Distracted, she walked past the orange glow of her son’s story on the computer screen and punched the CD player. Harry trailed her and slipped the .45 under the scattered paper on the table.
She twirled back into the main room, improvising a few dance steps to the piano and guitar riff of “Riders on the Storm.”
“How much are you going to get?” Harry asked.
“The basic deal. I’m out of here. On my own for a change so I won’t owe anybody…”
306 / CHUCK LOGAN
Harry furrowed his brow, which hurt. “What’s Jay get?”
She ignored him and glanced at the faint leftover scrawl on the wall: IS A FUCKER. She walked around the mattress spread in front of the fireplace. “Is this where you sleep? On the floor?” she asked.
“So when does it happen?”
“Tomorrow. He gives me a check, I sign some papers. I don’t even have to come to court when it’s final. One-stop shopping.” She stretched her arms and fell backwards onto the couch. Whee! Like a kid.
“What about Becky?”
“Larry’ll watch her.”
“She’s out in the woods, freezing!”
Jesse tidied her new hair. Minded a Cretan spit curl that curtsied over her forehead. Blew it aside. “Becky,” she said, “is out there having a ball. Being the main topic of conversation. She’s fine. Larry taught her. He used to run the winter survival course in the army, up in Alaska before he went to Vietnam. Probably what fucked up his head, the abrupt temperature change—”
“Jesse. Emery’s out of control.”
She shrugged. Brightened again. “So what do you say? Day after tomorrow, high noon, be standing in front of the Timber Cruiser Cafe. I’ll pick you up and we’ll drive that old rusty Escort to Duluth and leave it to rot in the airport parking lot.”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
She curled her legs under her on the couch. The firelight licked the curve of her calves. She wound the springy, errant coil of hair around her finger.
“Chemistry. In case you haven’t noticed, we have something…”
She shifted her haunches. The pleats flowed across her thighs and carved knees. “And not just sex, Harry. This only happens to people once.”
The phone rang. At the third ring Jesse inquired, “You going to answer it?”
“Uh-uh.” Harry stared directly into her eyes. “If I did, we both might disappear.”
HUNTER’S MOON / 307
She softened when he said that, shucked off an entire layer. “It’s Bud.” She pursed her lips and cocked her head. “You don’t owe him anything.”
“You here. Be hard to explain—”
“Do me a favor?” she asked. “Don’t say his name for the rest of the night, okay?”
“Okay.”
The fire crackled and a tongue of flame shot up. Jesse shivered and hugged herself.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Feel like that piece of wood. Like you’re going to burn me up.
Felt that way the first time I saw you.”
He took a small taste of the optimism that radiated from her eyes.
She was so good, so believable. Tip Kidwell believed. Bud believed.
Somewhere out there Emery was loading a gun.
“We’d be great,” she said.
“You don’t say,” said Harry.
“Just knew this was going to happen the minute you walked up the steps,” she said.
“This,” said Harry dryly.
“Yes.” She slipped off the couch and approached him. Their hips touched. She inclined her head, her large dark eyes tilted up, and the Barbara Stanwyck hairdo tumbled across her face. “So you going to burn me up or what?”
His hands melted into the warm firmness of her shoulders. She felt so good…
“Undress me,” she said.
Harry thought about it.
Her, lying there naked in the firelight. Once he got that far, he wouldn’t be able to imagine her anywhere but in a bed close to him.
This was the art of her changeling energy, to have this effect on a man.
Her face in the firelight was upturned, open, and guileless. Just like that first morning in the woods under the horned moon. Isn’t it supposed to be like this, her wide eyes prompted. Like magic?
308 / CHUCK LOGAN
Their bodies would consume each other, as hot and graceful as the flames, and drop by drop the fire would dry their sweat.
But most magic is just tricks. She was recruiting him for the Flying Scrotums, her high-wire sex act. A pyramid of men with her at the center designed so that at the last second they would all collapse and she would be left standing. Don’t buy into those dewy eyes.
Those are Aztec eyes.
She drew her finger down his chest, indolently circling his heart.
“What’re you thinking about, Harry?”
“Evil. It’s just like love. You need two people to make it work.”
“That’s the truth.”
“You fucked them all, didn’t you?”
“I know you all. And none of you know me because as soon as your pricks get soft you go blind.”
“We never talked about precautions.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not fertile. The pill made me swell up. And I never trusted those IUD things. Diaphragms always struck me as something you see hanging on a rack in an auto parts store.” She took a deep breath. “And getting a guy to wear a rubber is like getting a kid to eat broccoli. So I had my tubes tied. Now when my period comes, it’s like empty cars going by.”
He moved back, wary of the power of her sincerity.
She locked on to his reaction, stepped forward, closing the distance. Touched his cheek. “Tell me what you want, Harry…”
Her fingers plucked at his belt, undoing it. She popped the buttons of his jeans. “Okay then, I’ll tell you. You want what you all want.
To be forgiven,” she said. “For all your crimes, all your sins, and your dirty little thoughts.”
She knelt, easing his jeans down over his hips, tethering him at the knees.
Her hair grazed the skin below his navel. “Why is it,” she mused,
“that when men want to be forgiven I’m the one winds up on my knees?”
HUNTER’S MOON / 309
Something about the way her fingers moved, fluttering across the scar on his left hip.
Like she’d done
