T. Boyle - The Harder They Come

“Toughens you,” he said, though he wouldn’t look into her eyes.

“I was just going to get up and put on a jacket — what about you, Christa? You cold?”

But then Adam was talking, a miracle, as if a stone had cracked open and become fluent. “Colter wasn’t cold. Colter was butt-ass naked when they chased him — and that river he jumped into? That river was like ice.”

Christabel was just staring, running her eyes all over him, and she had that little smirk on her face. “Uh-uh,” she said, “I’m not cold,” and then, to Adam: “So you’re a nudist, huh? Sara never told me or I wouldn’t have bothered with all these clothes myself. Here,” she said, and she actually reached down, arched her back and worked the spandex top up and over her shoulders, pausing there a moment before pulling it over her head and balling it up on the table in front of her. She was wearing a black lace brassiere underneath and she was all gooseflesh too.

“Oh, come on, grow up, the two of you.” Sara was sitting there clinging to her wine glass, not upset, not yet, but maybe something less than amused. A whole lot less.

“You said you wanted to show me off,” Adam said in an even voice, and then he was rising from the chair so you could see all of him, cock, balls, pubic hair, everything. “Isn’t that right, Sara?”

All she could think to say was “Not at the table” and she was going to add that his mother must not have taught him any manners at all, making a joke of it, but checked herself — she didn’t want to provoke him because you never could tell what he was going to do next.

It wouldn’t have mattered because in the next moment Adam was gone — present, but gone, veering off into one of his reveries or spells or whatever you wanted to call it — his gaze focused on a point over Christabel’s head, on nothing, and his voice took on a weird metallic timbre as if there were a microphone stuck in his throat: “Party on down,” he said, echoing her, mocking her. “How about a threesome? You ladies up for a threesome?”

That seized her up, all right. She was no prude, but this was just him pushing her buttons to see how far he could go. He was still posed there, staring off into space, but now he was getting hard by degrees, click, click, click, and she couldn’t have that, not in front of Christabel, so she did the first thing that came to mind — she took up one of the grandmother’s antique-gold linen napkins and snapped it at him, right there, right where it hurt most, and what did Christabel do? She just burst out with a laugh.

Okay. Fine. But Adam got the message, both hands shooting to his groin, and then he sat down, wrapped the towel back around him, and without another word put his head down and began to eat. Christabel watched him a minute — fork to mouth, his jaws grinding — then let out a hoot and said, “What fun!”, shook out her top and pulled it back over her head, though it didn’t do her sprayed-up hair any good. And herself? She laughed too, couldn’t help it, and in the next moment, as the sky pulled down and the bats shot out of the trees to explode overhead, they were all three of them laughing to beat the band, and when they were done with dinner they went on into the house and built a fire and sat around it, watching the flames leap up the chimney and holding tight to their wine glasses until at some point, Adam, still wrapped in the towel, got up and slipped out the door and into the night.

IT WAS THE MIDDLE of the second week when she began to wake up to reality, at least that portion of it that had to do with money and earning a living. She’d had two jobs the week before, one all the way up in Redwood Valley, which would have been no problem if she’d been at home because that was practically in the neighborhood, and the other down in Navarro, at the winery there, where she saw to the owners’ horses on a regular basis, but that meant burning up gas and since she didn’t want to use her credit card — they could trace it — she had to use cash and her cash was running low. Most of her income, the lion’s share (or horse’s share, actually), came from her trade and the connections she’d made over the years, but she relied on subbing to supplement it and school was still out for the summer. And even if it wasn’t, how could they call her if she wasn’t home?

To complicate things, she didn’t have her calendar — or most of her clients’ numbers either, aside from the few she’d kept on the card double-folded in her wallet — and she was sure she must be missing appointments. For the past three mornings now she’d awakened with a jolt from dreams of fucking up, of being late, lost, unable to get where she was going in the hazy geography of dreamland that was clogged with wrong turns and the butts of horses galloping steadily away from her. That made her nervous. Irritable. She’d even snapped at Adam over breakfast when he started going on about Colter. “ Colter, ” she’d spat, slapping the flat of her hand down on the counter, “fucking Colter! I’ve only heard it like ten thousand times.”

He was sitting at the table, forking up French toast, and he shot her a look that should have warned her off, three parts hurt and one part pure slingshot rage.

“Can’t you ever talk about anything else? Like what you’re doing out there in the woods all day long? Huh? Like what you’re growing ?”

What happened to the plate he was eating from, his grandmother’s china plate with the rose-cluster design on it? Up against the wall, syrup and all, and then down on the floor, in pieces. And Adam? He looked hate at her, then bulled right by her, and if she lost her balance and slammed against the kitchen cabinet it was nothing to him because he was snatching up his pack and jerking the rifle over his shoulder and then he was over the wall and gone without a word.

So she was sitting there in the kitchen in the aftermath of all this, brooding over things, Kutya licking the scraps off the floor and the sun trapped in the morning fog, which had managed to reach this far up just to depress her further, when it came to her that what she needed was to get into her house, whether they were watching it or not. She needed her calendar, where she’d always been careful to write out her appointments under the date, along with phone numbers, and in the case of word-of-mouth referrals, addresses. And she could use some clothes, having packed hastily to say the least. She was bored with what she was wearing — boots, jeans and the same two tops, in rotation — and figured Adam must be too. She hardly ever wore a dress, but she had half a closetful, including a cute yellow sundress with a scoop neck that still fit her in all the right places. Maybe Adam would like to see her in that, just for a change, to spice things up. And here she went off into an erotic daydream, him sitting there on the couch with the towel wrapped around him, already hard, and her coming across the room to climb atop him and lift the skirt up so he could see she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. .

It didn’t take her long to convince herself that they wouldn’t be watching her house. She was too small-time. She hadn’t killed anybody, had she? And she told them she was quarantining the dog, though it was just plain stupid because anybody could see he didn’t have rabies and what was a little scratch on some scrawny lady trooper’s hand? A quick raid on her own house, that was what she was thinking. But not in daylight — it might be totally paranoid to think they were watching the place twenty-four/seven, but it was very much in the realm of possibility that they’d send a patrol car by once in a while just to see if there was a vehicle in the driveway. No, she’d go at night. Tonight. Late. Adam would love the idea because here was another chance to stick it to them, and all at once she was replaying the scene at the animal shelter, how her blood had raced, beating like a drum circle, and how the two of them had laughed in the car as they rolled down the highway free and clear, laughed till they were gasping for air and she put a hand on his thigh and asked him if he wanted to party and he did. Oh yes, he did. With gusto. And the party was still going on.