When She Was Bad

Okay, this is the part where the retired old FBI guy calls the cops, he thought. You tell the nice policemen everything there is to tell, then you go home, pop a cold one, put your feet up on the hassock, and watch the ball game.

Because this is no longer your business, old man. From here on in, all you can do is screw up somebody else’s crime scene. Or if Maxwell’s still inside, get somebody killed.

Then he remembered where he was: The Last Home Town. Crime rate slightly lower than Vatican City. This would be the most exciting thing that had happened in Pacific Grove since Princess Topaz’s dragon boat had nearly sunk a few years ago during the annual Feast of Lanterns pageant. One call to 911 and the locals would be swarming the scene, sirens screaming and roof lights blazing. And if Maxwell was inside-whichever version of him was currently playing in the multiplex of his mind-and it was a hostage situation….

Pender found himself picturing Irene wearing the filmy negligee she’d had on Monday night. Only now, in his mind’s eye, he saw Maxwell standing behind her holding a knife to her throat. Her eyes were pleading for Pender to do something-anything.

Ah, fuck it, thought Pender, drawing the hickory-handled Colt from the flap pocket of his sport jacket. In for a dime, in for a dollar, he told himself, brushing off the muffin and Danish crumbs and jacking a round into the firing chamber before returning the gun to his pocket.

2

Perched on a wide flat boulder jutting out over the creek bank, bathed in the emerald light of the redwood forest, and serenaded by the babbling creek, Lyssy watched a dragonfly skimming lightly over the rippling water, its wings transparent and shimmering.

Lily joined him a few minutes later, wearing a Stanford sweatshirt-a red hoodie-over a dark-brown, V-neck T-shirt and a pair of Guess? jeans she’d borrowed from Dr. Irene’s closet. Hours earlier, when they’d first arrived at her family’s rustic retreat deep in the Lucia Mountains south of Big Sur, she’d hung a string bag bulging with items liberated from Dr. Irene’s refrigerator-bottles of juice, sparkling Italian soda, a quart of 1 percent milk, and a pint of half-and-half-into the clear, cold running water from an eyebolt drilled into the underside of the rock. Now, kneeling and leaning out over the edge of the jutting boulder, she double-checked to be sure the bag was still there, still securely fastened. “Mother Nature’s fridge, Grandma always used to call it.”

“Cool,” punned Lyssy, who was now wearing a faded orange S.F. Giants T-shirt over Dr. Al’s button-fly 501s. The two had spent the first part of the afternoon unloading the car, sweeping out the cabin, putting fresh sheets on the bed, and hauling firewood from the shed-all the chores she and her grandmother used to take care of while Grandpa fished for their supper. (“Only the very rich or the very poor can afford to live this simply,” he used to tell Lily.)

When the chores had been completed, Lily had selected a stout walking stick from her grandfather’s collection for Lyssy to use, and they’d spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the five-hundred-acre parcel known as La Guarida: the narrow canyon, the slow-running Little Bear Creek, the millennium-old redwoods.

“So what do you think of our little hideaway?” Lily asked him, leaning back on her elbows-La Guarida meant den or hideout in Spanish.

“I am so absolutely, I don’t know, knocked out.” Lyssy gazed about him in wonderment. “All these years, I never knew, I never dreamed-It’s so rich and full and busy, it’s like there’s all these worlds, all these realms. There’s a realm down there, with the fish and the insects”-the creek-“and another realm up there”-the redwood canopy-“with the birds. And we’re in the middle realm with the deer and the bushes and the flowers, and it’s all so full of, of life, it makes the arboretum look like a parking lot or something.”

His eyes had all the colors of the forest in them, even the golden glint of the sun peeking through the redwood canopy. Suddenly Lily experienced a funny, melting feeling inside, and had to look away. Spotting a white- barked twig the size and shape of a slightly warped pencil on the boulder, she tossed it into the water, just to watch it float downstream.

“You want to know what really bugs me about all this, though?”

“Sure.” She followed the twig with her eyes as it began its downstream journey.

“The timing.” The twig narrowly dodged a mean eddy, took a ducking but bobbed up again. “The stupid darn timing. It’s like, like-Did you ever see that movie Time Bandits?”

“The one with the English kid and the midgets?” Lily asked him.

“Right. And there’s this scene, this lovey-dovey couple in oldtimey clothes is standing on the deck of a big ocean liner holding hands. And you can tell how happy they are, how they’re thinking about how much they love each other, and how they’re going to spend the rest of their lives together. Then you see this life preserver hanging from the side of the ship, and then the camera gets closer so you can read the name of the ship on the life preserver: it says HMS Titanic-they’re on the Titanic.”

Lily couldn’t think of anything to say. The twig had gotten itself hung up on an exposed root sticking out from the stream bank. She held her breath, watching it fight its way clear of the root, then shoot downstream and disappear around the last bend, bound for the ocean.

“Made it!” Lyssy exulted.

Somewhat startled to realize that their thoughts had been running in harness, that without saying anything, they’d both been rooting for the little twig, Lily turned to Lyssy, her dark eyes searching for reassurance. “Did you ever think maybe they made it, too?” she said.

“Who?”

“Those two on the Titanic. Maybe they made it to a lifeboat and survived-the movie never said they didn’t.”

Their eyes met. Lyssy reached up to touch Lily’s hair, his fingers sifting gently through its dark silky heaviness. Lily noticed that funny melting feeling again; she wondered if he’d touched Lilith’s hair like that. “Pretend I’m her,” she whispered, over the sound of the rushing water.

“Who?”

“Lilith-I want to pretend I’m Lilith.”

“But I already told you, I loved you first.”

“Yeah, but you made love to her. And she wasn’t afraid, and she didn’t freeze up, she didn’t see…” An impossibly swollen, purple-headed penis forcing itself into her mouth, choking her; a flashbulb exploding into white glare. “Tell me about her. Tell me everything-what she was like, how she talked, how she moved, what she said, how she made love.”

A fellow with some experience in these matters might have been more circumspect, but Lyssy took her at her word. He spoke uninterrupted for a good ten, fifteen minutes, for there was little about Lilith he hadn’t hungrily memorized. When he was through, she leaned in close and whispered, “Kiss me. Kiss me like you kissed her.”

His mouth was soft, softer than she’d imagined a man’s mouth could be. And welcoming-instead of thrusting his tongue into her mouth, the sweet, gentle urgency of his kiss drew her tongue into his mouth. And here came that funny melting feeling, not so funny anymore. She felt herself tensing around it, her panic building. She broke off the kiss to whisper in his ear. “Talk to me,” she said. “Talk to me like you were talking to her.”

Her hair was disarranged; a strand had fallen damply across her eyes. “There was a little girl,” Lyssy began, pushing it back gently, “who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.” He kissed her on the forehead, then again, softly, on each eye. “And when she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was-”

“Lilith,” she broke in. “When she was bad, she was Lilith.” She kissed him again, more lasciviously, her mouth open, her lips soft and sloppy, her tongue expertly insistent, then broke it off. “Well,” she said, panting for breath.

“Well, what?” He was breathing pretty hard himself.

“Who am I? Lily or Lilith?”

“Does…does it really matter?”