“Hey,” he said, gentling his voice.
She didn’t say anything, and that scared him.
“I’m sorry I was so rough.” He traced a finger down her cheek. There was blood. It was his, from his temple, where she’d connected with the box. It didn’t seem to matter much now. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” she said, her voice a thread of sound.
“Good.” He lowered his head and kissed her slowly, deeply, thoroughly, feeling himself begin to harden inside her again. Jesus, he thought, not again, no way, not this quick. Not since I was fifteen anyway. He was more than willing to go with it, though, until he felt her hand against his chest, pushing, and raised his head again. “What?”
“No,” she said again, and pushed him off her to wriggle free. She caught him unawares and he rolled into the coffee table, catching the back of his head on a corner.
“Ouch! Damn it!” He grabbed the back of his head. “Didn’t we do this already?”
She didn’t apologize, just reached for her clothes and skinnied into them as fast as she could.
“Kate.” She didn’t answer. “Kate,” he said, rising to his feet. He’d lost his tie, one shoulder seam of his shirt was ripped, and he had to grab at his pants before they fell down. “What’s wrong?”
She gave him a hunted look. “Nothing’s wrong. I have to go is all. Where’s my other shoe?”
“Kate.” He reached for her and she stepped quickly out of range. “Wait.”
“No. This can’t happen.”
“Why not?” he said, starting to get angry again and trying to tamp it down. He’d just had the most exciting sexual experience of his life and now the cause of it was about to walk out the door. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one little bit. “And I’m pretty sure it already did.”
“It was a mistake.” She swallowed and shoved the hair out of her face. “I shouldn’t have thrown the box at you. I-I shouldn’t have done a lot of things. I-I’m sorry, I have to go.”
“Like hell!” He reached for her again and would have caught her if he hadn’t stumbled over her other shoe.
“Oh, good,” she said, and scooped it up. Gal hissed from the loft, to which she had retreated when the shooting war began. Kate retrieved her and tucked her inside her parka.
“Kate, don’t go!”
The slam of the door was her reply. The cabin shook beneath the weight of her hasty steps on the stairs. Her snow machine roared into life a moment later, followed by a surprised yip, probably from Mutt.
“Shit!” Jim said. His left eye had crusted over so that he could barely see out of it. “Shit,” he repeated. “Shit, shit, shit.”
He cleaned himself up as best he could, checking his reflection in the little mirror on the kitchen wall. Yeah, he was going to have a shiner. His shoulder was sore, too. He thought at first it was from where she had hit him with the dictionary, until he investigated and saw the teeth marks. He didn’t even remember her biting him.
Well, his uniform was going to require some serious rehab. “Not to mention my life,” he said out loud. He sighed heavily and began to clean up, stacking the papers back beneath the dictionary, righting the table, picking up the papers that had scattered from the tin lockbox.
One caught his attention, a thick piece of parchment beginning to turn yellow with age. He read it twice, disbelieving his eyes, and a third time, just to be sure.
“Jesus Christ,” he said blankly. He stared around the room as if he’d never seen it before. He read the piece of paper again. Was this a joke? This had to be a joke. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.”
The door opened. Dandy Mike peeped in. “Is it safe to come in now? It’s freezing out here.”
“What?” Jim remembered Dandy poking his head in the door in the middle of his very own personal firestorm. “Oh. Yeah. Sure. Hey.”
“Hey yourself.” Dandy sidled inside and cast a wary look around. He seemed surprised at the relative order that reigned inside the little cabin. “I saw Kate leaving, so I figured it was safe to come up.”
Oh no. “Were you outside all this time?”
Dandy’s eyes slid away. “No. Well, kinda. Well, okay, yeah, I was. What was she so mad about anyway?”
Dandy Mike was, Jim’s own activities in that field notwithstanding, the biggest rounder in the Park. He knew women. There was nothing wrong with his hearing, either. Jim repressed a sigh. It’d be all over the Park before sunset, which on this day was less than an hour away. One more thing for Kate to be pissed about.
Although, now that he thought about it… Jim felt a smile spread slowly across his face. If word got at least as far as Ethan Int-Hout, that would be okay with him.
“Jim?” Dandy said.
“What are you doing here anyway, Dandy?”
“Who, me? Oh, I don’t know, I heard you were in town, and I figured you’d be up here, and, you know, I was first on the scene, so I…” His voice trailed off when he noticed Jim’s stare. “Well, I wondered if you could use some help is all. I can see you had help, so I’ll go.”
“Dandy.”
Dandy stopped, his hand on the door.
“What’s up?”
Dandy turned, pulling off his knit cap and examining the brim as if his soul depended on an even rib stitch. “I hear you’re moving your post to the Park.”
Oh, hell. Billy Mike hadn’t waited to spread the word, and who would he tell but his own son? His own chronically out-of-work son. “News travels fast.”
“Yeah. So I was wondering…”
“Wondering what?”
Dandy shifted his weight. “Well, if maybe you’d be hiring. Like, I don’t know, an assistant.”
Jim was momentarily dumbfounded. “You want a job?” he said, heavily stressing the first and last words.
Dandy flushed. “Well, I might. Maybe. I guess. Yes.” He shifted his feet. “I’m thinking about getting married, and-”
Jim stared at him. “I beg your pardon?” Dandy started to speak, but Jim waved him to silence. There was nothing wrong with Jim’s hearing, either. “Never mind, I don’t think I’ll still be standing if I hear it twice.”
He took a long look at the floor, vaguely surprised that there wasn’t a charred outline of his and Kate’s bodies marking the spot. He still wasn’t sure he hadn’t died and gone to heaven right there.
“I’ve got some calls to make. Let’s head back into town.”
7
Kate had given a potlatch for her grandmother. This would be her second, and she felt relatively experienced. The place-the gym-was set and the principal was declining rent. “Even if their, er, lifestyle wasn’t one that we would want to set up as an example for the children,” she told Kate, and since the woman hadn’t been in the Park even a year and was totally clueless, Kate forbore to snarl.
There had to be a lot of food, but everyone would bring a dish, so all Kate had to do was make sure there was pop and that it was cold. George had promised to fill up a plane and would only charge for freight. She had coerced the senior class into filling half a dozen coolers with snow.
There ought to be gifts to give away, things that would remind the guests of Dina. That was more difficult, especially since Ruthe was still hanging on to life by a thread in the Chief William Memorial Hospital in Ahtna, and Kate did not know which of Dina’s possessions Ruthe would want to keep.
Kate had flown to Ahtna two days before, to sit vigil next to Ruthe, a figure swathed in bandages, hooked up to enough machines to launch a space shuttle. One was breathing for her. The doctor, who was personally acquainted with Kate Shugak’s built-in bullshit detector, was very frank. “We’ve done all we can. It’s up to her now.”
So Kate settled into an uncomfortable armchair and read out loud for two hours, parts of Travels with Charley, The Monkey Wrench Gang, and even a few entries out of Alaska’s Wilderness Medicines. She thought Ruthe had given a tiny smile when she read the entry on devil’s club, but it could have been her imagination.