“When you kissed me,” she said, “I thought that’s what you wanted. That you’d make me… earn your silence.”
“I understand. You weren’t right, but I understand, and I shouldn’t have done it. It was a mistake.”
“I shouldn’t have hit you.”
“I think you probably should have,” he said.
She turned and took a few steps toward him.
“Why did you do that, though? It didn’t seem like something you would do. That’s why I reacted that way. It didn’t seem to fit you.”
“Why did I kiss you? I think you had it right. I wanted to control you. I’m a brute, same as McGrath or Tolliver or Wade.”
“That’s not the truth. Why did you do it?”
He studied her for a moment and then said, “You don’t need to ask a man why he’d be moved to do a thing like that. You don’t need to ask that at all. You damn well know why.”
She’d stepped even closer, was an arm’s length away now.
Tell her to get out, he thought. Tell her thanks for the gun, honey, but go on your way now.
She took one more step forward and he reached up with his right hand and placed it on the back of her head and pulled her face to his and kissed her, just as he had the last time. She didn’t slap him tonight. She returned the kiss but kept her body distant for a moment. Just a moment. Then she leaned in and he felt the press of her chest against his, the graze of her thigh.
He broke the kiss.
“All right,” he said. “You let me have one. Thanks. It was awfully nice. Now you need to leave.”
She stepped back from him and looked him in the eye and then she reached down and took hold of her gown and lifted it, brought it up over her head just as she had that night on the beach before she’d waded into the water. She held the gown in her hands for one long second and then dropped it onto the floor, and she was naked before him.
This is how far she’s willing to go, he thought. This is how far she thinks she needs to go. You’ll get your reward for keeping your mouth shut. How do you feel about yourself now? You proud of what you’ve got her ready to do?
“Go back to your room,” he said, and his voice was hoarse. “I’m a rotten son of a bitch, some days, but I’ve never been this kind of rotten. Get out of here.”
She didn’t move. The moonlight lit the curve of one breast, traced the swell of her hip and the length of her leg with white light.
“All I asked for was the gun,” he said. “You can go back to bed now. Go on and get to bed.”
“You want me to go?” she said.
“Yes.” But even as he said it he felt himself step forward. It was wrong, it was all mighty damn wrong, this moment built from everything that a moment like this should not be of-distrust, power, manipulation. A flickering thought-Just come toward me a little, don’t make me go all the way there, come toward me a little, that will make it better, so much better-danced in his brain.
She leaned into him just before he reached her. She leaned into him and something broke free in his mind and floated clear and then his lips were on hers again and his hands were resting first on the small of her back and then on her hips. Her hair slid over his cheek and her chest pressed into his, her nipples tightening against his skin.
When he pulled her back to the bed, his foot brushed against the Smith & Wesson. He almost tripped over it just before they hit the mattress, the old bed frame creaking under their weight. She had both of her hands on his belt now and he was trying to help with one of his own. He twisted and tugged free from his pants, then ran his hands along her sides, tracing the lines of her body as he moved his lips to her ear.
“Quiet,” he whispered. “Quiet. I don’t want the boy hearing.”
26
SHE WAS GONE when he woke, but the gun remained.
He turned away from the window to hide from the sunlight. The sheets and pillow smelled of her. He didn’t remember when she’d left, but he remembered the night. Long would he remember the night.
He heard voices from downstairs then, hers first, then Paul’s. The sound of the boy’s voice made him squeeze his eyes shut.
Out of all the reasons you shouldn’t have done it, his schoolboy’s infatuation doesn’t rank anywhere near the top, he told himself. Not even close.
Somehow it seemed to, though. Somehow it seemed mighty near the top.
They worked a full day, completing the first third of the dock, Paul in his usual high spirits. Once, Arlen went up to the house to fetch them both some water and found Rebecca with a set of ledger books. He didn’t ask what she was studying on, and she didn’t offer.
During dinner Paul mentioned how much he’d like to try some fishing. Rebecca left and came back with two beautiful rods and reels. “My father’s,” she said shortly. That evening Arlen stood on the dock and smoked a few cigarettes while the boy tried casting. He caught two black drum before the night was done, fish with high backs, steeply sloped heads, and a tangle of chin whiskers. They gave him some fun on the line, and he brought them up to the inn and made an awkward job of cleaning one before Rebecca stepped in and did the other.
“Fresh fish tomorrow,” she said. “You caught it, and we can keep it cold now because you fixed the generator.”
There was nothing the kid liked more than her praise.
She came back to Arlen’s room that night.
“I told you,” he said, “you don’t have to do this. I didn’t ask it of you.”
“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”
“If you don’t want to be here, then go on back to your room.”
“If I didn’t,” she said, “I would.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at her in the dark and said, “I need to believe that.”
“You should.”
He didn’t answer.
“If you’d like me to go, I will,” she said. “But do you really want me to?”
He did not.
The wind changed early the next afternoon. It had been blowing in hot gusts out of the west for the better part of two days, but now it swung around to the southeast and the water in the inlet rippled beneath it. The change brought a touch of cool, and they were grateful for it down on the dock, until they noticed the smell.
It was coming from farther up the inlet, somewhere back in the mangrove trees. Paul twisted his face in a grimace of disgust and said, “What is that?”
“Dunno,” Arlen said, but he was facing into the wind and thinking that he knew very well indeed.
“You mean you don’t smell that stench?”
“I can smell it.”
“It’s awful. You ever smelled anything so awful, Arlen?”
“A time or two.”
They got back to work then, and the sun moved west and shone down on the inlet, unbroken by cloud. The smell intensified-a fetid, rotting stink. Arlen saw vultures coming and going from a spot in the marsh grass just up the creek from them, maybe three hundred yards away. They flicked through the trees as silent shadows, but there were many of them.
“Something died back there,” Paul said. “Wonder what it was.”
Who, Arlen thought. You wonder who it was.
Of course, it could be an animal. One of the boars they had out in these woods. Or perhaps someone’s hound had gotten loose and found its way down to the inlet and ran afoul of a snake. There were any number of possibilities.
An hour passed before Paul went up to the inn and came back with a rake in his hand, a thing with a mean-looking array of wide metal tines.
“The hell you think you’re doing?” Arlen said.
“We better check that out. Arlen, it smells like death.”
“Could be an animal.”