by Marta Acosta
“The rest of my back.”
“Nothing here.”
“Keep going.”
His strong hands gripped my ass very briefly. “Clean, too.”
“Look at the back of my knees. They’ll hide there.”
He crouched a little, and then he stood. “All clear, Maddie.”
I felt foolish and stupid and humiliated. “I’m sorry. I haven’t had an episode in a while and... I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay. Finish drying yourself and we’ll get you into your night clothes.”
I led him to my room and pulled my sleep T and shorts from a drawer. While I dressed, he turned away to look at the framed photos of Claire and me on my dresser and my favorite candid shot of Kenzie at 12 on her first horse.
“What does Kenzie usually do now?”
“I get in bed and she puts on one of my shows. We have a glass of wine together. Will you keep me company?”
“Depends on your favorite show. What do you want to watch?”
“Battlestar Galactica, the first show in the first season.” I paused. “Kenzie doesn’t like science fiction and doesn’t like this show because she thinks it’s too dark, but I’m interested in artificial intelligence and the whole question of what it is to be a sentient being. Have you seen it?”
“I’ve always wanted to, and I don’t mind dark.”
“You don’t mind dark and you have a capacity for peculiar, Ben. Good things in my book.” I could hear the off notes of my voice. “I’ll set the show up and you can get wine from the kitchen.”
The moment he was out of the room, I shrugged hard once, twisting my shoulders as far as they could go, and repeating the motion again and again. I was propped in the middle of my bed when he returned with two glasses of red wine.
“I like the Venn diagram on the refrigerator.” He handed me a glass.
“I didn’t mean it seriously.”
“It’s okay if you did.”
“Good, because I really did mean it seriously. Venn diagrams are my favorite of all. Kenzie prefers pie-charts, but I think it’s because she likes pie in general. She makes sure I’m snug.”
He tucked the duvet taut. “It makes you feel more secure?”
“Yes,” I said and saw him glance up at the vibrant painting over my bed. “Claire painted that. She usually does abstract expressionism, which I don’t get, so she painted this for me. She says it’s done in Bay Area Figurative, which I also don’t understand, but supposedly it’s the view from our pond to the mountains after the last winter rains. She called it ‘anticipatory.’”
“My knowledge of art is those bright paintings with football players. Also, dogs playing poker.” He began to move a chair close to the bed.
“Kenzie always sits on the bed. I like to know she’s close.”
“Move to the other side and I’ll take this side.”
“No, because I like to be on my side. You go on the other side.”
“You’re bossy and inflexible.” He took off his shoes before sitting on the bed and swinging his legs atop the duvet. He held up his glass for a toast and I saw the glint of his wedding band.
“What are we toasting to, Ben?”
“How about to our friendship?”
Taken by surprise, I blurted, “Do you really want to be friends with someone who’s so fucked up? You’ve already seen me freak out twice. Usually people have to know me for at least a month before they get that special treat.” I swiped at my eyes, confused and frustrated. “I’m scared of everything. I never do or say anything right.”
Ben turned to me. His clothes were a little rumpled now, his hair unkempt. “Maddie, on the first day we met, you rescued a dog and her pups. You discovered a body and reported it instead of running away and keeping quiet. Then you broke into a house and saved an aggressive dog, even when the sheriff kept ordering you to get back in the patrol car.”
“I didn’t hear him yelling. How did you know?”
“One of the neighbors told us when she brought her cat in.”
“Do you want to know why I was in the patrol car? Because the jerk sheriff was hauling me in for trying to have a conversation with Claire, who is very inconveniently his sister. He wanted her to file a restraining order. Merely for talking. Which is not against the law.”
“I’m beginning to get the impression you’re not very good with personal interactions.”
“You think?” I started laughing. “So I’m afraid of everything besides dogs. And cats. I don’t mind horses. As you have seen, I have other issues. Do you still want to be friends?”
“I think I’m too invested to abandon things now. Besides, I’m not perfect. I have issues, too, and baggage.”
“That comes with living.”
“Friends then,” he said, and we clinked glasses and I met his eyes and counted to three. And then I hit the start button on my remote and as the white titles appeared on the black screen and the eerie background music began, my body calmed.
Ben said, “Do you really have a doctorate?” and I said, “Ssh, it’s starting.” He sighed and for a moment I was too aware of him, of this stranger beside me, of his strong hands and dark eyes, and I hoped he wouldn’t hit on me, not tonight. I pushed away those thoughts the same way I pushed away the image of the addict’s leer and his stench and the way he’d grinded against me and his clammy sweat and the white white skull behind his face.
I shrugged away all those bewildering, unsettling things and watched the show, the light traversing the finite distance from the screen to my eyes.
Chapter 9
“MADDIE, MADDIE...”
I opened my eyes and saw Ben standing by the bed in the blue light of the soundless images on the television.
“It’s getting late, Maddie.”
Now I remembered the man in the alley, the skull, blackbirds. “You don’t have to go. We can watch more.”
“You can’t even keep your eyes open. Is there anything else I can do?”
“Kenzie brings Bertie to keep me company.”
“Will you be okay by yourself while I go to the kennels?”
“Yes, I’m okay now. I’ll be fine with Bertie.”
Ben stood quietly for a minute. “I’ll get your dog and sleep on the sofa if that’s okay.”
“You can sleep in Kenzie’s room. If you want to.”
“Sure.”
I sunk back into my pillows, letting my heart slow to normal, listening as Ben left the house, vaguely aware of the ruckus when he reached the kennels, and I was lost in a nether world between the conscious and unconscious when Bertie leapt onto my bed and I put my hand out to his thick fur.
I SLEPT THROUGH THE rooster’s crow, waking at 6:15. Bertie rested his head heavily on my leg and looked at me expectantly, as he did every morning even though he knew I wouldn’t get up until 6:30. “You’re eternally hopeful,” I told him and scratched behind his ears. It took me a moment to recall the day, Saturday, what had happened last night, and that Ben Meadows was in my house.
Claire had once said, “Do you ever wonder what it would be like not to have other people feel obligated to take care of you? Because the novelty of worrying about you wears off.”
I got up and Bertie thumped down to the floor beside me. I was dressed and brushing my teeth a few minutes later. I scraped my wet hands through my hair, smoothing the clumps sticking out. Locks. Hair formed locks, not clumps...unless they were clumped with blood.
I was about to knock on Kenzie’s door, when Ben opened it. He’d opened the curtains and he looked as out of place as a bear in the frilly pink and cream room with its velvet trimmed pillows, ivory duvet, the sprigged sheers, and our mother’s loomed floral rug.
“You’re up.”
“Morning, Maddie. How are you doing?”
“Very well. I always feel better on sunny days, don’t you? Sometimes when the light is wrong, I feel askew. More askew. How are you?”
“Reasonably aligned,” he said
, and grinned. “Any chance of coffee before I take off?”
Kenzie didn’t like me to drink coffee. “I’ll make a pot.” As we walked to the kitchen, I said, “Did you sleep okay?”
“Very well. It was a lot like staying in the guest room at my in-laws when I was engaged. Except Ava, my wife, would sneak in.”
“Hope you didn’t expect that from me. I don’t sneak into bedrooms. I tell someone straight out when I want to fuck.”
When he didn’t respond, I said, “Uncomfortable silence. Half my life consists of uncomfortable silences.” I opened the freezer and took out the bag of coffee beans.
Ben leaned against the wall and watched while I ground beans and poured water into the coffee machine. “What’s the other half of your life?”
“Well, obviously, the other half is uncomfortable conversations,” I said, and he laughed. “I would have been okay by myself last night.”
“I want to say something and I don’t want you to panic.”
“Panic is inevitable. I panic even when people address me by because I assume I’m done something wrong, and I know it’s paranoid, so feel free to call me Maddie as much as you like.”
“Okay, Maddie. If the man by the Brewhouse recognized you, he probably knows where you live. Don’t you have any way to lock the gate at least?”
“Anyone can climb over a gate. I’ll keep the dogs close by and if I get spooked, I’ll bring the rifle up from the barn. It’s locked there in case a horse has an accident and we need to act fast.” The coffee machine hissed and burbled, and I got cups from the cupboard. “Do you take anything in yours? We have milk.”
“Black is fine.”
I filled his cup and then stirred four teaspoons of sugar into mine. “I’ll have to feed the dogs soon.”
“I’ll help if you show me the stud lot. Why do you call it that?”
“My grandfather and Doc Pete were poker buddies and their bets kept getting stupider—walk naked down Main Street at noon, eat a dozen rotten bananas. So Doc Pete won a parcel of land in a game of Five Card Stud and to fuck with him my grandfather chose a spot useless to anyone but us. Come on.”
We took our mugs outside as Jaison’s pickup was coming up the drive. He stopped and leaned out the window. A pretty, vaguely familiar girl was in the passenger seat. “Hey, boss lady.”
“Hey, Jaison. Where you off to?”
“Julie’s got the morning shift at the Suncrest, but she wanted to see the center first,” he said.
Now I recalled her working the register at the grocery store. “Hi, Julie. Nice to see you.”
“Hi, Dr. Whitney. I watched you on TV. Wow, I didn’t know you were psychic! Can you read my mind?”
“Absolutely. You think Jaison is hilarious and hot.”
She giggled and I liked her instantly. I introduced them both to Ben, and noticed Jaison’s smirk as he waved and drove off.
Ben said, “Will they talk because...”
“Jaison doesn’t spill anything, but I imagine Julie’s like everyone else in Coyote Run. Do you want me to tell your wife that nothing happened?”
“I have a feeling that would make things worse.”
“You’re a quick learner, Ben.”
He wore nice shoes so I kept to the paths cut through the fields, dewy grasses glistening as the sun rose over the dark ridge of hills. We didn’t speak, only pausing in our steps to sip from our mugs and raise our faces toward the sky. I led him to the tattered lawn chairs and the bent aluminum frame of a card table. “This is the epicenter of your plot, so imagine a quarter-acre around what’s left of the table.”
Ben circled the table and then stood and surveyed the fields beyond. “I don’t suppose there’s access to electricity or water.”
“You could dig a well and run lines, but your neighbors might cause a fuss.”
“And you and Kenzie are the neighbors.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I’ll sink a cargo container here as an underground bunker.”
“Great idea. I’m obsessed with cargo containers. Kenzie makes excellent jam and we could give you a few jars. It’s my theory that jam will be the major form of currency in a post-apocalyptic world. Where are you living anyway?”
“For now, I’m crashing solo in the bungalow attached to the clinic. Eventually, I’d like to hire a surgical specialist and expand into that space later. We haven’t had time to house-hunt yet, and Ava wants to wait until the school year ends before moving the kids.”
“How many do you have?”
“Two. Sean is six and Helen is four.”
“I’m not familiar with kids. I don’t know what they’re like.”
“In terms you’d understand, Sean is as single-minded and about the same size as a one-year old pointer, and Helen is like a six-month old golden retriever, very cuddly and playful. Ava is like a greyhound in temperament. She’s calm ninety-nine percent of the time, but can blow you away with a burst of energy.”
“Bring them by sometime and I’ll introduce them to the pack.”
The calm of the morning was broken by the sound of a gunshot and then another. Ben looked at me and I said, “Wild turkey hunters here don’t care about the season, which is fine by me, since these non-native Rio Grande species are very destructive.”
“So gunfire isn’t noticed much?”
“Only on hot nights when people get cranky, but if you’re thinking about the woman who died... There are too many unknowns and not enough knowns.” I tipped out the rest of my coffee.
At the center, I fed the dogs and introduced Ben to my own pets—Brillo, Chapeaux, and Scully. I took Ben to Zeus’s kennel and he said, “He’s Dutch Shepard all right.”
“He needs to be neutered. You’ll save me a trip if you take him now.”
“I need the owner’s approval first.”
My arms flew up as if jerked by strings. “He’s abdicated all claims to this dog by sheer neglect!”
“Calm down. Animal Control and the sheriff’s department can confiscate abused pets. I’ll take the dog to the clinic and once you get approval, I’ll do the procedure, okay. I have a crate in my car. Do you have a muzzle?”
I made all the other dogs sit, except for Thing One and Thing Two, who stayed in a kennel, while I walked Zeus out of the center. I could feel the bad energy intensifying and I instructed, “Fuss.”
Zeus walked obediently, but the hair on his spine stood and his tail was straight. I tapped his hip with my heel to snap him out of his mood. Ben went ahead of me to open the gate of his car and unlatch the crate door.
“Geh rein,” I said, and Zeus leapt into the crate. I latched it.
“How did you figure out he knew German commands?”
“I’m psychic, remember?” I smiled at Ben, noticing the telltale pinholes of piercings in his earlobes and a scar angling along his collarbone. “I’d once worked with a Dobie who’d had Schutzhund training so I knew the commands. I was running out of time before Zeus ripped out my throat or Sheriff Desjardins ‘accidentally’ shot me while trying to put down Zeus.”
“A case of ‘I shot the girl in order to save the girl?’”
“My association with the sheriff is complicated.”
“Because you’re complicated. Why does everyone call him ‘sheriff’?”
“It’s easier than saying ‘Sheriff’s Captain.” The elected Sheriff is forty-five minutes away in the county seat and doesn’t give a shit about Coyote Run except at election time. Desjardins is a jerk, but he’s our jerk.”
Ben grinned. “Call as soon as you have the go-ahead.”
As he drove off, I thought how it was typical of my fucked-up life he’d only ever see me at my worst. I ran my palms over my breasts, feeling the tingle in my nipples.
I really needed to get laid.
Even more, I needed to straighten out things with Oliver. I worked off my caffeine jitters by cleaning the kennels. I led the horses to the paddocks and fed them.
Eight a.m
. on a Saturday morning seemed like an excellent time to show up at the sheriff’s office for my mandatory meeting.
I practiced my speech on the way over. Once in front of the desk clerk, I said, “Hello, I’m Dr. Madeleine Whitney, here to see Sheriff Desjardins.”
The desk clerk raised her brows. “Being kinda formal, aren’t you, Maddie? Your tip about the cat helped. He’s not peeing in shoes anymore.”
“Good. I have to learn more about cat behavior, because it’s so different than dogs’.”
“Don’t your psychic powers work with them?” The side of her lips lifted, meaning something that she thought something was funny, and I guessed it was me.
I played to her prejudices. “Cats are much harder to read because they’re more intellectually sophisticated than dogs.”
“Ha!” she said, nodding. “You got that right.”
Smiling I said, “I’m so sorry to have missed the sheriff. Please tell him I stopped by exactly as he asked and I’ll check in some other time when my extremely busy schedule allows. Nice seeing you again!”
“Hold on. I never said he wasn’t here.”
“But...” I watched with dismay and she picked up the phone and said, “Hey, Oliver. Ms., I mean, Dr. Whitney to see you.”
She hung up. “Go on back to his office. You remember where that is, don’ you, hon?”
“Thank you.”
I dallied in the hallway, drinking from the water fountain and reading the bulletin board, before going through the open door with Sherriff’s Captain Oliver W. Desjardins in gold and black block letters on the inset glass. “Good morning, Sherriff.”
Oliver sat at his desk, dressed in a Coyote Run County All-Stars baseball jersey and track pants. He didn’t speak for a long time. I opened and clenched my hands to count my wait, and at 17, he said, “It isn’t enough that you violated my order to stay in the car, broke into a house, and stole a dog, putting all of us in danger, but I’ve been informed that you were up to shit again last night.”
“Did Claire tell you that? Because the truth is I was assaulted by a hyped up scumbag.”
“Sit,” he said, and I reluctantly dropped into the chair opposite his. “Every criminal is a victim in his—or her—own mind. Nothing is ever their fault, and no one understands them. You never see how your own actions set off events, Dr. Whitney.”