The rain had ceased and you could hear everything dripping. A bluejay began jattering and a dog started going crazy at the sound. Four-legged somethings, probably squirrels, skittered across the roof. All those noises, it was like the world was surfacing to snatch a breath before the rain went to drowning it again.
“Carl’s my son,” Ava said. “He’s the spitting image of his daddy. He’s dead… Carl Senior. He was killed in a car wreck right before we was about to marry. I was already pregnant. Carl was born retarded and he’s got lotta other problems. There’s this disease makes his nerves not work right. He can’t hardly feel a thing. It’s killing him. I don’t know how much longer he’s got. Not long, I expect. Squire, he’s just this fella I met in a bar over in Boynton Beach. He keeps me happy and he’s simple enough to relate to Carl. Carl Senior’s daddy worked for NASA. One of the directors. Even though I never married his son, he was kind to us. When he died he left a trust for me and Carl. The house where you met us? He had it built for us. Pulled some strings so we could have access. The government don’t care about the land no more and his friends make sure people leave us be when we’re there. Ava crossed her legs and clasped her hands behind her head. That fly any higher for you?”
“You’re a piece of fucking work, I’ll give you that,” I said.
Ava grinned. You’ll never know ’til you cut you a slice.
“What the hell you hanging around with us for, you got all this money?”
“I like Leeli. I like you, too. Different, though. I was enjoying myself with y’all until yesterday.”
“The thing gets me,” I said after studying on things a patch, “is how come you don’t seem so worried about your son or your old boyfriend or your experimental subject, whichever he is… about him committing murder.”
“Oh we’ll be all right. I got confidence in you.”
“Now that’s a lie.”
“You got us outa Ocala, didn’t you? With your experience in these matters and my money, we’re gonna do fine. I was thinking about Mexico.”
“Mexico?”
“Uh-huh. I was thinking I’d charter a plane and we’d lay low for a few and then jump on over. After Leeli finishes her time with me, the two of you can skedaddle. Twenty thousand’ll go a long way in Mexico.”
“Whyn’t you just call your bigwig friends to haul your ass outa this?”
“Maybe I will, things don’t go well. But you know how it is, Maceo. You got a favor in the bank, you want to hold back from using it long as you can.”
My thoughts skipped back and forth from story to story. I didn’t believe any of them, but I kind of believed them all. I suspected there was a spoonful of truth in each, or that each was a stand-in double for a truth she hadn’t spoken.
“It don’t matter who I am, who Carl and Squire are,” she said. “We still hafta deal with the problem.”
Trying to decide what to believe and what to do about it tied knots in my thought strings. Ava lay grinning at me, looking from the neck down like a dessert tray. I gave myself a nudge toward the bed, pretending to buy the proposition that if I tore one off with her, I’d have a better feel for the situation. Old hayseed philosophers gathered in the boiler room of my brain, swapped round a bottle, and spewed dipshit wisdoms: You can’t say how a peach tastes ’til the juice runs down your chin. Staring at the groceries don’t tell you who the cook is. Video footage of a naked, sucked-dry corpse, its mouth wrenched open in a final agony, was playing in the den, with graphics reading ALIEN EMBRACE KILLS REDNECK LOVER. I stayed where I was, speculating pro and con upon what I might be missing.
The door shrieked as someone shoved against it. Squire squeezed on in, followed by Carl. Squire glared at Ava, at me, and Carl beamed. His bandage was soaking wet, smudged with dirty finger marks.
“Hi, honey,” Ava said.
“That man went for food’s coming down the drive,” Squire said.
“That’s nice. Soon we can have us a feast!” She patted the bed, an invitation, and Squire, good dog that he was, laid down beside her. Carl gazed at the chair I was on for a second, then plunked himself down on the floor next to the bed. Squire began toying with Ava’s nipples, kissing her neck. The rain swept back in. I heard a clattering from the front of the lodge, a door slamming, but I didn’t turn from watching Squire and Ava. The rainy noise seemed to be tightening the space around us, compressing and heating the air. I told myself the minute Squire started taking off his clothes, I was gone, but there was something mesmerizing about Ava, about the lush, lazy strain of her belly, the slow surges of her hips, and the way her eyes would graze me every so often. I felt the cold pull of her. The sexy warmth of her surface was a dream and beneath lay an undertow that sucked all the swimmers who’d strayed out past the bar into whatever deep lightless place her story really sprung from. I had a glimmering of how it would be to go with the flow, to stroke hard and arrow down into her dark, to reach the great secret at the bottom, whether toothy maw or golden kingdom, it wasn’t much important, because you were bound to be part of it, and as Squire’s fingers traipsed between her thighs and her hips lifted, I thought what I was feeling now was closer to the truth than anything she’d said, and knew that she was willful and careless and irresistibly strong. The instant I understood this, however, I declared bullshit on it. I was watching a dirty movie, I told myself, and not falling down no rabbit hole.
“Fuck y’all doing?” Rickey had popped his head in and was gawking at the bed, where Squire and Ava hadn’t missed a beat.
“Notice how the entire school turns as one,” Carl said happily.
“Hallelujah!” I said. “The single mind’s directing.”
Rickey slid himself in past the stuck door. I could see he was hoping to get in on the act, but was all puffed up and ready to be outraged in case he couldn’t. “Goddamn it!” he said, and stepped over to the window, getting a side angle on the center ring. “I don’t want no weird shit going on in my house!”
“God, no!” I said. “There’s never been no weird shit like people fucking and people watching going on out here. Not in this holy temple.”
Rickey might have said something back, but his mouth stopped working, because right then Ava opened her legs and Squire started wrestling off his jeans.
“That’s Ava there showing her rosy,” I said to Rickey. “Squire, he’s the boy ’bout to have some fun. Down there in the front row, that’s Carl.”
“In concert,” said Carl. “In simple harmony and balance.”
“Carl’s got this kinda religious thing going,” I told Rickey.
This inspired Carl to point at me and say, “Hands up! Who wants to die?”
Rickey pricked up his ears at that, but again gave no response. Squire had climbed on board the Ava train and was making tracks for the station, giving out with chuffing noises. The springs backed him up with a jangly, crunchy rhythm and the rain kept drumming and Ava sang a lyric with a single breathy word. Carl nodded, smiled. Rickey’s eyes cut toward me—I expect he was wanting a sign it would be okay for him to mix in.
The floorboards creaked. Leeli had crept in and was nailing me with a .45-caliber stare. She said, “You asshole!” and ducked back out. Catching a last glimpse of Ava’s heels and Squire’s pimply backside, I wheeled up from the chair and after her. I checked the porch and saw Leeli standing with her arms folded out in the rain. I didn’t think she was crying or nothing, just had a mad on. Rickey came up at my shoulder and said, “Hey, man! Is that Ava, she doing everybody?”
“Don’t be shy, boy. Ask her.”
“You serious?”
“She ain’t gonna screech and hold her knees together if you do. She’ll just tell you yes or no.”