Deceived (2 page)

Arty bounded up a couple of boulders, a T-shirted mountain goat. “Come on up,” he said. “You can see to forever.”

Liz said nothing. She sat and looked the other way. Not to forever. To the scrub brush about a hundred feet below.

“Honey?”

She didn’t answer. Let him sweat. Let him get it through his skull that he was being stupid.

She heard the clomp of his hiking boots descending.

If he tries to touch me now, she thought, it might get ugly.

He came around in a little semicircle and sat, facing her, on a rock.

“Sweetheart, please talk to me,” he said.

She looked at him now and saw, for a brief moment, the man she wanted him to be. Tan face, thick brown hair that sprang from his head like Hugh Grant’s. Blue eyes to die for. A package like that was supposed to have ambition, success, wealth — the winning ticket.

“What do you expect me to say?” Liz put on her cold stare.

“You could start with ‘I love you,’ ” he said, “and tell me how charming I am.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“Start with anything, then. Anything.”

“You want me to say anything?”

“Please.”

“You’ve changed,” she said. “I don’t like it.”

He was silent a long time. He passed his hand over the surface of the rock. He looked up. Finally, he said, “You’re right. I have changed. I thought you understood that.”

“I don’t understand,” Liz said. She rubbed her hands on her shorts as if an ant was crawling on them. “I don’t understand how someone can go from being one way to ending up a completely different person.”

“That’s the whole point,” he said. “He wouldn’t be much of a God if he didn’t change you.”

“Not your personality. Not the thing that makes you who you are. Made you who you
were
.”

“There’s a lot of the old me still here,” he said with a smile. “I just don’t think about the same things in the same way.”

“Do you think about me?”

“Of course I do. I’m committed to you.”

“Committed
.
Sounds so enthusiastic.”

“I mean it in the . . . best way.” He looked confused. Good.

“Then why’re you making it so hard on me?” Liz said.

“I’m not trying to make it hard on you. I just can’t go back to selling a product I don’t believe in. Just can’t do it.”

Arty wiped his face with his right hand, then kept it over his eyes for a moment. Like he was trying to hide.

Liz said, “Have you thought that having a lot of money enables you to do good? Like buy food for poor people or something? Or maybe buy a nice car for your wife once in a while? Isn’t that a good thing too?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I just can’t earn money from something that’s wrong.”

“What is wrong with a little entertainment?” Liz shouted
entertainment
, creating a small echo.

Arty didn’t even blink. “Bikini Blackjack Babes is not entertainment,” he said. “It’s just this side of pornography.”

“They don’t take their bikinis off, do they?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s the suggestion.”

“This is really freaking me out, this whole thing, this whole change. I really, really can’t stand it.”

She sighed to the sky. Arty had quit RumbleTV a week ago, even though he was pulling down six figures. And he had quit because of one little game they produced for cell phones. It was a
game
! People played this thing for
fun
!

But no. His “faith” would not allow him to continue with a company that made such things. His “conscience” was bothered. It kept him up at night. Well, she kept him up that night he told her. She gave him one big earful, oh yes.

You don’t know what it’s like to be poor! You do not have any idea.
You don’t know what it’s like to eat Hamburger Helper five nights in a
row
,
and maybe if you’re good, you get a Lemonhead for dessert. One
Lemonhead! You don’t know
,
so you go and blow a good thing. I hate you
for that!

Arty was hurt now. She could see it in his body language. The way his shoulders sagged as he got up and started climbing again. Running away. The old Arty would have stayed and fought.

Six figures! He threw that all away for what?

“Honey, come up here,” he called. “It’s beautiful.”

Oh please
,
please
,
please
,
shut up.

She did not go up. She went down. Down the rocks toward the scrub wedged in the hillside. It was thick down there. Maybe she could get lost. Maybe get Arty to come crying after her.

She almost fell. She cursed out loud. Loud enough so Arty could hear it. Loud and she took the stupid Lord’s name in vain — that’s what they used to say back home, anyway. If you said
God
except in prayer you were
taking the Lord’s name in vain.

What a stupid rule that was. Like what that skinny old man told her when she was a girl, about how there’s the saved and unsaved, redeemed and unredeemed, and you can’t change who’s who.
Saints
and ain’ts
the preacher said, his mouth turned down in tight-lipped emphasis.

Liz had known immediately which one she was in that old gasbag’s eyes.

“Watch out down there,” Arty called, concern etched in his voice.

Liz kept on. The rocks made a V a few yards away, a place where you could easily get stuck. Maybe if she went for it, Arty would follow her and get wedged in, and then she could slap him until he came to his senses.

Thanks. I needed that.

Yes, and then he’d wake up and think about
her
needs for a change. Wake up and get back to making money.

Wake up and be a man again.

Sure.

“Honey, please wait!”

She didn’t.

Keep moving.
That’s what Mama always said.

Keep moving so they don’t get you.

Keep moving or they’ll lay you out.

She kept moving, got to the V and thought for a moment what it would look like if Arty was really and truly in there.

And then she knew exactly what it would look like. Because she saw a body.

“Honey, what are you doing?”

“Shut up.” Liz said it without premeditation. Said it because she was going to control this situation. Arty would get all bothered and righteous about the body.

She needed time to think.

It was clear he was dead. She knew that without going down to see.

He was a motorcycle rider. His big, old Harley was on its side about ten feet from the body. His legs were bent and so was he. Like a pretzel of flesh and bone.

“Honey, are you coming back here or not?”

She ignored him and started to make her way down the rocks.

Let him try to follow, she thought. He can follow
me
now. He can bring up the rear if that’s what he wants. He can run away from life if he wants. I’m not going with him.

Keep moving.

Liz wasn’t the sure-footed goat Arty was, so she had to be careful. But as she quickened her pace she gained more confidence. Just before reaching the bottom of the — what was it? a gorge? — she felt like she could easily master these rocks. That she could jump and stride and go wherever she wanted.

She always knew she could master anything she put her mind to.

She reached the body. For a half-second she thought he might move. Maybe he wasn’t dead after all. Maybe he was just hurt and needed their help.

But there was no sign of breathing. She reached out to touch his arm. He was as still and cold as stone.

He was a big man, wearing the least amount of helmet allowable by law. A glorified skullcap. Didn’t do him any good, from the looks of things, because his neck was probably broken.

Face up he was, eyes open in death, skin the color of clamshells, a bit of dry tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t touch anything!”

Arty. His voice startled her. She turned. He was almost charging down the rocks.

Slip
,
will you?

“Is he alive?” Arty said.

“Does he look alive?” Liz spat the words like hot rivets. “Oh, that’s terrible.” Arty was now by her side. He looked up. “There’s a dirt path right over there. I’ve seen kids on bikes there, and it’s not good. He must have just gone right over. We need to call this in.”

“Wait a second,” Liz said. “We don’t even know who this guy is.”

“We don’t need to.”

“He’s not going anywhere, Arty.”

He looked at her like she was some strange creature he’d never seen before.

“I suppose we could look for an ID,” Arty said.

“Good,” she said. “You do that. Look in his pockets.”

“Yeah.”

He went to the body. Liz let him. She didn’t care one way or the other about the man. Who he was didn’t matter a bit. But the death was something different. Radically different. Beautifully different, in a way.

As Arty looked at the body, Liz checked the overturned Harley. A nice piece of machinery, with silver-studded black saddlebags.

Maybe the ID was in one of the bags.

“Don’t touch that,” Arty called.

She ignored him. She unbuckled the two straps on the up-facing bag, opened the flap, and bent over so she could look inside.

Some sacks, like stuffed gym socks, were inside. She fished one out. It was buff-colored canvas. She hefted it. It felt like a sack of marbles. It had a little zipper on top. She unzipped the bag.

“What is it?” Arty said.

“Get over here,” she said.

“You’re a young man,” Mrs. Axelrod said. “Why aren’t you married?”

Mac kept his head under the hood, pretending he didn’t hear. “Almost got it, Mrs. Axelrod.”

“How’s that?”

Good. Subject changed. Mac gave the wrench a final turn, then pulled out from under the iron shell. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. It was a scorcher today.

“Should fire right up,” Mac said. “You want to give it a try?”

“No, you go right ahead. But a young man like you should be married. Why aren’t — ”

“I’ll do ’er right now.” He went quickly to the driver’s seat of the ’95 Buick, put the key in, and started it up. He hoped his automotive triumph would distract Mrs. Axelrod from asking the question again.

“It’s fine now,” Mac said, getting out. “If it ever — ”

“Come up to the porch,” Mrs. Axelrod said, waving her cane toward the house. “Got something I want to talk to you about.”

“Can’t it wait, Mrs. Axelrod?” He always called her that. It seemed respectful to the oldest living member of the congregation. She was eighty-seven and therefore had a full fifty years on him. Calling her Edie just didn’t seem right.

“No, it can’t wait,” Mrs. Axelrod said, clipped and final. She’d have been a good prison guard. Give her a cane with an electric prod, and
zappo
. Even so, Mac liked her. She spoke her mind. You knew where you stood. She was short, plump, and colored her hair nut brown. She always wore dresses, which put her more than a little out of style in the laid-back canyon community.

Here, among ex-hippies, aging Baby Boomers, struggling artists, outlaw bikers, an assortment of young families — and ex-cons fighting to stay on the straight and narrow — Mrs. Edie Axelrod was almost like a queen.

She, along with her late husband, Elmer, had been one of two founding families of Pack Canyon Community Church. When she spoke, people at the church hopped to it. She did not abuse her position so much as assert it. She was the “keeper of the books,” Pastor Jon told Mac once. “The Energizer Cornerstone.”

And so, dutifully, Mac trudged to the front porch of the mini-Victorian that had been built in the 1930s.
Back then
— Mrs. Axelrod was fond of saying, almost as often as she saw you — Pack Canyon was little more than a couple of ranches and a notorious bordello for some of Hollywood’s sneaky male stars. The canyon still had a little of that frontier feel, though after the Boomers discovered it in the 1980s, it got a little more suburban.

The site of the bordello now housed the Pack Canyon Market. You could shop for food there. Maybe pick up a can of peaches in the very room Errol Flynn once favored. That’s the way store manager Henry Weinhouse liked to tell it, anyway.

Mrs. Axelrod had Mac sit in a wooden rocker. She sat in the other rocker next to a table. On the table was a pitcher of iced tea and two elegant, frosted glasses.

“Now then,” she said, pouring tea for both, “have you given any thought to your future?”

Future? He hardly had a present. “I’m just glad to be alive and living in Pack Canyon.”

“But where is your basket?” she said.

“Basket?”

Mrs. Axelrod tapped her cane on the wooden planks of the porch. “Mr. Axelrod always said a man should put all his eggs in one basket, then watch that basket!”

“Sounds like a wise man,” Mac said.

“I see a little Elmer in you.”

Mac took a swallow of iced tea. He didn’t know if he wanted any Elmer in him. He had enough trouble keeping Mac in check.

“Elmer was a man’s man,” Mrs. Axelrod said. “You don’t find many of those around anymore, sad to say. Lots of men going to the beauty parlor now. I remember when men started to wear earrings. Earrings!”