She closed the book and shoved it off the mattress. It landed with a thunk that made the nightstand lamp quiver. Tyler stepped toward her, already feeling his breath quicken and his desire stir.
And then it happened. She rolled over onto her back, and raised her arms above her head, displaying herself—offering herself—in all her nakedness and vulnerability and sweetness, and it was his utter undoing. In his mind’s eye, she became the woman in the woods, and for a horrifying moment he envisioned Roxanne’s lovely body bloodied and bristling with arrows. His heart pounded, his head swam, and his legs began to give way beneath him. Stumbling forward and clutching the footboard of the bed, he dropped to his knees and tucked his head, his breath coming in quick, spasmodic gulps.
She scrambled down the mattress and leaned over to stare down at him. “Tyler? Sweetie, baby, what’s wrong?”
He could not answer. Folded in on himself, he shivered and hyperventilated. She scrambled down to his side, wrapped him in her arms, and stroked his head. “Sshh,” she whispered. “Shhh.” She pressed the back of a hand to his cheek. “Are you sick?” Wordlessly he shook his head. “Have you . . . done something? Something awful? Slept with somebody else? Run over a child?” Another shake of his head. “Then come get in bed, and let me hold you.”
She helped him up, led him to the side of the bed, and eased him onto the mattress, then curled around him from behind. They lay like that for a long time. Muscle by muscle, nerve by nerve, breath by breath, he calmed, and the reality of the room—the warm pool of light from the lamp, the warm skin and soft breath of the woman pressed against him—reasserted itself.
Finally she spoke. “What’s got you so upset? Tell me.”
And so he did. He told it almost as if in a trance; almost as if he were reliving it, or showing her the slides he’d shot at the scene, all 108 of them—three full rolls of gruesome film. He told his way in, and he told his way out. But by the time he was telling his way out, he’d gotten separated from her. Somewhere during the telling in, she’d stiffened, so slightly that he’d failed to notice it at first. Heedless, he’d kept on, describing the woman pinned to the tree, naked and martyred. Meanwhile, the other naked woman—the naked woman in his bed, who had offered herself to him at her most unguarded—had gradually edged away, easing the sheet up her leg and hip and torso. And when at last he revealed the obscenity of the final arrow, Roxanne rolled away and sat on the edge of the bed, no longer touching him, and wound the sheet around herself like a shroud, tucking it tightly beneath both arms.
She drew a long, slow breath through her nostrils. She held it for several seconds before exhaling, with equal control, again through her nostrils. In the stillness of the room, the breath seemed deafening. “God damn it, Tyler. Why did you tell me that?”
He rolled to face her. “What do you mean, why did I tell you? Because you asked me to, Rox.”
“I wish I hadn’t. I take it back. Un-tell it, Tyler—I don’t want to know. I don’t want it in our bed. I don’t want it in my head.”
“I know,” he said. “I don’t, either.” He held out a hand, hoping that she’d take it; hoping that from their shared distress, they could build a bridge across the chasm that had opened between them. His hand lay open, untaken; Roxanne remained rigid on the edge of the bed, as still as a stone. “Come on, Rox, don’t do this. Give me a break here.”
Without looking, she swung her left arm behind her, striking him in the chest so hard he grunted. “Damn it,” she repeated. “Why are men such shits? Especially to women? I swear to God, Tyler, it makes me sick.”
“I don’t know why,” he said. “You’re right—men do awful, awful things to women. I hate it, too. It makes me sick, too. I puked in the woods out there today. I did. Ask Brockton; he’ll tell you.” She sat, unmoving. Unmoved. He waited, and it became clear that the wait could last forever. “You know what, though, Rox?” His voice took on an edge. “I am not the bad guy. I am nothing like the bad guy. As a matter of fact, I’m the good guy—one of them, anyhow—and I’m doing my damnedest to help catch the bad guy. So cut me some slack here, could you please? Because in case you hadn’t noticed, I had a shitty day. A really, really, really shitty day.”
She softened—some—and came back to him, turning onto her side and laying her head and one hand on his chest. But she did not unshroud herself. The fruit of the knowledge of evil had left bitterness in her mouth and coldness in her body. Hours later, when Tyler twitched and began to snore, she slipped from the bed. By the watery, soundless light of dawn, she dressed and packed and let herself out.
By the time she turned onto I-40 for the four-hundred-mile drive west, the rising sun was blazing red-orange in the rearview mirror, like the flaming sword at the gates of Eden, after Adam and Eve had been cast out for knowing too much.
CHAPTER 34