A Place of Hiding

She hadn’t donned a coat or even a sweater. The goose-pimples on her skin had their own goose-pimples, but she didn’t seem to be aware of this. Deborah took off her own coat. She wanted to reassure her friend with a fervency identical to Cherokee’s, but she also didn’t want to give her false hope. The open window provided an excuse to avoid a discussion of the growing blackness of China’s situation. She said, “You’re freezing. Put this on,” and she draped her coat round China’s shoulders. Cherokee leaned past them and shut the window. He said to Deborah,

“Let’s get her out of here,” and he nodded in the direction of the sitting room, where the temperature was marginally higher.

When they had China seated and Deborah had found a blanket to wrap round her legs, Cherokee said to his sister, “You know, you need to take better care of yourself. We can do some things for you, but we can’t do that.”

China said to Deborah, “He thinks I’ve done it, doesn’t he? He hasn’t come because he thinks I’ve done it.”

Cherokee said, “What’re you—”

Understanding, Deborah cut him off. “Simon doesn’t work that way. He examines evidence all the time. He’s got to have an open mind to do it. That’s how it is just now for him. His mind is open.”

“Why hasn’t he come over here, then? I wish that he would. If he did—if we could meet and I could talk to him...I’d be able to explain if things need explaining.”

“Nothing,” Cherokee said, “needs explaining because you didn’t do anything to anyone.”

“That ring...”

“It got there. On the beach. It just got there somehow. If it’s yours and you can’t remember having it in your pocket when you went down to check out the bay sometime, then you’re being framed. End of story.”

“I wish I’d never bought it.”

“Hell, yes. Damn right. Jesus. I thought you’d closed the book on Matt. You said you made it over between you.”

China looked at her brother evenly and for so long a time that he looked away. “I’m not like you,” she finally said.

Deborah saw that a secondary communication had passed between brother and sister with this. Cherokee grew restless and shifted on his feet. He shoved his fingers through his hair and said, “Hell. China. Come on.”

China said to Deborah, “Cherokee still surfs. Did you know that, Debs?”

Deborah said, “He mentioned surfing but I don’t think he actually said...” She let her voice drift off. Surfing was so patently not what her old friend was talking about.

“Matt taught him. That’s how they first became friends. Cherokee didn’t have a surfboard but Matt was willing to teach him on his own. How old were you then?” China asked her brother. “Fourteen?”

“Fifteen.” He mumbled his answer.

“Fifteen. Right. But you didn’t have a board.” She said to Deborah,

“To get good, you need a board of your own. You can’t keep borrowing someone else’s because you need to practise all the time.”

Cherokee went to the television and picked up the remote. He examined it, pointed it at the set. He turned the set on and just as quickly turned it off. He said, “Chine, come on.”

“Matt was Cherokee’s friend first, but they grew apart when he and I got together. I thought this was sad, and I asked Matt once why it happened that way. He said things change between people sometimes and he never said anything else. I thought it was because their interests were different. Matt went into film making, and Cherokee just did his Cherokee thing: played music, brewed beer, did his swap-meet number with the phony Indian stuff. Matt was a grown-up, I decided, while Cherokee wanted to be nineteen forever. But friendships are never that simple, are they?”

“You want me to leave?” Cherokee asked his sister. “I can go, you know. Back to California. Mom can come over. She can be with you instead.”

“Mom?” China gave a strangled laugh. “That would be perfect. I can see her now, going through this apartment—not to mention through my clothes—removing anything vaguely related to animals. Making sure I have my daily allotment of vitamins and tofu. Checking to be certain the rice is brown and the bread whole grain. That would be sweet. A great distraction, if nothing else.”

“Then what?” Cherokee asked. He sounded despairing. “Tell me. What?”

They faced each other, Cherokee still standing and his sister still sitting, but he seemed much smaller in comparison with her. Perhaps, Deborah thought, it was a reflection of their personalities that made China seem so relatively large a figure. “You’ll do what you have to do,” China told him. He was the one to break the gaze they each held steadily on the other. During their silence, Deborah thought fleetingly of the entire nature of sibling relationships. She was in water without gills when it came to understanding what went on between brothers and sisters. With her gaze still on her brother, China said, “D’you ever wish you could turn back time, Debs?”

“I think everyone wishes that now and then.”