Diamond Head (15 page)

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Authors: Charles Knief

BOOK: Diamond Head
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K
ate walked Yoshida to the door. I remained where I was, partly because they wanted to talk about me where I couldn't hear what they had to say and partly because it hurt too much to move. They stopped in her tiny kitchen and spoke quietly for a few minutes before he patted her shoulder and stumped out the door. I noted that before he left he took something from his pocket and handed it to Kate.
She set the double locks on the door and went into her bedroom, telling me that she needed a shower and a change of clothes. I sat in the easy chair and watched a rainsquall passing over the mountains, waiting for the rainbow I knew would follow, and listening to the sounds of the woman in her bathroom. It was a private and intimate scene, the kind of thing I'd seldom experienced. I kept my eyes on the mountains and my ears attuned to the sounds coming from the bathroom, appreciating for a time the softer things in life.
Kate returned from her shower and sat next to me, bringing a glass of wine for each of us. She handed me my keys. I weighed them in my palm.
“I've been forgiven of my sins?”
She nodded, smiling. “It would seem so.” She was wearing a pink silk robe over matching silk pajamas, like the ones they
used to wear in old movies. It made her look like a Polynesian Lauren Bacall. Her manner had transformed during Yoshida's visit. She'd become proprietary. It made me feel a little uncomfortable, yet I liked it.
I'm not used to being owned or having anyone even make the claim. I'm a single, not any part of a couple. It is difficult to remember a time when it's been any other way. I'd been attracted to Kate when I first met her and I thought she only tolerated my company in return. This was different.
“You really don't have anyone, do you?” she asked.
“No. I live alone. I work alone.”
“Never married?”
“Well …” I said, thinking this was not the time to drag out old lost loves.
“Go ahead,” said Kate. “Tell me about her.”
“Almost married,” I said. “I met a girl in junior high school and fell in love with her immediately. It was like I'd been hit with a lightning bolt. Her name was Jayne, with a y, and she suddenly became the only female that existed on the planet. Other girls seemed to be of a different species.”
“This was junior high school?”
“Classic case of first love. I was thirteen. She was twelve. She couldn't see anything good in me until high school so I carried the torch by myself. It didn't dim, either, and she eventually came around. Maybe I grew up a little. Maybe she saw through what I was on the surface and realized that I really loved her, I don't know, but we became a couple. We went together all through high school and college. Every year it was John and Jayne or Jayne and John. We were inseparable.
“This was the midsixties, you'll remember, although you might be too young to remember what those times were all about. It was a time of free love, drugs and attacking the establishment. We weren't like that. While other kids were taking their clothes off, smoking dope on street corners and protesting the war, we were planning for a future together, saving
our money and making plans for the house with the white picket fence, two children and a dog.
“We agreed that I'd graduate from college, join the navy and marry when I got out, or at least not until I was given a permanent duty station. We chose the navy because the Vietnam War was in full swing then and it seemed to be the safest branch of service available.
“I studied hard. I got straight As. Because of Jayne. I didn't want to let her down. I graduated and was accepted to ocs. I worked hard there to turn myself into the best officer possible. Because I grew up on the water I excelled at what the navy called basic seamanship, and I was a whiz at the books. It sounds as though I'm bragging but it was true. I applied myself harder than I'd ever applied myself before. I ranked third in my class and was closing in on the second spot, right behind an Eastern establishment type from Harvard.
“So it was difficult to understand why I was called to the commanding officer's office, pulled from morning inspection. Two marines all but arrested me and brought me to his office without any explanation.
“I was told, as politely and as gently as that kind of news could be told, that Jayne had been run down by a drunken driver in a crosswalk at six-thirty in the morning the day before. She'd been dead a whole day before anyone thought to notify me. The driver had been drinking all night and ran the red light because he said he didn't see it—the sun was in his eyes. He didn't see the young woman in the crosswalk, either. He had no explanation why he'd been driving seventy miles an hour in a twenty-five-mile zone.
“I was informed that I could be relieved of my duties at the school for a temporary pass to attend the funeral. The co told me that he'd see I was treated fairly. She wasn't immediate family, you see. Not yet. I believed him. He was a good man, and I sincerely believed that he would do as he promised, but there was nothing back home now for me to go to. Jayne was gone
and I was alone. I thanked him and told him I'd stay. He must have thought I was a cold bastard.
“It struck me that for that whole day after her death she'd still been alive to me, as alive as she'd ever been during our separation. I don't know what significance that had, but I wondered about it for years afterward. I finally decided it's always like that. Until you get confirmation, someone's still alive. So don't push confirmation. Avoid it at all cost.
“I graduated second in my class. Ahead of the Harvard guy and right behind a guy who'd been in the navy for years, who'd been a senior enlisted noncom before. Nobody came to my graduation.”
Kate looked at me strangely. “You didn't go to the funeral?”
“No. Funerals are only for those left behind. Even then I thought them too public. My parents were both dead. I had the grief, but I didn't have anyone to share it with. I held my own private ceremony for her. It's only important when you remember the person who has gone.”
“Have you been in love since?”
“In lust a couple of times.”
Kate's hands gently cradled my face, turning my gaze from the window until our noses were almost touching. I looked deeply into her eyes. “You've never told that story to anyone before, have you?”
“Nobody ever asked …”
She kissed my forehead and released me. My scalp tingled where she touched me. “You are a strange man, John Caine. Is that why you became a SEAL?”
“Yeah.”
“Because you wanted to test yourself?”
“Nothing like that. They were the best and I wanted to be the best.”
“You still love her.”
“I always will.”
Kate got up and refilled my glass. I didn't remember draining
it. She poured herself another, too, killing the bottle. “We haven't discussed sleeping arrangements,” she said, her voice husky. “Since you're the invalid you'll take the bed. It's comfortable and you'll sleep better there. I'll sleep on the couch.
“I get up every morning at five-thirty and I run for thirty minutes. While I'm gone you can shower. When I come back the bathroom is mine. All mine. For an hour. It's my time of the day. Coffee is on a timer. Any questions?”
“Thank you, Kate. This has been an unexpected surprise.”
“For what? Taking the lead out of your butt?”
“No,” I said, smiling. “For taking me in.”
She reached across the space between us and patted my hand. “I realized I could trust you. You're one of the few men I've known who hasn't lied to me, or who hasn't tried to use me or use my position. I haven't known you long, but I know you well. I trust you. And I guess I realized that we've been friends all along and I didn't know it.”
 
 
I
had a difficult time getting to sleep. I couldn't find a comfortable position in the bed. Any way I turned hurt something. But it wasn't because of my injuries alone. Thoughts of Kate on her couch intruded. Memory of her touch lingered. I replayed the views I'd had of her face in profile. I recalled every word of our conversation. Eventually I drifted off, dreaming of pink silk pajamas.
I woke as weight was applied to the mattress, still in the dream I was having just before waking. Kate, dressed in pink silk, had been trying to tell me something. I couldn't understand what she wanted no matter how much I tried. We were both frustrated. I opened my eyes.
Kate, minus the pink pajamas, was crouched beside the bed. In the light-shadowed darkness I saw her breasts sway sweetly as she leaned over to open the covers.
I was in the middle of the bed, deep in the valley Kate's body had made from her single nights on the old mattress. I rolled to one side, accepting her embrace.
“Does this hurt?” she asked, touching me.
“Yes,” I said. “Don't stop.”
“Don't make anything out of this, okay?”
I looked at her face. It was lovely to watch her eyes looking
back into mine. I never thought I'd see that look again on any woman's face.
“Sure,” I said. “It means nothing.”
Her hands explored my skin, skirting the wounds and the welts. I let her take the lead, allowing her anything she wanted. Her touch was gentle, as if she were afraid I might break. Ignoring the pain was not difficult. Most of it came from the welts and was of no consequence. I concentrated on the pleasure of touching another human being, a sensation lost for so long I'd nearly forgotten what it was like.
She became more demanding and I responded. This first time can be a clumsy affair, seldom satisfying to either party, but it wasn't that way for us. There was no urgency to join as we found the little places to linger. The longer we delayed, the better the anticipation.
Neither of us worried about my injuries.
She directed us, made me lie on my back and mounted me. The soft, sliding pleasure of it brought both of us to the brink, caused her to stiffen, then soften again. I looked up at her face, beautiful now that all protection had fallen. Tears were silently flowing down her cheeks. I held her as she began rocking to her own drumbeat, dancing to that most ancient of rhythms.
She stepped up the tempo of her dance, racing something inside of her, reaching for and finally grasping what she had been chasing. I followed, allowing her the freedom to take us wherever she wanted to go.
She collapsed on top of me. She felt me still inside of her and understood at once that I hadn't followed her over the edge.
She smiled. It was the mischievous grin I'd seen before.
“Nice guys finish last, huh?”
“Something like that,” I said.
We rolled over as one, face to face, and moving inside of her I found myself hypnotized by her eyes. Our mouths came together, mirroring that other joining. Now I followed my own
path and Kate found the rhythm and followed. This time we arrived at the same place at the same time. I made it a point to look into her eyes when it happened, watching her face. It increased my pleasure to watch her pleasure.
Icing on the cake.
Afterward we lay together, still joined. Her arms reached around me, holding me tightly to her as if I would float away if she didn't hold me down. I held her head, stroking her fine black hair, still watching her face. It made me think of rainbows. I am a confessed rainbow junkie. Each one is different, and I could stand and watch the brilliant pastels for hours if they'd last. I get a foolish smile on my face when I look at them. I felt the same way about Kate's face. It made me feel peaceful and happy.
She stiffened and released me.
“My God, doesn't that hurt?”
“What?”
“Touching your skin?”
I thought about it. I hadn't been aware of any pain. Now that she mentioned it, there was some, but it wasn't much. “Nothing that's not worth what I'm getting in return.”
She hugged me again. Gently.
“You're a very strange man,” she said again. “You're smart, smart enough to be president of General Motors. Yet you live out here and do nothing.”
“I never could have been president of General Motors,” I said. “They wouldn't have me and I wouldn't want them. I'm too independent and I can't eat that much shit or kiss that much ass. Jayne has nothing to do with what I do now. And what I do is not nothing. Long ago I decided there had to be someone who will not bend over and take it. There had to be someone people can turn to for justice when all other routes have been closed to them. Someone not connected to the bureaucratic machinery that inhibits it.”
Still inside of Kate, I brushed the hair from her eyes.
“You make it sound so noble,” she said. “Yet you described yourself as a retriever.”
“Some parts of it are noble. Most of it is not.”
“What happened to the man who killed her?” Kate's eyes bored into mine. I was keenly aware of her skills, and just as aware that we were still physically connected to each other. This was neither a time nor a place for sliding the truth.
“He died,” I said.
She stared at me, expecting more.
“What did the courts do?”
“Gave him a suspended sentence. He was a thirty-year man in the navy, a senior chief. He'd been through World War Two and Korea. They didn't want to ruin his career.”
The silence built. Kate could put two and two together faster than most.
“You killed him,” she said after a while, her voice a quiet indictment.
“You don't want to know.”
“There's no statute of limitations—”
“Don't ask questions of me if you don't want to know the answers. I′ll tell you everything.”
“I have to know, John.”
I kissed her eyes. Tears trickled from their corners. I licked the tear tracks, tasting her salt.
“You know. That's enough.”
She nodded and held me tightly to her, and wept.
 
Sometime in the night we found each other again, our bodies melding together as if we had been lovers for years and not hours. I took the lead this time, waiting for Kate to find her source of joy once, twice, three times before I shifted our bodies so we could come together. And we did, bodies clasped, two
organic machines in harmonic rhythm, two sets of eyes fixed upon the other, two hungry mouths responding to identical needs. I spent myself into her as she writhed against me, calling my name through the kiss.
We didn't talk afterward. Kate nestled inside my arms, protected from the world by my body. My face was buried against her hair. I finally fell off the end of the world smelling her scent, feeling no pain at all. Of any kind.

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