love October. I love you. Daisey says hello and together we say GOODNIGHT. I wish you were here so we could tuck each other in. Hugs and more, Sean
13
Hugely distracted by her evening plans, Seliah worked half of the following day at the Aquatics Center. Sundays were busy when it was hot. It was three and a half hours of near-blinding sunlight, and three and a half hours staring at the water, which made her nervous and nauseous. The water that had always been so beautiful to her, pliant and sensual, was now an alien thing. She hoped she wouldn't have to touch it. The sight of it made her throat ache. A cold coming on? Maybe.
Then, just as she had feared, little Amy Leitman staged a mid-pool panic. The girl screamed and gasped histrionically, threw herself around. Fourth time since July. Seliah knew that she was expected to strip off her hat and shirt and sunglasses and jump in and pull the girl to the side. Amy wouldn't touch the life buoy. She was an attention-starved fifth child and she openly worshipped Seliah and thrived on this ritual.
Seliah cursed under her breath, stripped down, and dove in and felt the terrible water close around her. She was only moderately claustrophobic but her sudden envelopment in the liquid felt like being buried alive. It was! She came up and drew a deep breath and looked through her stinging eyes at Amy, who was thrashing dutifully just a few meters away.
When Seliah was upon her she turned the girl and hooked her strong arm around Amy's chin from behind and drew her elbow firm. She sidestroked across the pool, trailing Amy out behind her. After just a stroke or two, the girl stopped struggling and let Seliah pull her through the water. Seliah could see the little girl's face turned to the sky, eyes big, and her mouth drawn back in a grimace of alarm so fake it would have been funny if Seliah's heart was not pounding viciously against her rib cage and her lungs weren't working so hard and getting so little air. Her skin felt as if it were crawling with something-fleas, flies, worms?
She came to the stainless steel ladder and manually clamped both of the girl's hands to the curving handles. Then gave her fingers a good hard squeeze.
Amy spit up some pool water, but not much. 'You… saved… me. Seliah. Seliah.'
'Yeah, yeah, yeah, Amy. Climb the goddamned ladder.'
'You hurt my hands.'
'Get out.'
Seliah hoisted herself to the deck and stood. She reached down and took Amy's hand and pulled her from the pool. Amy stood trembling on the deck and spit up another small load of water, then started crying.
'You don't like me anymore.'
'No, I don't.'
'I want Mom.'
'She won't be her for half an hour. Cry all you want.'
Amy looked up at her, bawling. Seliah registered the heartbreak in the girl's face but was unmoved by it. By then a small crowd had gathered. Some of the open-swim kids had seen this before but many had not, and some of the moms came over to comfort Amy, and the dads to size things up.
Seliah looked at the gathered faces, then down again at Amy, whose blubbering was gaining momentum, and she walked back to her stand and gathered up her things and walked toward the exit.
The Aquatics Center director intercepted Seliah at the gate. He was a former butterfly All American with wide shoulders and an easy manner.
'Sel? You okay? What's up?'
She stopped and looked at him. 'I quit, Dave. As of right now.'
'Well, wait a minute… Why?'
'I can't stand the sight of this place.'
'What happened out there?'
'Amy again.'
'You were always good to Amy.'
'Not anymore. Mail the check.'
'I thought you liked it here.'
'I can no longer stand it here, Dave.'
'Did something happen?'
'I changed.'
Dave crossed his arms and nodded. 'Okay. But if you change again, I'll hire you right back. I mean, I think I will. What's… what's wrong with you, Seliah? I noticed this at least a week ago. You're not yourself.'
'I'm too much myself. See you around, Dave.'
'You okay?'
She shook her head and pushed through the gate and strode toward the parking lot and didn't look back. At home she found a yearningly sweet e-mail from Sean waiting for her. She forwarded it to Charlie, then answered it with a slightly longer one-how strange to not even mention the secret that was devouring both of their minds right now! It felt almost good. She thought she might be starting to get the feel of being undercover-its heady deceptions and secretive powers. No wonder Sean had gone half-crazy. Full crazy?
She packed, lightly, as she had told Sean she would. Three days of clothes, the ruby choker and earrings he had given her, toiletries, a floral nightie he liked.
Charlie wrote back a moment later, asking after her, his usual polite and understated self. This must be hard for you, Seliah. Please know that I am here for you as a friend. I know we both want what is best for him. She imagined having sex with Charlie, something long and exhausting, animal-like, then rebuked herself for it, then forgave herself because she could barely control her own actions that way, let alone the thoughts that swarmed up from inside her. She'd given up on controlling those two weeks ago! Not much she could do when she saw the cute mailman in his little blue shorts; or her hot, hunk, bachelor neighbor who had a different chick every week; or the barista at her favorite coffee place, who couldn't take his black eyes off her. She had varied her routine to avoid them. She had stayed home all day to remove temptation. But that was worse, because all she had thought about was Sean, hundreds of miles away, and the Flexi-Dong, a nominally fleshlike device she'd bought online, which was right there under her bed. Enough.
She endured a long shower and felt better when she stepped out and dried herself. In the mirror she saw a beautiful woman in her prime, shapely and fit, with a pinched expression on her face. But it was uncomfortable to look at her own reflection-it seemed… ghastly. What next, she wondered. She flung back her hair and blasted away at the roots with the blow-dryer and forced a smile. She thought of Sean. Pictured him walking into the bar at Rancho Las Palmas. Better.
She gassed the Mustang and circled the block a few times looking for Charlie or Janet or some other cagey little ATF agent trying to follow her. Nothing. She widened her circle up and down El Camino Real and saw no one, then made a series of arbitrary turns and U-turns that finally led her to Interstate 5. It was four fifteen P.M. She punched the Mustang V-8 down the on-ramp and hit the freeway at eighty miles an hour. She sat at the R Bar, nursing a Bordeaux in an oversize goblet. She'd taken a circuitous route to the resort hotel, then walked the grounds casually for nearly half an hour to make sure she hadn't been followed.
When Sean walked in, her breath caught in her throat. It took most of her self-control to remain seated as she watched him walk toward her. He'd traded out the biker gear for something more soulful-tight black leather pants and soft black boots and a cotton jacquard Robert Graham shirt open over a black tee. His leather messenger's pouch was slung across his right shoulder and hung down low on his left. A weapon, she knew. When he got closer she saw his cross and iron cross and the SEL on stainless steel chains around his neck. His hair was just washed and it flowed nearly to his back. It looked like it had grown two inches in the two weeks since she'd last seen him. The gunslinger mustache couldn't hide his smile.
He sat down beside her and set his sunglasses on the bar top. 'I'm Sean.'
'I'm Seliah. Let me buy you a glass of wine.'
'I'd like that.'
