And . . . .
And I owe him one humongous apology. And he offered me a place to sleep, that gatehouse, said people around here wouldn’t leave their worst enemy without a roof and four walls in weather like this. That’s how people this far back in the woods survive.
She drove, concentrating on curves and the treachery of ice that looked like water. Then, on the next straight stretch, I wake up in the night, sweaty, dreaming about him. No way we’re gonna work around that, without an apology first.
She wasn’t good at apologies. Not enough practice.
She spotted the road off to the right. She turned down it, onto Ghost Point, unmarked, not even a fire road number. She pulled up at Carlsson’s gate blurry through the windshield, groped through the biting rain and sleet for the garage key, and backed the Dart in and parked it. The other key, that had to be the gatehouse, she could stoke up the stoves and stay there. He said so. Hide-out, like that dope-filled trailer back in the hills. Accessory to murder.
Not murder. Self-defense, Alice hadn’t fired the first shots. The bastards could have run away.
Did Mom’s head look like that? Close-range shot, back of the head?
I need a person. I need a living human face. “You should not be alone.” Gatehouse, alone, I’d have to see that over and over again.
Carlsson, head down, fighting the storm to care for those animals. Every hour, day or night, even a night like this. He’ll need help with Grendel, if the Navy starts transmitting while he’s out.
Skis, to hell with guessing at a wax, nothing would match the rain-soaked slop underfoot. Susan felt cold already, changing from shoes to ski boots, not sure if that ice was her heart and conscience or the rain soaking through her jacket and pants. Only a mile, she could do that without dying of hypothermia. She pulled her headlamp out of the pack and strapped it over her ski cap, flicked the light on. It burned bright, batteries fresh, she kept all her gear fresh. She had dry clothes in the pack. Even underwear.
Follow the trail, don’t leave the path, no excursions into ponds. She found the groove her skis had left that morning, a lifetime ago. She followed them, left foot right foot diagonal stride, skis slipping on the packed track turning to slush under her, right hand left hand poling to keep her balance where the sun and rain had eaten one side more than the other. Cold. Bitter rain lashed at her, sleet stung her cheeks, blurring the light from her headlamp.
This really wasn’t a good idea. Ice-water slipped down her neck and spine and she threw more muscle into her kicking, into her poling. Get cold when skiing, that’s what you do, speed up. Generate more heat.
No glide, no Eagle carrying her into low stooping flight, just slog and slog and slog. Her fingers turned numb inside soaked gloves. Her boots squished. White spray blew across the beam of her headlamp and she stopped and stared. Surf. Fucking surf, waves smashing ashore and spurting up and flying across in front of her, carried on the wind.
Something Carlsson had said, the driveway turned deadly in bad weather. One reason he didn’t plow it out in winter. He had a safety line rigged back in the woods, another route. Alice had pointed it out. Sheltered. Safer in storms. A little late to be remembering that, girl. Too far to go back now, more than halfway in.
Don’t leave the path. Not a good night for a swim in one of his scenic ponds. Keep moving. Move or die.
She was standing on ice, in ice, slush on her boots and soaking the ankles of her pants. Slush in her boots, working past the gaiters. Shut up and ski. She stared at the plume the breakers threw across her headlamp beam, counting, timing for a gap.
Spray scudded across in front of her and she kicked and poled into the gap behind it that was filled with merely rain and sleet. Kick, pole, kick, pole, salty snow dragging at her skis, the next wave hit and threw its load of sea ice at her and she felt it soak her sleeve and pants legs on that side, even colder than the rain, wool was supposed to keep you warm even when wet but not against a drenching straight from the Arctic Ocean.
Kick, pole, kick, pole, concentrate on moving, concentrate on muscle heat, fighting entropy. Kick, pole, kick, pole, she’d lost her hands and feet, arms and legs felt like lead, her fucking brain was going numb. Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum . . . .
Tunnel of light ahead, her own headlight, not anything mystical. Slog, slog, slog. Head down, eyes on the groove in the snow. Follow the track. Don’t leave the track. Slog, slog, slog. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra . . . .
Her ski tip hit something. She stopped. She stared. Wet wood. Steps. A shoveled landing. A door. A window. Dark. Shouldn’t be dark. Should be a lamp, a candle, something. She tried to climb the steps. Skis. Bindings. Bend down. Push the lever. She started to fall over. Left binding. Right binding. Push hands against the skis for balance, stand up, shake the skis off, find the steps, one foot, other foot. Tangle, ski poles still hanging from their straps, can’t work the knob. Ski pole loops, one, two, both hands on knob, fumble. Door into darkness.
Stumble in, elbow door closed, lean back against it, feel thump of wind, feel latch grab. Stand. Dark. Faint glow, cookstove, coals in firebox, other glow, lamp turned low through doorway. Jacket off, splat on floor, sodden cold sound. Hat off, splat and thump of the headlamp. Chair, kitchen table, bend over, boots off and lying on their sides, water running out, socks off, splat on floor. Pants off, splat, sweater off, splat, blouse off, splat. All soaked through.
No warmth in the air. Stove cool.
Dark. Just the puddle of light from her headlamp lying on the floor.
Fumble into next room, dim, yellow, kerosene lamp turned low, heating stove, feel warmth, damper closed, firebox draft nearly closed, fumble both, open up, waken fire. Stand, staring at stove. Stand. Stare. Hands numb, feet numb, shiver. At least she’d warmed up enough to shiver. The stove popped at her, clicking, groaning, cast iron joints expanding, her brain thawed enough to cut back the damper, cut back the air, didn’t want a chimney fire or something. Her soaked underwear started to steam.
Man sleeping under quilt. Brain stirred, who the hell goes to bed this early? Check watch, stare, focus through beads of water, eight. Man who checks on animals, every hour, all through the storm, that’s who. Carlsson.
Warm body. Warm covers. Brain stirred more. Don’t touch his back, hurt. Touch his back, he’ll throw you out into the snow. Did that once already. Throw you out into the snow, wearing nothing but bra and panties. Wet bra and panties.
Rub up against his front, he’ll think you want . . . .
So what? Sex is warm. Crawl under quilt. Shiver.
“Warm me up, damn you.”
o0o
Dennis woke, sort of, fuzzy, something cold and clammy-wet pressed against him, something shaking and sucking warmth out of his body. Something female, the rub of a bra strap told him. Something that smelled of cigarettes.
He’d gone to bed alone. He usually remembered things like that. He’d gone to bed sober.
Rain and ice beat on the windows, wind rattled them, the storm had come back for a second round. Someone got caught out in the storm, needed shelter, needed heat, needed dry. Maine weather will kill you, give it half a chance. He woke up a bit more and wrapped his arms around the small body, pulling its cold in against his warmth. He pried one eye open.
Small body, brown skin, black hair, female, smelled of cigarettes. He jerked back, almost full awake. That had to be either Tranh or Alice. Poison in his bed, either one.
“Please.”
“Huh?”
“Please don’t stop.” That was Tranh’s voice.
Oh, sweet Jesus. But he wrapped his arms around her again and pulled her tight. She was still shivering. He wondered if that was the weather, or shock from what she must have seen.
He held her. Her skin warmed. The shivering slowed and then stopped. She nestled back against him, squirming gently. Dammit, any other woman, that would be a hint.
He didn’t dare move.
She squirmed some more, rubbing her butt against his groin, against his hardening groin. She muttered something, under her breath but it sounded like “Do I have to draw you a goddamn map?” She reached down and slipped her panties down and kicked them off and grabbed one of his hands and shoved it between her legs.
Okay, it was a hint. That’s Tranh, subtle as a sledgehammer.
He kissed her on the back of her neck, heard a long sigh, felt her relax, felt her hand covering his and guiding it.
“I don’t have any rubbers. Never figured to need them, out here.”
“Last boyfriend took a hike couple of years ago, but I stayed on the Pill. Triumph of hope over experience, I think it’s called.”
o0o
She was crying. Crying and snuggling back against him and shaking, mixed messages as always. Didn’t sound or feel like tears of joy, but she’d made the moves, she’d crawled into his bed and pulled her panties off. That was Tranh all over. Maybe that had been reaction, maybe she’d only screwed him to prove that she’d survived the storm?
“You could have died out there.”
“How do you forget the ugly things?”
Oh. Maybe nothing to do with me. Memories?
“Vietnam?”
“Fuck Vietnam. I’ve never been west of the Rockies. I keep seeing blood and brains splashed across the wall.”
Shit. “You did go with Aunt Jean and Alice.” He hadn’t been sure.
“Fucking pig-headed bitch wouldn’t listen to your warning. Yeah, I went.”
Well, she said it. He wrapped his arms around her and held her. What kind of image would help? “Raccoons. I’ve helped a dozen of them, maybe more, smartest cutest animals you ever see, bright eyes, hands instead of paws, always picking at puzzles. They knew me, knew I was helping, didn’t even try to get out of their cages, a couple of them would come over to me to get their ears scratched like a cat. I had to shoot one, rabies. Not a damn thing anyone could do to help.
“Humans are like that. Some of them have rabies. Even if you cage them, they’ll infect anyone who comes near. Shoot one to protect the rest.” That wasn’t a popular philosophy in liberal circles, but his family seemed to lack the liberal gene.
Move on to the next point. “Did you have an older sister, stayed in Vietnam?”
She shook her head, puzzled. “I’m an only child.”
“A woman who looked a lot like you tried to kill me in ’Nam. I shot faster. I keep remembering her face, older but the same lines. That’s why I dropped that coffee. All I can say is, the memories fade and lose their edge and life goes on. The good days outnumber the bad.”
“You’re a fucking lot of help. How many years has it been?”
“Eight years, seven months, five days, about. Yeah, I keep track. And I could give you the name of the nearest village, grid coordinates and all. I didn’t say it would be easy.”
She snuggled against him some more. She’d quit shaking, maybe had quit crying. “I think maybe that does help. ‘Life goes on.’ They tried to kill me. Wasn’t for Aunt Jean and Alice, life might not go on.”
He checked the wall clock, slicing time with its pendulum like always. Nearly time to suit up for another run around the cages and pens, really great fun in a winter storm. And contrast that with something warm and soft and cuddly in his bed . . . .
Warm and soft and cuddly, not words he would have ever matched up with Doctor Susan Tranh. He wondered how long that would last.
She stirred and pulled away from him a bit, turning to lie on her back, small delicate breasts gleaming in the lamplight, damp, but not from the storm. He let his gaze travel the length of her, slim and dark and powerful for all her small body, more lean muscle than curve. Intense. Even relaxed after sex, she could personify some force of nature. Eagle.
“You’re beautiful.”
She blinked. “Men. You think any woman who’ll go to bed with you is beautiful.”
“There’s that, but I was thinking sculpture.”
“Sculpture? You’re out of your fucking head. Even Alice has more sex-appeal than I do. You must be some kind of pedophile or latent homosexual.”
“Beauty and sex-appeal aren’t the same. But you do okay on that part, too.” He gestured down his body, starting to show interest in a second round after such a long drought. “I’d been wondering what you looked like without clothes on. Thought you’d castrate me if I showed any interest.”
That drew a derisive snort, more what he’d have expected from Ms. Doctor-to-you than this cuddle bit. “That’s how girls survive the streets. No sex-appeal, always show an edge if not the full knife. Helps a lot if you don’t look like a girl. Like me. Never learned to look girly.”
Streets? Only child?
“I thought your father was an ambassador or something. That you had family in the camps, couldn’t get visas.”
A shrug. “That story. You must have got it from Bouchard. Hey, sometimes I lie. Ask me too many questions and I start to make up the answers. I grew up on the streets, D.C. and South Boston, Dad abandoned us when I was about five. Mom’s dead, murdered when I was off at Brandeis, fucking junkies got the price of a few egg-rolls from the greasy Chinese restaurant where she worked. What you see is what you get. No baggage.”
Shit. Street kid raised by a single mom, not Ms. Doctor RichBitch daughter of a kiss-ass corrupt Saigon diplomatic whore. Puts a whole new spin on her attitude toward the world. I’m going to have to back off and recalibrate my sensors.
She rolled up onto one elbow and her breasts barely moved—firm, almost muscles. She was probably tougher than he was, more endurance, just nowhere near as strong.
“Woman looked like me, eh? All Gooks look alike. How could you tell?”
“Eyes, nose, cheekbones, mouth. Body, much as I could tell in black pajamas. Hair, of course, and skin, but I could tell the difference. All Gooks don’t look alike. Not even in the dark.” He leaned toward her and kissed a nipple before running his tongue around it.
“Don’t do that unless you’re serious. It’s been a long couple of years.”
Then she lay back and stared at the ceiling, something in her body-language that stopped him from following up with the obvious.
“Eyes, nose, cheekbones, mouth. Mom always said I look like Dad. She was a round-faced type and chubby, not lean and sharp. Even had different hair, browner, a bit of wave. Older, you said? It’s possible. Half-sister, she’d have been. Dad did something in Indo-China, World War II, Mom never knew but I’d guess CIA. She used to say that if Truman had listened to him, there’d never have been a Vietnam War. Boiled down to, keep the French the fuck out after we whipped the Japs, let the Gooks have their own country.”
He thought about that. He’d heard rumors, Uncle Ho and Giap had liked the USA, admired us . . . . “Could have saved a few million lives, yeah. Would have been the OSS, not CIA. Same game, different name.”
“Well, whatever.” She lay there, still focused on nothing. “I’ve sometimes thought about sitting on their front steps until they told me what happened to Dad. He just . . . vanished. Could have been CIA, could have been the other side. Vanished. Went to work one morning and never came home.”
Not likely to have been black ops, but neither side believed in rules. Just ask Bouchard.
He leaned over and gave her other nipple the same treatment. He didn’t think she wanted to poke around in sore memories right now.
Then he stopped and lifted his head, staring into that brown face in the flickering light. “Please stop calling yourself a Gook. I don’t care how long the world has hung that label on you. Any shrink would tell you, it’s bad for the self-image. Next thing, you’d be getting breast implants and ruining these.”
He went back to licking nipples. They responded.
XXVI
“You okay with seeing Aunt Jean and Alice this morning? You don’t have to . . . .” Dennis let the thought trail off. Actually, he wasn’t okay with the day’s agenda. If Aunt Jean was wo
rried about following Bear’s orders, he was scared shitless. But they had to act. This was the first morning that the weather had backed off enough for Aunt Jean to come out here. This was the first morning that air and ground searches were possible. Word from Bouchard was, Ghost Point ranked well up on the Navy’s search priorities. “I’ll be busy today, might come by first. Say hi to your aunt.” Coded messages, innocent words, on the CB, second nature to him and Bouchard. Charlie Cong had captured GI radios.
Touchy subject, Naskeag aunts and spirit doors and helping Grendel find her way back where she belonged. Almost as bad as Naskeag aunts and crooked cops and Susan having her nose rubbed in the shit that splattered from the fan when the two collided. But she’d had a couple of days to calm the twitches.
Had more than a couple of crying jags, too. One lasted nearly an hour. He’d held her, just held her. Then she’d shaken herself and said “American girl must be strong,” in a half-pidgin accent he’d never heard her use, straight out of his memories of ’Nam. She’d said she had been thinking about her mother, quoting her mother. Then she’d wrapped herself around him and they’d moved on to a bit of therapeutic sex.
Here and now, she took a deep breath and let it out as a slow sigh. “I guess so. I’m starting to file off a few of the rough edges, getting things to fit into my world. Some of the things you’ve said, some of the . . . history . . . sure as hell could have used a little Haskell law back in D.C. or Boston. Cops never caught the punks who killed Mom.”
Dennis studied the woman sitting in his kitchen. Street kid. More, survived growing up as a girl on the streets. Mother murdered, father . . . vanished. Had to claw and bite for everything she wanted. Turned her into a Class A bitch, but not Ms. Doctor Saigon RichBitch. Good reason why we got off on the wrong foot.
Not all my fault, though. He gulped another slug of coffee, bitter and hot, fighting back a yawn. He hadn’t gotten enough sleep the last couple of nights. Worth staying up for it, though . . . and if they were awake and screwing, neither of them needed to worry about the nightmares. He still didn’t know if he dared to live with someone, still remembered those vets’-group tales of a guy waking up with his hands around his wife’s throat. Fucking Vietnam.
Ghost Point Page 28