The Harder They Come

“The French would say, ‘Non.’ They’d say, ‘Pour me some more wine.’”

 

“Oui, oui,” Christabel said, rising from the chair now, “more wine.”

 

They pulled two chairs up to the stove, the door of which she’d left open so they could watch the fire crackling inside, and settled in, plates in laps. Kutya was interested suddenly and though she told herself she wouldn’t have him begging she couldn’t help feeding him a sliver or two of fish in between bites. He took it daintily, with the softest jaws in the world, bolted it down and looked up expectantly for the next morsel to come his way.

 

“This is good,” Christabel said, as if she doubted herself. “Really good. I don’t think I’ve ever . . . I mean the whole fish—”

 

“You don’t think about it, though, do you? After the first one.”

 

Christabel, chewing, staring into the stove, just nodded.

 

This was the kind of meal Sara loved, no chemicals, no BHT or food coloring or (the worst) corn syrup, just natural food, come by naturally. Except for the rolls, but she just didn’t have the time or energy to make them from scratch, having worked outside in the rain half the day, but the fish were fresh-caught right down there on the coast and the butter lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and radishes had come from her own garden. And the fish were free, which made it even better, free for the taking. Like mussels. She loved nothing better than to just pull over and make her way down a path to the sea at low tide, cut a bunch of mussels from the rocks (but not in summer, when they were quarantined because of the possibility of paralytic shellfish poisoning, which was fatal, thank you), and then steam them up and serve half as a starter with butter and garlic and homemade bread and then toss the rest into a pot of marinara at the last minute so you didn’t have to worry about them getting overcooked and rubbery. And berries. Nothing better than gathering berries in late summer for pies and tarts, but then you had the calorie factor to worry about. Berries with a little half-and-half then. And the smallest sprinkle of sugar.

 

When they were done, Christabel insisted on washing the dishes but she told her no, just let them sit, because why spoil the evening with something so—what was the word?—boring. Or no, tedious. “Too tedious,” she said, and she liked the sound of it and added, “Don’t be tedious. Let’s be the opposite—what is the opposite of tedious, anyway?”

 

Christabel let out a laugh. “I don’t know, untedious?”

 

They talked about having an after-dinner drink—Bailey’s, she had some Bailey’s in the cabinet, but that stuff packed on the pounds like steroids. “They ought to give that to the cattle at the feedlots,” she said. “That’d fatten them up. Pronto.”

 

“Yeah,” Christabel said, giving her a sloppy grin, “but what would the French say?”

 

“They’d say ‘Make mine rare.’”

 

“Right. And then they’d say, ‘Let’s stick to wine.’”

 

So they stuck to wine, how many glasses neither of them could say, but the quantity turned out to be exactly the precise amount to make the so-called comedy funny—or, that is, to prime them to the point where they could get sarcastic and laugh at it, which, as it turned out, made it genuinely funny.

 

They were both laughing when they heard the sirens, and before they could even get up out of their chairs or pause the video or shut the stove so they wouldn’t have to worry about sparks, the front door, which had been locked—she was pretty sure it had been locked—burst open as if it was made of cardboard and there were cops everywhere, shouting, “Your hands! Let me see your hands!”

 

She’d been a fool, that was her first thought, worse than a fool, because she of all people should have known they’d never let it go because once they got their claws into you, you had no more status than they did, and not packing up and moving to Nevada when she had the chance was just about the stupidest thing she’d ever done. What was wrong with her? What had she been thinking—that they’d forget about it? That if she stuck around, Adam would give up on the woods and come back to her? That it would be too hard, too much of an effort, to pull up her stakes here? She’d been lazy, that was what it was, living in fantasyland, and she was getting just what she deserved, because here they were with their boots and guns and bulletproof vests and there was no way out now.