“Naomi doesn’t have one.”
“It’s a flaw I’m overlooking. Sometimes it’s just sex, as Bonnie illustrates and your memory serves. And sometimes, as you ought to remember, you want some conversation, some meat along with the sizzle. Bonnie had the sizzle, but I knew it wasn’t going to be enough, even for the summer, when she picked up a copy of East of Eden I had on the nightstand and said she didn’t know I was religious.”
“Religious?”
“She figured Eden—so it must be a biblical story. She didn’t even know who Steinbeck was.” And he could still shake his head over that. “Even an overbite can’t make up for that.”
“It’s good to have standards.”
“Oh, I’ve got standards. So far, Naomi’s meeting them, so I can take some time.”
“What if she’s lousy in bed?”
“That’d be both surprising and disappointing, but if so, we can still have conversations. Does she ever talk about her family with you?”
“Her brother, her uncles. Little bits and pieces here and there. Not much elaboration, now that you mention it.”
“Exactly. It’s interesting—what she doesn’t say. It’s interesting.”
—
He thought about that, late into the night, long after rehearsal and the cold-cut subs he and his bandmates chowed down on.
In general he liked the company of men more than the company of women. He understood what men didn’t say, didn’t need or want it all laid out in specific words, expressions, freaking tones of voice. Women, to his mind, were work. Often worth it, and he didn’t mind work.
But time spent with women, when it wasn’t before, during, or after sex, was entirely different than hanging out with men or working with them.
In general, he preferred the short, straightforward mating dance and considered the extra steps and flourishes a waste of everyone’s time.
You wanted or didn’t; there was heat or there wasn’t.
For some reason he found himself willing to take those extra steps with Naomi. He didn’t really mind them; in fact, he enjoyed them, all the stops and starts, the detours.
And in his experience once the mating dance was done, the first rush of sex slowed, interest faded.
He liked being interested.
He turned on the bedroom TV, with the sound low as it was mostly to cover the silence so he didn’t miss Milo’s snoring so keenly. He picked up his nightstand book—a worn paperback of Lord of the Flies.
He never had a first read on the nightstand, not if he wanted to sleep, so he settled in with the familiar and fascinating.
But he couldn’t get Naomi off his mind.
—
On the bluff, Naomi turned off the lights. Her brain was too tired for more work, too tired to pretend to read, even to stream a movie. The dog had already settled down, and it was time she did the same.
Since her tired brain didn’t want to turn off, she let it wander, circling around faucets, lighting fixtures, whether she should do that study of Douglas firs she’d taken that morning, the green eerie through thin mists. It would make a solid cover for a horror novel.
She worked on it in her head, played up shadows until she drifted off, drifted away.
When she walked through that eerie green, the wind rolled through the tops of the trees, a whoosh and moan that laid a chill on her skin. She followed the path. She wanted to get to the water, to the blue, to the warm. Her footsteps were muffled on the thick cushion of pine needles, and those deep green shadows seemed to shift into shapes. And the shapes had eyes.
She moved faster, heard her breath quicken. Not with exertion, but with an atavistic fear. Something was coming.
Thunder mumbled overhead, over the rolling, muttering wind. The shimmer of lightning tossed all into an instant of relief, and brought a sick heaviness to her belly.
She had to run, had to find the light again. Then the shadow stepped from the shadow, a knife in one hand, a rope in the other.
Time’s up, it said in her father’s voice.
She tried to scream, and woke with it trapped in her throat, with the weight crushing her chest.
No air, no air, and she clutched at her own throat as if to fight away the hands that circled it.
Her heart thudded, sharp, vicious hammer blows that rang in her ears. Red dots swam in front of her eyes.
Somewhere deep under the weight, the terror, she shouted at herself to breathe. To stop and breathe. But the air wheezed, barely squeezed through her windpipe, only burned her starving lungs.
Something wet ran over her face. She saw it, felt it, as her own blood. She would die here in the woods of her own creation, in fear of a man she hadn’t seen in seventeen years.
Then the dog barked, hard and fierce, chased the shadows like rabbits. So she lay panting—breathing, breathing, with the terrible weight easing as the dog lapped at her face.
He had his front legs braced on the bed. She could see his eyes now, gleaming in the dark, hear his pants along with her own. Struggling to steady, she raised a trembling hand, stroked his head.
“Okay.” She rolled toward him, comforted, let her eyes close, focused on long, slow breaths. “It’s okay. We’re okay. Just a dream. Bad dream. Bad memories. We’re okay now.”
Still, she switched on the light—she needed it—brought her knees up to rest her clammy forehead on them.
“Haven’t had one that bad in a while. Working too hard, that’s all. Just working too hard, thinking too much.”
Since the dog remained braced on the bed, she shifted to wrap her arms around his neck, pressing her face into his fur until the trembling eased.
“I thought I didn’t want a dog. I’d say the way you were wandering you must’ve thought you didn’t want a human.” She eased back, rubbed his ears. “And here we are.”
She picked up the bottle of water she always kept on her nightstand and drank half of it before rising to go into the bathroom and splash cold water on her face.
Still shy of five, she noted, early for both of them, but she couldn’t risk sleep. Not now.
She picked up the flashlight—also handy on her nightstand—and went downstairs. She’d gotten into the habit of just letting him out in the morning, but this time she delighted him by going out with him. For a while they just walked, around the house, around the quiet.
Tag found one of his secreted balls and happily carried it around in his mouth. When she went back in, he watched her make coffee, let the ball drop when she filled his food bowl, picked it up.
“Let’s take it upstairs.”
He raced halfway up the back stairs, stopped, looked back to make sure she was coming, and then raced the rest of the way.
With the dog, with the coffee, she settled down, calm and content again, to wait for sunrise to bloom over her world.
—
When Sunday rolled around she thought of a dozen reasons not to go to Jenny’s, and the excuses that would cover it.
Why would she take one of her two days of quiet and solitude a week and spend it with people? Nice people, certainly, but people who wanted to talk and interact.
She could drive to the national forest, go hiking—alone. She could work on the yard, or finish painting the first guest room.
She could sit around and fat-ass all day.
Really, she’d agreed to go in a weak moment, in the rush of mermaid lamps and bargains. She should . . .
She’d agreed to go, Naomi reminded herself. What was a couple of hours? If she was going to live here, she needed to be moderately sociable. Hermits and recluses generated gossip and speculation.
And she’d said she’d bring dessert, and had even shopped for what she needed to make the strawberry torte. It was spring, after all—stubbornly cool, often rainy, but spring.
She decided to compromise. She’d make the torte, then see how she felt.
Tag cast suspicious looks at her new stand mixer, as he did the vacuum cleaner. But she loved it, had actually done a little dance when it had arrived two days before.