in the face.
He turned onto Grapevine Road. He took another sip of coffee, but it tasted like shit, and he rolled down die window, dumped out the rest of the cup's contents, and tossed the cup itself onto the floor of the cruiser. He was coming up on one of the valley's busier lovers' lanes, and he slowed down, hoping for some action.
He was rewarded with a red Mazda parked underneath a tree by the side of the road.
Mccomber slowed, cut his lights, and pulled in back of the vehicle. He grabbed his flashlight, got out of the police car and, putting his right hand on fee butt of his pistol, walked forward. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw a teenage boy in the passenger seat of the car, leaning back, his eyes closed, a look of relaxed joy on his face. A
moment later, a girl lifted her head from his lap, pushed the hair out of her eyes and back around her neck, and lowered her head once again.
Mccomber grinned. This was more like it. This was going to be fun.
He put on his most serious expression, strode up to the car, and rapped loudly on the driver's side window, shining the flashlight and peering in.
The chief's daughter sat up and stared back at him dumbly, fingers still grasping the boy's hard, wet penis.
Mccomber gazed at the pair, shocked. They were both hopelessly drunk. He could see it in their glassy-eyed stares, in the dumb slackness of their mouths. His light reflected off sweaty skin. The fun had gone out of this scare, but he decided to pretend he didn't know who the girl was, and he motioned for the boy to roll down the window.
He waited until the window was down before speaking. He tried not to look at the still stiff organ peeking out from between the folds of hastily pulled up pants. 'What are you two doing, exercising in there?'
His voice was threatening, official, but though the boy seemed frightened, the chief's daughter was not intimidated.
She picked up a wine bottle from the floor and took a swig, not looking at him. 'Fuck you.'
Chief's daughter or no chief's daughter, it was time to play hardball.
'May I see your driver's license?' Me Comber said.
The boy licked his lips nervously. 'Look, we're sorry. Please don't--'
'Your license,' Mccomber repeated.
The boy dug through his pants and pulled out his wallet. His hands were shaking as he withdrew his driver's license.
'Mr. Holman?' Mccomber, said, reading the name next to the poorly shot photo. 'Will you and the young lady please step out of the car?'
'We didn't--'
'Please step out of the car.'
He hadn't intended to do anything but scare them, put them through a few sobriety tests, then let them off with a warning, but as he stood mere, the wine bottle few over the roof of the Mazda toward his head.
'Fuck off, pig!' the chief's daughter yelled.
The glass shattered on the asphalt.
He knew he was acting out of anger and not reason, that he was making what could be a career decision, but he strode around the car, yanked the staggering girl to her feet, and twisted her arm around her back.
'Police brutality!' she yelled.
'If you do not cooperate, young lady, you will be spending the rest of the night in a jail cell.'
'She didn't mean it,' the boy said, apologizing for her.
'Fuck you!' The girl was sobbing, but there was no sadness in her tears, only anger and frustration. She glared at Mccomber defiantly. 'It's almost here, and there's not a fucking thing you can do about it!'
'What's almost here?'
'Him!'
'Who?'
Her expression clouded; her gaze seemed to lose some of its intensity.
'I don't know.' Her voice was confused but still defiant.
'Look, I'll take her home. She's sorry--'
'Shut up,' Mccomber snapped.
It's almost here.
He'd nearly understood that, it had almost meant something to him, and that was why he now held her without moving, why he wanted the two of them to shut up so he could have time to think. Even outside the car, he could smell the wine they had been drinking. It hung heavy in the air, recharged every few seconds by the girl's exhalation of breath, and it made him feel slightly nauseous, gave him a minor headache.
It's almost here.
He felt that too, had felt it ever since he'd seen the watchman's body at the winery, though he never would have thought to express it that way. There was a palpable feeling in the air, a building tension, like the accumulation of energy or the gathering of power or ... He wasn't sure. But something was coming to a head. Something he did not understand and probably would not believe in if he did. Something the chief's daughter had obviously tapped into.
He suddenly wanted a drink himself.
He looked toward the boy, now buckling his pants. 'Mr. Holman?' he said.
The boy looked at him, frightened. 'Yes?'
'I could run you in for being a minor and being under the influence, for having an open container of alcohol in your vehicle, for indecent exposure and, if I wanted to get nasty, for statutory rape.' He stared at the boy, waited for a response, was glad to see that there was none.
'But I'm going to let you off with a warning this time on the condition that you lock your car and walk--I said, walk--the little lady home. If I come by later and find that this car had been moved, that will mean that you were also driving under the influence, and I am afraid that is an offense I will not be able to overlook. Do I make myself clear?'
The boy nodded gratefully.
'Fuck you!' the chief's daughter yelled.
'Now get Miss. Charm out of here before I haul her in on a drunk and disorderly charge.' He let the girl go, and her boyfriend immediately took her arm, pulling her away.
'You can't stop it!' she called. 'There's nothing you can do!'
Mccomber walked slowly back to his car, ignoring her taunts, wondering if he should tell the chief about what had happened or if he should try to keep it quiet. The good mood which had been his upon initially approaching the Mazda had long since fled, and now he no longer felt like cruising the streets at all.
He felt like drinking.
He felt like getting drunk.
It's almost here.
He did not acknowledge the boy's wave as he passed the two teenagers on his way down the road.
The ground was wet, the sky overcast, the air redolent with the fresh, invigorating odor of recent rain. Above the rooftops, the trees appeared almost black against the gray background, their heavy leaves and branches disturbed only by the cool northerly breeze which blew against his face. Dion felt happy, for no real reason at all. Days like this inevitably put him in a good mood, no matter what had happened the night before. He breathed deeply, smelled fireplace smoke, exhaled, saw steam.
In a puddle on the sidewalk he saw a reflection of the sky, silhouettes of trees and rooftops, a charcoal sketch.
Fall had always been his favorite season. While most kids linked the seasons with the school year, waiting anxiously for summer and school's end, dreading fall and the resumption of classes, his perceptions had always been more instinctual, less tied to the workings of the material world. He loved fall, always had. There was something about this time of year which made him feel healthy and alive. Autumn was usually assumed to be nature's dotage, the season before its death, but as he had learned from Penelope, plants such as grapes belied that assumption, bucked the general trend, died when others bloomed, bloomed when others died, and he himself
