Eli reached for a tiny, thin hand and the boy grasped his finger surprisingly tightly. After a moment, Eli grinned.
The child startled him by smiling back at him. Somehow, it did not seem to be mirroring his grin. Its smile seemed almost sly -the unbabylike gesture of one who knew something he was not telling.
PRESENT 24
Somehow, Blake lost track of time. He was aware of sporadic shooting, aware that the house was under siege, that Rane and Keira were first with him, then gone. He worried about them when he realized they were gone, wondered where they were. He worried about his own helplessness and confusion.
Once the man called Badger came in to see him, bringing several other people along. The group shouted and stank and made Blake feel sicker than ever-all but one woman. She was no cleaner than the others, but her scent was different, compelling. She was just another car rat, but he found himself reaching out to her, groping for her with his cuffed hands. He heard shouts of laughter, then her voice, low and mocking.
"Hey there," she said, taking his hands. "You're not going to die on us, are you? Nobody'11 buy you back dead." She had a deep, throaty voice that would have been sexy had it not been so empty of caring. He knew she was laughing at him-at his pain, at his helplessness, even at his interest in her. He knew, but all he could think about was that he wanted her. He could not help himself. Her scent drew him irresistibly. He tried to pull her down beside him. She laughed and pulled away.
"Maybe later, wallie," she whispered. At least she had the kindness to whisper, not shout like the others. He was confused for a moment by her calling him "wallie." She knew his name. They all did. Then, murkily, he realized she was referring to the fact that he lived in a walled enclave. He wondered whether he would ever see it again.
The woman nudged him with her foot. "How about that?" she said. "Want me to come back when you're feeling better?"
Her friends brayed out their laughter.
But she did come back that night. And this time she only pretended to mock him as she unbound his hands and feet. "Don't do anything dumb now. You hurt me or get outside this room, Badger will cut your head off."
He opened his eyes and saw that she was nude, kneeling down beside him on the rug of his bare room. She fumbled with his belt. "Let's see what you've got, wallie. Big old rifle or little handgun."
For a moment, he thought she was Meda, but her hair, now free of the scarf she had worn before, was a startling white.
She was a tall, sun-browned woman, plump, but not really fat. Her scent was incredible. It so controlled him, he could not focus on whether she was pretty or not. It did not matter.
He could not have thought he had the strength to hold her as he did with his newly freed hands and make love to her once and again and again. In the end, the woman seemed surprised herself, and pleased, willing to drop some of her car-rat emotional armor. Without being asked, she got him a blanket from somewhere. He remembered Rane and Keira
trying to beg one for him, and being refused. They had tried to get extra food for him, too, and failed. When he asked
the woman for food, she brought him a cold beer and a plate of bread and roast beef left over from the car gang's dinner. The gang, sealed in as it was, had been living off the ranch family's large pantry and freezer.
The meat was too well-done and too highly seasoned for Blake's newly sensitive taste, but he ate it anyway. The gang fed him as well as they ate themselves, but it was not enough. It was never enough. He consumed the extra meal ravenously.
"You eat like a damn coyote," the woman complained. "You want some more?"
He nodded, his mouth full.
She got him more and watched while he ate. He wondered why she stayed, but he did not mind. He did not want to be alone. The food made him feel much better-less totally focused on his discomfort. "Who the hell are you, anyway?" he asked.
"Smoke," she said, touching her hair.
"Smoke," he muttered. "First Badger, now Smoke."
"Those are our family names," she said. "We don't keep the same names once we're adopted into a family. My name before was Petra."
He smiled. "I like that better. Thank you, Petra." To his surprise, she blushed.
"Are my daughters all right?" he asked
She looked surprised. "They're okay. They say you screamed at them to get out. Hell, we heard you screaming. And with what you were calling them, we didn't figure they were your blood daughters. We thought you might hurt them." Screaming? He did not remember. Screaming at Rane and Keira? Why?
Fragments of what seemed to be a dream began to drift back to him. But it was a dream of Jorah, his wife, not of the girls. Jorah, smooth and dark as bittersweet chocolate, soft and gentle, or so people thought when they saw her or heard her voice. Later they discovered the steel the softness disguised.
The dream recaptured him slowly, and he could see her as she had been with the cesspool kids she taught. The kids liked her or at least respected her. They knew she cared about them. The bigger, more troublesome ones knew she had a gun. She was too idealistic for her own good, but she was not suicidal.
He saw her as she had been when he met her at UCLA. He was going to fight diseases of the body and she, diseases of a society that seemed to her too shortsighted and indifferent to survive. She preached at him about old-fashioned, long- lost causes -human rights, the elderly, the ecology, throwaway children, corporate government, the vast rich-poor gap and the shrinking middle class. . . . She should have been born twenty or thirty years earlier. He could not get particularly involved in her causes. He did not believe there was anything he could do to keep the country, the world from flushing itself down the toilet. He meant to take care of his own and do what he could for the others, but he had few illusions.
Still, he could not keep away from her. She was an earlier, happier compulsion. He let her preach at him because he was afraid if he did not, she would find someone else with open ears. He knew her family did not like her interest in him. They were people who had worked themselves out of one of the worst cesspools in the southland. They had nurtured Jorah's social conscience too long to let it fall victim to a white man who had never suffered a day in his life and who thought social causes were passe.
He married her anyway, had two daughters with her, even acquired something of a social conscience through her. Eventually, he began putting in time at one of the cesspool hospitals. It was like trying to empty the Pacific with a spoon, but he kept at it-as she kept at her teaching until a young sewer slug blew away most of the back of her head
with a new submachine gun. The slug was thirteen years old. He did not know Jorah. He had just stolen the gun and
wanted to try it out. Jorah was handy.
Why had Blake dreamed of her, then recalled her so vividly? And what did she have to do with his driving Rane and
Keira away?
"Are they really your kids?"
He jumped, looked around, was surprised to see that Petra was still there. "The two girls. Are they your kids?"
"Of course."
"Shit, I felt sorry for them. You were calling them sluts and whores and slugs and sewage-everything you could think of. One of them was crying."
"But . . . why would I do that?"