“What’s that?” Gary said, looking at the overhead screen. “It looks good.” He looked at the girl’s name tag. She’d never worn it before. Rebecca.
The young woman wearing it looked up at him, then down at the cart full of videos she was re-stocking.
“Night of the Living Dead. Romero,” the girl said. She took a video and dropped it in place. He noticed she’d added Kool-Aid green stripes to her blonde hair. She had pierced her belly button; the silver ring, very sexy, showed just over the edge of tight black yoga pants that made her butt look as good as any butt he’d ever seen.
“Oh.”
They both looked up at the huge plasma TV screen. A black man’s face was held in a tight close up.
“He looks scared,” Gary said, not caring anything about it.
“Yeah, he’s about to have a real bad day,” Rebecca said.
The lights in the store faded. The music stopped. The TV screen went dead. Outside, the streetlights of Timberline went out. The store’s brief silence was replaced by the blaring of car horns as moronic types immediately hit their horns because the streetlights had stopped working.
“Sounds like San Francisco,” Gary said. “Listen, I was wondering if you would like to get a cup of coffee.” His ears seemed to grow sixteen sizes larger as he waited for her answer.
Rebecca pushed the cart with one hand. She had muscles on her arm that were bigger than his. She slid another video in place. “Okay. I have lunch in fifteen minutes,” she said. “Can you wait?”
“Sure,” he said.
“You’re not from Timberline, are you?” she asked.
“No, I’m new in town.”
“Where are you from?” She pushed the cart further down the aisle and he had to follow.
He looked at her butt. It was one of those high butts. She wore a black leather vest that was tight against her back.
“San Francisco,” he said.
“Why in the world would you come to Timberline?” she said. “It’s so out of it.”
“I like it,” he said. “I came for the mountain biking.” And you’re here, he thought.
The Higher Ground Cafe was one of the new additions to Timberline’s main street. It stood on the busiest corner in town. It had opened about the same time Genesoft, the biotech firm, had come to Placer County. It was a cool urban oasis in what was otherwise an old-fashioned strip mall. The cafe catered to younger ranchers and the new young professionals who were moving into town to work at Genesoft, as well as the new software firms, and video-game startups that had moved out of the Bay Area and located in the Sierra. At 11:30 it was crowded with every social stratum in Timberline: secretaries and lawyers from the courthouse, software geeks, young rancher types who liked fancy cappuccinos because they’d seen a bit of the world. The Higher Ground Cafe belonged to the young. It was theirs and they knew it.
“How can you like Timberline?” Rebecca said. “I’ve wanted to get out since I graduated from high school. I mean, I like it. But it’s so boring. What’s San Francisco like?”
They’d ordered mochas and got a table in the back. Rebecca Stewart was as tall as he was. It was one of the first times he’d found a girl whom he could look at directly. The lights—which had come back on while they’d walked across the street—flickered momentarily, and went out again.
“Does this happen much?” Gary said. He turned to look at the street. It was his first winter in the Sierras, and the idea of no power was frightening to him. Without electricity, his business as a web developer would be as productive as a dead body.
“Yeah. When it storms, it happens a lot,” Rebecca said. “You want to smoke a number?”
Gary checked at his watch and looked across the café at the perplexed faces of the other young people, who were mostly like him: new to the Sierras. They all found the lack of electricity disconcerting. If the power doesn’t come on, then Mr. Worden won’t be able to see what I’ve done. I don’t want to use up my battery up showing him his site. “Well, I don’t know,” Gary said. “I have a meeting in twenty minutes.”
“I don’t want to smoke it alone,” Rebecca said. She winked at him.
“Where?”
Rebecca stood up and led him into the Higher Ground’s back room, nodding to one of her friends who was manning the cappuccino machine. The storeroom was dark, the concrete floor was damp; the air was redolent with the smell of roasted coffee beans. The lights flickered as they walked into the room, but they didn’t stay on. Rebecca closed the door and flicked slightly. “Fuck it,” he heard her say.
All Gary could see was the light of the match when it was struck and the sound of the girl pulling on the joint. The end flared up, and the light of the match caught her blonde hair and the streaks of Kool-Aid green. She patted him on the shoulder as she sucked. She was trying to get him to relax.
The touch of her hand passed through him like a shot. It was electric. He reached for her and they kissed. It was all happening so fast, like it was all meant to be, he thought. It was like he’d won some kind of cool prize on the radio.
“I’m glad you came to town,” she said, pulling her lips away. She smelled of dope and some kind of sweet perfume, and some kind of girl smell that had attached itself to the white polyester sweater she wore under the leather vest. He didn’t know what it was, but it was about the sexiest combination of smells he could think of. He forgot all about his appointment, his fear of the lack of electricity, and his fear of the dark, which he’d had since he was five.
She took another long drag. In the orange-tinted demi-light, he saw her roll her eyes and pass him the joint. He took another hit and leaned back against the wall. The wall felt cold on his back and he heard her laughing in the dark, the little orange dot from the lit joint tracing bright lines in the blackness.
And then the THC began to wind, and unwind, in his head; the THC began turning his brain’s stoning-gear. It was greenhouse dope, raised by experts using high-powered chemical fertilizers. It was killer weed. Gary Summers started to laugh out loud.
CHAPTER 9
“Genie, I want to know where my daughter is,” Quentin said. “She’s not in at the pool where she should be. She has a PE class this hour, I thought.”
Quentin had walked into Timberline High’s busy main office. Two students were answering the phones. Quentin could see, too, that the main office’s multiple phone lines were all flashing red, people waiting to get through to someone at the office. The students manning the phones looked harried, and it was still first period.
Genie Lamont, wearing a pale yellow pants suit, had been Timberline High’s school secretary when Quentin had been a student more than twenty years before. The older woman, wearing reading glasses on a chain just as she had in his day, was beyond crusty. She looked up at the Sheriff.
“Good morning, Quentin. We were just going to call you. I’ll tell Mr. —”
“Genie! I need to speak to my daughter, now!” He didn’t realize he’d raised his voice until everyone in the office got quiet and turned to look at him. He’d asked the swim coach about having seen Sharon at practice, and had gotten a blank look and a shrug. By the time Quentin reached the office, he was certain something was wrong. It wasn’t like his daughter to miss a swim practice. It was the one thing she was dedicated to.