William Bankier - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 103, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 625 & 626, March 1994

He tried to be logical. It wasn’t impossible that Glenda had succumbed to his manly charms — some remarkably attractive women had fallen for him over the years; he didn’t understand it, but there it was, it was data, it couldn’t be ignored. On the other hand—

On the other hand came another memory of Glenda, most unwelcome, repressed for twenty years.

It would have been eleventh grade or so, and he had taken her home. And Barney Cannon was breeding a mare; that is, someone had brought a mare to be serviced by the Cannons’ purebred stallion.

Only they didn’t just let the stallion have at her; oh no, old Al Sharif or whatever its name was might have been injured, and anyway, at four hundred dollars a pop this activity was too expensive to leave to nature. No, they had tethered the mare, led over some less illustrious drone of a stallion, let him mount her — roped, a man on either side of him — and just before the climactic moment had hauled him off. Then, when the mare was hot and ready, Al Sharif had deigned to perform.

It had been an excruciating experience for Sam. Not because of the robustly sexual nature of the proceedings — he was a farm boy, after all — but because he had identified so strongly with that pitiful, eternally frustrated stallion-without-a-name, and because he had been afraid to look over towards Glenda and see her watching him and smiling, knowing exactly what was going through his head.

That was how Glenda had thought of him. Could she have changed so much? He didn’t believe it. She didn’t want him. When two people really wanted each other it was undeniable, inexorable, like a fire laid with dry wood; each person’s heat reflected and intensified until both ignited. Well, he knew how that felt, and this wasn’t it; like the woodstove, he had been prodded expertly into flame. He was burning, but he was burning alone.

He should have guessed, he thought bitterly, his passion turning to anger — if his gonads hadn’t taken over, he would have guessed — that once again he was some bit player in one of her Byzantine intrigues, a line item on her private agenda. They would have sex, he would feel beholden, he would do what she wanted; that was the syllogism.

Glenda was standing in the doorway wrapped in a satin robe.

“Better?” she asked lightly. Her damp hair curled around her neck and the silky material flowed over her nipples and he watched, mesmerized, as her hands moved slowly to her sash.

Oh, Jesus. If she opened that robe he was done for.

“Glenda!” he croaked. She looked at his face and seemed to droop a little.

“Changed your mind?” she asked with forced perkiness.

“More like recovered it. At least enough to realize that whatever you want from me, it isn’t sex.”

“You think too much, that always was your problem,” she said. “What does it matter? I’m here, I’m willing—”

“It matters to me,” he retorted. “I don’t need your grudging sex, Glenda. I know what it feels like when somebody really wants me—”

“God’s gift to women,” she smirked, angry.

“No,” he said evenly, “just an ordinary guy — kind of a nerd, in fact. No tight pants, no strut. But amazingly enough, a few women have actually loved me!”

There was a moment’s silence. “I’m sorry, Sam,” she said, looking abashed — and God help him, he wondered what she was up to now. “I was a little insulted, I guess. Of course women have fallen in love with you. I said you were a sweetheart and a sexy man, and I meant it. Your girlfriend’s a lucky woman.” She paused and gave an irresistible grin. “ ’Course, you didn’t seem to be thinking about her a few minutes ago.”

He couldn’t help laughing. “Nope, can’t say I was. You’re a persuasive woman, Glenda — no,” he said bravely when her hands moved to the belt of her robe again. “Save it for someone you really want.”

She looked at him candidly — that is, with the appearance of candor. “You’re too nice a guy for me, Sam. Not my type at all, I’m afraid; you’re right. I’m a little sorry, though.”

“Me too.”

Glenda did want a favor. She was going to be out of town tomorrow night, and while Peggy would be “on duty,” sleeping here in the tack room, she wondered if Sam could stop in and check on things, just in case. Say around ten P.M.? He assented readily, happy for the opportunity to expiate the guilt he inevitably felt after having denied Glenda something.

The fire was smoking damply again and Glenda poked at it. “Might as well let it go out,” she said, her back to him. After a moment she added in a muffled voice, “Funny, this ol’ oak blew down two years ago. You wouldn’t think it would still be so tough.”

Somehow he knew she was thinking about that old bully, braggart, and swindler Barney Cannon.

“Must have been a hell of a tree,” he agreed.

In a black mood, he drove away from EastWind. He supposed he was entitled to feel emancipated or triumphant at actually having turned Glenda down. But in fact he was as depressed and disgusted as if he had just left a Bangkok whorehouse — only now he was horny, too.

The whorehouses of Bangkok. He hadn’t thought about them in a long time: the dark rooms that smelled of incense and Thai stick; the skinny girls with their curtains of silky black hair. He had only visited them a few times. Guilt, that familiar companion, had overcome even his young-male lust. Not religious guilt — he had left the Baptist church behind, along with his virginity, some years earlier — but every other flavor: racial, national, class. Especially class. It was a new experience; he had been a poor boy all his life, but in Thailand he was a king, and the girls were so damned cheap! A few bhat, nothing to him, food and shelter and life to those fourteen-year-olds—

His train of thought was interrupted by the sight of a pickup pulled off by the break in the rail fence he had noticed Tuesday. A dark-haired man was neatly tacking a new board across it.

Sam stopped and walked over to him. “Mr. Gutierrez?” he guessed.

“Yeah?”

“I’m Sam Cooper, a friend of Glenda Cannon’s. I understand you found a break in the fence between her land and the drainage pools.”

“Yeah. A new break,” he said, stressing the word. “I was just up there two days ago — no matter what she say,” he finished resentfully.

“These things happen,” Sam said sympathetically. “What was it — a tree limb?”

“Yeah. Oak. Pinned the barbed wire right to the ground.”

“An oak?” Sam repeated sharply. “Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. Big ol’ branch.” He looked at Sam challengingly.

“Okay... well, thanks. Thanks a lot.” He had walked along the nature preserve boundary for three miles and seen salt cedars, paloverdes, some shrub-sized willows by the ponds — but no oaks. It wasn’t the right kind of habitat. So where had that branch come from?

He arrived home and paced restlessly about the house, revved in mind and body. He pulled a dusty bottle of Scotch from the back of a cupboard and drank a little too much. He imagined in detail what he and Claire could do if she were there. Finally, in the grip of acute sexual longing, he swallowed his pride and tried her at her mother’s in western Massachusetts. But she had left for the Cape.

Tires squealed as he took the curves on 170 too fast for the road, the Valiant, and his level of sobriety. If he had had his shotgun he would have taken out a few road signs, too; hell, if he had to relive teenage traumas he might as well revert to teenage strategies for coping with them.

The world was black except for the stars and the sweep of his headlights, where oak and manzanita gleamed briefly, white and silver, before receding into darkness. He climbed steadily. At about three thousand feet he pulled off into a turnout, cut the engine, and sat breathing hard as if he had run all the way. After a moment he got out of the car and crouched by the edge of the canyon, peering down into the void, listening to the roar of the invisible river below.