James Crumley - One to Count Cadence

"What were you doing in there? You know him?"

"Old friends," I said.

She walked into Morning's room, stayed longer than necessary, and when she came back, her sweet face was wrinkled in concern. Tiny white teeth chewed at her pale lips, and her hands held each other as if no one else had ever reached out for her.

"He's crying," she said, walking behind my chair but not pushing it yet. "He wouldn't answer me. He's just crying. What did you do?"

"I shot him," I said, but she wasn't listening.

"Why is he crying?"

"To hell with him," I said. "He enjoys crying. He's crazy about it. Leave him alone. He's bad medicine. Stay away from him." Once again she didn't listen, but she did push the chair down the hall. "You're lovely today, maiden."

"Huh?"

I grabbed the spokes and turned the chair out of her hands. "Listen to me," I said. "Is all of you going outside, or are you going to leave half of you in here?"

She took the hand I gestured with, held it with both of hers. "I'm sorry," she said. "But he looked so damned sad. Like a little boy whose dog was just run over. I felt so sorry for him."

"Yeah," I grunted.

"Yeah what?"

"Yeah nothing." I turned, pushed myself on toward the door.

"All right, Billy Goat Gruff," she whispered when she caught me. "Don't bite the milk of human kindness." She pushed me on out the door.

We rolled downhill through the golf course, uphill around the Nineteenth Hole Clubhouse, along the bluff past the Main Club. I took off the blue convalescent pajama top, lay my head back, and let the sun work on me. I kept my eyes closed until we were past the Main Club and into a stand of timber going uphill again on a graveled footpath.

"Where are we going, nurse? Physical therapy in your apartment?"

"Just shut up and help me push."

As we topped the small ridge, we came out on a clearing, a bowl-like depression circled by the ridge. In the center a miniature Greek theater had been built by some bored but imaginative airman, but the rocks were rough-hewn and it recalled something more pagan, Stonehenge maybe. Terraces stepped up the sides of the amphitheater, alternating stone and flower beds, rough stone, exotic flowers, sensual pinks, lush purples, velvet reds and blues, and pure whites. Abigail pushed me down one of the walkways to the bottom of the bowl and stopped next to the stage.

"You're pretty heavy, fellow. I'm not sure I can get you out of here," she said, wiping sweat from her forehead with a bare brown arm.

"You mean we're stranded here?"

"You're stranded here," she said. "I'm not." Then she laughed and ran away, circling the small stage once, then she flopped on the grass, then rolled on her back and stretched. "Isn't it lovely."

"Gaudy as a goddamned Christmas tree," I said.

"Don't be cute," she said. "Admit you're dizzy with beauty, you're stunned with color, knocked out by the air, enchanted with the sky, and madly in love with me."

"It's all right, I guess," I said, smiling.

"Quit that," she said. "I mean it." She sat up, propped her arms behind her, slipped her loafers off, and crossed her ankles. "You never admit anything," she said, not smiling. "Just say it's lovely. Just admit that much."

"It's okay; if you like that sort of shit."

"It's lovely. Admit that."

"Okay, so it's lovely," I said. "So what the hell. Gushing doesn't make it any more lovely."

"I didn't say gush," she said, tilting her head back. (I would have cut my leg off just to kiss her neck just then.) "I just said be honest and not cute and not cynical and admit what is."

"Come off it, lady."

She looked up at me, pouting playfully. "Please."

"No."

She looked down and away, trying to hide a really pouting mouth, and in a small quiet voice asked again, "Please."

"You don't give an inch," I said.

"Neither do you." She rose, pulled the blanket from behind my back and, in a very methodical medical manner, spread the blanket. With a nurse's hands, neutral, efficient, she helped me out of the chair and onto the blanket; then she sat in the chair, held her hands as a child does when she prays, and said, "What are you afraid of?"

"Jesus Christ," I said, nearly shouting. "This is the most beautiful place I've ever been. I'm stunned and enchanted and dizzy, assaulted by beauty, the beast in me is soothed by sky and sun, appeased by flowers, beset by madness, etc."

She said nothing for almost a minute, then, once again between folded hands, "You didn't say you loved me."

I started to shout, though what I never found out, but she giggled into her hands, stood up, fell beside me, kissed me, then lay her head on my chest.

"You idiot," I said, holding her against me. But I let her be silent too long.

"You didn't say you loved me, Jake," she said, her words muffled against my chest.

I waited, sighed familiarly, then said, "And I won't say it either. I don't believe in love, baby. I'll like you, respect you, and cleave unto you all of my days, but I don't believe in love. I told you that when this started."

"It didn't matter then," she whispered.

"Why not?"

She rolled over, kissed me again, then said, "I only loved you a little bit then. Now I want you to marry me." She blushed, then moved away, and lay face down on the blanket.

I went numb. "What in God's name for?"

"I knew when I saw your face in the sunshine. You need me; I want you. I get out in six months, and I want you to marry me."

"Just be quiet for a while, will you?"

She closed her eyes, and I lay on my back watching the peaceful white clouds fluff the blue sky.

Abigail had been, in her early years, what is commonly known as a town punch, though she was never as promiscuous as she was thought to be – not virtue, but a lack of able candidates, she was able to laugh now. She admitted that she earned the title. Only daughter of a fat merry high school principal and a thin nervous English teacher with a love for Gothic romances, Abigail grew up torn between the castle of eighteenth century love and the battering ram of nineteenth century virtue. Her maidenhead had burst, of its own accord, when she was fifteen, and she slept with twenty or more boys before she was eighteen – dry, senseless pilferings in the back seats of cars. Her reputation followed her the twenty-eight miles down Route 6 from Marengo to Iowa City, and she fell into the sad pattern of repeating old mistakes, until she fell in love. A boy just out of the Navy three years after Korea, a drunk at twenty-two, dated her because her roommate was busy, and because he was more interested in drinking than fucking, and because she enjoyed the same thing he enjoyed, namely sitting by the Iowa River with an icebox full of beer. He found the shy lovely girl under the reputation. He drank less; she fucked not at all; love.

She told him; he suggested that they refrain to refute her past. Three months of happiness, then in January he, drunk, stepped through an air hole in the ice covering the river; the body wasn't found until spring.

She said she spent her weekends parked up there, sitting in the car in the midst of crystal winter, cold blue snow and a pastel sky, cursing, cursing her sin and her untimely virtue. She had no shell to draw about her, but she made herself be careful. There had been a college boy, two pilots, a dentist, and nearly Gallard, but none of them had come to anything permanent.

When she told me I should marry her, I couldn't decide if the knot in my stomach was fear or love. I believe it was love, now, but I couldn't decide then. My life had too many loose strings, and I thought I'd best be about the business of tying them without knotting them. And I didn't believe in love or anything.

"Can you wait and not push?" I asked.

"Not forever," she said, looking up then moving beside me, "but for now." She kissed me, her lips cool on my face, but in only an instant we flamed together.