn't see her face. He slid across the tiles till he was by her. "I know you heard me."
With every fault and failure, even knowing how Nathan treated one son, the idea of it aroused every little unfulfilled need she had, it touched every womanly temptation, until it reached the part of her that was most guilty of all.
* * *
DAMON ROMERO…"
Dane leaned back against the kitchen sink and stared at the slip of paper. "From the way you describe him, he could be the one on the boat."
"You can see for yourself. He runs Romeo Boat Sales."
Dane reached for his bottle of beer on the counter. He drank with tired doggedness.
Essie sat at the kitchen table amidst beer bottles and an ashtray with two burning cigarettes. "It means the murder was planned."
When he finished the beer Dane walked over to the kitchen table for his cigarette.
"Charles… The Fenns… Romero… this, Merton."
Dane smoked. "Romero could say he knows the Fenns 'cause they were interested in a boat, so he showed the one that belonged to this Merton."
"They went after you in Mexico."
"We never saw them in Mexico. And it was Nathan who did the going after."
Essie undid the top to another bottle of beer and handed it to Dane. "We should have kept the diamonds." She hunched over the table smoking while she stared and thought. "We should have kept some anyway— for proof."
Dane turned away while saying, "Just wait, diamonds will show up." He walked over to the kitchen door. "The worst always does, when you need it."
He leaned against the doorjamb and looked up the hill where the river beacon shone down from the top of that windmill.
"I believe if Nathan thought he could have gotten away with killing Rocket Boy he would have airmailed the dooms linger right out of the plane."
Essie bent around and draped her arms over the chair back. Smoke from her cigarette
drifted up toward the ceiling. She stared at Dane. "Maria told me last night we'd given enough. We should tell what we know and be done with it."
He kept watching the windmill where its wooden slats went round and round in a warmish wind, strobing the light within it. "And what did you tell her?"
"I said, 'How do you know when you've given enough? Is it right before you give up, or right after?'"
"You're both right."
She came around and put the cigarette out. Dane heard her bare feet cross the linoleum, then felt her beside him. "You haven't said a word about what happened in Mexico."
He swigged down his beer. She saw something harbored in his eyes, something she did not understand. She put her hand out, the bandaged hand, and touched his arm.
His throat felt no bigger than a string. He was not sure if he was at a loss for words, or words were at a loss for him. But he began the sentences knife short. They started at that burning fire on the beach and he walked her every step of the way to when the freezer lid slammed shut.
"At first," he said, "it was sheer panic. Nathan and I trying to kick our way out. As if by kicking hard enough we could get out of that coffin.
"I read once," he said, "that sometimes the best resistance against an ultimate power is to remain completely still. I tried, I did."
He could feel time walking on that warm wind that turned the windmill wheel. He could feel it walking. "I concentrated on the cold. My breath, I slowed it. Slowed it, slowed it. Closed off from everything. The fear, the fear. It began to leave. To dissipate. But as it did, as it did—"
His voice had risen, he hesitated. "Something more terrifying filled in the quiet, something more terrifying took its place."
"What?"
His cheekbones pulled back hard. He went to smoke, but didn't.
"What?"
"That it would be a pleasure to die. A pleasure. And all the fragments known as me would find rest."
Chapter Fifty-Eight
HE LEFT HER standing in the doorway and walked that thin footpath up the hill. He stood beneath the windmill with its river beacon of a moon. He set his beer down on the stone ledge of the well. The wind had those wooden slats turning with an easy, steady cadence.
He watched the wooden slats cut the light with their quiet clack, clack, clack when Essie came walking up behind him.
He turned. Standing in the light's soft edge she said, "Know that I will stand by you."
To feel such bare honest affection hurt. To know that such bare honest affection was even felt for him hurt. It brought to bear every bit of shame and guilt that was inside his most lonely being. And he wondered how he could even deserve such affection.
Essie watched as he stepped over to the well. He took his beer and drank. He set it down carefully on the stone ledge. All this was done to the creaking homily of those windmill slats.
The ground on the ridge top was soft and it clung to his boots as he moved about silently with his hands behind his back, until he saw how those wooden blades cut through the light that made his shadow. There and gone, there and gone, there and gone.
He stood looking down upon that moving portrait of dark and light and just began talking. "As much as I know, I don't. I am capable of honesty, but I am a more capable liar. I want to be proud of myself, but when I look inside my own heart and see what I feel there, no such possibility is in sight."
He turned and tried to valiantly make himself understood. "I not only could be the person on that subway platform, I could just as easily be the monster riding that express ready to fling a heartful of chemicals. I feel for what happened to Taylor, but I feel Nathan more deeply. I am one part Paul Caruso and two parts Fenn.
"I want love, but I am certain I will fail it. I don't want to hurt you or Paul or Maria but I am convinced that I will. That the true will of me will make that happen."
He held his hands up and out together. "I just can't seem to—" He began to try and shape this invisible piece of space with his palms and fingers. "Take all the disparate and desperate parts of me and make one human being— fit."
He saw, on the ground, the shadow of his hands made by the river beacon. They appeared to be holding an amorphous world of light. From its shape it could have been a cloud, or a stone, or a skull. He saw too that if he tried to enfold it into his hands, it would be gone. That if he tried to reshape it, it would dissolve through his fingers into the vaster throw of light. And so he stood there.
"I don't want to see and feel all this," he said, hushed. "I just want to—"
She took his hands in hers. "Be twenty-five without all the baggage… forever."
"How many times does a human being have to die emotionally before they get it right?"
Essie saw then what she thought she had seen on the dock harbored in Dane's face.
"You have strength of character," said Dane. "You are someone to be proud of." He then went on introspectively, and with a certain degree of shame, "While I am quite something else."
She kissed his hands and held them tightly. Very, very tightly. She wanted him to feel the strength there, coming from her heart, through her fingers and into his hands. "That first day," she said. "Right here. You asked to help. Remember? You gave your word. Right here. Remember?"
"I do," he said.
"Yeah… you are quite something else. And I can tell you this and swear it's true. I'm the better for it."
She would, he knew, shore up any hole in heaven, if she could reach that high.
* * *
SHE LED him by the hands. His boots followed her bare feet through the flood of beacon light to where it touched the softly arching slope of the hill. She turned her face so that it bore the darkness and began to take off his shirt with a slow and obscene honesty of feeling.
The shadow of those windmill slats scythed across their naked bodies where they lay on the ground like the first two human thieves. She dug her heels into the moist earth and lifted her pelvis bone hard against his own. There were dire cries, filled with dreams. She raised her hips almost daring him to come in further, push further, drive further as a way of getting beyond the terror of their sins, their pasts, their conflicts, their fears, their agonies, their uncertainties, their lies, if that were at all possible.
She could see beyond the flesh of his cheek and her hands along his shoulders that moon of a river beacon light and the fan wheel black there turning, cutting the light in sections, an ever moving of white and dark. There then gone, there then gone, there then gone.
She never once asked him to love her. She never once said she loved him. She only wanted to show him what she was, what she would give. And that it was all right to be a helpless creature in so vast a world. That what you feel should not condemn you to be alone, to despair. That there were no perfect strengths, no perfect assurances. That there was only the heartbreaking and the beautiful, and that they were ever changing, ever moving, ever touching us there then gone, there then gone, there then gone. Like those strips of white and dark where the windmill wheel passed across that river beacon moon.
And as she held him in her arms she wanted him to know, to feel it from the way she breathed into his body, that if they could not be of one flesh, they could at least be of one spirit. She wanted this at least as much for him, as she wanted it for herself.
* * *
THEY RESTED beneath the creaking homily of that fan wheel. The clack, clack, clack.
He lay with his head across her stomach looking up the white path of her flesh toward her face. He listened to her heart. "I could imagine," he said, "that when Sancho Maria was young, she was you."
Chapter Fifty-Nine
IT COULDN'T EVEN pass for a seduction, not with all of Roy's unsettled, slavish needs. Lunch had been set at the Empire Grill on 13th and K Street in Sacramento. The Empire was an eye line away from the capitol.
The restaurant was a state-of-the-art steakhouse with terrazzo floors and an open kitchen lined in copper where diners could watch
chefs dressed in neat white scuttle about visually lavishing their passionate talents on each order. And with the legislature in session, assemblymen and senators were drawing down a lot of tables that day. Reservations were hard to come by.
Charles made Roy wade through one martini's worth of pointless conversation, all the while letting Roy take an earful of all that politics going on at the tables around them. When they brought the second round of martinis Charles opened his briefcase and took out a file.
He was securely matter-of-fact. "I've gone to the Republican Party and established a Committee to Elect. I filed all the necessary forms. I've put in thirty thousand dollars of my own money and I've gotten a commitment from half a dozen other business-people who will take a flyer with me and donate— to see— if we can get you nominated for a state senate seat in some district."
Roy thumbed through the papers with a look of naked want.
"Once you decide, and you sign your papers, we'll put together the exploratory committee to see which district to run in, and if you've got the meat at all to get nominated."
Before Roy could ask any questions, Charles went on assuming critical answers. "I want to be involved in politics, but I don't want to be in politics. I'll learn my way through you, and if all goes well. Well—"
"Every politician has business advisors from the community. People who think through important decisions." The waitress came by with a litany of specials only to have Charles give her a politely silent "not now" stroke of the arm. "I don't know if we can get you nominated, let alone elected. But if you want this opportunity I'd have Flesh recommend a good hair stylist and someone who knows how to fit a real suit. And you know what else has to be cleaned up."
Charles dipped the olive into his martini using the toothpick. He then worked it like a tiny pointer. "That dick under the desk shit is out. And don't ever smell like you've been hiding in your trunk smoking a joint. Nobody's gonna elect Jerry Garcia to the assembly or senate in Central California unless he's Jerry Garcia, and Jerry Garcia is dead."
