Darryl got down on his knees and buried his head in her lap. He broke down like a little kid.
And after a minute he felt her hands stroking his hair. It was like crashing a car and then, finding, thank God, you’re still alive.
30
T HE BOYZ GAVE NOTICE THE NEXT day.
“We’re leaving tomorrow, but we’ll pay the rent until the end of the month,” Dustin said on the phone. Nina, on the floor in Paul’s bedroom, files and books and papers spread around her in a semicircle, tried to wrap her mind around this new domestic disturbance.
“You sure will,” she answered. “Care to give me a reason?”
“This whole thing with Wish.”
“I don’t see how-”
“Wish’s mother. Mrs. Whitefeather. She’s here right now. Know what she’s doing?”
“What?”
“She’s scrubbing the bathroom. She’s putting my razor in the cabinet above the toilet where I’ll never find it.” Dustin must be on a cordless phone because he seemed to be watching Sandy’s movements. His voice, hushed, went on, “She’s sniffing the towels.”
“Put her on, would you?”
“It won’t change our minds. We’re leaving. Sorry, Nina.”
“So that’s it? There’s nothing I can do? Even make Sandy go stay somewhere else?”
“Something else will happen. Tus and I need quiet to study. If Wish gets out he’ll come back here and-no offense, but who knows what’ll happen next? We need quiet. Quiet, man.” Nina heard the sound of the toilet flushing. “There goes the roach that lived in the medicine cabinet,” Dustin said. “He was kind of a pet.”
Nina said, “Okay, Dustin. But I’ll still need you in court next week.”
“We’re still on. I owe Wish that.” Sandy came on the line.
Apparently Dustin hadn’t told her the news yet. When Nina told her she was about to become the sole tenant of the cottage, Sandy said, “I wasn’t going to say anything. But there were things in the freezer that would make your hair stand on end. So what now?”
“The rent’s paid for a couple of weeks. I’ll rent it out again when you leave.”
“It’ll be a lot better-looking around here by then. They’re nice boys, they just never heard of Ajax cleanser.”
Nina returned to her work. She was writing down points to cover during her cross-examination of the medical examiner when Bob knocked on the door.
“Mom? I’m going for a hike.”
“A hike? Where?”
“In the hills out back.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea. There are tarantulas and snakes and poison oak and-”
“I’ll watch out. Hitchcock hasn’t been for a good walk since he got hurt.”
Yes, but there’s a fugitive hiding somewhere out there who wants to take some children, Nina thought. “I’ll go out with you about four.”
“But I want to go now.”
“Go swimming at the condo pool. Okay?”
Bob’s eyes had fallen on a book that lay open in front of her. “What the heck is
“Don’t look at those, honey.” Nina hastily closed the book.
“What happened to those people?”
“It’s a book by two medical examiners, both named Di Maio, called
“You have to read stuff like that? Look at those cracked-up skulls? That one guy looked like a mummy. His skin was hanging in flaps!”
“I’m sorry you saw the pictures, honey. This book is a reference book for doctors and lawyers. Not for you to look at.”
“Remind me not to be a doctor or lawyer!”
“I’ve got to get back to work now, Bobby.”
“So when are we gonna have our big talk?”
“In the next couple of days.”
“Is Paul mad that I’m here? He’s staying away a lot, isn’t he?”
“Paul likes you just fine,” Nina said. “Don’t worry about a thing.”
“You always say that.”
“Bob, I-” I don’t have time to talk right now, I have a prelim tomorrow and I have to get to work, kiddo, she wanted to say. And managed not to say it. “So go have a swim and get some sunshine.”
He also hesitated. He was growing up and she couldn’t always read his mind anymore. “Okay. See you later.”
“I’ll be knocking off around four. We’ll take a hike and later we can eat at Robata and we’ll stop at the Thunderbird Bookstore.” And then she would work some more.
He closed the door and Nina opened her text again. The caption under the photo said, “Scalp burned away, exposing cranial vault.” Outside the window, it was summer.
At Ben Lomond, Ted and Megan stopped for more water and granola bars, twenty hard miles from where they had started cycling. Ted’s hair, when he removed his helmet, curled in tendrils above his brow and made him look like a Roman emperor. They sat on a bench in front of the general store, drinking water and sweating it out almost as fast as they took it in. The tourists drove along Highway 9, gawking like they were exotic or something.
“I never liked these mountains around Santa Cruz,” Megan said. “They’re too dark. Too thick. Too many murders too. I think the hippies who never grew up came here and some of them stagnated for a long time and then they got rotten.”
“They’re dying off now,” Ted said. “The music was pretty good, though.”
“Sex and drugs and rock. Do you think they had more sex than the current generation?”
“Oh, crap. Are you on the sex thing again?”
Megan looked at him, tall, hard, sucking down his water, wet hair, black spandex cycle shorts, hairy legs. “I’ve got a theory,” she said. “About the sex thing, as you call it.”
Ted groaned.
“I think it’s your bicycle seat. And all the time you spend on it. It injures your testes.”
Ted ate some of his granola bar. He said, “I thought that just made you infertile.”
“If it can do that, it must be cutting back on your testosterone production.”
“Stop it, Megan. You’re starting to really bug me.”
“It’s that, or have an open relationship,” Megan said. Ted groaned again.
“You never quit.”
“Because you won’t be straight with me. Yes, I am straightforward. I don’t make three hundred thousand dollars a year pussyfooting around. But remember, Ted, I am also nonjudgmental. I want to solve this problem of us not making love.”
“Maybe it is you,” Ted said. “Maybe you’re cutting my balls off talking about all the money you make.”
“You’re stronger than that.”
“Maybe I need a seventeen-year-old honey who blindly adores me.”
“I adore you. In my way. But I won’t let you keep secrets from me.”
“Megan, I-”
Megan waited.
Ted’s face contorted. “All right!” he said in a low, intense voice. “You asked for it! I don’t like to have to be the one who does it! I want you to do it to me!”
“Do what?”
“You know! I need you to-I’ve been feeling so guilty about some things I need to be-I don’t want you to go easy on me-”
Megan finally understood. She had been obtuse, very obtuse. “You mean, you want to be the passive one in-”
“Don’t say it! Don’t say it out loud!” Ted looked embarrassed now.
“Thank you,” Megan said. “That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?”
“Let’s go. Let’s get out of here. I need to ride.”
Megan put her lips close to his ear. She said, “After our hot tub tonight, I’m going to-are you listening?-tie you-to the bed-and-punish you severely.” His ears flamed. He filled out his shorts in a whole new way.
31
W ISH HAD THE FLU. HE SNUFFLED into a handkerchief beside her at the defendant’s table. He had a generic prisoner’s look about him with the shorn hair and the orange jumpsuit.
Behind him, in the audience section of the court that Nina thought of as the pews, Sandy sat in her purple coat, her purse in her lap. They had whispered a few things to each other. Then Wish had folded his hands in front of him on the table and gone mute.
Paul sat next to Nina at the defense table, reading the Monday morning paper. He had arrived home late the night before and had been sleeping when she headed for his office at 7:00 A.M.
