— Jim. . Melanie appeals, gaping at him, then Damien Coover, but finally regarding the girls and standing up and yanking Grace to her feet.
She moves towards Jim, who transfers Eve into her arms, his eyes never leaving Santiago and Coover. — Go back to the car, he repeats.
Melanie feels the proximity of the girls, glances at the two men, and then moves up the beach towards the small parking lot on the bank above. She looks back and sees that her bag is on the towel. Her cellphone and Jim’s are inside it. It’s open. She sees Coover register this. Jim does too. — Go, he says a third time.
Coover watches as Melanie and the kids depart up the beach. Her body is taut and toned in her bikini, but a stoop of terror has made her habitually graceful movements pensive, fractured and ugly. Nonetheless, he manages a pointed leer. — That’s some hot pussy you got there, brother, he laughs at Jim Francis, and his friend Santiago, who has been balling and unballing his fists, joins in, a low mirthless sound.
There is nothing in Jim Francis’s reaction: just stony evaluation.
So Santiago and Coover are compelled to contemplate the silent man facing them, dressed only in his green khaki shorts. A bronzed body, muscular but pitted with strange scarring, connotes this man as miscast in that family of blonde Californian females. He is of an indeterminate age: at least forty, possibly around fifty, which would make him a good twenty years older than the woman he’s with. What, Santiago wonders, does a man like that have in order to get such a hot piece of ass? Money? It’s hard to figure out, but there is something about him. He looks back at them, like he knows them.
A database of encounters past, of bar-room and penitentiary faces, starts to roll through Santiago’s head. Nothing. But that look. — Where you from, buddy?
Jim remains silent, his gaze sliding from the dark lens of Santiago, onto the blue eyes of Coover.
— Starin me down. . Coover’s voice goes high and he reaches into the duffel bag at his feet and pulls out a large hunting knife, brandishing it a few feet away from Jim Francis. — You want some of this? Get the fuck outta here while you still can!
Jim Francis flashes an odd look at the knife for a couple of seconds. Then he stoops, his eyes never leaving Coover, and picks up the bag and towels, turning slowly, following his wife and children up the beach. They notice that he walks with a slight limp.
— Gimpy asshole, Coover barks, sheathing his blade. Jim halts for a second, sucks in a slow breath, then walks on. The two men share a mocking laugh, but it is one underscored with a sense of relief that the man who was facing them has just departed. It is more than his strong build and the attitude he carries that he would fight savagely, and to the death, in order to protect his family. There is something about him, that scar tissue on his body and hands, as if he’s had substantial tattooing covered up; those thin but extensive cicatrix configurations on his face; but most of all, those eyes. Yes, Santiago considers, they indicate that he belongs in a different world to the one inhabited by that women and those kids.
Jim gets to the Grand Cherokee, parked on the gravelly lot behind the beach, fifty yards from the tarmacked road. There is another vehicle positioned there, a beat-up, four-door Silverado pickup truck. For a second he panics as he can’t see Melanie or the girls, but it’s only the rising sun, burning away the cloud cover, reflecting on the windows of the car. They are safely inside and he joins them, to find Grace asking questions. Who were those men? What did they want? Were they bad? He straps her in the back with Eve, and climbs into the front passenger seat. Melanie starts up the Grand Cherokee and drives past the Silverado, knowing that it belongs to the two interlopers.
— We should go to the police. . Melanie whispers, content that Grace is now distracted with a toy. — I was so scared, Jim. Those guys were trouble. . She drops her voice. — I was thinking of Paula. . I dunno what would have happened if you hadn’t come by. . I couldn’t see you because of the dunes. .
— Let’s get the girls home, Jim says softly, his hand falling on her knee, feeling a steady tremble in it, — then I’ll see about the police.
Home is only a short drive down Highway 101, and a further mile to their Spanish colonial-style house in Santa Barbara, a few blocks from the ocean. Melanie pulls the Grand Cherokee into the front yard and Jim lets them all disembark, then heads into the second garage which he has made his workshop, emerging a few moments later and taking the vehicle back onto the road. Melanie says nothing, but as the car turns out of the driveway, she is once again uneasy.
2. THE DELIVERY BOY 1
The blood leaked out of the man’s smashed head. Finally all was silent and still. Stepping away from the body, I looked up at those stark, forbidding walls. Above, a full moon shimmering in a bloated, mauve-and-black sky, its reflection dusting the metal rungs cut into the side of the stone. After that terrible ordeal, I was spent, and there was no power in my small, frail legs. I thought: How the fuck am I ever going to get back up there?
3. THE CONSIDERATIONS
Jim returns a couple of hours later, to find Melanie playing with the girls at the rear of the backyard, beyond the wooden decking, under a group of mature fruit trees. She has set up an elaborate game around the huge red-painted doll’s house that he worked on for the best part of a year. The girls love it because, inside the structure, Jim has assembled an intricate series of pulleys, ramps and ball-bearings, which set off various calamities for the doll figurines that live there. On the lawn, an unfeasible number of candy wrappers and toys lie strewn about: Melanie’s attempt to salvage something from the abandoned beach excursion.
She rises and moves over to him. — Did you speak to the police?
Jim stays silent.
— You didn’t, did you?
Jim lets go of some air he’s been holding in. — No. I just couldn’t do it. It’s not in my DNA to talk to them.
— When psychopaths put women and children at risk, normal citizens report that sort of thing to the police, Melanie snaps, shaking her head. — You know what happened to Paula, for fuck’s sake!
Jim raises an eyebrow. The circumstances with Paula — the two guys, students, whom she knew — were different. But he isn’t going to argue that detail.
Realising she’s come over more patronising than intended, and that it’s rankled with Jim, Melanie rubs his arm reassuringly, while mouthing his name in urgent appeal. — Jim. .
Jim squints in the sunlight filtering through the big overhanging oak tree, sucking in another steady breath. She watches his chest expand. Then he exhales. — I know. . it was stupid. I just couldn’t do it. I drove around to see if those guys were still about, but there was no sign. They’d gone; the beach was deserted.
— You what? Melanie gasps. — Are you kidding me!
— I wasn’t going to confront them. Jim shakes his head, his mouth tight. — I just wanted to make sure that they weren’t harassing somebody else. That’s what they would be getting up to, hanging around the campus, causing bother. Then I would’ve. .
— What?
— I’d have called campus security.
— That’s exactly what I’m gonna do right now, Melanie announces, and heads indoors for her cell, which is on the kitchen breakfast bar.
Jim follows her inside. — Don’t. .
— What. .
— I did do something, he confesses, watching her features slide. — Not to them. To their car. I stuck a lighted rag in the gas tank and blew it up. So it’s probably best that the cops, or even campus security, don’t know that we were around.