Alice Close Your Eyes (13 page)

It felt like an accusation.

“Aren’t you?” she said again.

“It doesn’t matter what I look like.”

Her head swiveled toward me.

“Really,” she said. “I can’t think of anything that matters more.”

Late that night, I heard someone crying. This was not unusual; a lot of crying went on at the PNC, though usually it was a morning or late-afternoon activity. I tried to ignore it and focus on my book, but the sobs went on and on. Muffled at first, then with a long-drawn sound:
ayy, ayyyy
... Soothing professional voices joined in, offering comfort, but those two long sounds rose to a scream, and after a minute I realized they were words.

“My eyes. My
eyes!
”

With mine closed now, I try to imagine a life in darkness so complete that even the noonday sun couldn’t penetrate it. There would be no waiting for the dawn. No hours of daytime safety. Only darkness and the fear of drifting away.

A wave of exhaustion ripples through me. I tip back my head and let my body sway in the wind.

Without warning, Jack appears beside me, his hand like a manacle around my upper arm.

“Jesus, baby, step back. What the hell are you doing?”

I look down, surprised, and realize how close I have come. My toes are one tuft of grass from the cliff’s edge. If the ground were to crumble, we would fall fifty feet to the rocks below. I take a few cautious steps back and manage a smile.

“For a minute there, I imagined I could fly,” I say.

Jack puts his hand on the top of my head and turns me around, takes my hand and leads me back up the path to the motel. The room is small and beautiful, with pale blue walls and snowy bedding, and a tufted headboard of yellow silk damask. I close the striped drapes and he runs a shower. Silently, he undresses me, laying slow kisses upon my breasts, sweeping his hands over my chilled skin as though to reassure himself that I’m still in one piece.

“Don’t go to the edge without me,” he says. “You might fall.”

He pulls me into the shower and washes my hair, slicks my body with soap, sips the river that streams between my breasts and over my nipples. I kneel before him and take him in my mouth. He tastes clean, almost sweet, his cock gliding across my tongue and easily back, while the water slips like summer rain over our skin.

I trace his body with my hands. The flattened ripples of his abdomen, like the sea-pressed patterns on a sandy beach; the ridge above his hip, and the firm curve of his ass; the long ropey sinew at the backs of his knees, his thighs rough with hair. I cup my hands over his forearms as he smooths the water from my face. This is where his power is, in the clever strength of his fingers, in the fat-veined muscle on the underside of his arm. His body fills me with pride.

Mine. He wants me, he’s mine.

He presses into my mouth and I sink lower before him, tilting my head, waiting with my tongue out like a child in the rain. Instead, he tugs at my arm and lifts me to my feet, slides me up the wall and buries himself inside me with one clean, complete stroke. My back slips along the tile, my legs lock around him. I drink the water from our kiss, gasping and crying out from the sweetness of it.

* * *

For dinner that evening we have seafood at a small restaurant on the edge of the pines. Below us is the beach we’ve just left, where the tide is rising over the rocks, opening fans of sea-spray-tinged orange from the setting sun.

I devour a tangle of salmon-pink crab legs, dripping with butter, while Jack attacks a plate of raw oysters.

“Mmm-mmm,” he says. “Like eating a mermaid’s pussy.”

“So crude.”

“The mermaids have nothing on you.” He gives me a lopsided smile, one that reminds me of how he must have looked as a boy. His hair is still tousled from the beach and there are fine grains of sand clinging to his eyebrow. He dabs some wasabi cream on the last oyster and slurps it into his mouth. “So, I was thinking.”

“Always good.”

“We should do it again.”

I crack apart a shell and draw out a tender chunk of crab meat.

“You liked it, too,” he says.

I don’t answer. I’m thinking of the scent of the leather man’s house, the texture of his blanket against my cheek and the landscape of crumpled bedding, a foreign mountain range viewed from the side—and Jack inside me, all the way inside me, his hands splayed over the welts on my ass that lasted through the next day, his fingertips circling, making me come.

I shift in my seat, roll the seam of my pants over my clitoris, cross my legs to press the ache away. I watch his face. The power in his jaw as he eats, the width of his hands. Light streams over his hair, flashes on his teeth as he grins at me. He knows.

I want to do it again.

* * *

After dinner I ask Jack to take me to a bar.

“You can get me drunk and take advantage of me.” I link my arm through his as we leave the restaurant.

“I don’t need to get you drunk for that.”

“I’ve been known to say no.”

“Not to me.”

“Then you’ve been lucky so far.”

“Mmm. You playing a game, baby?

“No games. I just want a beer and maybe a game of pool.”

He looks at me. “Sure you do.”

* * *

The bar is arranged like an Irish pub, with some random seating, an L-shaped bar with a worn brass rail, and two pool tables at the back of the room. We claim one of those and Jack proceeds to make good on his promise to kick my ass at the game, which is not difficult since this is only the second attempt in my life and I can’t figure out how to hold the cue. Jack tries to demonstrate, but the cue is too big for my hands.

“I can’t hold my finger closed,” I say.

He circles to my side of the table and leans over me.

“Cock your thumb,” he says, “and slide the cue along the back. You want to make a bridge of your hand with a notch on top.”

He demonstrates, and I follow along. It still feels awkward, but my hand is more stable and I’m able to get off a solid—though poorly aimed—shot.

I look at Jack doubtfully.

“Better,” he says.

“You shouldn’t let your opponent teach you,” says a voice behind us.

I straighten and turn to see two men about my age, each with a mug of beer in his hand and wearing a Seahawks T-shirt. The blond in the baseball cap introduces himself as Tom, and says his heavyset friend is L.J.

“We stink at pool,” Tom says in the flat nonaccent of the Pacific Northwest. “But we’re bored and the other table’s in use.”

Jack rubs some chalk on the end of his cue. At first I think he’s going to refuse.

“As long as we’re not playing for money,” he says.

“What money?” says L.J.

We decide Jack and I will play together. Tom orders another round of beer and L.J. breaks, scattering the balls with a sound like a toy machine gun.

“We’re being hustled already,” Jack says good-naturedly.

“You’ve just seen my only move,” L.J. says.

It really is, too. L.J. is almost as bad as I am, and Tom almost as good as Jack. We play three games in a row, chatting idly. From the jukebox, a favorite song seduces me into motion, just a little, a rock of my hips and a slide, following the beat.

“Where are you two from?” Tom says.

“Seattle,” I say.

“Vashon,” Jack says at the same time.

“Hey, I used to live on Maury, near the lighthouse,” says L.J.

“Why did you leave?” I ask.

“To meet women,” he says, round belly bouncing once with a grunt of laughter.

“And how’s that working for you?”

“All the good ones are taken,” he says, eyeing me regretfully.

Jack is leaning over the table, lining up his shot. He throws a glance over his shoulder at L.J., draws back his cue and sinks the eight ball neatly in the corner pocket.

“Damn, that’s two out of three,” Tom says.

“We should’ve played for money, after all,” I say.

“What money?” L.J. says again.

“Everyone’s got something to gamble with,” Jack says. He straightens and looks L.J. in the eye. Though there’s nothing overtly threatening in Jack’s tone or body language, a frisson of unease passes through me.

Jack hangs up his cue and heads off to the men’s room, while Tom pays for another game and begins to arrange the rack.

“So what do you do for a living, Alice?” he says.

“I’m a writer.”

He glances up.

“Is that right. Anything I would know?”

“I doubt it.”

He assumes an expression of offended dignity, one hand over his heart.

“I read.”

“Oh, I believe you.”

“No, you don’t,” he says, laughing.

I place the cue ball on the table and try again to perfect my bridge. Tom moves to my side of the table and stands next to me. I move a half step closer, a slight shift from left to right, and look up at him.

“Spread your fingers more,” he says. “And lock your elbow.”

He bends over me, takes hold of the end of the cue to show me how far to draw it back. His scent fills my nose, an unfamiliar blend of beer and aftershave, and I feel the heat of his body.

“You’re hesitating,” he says. “Push through, think of it like a tennis stroke.”

I lock my elbow and let the cue slide over my thumb. The ball shoots down the table and zips straight back.

“That was good,” he says.

His eyes are on my mouth, quickly to my breasts, back again. I’ve read that men don’t fantasize about the
idea
of a woman the way I do with men. They think of someone they’ve actually met, some real woman they’ve seen and wanted. And I know from Tom’s quick glance at my mouth, down my shirt, that this stranger will be using me tonight. When he’s home alone and the lights are out, he’ll have me bent over this pool table, and may even have ideas about the wooden cue I’m holding in my hands.

It’s an insult and a compliment at once. But I don’t have time to think about it. Jack has returned to the table.

“Time to go.” He takes my cue and hangs it on the wall rack. He shakes Tom’s hand. “Good to meet you.”

“Yeah, you, too,” Tom says. “Sure we can’t talk you into another game?”

Jack’s expression never changes, but his eyes are fixed on me as he answers.

“No, I think we’ve had about enough.”

He follows me to the door, one hand lightly on the back of my neck. I begin to turn slightly, to say goodbye, and feel his fingers tighten to keep me moving forward.

At the motorcycle, Jack hands me my helmet.

“You might want to keep that on when we get back to the motel,” he says. He buckles his helmet in place and lowers the tinted shield over his eyes. He swings his leg over the bike and starts the engine, revving it gently, and jerks his head at me.

From the bar, light bursts into the cool blue darkness as a couple opens the door and goes inside. The door eases closed, and we are alone again. Jack’s helmet frightens me. There’s no way to gauge him. I can’t tell whether he’s amused or angry.

I scoot onto the bike behind him and wrap my arms around his waist. He leaves the parking lot with a swooping curve like a big shark flicking its tail. Gravel clatters to the pavement behind us.

The streets are clear and dry. But even so, Jack is going much too fast along the unfamiliar road, which winds like a snake through the pines. He leans into the turns, hugging the center line like he’s on a rail, never deviating, never slowing down no matter how sharp the curve. The trees flash by in a blur, and I am clinging to him with both hands locked around his waist, sure he’s going to crash, that we’ll hit a pothole and sail off the bike, that a deer will leap into the road and Jack will lose control. I call his name but can hardly hear it myself over the engine and the rush of wind. I clunk my helmet against his, tug at his shirt. But he won’t slow down. Instead, he accelerates, which feels like a punishment against my protests, so I give up and hold on and pray.

At last we pull into the parking lot of the white motel. Before he can even kill the engine, my helmet is on the ground and I’m off the bike and running. My legs are trembling and weak with relief, and I have no idea where I’m going—I only know that the last thing I want is to go inside with him.

I’m on the path now, headed into the forest, where earlier today I noticed a couple of stone picnic tables nestled in the pines. The sea is churning at the bottom of the cliff and my footsteps and breath are coming fast. Then Jack is behind me, two or three heavy thuds of his boots on the ground, and his hand is around my arm.

“Where are you going?”

“Get away from me.” I shake him off. “Are you trying to kill us?”

“If I wanted to kill us, we’d be dead.”

“What the hell is your problem?” I turn to face him. My voice is shrill with fear.

“I think you know the answer to that.”

“What, I can’t have a conversation now?”

“A conversation. Is that what you call it, when you’re acting like a fucking pole dancer, letting guys hang all over you, while you stick your ass in the air and pretend you don’t know how to play pool.”

My face grows hot. “I
don’t
know how to play.”

“Bullshit. What you wanted was a lesson, and an excuse to piss me off.”

“That’s not tr—”

“Bullshit.” In the darkness, Jack’s face floats like a mask, his cheeks and eye sockets blotted with shadow. “You think I don’t know when I’m being played? How many times did you smile tonight. I lost count. And you never smile.”

“What, I can’t smile now? Did we enter a no-charm zone I was unaware of?”

He steps forward and slaps me once, hard across the cheek. I stumble back, disoriented. He has never hit me in anger.

“The problem here,” he says, “is that you haven’t figured this out yet. You think you know what you want, but you don’t know shit.”

He advances on me, and I’m scurrying backward, trying to get out of the way. I glance back, see I’m about to run into a metal barbecue grill and try to change course. Jack hooks my elbow and pushes me against the picnic table.

“You wanted to play a game tonight, you wanted to make me jealous.” He throws out his arms, palms up. “So I’m jealous. Now what?”