Curled in the Bed of Love (3 page)

Claire does not speak until they have rounded Tomales Point and returned to the predictable waters of the bay. “You knew what we were heading into. Your big ego. You just had to push your limits and see if you'd win the roll of the dice again.”

“I didn't think it would be so rough. And it's not about my big ego. Didn't you feel it out there? How small your will is, how irrelevant? Come on, listen to what your body's telling you now. That gorgeous kick of adrenaline.”

The fetid stink of the sea rises from Claire's clothes, heated to vapor by her body. If she weren't trapped in the kayak, she'd punch him. “There's nothing glorious about fear.”

“Liar.”

When they get back to the house after dropping off the rented kayak, its dented prow proof of the force they endured, Russell meets them in the entryway.

“Where were you?” he says. “You were supposed to be back hours ago. Dinner's ruined.” He stops abruptly, takes in Claire's still wet hair, their soggy clothes. “What happened?”

“We took a roll in the kayak,” Sam says.

“Sam had to have his thrill ride,” Claire says.

“Next time you want to screw around, leave her home,” Russell says.

For a moment, Claire thinks Russell might do something foolish, shove Sam's broad chest, take a swing at him.

But Russell is not by nature an angry man. He turns his attention to Claire.

“Better get out of those wet clothes. I don't want to risk you getting sick.”

Russell commands Claire to sit on the bench in the entryway. While Sam stands beside her, fumbling with his shoes and stripping off his wet clothes, Russell unties the wet laces of Claire's shoes, fumbling with the waterlogged knot. When her shoes are off, he peels her wet socks from her feet. He holds an arm out to her. “You need a hot shower.”

Claire declines his proffered arm. “I can manage on my own.”

She takes a long shower, but the pounding hot water does not dispel the cold that has congealed in her body. The jeans and shirt she should put on are too heavy a burden, a reminder of the weight that soaked into her when they rolled in the ocean. She puts on a dress instead, not bothering with a bra, and stands shivering a moment before grabbing a bulky sweater and heading downstairs.

Russell has set a pot of tea on the coffee table, and Sam is digging into the plate of bread and cheese beside it. Russell offers Claire a cup. “This will do you good.”

“I want a real drink,” Claire says. But they don't keep hard liquor in the house.

“If I fix you a drink, will you forgive me?” Sam says.

“Don't count on it.”

“Wait,” Sam says. “Just wait.”

He bangs around in the kitchen and brings back a loaded tray. On the coffee table he lays out everything he has collected for their drinking—cut limes, a bowl of salt, ice cubes, wide-rimmed glasses. He goes to his room and returns with a bottle of tequila that his father bought forty years ago, which Sam tells them he has been carrying around the world with him ever since his father died, the glass nearly opaque with age, the print on the label worn away by fingertips, the worm at the bottom hard as an acorn kernel.

Claire wets the rim of her glass with the lime, dips it in the bowl of salt until the rim glitters, then holds out her glass for Sam to fill with ice and tequila. Russell sticks with the tea. Until the drinks
begin to take effect on Sam and Claire, they remain silent. Then Sam casts off on another of his pet peeves. He's been writing an essay on wildlife management, the transformation of wilderness into parks, a word he practically spits.

“Look at Yosemite,” he says. “Paved trails, traffic jams, deer so tame you can walk right up to them, bears dependent on what they can scavenge from picnic coolers. Instead of limiting access, they're turning Yosemite into Disneyland.”

“It would be undemocratic to keep people out,” Russell says mildly. “People can learn to live within limits. They can be taught.”

Russell's impulse is to help even when he can't accomplish anything by it. And not only in the persistent effort of his work, testing the rigid laws case by case. When they happen upon a wounded bird at the beach, he'll wrap it in his jacket and move it to the shelter of a rock above the tide line. Inevitably, when they come back along the beach, they'll find the bird, its throat torn by vultures.

“We don't have natural limits,” Sam says. “Or we wouldn't have plundered our resources in the first place.”

Claire downs her first glass as quickly as she can, spends more time preparing the next glass than she did drinking the first. Memory lurks in the taste of the tequila, in the way her hand closes around the wide-bowled glass. For years she has spoken of her relationship with Sam with amused tolerance, another example of her foolhardy waste of herself. Now she recalls drinking with him in a room lit only by dusk, Sam kneeling beside her, lifting the heavy wash of her hair, murmuring her name. She's frightened: that touch, the pealing of her name, more real than her numb body is to her now.

She reaches again for the tequila bottle. The liquor warms her. She shrugs out of her sweater while Russell doggedly argues with Sam, well able to hold his own, having earned his convictions by living up to them for twenty years.

“What every national park needs is a good bouncer,” Sam says. “To turn back morons in
RVS
. To kick out the idiots who need
TV
sets in their campers.”

“But you'd get to go where you want,” Russell says. “No rules for you. Screw whatever happens as a result. Claire could have been hurt out there.”

Claire looks at the glass in her hand. When was the last time she threw something? She places the glass carefully on the table and gets up and steps out the back door. She has not been this drunk in years. The stars swim above her, refuse to stay in place. She's astonished that they can disappoint her in this way, when she has spent hours watching the night sky, enough hours to learn how slowly the Big Dipper sinks toward the horizon, how it never dips far enough to spill over.

Russell comes out onto the deck after her, her sweater in his hand.

“Come on,” he says. “We should go to bed.”

Russell didn't rescue her. She chose him after she'd made up her own mind to change. She twirls away from him, letting the dress billow out around her. Sam, standing in the doorway, applauds.

When Russell moves toward her, Claire stumbles down the steps of the deck and dances in the garden, her arms out to the night. She is so warm. She plucks at the buttons of her dress, peels back the cloth to expose her skin to the cool air.

“Claire, Claire,” Russell pleads.

She runs to escape him, feels as if she is floating over the grass. She remembers now how being drunk used to convince her of the grace of her body, how she never stumbled, never got sick, never banged into things. And something else comes to her belatedly: the awe that Sam promised her in the kayak and she denied. She feels wild with the knowledge of their dare, of the absolute moment when they were reeled under the water, when she did not have to ask herself,
Do I want to live?

Russell looms closer, a blur in the dark, and she runs from him again. Twigs and stones prick her feet, but the sharp sensation doesn't hurt. She moves flawlessly and silently through the tangle of their garden and down to the bluff while Russell blunders noisily somewhere above her.

She crouches on the bluff just below the writing shed. The night swells around her like a luxurious blanket, muffling the movement of the body that appears suddenly beside her. Sam claps a hand over her mouth to still her cry of surprise and draws her quickly into the shed, tugging her to the floor. She can still hear Russell, moving noisily back toward the house.

Sam offers her a sip from the glass of tequila in his hand. Her senses, elongated by alcohol, discern the prism shape and sharp taste of each crystal of salt dissolving on her tongue.

“I've been wanting you to put on a dress,” he says.

Smoothly, he slips her opened dress from her shoulders. The brush of his fingers against her skin shrinks her nipples to hard knots. He fishes the wedge of lime from his drink and runs it over her breasts, making her shiver. He leans over her to lick the taste from her.

It has been a long time since Claire felt desire. Her body feels full, as if the blood in her veins is holding still, pooling under Sam's touch.

He lowers his mouth to hers, his lips hard, his tongue seeking brutally in her mouth. His kisses, so unlike Russell's, demand a greedy response. As her hands roam over Sam's ribs, she shares with him astonishment at the strangeness of their contact—to have known each other's bodies so long ago is to have forgotten them.

But one hunger is kin to another and another, a span that knows no borders, and suddenly panic flutters in Claire's throat. She pushes up on her elbows, struggles to rise.

“I know,” Sam says. “We shouldn't. But we can.”

She raises her arm as a barrier. “No.”

He rolls to the side, watches her tug at the disarray of her dress. “You'll come back. Another time.”

She gets up and shuts the door, careful to let the latch click quietly, habit absurdly taking hold again.

She finds Russell sitting on the deck, waiting for her. She has a moment of hating him for his patient faithfulness. Then she sits beside him and curls her hand in his.

“If I could make it hurt you less,” Russell says.

In the dark she can't tell where the land ends and the bay begins. Still she can faintly smell brine on the wind, discern the tree-tufted spine of the Inverness Ridge against the sky, imagine the waves pounding brutally at the unprotected shore beyond. This same glorious, erratic creation took their child, without intention, without malice, even though her body feels the blow as aimed.

Russell says, “We'll try again. We still have time.”

The night loosens her, tugs her beyond the modest confines of reassurance. How still and solid darkness and the shapes it reconstitutes can seem, when below the surface the tectonic plates grind against each other with the accumulated force of sixty million years of yearning.

“I don't want to have to keep trying,” Claire says, and now she can hear the low rumble of an ancient abyss, split, straining to open beneath her once again.

I've forgotten how long I told them I'd circle the block before coming back for them. Now I'm stuck behind a truckthat's backing slowly into a driveway. I picture my customers standing on the corner looking bereft. Though they're more likely to be irritated, impatient, checking their watches to count off the minutes I've stolen from them, I prefer to imagine them as little lost lambs. Most people who rent a limo by the hour splurge only on a special occasion like a wedding or a prom night or a twenty-first birthday. They're usually so shy on finding themselves in the lap of luxury that I can't help wanting to give them their money's worth, hold doors open, provision them with champagne and fluted glasses, unfurl their umbrellas before they step out in the rain.

It's not like me to lose track of time. Probably I should make it a rule not to think about Linnie when I'm on the job. But we're at that point. Last night, my night off, she made me dinner at her apartment. Her best china, chicken stuffed with gooey cheese, lit candles on the table. After dinner we sat on the sofa to drink and talk, and she swarmed all over me, leaning against me when we kissed, running her hands up and down my chest, moving my
hands down to her hips. It was nice. But when it didn't go any further than that, I could feel her tightening up, and she said, “Aren't you attracted to me?” And then I wasn't hard anymore. We've been going out for three months, and Linnie wants to have sex and I can't, and when she finds that out, there'll be no more cuddling on the sofa.

The customers do not look too angry when I pull up to the curb. Older people like Mr. and Mrs. Lesser tend to be more civil. I jump out of the car to open the door for them, apologizing, waving my arm vaguely and offering the one word, “traffic,” as an excuse. I'm not sure how late I am, so I don't want to be too specific.

“We'd begun to wonder about you,” Mr. L. says. Mrs. L. just smiles at me. With these older couples, the gentleman usually handles complaints.

“I know,” I say gently.

“My wife left her coat in the car, and here she is, shaking like a leaf in this wind,” Mr. L. says. “And paying for the privilege.”

Mrs. L., her arms wrapped around her chest, truly does shake from cold. I reach into the car and get her jacket and put it over her shoulders. Still, she wraps her arms around herself, as if the cold has worked its way into her body and nothing will warm her now. I'm upset that I let her down. I want to wrap my arms around her, but she'd have a coronary if I did that. When I offer her my own jacket, I can tell by the way she looks at me that I've crossed the line.

I'm beginning to dread hurting these women almost as much as I dread confessing that I can't get it up. They think I'm such a catch—the women I end up with are slightly overweight like Linnie or gangly and bony, which makes them shy about taking off their clothes, which works to my advantage for a while—and they rush to blame themselves when I breakup with them. I wish I had an excuse that would absolve them as well as me.

When I get back behind the wheel, I apologize again. “It's not
like me to miss my cue,” I say. “I'll make up to you for that lost time, I promise.”

I hate it when people say the customer is always right, but what they really mean is the verbal equivalent of a shrug: let the idiots have their way. Mr. L. shells out all this money for a limousine, he expects something beyond transportation. The whole experience ought to reek of privilege: smooth driving, no cutting other drivers off or honking the horn, a stocked bar, helpful advice, some genuine concern when he has a particular need or wish.