Kiss of the Bees

Overhead, the broiling sun beat down on both of them, and Juan knew he had to hurry. He placed one of his own precious jugs of water well within reach of the other man’s hand and closed his fingers around the handle. Then, without a word, Juan stood up and went for help.

As he walked south, he knew full well what that foolhardy action meant and what it could cost him. He would probably be caught and deported, shipped back home without enough money to marry Carmen, the girl who was waiting for him there. He knew she would be disappointed. So was he, but he had to do it. He had no choice.

If nothing else, he owed his father that much. And for that reason, and that reason alone, only two men died that afternoon. The third one—Leon Morales—lived. Unlike Ignacio Romero, Leon returned to his family in Mexico eventually, to the little town of Santa Teresa in Sonora. He went home crippled and unable to walk but with a compelling story to tell.

When called upon to do so, Leon would relate the harrowing tale about how, as he and his grandsons had followed a wash north through the Arizona desert, they had been set upon by a bandido who shot them all, killing his grandsons and leaving Leon to die as well. He never tired of telling his enthralled listeners about how he had been saved that day by an angel who appeared out of nowhere, gave him water to drink, and then brought help. Leon always finished the tale by explaining how, in America, a federale—a gringo federale—had found the bandido. After keeping Leon in the States long enough to testify, his would-be killer had been sent off to jail.

Leon’s was a good story, and he told it well. Well enough that, on long evenings in Santa Teresa’s dusty cantina, a command performance of the old man’s shocking adventure up north was always good for a cerveza. Or maybe even two.

JULY 1988

It was dark and hot and long after lights-out in the Arizona State Prison at Florence, but Andrew Carlisle was wide awake and working. Since he was blind, the dark didn’t bother him. In fact, that was when he did most of his best work—after everyone else was asleep.

Careful to make no noise that might attract the attention of a passing guard, he pulled out a single sheet of paper, placed it on the clipboard, and then clamped it in place with the template he had devised and that his father’s money had allowed him to have built. The template consisted of a sheet of clear plastic that was large enough to cover an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch piece of paper. It was punched through with lines of small squares. In the far left-hand margin was a column of holes. By moving a peg down the side of the sheet as he worked, it was possible for Carlisle to keep track of which line he was working on. He had to be sure to keep the tip of his pencil in the proper box so as not to use the same one twice.

This process—laborious, slow, and cumbersome as it might have seemed to others—allowed Carlisle to write down his innermost thoughts with a privacy not to be had by users of the communal computers and typewriters available in the library.

One at a time he filled the squares with small capital letters. It bothered him that the system made no allowances for revisions. That reality had forced him to develop a very disciplined style of writing.

JUNE 18, 1988. AFTER YEARS OF DILIGENT SEARCHING, I BELIEVE I HAVE FINALLY FOUND A SUITABLE SUCCESSOR, ONE WHO WILL—WITH A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF GUIDANCE—GROW TO BE A KIND OF EXTENSION OF ME; ONE WHO WILL TAKE ON MY BATTLES AND MAKE THEM HIS OWN. IF I SHOULD SUCCEED IN MY ENDEAVOR TO CREATE A MODERN-DAY PYGMALION, I WILL TAKE A WORTHLESS LUMP OF CLAY AND MOLD IT INTO SOMETHING MAGNIFICENT. WISH ME LUCK, DIANA. IF IT WORKS, YOU AND YOURS WILL BE THE FIRST TO KNOW.

That said, Carlisle removed the paper from the clipboard and stashed it with a growing stack of similar sheets. The guards had long since grown accustomed to the fact that Andrew Carlisle kept a diary. They hardly ever asked to see it anymore. Still he resisted the temptation to be any more specific than that, just in case some nosy guard did decide to read through some of it.

With the diary entry made, Carlisle settled down on his cot and tried to sleep. At first the doctor’s words—his verdict, really—got in the way, but gradually, as he had done for years now, Carlisle used a daydream about Diana Ladd to help him conjure sleep. He saw her again as she had been that night when he forced himself on her in what should have been the sanctuary of her own bedroom. She was one of the last things Andrew Carlisle had seen before his vision was stolen from him, and he reveled at the image of her there on the bed—naked, terrified, and defeated. In those glorious moments, except for her stubborn silence, she had belonged wholly to him, just as all the others had—the ones who had gone before.

The memory of that godlike moment washed over him like a sustaining wave, carrying him along on the crest of it, buoying him up. The only thing that would have made that moment any better would have been if she had cried out when he bit her, if she had whimpered and begged for mercy. She had not done so in real life, but in Andrew Carlisle’s daydream, in these midnight recollections, she always did. Always.

Knowing no one was there to see him do so, he grasped himself and used that powerful remembered image to summon a solitary orgasm. When it was over, as he lay with his breath coming fast and with sticky semen dribbling through his fingers, he thought of how much it felt like blood. He only wished that it was hers. It should have been. That was what he had intended. Why hadn’t it worked?

As usual, in the aftermath of that remembered high came the crushing remembrance of defeat as well. The two experiences were like Siamese twins. One never came without the other.

The exact nature of his defeat—the how of it—was something that was never quite clear in Andrew Carlisle’s mind, but he never allowed himself to dodge it, either. One moment she had been under his control. In those still- golden minutes in the bedroom he could have sworn he owned her very soul and that she would have done anything he said, yet somehow—a few moments later—she had overcome the temporary paralysis of her fear and had fought back. She fought him and won.

Thirteen years had passed since that night. In the intervening time what Diana Ladd had done to him on the kitchen floor of her house in Gates Pass had become the central issue of Andrew Carlisle’s life. More than anything, she was the one who got away. The fact that their battle had left him blind and with a mangled arm wasn’t as important as the simple fact that she had somehow escaped him.

However painful that realization might be, Andrew Carlisle never for even a moment allowed himself to forget it. She had been far tougher, far braver, and more resourceful than he had ever expected. Carlisle’s proxy would have to be warned, in no uncertain terms, not to underestimate this woman. After all, look what she had done to him! He was locked away in prison for the rest of his natural life—shut up with no chance of parole while she was still out there somewhere, free to do whatever she liked.

Still courting elusive sleep, Andrew Carlisle tormented himself with wondering where Diana Ladd was at that very moment and what she might be doing. Right then, in the middle of the night, she was probably in that same little house down in Tucson, sleeping next to that asshole husband of hers, and reveling in the fact that one of her puny, stupid books had managed to edge its way onto the New York Times Best Sellers list.