But she loved to see him, loved his big old body and the way he held his funny head, resting a hand loosely against his side, sometimes making amusing gestures when he spoke. He and Danny had worked together for fifteen years, knew each other as well as any two straight men ever could. Andy and Teresa sometimes made jokes about Danny: he'd go and live with Danny and his wife, if Teresa ever left him.
Maybe he should do that now, Teresa thought, looking at the man she loved in the bleaching glare of the sun.
Andy Andy Andy ... stop this. Come here!
In the end he did, and he climbed into the car and started the engine.
'I'll drop you off where you want to be,' he said, not looking at her. 'We'll talk about this tomorrow. I'm going back to Abilene, and I'll have to put in a report. Too many country cops saw what you did, and I've got a project to defend.'
'Andy, don't do this by the goddamn book. 1 saved your life.'
'Hell, you didn't.'
'Hell, 1 did. That wacko was going to kill you.'
'Get real, Tess.'
She laughed, a short sardonic noise. 'Get real, you say!'
'Yeah, we'll do all this later. 1 got to get back to Abilene, right now. This mess isn't over yet.'
'No it isn't.'
He swung the car round and drove off, squealing his tyres on the hot tarmac of the parking lot. The car bounced and bottomed out with a noisy underside scrape on the steep exit to the road, and as they headed down towards the freeway Teresa stared around, glorying in the endless detail of this boring Texas town: the supermarkets, the steak restaurants, the plazas, the multiplex movie houses, the office stationery warehouses, the malls, the car rental offices, the filling stations, the flower sellers at every main intersection, the shacklike houses, the bug exterminators, the hamburger joints, the thinning trees, the broken soil of plots cleared for development, the scrubby grassland, the unending road. Finally they hit Interstate 20 and joined the unknowing traffic, cruising sedately into the west, the sun beating down on them.
They drove along through the unchanging scenery. Andy turned on the radio, and there was country music. All you can pick up around here, he said. He always said that when he was away from base. He liked country music, really. The first track finished; another segued in, a song about love and betrayal and men with guns; Andy muttered about country music all sounding alike, goddamn steel guitars, and switched to another station; Stevie Wonder came on with one of his old hits. Remembering a drive years ago, Andy and she when first in love, Philadelphia to Atlantic City, listening to Stevie singing in the night, Teresa reached across and gripped Andy's hand, wanting to cry, wanting to hold him.
Andy pulled his hand away.
'Where do you want me to drop you?' he said brusquely.
'Anywhere you like. 1 guess it doesn't matter.'
'You want me to leave you here? On the side of the highway?'
'As good a place as any.'
'Then what do you plan to do?'
Andy, you're going with me. None of this is real. I can't tell you that, and you'd never believe it, but we are at the edge, where reality ends. Where's Abilene? You're going to ask me that in a minute. We've been driving for half an hour, and those cars in front haven't changed, or those behind, and Abilene is no nearer. We'll never get there, because Abilene isn't in the scenario. Not even bolted on by a computer geek. The road goes on and on, to the edge, to where it runs out of memory. We can't go there, because at the edge there is nothing more.
He braked the car, still angry with her. It hauled over to the side of the road, swirling dust around them. The Stevie Wonder track died away; three quiet chords then silence. The rest of the traffic continued to sweep by on the interstate. There was no noise from the tyres or engines.
'This the place you want to be?' he said.
'No, Andy.'
'Then what? What do you want? Where do you want to be?'
Andy Andy Andy.
'Finland,' she said, and recalled the LIVER mnemonic.
She was naked, and Andy was on top of her. His strong hairy body touched and embraced her everywher e, leg sliding between hers, pressing gently into her cleft, caressing her with great weight and a wonderful deftness. His hand rested on her breast, and his fingers lovingly teased her nipple. His mouth lingered on hers, and their tongues played lightly against each other. She could smell his hair, his body. Stretched fulllength they just about filled the row of three cushioned seats, but whenever they shifted position their elbows and hips and knees knocked roughly against the hard undersides of the armrests, which were raised erect to make this temporary couch.
As Andy slipped into *her, pushing and thrusting, she craned back and started to turn, moving over so that Andy rolled to her side, facing her. She braced herself against the wall of the aircraft. The oval window was by her head, and she moved around, turning her face a little more with every thrust he made. Soon she could see through the strengthened glass, down towards the ground, where the trees and lakes were moving deliriously by. The great turbine engines roared, and the low evening sun glinted off the wing. The aircraft banked, turning to and fro, swooping low over the lakes, following the winding courses of rivers, its nose lifting to take them across the ridges of mountains, round and round, endlessly on, nothing but trees and water, green and silver, reflecting the light, soaring through the placid air, out to the extremes where all memory ends and life begins anew.
