"Baxter," said the woman, voice quivering. "Look at what Sage is doing. You guys are going to kill me." Still holding the boy, she moved toward the girl, tripped, fell, dropped the boy, who ended up with a mouthful of sand and began choking and screaming.
I hurried toward Sage. Hearing the woman call out, "Ohmigod, I'm so stooopid!"
I reached the child just as she fell on her rear and gulped water and broke into sobs. When I swooped her up, she stopped crying immediately. Giggled. Touched my lip with a tiny, gritty finger. Giggled again and tried to poke my eye.
"Hey, cutie," I said.
"Cootie. Heh heh." Poke, poke. I restrained the finger, and she found that hilarious.
I carried her back to the blond woman and handed her over. Baxter's mouth was clean and grinning crookedly. He glared at me, proclaimed, "No fish," and shook his fist.
"He thinks he was fishing," said the woman. "He thinks it's your fault he didn't catch anything."
"Sorry," I said.
Baxter scowled.
"Big fisherman," said the woman. "I can't believe he actually did that. He never did it before."
"That's kids," I said. "Always something new."
"No fish," opined Baxter.
"Fiss," echoed Sage.
"What, you have an opinion too, you little wild thing?" said the woman. She bent and stared at both kids. "That was silly—really silly. Both of you were silly, right?"
No reply. Baxter had turned profoundly bored, and his sister's attention was taken up by the sand at her feet.
The woman said, "You wild, wild things—for all I know there are sharks out there that could eat you! Sharks!" To me: "Isn't that true?"
Before I could answer she repeated, "Sharks! To eat you!"
The possibility made Baxter smile wider. But for a few sand scratches on his chest, he looked unscathed.
"Oh, you think it's funny. Would you like that? Huh? Would you? To be eaten by a shark—gobbled up like you're his Big Mac or something? Would either of you like to be a Big Mac?"
"No way," said Baxter, cocking one leg. "I eat him."
The little girl giggled.
"You're impossible," said the woman. "You're both impossible."
She straightened, folded her arms under her breasts, turning the nipples into twin torpedoes. She had a husky but girlish voice, beautiful, lightly freckled white skin, looked barely out of her teens. Full, soft lips, dainty chin, long neck, and the green-blue eyes were enormous and widely spaced under plucked eyebrows. No makeup, but for the extravagant red talons and toenails glossed in the identical shade.
"Fuckin' shark," said Baxter.
"Fug shanf," said the girl.
"Oh, Jesus," said the woman, grabbing each of them by the hand and shaking her head. Breathing hard and fast, but her breasts barely moved. Too big and too firm, and the rest of her was too slender to support a chest that robust. Solidity, courtesy the scalpel.
I don't think I stared, but maybe I did, because she seemed suddenly to become aware of her body—of being, for all intents, stripped naked by the second-skin wet dress. She gave a tiny, knowing smile, flipped her hair, peered into my eyes as I forced them to keep away from the curves below. Trailing her eyes—now I saw flecks of amber in the big, clear, green-blue irises—down her own body. Then her gaze shifted to me as she conducted a quick appraisal of my wet suit. Smiling again, she turned and, clenching a child in each hand, dragged them back to the spot where she'd fallen asleep. Walking slowly, with a swivel-hipped, tiptoe prance that jiggled her rear.
I followed, and she had to know that, but she paid me no mind all the way to her beach chair. The straw hat lay half-buried in the sand. The shiny thing I'd seen from the kayak was an Evian bottle. I realized I'd forgotten about the kayak and turned sharply.
The boat had come aground, upended, almost square with the spot where I'd brought Baxter the ear biter to shore. I jogged over, pulled it out of the tide's way, became aware of the throbbing in my ear, touched the lobe, inspected my finger. No blood, but those little teeth had done their job and the flesh was still dimpled and hot.
Back in the spoon-shaped shelter, the woman in the wet dress remained on her feet, saying something to both kids. Sage looked up at her, but Baxter's attention had drifted back to the ocean, and when he moved toward the water the woman held him back.
Then she waved at me. I jogged back.
"Please tell him," she said, when I arrived. "There are sharks out there. Right?" Smoothing down the soaked dress, pressing the fabric flush against her skin."Fuckin' shark," said Baxter, growling happily and gnashing those killer teeth. "Eat eat eat eat eat eat! Grrr!" Sage laughed.
"Well, aren't there?" the woman demanded of me. "Big killer whites or whatever—as big as dragons—like from Jaws!" She gnashed too. Small, sharp white incisors of her own. Her nipples had swelled to cherries.
"There just might be some kinds of sharks in there," I said to the kids. "Sharks and all kinds of other fish."
"There you go," said the woman. "Listen to this man, Bax, he knows. With all those sharks and fish and sea monsters in there, you'd be nothing but food, right?"
The boy chortled and tried to break free once more. The woman held on to him and whined: "Stop, you're hurting my arm—you are really going to kill me. Wild thing—and you should know better too, Sage-a-roo-roo. What got into you, you always hated the water!" Sage dropped her head. Her lips trembled.
"Oh, no," said the woman scooping her up. "Don't start crying, now—c'mon, sweetie nibbins. C'mon, c'mon, no tears now, you're a good girl, you don't have to cry—good girls don't have to cry." Sage sniffed. Cried.
"Oh, please, Sagey. Mommy just doesn't want anything to happen to you. Okay? You understand?"
Sage's nose began running, and she licked away snot. Baxter said, "Ew, boogers," and yanked on his mother's arm.
She yanked back, raised her voice. "Now just set yourself down—both of you." Pushing both children down onto the sand. "Good. Now just stay there—don't move or ... no TV and no pizza or F.A.O. Schwarz or Digimon or Pokemon or nothing. Okay?" Neither child responded.
"Good." To me: "You must think I'm a horrible mother. But he's impossible, never sits still. When he was a baby, every time I walked through a doorway carrying him he used to stick out his head and—bump! Banging his head on purpose] Raising these lumps! I used to worry everyone would think he was abused or something, you know?" A glance back at Sage: "And now, you too!"
The little girl said, "UUUUUl"The woman blew a raspberry. Smoothed her dress again, heightening the virtual nudity. "She's usually my good one. What a day."
I smiled. She smiled back. Stuck out her hand. "I haven't thanked you, have I? I'm really horrible—thank you sooo much. I'm Cheryl."
"Alex."
"Thank you, Alex. Thank you very very much. I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't . . ." The green-blue eyes took another trip down my wet suit. "Do you live around here?"
"No, I was just kayaking."
"Well, thank God you were. If you hadn't happened to . . ." Tears filled her eyes. "Ohmigod, it's just starting to hit me—what could've—I'm so—" She shivered, hugged herself, looked at me as if inviting a hug. But I just stood there, and she emitted several high-pitched whimpers, plucked at an eyelash.
Now her lip quaked. Both kids stared up at her. Sage seemed stunned, and for the first time Baxter looked penitent.
I squatted down beside them, sifted sand through my fingers.
"Mama, kie," said Sage, with wonder. Her lower lip jutted.
"Mama will be fine," I said, drawing a small circle in the sand. Sage dotted the middle.
Baxter said, "Mommy?"
Cheryl stopped crying. Crouching down, she gathered both children to her artificial breasts.
"Mama fine?" said Sage.
"Yes, I am, nibby-nib. Thanks to this nice man—thanks to Alex." She held on to the kids as her eyes locked onto mine. "Listen, I want to give you something. For what you did."
"Not necessary," I said.
"Please," she said. "It would make me feel better—to at least— You saved my babies and I want to give you something. Please." She pointed up at the top of the cliff. "We live here. lust come up for a second."
"You're sure it's okay?"
"Of course I am. I'm—I'll bring the car down and we can ride up. You'd be helping me anyway. It scares me—the car. I'm always afraid they'll fall out or something. You can hold on to Baxter, you'll be doing me a favor. Okay?"
"Sure." Her smile was sudden, warm, rich as she leaned over and kissed my cheek. I smelled sunscreen and perfume. Baxter growled.
"Thank you so much," she said. "For letting me give you something."
She walked over to the straw hat, lifted the brim, and pulled out a small, white remote-control unit. The push of a button triggered the cable car's descent, soundless but for an occasional bump where an odd rail protruded.
"Neat, huh?" she said. To the kids: "Neat, right? Not too many people have something this cool."
Neither child answered. I said, "Sure beats climbing."
Cheryl laughed, tossed her hair. "Well, you couldn't exactly climb that unless you were a—a lizard or something, I dunno. I mean, I like to work out—we've— There's a great gym up at the house, and I'm real physical, but no way could I climb that, right?"
"No way," I agreed.
"No-ay," said Sage.
"I could climb it," said Baxter. "Pizza cake."
"Sure you could, honey." Cheryl patted his head. "It's kind of neat, being able to ride down whenever you want. He—it got put in a long time ago."
Muffled thump as the car came to rest six inches above the sand. "Okay, here we go, all aboard. I'll take Sage and you hold on to him, okay?"
The compartment was roofless. Glass panels in a redwood frame, redwood benches, large enough for four adults. I got in last, feeling the car sway under my weight. Cheryl sat Baxter down, but he immediately stood. "No way, Jose," she said, returning him to his bench and stretching his arm toward mine. I gripped his hand, and he growled again and glared. I felt, strangely, like a stepfather.
"Close the door, Alex. Okay? Make sure it's locked good— Okay, here we go."
Another button push, and up we went, hugging the cliff. The transparent walls gave the ride a weightless feel—floating in air as the view expanded to infinity. A brief, dank wave of vertigo washed over me as I caught a stunning brain-full of ocean and sky and endless possibilities. Norris might be right about the millionaires and their pitiful scraps of beach, but this was something too.
The trip was less than a minute of Baxter squirming, Sage growing drowsy, and Cheryl staring at me from under half-lowered lids, as if I had something to look forward to. Her legs were long, smooth, subtly muscled, perfect, and as she flexed she allowed them to spread, offering a view of soft inner thigh, high-cut lace panties, the merest hint of postwax stubble and goose bumps peeking out beyond the seam.
Baxter was staring at me. I held on tight to his hand. When we reached the top the car paused for a second, changed course, drifted horizontally, bumped to a halt under the metal arch.
"Home sweet home," said Cheryl. "At least, kind of."
28
THE FUNICULAR SET us down on a concrete platform, and we walked to a waist-high redwood-and-glass fence set twenty yards behind the cable unit. The barrier stretched the width of the property—at least three hundred feet—and halfway to the northern edge; a husky man in a gray uniform stooped and sprayed glass cleaner from a blue bottle. The area between the cliff edge and the fence was a hundred thousand dollars' worth of packed brown Malibu dirt. No need to conserve space; the expanse before me was twenty acres minimum, maybe more.
Twenty calculated acres. The earth had been bunched into too-gentle slopes of a symmetry that would've amused Mother Nature, then cloaked with emerald sod. Beds of tropical vegetation had been cut into the grass, and medallions of flowers sprouted bauble-bright. Granite paths, some hooded by pink marble arbors laced with scarlet bougainvillea, others sun-whitened, sickled through perfect lawns under the selective shade of specimen trees. Maybe half a thousand trees, grouped in copses and pruned sculpturally, as calculated for size and shape as Cheryl's breasts. The beat of the ocean continued to work its way up. But it competed now with new water music—waterfalls, at least a dozen minicataracts, tumbling into rock pools that seemed to sprout from nowhere. The soda spritz of skyward-aimed fountains jetted from free-form rock ponds, some occupied by swans and ducks and pink flamingos. Bird cries in thedistance didn't belong to any native species, and something that might've been a monkey shrieked.
I said, "Sounds like someone's got a zoo."
"All kinds of animals," said Cheryl, smiling enigmatically and moving several steps ahead of me, long, blond hair flapping against her back. Sage was slung over her shoulder, sleeping soundly, cheeks bunched, tiny mouth a vermilion squiggle. Baxter held my hand without offering resistance. His pace had slowed and his eyelids fluttered, and when I lifted him into my arms he didn't fight, and I felt his body go heavy against mine.
Cheryl walked faster. Lagging slightly behind allowed me to check out the estate. No buildings in sight, just greenery, and now the fountains' ejaculations had drowned out the ocean. A few acres to the right the lawn sloped to a silver mirror: an unfenced, dark-bottomed swimming pool the size of a small lake. No birds. How did they keep them out?
No swimmers either. But for us and the glass cleaner, no humanity. The place had all the intimacy of a restricted resort, and I half-expected some officious sort to dart out from the shrubbery and check my membership card.
Cheryl turned onto a path, and we passed behind beds of tall, flowering pampas grass, hedges of variegated mock orange, a grove of two-story Hollywood junipers studded with blue-gray berries. The trees obscured the rest of the property, and I caught up with Cheryl. When her hip bumped mine a couple of times and I didn't react, her jaw set and she surged ahead of me again. The junipers gave way to a planting of cattails, and I resumed sneaking peeks between the stalks.