Reilly 12 - Show No Fear (5 page)

“M
ATT.
S
IT DOWN AT THE TABLE,” HIS MOTHER SAID
sternly. “Eat your cake.”

Matt sat. He was trying hard, but he was barely holding it together. Bob scrambled onto a chair beside his uncle. They sang the birthday song. Nina cut the cake. She handed each one of them a piece on a paper plate.

Ginny always used to cut the cake.

“Nina,” Matt said. “White cake? You know I hate this shit.”

“Don’t eat it then.”

“I picked the cake, Uncle Matt. The flowers are your favorite color, blue. That’s what boys like, blue.” Bob’s serious face studied his uncle’s. “But I’ll eat your piece if you really don’t want it.”

“Oh, Bob-o. I’m just teasing your mom. See?” Matt shoved in a huge mouthful, nearly choking while Bob laughed.

“Have another piece, Bob,” said Ginny, putting another small piece on Bob’s plate.

Bob begged for television and, when everyone said no, returned to his other toys, a garageful of cars and trucks Nina had brought.

Matt stood up and brushed cake from his T-shirt. “I should’ve driven you up to see another specialist. It’s getting worse all the
time, isn’t it? There’s gotta be someone out there who can help you—”

“Sweetie, it makes no sense for me to run off and see a new specialist every time I have questions,” replied his mother. “Don’t worry so much.”

“Maybe Dad can do more,” Nina suggested. “He knows everyone. He should help.”

“You’re an independent young lady, Nina, so I know you’ll understand why I don’t ask your father for anything more at the moment, okay?”

“What’s going on with you and Dad?” Matt asked.

Nina could hardly believe they were talking about this. Her mother did not discuss their father with them.

“Things aren’t perfect. That’s natural. You know, we were married for thirty-one years.”

“You’ve been divorced for a year now. Isn’t that right?” Matt said. “I figured the two of you had things settled.”

“Not exactly,” Ginny said. “It’s ongoing. Even though we had an agreement, spousal support can always be modified. Maybe I should modify it more to my benefit, do more to help you kids.”

“Mom, do not squander one single thought on us. Matt and I are fine.”

Matt slouched, looking far from fine.

“You need to concentrate on your health,” Nina said.

Ginny smiled. “That’s so boring. I like thinking about how to help you all have better lives. That makes me happy. What do you think, Nina? Should I go back to court?”

Nina pulled a card out of her wallet. “You know my number at work. You need to talk to Remy Sorensen for an unbiased legal opinion. She’s good.”

“Thank you, Nina. Advice from experts is good. I know I should stand up for my rights, if not for myself, for you all, to show you what fair looks like. Yes, I was already thinking about seeing Miss Sorensen.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” Nina studied her mother. She had come to think of her as something of a pushover when it came to Harlan.

“But not about your father. I think I need to do something about the acupuncturist.” Ginny moved into the kitchen. “Would you get me a glass of water, Matt? I have to take my pills.”

Nina sat back in her chair. She had been trying to get her mother to do something about the acupuncturist for ages. Another lawsuit? Now? What was happening? What was precipitating these lightning-swift changes everyone was going through in the family? She felt sucked down into a wave that wouldn’t quit, that just kept pulling her, her brother, her son, her mother, down deeper.

Fear gnawed at her insides. She cupped her hand over her mouth, her throat tight. Get hold of yourself, Nina, she told herself. One thing at a—

“That’s just what she needs right now, Nina. First the quacks, then bring on the shysters. More vultures to fight over the carcass,” Matt said as he got up.

“Shut up, Matt!”

Ginny Reilly put a pill on her tongue and accepted the glass. She drank, spilling a little. Matt returned, handing her a paper towel. “Thanks, sweetie,” Ginny said.

“I need to say this, okay? Nobody fucks with my family and gets away with it.”

“Control yourself, Matt. Set a good example for your nephew. You can do that, can’t you?” Ginny chided.

“Oops. Sorry, Bob-o.” Matt’s voice sounded mocking to Nina. Heartsick, she felt certain now that Matt was high on something. Even in this cool house, he sweated.

“Let’s pack up that nice cake your sister brought for you. And thank God for your good health, and the day he gave you to us.” Matt relaxed when Ginny hugged him, all the tics momentarily gone.

“I need to rest.” Ginny leaned close to Nina and murmured, “Take the cake with you for Bob if Matt won’t. Just leave me a little piece for tomorrow. It’s so good!”

Nina kissed her mother on the cheek. Ginny went to Bob and put her arms around him. With a final long hug and many secret whispered words, Ginny let go of him and went to her room.

“Give me a ride home?” Matt asked.

“How’d you get here?”

“I hitched. People are so naive. I could be a psycho killer. They ought to be more careful.”

“Sorry, Matt, I can’t give you a ride. I have to go the library.” She gathered up Bob’s things, which filled most of a large backpack.

“Okay. No problemo.” Matt used a wall phone, murmured a few words, and said, “See you in five.”

“You lined up a ride?” Nina asked.

“Yep.”

“Go ahead, open your present. I’ll be right back.”

Her mother was lying down, fully clothed, on top of the bedspread.

“Let me tuck you in,” Nina said.

“I’m fine. Sit down a second. Are you all right, honey?”

“Please don’t worry about me, Mom.”

“That’s the problem. We all worry about each other but don’t talk enough. Is something special going on with you right now?”

“I don’t want to add my problems to your problems.”

“Tell me,” her mother commanded, still able to pack a wallop.

“Richard Filsen turned up.”

“Well, he lives in Seaside, doesn’t he? You must see him now and then.”

“Actually no, I don’t. But he’s back and he wants back in our lives. He filed a suit for joint legal custody of Bob and for visitation. They’ll be taking Bob’s DNA to compare it to Richard’s.”

“But this is—sickening.” Her mother did look sick. “What the hell is he up to?”

Trying not to react to the rare profanity, Nina said, “He claims he’s been sick.”

“Oh, he’s sick all right.” Her mother frowned so deeply even her rigid face registered severe alarm. “I knew you couldn’t trust him. I told you not to trust him.”

“You did. But he left us alone, and I really thought I was off the hook. Now all I can think about is that he wants some kind of relationship with Bob and that means one with me. Oh, Mom.”

Her mother’s bright eyes caught and held hers. “Don’t you dare let him scare you. He’s nothing. Nobody. He can’t get custody, you know that.”

“Even so, I can’t believe I allowed this to happen. That man could be in our lives forever.”

“That will not happen.”

“It’s just—it all starts to feel like—”

“Too much. I know the feeling.” Her mother tidied her sheet. “Tell me everything he said, okay? Matt can wait a couple more minutes.”

When Nina returned to the living room, Matt grabbed her around the waist with his strong arms and picked her up, laughing hysterically. “Smoked almonds, my favorite food from my favorite sister.”

“I picked them,” Bob said. Matt picked him up and tickled him, while Bob laughed.

Nina watched them. Matt was getting worse. She would have to talk to somebody about him. If she called county services, would they help him or put him in a cell to rot? She dreaded involving Matt in the legal system.

If she did nothing, he’d involve himself soon enough. He was as sick as her mother in his own way.

Had the divorce done all this to them? How could she take the lead for them, get some control of this careening descent?

The doorbell rang. “Um,” Matt said, “talk to you for a second, Nina? Can you get the door, Bob?”

Bob went for it.

“Got a few bucks you can spare till I get paid, Nina?” Matt whispered.

“Define ‘few.’”

“Twenty?”

She pulled her folded wad of cash out of her jeans pocket and counted it. “Eighteen big extras until my next payday. Will three help?”

He pushed the money back at her, gently. “Forget it, Nina. Buy Bob a Happy Meal. Buy yourself one, for that matter. You look like
you could use it more.” He smiled his sweet smile at her and went to the door.

Zinnia, a friend of Matt’s Nina had never met and had only heard some unsettling stories about, stood in the open doorway, one hand in the pocket of her ragged khakis, gazing vacantly at Bob, a finger wound through her long black hair.

“Bye, all,” Matt said.

“Yeah, and, hi, all.” Zinnia waved an unenthusiastic hand at them, turning to leave. “You get the money?” she asked Matt before she got out of earshot.

“Birthday bucks from my mom. I’m good.”

Nina and Bob left a few minutes later. Ginny closed the door behind them, locked the latch, and picked up the hall phone.

Dust on the table, she noticed, pulling her index finger over its surface. She used to take much better care.

He answered after three rings.

“It’s me, Ginny Reilly.”

“Hey, Mama, or should I say Grandma?”

“We had a deal.”

She almost heard the shrug. “That was then. This is now.”

“I
KNOW
I
HAVE IT HERE SOMEWHERE,”
J
ACK REPLIED.

“You lie, McIntyre,” Paul said, smiling. “Took the camera to the shop yesterday after I called, didn’t you?”

“Damn the world’s detectives.”

“The light meter always has been a problem.”

Paul took a seat at the table. Jack brought him a plate piled with steaming scrambled eggs. They were at Jack’s place, a ramshackle cottage with a sunny deck amid a flourishing forest of poison oak, off Fern Way in the Carmel Highlands.

Paul had arrived the night before, unexpectedly early. While Jack pulled out sheets and blankets for the couch, Paul explained that his boss in San Francisco had told him his replacement, a transfer from Fresno, would be in the next morning. “I hate being redundant,” he explained. “Besides. When you’re done, you’re done. I wasn’t going to limp around the place like a duck for two weeks when somebody was available to take over. So I kissed the women and slapped the guys on the back and went home and packed my duffel. I’ll finish moving when I find a place down here.”

“Stay as long as you like,” Jack said. “I know about moving on.”

They’d stayed up late watching a replay of last week’s 49ers game, drinking a forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor Jack had found in the fridge.

In the late-morning light Paul’s eyes had a blasted, staring quality. Unshaven and crusty, he looked to Jack like a hostage stumbling out of a Colombian jungle. He would need some serious rehabilitation.

Such is love, Jack reminded himself, and resolved to try, even if he couldn’t possibly succeed, to protect himself slightly from its depredations this time around with Remy.

“So who is it?” Paul asked, tucking in.

“We are not going to discuss my absolutely fantastic love life over eggs.”

“You have a new lady. I knew it when you dropped out of touch. Mmm.” Paul ate more.

“You said you didn’t want to obsess about women. Let’s talk about boar hunting. Season will be starting up soon in the Los Padres Forest.”

“Have I said how much I love fresh pig meat with my eggs? I’m up for it, but right now it’s all I can do to stuff myself with food and pretend I am a fully viable human.”

Jack laughed. He picked up the
Monterey Herald
and read the sports section. While Paul finished up, Jack took a final cup of coffee outside. A couple of early pumpkins decorated the teetering deck that extended out the front door of the wooden cottage. On stilts, the deck hung as sturdily as a leaf in winter.

He lived up the hill from the Carmel Highlands Inn, a venerable hotel that still entertained its cocktail crowds with piano music. Jack preferred to go down the coast to Esalen for hot baths or to eat an expensive hamburger at Nepenthe in his off-hours. He finished his coffee and considered a drive by the ocean, thinking of Remy, her pale skin, her soft cries while he worked her, worked it, felt it happening—she had said she would be tied up today.

He should hang out with his old buddy Paul, who no doubt was feeling lonesome as hell and ready to put a six-shooter to his head. But Paul disappeared up the road, promising to meet up later. Jack
went back into the house and, not allowing himself to think, called Remy’s place in Carmel. She answered the phone as if she had been waiting.

“I hoped it was you. You made it home all right?”

“In one piece. Yesterday: amazing. You’re amazing.”

“Careful. I cast spells.”

“Too late.”

A silence ensued, during which some increasingly heavy breathing came on from one or both of them. Jack imagined her holding the phone—what did she wear to bed? He hadn’t found out yet.

Finally she said, “See you in a half hour? Your place.”

Stricken with joy, Jack said nothing.

“Put your ear close to the phone.”

“It’s melded to it.”

“I need you,” she whispered. “Okay?”

A happy welcoming feeling warmed his scrotum.

Jack lit a fire in the big stone fireplace, shaved, and changed. Outside, fog drifted through the redwoods.

He heard Remy’s car crunching leaves in the driveway. He walked out onto the deck as she turned off the motor and stuck her head out the window, blinking up at him through the filtered sun of the forest.

“Hey, what are you driving?” he said, leaning dangerously over the railing. “Where’s that ugly Acura you love better than any man?”

Remy laughed. “In the garage. The heater’s out again. It hasn’t worked well since the day I bought it. Klaus likes me to take his out for a spin now and then anyway.” She stepped out of Klaus’s mint-condition, white Jaguar convertible, a sixties relic with soft curves and the glow of hand wax. “He likes taking care of me.”

Remy climbed lightly up the stairs. At the top, Jack captured her, hugging her long, lissome body for a long time. She smelled like all the spices of China. Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes and went limp. He caught her warm lips. The kiss deepened, turned into open-mouth explorations. Neither of them broke away, until it
felt to Jack that he had entered a dream during which they had melted into each other, holding tight.

She rubbed against him, whispering, “We’re alone?”

He nodded.

They walked with their arms around each other into the house, stopping to close the curtains and lock the door, getting as far as the pool of warmth in front of the fire, where Jack kicked the chair away and lowered her to the Swedish rug.

He took her cold hands between his own and held them until she took them away and pulled down her jeans. Her silk camisole was cut low over soft breasts. Her shoulders were so white they seemed to shine in the light filtering through the curtains. Jack slipped the thin straps down and bent his head, kissing her. Her panties were gratuitous, evanescent; easy to push aside whenever. He liked the feel of them and decided to keep them on her. Stroking his hair, she raised his head up and kissed him harder on the mouth, electrocuting him with her lips.

This sort of mad love doesn’t last, Jack thought, so I’d better enjoy this as hard as I can.

She unzipped him, slipping her hands inside to touch him, first tentatively, finally with frantic strokes. When she began to strike his chest and push him, he grabbed her hands and took over. Raising them over her head, he pulled the rest of her clothes off while she writhed, eyes closed. He fucked her in several ways with a royal roughness not in his usual style, but Remy wanted it, she wanted him, and every moment felt perfect. If that was her thing, rough was their thing. Whatever she wanted.

Afterward they faced each other, Jack back in his jeans and Remy nude as a white birch, her light hair shining red in the firelight. She wore a mild expression, a satisfied expression, the kind that makes a man feel as if he’s done his job.

“You know Botticelli’s Venus? That’s you.”

“He was gay and never used live models,” she said.

“You’re too damn smart.” He tried to take her into his arms again, but she murmured protests and wriggled away, heading laughing for the shower.

Outside, the sky slipped into gray the way it does as the year grows late. The redwood-paneled room with its fireplace now seemed to be drifting into a January night instead of a September afternoon. Right then, in a swift, definitive energy shift, Jack felt the season change from summer to autumn. He smelled winter ahead, feeling the comfort that comes from being part of the rolling parade of life and time.

Peace overcame him, the peace of balance, when all comes together: Remy’s beauty, their heated lovemaking, that it was still only Saturday and he had almost two free days. He congratulated himself on his luck.

Used up, replete, simple, he lay on the couch with his hands parked behind his head, awaiting her return.

Another shift occurred, though, when Remy came back into the living room fully dressed. She had slicked her wet hair tightly against her head, and for a moment her face in the shadows had the highlighted look of a skull. She’s too thin, Jack thought.

“I have to go,” she said.

He sat up fast.

“I’m the defense in that real-estate-swindle trial. You remember me describing it at the last partners’ meeting? Trial is next Monday. I have a lot of prep work.” She moved toward him.

He smelled the soap on her skin and reached up to pull her to him. “Sit down here,” he ordered.

Sighing, she sat down next to him. Jack slid down onto his knees and knelt in front of her. He took her hand and kissed it.

“You are my Queen of Sheba.”

She smiled. “A legend.”

“Cleopatra. Nefertiti. I will worship you all day in various specific ways we can discuss henceforth if you stay with me.”

“Oh, Jack.”

“All of me will need all of you in a few minutes. Keep looking at me like that and we’re talking a few seconds.”

“You’re so different from the man I practice law with at work. So—ardent.”

“You’re different, too.”

“No.”

“Glorious in the sack. I need say no more.”

“We’re well matched. I like your body, how you are compact but strong. I like to be the one to lie back and take it, and I know you like to be the one who gives it.” She gave him a sideways look. Her eyelashes swept across her eyes.

Jack grabbed her, saying, “That does it. Now we’ll go to the bedroom.”

“No, no. Back to work.” She stood up, straightened her clothes, and left.

Jack finished dressing, had a beer, collected the pumpkins on the deck, and began carving them into salacious, leering faces.

They would be rotten long before Halloween. The moment of bliss had passed and he felt lonely for Remy already. Oh, shit, he was falling in love. He saw it coming on like a disaster that cost lives, a freight-train flu.

When he finished with the pumpkins, he set them on a chair by the door to greet Paul and drove down to Nepenthe. He drank more Coors as the Big Sur sky clouded and unclouded and watched the waves hundreds of feet below, water to the edge of the world as far as he could see, water too cold to touch.