One More Knight

by Kathleen Creighton

  There was an odd little silence before she said, “Yeah, actually. I do.” He could tell by the sound of her voice that she was looking straight at him, and knew that he was taking a risk, meeting her eyes, even for a moment. He chanced it anyway, but she’d already turned her head away. “It’s not too far from here,” she said softly. “Bear right at the fork.”

  Beyond the place where the main highway out of town branched off, the road got curvier and began to climb. A little farther on she told him to turn right where a sign said, Mourning Spring Park-No Camping-Closed at Dusk.

  “Ignore that,” she said. “Everyone does.”

  “Ah,” said Troy dryly, “let me guess-the local lovers’ lane?” Lord, he hoped not

  She didn’t reply. The narrow paved road wound down and down. Troy was conscious of trees he couldn’t see, and lush vegetation closing in around them, shutting out the stars. At Charly’s direction, he pulled into a wide graveled clearing, parked and turned off the engine. In the Cherokee’s headlights he could see picnic tables and trash cans and the trunks of large trees. A car parked down at the far end of the clearing started up its engine and pulled slowly past them, lights off.

  “Sorry, kids,” Troy muttered. He rolled his window down and he sat for a moment, listening to the music of the night…the ticking of the cooling engine, the rhythmic singing of frogs, the screech of cicadas in far-off trees, the rush and tinkle of running water, the rustling of leaves. And closer by, the breathing sounds of the dog in the back seat, and of the woman next to him. The air felt cool and moist on his skin and smelled of ferns and moss and rotting leaves and rich, dark earth. Eden must have smelled like this, he thought.

  He left the car’s headlights on while Charly carried the sack of groceries to one of the picnic tables and he got Bubba’s leash on him and secured it to a nearby trash can. Then he hauled out the blankets he’d started keeping in back to protect his new upholstery when he’d first got the pup, and gave them a good shaking. He got the battery-powered emergency lantern out from under the front seat, set it on the picnic table and spread the blankets out on the ground. When he came back from turning the car lights off, Charly was already carrying the grocery bag over to the blankets.

  “You don’t know what’s been on those tables,” she said with a shudder. “And you don’t even want to.”

  They settled themselves on the blankets, out of reach of Bubba, whose leash allowed him as far as a corner and no farther. One by one, not looking at each other, they laid out the things Troy had bought, placing them on the blanket between them-save one, wrapped and cushioned in plastic, which he set carefully aside. From a tree nearby an owl hooted his hopeful question, and Troy thought again of Eden. He was beginning to have doubts about whether this picnic had been such a good idea after all.

  He got out his pocket knife and began whittling at the loaf of bread, cutting off huge slabs while Charly laughed at him and muttered, “Boy Scout.”

  “Nope,” he said placidly, slathering the slabs with spicy-sweet honey mustard, “SEALs.”

  He then turned his attention to the chicken. The first piece, covered with greasy, well-seasoned skin, he meant to offer to Bubba, since the poor guy was whimpering and slobbering all over himself and just about to pee himself in his excitement and anticipation. But when Charly saw what he was doing, she snaked out her arm and snatched the chicken out of his hand just in the nick of time, exclaiming indignantly, “What are you doing? That’s the best part!” And poor ol’ Bubba gave a woof of disappointment as he watched her pop his morsel into her own mouth.

  Troy just shook his head in resignation and went back to slicing, while Charly defiantly cooed and licked her fingers with exaggerated smacking sounds. In the lantern light he could see the sheen of grease on her lips and fingers, along with a wicked gleam in the look she slanted his way. He knew she was teasing him, taunting him, tryin’ her best to get his goat. He just couldn’t quite be sure whether it was the food she was giving him a hard time about, or something else entirely.

  “Here you go, guy,” Charly was crooning to the dog, “you can have this instead.”

  Well, that got Troy’s attention off of Charly’s lips and the busy pink tongue she was cleaning them with barely in time for him to rescue a drumstick from Bubba’s slavering jaws. Which was just about more than the poor dog could handle; he gave a brokenhearted yip and sat back on his haunches, quivering all over, until Troy got the meat pulled off the bone for him. Then it disappeared in one gulp, before Charly’d even had a chance to utter a squawk of indignation.

  “Never give a dog a chicken bone,” Troy explained to her. “They splinter-might get caught in their throats.”

  She made a vaguely acquiescent sound deep in hers and slowly licked her lips. Then, keeping her eyes fastened on Troy’s mouth, she tore off a piece of the chicken and held it out to him, dripping skin and juices. “This is so-o good,” she murmured. “You’ve got to taste it.”

  Before he could even recall why he shouldn’t, much less tell himself not to, he’d opened his mouth and let her place the fat, juicy scrap of meat on his tongue. “Mmm,” she crooned. “See?”

  It probably was delicious, but you couldn’t have proved it by him. All of a sudden his mouth had gone bone-dry, and his tongue wanted to stick to the roof of his mouth. He swallowed with an audible gulp as she wiped her thumb across his lower lip.

  She pulled off another piece and put it in her own mouth, then licked her fingers, sticking them in her mouth one by one and slowly drawing them out again.

  Troy wanted to grab her and shake her and demand to know what the hell she was trying to do to him, but he was afraid if he moved, if he so much as opened his mouth, he’d find himself kissing her instead. He felt light-headed and bottom heavy, as if all his blood had suddenly surged into his lower body. Which it probably had. Lord, but the woman was dangerous.

  Bubba was whining again, figuring his turn was way overdue. Charly told him sweetly to mind his manners, then fed him the part of the back with the tail on it. The poor dog was so grateful it was almost pitiful to watch him. Troy knew just how he felt.

  “You ever have a dog?” he asked her, his voice an unrecognizable croak.

  She shook her head. “I always wanted one when I was a kid. Most of my friends had them.” She cocked her head to one side, and her voice took on a dreamy tone. “I wanted a great big woolly bear of a dog, you know? Something lazy, like a St. Bernard, so I could cuddle up with it on the rug and read a book, or something. Stupid, huh?” She broke off another piece of chicken and studied it for a moment before absentmindedly letting Bubba steal it.

  “So why didn’t you get one?”

  She shrugged and went for the chicken again. “When I was…oh, about eight, I guess, my father got me this little mouse thing-a gerbil. Maybe a hamster. Anyway, it died-I don’t remember why, I must have done something wrong-and my father said I couldn’t have any more pets because I wasn’t responsible enough to take care of them properly.”

  Troy cautiously cleared his throat, finding it necessary once again to tiptoe around his own emotions. “Don’t know very many eight-year-olds that are,” he muttered.

  Then he figured he’d better rescue the chicken before she fed the whole thing to the dog, so he took it from her, pulled off a nice big piece of skinless breast meat and held it out to her. She leaned over and took it into her mouth, and he felt a tingle go through his fingertips and all the way up his arm and into his scalp. He thought it was a damn good thing he had his hands full.

  “What about later on?” he asked her in an airless mumble. “When you were grown-up and on your own?”

  She answered him with her mouth full. “Mmm-I live in an apartment, work long hours-wouldn’t be fair. It’s better this way, actually. No responsibilities, nothing tying me down. I can do what I want to-come and go as I please.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Troy. He wanted to ask her if she ever missed having somebody around, somebody to be
there and happy to see her when she came home at night, somebody to curl up on the rug with and read a book, somebody to massage her feet for her when she’d been in court wearing those high-heeled shoes all day. Not that a dog could do that for her. He tore off another piece of chicken and held it just out of her reach and said, “Doesn’t that get kinda lonely?”

  Her eyes met his above the morsel of chicken, dark as the woods around them, each one holding a tiny glowing lantern in its center. “I’ve been alone since I was sixteen,” she said softly. “Except for a few good friends, like Bella. That’s the way I like it.” Without taking her eyes from his, she leaned over and took the meat from his fingers, making sure her lips caressed his fingers before curving in a smile of seduction and challenge.

  Bravado, he reminded himself. Pure bravado.

  “How’d you do it?” he asked her in a casual way, focusing on the conversation with all his willpower as he doled out Bubba’s next portion. “Just out of curiosity. I mean. jeez-sixteen years old and just off the bus in California? Lots of kids do it, and I don’t think very many of ’em manage to grow up to be lawyers.”

  “I had some money-my college fund. It was mine, so I took it. And I had a fake ID-everybody did, didn’t you? So we could buy booze and things like that? Anyway, that helped. I was able to get a job, and the police didn’t hassle me.”

  She told him about it between bites, about how she’d found herself a room at the Y and a job in a fast-food restaurant, not enough to live on, but it made her college money last longer, long enough for her to find a job working as a live-in maid for the family of a Beverly Hills attorney who hadn’t been fussy about her documentation. And how, with the security of a safe place to live and enough food to eat she’d been able to go to school at night and earn her GED, then community college, all the while saving every penny she could toward the day when she would finally enroll in UCLA. And after that, law school, and with the recommendation of her former boss, a part-time job with a law firm.

  She gave it all to him, the bare bones, anyway, while they reduced the chicken to the same condition-with the eager assistance of a big old Lab puppy. Troy had meant to make them some nice hefty sandwiches with the whole-grain bread and the mustard he’d brought, but somehow he just never got around to it. Instead they took turns feeding each other-and Bubba-little bits and pieces of that chicken, and talking, and licking the juices and the grease off of each other’s fingers, and they never even noticed that they were getting closer…and closer…and closer to each other, until there was hardly any room between them at all, and licking fingers got to seem like kind of a superfluous thing when there was something better right there handy.

  He never did know who started it, or just whose slick and lemon-peppery lips first became too great a temptation for a questing tongue to ignore. Spicy breaths flowed together and became a warming sweetness, like sun-ripe fruit. Lips and tongues slid over and around and slipped between, tangling together with a joyful abandon that was like otters playing in sun-dappled water. Her skin felt warm on his fingers, as if it had just been kissed by the sun. When he spread his fingers across her cheek and pushed them into her hair, the sunlight came inside him, filling him up with heat and nourishment and light.

  He brought her to him slowly, pressing her into him with the utmost gentleness, and as he sank into her mouth he felt himself rising, growing larger, becoming stronger, and her with him, as if some benevolent and approving god were lifting them up toward the light. Lifting them into the sun.

  And that was when he knew. Exactly how and where and when it had happened, he didn’t know, but somehow, somewhere along the way, she had become his sun.

  The realization shook him so that he tore himself away from her, reeling and disoriented, Icarus tumbling to earth.

  He opened his eyes and was surprised to find that it was still night. “Time for veggies!” he said in an adolescent croak as he groped behind him for the package he’d set aside.

  “I was hoping you’d forgotten,” Charly mumbled. The words sounded bumpy to him, as if she were shivering.

  “I’ll just bet you were. Close your eyes,” he ordered.

  “Why?”

  “No questions. Just…trust me, now, okay?”

  He heard a breathless and miserable “Okay.” Then and only then did he trust himself to look at her. She sat with her legs under her, hands clenched in her lap, shoulders hunched. Her head was high, though, and with her eyes closed her face wore the sad, noble expression of martyred saints. In the lantern light her skin had a cold, bluish look to it, so that what she reminded him of more than anything was a lovely sculpture made of ice. The images of sunshine seemed like a fading memory with no sensory reality to it, like looking at summer-vacation snapshots in the dead of winter.

  “Okay,” he said softly, “open up, now-your mouth, not your eyes.”

  A moment later she gave a little hiccup of surprise and pleasure. “Strawberries! But that’s not-”

  He silenced her with a berry. “Sure they are. Chock-full of vitamins and fiber.”

  “What? Well, okay, but how come there’s no hot fudge to dip them in? Or champagne?” But she was laughing when she said it.

  “Shut up,” said Troy, laughing too. “Here-have another one-they’re good for you.”

  “I will if you’ll share it with me.” Her eyes were shining with laughter and challenge.

  What could he do? The laughter was so good to see, and he couldn’t bear for her to lose it. So he leaned across the space he’d put between them and took what she offered…first the fruit, then her mouth. Strawberry wine…

  “Not a very original idea, I’m afraid,” she whispered after a while.

  “Hard to beat a good cliché,” he replied, half-drunk on the taste of her.

  But this time, like the older and wiser Daedalus, he knew better than to fly too near the sun; given a second chance, he managed to stay emotionally far enough away from her to keep them both from falling.

  “I’d like to go back to the motel now,” said Charly. “Please.” The strawberries were all gone, and the laughter with them.

  Troy was doing his best to gather up their trash while Bubba snored on his feet. His body ached all over from the strain of unconsummated passion. Charly was trembling, he imagined, for the same reason. And he almost-almost-gave in. God knows he wanted to. But in the end he took a deep breath and said gruffly. “Naw…thought we’d stay here a while longer.”

  “Someone might come.” She blurted it out breathlessly, then cut herself off as if she regretted the impulse that had made her say it. After a moment she started again in an entirely different tone, lifeless and wooden, trying hard to sound as if she didn’t really care all that much. “That’s why, isn’t it? Why you wanted to do this. You don’t want-”

  “Oh, I want, all right,” he said harshly, breaking in because he couldn’t bear the sadness in her voice another second. “I want you so bad I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to stand it.”

  “Well, you certainly have me.” Her whisper was slow and tentative. When he didn’t reply right away, she made an impatient sound and looked away. “I don’t know how I could possibly make that more obvious.”

  For a minute or two Troy went on fiddling with the blanket, smoothing it out, making it neat, while his thoughts and feelings chased and tumbled around inside his head like squirrels playing in the woods, his heart going a mile a minute and a sweat coming on. How in the hell am I going to explain this? he thought.

  He knew a lot of guys who were good talkers-sounded like TV soap operas, some of ’em-when it came to telling a woman the kinds of things they liked to hear. Troy hadn’t ever tried to be one of them. He’d always believed if he couldn’t tell a woman what she wanted to hear and have it be the truth, it was better to keep his mouth shut, and there’d been a few times he knew he’d caused a woman some disappointment and heartache because of that philosophy. In the long run he’d figured it probably saved both t
he woman and him a whole lot more grief than it caused. This was the first time in his recollection where the truth was both too complicated for words and too important for silence.

  “Hey,” he said gruffly, “come on over here.” Not knowing what else to do, he reached for her, put his arms around her and pulled her against him. She came stiffly at first, until he growled, “Pretend I’m a big ol’ St. Bernard dog.” Then she gave a moist, uncertain laugh but snuggled close, and he eased them both down on the blanket so that her head was pillowed on his chest in the nest just below his shoulder. When her hand began to rove across his chest, heading south, he corraled it gently and held it cradled right over his rapidly beating heart.

  “Look up there,” he said thickly. “It’s clearing off-look at the stars.”

  “Lord,” she said in a wondering tone, “you really are a Boy Scout.”

  “No, ma’am,” he growled, “not hardly.”

  He kept staring up at the stars, trying to think of a way to explain it to her. For some reason all he could think of was a cartoon movie he’d seen while he was growing up-Peter Pan, it was-and there’d been this crocodile that had bitten off Captain Hook’s hand, along with a clock that for some reason never seemed to run down, and then followed him around the rest of his life trying to get at the rest of him.

  “What’s funny?” Charly mumbled.

  “Nothin’.” How in the hell was he supposed to tell her that he reminded himself of a crocodile, and she of Captain Hook?

  But it was the truth. He knew he didn’t have Charly, no matter what she’d just said. All he had was just a little bitty piece of her. And dammit, he wanted the rest-the whole Charly, every last bit of her. Because the taste of her he’d already had was part of him now, like that ticking clock in the ol’ croc’s belly. She was inside him, part of him, and he wasn’t going to ever be able to get her out of his system or his consciousness again.