by Tim Sandlin
A pint of Captain Morgan rum sat on the nightstand between the beds. A pint was all Lydia had been willing to spring for, and it took the threat of blackmail for Oly to get that.
He’d said, “I’ll tell the prissy woman,” and Lydia said, “I see this threat business turning into a never-ending nightmare for the rest of my life.”
Oly said, “My life.”
Lydia said, “That better not be much longer, you old goat. If you don’t back off, I wouldn’t feel an iota of shame about shoving you into traffic.”
Now, Oly humped over to his wheelchair and more or less fell into it. He screwed around with his hearing aid, either turning it up or down, Roger couldn’t tell, then Oly said, “Turn the TV to an exercise show, if you please.”
Roger tore the seal off and twisted open Oly’s rum. “I’ve been around the dial more than once, and I’ve haven’t seen an exercise show. All they have are regular shows and sports. There’s a news-all-the-time channel, and a station to tell you what’s on the other stations.”
“Those ladies on the exercise shows are hired for enticement.” Oly held out his glass while Roger poured. “I watch them before bed. They improve the quality of dreams.”
Roger said, “I don’t think this TV gets exercise shows.”
“I’ll settle for Weather Channel if there’s no exercise,” Oly said. “Weather girls are hired for enticement too, but the dreams they bring about are not near so entertaining.”
A knock came at the door and before Roger could say, “Who is it?” the door opened.
Shannon stood in the dark rectangle of the doorway. She said, “I can’t stand this anymore.”
Roger and Oly looked at one another. Roger said, “Can’t stand what?”
Oly assumed it had to do with the TV. “You don’t even know what we’re watching.”
Shannon walked toward Roger. “We have to talk.”
“Uh-oh.” Oly gulped from the motel glass. “I’ve run into that one before.”
Shannon nodded at Oly. “Without him around.”
“Whoa there.” Oly affected offense. “I’m harmless.”
Shannon picked Oly’s overalls off the floor. She held them at arm’s length, between her thumb and index finger. “Get dressed, Oly. You’re going to my room.”
Oly stuffed the glass between his floppy thighs and dug his hands into the wheelchair handles. “I just took my clothing off. I’m not putting it back on again. At my age, you don’t waste time undoing what’s done.”
Roger finally caught up with the situation. “Lydia will fly off the handle.”
Shannon knelt to peer under Oly’s bed, searching for the shirt, but she didn’t find it, because he’d washed the shirt in the sink and left it to dry on the shower-curtain rod. She said, “Lydia’s long gone.”
Roger turned off the TV. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Soon as we checked in, she changed her clothes, grabbed her keys, and took off.”
“Where to?” Roger asked.
“What I don’t have here is a clue.” Shannon gave up on the shirt and stood with one hand on her hip, hovering over Oly. “It’s a warm night, compared to back home, anyway. We’ll take him like that.” She raised her voice to a near shout. “You ready to roll, Oly?”
His mouth chewed on itself, then he said, “Only if I get to keep my bottle.”
“Of course you can keep your bottle. We’ll set you up in front of the television with your bottle. You’ll have a ball.”
Roger leaned over to put on his shoes. “Lydia will come back and find him.”
Shannon dropped Oly’s overalls back on the floor, where she’d found them. “I don’t see that as a problem.”
***
Together, Roger and Shannon pushed Oly’s chair down to the girls’ room, which looked exactly like the boys’ room, only messier. Lydia’s traveling outfit was thrown across her bed, along with most of the clothes from her overnight bag. Makeup bottles and tubes cluttered the top of the TV. Roger was amazed at how quickly women fill up a room.
Shannon placed a pillow in Oly’s lap and draped a blanket over his shoulders. She clamped the remote in one claw and the bottle in the other.
“You’re set,” she said.
Oly twisted his skinny neck and cocked his head into an ogle position. “Can I have a good-night kiss?”
Roger said, “No.”
***
“I understand how we’re almost but not really related and all, Roger, but I was wondering how much you know about me.” They were back in Roger and Oly’s room. Roger was sitting in the motel chair that came with the little desk squeezed between the TV and the heater. Shannon sat on his bed. She had kicked off her cowboy boots and taken the tie out of her hair and was twisting it between her fingers. Shannon likes to twist something whenever she talks about matters that are important to her.
Her immediate problem was where to look. Straight eye contact was too intense for a serious conversation. It tended to turn into a who-blinks-first contest, and besides, Lydia always looked you right in the eyes when she lied, so Shannon had been raised not to trust the ones who overdid sincerity. But she couldn’t just stare into space. He might think her mind was elsewhere.
“I know we’ve been in the same state as each other eight times in the last ten years.”
Shannon stopped jiggling. “You kept count?”
Roger crossed his right ankle over his left thigh. He didn’t waste any angst on where to look. He stared straight at Shannon.
“The first was Uncle Pete’s funeral. That’s when we met, although met might not be the proper word. Nobody introduced us, and I wasn’t talking yet, so we didn’t come in contact with each other, except once when I left the bathroom and you were waiting to go in. You said, ‘What took you?’”
“I don’t recall that.”
“A couple years later, you flew in for Christmas and stayed a week. That’s the first time we spoke back and forth. Maurey and I went down to North Carolina when you graduated college. The other times were in Wyoming.”
Shannon absorbed all this. She didn’t remember any of it. Roger had just been there, for ten years, part of the family, but not a part she’d taken notice of.
“Those are charming memories.” She twisted the hair tie back into a high-riding ponytail. “But that’s not what we’re talking about.”
“What are we talking about?”
She inhaled, glanced up at him, exhaled, looked away, and jumped in. “Has anyone ever told you about my boyfriends?”
Auburn had told Roger about Shannon’s short-term serial-monogamy tendencies, although that’s not the way he worded it. Auburn had said, Our sister is a tramp.
Now, in the Lompoc Comfort Inn, Roger considered Auburn’s word and said, “No.”
Shannon gave a joyless laugh. “I’ve had many boyfriends.” She ran through a quick inventory to make certain that statement was correct. “The truth is I fall in love too quickly and then I fall back out too soon. It’s a problem. I guess. It makes me feel inconsistent. I’m always in flux.”
Roger nodded as if he understood. “If you were a boy, that wouldn’t be a problem.”
Shannon thought, Isn’t he sweet? Then she said, “That’s not true. Boys take pride in sex without emotional ties more than girls do, but falling in and out of love indiscriminately is a problem for either gender.”
Roger said, “I didn’t know that.”
They fell into a comfortable silence. Even though she still wasn’t sure where to look, Shannon felt much more at ease than she usually did when getting to know a new man. It was as if Roger wasn’t a new man. He’d been around a long time, like when you discover the perfect shirt that has been hanging in the closet for years, but you didn’t remember it, so it feels new even though it isn’t.
Roger was
wondering if he’d gotten Shannon’s ears right in his portrait. He liked her ears. They were not like other girls’ ears in that the top fold was softer and less pink, and the lobe didn’t hang down. Roger had a theory that a girl’s breasts were reflected in her earlobes, and Shannon had tight earlobes.
Shannon sighed, looking at her hands. “The truth is—I’m a mess.”
Roger started to disagree, but he stopped. That’s what anyone would do, and he didn’t want to be just anyone. Besides, she was right.
Shannon spoke with her head down. “If I don’t break the pattern, this will end badly, especially for you. We could ruin every Christmas and family reunion for the rest of our lives.”
Roger recrossed his legs the other way. He cleared his throat. “Shannon, I know we’re talking about something important, but you’ll have to define what you mean by this if I’m going to know what.”
Shannon blinked in surprise. “This? This is us. Don’t you want to be a couple?”
Roger’s response—after thinking his dream was coming true and not knowing whether that’s a good thing or not—was to wonder if couples always lived together and, if so, where in the cabin he was going to put Shannon’s stuff. He hadn’t built storage for two.
“That’s what I hoped you meant,” he said. “Being a couple with you has been a goal of mine since middle school. It just seems so sudden and far-fetched, I wasn’t sure what you meant.”
Shannon frowned. “Sudden is the problem. I’ve done sudden. Sudden ends in a train wreck, for me. We have to go slow.”
Shannon bit the corner of her lip and considered ways to slow down courtship. In the past, she would meet a guy, sleep with the guy, move the guy into her house, and start choosing bridesmaids, pretty much simultaneously.
“The future has to be unique with you. It can’t be like it was with the others. I have to handle every detail in this relationship different than what I’ve done before.”
She stared hard at Roger, noticing he wasn’t scared or nervous. She was scared and nervous and took it as a good sign that he wasn’t.
“How do you normally go about relationships?” Shannon asked.
In his mind, Roger pictured the girls he had been with. “I’ve never had a relationship, that I know of.”
“What about all those pregnant teenagers you sleep with?”
Roger shrugged. She liked his shrug. It was disarming without pretension or arrogance. He said, “None of that was a relationship. I was a familiar sex object, to them.”
Shannon nodded, understanding what he meant. “And what were they to you?”
“Hell, Shannon. I’m twenty-one. No twenty-one-year-old guy is going to say No to a girl who wants him.”
He could see right off that wasn’t the right tack to take.
Shannon said, “When we’re a couple, you better learn how to say no right quick.”
Roger backed up. “Unless he’s in true love with another girl. Which I will be. If we’re together.”
Shannon tore out of the stare. Eye contact had gone just the way she was afraid it would—all ego and want, none of it certain. “But you were already in love with me, before you slept with the hordes.”
“That doesn’t count. I never dreamed I had a shot with you. If I’d known you might like me back, I would have waited.”
“Is that an excuse for promiscuity?”
“It’s better than yours, for sleeping with your hordes.” Roger put both feet on the floor and leaned toward her. “If you want to be a couple, we should start over fresh. Dwelling on the past will only cause hard feelings.”
Shannon knew that was true. She’d been with guys who were jealous of former boyfriends. They always thought the exes were losers, dorks, jocks, poets, or any of the categories they considered themselves vastly superior to. They were insulted that Shannon could have ever liked such a poor choice for a man. It made them doubt themselves.
Shannon could tell from the leaning forward that Roger wanted more of the meeting-of-the-eyes thing, and she didn’t. She didn’t trust eye contact. She trusted skin contact, so she walked over and sat on Roger’s lap. She sniffed behind his ear. He put his right hand on her lower back. Now they could talk without soulful looks. She could be honest without seeming to be evasive.
She murmured into his neck. “The reason I fall in and out of love so often is because I sleep with the guys too soon.”
Roger enjoyed the breath on his neck. “In novels, sex leads to love. I never experienced it that way, myself.”
“It does with me. Every time. One orgasm and I think I’ve found my prince. If we’re going to be different and make this work where it hasn’t before, we have to not sleep together.”
Those were surprising words, coming from a girl sitting on his lap, breathing into his Adam’s apple. Not what Roger had expected to hear. “You think the love will stick if we don’t have sex?”
“It never stuck when I did have sex. We’ll try it the other way.”
Roger placed his left hand on Shannon’s back, below her shoulder blade, and pulled her into him. For Roger, this was the most intimate moment of his life. He’d never felt a true connection before, and since he’d never felt one, he didn’t know what it was or what he’d been missing. This was good jazz, a genre novel, a cup of coffee, and an early-morning piss outdoors all rolled into one—a person. This was deep satisfaction.
He said, “Forever?”
Shannon laughed and bit his earlobe. “Oh no. We’ll fuck like cats someday.” She felt his erection beneath her and wondered how long she could hold out. It would be intriguing to watch. “In the meantime, we’ll date. Talk and eat, go for walks and neck ourselves into a frenzy like normal kids did back when Mom and Dad were young, so when we finally do it, the sex won’t swamp the special thing between us.”
This wasn’t exactly Roger’s dream of being a couple with Shannon. “I’m already in a frenzy over you.”
Shannon hopped off his lap and walked over to the mirror to check herself out. “That makes me so happy.” She met his eyes in the mirror. “We’re going to have the longest foreplay in modern history.”
Maurey’s first clue was the Tiffany-style lamp. It lay on the carpet—base, stem, and stained-glass shade pieces—but that was not necessarily conclusive. Lydia had a flair for the dramatic gesture, which often led to broken furnishings, and that was okay, so long as the trash job stayed in her own home. The results, however, tended to remain where they fell. Lydia couldn’t see the point of throwing an object against a wall if she was the one to fetch the whisk broom and dustpan. Cleaning the mess was an admission that the gesture had been in vain.
So, the Tiffany-style lamp hinted at the breaking and entering Maurey expected, but it didn’t confirm a crime. Vanilla soy milk on the kitchen floor did. No matter how off-the-handle Lydia let herself go, she wouldn’t dribble. Then Maurey saw the rest of the milk and the carton on the counter and the broken pane of glass from the back door.
Leroy had been here. The fact he’d broken in when the door was unlocked only proved how stupid the yahoo was. A neighborhood kid looking for tranqs would have used the door. Anyone local would have used the door.
Maurey went through the house, searching for clues Leroy might have found. The closets had been rifled, and several of Lydia’s two-piece outfits thrown on the bed. That seemed strange, even for Leroy. She found the DuPree manuscript in the trash can and took it out. Maurey read the first page—a fairly graphic description of castration—then returned it to the trash.
Back in the kitchen, Maurey found a wadded-up sheet of yellow legal-pad paper on the floor beside the garbage pail. She carried the paper to the table, smoothed it out with her palm, and read Reasons Life Is Good written across the top left of the page and Reasons Life Stinks across the top right. No doubt Shannon’s reckoning. Lydia wouldn’t have left the right side of th
e page blank. From the corner of her peripheral vision, Maurey noticed the steady red light on the answering machine. On her machine at the TM Ranch, a blinking light signified a message no one had listened to, an unblinking light meant there was a message someone had played but not erased, and no light meant no message. Operating on the assumption that Lydia’s machine worked the same as hers, Maurey reasoned that whatever message was on the machine had been heard, probably by Leroy.
Beep.
“Hi, Lydia. It’s me. Shannon. Shannon Callahan. I’m flying into Las Vegas this afternoon, and I need you to pick me up. I’m on Delta. The plane gets in at 4:10 p.m., which should leave you plenty of time to swing by and—”
Beep.
“Get me. If I miss you guys, I’ll fly on to Santa Barbara and leave a message on your phone as to when I’ll be there. If I miss you in Santa Barbara, I’ll go on to that writer’s house. I’m sure I can track down anyone famous as Loren Paul.”
Beep.
“Don’t let Roger get away.”
Maurey picked up the phone and punched in the Madonnaville number.
I answered on the third ring. Because I held Baby Esther in my right arm and picked up the phone with my left hand, I dropped it—the phone—on the floor. Maurey waited while I shifted Esther from right to left and retrieved the phone.
I said, “Hey.”
Maurey said, “The kids are in trouble.”
“Do they need money?”
“Tell Gilia we’re flying to Santa Barbara.”
Esther yanked my glasses off and put the earpiece in her mouth. “All of us, or just you and me?”
“This isn’t a vacation, Sam. There won’t be any flights tonight, but I want you at the airport first thing tomorrow morning. And I mean my definition of first thing, not yours.”
I got my glasses back and managed to put them back in place. I’m not one to handle a crisis blind.
“Can you pick me up, or should I meet you at the terminal? We’re kind of short a vehicle.”
“Have Gilia drive you down. We don’t have time to carpool.”
