“You’ve been practicing.” Elena patted Grady’s arm approvingly.
“You’re a good teacher.”
They reached the riverbank and fell silent for a moment, taking in the glittering ribbon wending through the valley. The blasting sun had dipped beneath the west mesa hours ago, leaving the night air cool and fragrant. The moon washed their surroundings in silver light, and Grady caught the flash of Elena’s smile.
“Can you say, ‘It feels kind of weird to get naked in front of a college professor’?”
“Oh. You mean we’re…” Grady turned quickly and studied the river as Elena slipped off her light cotton blouse. “Ah. For some reason, I thought river-sitting had something to do with actually sitting beside a river.”
“You may sit wherever you like, of course.” Elena kicked off her sandals and slid her shorts down. “But as you know, I prefer my rivers up close and personal.”
“Ah,” Grady repeated inanely. Elena, who was naked as the day she was born, more even, stepped down the steep, shallow bank. Grady lifted a hand toward her when she started to slip. Elena steadied herself gracefully and waded into the water, lifting her hands slightly for balance.
Watching her, Grady again felt the odd, pleasant slippage of time this ancient desert valley seemed to inspire. The strange light from the moon outlined Elena’s lush and sensuous curves in a way that rendered her image somehow mythic.
“You’re Lethe,” Grady murmured.
Elena turned back. “Please what?”
Grady thought fast and covered her eyes with her hand. “Would you please sit for pity’s sake down, before I go blind?”
Elena’s laugh was genuine, if a bit high-pitched. She moved slowly toward the middle of the river, the water rising to cover her hips.
“Lethe,” Grady whispered again, unable to take her eyes off Elena. One of the Greek Naiads, Lethe was a river nymph, one of the few to take an interest in the fate of humanity. She appeared to men and women who had died, and offered them a goblet of water from her stream. If the mortal souls drank from Lethe’s cup, they would forget all the sorrows of their earthly life, and move on into the afterworld in blissful peace. Elena brought Lethe alive in that moment, two ethereal spirits who sought only to ease the grief of the troubled dead.
Elena settled herself carefully in the center of the stream, the slow current swirling just beneath her chin when she was seated. Grady heard the light lapping of water when she patted the space beside her. “Will you join me?”
Grady tapped her thighs uneasily to buy time, remembering her nightmare. She frowned at the river, searching for snakes. “Uh, yo no quiero mi muerte.”
Elena’s soft laugh was easier. “You don’t want your death? Grady, I don’t think even a brainy gringa can drown in three feet of water. And there aren’t any sharks in here.”
“Where did the piranhas at La Posta come from?”
“Not from the Rio Grande,” Elena called patiently.
When did you become such a joyless prude, Wrenn? Grady blinked at the vehemence of her thought. It was the stern inner voice she used on herself when she had to gather her courage. She plucked the shoulders of her T-shirt and slid it over her head. She shoved down her shorts and stepped out of them. That was the best she could do. Her undershirt and her briefs stayed on. She would just drive home wet.
Grady’s modesty might be misplaced, but it felt practical and wise. She was here, to some extent, to serve as Elena’s bodyguard, and she didn’t want the sense of vulnerability that came with being naked. She stepped cautiously into the water, which was pleasantly cool. Walking into a river was nothing like entering a pool. The Grande’s current was gentle but primal, sluicing slowly around her ankles with supreme indifference, following the course the gods set for it centuries ago. Grady waded out to Elena, trying to minimize her splashing because it sounded loud in the still night. She lowered herself beside Elena, squeaking softly as the water touched her more sensitive areas.
She could have guessed, to a tenth of a centimeter, the distance between her and Elena. Grady sat on a mild rise in the riverbed so her head rode higher, the water lapping against her shoulders. She was acutely conscious of the lumpy, rocky sand beneath her.
“See? No sharks in here. No tarantulas, no niños de la tierra.” Elena sat back, resting on her hands, and the swells of her full breasts lifted briefly into the moonlight. She was watching Grady with a mysterious half-smile that at first seemed flirtatious, but then she nodded at the water moving past them. “What do you think?”
Grady pulled her gaze from Elena and tried to focus on the river. Five seconds of that and she couldn’t focus anywhere else. “Wow,” she said quietly.
“I know.”
Elena was right; this was very different from lounging on a distant riverbank. Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the most storied river in the American Southwest, beneath a star-spangled, luminous sky, brought out a certain humility in the human heart. Grady had discovered long ago that the richest moments of her professional life were these brief glimpses of awe, kindled by her love of the past. A small Spanish cemetery, a cave in the foothills of the Organs, this grand and silent river. The sense of wonder that filled Grady now was all she knew of worship, as close as she could come to reverence.
Elena was still watching her. “Have you ever been to Carlsbad Caverns, Grady?”
“I haven’t. I’d like to go.”
“You should.” Elena let her head fall back into the water to wet her long hair. “At the bottom of the deepest cave there’s a pillar of stone they call the Rock of Ages. They figure it’s over five hundred thousand years old. It was old when our gentle brother Jesus walked on this planet. And now the stone is covered with a kind of lichen that absorbs light. You know what they used to do when the Caverns first opened, on the walking tours?”
“Dígame,” Grady said. “Tell me.”
“At the end of this long walk through the caves, everyone would gather near the Rock of Ages. And then the lights were turned off.”
Grady smiled, imagining it.
“My grandmother described what it was like, how dark it is a thousand feet underground,” Elena continued. “That kind of blackness is alive, she said. It touches your face. But then, out of that stark, deep midnight, in all that silence, this ancient stone pillar began to glow. It’s a muted, shadowy green, a subtle light. And then there was quiet music—a recording of a beautiful tenor voice singing the hymn. Do you know what the people who were watching did then, many of them? At least the adults.”
“They cried,” Grady said.
“That’s right.” Elena looked at her in surprise. “How did you know?”
“It’s what I’d do, I think.”
“Yes, me, too.” Elena leaned back and let her feet play with the current. “It’s just being in the presence of something so profoundly ancient. Such powerful feelings must come up.”
“You said they used to turn off the lights at the Rock of Ages.” Grady rocked with an eddy in the current. “They don’t anymore?”
“No. My grandmother said they stopped doing it after World War Two broke out. Because people would just sob.”
“I don’t doubt it.” If Grady gave up every vice she ever had and lived a pure life, maybe some god somewhere would let her sit with Elena Montalvo in the Rio Grande for eternity and listen to her stories.
Grady’s body had adjusted to the mild chill of the water. Like Elena, she rested back on her hands to accommodate the easy push of the current. She allowed herself the fancy of feeling the cool flow trickling through her ribs and bathing her heart, washing years of dredge from its sore and weary walls.
She watched Elena’s profile, silvered in the moonlight. Just as the ageless waters of the Grande were cleansing Grady, just as Lethe soothed the suffering of the dead, this curandera was bringing her back to life. It was a grandiose and shamelessly romantic thought, but Grady let it stand. Then she remembered she wasn’t here for roma
nce; she was supposed to be looking out for Elena.
Grady tuned her ears tightly to the quiet night air, which suddenly seemed too quiet. She braced herself to hear the opening snarls of Llorona’s fearsome wail, but a more prosaic warning signal reached her—the far-off sound of a passing car.
This section of the river was not so remote that traffic was unheard of, even at this time of night. But cars were rare—and they didn’t usually come to a stop in the middle of the bridge spanning the water. Grady twisted and looked back at the bridge, frowning.
“What is it?” Elena asked.
“Do you recognize that car?”
“Grady, I can hardly see that car.” Elena squinted. “Are you sure it’s not a van?”
“Too far to tell.” Grady’s frown deepened when a weak light ignited from the vehicle’s interior and played out over the surface of the river. She and Elena were much too distant to be detected by a flashlight, but the driver’s effort made her nervous. She considered and rejected the possibility that it was a police patrol car. A cop would have used his cruiser’s powerful searchlight.
After a few seconds, the faint beam switched off and the vehicle continued over the bridge and down the road. Grady still couldn’t get a sense of its size. It could have been a van, it could have been a blue truck. Her pulse didn’t return to normal until the headlights faded in the distance.
“The hang-up calls have stopped,” Elena said.
“What?”
“The hang-up calls have stopped.”
Grady summoned her patience and tried to be more specific. “What hang-up calls, Elena?”
“They’d gotten worse in the last few weeks.” Elena rested the back of her head in the water and her dark hair drifted with the current. “Someone calls my shop, and they don’t speak after I say hello. They’re just quiet for a few seconds, and then they hang up.”
“Haven’t you traced the number?”
“Mamá refuses to have any phone in the house but the one she bought in the stupid eighties, so we can’t trace anything.” Elena shrugged. “What can I say? My mother surrounds herself with the familiar and the safe.”
“But why haven’t you mentioned these calls before?”
Elena scowled up at her. “Hey, don’t take that hectoring tone with me, Grady. I’m only saying something now because they’ve stopped calling. Maybe we’ve seen the worst of the hassles these men have the cojones to think up. Maybe they’re backing off.”
“Elena, one of them ran us off the road less than a week ago.”
“Well, maybe that shook them up as much as it did us. They know I know their names. Maybe they’re scared we’ll call the cops.”
“The cops you don’t want to call.” Grady tried not to sound skeptical. “One of those men put that damn box on your porch tonight. You really think they’re backing off?”
Elena was silent. Then she sighed and sat up, pushing the river past slowly with her hands. “No. I know better. These men wouldn’t care if we called the whole state patrol. They’ve got nothing to fear from the police.”
“You worried me there, for a moment.” Grady shifted in the water, trying to see her face. “I have to know you’re taking all this real seriously, Elena. If you’re starting to blow this off as no big deal—”
“I’m not, I promise you.” Elena sounded despondent. “It’s just that you seem to worry about me, a lot.” She reached up, water cascading down her bare arm, and swept cool, wet fingers across Grady’s brow. “Look, your forehead was smooth two minutes ago, and now it’s all lined and tense again.”
Grady took Elena’s hand before it could disappear into the water. The gesture felt so automatic as to be preordained.
“It’s just that I would like to be more to you than a source of worry.” Elena swallowed visibly. She spoke so softly Grady had to lean closer to hear her. “It’s hard to want to be closer to a friend when you’re responsible for someone driving her into an irrigation ditch. But it’s what I want, Grady. To be closer to you.”
There it was, as artless and natural an invitation as Grady had ever received. She turned toward Elena and slipped her free hand beneath the cool curtain of her hair to cup the back of her neck. The first meeting of their lips was warm, sensual and sweet—for the few seconds it lasted. Grady opened her eyes to discover Elena had not closed hers yet, and they stared at each other in bug-eyed puzzlement. Grady laughed into Elena’s mouth and Elena laughed into hers, and then the kiss was on again, in earnest this time.
It probably wasn’t the most sophisticated kiss the river had ever witnessed, because Grady was out of practice and Elena seemed to be too, but it was a really good kiss. Friendly and warm and a little tentative at first. Then rich and happy. Grady felt the first small flash of open desire go off in her sex.
What are you doing? Grady’s inner voice was incredulous this time, and her lips stilled against Elena’s.
Suddenly Grady was kissing Leigh again, that last, formal, heartbreaking peck as they parted for good at the airport. She was kissing Max’s pudgy, sticky cheek the morning of their last hike. And you’re suddenly willing to risk caring that much again? Two years of loneliness is adequate payment for that moment of tragic distraction? What are you doing?
Grady resisted that voice, hard, but it wouldn’t shut up, and she lifted her head. She let go of Elena’s fingers and slid her hand out from beneath her hair.
“What?” Elena asked softly, searching her face. “What are you doing?” And that finished Grady for the night.
“I’m sorry, Elena. I don’t think we should do this.”
“Oh.” Elena sat up. “I see.” She sounded calm, even accepting. She had no further questions. They sat together quietly for a full minute, the river pushing gently against their bodies.
Then Elena stood. She lifted herself out of the water slowly, as if not wanting to splash too much. It was the only time Grady had ever seen Elena move in a way that wasn’t graceful. The careless ease with her body was gone. She waded clumsily toward the shore and stepped out of the river before Grady could find her voice again.
“Elena? It’s not you. Honestly.”
“Of course it isn’t me.” Elena stepped into her shorts. “Could you look away, please?”
Grady did, hating herself. “Do you understand? At all?”
“I do.” Elena was silent as she pulled on her clothes. Then she stood still on the bank and folded her arms across her chest, her hands cupping her elbows. “I know you’ve had terrible sadness in your life, Grady. I know you need to take care of yourself, now. But…that wasn’t easy for me. Do you think it’s easy to lay your heart open at someone’s feet like that?”
“I know it’s not.” Grady’s throat ached.
“Good.” Elena nodded once, then turned to walk back toward the road.
“Hey?” Grady clambered quickly to her feet, not caring about splashing. “Where are you going?”
“My home isn’t too far to walk.” Elena kept going.
“It’s a good three miles,” Grady called. “Elena, you shouldn’t be walking around alone out here!”
“Go home to your nice bed, gringa,” Elena said, just as she’d said on the first night they met. “I’ll be fine.”
“Elena!” Grady yelled. She waded the distance to the riverbank as fast as she could in sluggish current and bare feet. “Damn it, you wait for me!”
By the time Grady threw on her clothes, found her keys, and made it back to her truck, Elena was a distant white speck stepping onto the dirt road. Grady revved the engine higher than necessary and took off after her, gravel spraying beneath the wheels. Elena’s figure got larger in the dusty glow of the headlights. Grady moved close behind her and stuck her head out the side window.
“I said I was sorry,” she called. Elena said nothing and kept walking. “Elena! You’re being childish! Let me give you a ride home.”
“Go away, Grady.” Elena turned her head, but she didn’t look back and she di
dn’t stop walking. Her damp hair looked tousled and wild against the white of her blouse. “I told you I’m fine.”
Grady heard tears in Elena’s voice, and she sagged in her seat. Elena trudged another fifty yards, outlined in the headlights, the truck inching slowly behind her, before Grady could think of anything else to say. She stuck her head out the window again. “I promise we don’t have to talk!”
Elena didn’t seem to consider that assurance worth comment. She kept walking.
So that’s how Elena Montalvo got home that night—slowly, on foot, for three miles, outlined by the headlights of a small battered truck that followed close behind her. Grady actually considered the folly of stepping out of the truck, lifting Elena onto one shoulder, hauling her bodily back to the truck’s bed, and dumping her in. She didn’t attempt this for two reasons. First, Elena would fight like a crazed wildcat if her plea for privacy was ignored. And second, Grady had not earned the right to assert herself as Elena’s protector. Of the two of them that night, Elena had displayed more courage.
She followed Elena into Mesilla. The village was silent and still in the lush moonlight, except for the stubborn curandera who crept through the twisting streets and the miserable anthropologist driving slowly behind her. Finally, Elena reached the boardwalk in front of her shop. She stepped up onto it, pulled her keys from her pocket, opened the door, and closed it behind her without looking back once.
Grady idled the truck in front of the shop. Through the window, she could see the light over the stairway go on. Then it went off, and a window on the second floor lit up. Only then could she pull away gradually, shaking a little in her wet clothes. As the truck rolled past the shop, she thought she saw a figure appear in the upstairs window, and she braked quickly. She craned her head out of the truck to look back, but the light upstairs went off, leaving the storefront quiet and dark.
Grady went home.
Chapter Seventeen
The heart wants what it wants.
River Walker Page 16