“Oui, oui,” Christabel said, rising from the chair now, “more wine.”
They pulled two chairs up to the stove, the door of which she’d left open so they could watch the fire crackling inside, and settled in, plates in laps. Kutya was interested suddenly and though she told herself she wouldn’t have him begging she couldn’t help feeding him a sliver or two of fish in between bites. He took it daintily, with the softest jaws in the world, bolted it down and looked up expectantly for the next morsel to come his way.
“This is good,” Christabel said, as if she doubted herself. “Really good. I don’t think I’ve ever. . I mean the whole fish—”
“You don’t think about it, though, do you? After the first one.”
Christabel, chewing, staring into the stove, just nodded.
This was the kind of meal Sara loved, no chemicals, no BHT or food coloring or (the worst) corn syrup, just natural food, come by naturally. Except for the rolls, but she just didn’t have the time or energy to make them from scratch, having worked outside in the rain half the day, but the fish were fresh-caught right down there on the coast and the butter lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and radishes had come from her own garden. And the fish were free, which made it even better, free for the taking. Like mussels. She loved nothing better than to just pull over and make her way down a path to the sea at low tide, cut a bunch of mussels from the rocks (but not in summer, when they were quarantined because of the possibility of paralytic shellfish poisoning, which was fatal, thank you), and then steam them up and serve half as a starter with butter and garlic and homemade bread and then toss the rest into a pot of marinara at the last minute so you didn’t have to worry about them getting overcooked and rubbery. And berries. Nothing better than gathering berries in late summer for pies and tarts, but then you had the calorie factor to worry about. Berries with a little half-and-half then. And the smallest sprinkle of sugar.
When they were done, Christabel insisted on washing the dishes but she told her no, just let them sit, because why spoil the evening with something so — what was the word? — boring. Or no, tedious. “Too tedious,” she said, and she liked the sound of it and added, “Don’t be tedious. Let’s be the opposite — what is the opposite of tedious, anyway?”
Christabel let out a laugh. “I don’t know, untedious?”
They talked about having an after-dinner drink — Bailey’s, she had some Bailey’s in the cabinet, but that stuff packed on the pounds like steroids. “They ought to give that to the cattle at the feedlots,” she said. “That’d fatten them up. Pronto.”
“Yeah,” Christabel said, giving her a sloppy grin, “but what would the French say?”
“They’d say ‘Make mine rare.’”
“Right. And then they’d say, ‘Let’s stick to wine.’”
So they stuck to wine, how many glasses neither of them could say, but the quantity turned out to be exactly the precise amount to make the so-called comedy funny — or, that is, to prime them to the point where they could get sarcastic and laugh at it, which, as it turned out, made it genuinely funny.
They were both laughing when they heard the sirens, and before they could even get up out of their chairs or pause the video or shut the stove so they wouldn’t have to worry about sparks, the front door, which had been locked — she was pretty sure it had been locked — burst open as if it was made of cardboard and there were cops everywhere, shouting, “Your hands! Let me see your hands!”
She’d been a fool, that was her first thought, worse than a fool, because she of all people should have known they’d never let it go because once they got their claws into you, you had no more status than they did, and not packing up and moving to Nevada when she had the chance was just about the stupidest thing she’d ever done. What was wrong with her? What had she been thinking — that they’d forget about it? That if she stuck around, Adam would give up on the woods and come back to her? That it would be too hard, too much of an effort, to pull up her stakes here? She’d been lazy, that was what it was, living in fantasyland, and she was getting just what she deserved, because here they were with their boots and guns and bulletproof vests and there was no way out now.
She had her hands in the air. Christabel, who looked as if she’d been flash-frozen, had dropped the wine glass on the rug in the shock of the moment and she had her hands in the air too. And Kutya, Kutya was going bonkers. “Lady,” one of the cops yelled at her, “will you control that animal?”
At first she couldn’t understand what he was saying because they’d come to take Kutya away from her, hadn’t they? Wasn’t that what this was all about? That and maybe her no-show on the seatbelt thing. And the court date on the trumped-up DUI charge, to which she’d pleaded innocent, but that wasn’t for two weeks yet, not that she had any intention of showing for it. . or hadn’t had. Until now. But wait — and here her blood froze — what about that little incident the other night with the police cruiser and the sugar water meant for innocent hummingbirds? They’d caught her on videotape, she was sure of it, because everything in the U.S.I.G.A. was on tape now, every breath you took, and what about the Fourth Amendment, what about that? Search and Seizure? Hello?
“Kutya,” she called, “Kutya! Stop it now!” But when she tried to get up out of the chair and take him by the collar, the cop shoved her back down. “Hands!” he roared, and he had his gun trained right on her.
She was scared, had never been so scared in her life, but she couldn’t help throwing it back at him nonetheless, “How am I supposed to control him if I can’t even—”
“Shut the fuck up,” that was what he said, or snarled, and then another cop had one of those muzzle things on a stick and seized hold of the dog’s snout and the barking abruptly stopped.
It was right around then that she began to reconsider. There were cops everywhere, stalking through the kitchen, the bedrooms, their guns held out rigidly before them and laser lights poking red holes in everything — but why? Why would there be such a show of force over a woman who wasn’t wearing her seatbelt? Even if she hadn’t shown for her court date? Even if they knew she’d destroyed a police car, which, it became obvious to her in that moment, they didn’t. .
Another cop was there now, a bald-headed one, tailed by a deputy who looked all of twelve years old, and why did everybody have to shave their heads, was it some sort of cops and robbers sort of thing? He stood there a moment, just out of range of the one who’d pinned Kutya down with the muzzle-stick, staring at her. “Sara Hovarty Jennings?” he asked.
She couldn’t do much more than just nod yes, her heart going like the StairMaster set on Alpine, but the words were on her lips—Threat, Duress and Coercion—and if he didn’t back off she was going to start screaming and they could just go ahead and shoot her, but she surprised herself by finding her voice long enough to frame her own question in as nasty a voice as she could muster, “You got a search warrant?”
The cop ignored her. He swung his head in Christabel’s direction, Christabel who was sitting right there beside her, her hands in the air still. “And what’s your name?”
Poor Christa. She was so scared she could barely talk Or she couldn’t, she couldn’t talk at all.
“You can put your hands down,” he said, softening his voice, “both of you.” He was short, this cop, as nondescript as if he had his face on backwards, but he seemed to be in charge, and he had some sort of decoration or whatever it was sewed to the shoulder of his uniform. “Now, once again, you”—nodding at Christabel—“I asked your name.”