It was the same damn thing, Anna thought wearily. Bureaucracy, petty power struggles. Corinne in her office muttering behind closed doors, chewing up some unfortunate underling. Paul, already chewed, looking harried and grim and-God damn him, Anna thought uncharitably-understanding. Just once, maybe twice, she'd love to hear him tell someone to bugger off, to take a flying fuck at the moon. Marta sniping, always within safe limits, always with the same sly, smiling, sideways glance, asking solicitously after Christina. Chris had called in sick the day Anna fell. Marta made it clear she didn't believe it for a minute. The superintendent gone to a function. Craig Eastern shrugging and twitching his way through a plan to camp on the West Side with night photographic equipment next full moon. He would record the aliens, then nobody would laugh.
There were days Anna doubted she was in West Texas at all, days it seemed as if she must be in the psych ward at Columbia Hospital suffering from the delusion that she and all her fellow inmates were park rangers.
Tired of the insanity du jour, Anna had escaped into the library and returned the call from Tim Dayton at the Roswell lab. He was on vacation but his assistant, an eager and efficient woman, found the blood-test results. The sample Anna had sent was not human. As far as the woman knew there was no test to determine what kind of an animal. And, no, Tim hadn't left any information regarding the other samples she'd sent. Duty done: the blood found in Karl's truck wasn't human. The other samples didn't matter much.
Anna leaned back against Christina's pillows. A delicate floral scent floated up from the shams. She closed her eyes. Molly was right: she needed to get away for a while.
A timid tap at the bedroom door brought her head up. The door opened a crack and Christina peeked in. "If you're done with your call, supper is ready," she whispered. Then she pushed open the door all the way, flipped on the light and smiled. "If you're not done, supper is still ready."
"I'm done," Anna replied, trying unsuccessfully to restore the kitten to his former resting place without waking him. "I was just enjoying being in a real house, in a real room, where real people live."
Supper was "grown-up supper" as Christina called it. It was after eight o'clock. Alison had eaten her grilled-cheese and green beans and been tucked in bed. Christina and Anna sat on the screened-in porch drinking a chilled California blush wine and eating overpriced artichokes. The light was velvety gray, casting no shadows. To the west it deepened to a bruised purple. Stars shone; diamonds to a distant radio tower's insistent ruby light. Though the sun had gone it was still near eighty degrees. Silence settled like dust over the desert. No crickets, no coyotes, not even the sound of trucks hauling natural gas to Juarez.
"Marta told me you were sick last week," Anna said. "Nothing serious, I hope."
Heavy quiet prevailed for a minute and Anna wished she'd let well enough alone, enjoyed the evening, the wine, the company.
"The day you fell? The day I said I heard it on the office radio? Still your prime suspect, am I?" Christina said lightly, but Anna thought she could hear an underlying edge to her voice. "If you prove I'm a liar, will that prove I'm a killer, too?"
"No murder: no suspects," Anna returned.
"You are supposed to let go of all this. The autopsy; you promised Paul," Christina said.
Anna wanted to see her face but it had grown too dark. She reached instead for the wine. Christina's fingers closed over hers, imprisoning her hand and her glass in a gentle grip. She lifted the bottle, refilled Anna's half-empty glass.
"Why can't you let go? I have, and Sheila was my friend. She was my lover."
"I don't know," Anna answered honestly. Then, stringing the thoughts together, she spoke: "I guess because things just aren't right. They don't fit. Puzzle pieces from a half a dozen puzzles and they-Paul, Corinne-are pretending they all go together, make a whole picture. They just don't. The autopsy said lion kill. But the neck wasn't snapped, the body not eviscerated."
"Maybe Craig's space aliens did it," Christina teased. "Like those mysterious cow slayings in Nebraska a few years ago."
Anna ignored the interruption. "The killer lion has apparently no hind feet. Sheila hiked in, high on acid, no water, no cuts or scratches. She must've been one hell of an acid freak to negotiate the climb out of Dog Canyon two thousand feet, no trail, full pack, then eight miles down the roughest country in the park into a saw grass swamp, stoned out of her mind, and not sustain a single scratch."
"Acid?" Christina said. "They say Sheila was taking acid?"
"The autopsy showed it. Why?"
"I didn't know is all." Christina sounded sad.
"She didn't do drugs?"
"I really don't know. She used to."
"We all used to." Anna's voice sharpened with interest. "Did she still?"
"Anna." Christina said the name in a maternal tone designed to dampen growing excitement in children. "I honestly don't know. She smoked a little dope sometimes. She believed drugs could expand your consciousness. She wasn't an old hippy-she had missed all that. But she 'dabbled,' if that's the word."
Anna was dampened but not quenched.
Christina cleaned the artichoke heart, split it carefully in two and pushed half to Anna's side of the plate.
"Pieces. Ill-fitting, motherfucking pieces," Anna grumbled. "Have you ever watched somebody talk-somebody with something wrong with them? A toupee coming unglued, a bit of mustard in their mustache? You don't hear a word they say. All you can see is that silly bit of something askew.
"That's all I'm seeing, Chris. That wrong bit of something. I'm too tired to let go. Like one of those bulldogs who lock their jaws, hang on even after they're dead."
Christina sipped her wine.
"Were you?" Anna asked, cursing herself as she did. "Sick, I mean?"
"No," Christina replied pleasantly. "I was up on that mountain, lurking behind an agave, hoping to push you over the precipice. I wish I'd pushed harder now."
"Sorry. I don't mean that," Anna said. "Nobody pushed me. Nobody was near me. It's just. I don't know… Maybe I'm just tired of stories with holes in them. Fill all the holes: understand the story." She took all of her half of the heart, dipped it in mayonnaise, and ate it in one bite. "Were you?"
The other woman laughed. It sounded genuine if exasperated. "No. Alison's sitter was. I couldn't find anyone else."
"Why did you say you heard my accident reported on the radio?"
Darkness had come, had filled the porch with warm anonymity. Anna heard a sigh, then a tiny galloping horse: soft fingertips drumming on the chair arm.
"It was easier," Christina said at last. "You're like a hawk sometimes, Anna. Waiting to swoop down on any suspicious little act that dares to creep out of some hole. I just didn't want to deal with it. I lied. So sue me."
Anna's shoulder was beginning to ache. Her head had been aching for half an hour. "Craig's launching another search for his Martians," she said, trying for a lighter mood. "Soon as the moon is full again."
"I wouldn't be surprised if he found something," Christina returned shortly. "Craig may be crazy but he's no fool."
Anna was not forgiven.
The silence stretched, grew less strained, mellowed into the night.
"Christina?" Anna asked of the shadow in the chair next to hers.
"Yes?"
"I don't think you killed anybody. I'm just tired, thinking out loud. Not very considerate of other people's feelings."
"Thank you, Anna."
"And if you did, I would drop it."
"Even if the ranchers kept pushing to kill the mountain lions in the park?"
"Sure," she said. It rang hollow.
Christina laughed, touched Anna's arm in the dark. "It's okay. Your lions need you. Alison and I don't. So. You'll go away for a while?" Christina harked back to their conversation before Anna had telephoned her sister.