I was looking into her gray eyes and I watched them gauge her deep softness, her pain, and then saw them glow with anger. She slapped my hand away from her chin and turned her back to me. "Knock it off. Sometimes, Doc, you push a little too hard. It's not funny and I don't appreciate it so… yeah, maybe you're not the friend I thought you were."
I said, "Then let's finish our run and we can both go our separate ways. We'll each have our own very merry Christmas."
She swung around, fists on hips. "What the hell's with you? Being articulate doesn't give you license to act like a pious dick! All I want to do is run! Just fucking run and you're turning it into some kind of shrink session. Do I pry into your private life?"
"Yeah. All the time. You're one of the very few people I discuss my private life with."
"As if you've told me everything. Don't give me that crap, buster!"
"Never said I did."
She was folded over, stretching her hamstrings, letting me know I was wasting her time; standing there talking, muscles getting tight when we should be running. "Gee, tell me everything, Doc. Make my life complete."
"No need. You're already so happy, why risk being honest?"
"To say that to me… it's just so damn offensive-"
"Honesty is offensive?"
She was standing upright again, fists clenched. "Quit it! I'm serious-stop it right now! Nobody pries into my private life. You hear me? Nobody!"
Because she shouted the last of it, the silence that followed resonated. Wind in mangroves made a riverine sound like a distant reach of white water. High aloft, an osprey drifted, whistling frantic, ascending notes. Looking into her face, I waited several beats before saying, "Then run, Dewey. Just keep on running. Sorry I tried to interfere." I turned and jogged away; left her standing. Had run several hundred yards and was beginning to wonder if I had levered too hard; was already condemning myself for being unnecessarily pointed when I heard her deer-light stride behind me, getting closer, coming fast… entertained the unpleasant possibility that she might slug me in the back of the head as she ran past. I'd never seen Dewey so mad.
But instead I felt her grab my elbow and I let her swing me around. "Goddamn you!" she said. "Goddamn it… what right do you have to speak to me that way?" She was crying. It was the first time that I had ever seen jock-hard, tour-tested Dewey Nye cry. "I don't need to be interrogated and I don't need that kind of cruelty. I don't need that in my life right now!"
I made an effort to say something sharp and clever in reply… but found myself taking her into my arms, holding her, feeling her ribs spasm beneath my fingers, feeling her face hot and wet against my cheek as she sobbed, squeezing her tightly to me as if that were the way to both protect her and to apologize.
"I was a jerk," I whispered. "It's the new me. Lately… more and more… I've been acting like a jerk."
"No, you were a prick. There's a difference."
"It's been a rough year."
Dewey was nodding, her chin hard on my shoulder. "I'm so sorry about what happened, Doc. Losing that girl. How many nights did we talk and you hardly mentioned it? But I could tell. "
Holding Dewey, I suffered a brief cerebral replay of once holding a woman of the same comfortable size and shape, but who had Navaho hair and Cracker sensibilities. I would never hold that woman again. I whispered, "Old news. Water under the bridge."
"It really gets to be like that? The hurt goes away?"
"If you need to know… maybe there's a reason."
"There is."
"Someone died?"
"Not that bad."
Anticipating what had happened, I cupped my hand to the back of her head and patted softly. "Maybe worse, huh? In ways, probably worse. I'm sorry."
Dewey pushed herself away from me, wiping her face. "I lied to you. I didn't come down here just for something to do over Christmas."
"No kidding?" I said dryly. "You were so convincing.
So… are we going to run, or are we going to talk?"
She managed a smile before jogging off-but now at a much slower pace. "What an asshole," she said. "We'll do both."
What happened was, Dewey hadn't flown to Spain with her lover, Bets Bzantovski. She'd flown over on the red-eye a couple of days later as a last-minute birthday gift to Bets. Dewey had charmed the desk clerk at Madrid's Hotel Barcelona out of a key to Bets's room and carried her own luggage up. Her arrival was a surprise and Dewey didn't want a bellboy around when she flicked on the lights and saw Bets's face.
But the surprise was on Dewey. She opened the door to hear muffled laughter, then an eerie silence. Then she hit the lights… and there was Bets, naked, in bed with a woman named Elaine Wengo, one of the young French stars on the circuit. The next part was harder for me to picture because I know Bets and like her very much. "I just stood there like a dope," Dewey said. "It was like one of those god-awful nightmares where something's chasing you but you can't make your legs move. I had a big duffel bag in my hand and I didn't even put it down, and the whole time she's screaming at me to get the hell out, that she hadn't invited me, and what right did I have to walk in on her like that."
"Bets was screaming at you?"
"Who do you think I'm talking about-"
"Well, the French girl-"
"No, I'm telling you. Bets was saying that stuff to me. I'd flown all that way, changed my whole schedule, and she's treating me like some stranger, some uninvited guest. Like she hated me…"
I pictured Bets: a string-bean woman with muscles; long arms and longer legs; brown hair cropped short and brushed back; lean, European face with dark eyes that lived beneath heavy brows; eyes that knew a lot, that had seen a lot. Bets's face was familiar to anyone who subscribed to sports magazines. Bets was the one with the controversial lifestyle; the one who once told a reporter: "Your average reader and I probably have a lot in common. We both love beautiful women." Bets was the one who had become the darling of the news magazines because, as a Romanian, she had taken a hiatus from tennis to fight as a rebel leader against Ceausescu and the Securitate, his brutal secret police. I knew from friends, people in the intelligence community, that she had been implicated in the assassination of at least three of Ceausescu's people. Used her celebrity to open doors, then popped them. It was not public information. Bets did not know that I knew.
I told Dewey, "I'm surprised she behaved that way. She's an extraordinary woman."
Dewey said, "Yeah, well… Bets can also be an extraordinary bitch."
The story didn't come pouring out. It wasn't easy for Dewey. She kept approaching the subject, then dodging away. I plodded along and listened, pretending to look at the scenery. There were pepper bushes and webs of Spanish moss on oaks and stilt-legged egrets high-stepping along the ditches as tourist traffic filed by… rental cars and mid-western license plates as pale as the winters they'd left behind; visitors viewing the tropics through windshields, as removed from the biota as if they were peering through television screens.
I didn't say much. Friends aren't supposed to press friends for details, nor do friends leave friends waiting for answers. Both of us were chastened by our obligations. A further complication was that Dewey had never spoken openly to me about her homosexuality. We had a strange friendship. There were things I could not talk about and things she would not talk about, but everything else was on the table. Bets was always referred to as "my roommate" or "my housemate," as if their relationship was based on economic considerations. That I knew and understood was implicit-just as it was also understood that I must never, ever approach the subject openly.
But now, that's just what Dewey had to do.
"You're in love with Bets?" I asked.