Aaron Elkins: The Dark Place

Gideon noted that she didn’t ask him any personal questions and knew that John had told her about Nora. That pleased him; it meant that Julie had been interested enough to ask questions.

When the salmon came, along with a bottle of Gamay Beaujolais that Gideon had ordered over Eleanor’s injunction that white wine went with fish, it was placed before them worshipfully.

"Enjoy," said Eleanor again, her voice husky with reverence.

The fish was indeed extraordinarily good, with pink, firm flesh that tasted like fine veal.

"It’s called blueback salmon," Julie said. "The Quinault Indians have rearing pens on the lake, and they’re the only ones who can get them. The lodge has a special contract with them."

"It’s superb."

"They catch them with bone-tipped spears," said Julie, blandly chewing.

Gideon put down his fork. "They what?"

Julie laughed. "Joke. They use only the most modern methods, I assure you."

"I’m glad to hear it," Gideon said, returning to the fish, but his thoughts had gone back to that triangular point on the workroom table. He sipped the beaujolais abstractedly.

"Uh-oh," Julie said, "I’ve started him thinking serious things." She drained her glass and held it out to him to be refilled. "Let’s go back to us."

Gideon slowly shook his head. "There’s something that bothers me…"

"What?"

"I don’t know, but something’s wrong. Or not wrong, just not right." He refilled her glass and his own. "The hell with it. Intuition is a sidewise kind of thing, and you can’t push it; at least not mine."

They clicked glasses again and made small talk through the rest of the main course. When Gideon asked for the bill, Eleanor told them they couldn’t think of leaving without ordering the house specialty, a creamy chocolate cheesecake, with their coffee.

"If she says ‘enjoy’ when she brings it, I’ll scream," Julie said.

"So help me, I’ll kill her myself."

"Enjoy," Eleanor said heartily when she placed the cake before them and was greeted by a burst of laughter that sent her away baffled but beaming.

In the final ruddy afterglow of the day they walked down the deserted, cool lawn to the shore and listened to the gentle, steady lapping of the tiny waves against the gravel.

"You’re going to throw a stone in the water," Julie said.

"Why would I want to do that?" It had been just what he was going to do.

"Inborn male trait. Genetic. Haven’t you noticed? From the age of three on, no boy or man can pass a body of water without tossing in a stone. That’s why our lakes are silting up."

"Ah, but I’m no ordinary tosser. I’m a world-class skimmer, silver medal, ought-four Olympics. Give me some room, now."

He sidearmed a pebble out into the darkening lake. Together they counted the soft splashes as it hopped over the water, leaving spreading circles on the smooth surface. "Two, three, four…five."

"A new world’s record," Gideon said, "and you were there."

"Let me try," Julie said. "Here goes."

"You’re holding it too high. You have to do it underhand."

"Oh, yeah?" She threw the stone. There was a heavy plunk.

"One," they said.

"See?"

Julie shook her head. "Nope. I think it’s something men can do and women can’t, that’s all."

"You might be right, actually. Women do throw differently than men; they have different shoulder girdles. In a male, the top of the sternum is on a level with the third thoracic vertebra-" He stopped when Julie laughed. "John’s right, you see," he said, smiling. "I do tend to give lectures."

"I like it," she said. "You’re a professor. That’s the way you’re supposed to be. Are you absentminded, too?"

"Well, actually, you know, that depends more or less on the nature of… What was the question again?"

She laughed again, and they stood silent for a while, listening to the water and smelling the clean breeze coming off the lake. Gideon began to think about putting his arm around her. Did people still do that on first dates? Or did they run right off to bed, and only put their arms over each other’s shoulders when they were better acquainted?

"Chilly?" he asked when he saw her shiver. "Would you like to get a nightcap at the bar?"

"I don’t like bars very much."

"I don’t either," he said with sincerity. "I have some Scotch in my cottage, though, right across the lawn."

She looked at him for a long second. "I think maybe the bar would be better this time."

As they turned from the lake, she smiled and took his arm. "I need a chance to practice up on my karate."

After the soft, cool lakefront, the bar was a shock, full of happy, noisy people, mostly in their fifties and sixties. Even the walls were crowded: elk, antelope, and deer heads peered down from every flat space with lustrous, ruminant eyes. There was a monstrous salmon over the bar and even a small bear, seemingly frozen in midstep with one foot raised as it was padding over the top of the upright piano.

They found a free table in a corner and sat down. The laughter and closeness had made them suddenly shy with each other, and they were still searching for something to talk about when Gideon’s brandy and Julie’s Grand Marnier came.

"I’m going to practice, you know," Julie said. "I intend to beat your rock-skimming record, even if my vertebrae are funny."

"It’s not that they’re funny," Gideon said brightly, working hard to reawaken the conversation, "it’s just that their relationship to the sternum…" He put down his brandy snifter abruptly. "Holy cow, do you know where your seventh thoracic vertebra is?"

"I’m not sure. Have I lost it?"

"No, I’m serious," he said. "It’s just about the middle of the back, at the thickest part of the rib cage."

"That’s fascinating, but I have the feeling I’m missing something."

"Julie, the seventh thoracic-the one the spear point was in-it’s here…" He groped over his right shoulder with his left hand, and under his left arm with his right hand, but he couldn’t reach it. "Let me palpate yours," he said, leaning toward her.

"Professor Oliver! Is that legal in a public place?"

"Damn it, Julie-"

"Yes, sir," she said quickly, putting down the liqueur and turning so he could reach her back.

His sure fingers quickly found the familiar prominence of the lowest cervical vertebra at the base of her neck, then the first thoracic, and the second. After that the back muscles made the spines harder to feel, but he worked his way carefully down, counting aloud, until he pressed the seventh.

"There!"

"Ouch."

"You see, it’s right in the middle of your thorax."

He took his hand from her spine and leaned back in his chair. "In order for a spear to penetrate the front of the seventh thoracic vertebra, it would have to enter here." He placed his middle finger in the center of his chest.

"That would smart, all right."

"Not for long. I’d be dead at once. But that’s not what I’m thinking of," he said, his eyes thoughtful.

She pushed his brandy across the table to him and waited for him to go on, her own eyes more serious now.

"Look," he said, his hand at his chest again, "that spear would have had to go through the thickest part of the sternum and probably cut through a couple of sternocostal ligaments. And that would have been after severing the pectoralis tendons."

He sipped his brandy without tasting it. His eyes looked inward, seeing the chest cavity behind his hand. "Then it would have gone through the middle of the heart, clean through the whole thing-and the heart is one hell of a tough hunk of muscle. And then after that-we won’t even consider the veins and nerves and esophagus-it penetrated nearly an inch into a living vertebra."