banks of the Thick Silty River with Libby, picking the scabs off her knees and eating them. ‘At the age of twelve, that’s about as close as you’re going to get to oral sex.’ But now there was no point in writing any more.
Maybe he could work on a series about a man whose son was killed, and the son’s spirit comes back to help him sort out his tangled love life. Half tragedy, half bittersweet comedy.
Maybe Astrid would call.
By noon, nobody had knocked on the door and the phone had remained silent, so he decided to drive to the ocean. It was a warm day but a strong wind was blowing from the west, and the clouds were tumbling over each other in their hurry to get to the mountains.
Frank didn’t know if he had expected the old man to be there or not, but he had been sitting on the beach for less than ten minutes when he appeared, in his duck-billed baseball cap and purple T-shirt, dragging a moth-eaten gray mongrel behind him on a length of string. The old man stopped about twenty feet away and took off his cap and scratched his scalp.
‘All on your own?’ he said, his eyes narrowed against the wind.
‘I was, until now.’
‘Well, Frank, we can’t always expect other people to do what we want them to do. Sometimes we have to realize that we’re not the sun, and that other people, they’re not our planets.’
‘I took your advice.’
‘Oh, yes? And what advice was that?’
‘I kept on putting one foot in front of the other, but I still don’t know where the hell it’s taking me.’
The old man chuckled and sniffed. ‘Have patience, Frank. You’ll find out where you’re going, sooner than you think.’
He was sitting on the edge of the bed on Sunday evening, taking off his socks, when there was a frantic knocking at his door.
‘OK, OK! I’m coming!’
He opened the door to find Astrid standing there. Her hair was messed up and she had two crimson bruises under her eyes. She was hugging a dark-blue sweatshirt around herself as if she were cold.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Frank. She limped into the room and immediately sat down on the couch. He saw that she was wearing no shoes, and that her left foot was bleeding. He closed the door and sat down beside her, trying to take hold of her hands. ‘For Christ’s sake, Astrid, what the hell’s happened?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I got into some trouble, is all.’
‘Trouble? What kind of trouble? Look at you – you look like you just went the full distance with Mike Tyson!’
‘It doesn’t matter. Could I have a drink, please?’
He went through to the kitchen and brought her back a glass of Diet Coke.
‘A drink, Frank. A proper drink.’
‘You think you ought to? Look at the state of you.’
‘Frank, you’re not my mother.’
He poured her a Jack Daniel’s, straight up. She tipped it back in one, coughed, and held out her glass for another.
‘So . . . are you going to tell me what happened? I thought we were going to Rancho Santa Fe.’
‘I’m sorry about that, Frank. I had to go see somebody.’
‘And that somebody beat up on you? Are you going to tell me who it was?’
She took another swallow of whiskey. ‘I told you, it doesn’t matter. I deserved it.’
‘Look,’ he said, sitting down beside her again, ‘I don’t have any right to stick my nose in your private business, but you and I are a little more than friends, aren’t we? And when you come back here all covered in bruises, I think I deserve an explanation.’
‘I’m sorry about Rancho Santa Fe. I should have called you.’
‘What happened? Where did you go?’
She looked at him and he thought that he had never seen anybody looking so sad. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated.
They sat for a long time in silence. Astrid sipped her whiskey and kept her eyes on the television, even though the sound was turned down. Frank kept his eyes on Astrid. A television reporter was standing amongst the shattered remains of Happy, Sneezy, Sleepy and Bashful. The caption read ‘Disney Death Toll Reaches 113.’
Fifteen
He pulled open the shower door without warning. Astrid tried to cover herself, but it was no use. She couldn’t hide the bruises on her shoulders and her thighs, or the bite-marks on her breasts. She stood there with water coursing down her face, half ashamed and half defiant.
Frank took a long, long look at her, and then he closed the door. He was sitting on the end of the bed waiting for her when she came out of the shower, wrapped in a thick white hotel robe.
‘I don’t know what to think about this,’ Frank told her, and he didn’t.
Astrid stood in front of the mirror and toweled her hair. ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you, can it?’
‘That’s bullshit. Anything that hurts you hurts me.’
‘Frank, we’ve spent two nights together. It’s not as if we’re married.’
‘Danny said that you were my future. Don’t you think that counts for something? It does to me.’
‘For God’s sake, Frank, Danny didn’t tell you anything. It was Nevile Strange and Nevile Strange is a fake.’
‘Well, I don’t agree. I heard what I heard and I saw what I saw. And if you’re
Astrid came up to him and gently tilted his chin up so that they were looking at each other eye to eye. ‘I thought you needed somebody. Somebody who understood how much you’re hurting. I also thought that you needed to forget about Danny for a few hours, and think about yourself.’
‘Right now I’m thinking about you. I don’t see how we can sustain any kind of relationship unless I know who you are.’
Astrid smiled and kissed him on the forehead. ‘I’m just
‘I need to know who hurt you. I also need to know
She kissed him again. She smelled of summers gone by. ‘No, you don’t.’
They both drank too much Jack Daniel’s that evening, and when they went to bed they fell asleep almost at once. But Frank was woken in the middle of the night by Astrid tugging his penis. He mumbled, ‘No,’ but she pressed her hand over his mouth, and continued to rub him, harder and harder. When he grew stiff, she climbed on top of him and guided him inside her, gasping with pain.
‘
As she approached orgasm, she began to sob and snuffle. Again he tried to roll over, but she screamed at him, ‘Don’t! Don’t!’ and she jumped up and down on him faster and faster until she finally went into spasm, her thighs gripping him tight, her perspiration dropping on his face and scalding his eyes.
Afterward she lay with her back to him, quivering, and when he touched her face with his fingertips her cheeks were wet with tears.
‘Astrid,’ he said, ‘you have to tell me who did this to you.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You have to. Whoever he is, he deserves to be in prison.’
‘I’m not worth it, Frank. I’ve never been worth it.’
He sat up and switched on the bedside light. ‘How can you say that? You’re beautiful.’
‘No, I’m not. I’m nothing.’
He didn’t know what to say to that. He was too tired and his head was banging and his mouth was all furred up. But he knew one thing for certain. He would find out who had beat up on Astrid, and he would make sure that the bastard got what he deserved, in spades.
