"Rape!" she repeated, laughing shrilly. "Oh, that's funny! Oh, what you said! Me! Rape you! Oh, Larry!"
"Whatever you want from me, you could have had. You could have had it last week, or the week before. The week before that I asked you to take it. I wanted you to have it."
"That was too soon," she whispered.
"And now it's too late," he said, hating the brutal sound of his voice but unable to control it. He was still shaking all over from wanting her, how was he supposed to sound? "What are you gonna do; huh?"
"All right. Goodbye, Larry."
She was turning away. In that instant she was more than Nadine, turning her back on him forever. She was the oral hygienist. She was Yvonne, with whom he had shared an apartment in L.A. - she had pissed him off and so he had just slipped into his boogie shoes, leaving her holding the lease. She was Rita Blakemoor.
Worst of all, she was his mother.
"Nadine?"
She didn't turn around. She was a black shape distinguishable from other black shapes only when she crossed the street. Then she disappeared altogether against the black background of the mountains. He called her name once again and she didn't answer. There was something terrifying in the way she had left him, the way she had just melted into that black backdrop.
He stood in front of King Sooper's, hands clenched, brow covered with pearls of sweat in spite of the evening cool. His ghosts were with him now, and at last he knew how you pay off for not being no nice guy: never clear about your own motivations, never able to weigh hurt against help except by rule of thumb, never able to get rid of the sour taste of doubt in your mouth and -
His head jerked up. His eyes widened until they seemed to bulge from his face. The wind had picked up again, it made a strange hooting sound in some empty doorway, and farther away he thought he could hear bootheels pacing off the night, rundown bootheels somewhere in the foothills coming to him on the chilly draft of this early morning breeze.
Dirty bootheels clocking their way into the grave of the West.
Lucy heard him let himself in and her heart leaped up fiercely. She told it to stop, that he was probably only coming back for his things, but it would not stop. He picked me, was the thought that hammered into her brain, driven there by her heart's triphammer beat. He picked me -
In spite of her excitement and hope, which she was helpless to control, she lay stiffly on her back on the bed, waiting and watching nothing but the ceiling. She had only told him the truth when she had said that, for her and for girls like her friend Joline, the only fault was too much need to love. But she had always been faithful. She was no cheater. She hadn't cheated on her husband and she had never cheated on Larry, and if in the years before she had met them she hadn't exactly been a nun... time past was time past. You just couldn't get hold of the things you had done and turn them right again. Such power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to men and women, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.
If you knew that past was out of reach, maybe you could forgive.
Tears were stealing down her cheeks.
The door clicked open and she saw him in it, just a silhouette.
"Lucy? You awake?"
"Yes."
"Can I put on the lamp?"
"If you want."
She heard the minute hiss of gas and then the light came on, turned down to a thread of flame, revealing him. He looked pale and shaken.
"I have to say something."
"No you don't. Just come to bed."
"I have to say it. I..." He pressed his hand against his forehead and ran it through his hair.
"Larry?" She sat up. "Are you all right?"
He spoke as if he hadn't heard her, and he spoke without looking at her. "I love you. If you want me, you got me. But I don't know if you're getting much. I'm never going to be your best bet, Lucy."
"I'll take the chance. Come to bed."
He did. And they did. And when the love was over she told him she loved him, it was true, God knew that, and it seemed to be what he wanted, needed, to hear, but she didn't think he slept for a long time. Once in the night she came awake (or dreamed she did) and it seemed to her that Larry was at the window, looking out, his head cocked in a listening posture, the lines of light and shadow giving his face the appearance of a haggard mask. But in the light of day she was more sure that it must have been a dream; in the light of day he seemed to be his old self again.