Perri O'Shaughnessy - Presumption Of Death

“So what?” David said.

“We can’t keep volunteers who don’t care.”

“I’m thinking about building my own observatory.” But even Ray knew he wouldn’t. That would take an independent, motivated person, unlike David, who didn’t like doing things on his own.

David also knew that Ray didn’t like telling him what to do, because David had given MIRA over a hundred thousand dollars. All David asked for was access to the scopes.

For two years now he had watched the stars, bolstered by his connection to the universe, pretending to participate in the work. David didn’t care about the work. He just liked watching through the scope, falling into that endless blackness. They wouldn’t kick him out. He knew it and so did Ray.

David’s money had bought him salvation here, as it had brought him Britta at home.

The affairs she heaped on him didn’t matter. He understood and accepted her as you should accept a force of nature. Audacious, untamable, reckless, she burst into his life, a hot star-forming nursery at the center of his desolate universe. She threw her colorful clothes on the floor, onto the living-room chairs; she smelled of B.O. and perfume. She kept the air ionized with her angry chatter. She was very angry that he had made her move to Carmel Valley, land of hicks, but she did what he told her. He had the money, it was that simple.

He viewed her behavior with dispassion, because he viewed all natural things that way. That didn’t mean he didn’t have feelings. It didn’t mean he didn’t have passion for her and didn’t get jealous. He just recognized his emotions for what they were, impulses of the organism, and rejected them because he chose to tap into detachment.

After Sam had come Danny; perhaps Sam would come again-so what?

What mattered, the one thing he demanded of her, was that Britta had to sleep with him every night. Sleep, lay her head next to his and breathe next to him and dream. She had to allow him to grasp her hot body in the night, allow him to hold her by her solid hips, let him press his face against her backbone. Because without her, all that would be left would be the void.

His eye caressed the nebula. Pink, pulsing, living light came to him. Closing his eyes, he opened his mouth slightly and relaxed his face, as if the computer screen could allow him to bask in the heat he saw.

“Phone,” Ray said, yanking him back. He handed it to David.

“Britta?”

But it wasn’t Britta on the phone.

Ted came in from putting away the bicycles in the garage as Megan finished spritzing the salad with balsamic vinegar. They both still wore the black spandex shorts and tight shirts from the long bicycle tour they had taken that day-fifty miles along the foggy coast, dodging cars, pouring it on on the uphills, letting it all go on the downhills. They had had a long leg-stiffening trip home and she couldn’t believe the clock-after midnight! Oh, well, tomorrow was Wednesday. They could sleep and sleep. Neither of them was a rat-racer anymore.

“Pont Neuf,” she said, pointing to the glass of wine awaiting him. “For our fashionably late supper.”

“Good choice.” He took off his shoes and socks. Even his veins were carved; his legs looked like they had wires wound around them. Massaging his calf with one hand, Ted went on, “We were so fast at the Point Sur curve I thought we’d fly off the road.”

“Incredibly cool,” Megan agreed. She set cold shrimp on ice and shrimp sauce in front of him and sat down at the table, lit by candlelight. They both dug in and in five minutes the meal was over. Following the habit they had built up over their six years together, they went out in back to the hot tub, stripped, and stretched out in the hot water for a few minutes.

Then they went back inside. Megan lay down on the massage table in the bedroom. Ted dribbled warm oil on her, all down her back and the glutes and the thighs, and began stroking her with his long strokes, his strong arms smoothing her muscles. She relaxed fully, knowing he appreciated the tight muscles along the back of her thighs, where his hands moved now. He moved down to her ankles and feet, rubbing her big toes with his fingers, while she gave out low appreciative noises, started getting drowsy.

“Now you,” she said.

“Such a good day.” He lay down on his stomach on a fresh towel and she leaned over him, slick with oil, and rubbed him into as close as Ted could ever get to relaxation.

“Ted?”

“Mmm-hmm?” he said sleepily.

“Did you set those fires?”

His eyes didn’t open.

“I wouldn’t tell,” Megan said. “Remember a long time ago when we were talking in bed and you told me about-”

“I was a kid. It was hormones. Nobody died.”

“But you said you got off on the fires.”

“So?”

“I’ve been wondering. How come you’re not interested in me lately.” His back went stiff again.

He said, “I don’t want to talk about this. I was enjoying myself. You think I would be part of anything that caused someone to die?”

“Ted, that’s such an interesting way not to answer me. You know, I saw you looking at Danny one time, and I thought maybe… I thought maybe you might be bi. It’s perfectly fine to be bi, you know? I’m an accepting person.”

“So I’m bi and set fires and I killed Danny?” Ted’s muscles had hardened even more under her hand. He sat up and put his hand around her slippery neck. “What is this crap?”

She was suffocating. His hand was a vise.

“S-sorry,” she said.

“Get this, Megan. I am not bi.”

“Okay. I was wrong.” He took his hand away.

“What crap,” he said. “Ruining such a nice day. Hey. Listen. It’s my cell phone in the kitchen.”

He ran for it. When he came back into the bedroom, he got dressed again.

“I have to go out, one of the neighbors thinks she saw a prowler.” He hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that to you.”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it,” Megan said from the bed, but he was already gone.

On the corner of Siesta Court nearest Rosie’s Bridge, George and Jolene had been in bed for hours, but George couldn’t get to sleep. His feet didn’t hurt.

That was the problem. His feet didn’t hurt because he couldn’t feel them anymore.

He had knocked his left foot against the bathtub that morning and in spite of Jolene taking him to the doctor, it was going to ulcerate, he knew it. He opened one eye and looked at the clock on the bedstand. Midnight.

Not everybody gets to know what their death will be before it happens. His death was going to blind him and kill him off piece by piece. His dad had died of diabetes at forty-eight. They could keep you alive pretty near to a normal life span now. How old am I, sixty-three or sixty-four, he thought, and didn’t want to remember.

The main thing was how to leave Jolene enough money to raise the little girls properly, like ladies. Jolene never had asked for anything else but she wanted this, did she ever. They had some money in a bank account George had never told Jolene about, but it wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t keep them for a year. It wasn’t nothing the way prices of gas and clothes and food kept going up and up. Might as well just throw that money out the window.

Throw it out the window and let it catch on fire in the night and burn something that needed burning.

Out back, all that useless land covered with live oak, and he couldn’t even sell it because these damn yuppies came in and got theirs and then fought to keep him from getting his. It stung like fury. Here they were developing across the river, wanting to rip down the trees, stealing his views along with his peace of mind.

Had the fire stopped them? Maybe it was too early to tell. He had walked up there, in the meadowy area between the river and the handicapped place, before supper. They didn’t seem to be rebuilding the model home that burnt, not yet, and the land sure looked ugly where it burned.