“She came in and said, ‘Tabasco sauce in the Bloody Mary tonight, Monica,’ and right away I knew I was in for a wild time. Then she just flipped me over on the sofa, yanked off my underwear and-”
She held up a hand with the extended fingers together, moved it sharply upward, clenched them into a fist and pumped it up and down. Then she giggled again, rolled her eyes and blew air over her upper lip.
“Let’s just say I’m glad she doesn’t have bigger hands! You know what I mean.”
“Ah… yeeeeah,” Ellen said with a wince. “Fisting.”
“That’s what she told me it’s called; I’d never even heard of it before I came here. I don’t really like it all that much even when it’s, you know, not so abrupt.”
I found that out in my own apartment and I’m not inclined to giggle about it. God, I hope your variety of crazy isn’t catching! “I think that’s harder on the guys,” Monica said thoughtfully. “But you know how guys are. They’re sort of shy, really. They don’t like to talk about things.”
Ellen thought, in what was almost a prayer:
God, Adrian, you’re coming to get me, aren’t you? I swear, I’ll never keep a cat again. The mice and birds would haunt me.
And, as prayer sometimes was, it felt… very slightly reassuring.
Monica went on: “But then she fed-it’s very soothing when she feeds-and then she was, umm, really nice to me.”
She absently touched the Band-Aid at the base of her throat.
“You play tennis, don’t you?” Monica went on.
“Yes?” Ellen said, blinking at the non sequitur.
“There’s a ladies’ club that meets at the community center courts; I go after I finish up at the library most days. Care to play a few games this afternoon? I’m not very sore anymore, and the Do?a can reach us there if she wants you for something. She’s reasonable about that. You only have to clear it with her if you’re out of town for more than a few hours. Besides, she was with Jamal last night.”
“Ah… why not?” Ellen said.
I do like playing tennis. Why not, indeed? They’re probably not good enough to give me much of a game, but you never know.
Just then an ambulance came up the street and stopped in front of Number Three. Two paramedics trotted inside pulling a gurney. Both women froze, then exhaled again as they came out with a living man on it.
Adrienne followed; she was dressed in black motorcycle leathers and boots, and made a beckoning gesture, leaning back against a massive low-slung machine with wide tires, arms crossed on her chest.
Like something alien, Ellen thought; it took a slight mental effort to make herself walk to the driveway. Like something alien and sleek and deadly. All of which are truer than God. Much truer.
“He’s just dazed, I think,” the mistress of Rancho Sangre said absently when they came up, looking after the emergency vehicle. “Possibly a mild concussion. Jamal is”-her voice dropped to a purr “-very strong. And very, very grumpy at breakfast sometimes. Of course, I’m not usually a morning person myself.”
“Well, he should know better than to fight you, Do?a Adrienne,” Monica said disapprovingly. “Really, some people are just plain rude.”
Then she cleared her throat and touched the corner of her mouth for an instant.
“Ah, thanks,” Adrienne said, and used a thumb to wipe up the red trickle that ran down to her chin.
She licked it off, scrubbed her face with her sleeve and went on: “No, it’s actually entertaining, at least for a while. Now, I’m going up to San Francisco. You’re not up to it, are you, Monica?”
“Ah… on the motorcycle?”
Adrienne nodded. Monica smiled and patted the air behind herself for an instant.
“It would hurt a lot,” she said, almost clinically. “Riding that long, I mean.”
“You wouldn’t be very mobile when we got to town, either, which would be tiresome. We wouldn’t want to shock Jean-Charles. Ellen, sluice off, pack yourself some underwear and socks and an extra T-shirt, and your toothbrush. We can do some shopping while I’m there. Vite!”
She jumped at the snap and hurried, flushing with annoyance at herself.
Fear burns itself out, she thought. I can’t be afraid of her every moment of the day. Not that I don’t want to, I just can’t, the way I couldn’t run for twenty-four hours a day either. But I can be nervous a lot longer, the way you can walk farther than you can run. I do wonder why we’re making this trip. Surely she’d want to stay here behind… oh, defenses or something? If I’m bait for Adrian.
When she returned Adrienne was astride the big red-black-and-yellow touring bike; it had a V-shaped logo on the front with the trident-and-black-sun inside it.
I don’t like motorcycles. They’re insanely risky.
“What can I say, I’m lucky,” Adrienne said, and grinned beneath the raised visor of the full-face helmet. “There’s a spare padded jacket in the touring bag-that streamlined trunk thing behind the rear seat. You’d be chilly without that, even with me to break the airflow. And a spare helmet. Put ’em on, spread your thighs over the bitch seat of this vibrator on wheels, and let’s go!”
Just then Monica hurried up. “Some lunch!” she said, and tucked a plastic-wrapped parcel into one of the fared saddlebags beside the rear wheel. “In case you want to stop at someplace pretty and picnic!”
“Monica, you are a wonder,” Adrienne said and stood on the kick-starter. “En avant.”
The big V-twin engine roared into life, but then the sound faded to an oddly muted drone. The inside of the helmet seemed to adjust itself slightly, pressing more tightly against her ears.
“Automatic selective sound-damping,” Adrienne said, tapping her ear; the voice came through faultlessly from the mike in the helmet’s chin-bar. “Customized experimental military system, filters things like engine noise. I just love modern technology!”
Ellen mounted; the touring machine had actual if sketchy seats, enough to cradle the butt and hips at least, and her back was against a padded rest. The Shadowspawn’s torso pressed her, and she could just see over her helmet.
“Arms around my waist,” Adrienne said. “It’s the closest you’ll get to a seat belt.”
She obeyed hesitantly, feeling the other’s back pushing against her breasts and belly through the down jacket’s fabric, and the taut muscle beneath the leather as she gripped.
“It’s a bit late to be shy, ch?rie,” Adrienne observed. “Hang on!”
“Eeek!”
She did, gripping convulsively as the big machine seemed to hang on its spinning, smoking rear wheel for an instant, then came down and caromed out of the little lane like a wet melon seed squeezed between two fingers.
“Whooooop! Whooooop!” Adrienne caroled.
The cycle leaned far over as they cut right, dodging a delivery truck. Speed built to a blur, and the wind tugged at her head. She hugged desperately, hands joining below the other’s ribs as they headed south. After a few moments that was for sheer warmth as well as safety. The air caught at her jacket and made it flutter sharply, like an awning in a high breeze, a continuous crackling sound; the vibration sank into her bones, with the deeper note of the machine beneath.
“We’re on Highway 46 here,” Adrienne said as they turned west. “Pretty country, but it’s even nicer when we hit the coast.”
The only parts of California Ellen had seen before had been the Bay area and LA. This was pretty, in a way different from both the forested East and the austere pi?on-and-juniper high desert around Santa Fe.
Here rolling green hills rose out of the occasional patch of flat land, like a rumpled padded quilt on an unmade bed. Tongues of oakwood and trees she couldn’t identify rose up the notches in the high ground, with sheep grazing in ridge-top meadows. Vineyards pruned and stumpy for winter made geometry across the lower slopes with the first yellow traces of wild mustard beneath, and blazing orchards of cherry and almond were slashes of color against the green. The smells were fresh and moist and the air grew a little warmer as the sun rose; now and then there was an overwhelming sweetness of blossom or a pungent waft from livestock.
Adrienne drove the near-empty road and through the little hamlets with a hard decisive snap that was somehow never jerky, overtaking whatever came her way with a surge that pressed her back against the passenger and Ellen back against the rest. Uneasily, she remembered that Adrian handled the sports cars he loved in very much the same fearless way, as if he were pushing his own nerve and muscle down the controls into the
