bicycle tour they had taken that day-fifty miles along the foggy coast, dodging cars, pouring it on on the uphills, letting it all go on the downhills. They had had a long leg-stiffening trip home and she couldn’t believe the clock-after midnight! Oh, well, tomorrow was Wednesday. They could sleep and sleep. Neither of them was a rat-racer anymore.
“Pont Neuf,” she said, pointing to the glass of wine awaiting him. “For our fashionably late supper.”
“Good choice.” He took off his shoes and socks. Even his veins were carved; his legs looked like they had wires wound around them. Massaging his calf with one hand, Ted went on, “We were so fast at the Point Sur curve I thought we’d fly off the road.”
“Incredibly cool,” Megan agreed. She set cold shrimp on ice and shrimp sauce in front of him and sat down at the table, lit by candlelight. They both dug in and in five minutes the meal was over. Following the habit they had built up over their six years together, they went out in back to the hot tub, stripped, and stretched out in the hot water for a few minutes.
Then they went back inside. Megan lay down on the massage table in the bedroom. Ted dribbled warm oil on her, all down her back and the glutes and the thighs, and began stroking her with his long strokes, his strong arms smoothing her muscles. She relaxed fully, knowing he appreciated the tight muscles along the back of her thighs, where his hands moved now. He moved down to her ankles and feet, rubbing her big toes with his fingers, while she gave out low appreciative noises, started getting drowsy.
“Now you,” she said.
“Such a good day.” He lay down on his stomach on a fresh towel and she leaned over him, slick with oil, and rubbed him into as close as Ted could ever get to relaxation.
“Ted?”
“Mmm-hmm?” he said sleepily.
“Did you set those fires?”
His eyes didn’t open.
“I wouldn’t tell,” Megan said. “Remember a long time ago when we were talking in bed and you told me about-”
“I was a kid. It was hormones. Nobody died.”
“But you said you got off on the fires.”
“So?”
“I’ve been wondering. How come you’re not interested in me lately.” His back went stiff again.
He said, “I don’t want to talk about this. I was enjoying myself. You think I would be part of anything that caused someone to die?”
“Ted, that’s such an interesting way not to answer me. You know, I saw you looking at Danny one time, and I thought maybe… I thought maybe you might be bi. It’s perfectly fine to be bi, you know? I’m an accepting person.”
“So I’m bi and set fires and I killed Danny?” Ted’s muscles had hardened even more under her hand. He sat up and put his hand around her slippery neck. “What is this crap?”
She was suffocating. His hand was a vise.
“S-sorry,” she said.
“Get this, Megan. I am not bi.”
“Okay. I was wrong.” He took his hand away.
“What crap,” he said. “Ruining such a nice day. Hey. Listen. It’s my cell phone in the kitchen.”
He ran for it. When he came back into the bedroom, he got dressed again.
“I have to go out, one of the neighbors thinks she saw a prowler.” He hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that to you.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it,” Megan said from the bed, but he was already gone.
On the corner of Siesta Court nearest Rosie’s Bridge, George and Jolene had been in bed for hours, but George couldn’t get to sleep. His feet didn’t hurt.
That was the problem. His feet didn’t hurt because he couldn’t feel them anymore.
He had knocked his left foot against the bathtub that morning and in spite of Jolene taking him to the doctor, it was going to ulcerate, he knew it. He opened one eye and looked at the clock on the bedstand. Midnight.
Not everybody gets to know what their death will be before it happens. His death was going to blind him and kill him off piece by piece. His dad had died of diabetes at forty-eight. They could keep you alive pretty near to a normal life span now. How old am I, sixty-three or sixty-four, he thought, and didn’t want to remember.
The main thing was how to leave Jolene enough money to raise the little girls properly, like ladies. Jolene never had asked for anything else but she wanted this, did she ever. They had some money in a bank account George had never told Jolene about, but it wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t keep them for a year. It wasn’t nothing the way prices of gas and clothes and food kept going up and up. Might as well just throw that money out the window.
Throw it out the window and let it catch on fire in the night and burn something that needed burning.
Out back, all that useless land covered with live oak, and he couldn’t even sell it because these damn yuppies came in and got theirs and then fought to keep him from getting his. It stung like fury. Here they were developing across the river, wanting to rip down the trees, stealing his views along with his peace of mind.
Had the fire stopped them? Maybe it was too early to tell. He had walked up there, in the meadowy area between the river and the handicapped place, before supper. They didn’t seem to be rebuilding the model home that burnt, not yet, and the land sure looked ugly where it burned.
And after that walk, he couldn’t feel his goddamn feet. He’d have to see the doc again in the morning.
Jolene might go twenty years with the four hundred thousand, which the realtor said he could have gotten on the Back Acre, had he been able to do what he wanted with his own damn property.
Too late now, he’d never get that ordinance changed. He’d done everything he could for the family, right up to things he couldn’t ever tell Jolene about. All he could do now was try to live a little while longer.
He heard the phone ring at the bedstand. Jolene beat him to it. “Oh, hi, Sam,” she said. “Everything all right?”
She handed it to him and he listened. Then he reached down for his slippers. “What is it?” she said.
“Sam thought he saw a prowler. I’m gonna meet him outside.”
She sat straight up in bed, her nightie slipping down her shoulder, pretty as a postcard. “I’ll go too.”
“You stay put. I mean it. It’s probably nothing. I’ll be right back.”
Tory was vomiting in the bathroom again. Darryl heard her wash her mouth out. She crawled back into bed, pulling the covers off him.
One thing after another.
“You’ll forget all about this in a couple of months,” he said. “Remember, you had all that trouble the first trimester with Mikey.”
Tory just rolled over to her side of the bed and gave him her back. She was mad at him for trying to talk to Elizabeth at the party, and he could make no explanation. He didn’t know what had possessed him. He’d only had a couple of Coronas.
Lately, he’d done several things he’d never dreamed he’d do. He’d been lucky, and here he was now, ready to push his luck again.
Tory had no idea that he’d gone to see Elizabeth. Fine, let her sleep, he just wanted to go to sleep too. Darryl rolled over in the opposite direction.
A song was running through his head, a song George sang, a cowboy ballad, and Darryl kept thinking about some of the words:
They had an appointment with Pastor Sobczek next Thursday, and Darryl was afraid all his fantasizing was going to have to end at that point, because God would be involved, and God would come down, when it came to Tory and his soon-to-be-five kids and his commitment to love and honor forever, on the side of his marriage. That his love for Tory had turned to a mild, fond kind of feeling didn’t matter to God. That he wanted Elizabeth so bad he was breathing harder just thinking about it now didn’t matter.
God’s God. He doesn’t indulge these crazy emotions.
Elizabeth was beautiful and tragic. Debbie had whispered the whole story to Tory and Tory had told him, all about the car crash and the husband and daughter who died.
He couldn’t believe he’d actually gone to Elizabeth’s house. He’d talked with her, had the chance to drink her in. That’s what he had done, drunk her into his soul and made her part of him.
But he hadn’t expressed himself right. Words didn’t come easy to him. She’d thrown him out.
I could make her smile, he thought. I’d go to France with her if she wanted. She’d probably do something like that, go live in Paris. She had money and freedom. Wouldn’t life be fabulous with Elizabeth in Paris, free and rich?
A man had a right to do one thing before God intervened. He had a right to make his feelings fully known to the woman he loved, privately and without humiliating his wife. If he didn’t have that, well, he’d explode. And he’d hate his wife, because he’d blame her for not letting him at least say it once to the woman.
He slaved for Tory and the kids. Tory must know that. Sometimes he hated what he had to do, meeting the demands of his family and neighbors, working too hard and too much, day in and day out, the parties, the yard work, the troubles, but he did what he had to do, didn’t he? He took care of business just like he was supposed to, so if he wanted more out of life… well, didn’t he deserve it?
Bringing the blankets up to his nose, Darryl put his hands together under the covers. Silently, he said, Lord, am I allowed to speak to her one more time? Am I allowed this one thing? Should I?
The Lord may have answered him. But Darryl didn’t really want to hear what He said. Besides, the phone was ringing in the living room. Tory had finally gotten to sleep.
Confused, guilty, and scared all at once, Darryl rolled out of bed to find out who needed him now.
Out behind the Cowan house on this late night, Debbie thought she could see two silhouettes making their way behind the garage.
Sam wouldn’t! What if David came home! Of course not! She looked harder out the kitchen window, across Ben’s grassy yard, but now saw only shadows. Sam was at the office working late just like he had said. Sam would never do it to her again. He really did love her.
