The big front room was dominated by an Edward Hopper print. I’d seen it before, but it wasn’t one of his popular ones. It shows a woman sitting on a train. She has a dark hat, dark suit, fair hair. She’s reading and you can’t see her eyes. Out the train window is a stone bridge.
“It’s called Compartment C, Car 193,” Gretchen said, putting her arm around me. “I’ve always loved Hopper, once you get past seeing Night Owls everywhere.”
“We both like trains, I see.”
“I love trains,” she said. “One of the pleasures of living this close in is I can hear the whistles at night. I can even hear the cars banging together sometimes.”
She watched me as I walked over to a framed portrait on a table. It showed a young woman in bulky coveralls with a pack in front and holding a helmet. She was smiling broadly. Gretchen.
“I’ve read that smoke jumpers are the elite,” I said.
“It’s true, and there still aren’t many women who do it. I was very proud to get to be one of ‘the bros.’ Then I lost my passion for it. My youthful adventure.”
“Jumping into fire.”
“I’ve been known to do that.”
Her lips again came up. She was a woman who knew just how to tilt her head to meet the kiss from a taller man. “I was worried about you,” she said. “After you told me what happened the other night after we had dinner. Am I allowed to worry?”
“I want to be cared about,” I said. “I want to care in return.” She nuzzled my neck.
“Maybe you’ll come meet my parents sometime. I’ve told them about you. Don’t be nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“Come on, I’ll give you the tour.”
She showed me around: a spacious workroom with a wooden table serving as desk; big bathroom with a claw-footed bathtub; a sleeping porch with wicker furniture and plants, and the bedroom set off with a comfy-looking queen-size bed beneath a curvy, wrought-iron headboard. Another Hopper on the wall, this one I hadn’t seen: a nude woman with reddish-brown hair, alone in a room and staring out a window, the sun bathing her skin in an alabaster glow. The woman wore black shoes and nothing else. Plants were everywhere, filling the space with a cheery greenery. I started to ease Gretchen toward the bed, but she said, “I have plans for you.”
She took my hand and led me through to the bathroom again. She started water in the tub. Then she turned and did that melting thing in my arms, where we totally merged. I reached inside the robe and caressed her warm skin.
“Thank you for trusting me to tell me where you live,” I said.
She kissed me, gently bit my lower lip, unbuttoned my shirt and ran her hands over my chest. “I do trust you,” she said. “But I want you very relaxed.”
She dropped to her knees in one fluid move and undid my jeans. They fell in a heap at my feet. The floor was small tiles of black-and-white ceramic.
“Boxer man,” she whispered, burying her face in my shorts, running a finger around the band, up inside the legs. She nibbled and licked around my belly as she eased the boxers off, too.
She took me in her mouth. She had the moves. Not every woman does, in fact few do, but Gretchen did. I stroked and clenched that silky reddish-brown hair and she expertly worked me over. In a few minutes I would have done anything for her.
She kissed me and our tongues exchanged the taste of me. She pulled back slowly and let her robe fall on the floor. She leaned into the medicine cabinet and pulled out some shaving cream, put it into a stainless steel cup with water and started mixing it with one of those blond brushes you see in old-men’s barber shops. She reached back in the cabinet and pulled out something that looked antique and covered with tortoise shell.
It had a blade.
“Ever use one of these?” she smiled, her lips still glistening.
I must have visibly stepped back. She gently took my hand and pulled me closer. “Take it in your hand.”
I grasped the straight razor. The handle was smooth from years of handling, but the blade was so tacitly charged it felt sharp even inches away from my fingers.
Gretchen wrapped herself against my back, nibbling on my ears, and said, “I want you to shave my legs.”
“See, it’s easy,” she said. She was in the tub now, and I sat on the edge, holding a soapy leg in one hand and the straight razor in the other. Her legs were appealingly long, with slim ankles, shapely calves and lovely thighs comprised of just the right proportions-not chunky but not anorexic, either. I made easy, straight strokes, then shook the blade in the water to get the soap off. It was a move like driving over one of those barriers that says “Do not back up, severe tire damage!”
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “You’re doing great. I have very stubborn leg hair. Once, on a dig in Peru, I lost my Lady Bics and there was only this crusty old professor with a straight razor. So I tried it.”
It took a gentle, sure touch. No hesitation. But I could see the sensual appeaclass="underline" danger and pleasure in one basic human tool in your hand. Something to do with the nearness of the unencumbered blade, with the discipline of strokes to cut close-but not too close.
“You have a natural talent for it,” she said as I moved along the muscles of her right calf. “What happened to your friend Lindsey?”
I shook the blade in the water and cut against the stubble. “She left. Before you and I got together.”
“I’m sorry,” Gretchen said, “if you’re sorry.”
“She was going through a lot. Her mother killed herself. But she didn’t want anybody close, didn’t want me close at least.” I felt like I was betraying Lindsey. I shifted my grip on the heavy, smooth handle.
“Do you worry about a woman with the suicide bug?”
I hadn’t even thought of it. The thought of it-the thought of relief from Lindsey’s leaving-made me feel small.
“I don’t think we’re a prisoner of our genes,” I said finally.
“I do,” Gretchen said firmly. “Lindsey is a deputy?”
“Yes. She mostly does computer work.”
“Did you worry about her getting hurt?”
“Yes.”
“The thighs are very tender,” Gretchen said. “That’s where the real loving care takes place.” I moved above the knee. “Did you love her?”
Her words rattled around in my head, and the answer wouldn’t have mattered. I shaved for a few minutes. “I’m very glad I met you.”
She reached a finger out of the water and touched my nose. “Me, too,” she said.
“What about you? Ever been married?”
“No,” she said quietly. “It just never worked out.”
She fell into silence and we listened to the scrape of the razor across her flesh, then the watery sound of the blade being cleaned. The razor felt heavier than it looked. Then I told her more about the Yarnell case.
“I feel like there’s something fundamental I’m missing,” I said. She had a dark brown freckle just above her left knee.
“It’s a lot of strands,” she said. “Maybe you have to choose one and pull it, see where it leads.”
“Why would someone be killing the Yarnells now, over something that happened more than half a century ago?”
Gretchen leaned back and the tips of her hair brushed into the water. “You know the past is never past, David.”
Then it was my turn in the tub. She brought us both glasses of chardonnay as I slipped down into the near-scalding water of the big old tub. It had been years since I’d taken a bath instead of a shower. My muscles yawned and stretched in the hot water.
“Now it’s my turn,” she said. She mixed new shaving cream and dabbed it on my face. Then she pulled a little strap out of the medicine cabinet and ran the razor against it several times. The blade shimmered in the light.
“Relax,” she said, kissing me and gently easing my head down against the lip of the tub. “After legs, this is a breeze.”
I barely felt the pressure against my neck, but I could hear the sound of blade against beard like it was on loudspeaker. “You have nice, taut skin,” she said. “Did you ever think about growing a beard?”
“I had one when I was teaching.”
“I love beards. But they take a lot of work to keep neat.”
I didn’t say anything. I just gave in to the experience: the pressure of her stroke, the muted grating-ripping sound of the stubble falling before the sharpness of the blade.
“My first lover had a beard,” she said. “His name was Will.”
I could hear a train whistle out the window, long and mournful.
“I really loved him. We were both smoke jumpers. We thought we were invincible. I guess everybody does when they’re young. Anyway, we had this romantic notion of living out in some national forest for the rest of our lives.”
She swept on fresh shaving cream, the soft bristles of the barber’s brush the very opposite sensation of the blade. I closed my eyes. I felt her fine hair brush my cheek as she leaned down to resume shaving me.
“We went on a fire in northern California. It was outside Susanville. Just a little lightning strike that got out of hand. I went down a ridge with some fusees-those are ignition flares-to start a backfire. And when I turned around there was just this wave of fire rolling down the mountainside. It looked like it was ten stories tall. There wasn’t any time to run, to do anything. I pulled out my Shake ‘N Bake-they issued us these little individual tents made of aluminum, but we didn’t really believe they’d work. And I got under it and just drove myself into the ground. God, I can still taste those pine needles.”
I didn’t open my eyes. I just listened to the alto melody of her voice, felt the confident rhythm of the razor in her hand.
“Well, the fire jumped over me. It was an amazing feeling of being in the stomach of this thing, but I was alive. I couldn’t believe it. But when I went back up the hill, I found Will.”
She stopped shaving and I opened my eyes.
“He had fireproof boots.” She spoke more slowly now. “And that’s about all there was.”
She had the razor poised in front of me, and then there was a drop of water on the blade. Just big enough for a tear.