Anne Siddons - Fault Lines

“Lord, hasn’t it all come further than this?” I said, looking around the shed.

“Oh, sure. For one thing you can just get a PC that has an a-two board. That means analog-to-digital computer. You connect the seismometer to that. I’ve got one upstairs; I just ran the line out the window and down the leg of the tower and buried it underground till I got it out here. This stuff here is just because I wanted to, just because I could. I could have bought a geophone and saved myself a lot of tinkering; you can order them from several weird electronic catalogs in Texas. They use them there to look for trapped oil. Come to that, I could have just bought myself a seismograph, I guess. I haven’t spent much of the old man’s dough. But I got a kick out of doing it this way. Are you impressed?”

“I’m stunned. You mean you could really predict an earthquake with this stuff?”

“Not predict, exactly, but record action in the area, which helps to predict. Two years before the Loma Prieta a Stanford researcher set up a very sensitive instrument to measure low-frequency electromagnetic waves in the Santa Cruzes. He put it up near where the epicenter was, later. He was actually tracking submarines. For two years there was no big change, but then, a few months before the quake, he noticed a moderate change, and then hours before a really big jump. Of course he only noticed that after the quake, but it shows you that movement and waves can be monitored. What we can’t do, even with the best and newest stuff, is predict just when, or precisely where. I depend on my feet to do that. I don’t wear shoes much up here.”

“What else do you have?”

“You are hard to impress, aren’t you? Nothing, really, except some books and magazines. I’ve got Elementary Seismology , by the grand old man himself, Charles Richter. He published it in nineteen fifty-eight, and it’s still the bible for the profession. I’ve practically memorized chapter fifteen, Seismograph. Theory and Practice. I still read it for fun. I’ve got Peace of Mind in Earthquake Country . It mainly covers how to build structures to withstand quake motions. Most of the pros have it. Of course, Kobe showed us how much use that was. And I take a bunch of magazines that the U.S. Geological Survey puts out, and some other stuff. Want to curl up with one of them while I shower and change?”

“No,” I said. “I want to shower with you. I guess you mean that showerhead sticking out of the tower leg just above Curtis’s water bowl, don’t you? I want to take a long, no doubt bone-chilling shower with you, and then I want to go up and fix that damned bouillabaisse at last and put it on to simmer, and then I want”—and I reached over and pulled the band of his shorts away from his back and reached in and squeezed both his muscular buttocks—“then I want to see how many times in one day you can do it. Get cracking, T.C. We’ve miles to go before we sleep.”

“Merritt, I do believe I have created an insatiable sex monster. When are you going to get enough of it?”

“When the fat lady sings,” I leered, and ran back across the yard and turned the spitting, rusty stream of the shower on, and ducked under it. I was right. It was as cold as glacier water. We stayed under it only long enough to lather up with T.C.’s desiccated soap-on-a-rope, and then dried ourselves off vigorously and gratefully on the thin Fairmont towel that hung on a peg beside the soap. My skin was tingling as I ran up the ladder to the top of the tower, and the trapped heat in the glassed-in aerie felt good. Behind me, T.C. checked the answering machine again, found it still empty, and fetched a bottle of Glenlivet from a cubbyhole under his counter. He poured two healthy shots into the squat, heavy glasses of cloudy old crystal, and handed me one. He plopped himself on the bed with his, crossed his legs at the ankle, and propped his head on the piled pillows. He had not dressed after his shower, and except for the strip of white where his shorts usually were, he was red-brown all over, felted with glistening black hair, and, to me, a very beautiful and serviceable man.

“Cook, woman,” he said, sipping single malt. “Your reward will be lavish and long.”

“In hours or inches?” I said, dragging the bouillabaisse ingredients out of the crowded under-counter refrigerator. They still smelled sweet and briny. I thought we were safe.

“However you want it,” he said.

“Just like you said. Lavish and long. Real long.”

“How about an incentive, instead of a reward?” he said, and I turned to look at him, and saw that despite the cold shower, he was erect once more. I laughed with pure, greedy joy, deep in my throat.

“If I don’t get this stew on we’ll have to throw it out and order in. But by all means, hold that thought.”

“Do you know the one about the old earl whose manservant came in and found him with a hard-on for the first time in years, and said, ‘Do you want me to call her ladyship, m’lord?’ Well, the old earl said, ‘Her ladyship be blowed; ring for the car. I’m going to smuggle this one up to London.’ Tarry too long with that stuff and I’m going to take this one into Palo Alto.”

“What’s a few minutes to a bunch of fish?” I said, and went over to him and fitted myself down upon him, looking down at his brown face in the last of the sun.

“Mmmm,” I said, moving slightly, leaning back. “I’m powerfully empty without this. What would you think of a life cast?”

“About what I’d think of a board with a bearskin nailed to it and a hole punched through it,” he said, beginning to rock with me.

“What’s that?” I laughed, gasping through the laughter.

“The traditional refuge of the Hudson Bay trapper after months in the Arctic without a woman,” T.C. said, closing his eyes. “Slow, Merritt. Take it slow, my love…”

We ended up eating Brie omelettes, much later. The bouillabaisse boiled itself dry, and we did not notice until the reek of scorching metal filled the tower room.

The fat lady sang at 8:30 P.M.

We were lying together on the bed, propped up on pillows, loosely touching at shoulder and hip, and he was playing his guitar. Actually, he was accompanying Sunnyland Slim, who was rolling out Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me on a plinky old piano. It was one of T.C.’s oldest records, and he handled it as a knight errant might the Grail. He had been instructing me on the movement of the blues from Mississippi to Chicago, and we had gone through Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, and Walter Horton. I was absurdly happy. I loved the rich, wailing music; I loved the tall man who loved it too, and played it. I thought we might listen to it until the black mirror of the skylight grew pale, and then we would sleep. And tomorrow…tomorrow there would be more. Of everything.

When the phone rang I did not know what it was. T.C. stopped playing and sat very still. Sunnyland Slim went on plinking. Then T.C. got up and went slowly across the room to pick up the phone. On the way he pulled on his red-and-black checked shirt. It was that gesture that cut through my heart and down into my stomach. Only then did I realize that the phone had rung.

He stood with his back to me, leaning on one knuckled fist on the desk as he held the phone to his ear in the other.

“No need for that,” he said pleasantly. “She’s right here.”

I knew then that the days of gold were over. Whoever it was who sought me—Glynn, Laura, Pom, even Amy—it was that other woman who must answer.

“No,” I whispered aloud, tears of pure grief filling my eyes. “I’m not ready.”

He held the phone out, not looking at me, and I got up and pulled on my shorts and T-shirt and went slowly across the floor. I understood then his gesture with the shirt. Eden had been breached and we must now cover our nakedness.