Live a Little

by Madeleine Reiss

  ‘I really don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘You’ve just given up the right to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.’

  ‘Just stay here and we can talk some more.’

  ‘I really don’t think there’s anything more to say.’ Then Dean walked across the room without looking at her and went out of the door.

  Chapter 26

  ‘WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL happen with Dean and Lottie?’ Spike asked.

  They were walking along a narrow, rocky trail down into the canyon, stopping every now and again to let people on perilously balanced donkeys pass by, or to take in the view which stretched and contracted round each bend. As they descended, they could see the lines of passing time in the curving strata, by turns creamy white, dark purple and yellow. Below them the crease of the canyon floor seemed always to be the same distance away. Here in the shelter of the canyon the sun was fiercer than it had been up on the rim. Tina could feel it burning the tops of her arms.

  ‘If she tells him, I’m guessing the whole thing will be off,’ Tina said.

  ‘What if she makes it clear it was just a one-night thing?’ Spike asked, navigating a stepped section of the track and pausing to look out at the mounds of rock, which were shaped like jelly moulds.

  ‘Is that what it was? A one-night thing?’ Tina asked, stopping alongside him.

  ‘I’m not exactly sure what it was.’ Spike took a step onto an outcrop of rock that jutted out of the edge of the path. A foot wrong and he would bounce several hundred feet down.

  ‘Be careful,’ Tina said. ‘Being the cause of a cancelled wedding is bad, but not bad enough to kill yourself.’

  ‘You should be pleased,’ Spike said. ‘You didn’t want her to marry him, so it’s mission accomplished.’

  ‘I just wanted to give her a chance to test her feelings. I wasn’t expecting her to fall for you the way she has.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what’s happened?’ Spike asked. He had stopped again and was scraping the side of a stone with the penknife he had taken out of his pocket. Tina thought it was a bit like walking with a dawdling child – Spike seemed endlessly distracted.

  ‘Well, she’s been with Dean for the best part of ten years and I’m certain she never strayed from the path of true devotion – and then you come along and all of a sudden she’s behaving like a moonstruck teenager,’ Tina said.

  ‘I didn’t expect to like her as much as I do,’ Spike said, and Tina felt her stomach clench. ‘It started out as a bit of a game and I wanted to prove you wrong about her not being sure about marrying Dean, but there’s something so lovely about her.’

  ‘Can you imagine the two of you having a relationship?’ Tina asked. She didn’t want to hear the answer.

  ‘Stranger things have happened.’ Spike smiled. She wanted to hit him. He looked insufferably smug. ‘Although of course, we live a long way apart, and I’m only likely to be with you guys for a couple more days.’

  ‘True love can survive a little bit of geography,’ she said as blithely as she was able. Somehow, the thought that he and Lottie might be together made her feel like crying. She should be happy that she had saved her sister from marrying the wrong man and that Lottie had met someone she clearly liked enough to risk everything for.

  Just then a condor sailed above them, the girth of its white-flashed wings looking improbably wide at such close quarters. A moment later it was joined by a second bird. They looped around each other and then drifted down into the canyon, so that for a while Spike and Tina were standing above, watching their effortless flight.

  ‘It’s the strangest sensation being higher than the birds. It feels as if we’re at the top of the world,’ Tina said.

  ‘Your shoulders are getting burned,’ Spike said. ‘Why don’t you put your scarf over your arms?’ He leant forward and untied it from her neck and shook it out and placed it around her. As his fingers touched the skin of her throat, she felt a kind of contraction – a tiny clenching shiver that took her completely by surprise. She looked at his bent head as he secured the scarf and had an almost irresistible impulse to put her fingers in his hair. She remembered the spring of it against her hand, as if recovering a lost memory. When he met her eyes, she thought he looked shocked, as if he had read something in her face that he had not expected to see there. They stood looking at each other for what seemed a long time, but then she stepped back.

  ‘I think we should carry on,’ she said, and began walking downwards.

  The path narrowed as it hugged the edge of a large expanse of rock, ruddy and warm under her hand as she eased her way round. Below she could see the trail path zigzagging its way down the face of the cliff, looking terrifyingly narrow viewed from where she was standing, although she knew it was much wider when you were walking along it. The Bright Angel Creek in the flattened-out stretch of hillside, which now seemed suddenly much nearer, was marked out along its length by cottonwood trees and willows, a vivid green against the dun-coloured rock.

  Tina walked on without looking behind her. She felt as if stopping might be dangerous since it would bring her into contact with Spike again. She recognised in the hammering of her chest and the bright, tender edge to her skin the feeling she’d had when she’d seen him for the very first time. She knew now that the longing had never gone away, but had just been resting under the rim of her heart. It wasn’t possible. It mustn’t be possible. She was almost certain Lottie was in love with him. Right now, her sister was probably breaking off her engagement and it had been her doing. She couldn’t now compound her carelessness with cruelty – and in any case it seemed that Lottie’s feelings for Spike were reciprocated.

  ‘Slow down!’ Spike shouted out, and she looked back to see that she had been walking so fast, she had left him behind. His leg still wasn’t completely healed and it hampered his progress. She watched his uncertain approach. She could seal up her feelings. She had done it before over Mia and she could do it again.

  *

  ‘It’s just that he wants the best for me,’ Mia had said. ‘All I need to do is try a little harder.’

  ‘But you’re perfect just as you are,’ Tina had replied. Lottie had taken her hand and held it tightly. They were sitting on stools in a bar. Three sisters, three strawberry daiquiris and three curving top lips – the barman had hovered over them.

  ‘The Three Graces,’ he had said, doing a funny little bow that had made Lottie and Mia giggle, although Tina had rolled her eyes.

  ‘When things are good between us, it’s the most perfect feeling ever. He holds me closer than anyone ever has. In the night,’ here Mia had blushed; she was always a little prudish, which meant that Tina enjoyed the sport of trying to shock her, ‘in the night he’s as tentative as a boy.’

  ‘But what about the rest of the time?’ Tina had asked. ‘When he’s not having sex with you.’

  ‘He struggles sometimes with believing I love him,’ Mia had said, a shadow crossing her lovely face. ‘It’s hard to prove love, isn’t it?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have to prove it,’ Lottie had said. ‘It should be enough for him that you’re there, putting up with his shit.’

  ‘I can help him.’

  ‘Mia, you need to understand that nothing you ever do will be enough for him,’ Lottie had said, putting her arm around Mia to take the sting out of her words. ‘You’ll not find him, you’ll lose yourself.’

  But she had been implacable, as sturdily oblivious as the slopes of the Grand Canyon. ‘He just needs me to keep on loving him. One day he will believe it.’

  That had been the last time Tina had ever seen Mia. The period afterwards had been filled with work and trips away and a new lover. One night Mia had phoned her, but she had been at a party. She’d barely been able to hear her sister’s voice; the music had been so loud. She had been too drunk to get it together to find somewhere quiet to talk.

  ‘Can you come round? Can you come round now?’ Mia had asked. Tina should have
been alerted by the fact Mia had never asked this of her before.

  ‘I’m at a party,’ she had said, stupid and oblivious. Careless, the way she always had been. Mia had said something else which she hadn’t been able to quite catch.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ she had said. ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow when I’m not wasted. I’ll ring you tomorrow, Mia.’

  She had rung off and had another drink, then sex with the new lover in one of the rooms upstairs.

  ‘I’m a wasted waste of space,’ she had said, laughing as he put his fingers into her.

  It had been the night of Mia’s murder. She had thought many times in the three years since her sister’s death about what would have happened if she had left the party and taken a taxi to Mia’s house. She knew that she might not have been able to prevent her sister’s death, but she would have been there for her at least. She would have come when Mia called for her. She would have been a good sister. Mia’s last phone call was a secret she kept to herself to pick at in the night – her unforgivable, missed chance.

  *

  Spike caught up with her, a little breathless and limping slightly.

  ‘You’re walking as if you’re being chased by the devil,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps I am.’

  ‘My leg’s giving me a bit of trouble.’

  ‘I think we’re almost at the creek,’ she replied. ‘When we get there I think we should eat lunch and have a rest and then start back. I don’t think you’re going to make it all the way down to the bottom.’

  They found a shady spot by the river, where they took their boots off and paddled in the water. It was shallow but still cold enough to make their hot feet numb. Spike splashed her stinging shoulders. She poured water from the cup of the Thermos over his swollen leg. A family of raccoons foraged at the river’s edge, dipping and tapping and then rolling their paws together as if they were taking a wash. They ate, and then Spike fell asleep with his head resting on his rucksack. Tina lay down and looked up at the sky, which was an unblemished blue lid over the cupped sides of the canyon. She must have dozed off too, because she was startled awake by a voice above her.

  ‘Hello, Tina.’

  She stared into Dean’s face, then sat up quickly. He looked flushed and untidy. Her first thought was that he was wearing completely the wrong shoes – he must have almost slid down the trail in those smooth-bottomed brogues. Her second thought was that he had been propelled downwards by fury. You could feel it coming off him with a stronger heat even than that held in the sun-facing rocks. She got to her feet and nudged Spike awake with the side of her bare foot.

  ‘Hello, Dean, it’s very nice to see you,’ Tina said, and then inwardly cursed herself for her choice of words. She was sure he wouldn’t appreciate being greeted as if they were acquaintances at a party.

  ‘Is this Spike?’ Dean asked.

  Spike got to his feet and looked at him warily.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, extending his hand. Dean ignored the gesture and stared at him.

  ‘Did you at any point when you were fucking my fiancée stop to think about the fact she was supposed to be getting married in little over a week?’ He spoke through gritted teeth, his fists clenched by his sides.

  ‘I know how angry you must be,’ Spike said. He was pale and looked a little shaken. ‘But it wasn’t as if we planned for it to happen.’

  ‘Not the way we had planned flowers and favours and fairy cakes and the rest of our fucking lives.’

  ‘Dean, why don’t you sit down and let me get you a drink,’ Tina said. She had never heard Dean swear before and the venom in his voice shocked her.

  He turned to her. His pale eyes were red-rimmed as if he had been rubbing the canyon dust into them. ‘You’ve never wanted her to marry me, have you?’

  ‘I just wanted her to be sure she was making the right decision,’ Tina said.

  He ignored her and turned his attention back to Spike, who, sensing his disadvantage, was trying to put his boots on.

  ‘Why don’t we talk about it,’ Spike said, in that particularly chummy, American way which only serves to inflame an already irate British man. ‘I’m not even sure it was that important to her,’ he continued, bending to tie up his laces.

  The blow from Dean’s fist knocked him off his feet and he lay for a moment blinking up at his adversary, then scrambled up, holding the side of his face.

  ‘Well it was fucking important to me,’ Dean said, and swung his arm again. This time Spike ducked to avoid the blow. Tina was astonished. The man had clearly lost his mind. Who would have thought that Dean, whose idea of a good time was half a lager and a walk through a bluebell wood, would behave like Liam Neeson on a tough day? Dean hit out again and this time made contact with Spike’s head.

  ‘Stop it!’ Tina cried, trying to get between them as they grappled with each other, but Dean was oblivious. He grabbed hold of Spike’s neck and tightened his hands around it. Spike was making desperate gurgling noises.

  Suddenly Dean’s shoulders slumped and all the fight seemed to go out of him. He let go of Spike’s T-shirt, which he’d held balled up in his fist. He stood for a moment as if he was trying to find something to say, then turned away.

  ‘Let’s walk back up with you,’ Tina said, alarmed by Dean’s blank stare and the dejected way he was holding himself.

  ‘I don’t want either of you anywhere near me.’ Dean set off walking back up the path again. At one point his ankle twisted as one of his shoes slid on a rock and Tina’s heart smote her.

  ‘It would have been better for all of us if you hadn’t come back for me in Morro Bay,’ Spike said.

  Tina didn’t answer. She was thinking it would have been better for them all if she had not taken it upon herself to meddle. Everything was spoiled, and it was her fault.

  Chapter 27

  WHEN LOTTIE RETURNED TO HER room and found that Tina wasn’t there, she crept into her bed, fully dressed, and cried herself into a deep and exhausted sleep.

  She woke a couple of hours later, disorientated and dry-mouthed, haunted by her tumbled dreams. Mia had been in the car with them, Lottie’s horse on her lap. She had smiled and waved from the window at the train they had overtaken on Route 66. In the soupy, kelp-filled sea at Big Sur she had risen up out of the water, laughing, her hair as sleek as a seal.

  Lottie took a shower in an attempt to clear her head, but she felt as if she was being pulled back to the dream fragments of Mia that seemed more vivid than her hotel room.

  She went down to the reception and asked if anyone had phoned for her or left a message, but nobody had. She was worried about what had happened to Dean. She wandered through the lounge – leather sofas, couples with suitcases propped up at their feet, a group of young girls in hen party sashes manically having fun – and on into the bar, with a vague idea of getting a strong coffee and waiting for the others to return.

  Dean was sitting at a table by the window with his back to the room. She would have known the slope of his shoulders anywhere. He seemed startled to see her, as if he too had been pulled back from his own set of dreams. There was an almost empty glass of whiskey on the table in front of him and she could tell by the way he was holding himself that it was probably not the first. He never drank very much when they were at home. He claimed he was a morose drunk, and certainly now he looked utterly desolate. He seemed to have acquired mud or something on the leg of his trousers. She felt an instinctive desire to brush him clean – a reflex as automatic as the ready hand that catches something falling through a cupboard door. He raised his glass to her in an attempt at bitterness that made her throat close.

  ‘Where did you go?’ she asked, sitting down opposite him.

  He gave her a kind of flinching look, as if what he was seeing was too vivid to look at directly. ‘I went down the Bright Angel Trail as far as Bright Angel Creek and punched your lover in the face.’ He was still himself enough to name the places exactly, then. He knew the names of everything; it
was one of the things she had always liked about him, that and his tenderness, the way he remembered all their anniversaries, even the day they had moved in together. He had picked her up and carried her through the door and deposited her on the living room rug, which had pretty much been their only possession at the time.

  ‘He isn’t my lover,’ she said.

  ‘What is he then?’ Dean asked.

  ‘He’s someone that made me wonder about the possibility of a different version of my life,’ she said.

  ‘What’s wrong with the life you actually have? Or rather had, to be precise, since you’ve just thrown it all away.’ He drained his glass.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never, in all the years we’ve been together, thought about what else you might be doing or who else you might be with.’

  ‘I’ve always been completely happy. Grateful, even,’ he said. ‘I never wanted to change anything.’

  ‘I’ve been happy too. I have. It was just a kind of curiosity. That sounds terrible, but honestly I think that’s all it was.’

  ‘Well, curiosity killed the cat and our relationship,’ he said.

  He caught the eye of the waiter and waved his empty glass in the air.

  ‘Don’t you think you’ve perhaps had enough to drink?’

  ‘That’s another example of something that isn’t your fucking business.’

  ‘Why don’t we go out somewhere? Let’s just get out of this hotel for a bit,’ she said. ‘Find somewhere to sit and take in the view and talk.’

  ‘Strangely, I don’t think I’m up for sightseeing at the moment,’ he said.

  ‘What are you going to do instead?’

  ‘I plan to get drunk and then go to bed and then get a flight back tomorrow morning. Leave you to your great adventure.’

  ‘You can’t come all this way and not see at least a bit more,’ she pleaded. She couldn’t bear for him to go, still hating her. The hen party had swooped into the bar, scattering bits of feather boa in their wake. The bride-to-be was as plumpchested as a chicken and basted with shimmering oil.