She said nothing.
“And for us it’s gardening.”
“Excuse me,” Faulk said. “There’s really nothing to be gained by haranguing someone at this time of night and in this situation, is there?”
The man did not answer but opened the briefcase. For the moment his head was obscured by the open lid of the case. Both Faulk and the woman watched him. Then she turned to Faulk and said, low, “You want anything to eat or drink?”
“Thought I was hungry,” Faulk said. “Feeling’s gone.”
She said, “Terrible day.”
The man closed the lid with a snap and lifted his coffee cup. He sipped from it. “I was in Boston at a funeral,” he said. “Business associate of mine. We were in ’Nam. He got wounded, and I pulled him onto a chopper in a firefight. Bullets ripping the air all around us and pinging on the metal. All hell breaking loose. I pulled him in. Nice guy. Another war altogether. Jungle rot and little people hiding in the leaves, some of them just kids. Kill you quick as look at you. I’ll tell you, lot of gardening going on in that war. And it’s one goddamned war after another, isn’t it.”
The woman did not respond, standing by the cash register looking at him.
“Wish I could see the world like you do, ma’am.”
“Excuse me, but you don’t know how I see the world, sir. You don’t know the first thing about me.”
He raised the cup as if to toast her. “To gardening.”
“Maybe I said that to make you feel better.”
“Well, it did that, all right.”
“What’s your point, anyway?” Faulk said.
“Pardon?”
“What’re you getting at? What’s the point of bothering to be so unpleasant tonight?”
“And what are you, a lawyer?”
“I happen to be a priest.”
Both of them stared.
“Now, you want to start in on me?”
“I didn’t know I was starting in on anybody. I was just talking. Seemed odd, that’s all — that business about God the gardener. I don’t know how anybody can think anything positive after today.” His voice broke. “I’m sorry.”
After a little pause, the woman, in a soft, ameliorative voice, said to him, “You want more coffee?”
“Yes, thank you.” He held out the cup.
Faulk said good night to them and went back through the vestibule and the door, the mostly empty car, to the next vestibule and his own car and along the aisle to his seat. The train rattled and tossed, and then it entered a tunnel, the dark at the windows becoming blackness with intermittent rushing lights. He sat down and saw his own reflection in the glass. So, he thought. I happen to be a priest.
3
She woke in bright moonlight, wrapped uncomfortably in the wet clothes. She sat up and had a shaken realization of the whole long day. It played across her memory in an instant. She saw the couple, looking so small, leaping from the hole in the massive burning side of the building. She saw the slight, brave, doomed, waving woman with the smoke coming from her hair and back. And she thought of Michael Faulk. “Oh, Jesus God.”
The sea made its steady rushing. She could not see the resort nor anything but empty beach with the blackness beyond it and the moving whitecapped waves. She sat up, shivering, the residue of the dream playing across her nerves.
Suddenly, with a strange forceful slow assuredness, someone was upon her from behind, hands on her breasts.
She yelled and tried to turn, swung her elbows back to strike. Reaching over her head, she got ahold of hair and pulled and was pushed forward until her face was in the sand. The other was heavy on top of her, knee in her upper back, one hand pressing her head down. The sand was in her nose and mouth, and this was going to be her death. But then he let go enough for her to turn over, and she saw Duego and kicked at him, attempting to rise, the sand choking her. “Stop it! Get off me! Are you — get off!”
“You — are — beautiful,” he groaned, moving back on top of her. “We both — want this. You — know we both want this.”
The force of it amazed and bewildered her. He was very strong. She kicked twice more at him, gagging, coughing, and when she reached for his eyes, he took her wrists and forced her over and held her, so that once more the sand was in her mouth. She had to use her hands to keep her head out of it, to breathe, and now he was pulling at her jeans, the sand choking her. She lost consciousness, her mind buckling. She was elsewhere, her hurting body separate from her, something not hers, and his hands were at her hips, pulling her up and toward him. “You know you — want this,” he breathed. “Come on.” She was sick, coughing deep, spitting, trying to scream and gagging, crying. He was ramming himself at her, thrusting at her and then into her with what felt like a tearing. He held her there, by her hips, rigid, pressing tightly and then moving, murmuring something about fate, their fate. It went on, hurting, wounding, until she lost consciousness for another moment, drifting off in a terrible asphyxiating fog, her face down in the sand. Everything was blank, gone, nowhere, and suddenly she was awake, him pushing in and pulling out and pushing in, gripping her at her hips. “Oh,” he said. “God.” Then there were the little spasms. He held her even tighter to himself, shuddering, moaning.
Finally he moved away from her, lying once more on his back, making the crying sound of before, arms flung out, looking like someone who had been knocked down.
Struggling to her feet, she kicked him in the side of his chest. It hurt her foot, and she shouted in pain and rage and then couldn’t get sound out anymore, still choking on sand and blood where she had bitten her tongue and her lip. She kicked at his groin and fell back. He did not seem conscious. But then he was up and upon her. “You should not have done that,” he said, holding her down with one hand on her chest and with the other taking hold of her jaw. She flailed, and gagged, and his knee came down on her middle, both hands at her head. He took a fist full of sand and thrust it down in her face, then took more and held her jaw tight, squeezing, jamming the sand at her mouth, packing it in, and pressing it, and grabbing more and pushing it at her, while she tried to bite at the fingers and coughed and the knee was pressing her chest, the one hand pulling her jaw down, the sand going in. He rolled with her, was back on top, ranged across her lower spine, his palms on the base of her skull, forcing her face down into the wet sand. Her vision blurred and ended, was all black. She was gone and nothing, no sound and no sensation but the choking and no air at all, and the heaviness on her chest, and this was death. This was the last of life.
But she rose from the dark, awake, still choking. He had fallen from her. She got to her knees, gouged at his eyes, spitting, the sand coming up in a clod with the contents of her stomach. He pushed her aside and stood up, taller than she could believe, as if he had undergone some elemental transformation and had become more than human, taller than anything. He would surely kill her now, and now all she wanted was to keep breathing, to be alive, away, and quiet. She watched him stagger away with his long shadow in the moonlight, on down the beach, crying that he was sorry and that it was something meant to be. Apologizing. Apologizing! She tried to scream but was too woozy and sick. The sickness kept coming and coming, mixed awfully with the sand. “Oh, God!” she screamed, choking. “Help me.”
She managed to get briefly to her feet, sought to bring forth another scream, nothing coming but more heaving. She was on her knees again and then on all fours, head down, sputtering, gagging. The sand burned in her eyes, the grains of it scraping the iris, stinging, and she couldn’t get it out of her nose and mouth. It came rushing out of her with the whiskey she had drunk. She could not breathe in, kept trying to, hearing the whooping sound that came from her.