With Jamie, these images were part of who she was. Even though I didn’t find them attractive, her tattoos told stories of personal significance about which I was curious.
“I got this when my folks died.” She pressed a red nail against the Chinese character. “It means ‘wisdom,’ because what happened seemed pretty random, and I was going to need wisdom to handle everything that was coming to me.”
“What happened to your parents?”
“Their car hit black ice on the Machiasport Road and they crashed into a telephone pole. They died at the scene. Mitch and I had to move into their house to take care of Tammi. Prester was still living at home because he wasn’t working, as usual. I wish the tattoo had brought me wisdom, though I guess I finally did wise up to what a loser Mitch is.”
I rolled onto my side and propped myself against the pillow. “It sounds like you’ve had a rough time.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to take care of Tammi and Prester. All I dream about morning, noon, and night is escaping somewhere.”
“Where would you go?”
“Someplace warm. The jungle, maybe, like Prester John.”
“Who?”
“Prester John.” She peered up at the ceiling, as if reaching for an elusive memory. “He was like this white Christian king who lived in Africa with all these natives in a city of gold. My dad was a Holy Roller at the Church of the Living Spirit. He was into all those TV shows about finding Noah’s ark on top of mountains and stuff. It was my dad who gave Prester his nickname, because he acted like a little king.”
“I never heard of that legend,” I said.
“It’s probably bullshit, like every other bullshit story,” she said. “But someday I’m going to escape from this land of winter. I’m going to take off south, and I’m not going to stop until find my own golden city in the sun.”
24
The next morning, I awoke to find myself lying naked across a bed that smelled of perfume, stale beer, and sex. A watery white light was leaking in through the window shades. I heard the toilet flush in the bathroom. I turned my head heavily on the pillow and saw fuzzy red numbers sharpen into focus on the clock face. It was 7:15.
The events of the previous night returned to me in a rush of sounds and images. Jamie and I had slept together. I’d wanted so much for it to happen, but now that it had, my emotions were all tangled and I couldn’t pick them apart. I was undeniably happy; the thought of being at the start of a relationship with a stunning, surprising woman filled me with excitement, if not fear. And yet the heedlessness I’d shown troubled me, too. Why couldn’t we have waited at least until the murder investigation was behind us? I’d worked so hard to leave my impetuous self in the past. But here he was again.
I hadn’t drunk that much, just four beers ultimately, not enough to get drunk in any meaningful sense. Not enough to excuse anything. And Jamie hadn’t touched a drop. She’d come to the motel with a six-pack of beer and condoms in her purse. Whatever else she was, she wasn’t the emotionally fragile victim of circumstances I’d imagined her to be. This was a woman who made choices. We’d had sex because Jamie Sewall wanted it to happen.
The bathroom door opened, and she came out dressed in her turtleneck and jeans, looking hurried but radiant. Seeing her again in the morning light, with her hair mussed but gleaming, and her tattoos hidden, was like seeing her again for the first time, and all my second thoughts disappeared, replaced by powerful feelings of attraction and affection.
“Oh my God, I am so late for work,” she said. “Jim’s going to fire me this time for sure. And I have to drive all the way home to get my uniform still.”
“I could tell him you hit a moose,” I suggested.
“Would you do that? If he gives me any grief, I might need you to give me an alibi.”
I clumped the sheet in my lap to cover myself. “You look great,” I said.
She smoothed the wrinkled front of her top without making eye contact. “How many beers did you have?”
“I mean it.”
She turned and leaned across the bed to kiss me. Because she was so short, she didn’t need to lean much. Her breath had the wintergreen taste of Nicorette.
“I’ve really got to run,” she said. She zipped up her ski parka and reached into her pocket to check that she had her keys. She must have pressed a button, because I heard the van beep outside in the lot. “Why don’t you stop by McDonald’s later?”
“I’m supposed to meet a friend, or I would. He’s taking me up in his plane.”
“Don’t crash! That would definitely send me into a permanent binge.”
“I’ll give you a call when we land.”
She smiled and then leaned across the bed to kiss me again. “I’d like that.”
After she left, I let my gaze wander happily around the room. Joe Brogan and his skunk had forced me out of my house and into this tiny motel room, but I would always remember it now as the place Jamie and I first made love. The Blueberry Bunch Motel had unexpectedly attained landmark status on my life’s crazy road map.
I would need to clean up the place before I checked out. I always wondered what it was like for the maid to clean up a room where two people had enjoyed a debauched night of lovemaking. Five empty beer bottles were arranged in a straight line along the desk, beside Jamie’s half-empty soda bottle. Funny, I thought I’d drunk only four.
A gust blew the door open, causing me to shiver. The skin on my arms and legs was covered with goose bumps. Jamie must not have closed it tightly enough. I clamped the sheet to my groin and got up and turned the lock, then wandered into the bathroom.
I stared at my bleary, stubbled reflection, wishing I could reach into the mirror and slap the reckless bastard. Instead, he confounded me with an unspoken question: Do you always have to make things so difficult for me?
I drank three glasses of water from the tap, then shaved and showered. I put on my uniform, but it only made me look more sheepish. I tried tidying up the room, but it was no good. The stained sheets told our illicit story.
I went over to the office with my duffel bag.
The little old woman was standing on her wooden box behind the registration desk, a Forbes magazine spread out beneath her withered fingers. “Checking out?” she asked.
“I had company last night,” I said.
“Did you?” Of course she had noticed Jamie’s van parked in front of my cabin, but I appreciated the feigned ignorance.
“I want to pay for another person, since it was just supposed to be me in there.”
“Forget about it,” she said. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
I smiled. “But this isn’t Las Vegas.”
“That explains the snow.”
I stopped at the nearest gas station and bought a quart of Gatorade, which I swallowed in one enormous gulp. I also purchased a cup of coffee and half a dozen granola bars for the plane ride. The snacks Charley usually brought with him were things like smoked bear jerky and pickled eggs-food I could barely stomach, even without a low-grade hangover.
The coffee was too hot to drink until I’d arrived at the Gardner Lake boat launch and was sitting in the plowed lot. There were clusters of ice fishermen out on the frozen surface. One group had driven a big SUV out there-a Chevy Yukon. You had to have a lot of balls, or very little brains, to drive something that heavy onto the ice. People assumed that because it had been so cold lately, the conditions must be safe, but they didn’t understand how snow cover could retard ice formation. I rarely felt safe on the ice, no matter how frigid it was, and always wore a float coat in case I fell in.
The sky and the ice were the same hard zinc color this morning, and every few minutes, a gust of flurries would blow through, scattering flakes across my windshield.