There were logs laid in the fireplace, and he looked around for a book of matches. But she picked up what looked like a TV remote, pointed and clicked, and just like that, fire happened. It might not have been Jaywalker's weapon of choice, but it did the trick.
'So,' she said, standing there in the firelight. 'Is it after yet?'
'It's close enough,' said Jaywalker.
Even as extended foreplay goes, seven and a half years is an awfully long time. With a buildup of that length, it would have been entirely understandable, indeed all but inevitable, that the reality would fall far short of the anticipation.
It didn't.
Finally going to bed with Samara turned out to exceed everything Jaywalker had imagined, hoped for and dreamed about in his wildest and most X-rated fantasies. If her bethonged backside had driven him crazy, so now did the rest of her. But there was more. Not only was she physi cally exquisite, she was, well, talented. So much so, in fact, that once or twice Jaywalker caught himself remembering the details of her past. But each time his hesitation proved to be only fleeting and soon evaporated. And if Samara didn't try to make him feel as though he were her first ever (a tall order if ever there'd been one), she somehow man aged to succeed in making him feel that he was her best ever, smothering any self-doubts he might have had with an unending barrage of kisses, touches, caresses, moans and all sorts of other stuff that in the end would leave him breathlessly begging for less. Totally forgotten were any concerns over the freshness of his breath, the size of his personal endowment or the satisfaction of Samara's needs; all three of those areas seemed to work out just fine, thank you. Suffice it to say that in spite of however great the an ticipation might have been, the experience itself proved to be anything but anticlimactic, both figuratively and literally. In fact, at one such moment, Samara was heard to remark, 'That's three months off your life expectancy so far.'
'Me?' Jaywalker gasped. 'Then you've lost years. '
'It's not the same, silly. Don't you know anything? '
This from a woman twenty years his junior, sitting astride him totally naked, her small breasts framing a pair of out rageously pointed nipples. And already she was busy at work trying to deprive him of yet another month of his life.
At some point, when they'd been forced to come up for air, Samara caught Jaywalker pinching the bridge of his nose. 'Headache?' she asked.
He nodded.
'I'm sure Barry left some aspirin here,' she said. 'Or some ibuprofen. He was a regular walking pharmacy.'
'I can't take any of that stuff,' said Jaywalker, who'd developed an allergy late in life. 'My head blows up, and I look like a manatee.'
'So what can we do for you?' she asked.
'You've done more than you can imagine.'
'Seriously.'
'Seriously? I guess I should eat something,' he said. 'It's been about a day and a half.'
'And by something, you probably don't mean ice cream.'
The thought of brain-freeze caused him to reach for the bridge of his nose again. 'Probably not.'
'Pizza?'
'You've got pizza?'
'No,' said Samara. 'But I've got a phone. This is New York, remember?'
At his insistence, they ordered not one but two medium pies. When the pizzas arrived thirty minutes later, they kept the plain one for themselves. The pepperoni, meatball and extra cheese, Jaywalker had redelivered to the gray Crown Victoria across the street.
'So what's a manatee?' Samara asked. They were sitting on the rug in front of the fire, eating pizza. Collec tively, they were down to an ankle bracelet.
'A manatee's a sea cow. And trust me, you wouldn't want me looking like one.'
'I do trust you,' she said. 'And I'm sorry I didn't trust you enough to tell you about that other stabbing business, and about being Samantha Musgrove. I guess I thought that as long as I didn't tell anyone, it would be like the whole thing was just one long bad dream that had never really happened.'
'Whatever made you pick Samara? I mean, Moss I can understand. Short and sweet, easy to remember. But Samara? '
'Do you know what a samara is?'
'No,' he confessed.
It was her turn to teach. 'A samara is the seedpod that grows on a maple tree. It has a pair of tiny little wings attached to it. When it leaves the tree, the wings catch the wind, and it flies far, far away, so it can begin a new life all on its own.'
'Nice,' said Jaywalker. 'And you were only fourteen when you realized that was you?'
'I was a very old fourteen.'
'So you were. Samara,' he said, just to hear the sound of it. 'Pretty name, Samara Moss.'
'The Moss part was because I was hoping for a soft landing. It beat Musgrove, anyway.'
Jaywalker nodded solemnly, or about as solemnly as a naked man eating pizza can nod. He couldn't be sure, but it felt like his headache was already beginning to melt away. Maybe it was a good idea to remember to eat some thing every day, he decided.
'Funny,' said Samara, 'in all these years, this is only the second time I've told anyone about it.'
'About what?'
'The Samantha Musgrove stuff.'
'I'm very honored,' said Jaywalker, wiping a string of cheese off his chin with the back of his hand. 'When was the first?'
'Eight years ago. Back when I believed in true love, sharing your innermost secrets, and all that till-death-do us-part crap.'
Jaywalker had just taken another bite, and when his lower jaw dropped, so did a mouthful of pizza, not some thing to be advised when one happens to be both sitting and naked. The thing was, his ears had heard the words Samara had just said, but his brain was still struggling to make sense of them. 'You told-'
She nodded.
'— Barry?'
'We were getting married,' Samara said with an ex planatory shrug. 'I thought I loved him. I figured he had a right to know.'
'You told him about the whole thing?'
Another nod.
'The rape, the stabbing, even that your name had once been-'
'All of it.'
'— Samantha Musgrove?'
'Yes.'
'Musgrove, Musgrove,' Jaywalker repeated. 'Where have I heard that name before?'
'At the trial. It was my name, back in Indiana. That's what we've been talking about this whole time.'
'I know, I know. But where else?'
'The Seconal,' said Samara. 'Remember the name of the doctor who prescribed it? The doctor who turned out not to exist? Samuel Musgrove. It's how as soon as I found the Seconal, I knew right away it had to be part of the frame-up. Only I couldn't tell you, not without going into the whole past-'
'Whoa.'
'Whoa, what?'
'Who else besides Barry knew about the name Musgrove?'
She seemed to think for a minute, before saying, 'No body.'
