Stretching in the heat of the wood stove, Jessie decided that nothing had ever felt so good. Both candles on the table were burning. One lantern glowed and a little natural light shone through the windows. The sounds of the boiling water and crackling fire, the smells of cooking meat-these things charmed the senses. Cattail sprouts and two kinds of tubers steamed over a saucepan while the beaver meat sizzled in its own fat. At one end of the cabin all of their clothing but what they wore hung from a line strung wall to wall. Kier, shirtless and wearing almost-dry jockey shorts, tended the food as Jessie, clad tentlike in his T-shirt and her panties, stood close by.
She could have sat or leaned against the wall. It wasn't necessary for her to be near him. Of course, she was also close to the food. The newest shoots from the cattails, now six months old, could still be eaten raw, and she had already eaten quite a few.
Sweat glistened in the hollow at the base of Kier's throat. She noticed it, and the bulk of his arms. Although his arms were long and a little bit lanky, they were the size of a thin man's thighs. Veins in his flesh stood out just like those on hefty athletes. His chest was massive and hairless, smooth.
She could feel the heat of him. When his eyes caught hers, she had a great urge to smile, as if they were sharing some secret joke. Whenever she looked up, his gaze was there, waiting in ambush. The eyes were deep brown, smiling. Aside from mirth, they looked full of desire. Maybe love. Again she looked away. She hated to think she was embarrassed.
'Prolonged eye contact is a form of boundary testing,' she said in as detached a tone as she could muster.
When next she looked, he was concentrating on the food, no longer staring. As he pressed the meat with a fork, she studied his face, looking to see if there was any hint of his emotions. She could read nothing until he glanced her way with a little smile.
'What?' she asked.
'Are my eyes such a force?'
For a moment, her gaze followed her hand as it reached for a cattail sprig, then returned to his.
'It's your desire.'
Kier turned from the frying pan, inches from her, looking down into her face. The warmth of him washed over her as she tried to decide… what? She reached out with her hand, even as things tumbled in her mind. Her hand hovered over his chest, waiting. It was a perfect parody of her indecision.
'You're right. I'm sorry. I was flirting,' he said, breaking the spell. 'It's an unnatural situation. We're both tired.'
He was right. People in harrowing circumstances felt compelled toward one another for strange reasons. She and Kier would never work. Looking at him now, he seemed relaxed. The tension had departed, leaving only the cooking smells and the comfort of the fire. Yet something inside her wouldn't let her leave it alone.
'Do you think that some hurts are so big we never really get over them?'
'I don't know. A lot of times I think that sort of thinking is just an excuse.'
''Did you ever think about the downside of love?''
'What's that? Loss of freedom?'
'No. The fact that it ends. Either in life or in death.' He looked perplexed. 'You don't have the faintest idea what I'm getting at, do you?'
'Afraid I don't.'
'Do you think you ever just decided to go it alone because the risk of it all ending was too great? I mean when you were a little kid. When your dad died. When your first wife left you. Did you ever say to yourself: 'Kier will take care of himself. Kier doesn't need anybody else'?'
'Everybody needs to take care of himself. But I think I understand what you mean.'
'Your first wife left you.'
'Well, it was complicated.'
'Don't complicate it, Kier. You taught at the university together, Claudie told me.'
'Yes.'
'You wanted to come to the mountains so you both moved here.'
'Yes.'
'She left.'
'Okay. She left.'
'So this stir-the-oatmeal kind of love that you're longing for-how risky is that?'
'I've heard the old saw about afraid to fall in love. I don't think that's me.'
'God no. Kier couldn't be afraid of anything. So let's not talk about fear. I want to know what you did with all the pain.'
Kier shook his head with a half-smile.
'I felt the pain,' he said, looking irritated.
'Which caused you more pain, your father's dying or your mother's need to prove that her son could be somebody even without a father?'
'Where do you get all this?'
'You forget. You've spilled your guts to my brother-in-law, and we both know that Claudie owns him. I put it all together.'
'So you're a shrink as well as a cop?'
'I'm a disillusioned woman, Kier. Maybe numb from the pain myself.'
He put his hand to her face for just a moment, then shook his head. 'I guess I don't like depending on other people.'
'What if we changed the word to 'trust'? What if we said you don't like the feeling of needing to trust someone?
''When you were at that university, with your wife, where she was the hotshot, where she knew everybody, came from a prominent family, knew her way around, how did that feel? Did you maybe worry just a little bit about what if she cut you loose?''
'I think I was confident of her loyalty.'
''So when you moved back to your turf, where you knew everybody, where you were the hotshot, where you were in control, did that feel different? Did you really need to trust her back here?''
'Any of us feels insecure if we're out of our element.'
'That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about you not being able to love somebody when it takes a lot of trust. Actually, I think I'm talking about you not being able to love somebody.'
'I can love Willow. Are you questioning that?'
'Love can never be built on a lie. Until you tell her what you have in mind for love-this passionless caring sort of thing that you call 'stir the oatmeal'-then you can't love her.'
'Well, no one can fault you for not speaking your mind.' He gave her a little smile.
''No, I speak my mind well. Go ahead and change the subject. I know you're dying to.''
'Remember I was going to tell you what I read, something I figured out.'
'Yes,' she said.
'It's something that I only barely understand. I think I have an idea of how, at least in the early stages of their research, they created the God Model that enabled them to figure out gene function. They call it DNA chip technology.'
'I remember reading something totally unintelligible about that.'
'I think I understand the basics of how it works,' he said. 'Are you ready for more biology?'
'As long as there's no lab.'
'Just the theory.'
Kier began putting the food on the table as he talked.
'In each cell is a little factory that produces one or more types of protein. Instructions to the factory regarding what kind of protein come from the messenger molecule RNA.'
She dished up the beaver tail, trying to cut a sizable hunk for herself. But her mind was mostly occupied with Kier's explanation and didn't focus on the fact that she was using an ordinary butter knife.
