Live a Little

by Madeleine Reiss

  ‘Perhaps I should have broken the habit of a lifetime and done some research before we left,’ said Tina. ‘You can really see and hear Dove and Tache now though, can’t you? The silhouettes of horses against the sky, whistles, gunshots, whiplashes, close-ups of faces so detailed you can see the hairs in their chins, and then the pull away to the wide, endless frontier.’

  ‘I’m sure going to miss you,’ Spike said. ‘This has been a road trip like no other.’

  ‘We’ll miss you too,’ Lottie said.

  ‘Speak for yourself, sis,’ Tina said. ‘I’m looking forward to getting rid of him.’

  Tina turned her face towards the ruined city, which was trimmed now with a glittering golden ribbon.

  Lottie looked at Spike, thinking she would make a don’t-believe-a-word-of-it face in case he had taken Tina’s words seriously, but he was staring at her sister.

  Suddenly, Lottie understood. There was no mistaking the longing she saw there. It was as clear as if he had said the words out loud. It felt like a revelation, although when she really thought about it she was surprised she hadn’t seen it before. There had been a hundred clues along the way – his decision to come along with them in the first place; his despondency when Tina got off with Greg; his anger when she danced with the handsome cowboy type in Lone Pine; the continual sparring they had exchanged throughout the trip; even perhaps, she thought now with a lurch of her heart, the fact that he had slept with her. Maybe all he had wanted was to make Tina jealous. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was. Tina was the real prize. She always had been.

  Lottie got up abruptly, knocking her cup of wine over.

  ‘I think we should find somewhere to stay the night,’ she said, and the other two looked startled at the suddenness of her suggestion. Only minutes before she had been saying that she could stay in the same spot forever, or at least until it was so dark you couldn’t see anything anymore. Lottie marched back to the car without saying another word, and Spike and Tina followed her, exchanging bemused looks.

  ‘Probably Dean,’ Tina mouthed at Spike, and he nodded his head. When they had almost got back to the car, Tina stopped and stared at the ground and then bent and picked up something and slipped it in her pocket.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Tina asked. Lottie had already strapped herself in and was staring fixedly ahead.

  ‘Nothing. I just feel a bit tired, that’s all.’

  What a fool I’ve been, Lottie thought, as the car slid on through the valley, the shapes of things less vivid now as they blued into the darkness. I’ve thrown away love to satisfy a vain whim, thinking myself desirable, when all along I was only second best.

  Chapter 30

  ‘WHAT DID YOU SAY TO Spike when you were having your talk today?’ Tina asked.

  ‘I told him that I love Dean,’ Lottie said, looking up at the wall.

  ‘How did he take it?’

  ‘Something tells me he’ll recover,’ Lottie said in a dull voice.

  ‘He told me how lovely you are,’ Tina said, remembering the stab of envy Spike’s words had given her. ‘If he seemed not to care, I think he was pretending.’

  ‘He’s in love with you,’ Lottie said, watching Tina twist her hair and secure it to the back of her head with a mother-of-pearl clip. They were supposed to be getting ready to go out for a drink and something to eat, but ever since they had arrived Lottie had been lying on her bed, barely moving, despite Tina’s entreaties that she was starving. She was always starving, Lottie thought vengefully, as she watched her sister highlight her already fine cheekbones with a shimmering stick. She looked particularly lovely this evening in a gold-coloured, boat-necked top and black jeans.

  Lottie had tussled with herself about whether or not to tell Tina about her discovery. If she did, it would confirm how deluded Lottie had been to risk so much for so little, and in any case she thought it would probably only give her sister ammunition to torment Spike. There was no way Tina felt anything for him. She had spent the whole trip being rude. What purpose would it serve to tell her something she didn’t need to know? It was better that Spike just went off the next day, with Tina none the wiser. But even so, the impulse to speak the truth was stronger than her pride or her misgivings about how Tina might react. Let her sister make of it what she wanted. It wasn’t Lottie’s business anymore. Lottie’s business was to fly home with a broken heart and sell her wedding dress on eBay.

  ‘Who’s in love with me?’ Tina asked, turning from the mirror.

  ‘Spike, of course. Who else would I mean?’ said Lottie crossly.

  ‘Don’t be stupid!’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Did he say something?’

  ‘No, but I saw him looking at you when we were in Monument Valley.’

  Tina turned back to the mirror. ‘It must have been your imagination.’

  ‘I’m serious, Tina. I’m good at expressions.’

  Tina started laughing. ‘As in the time you thought Sean Bingley was keen on you and it turned out he was just trying to suppress a fart.’

  ‘Sean Bingley was keen on me, actually,’ Lottie said with dignity.

  ‘God, that boy had a wind problem!’ Tina said.

  ‘Well, I’ve told you. What you choose to do with the information is up to you.’

  ‘Spike and I have had our time.’

  ‘I’m not saying you’re in love with him. I’m saying he’s in love with you, and just be a bit kind to him when he leaves.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Tina said. ‘Now get up and get changed. There’s a bison slider waiting with my name on it.’

  ‘You go out. I’m not hungry,’ Lottie said, turning herself to the wall.

  ‘I’m so sorry about what’s happened with Dean,’ Tina said, a moment later. Lottie did not reply.

  Tina went out into the corridor and phoned Dean’s number. It went straight to voicemail so she left a message.

  ‘Don’t be a fool. She loves you.’

  *

  Spike was waiting in the lobby.

  ‘Where’s Lottie?’ he asked.

  His hair was still wet from the shower and he was wearing a tight black T-shirt.

  ‘She’s not feeling up to coming out,’ she replied, ‘so I’m afraid it’s just the two of us.’

  They walked past the light-trimmed succulents and the modest water feature, which was sending out a tired spume of foam. The air was heavy with imminent rain and smelt of jasmine and creosote – a lorry was ejecting tarmac out of a chute and a man was frantically spreading its gleaming silkiness across the road with what looked like a rake. The restaurant had large windows that overlooked Monument Valley, but their vantage point was wasted since it was dark outside, although you could just see the dim shapes of the rocks if you pressed your face to the glass. They ordered cactus juice and burgers.

  ‘How are you going to find Landing Rock?’ Spike asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. It might not even exist. It could be just a bit of scenery knocked up out of polystyrene and paint,’ Tina answered.

  She got her phone out and showed him the screen grab she had taken from the scene in the film. ‘It looks real enough,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know.’

  Spike studied the picture. ‘It looks pretty convincing to me. There’s that strange-shaped tree in front of the stone with a split down the centre of the trunk. A juniper, I think. That doesn’t look like something they’d have made in a studio.’

  ‘We have to find it. It’s the main reason for this trip.’

  ‘What really happened to your sister?’ Spike asked. He expected she would fob him off as she had every other time he had mentioned it, but Tina looked directly at him.

  ‘Her husband killed her.’

  ‘Oh my God! Really?’

  ‘He stabbed her seventeen times.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Spike said. His words seemed inadequate, as words always were when something truly terrible happened.

  ‘We told her to leave him.
We told her again and again, but she just couldn’t.’

  ‘Was she scared to leave him?’

  ‘I think she was, but I think mainly she stayed because she loved him. She once said to me that she thought her life wouldn’t be worth living if she couldn’t be with him. To us, on the outside, it seemed that the real problem was that life wasn’t worth living with him, but she just didn’t see it like that. I think she thought she could make him better. Mia always tried to make things better.’

  ‘I expect you did all you could,’ Spike said.

  ‘I don’t think I did,’ Tina replied. ‘I let her go.’

  He thought for a moment that she might start crying. Her eyes filled and her face moved with a kind of deep feeling he thought he had only seen once before. It occurred to him that although she was expressive in her movements and in her sudden turns to mockery, she seldom showed so much. She shook her head, as if trying to shuck off her sadness, then took a long drink of her juice.

  ‘Why don’t we go out onto the patio?’ Tina said, changing the subject and trying to sound upbeat. ‘They’re showing The Searchers, which was mainly shot in Monument Valley.’

  They went outside to the covered veranda where chairs were laid out in rows in front of a projector screen. There didn’t seem to be many takers for the movie; one other couple and a man with his son made up the entire audience.

  ‘We’re on the back row,’ Spike said.

  ‘Well, don’t go getting any ideas,’ Tina answered.

  Just as they sat down, it began to rain. Heavy, single drops at first and then a drenching fall that trickled and then gushed across the packed earth around the porch. You could hear it on the wooden roof and on the ponderosa pines that lined the nearby road and on the bonnets of trucks. It almost drowned out the sweet, familiar opening strains of the film’s soundtrack – Martha in her white apron stepping out of the darkness of the house onto the bright porch and holding fast to the post as John Wayne’s Ethan rides towards her, the love between them never explicitly mentioned in the film but tangible here.

  ‘Mia thought this was the saddest and most beautiful western ever made,’ Tina said in a whisper.

  Spike looked at her upturned face. The light from the screen touched the side of her cheek and her mouth. Her hair curled around her ear just as he remembered it. The skin of her throat and shoulders gleamed above her gold top. He felt his heart was beating as loudly as the rain. He tried to watch the film but all the time he was conscious of her beside him and of the time dripping away. He was going tomorrow. He did not think fate would throw them together a second time.

  ‘Valentina,’ he said, so softly that he thought she hadn’t heard him over the sound of the rain and of gunshots and snorting horses. Then she turned her head and looked at him. Her eyes were cautious but she was smiling. He kissed her. He remembered the softness of her mouth and the way her hand held his face and the sharp, sweet smell of her.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ she said, pulling away from him after what seemed like a long time.

  ‘It’s still raining,’ he protested, but she took him by the hand and led him down the steps of the veranda. They were almost instantly soaked to the skin but the heat in his body made the rain feel warm. He thought of his walk home from The Fillmore all those years before, when he had felt the same burn, the same longing. They wandered down the road hand in hand. The lights of the bars and restaurants were smeared across the pavement.

  ‘I’ve just remembered, I’ve got a present for you,’ she said, stopping and fishing around in the pocket of her trousers. She held the stone out to him on the palm of her hand. ‘I found you a meteorite! I’m certain it’s one. It latched itself onto the fridge magnet I bought in Vegas. I remember you saying they were magnetic.’

  He looked into her cupped hand. Rain was gathering there and in the centre he saw a small black lump of iron with the characteristic dents or ‘thumbprints’ caused by the surface melting during flight. He took it from her and felt its weight – heavier than a normal stone that size would be. He peered at it closely.

  ‘I’d have to test it,’ he said, ‘but I think you’re right.’

  ‘How old do you think it is?’

  ‘I can’t tell just by looking at it, but almost certainly millions of years old.’

  ‘It was just at my feet!’ she said wonderingly. ‘This evening, when we were walking back to the car.’

  She looked so pleased with herself that he couldn’t help kissing her again. Their bodies were close together and their wet clothes clung so that it was difficult to tell where he ended and she began. A passing car honked its horn at them but they ignored it.

  ‘Let’s go back to the motel,’ he said at last, when he didn’t think he could bear being so near her and not touching her properly.

  They ran back past the restaurant and the pool of tarmac and the fountain. In his haste his room key slipped from his wet fingers, so that she bent laughingly to pick it up and opened the door. The room was chilly compared to the temperature outside.

  ‘I’m so cold,’ she said, her teeth chattering.

  ‘You should get out of your wet things,’ he said, pulling his own soaked T-shirt over his head and then going and getting her a towel. Spike looked ridiculously handsome standing there with his hair wet and his chest bare. The old Tina would have thrown herself at him, not caring at all about the consequences, but something in her had shifted. She drew the towel around her shoulders.

  ‘I’m not sure we should do this,’ she said, and saw him flinch slightly, almost as if he had been expecting to be rebuffed.

  ‘We don’t have to do anything at all,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you should just go back to your room before you catch a cold.’ The way he traced her face with his eyes did not match his words.

  ‘You slept with my sister two days ago,’ she said. ‘This feels wrong.’

  ‘This is a very different thing . . .’ he said, trailing off.

  ‘If she knew I was here with you, she would be really hurt.’

  ‘She says she’s in love with Dean,’ Spike said. His eyes were dark. Despite her misgivings, she wanted to touch him. It felt as if her fingerprints had never really left his skin. She knew exactly what he would feel like.

  ‘Yes, but she would still feel upset. I would, if I was her. In any case, perhaps it would be a mistake to try and recapture the past. We tried once, remember?’ Tina wasn’t sure whether she was trying to convince him, or herself.

  Spike looked sad. ‘I was a fool then, and it seems I haven’t changed.’

  ‘I have,’ Tina said. ‘It seems as if I’ve learnt to think before I do things. Perhaps a bit of Lottie has rubbed off on me.’

  He smiled and something in her turned. It was as if a hand had reached down and twisted her from inside.

  ‘There are some things that remain the same, however,’ she said. ‘I still can’t resist a man with a cauliflower ear.’

  She led him to the bed and he stood while she unbuckled his belt and helped him to take off his soaked jeans. The effort to get her own off set them tumbling onto the bed and he laughed, but when he looked at her the laughter caught in his throat. Her beautiful face was shining. She was looking into his eyes, at his mouth and he heard himself make a sound – a kind of hissing sigh as if he had landed at last after hurtling for a long time through space. He put his hand under her bra, feeling her nipple harden under his palm. She stroked him between his legs and pulled him to her.

  ‘Condom,’ he managed, and stretched across her to the bag by the bed. She took it from him and rolled it down with quick fingers. I need to slow down, he thought, but it was impossible. He felt more urgent than he ever had before. He was almost maddened by it. She was wet and then he was inside her, and all he could see was her face moving beneath him and all he could feel was a rising joy.

  Chapter 31

  TINA WAS WOKEN BY A soft tapping and the sound of Lottie’s voice on the other side of the door calling o
ut for Spike. She leapt from the bed and made a hasty grab for her still-damp clothes. Shit. Shit. How come she had allowed herself to fall asleep? What would Lottie say to find her in Spike’s room? She claimed she didn’t want anyone but Dean, but she would surely feel bad about it. Tina herself couldn’t believe that she had succumbed in the way she had.

  She opened the door a little way and saw both shock and relief in her sister’s face.

  ‘I didn’t know where you had got to,’ Lottie said.

  ‘Give me a minute and I’ll come to our room,’ she said, trying unsuccessfully to smooth down her hair, which had dried in wild tufts. She shut the door again. She heard her sister pause for a while and then walk away down the corridor.

  She washed her face and ran Spike’s comb through her hair, then attempted to flatten out the creases in her clothes. It was still dark outside. Lottie must have been waiting up for her. Spike stirred and muttered something. She told him to go back to sleep.

  Lottie was sitting on the edge of her bed waiting for her when she went into their room. She didn’t say anything at first, only ran her eyes slowly over her sister’s rumpled appearance.

  ‘I’ve been worried sick,’ she said at last.

  ‘I’m really sorry, it was thoughtless of me,’ Tina said, ‘especially after what happened to you. Although the chances of me getting abducted as well are probably rather slim.’

  She laughed, but Lottie remained stony-faced. ‘You had sex with him, didn’t you?’ she said.

  Tina thought about denying it but it was unlikely Lottie would believe her. She looked like something that had been dragged through a hedge backwards. She could hardly claim with any credibility that the two of them had been having a quiet game of Scrabble until three in the morning.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ she conceded. She moved into the bathroom and began to take off her clothes again.

  ‘Just another shag then?’ Lottie asked, her voice low and mean. ‘He was clearly gasping for it, the deluded idiot, and you thought, well, why not? It’s his last night, so let’s go out with a bang.’