Fabulous Creature (6 page)

“Well, actually, I’m here on business.” Better and better!

“On business?”

“Yeah. I’m on a stake-out.” And then it happened—a line that even Max would have been proud of. “Actually, I’m from the FBI, and I’m keeping an eye on someone on the most wanted list.” He even managed to raise an eyebrow when he said “most wanted.”

Diane giggled, and a minute later she asked him to walk home with her.

While the line about the FBI was probably the highpoint, conversationwise, things continued to go well. When she asked him why he was taking off his glasses, he explained that he didn’t wear them very often—only when there was something
really
worth watching—and she giggled again. Later he offered to carry her beach bag and she refused on women’s lib grounds, and he insisted and tried to grab it, which led to some very exciting chasing and pushing and shoving. Eventually she put the bag behind her back so he had to put both arms around her to try to reach it, and at that point something more might have happened, except that they were in front of the Jarretts’ cabin by then and all of a sudden a deep male voice called, “Diane.” When James recovered from almost doing a back flip, he saw that the person who had yelled was a man who was sitting in a lounge chair on the bottom deck, smoking a pipe. Obviously it was Diane’s father, and of course James had to go up and be introduced.

Actually, he wasn’t too nervous about meeting Hank Jarrett, because all of his life he’d been good with adults. A lot better, in fact, than he sometimes was with people his own age—a situation which can result from growing up in a relatively adult environment. But Diane’s father turned out to be a slightly different proposition. For one thing, Hank Jarrett talked mostly about three subjects, in none of which James had any particular expertise: building shopping centers, killing things and winning trophies. But there was more to it than that. The usual conversation gears just didn’t seem to mesh. The whole process, question-answer, give-take, didn’t seem to apply.

Right after Diane introduced James and said he’d walked up with her from diving class, her father said, “Diving class. What do you think of Fraser? Good coach, isn’t he?”

“Fraser?” James had no idea who Fraser was.

“That Clifton woman,” Jarrett went on without noticing James’ confusion, “didn’t know beans about coaching advanced divers. Can’t think why Mitchell hired her. Okay as a swimming coach, I guess, for the kids just starting out, but out of the question for divers of Di’s caliber. When I found out about her, I hit the ceiling. Got Mitchell to do something about the situation. Kids with an investment like our Di’s,” he put an arm across Diane’s shoulders, “years of training and practice, can’t be expected to go all summer without proper instruction.”

Having deduced that Fraser was the diving coach, and still assuming that he was being conversed with, since Jarrett was continuing to look in his general direction, James felt called upon to respond. “I’m afraid I’m not much of an authority on—” he began before Jarrett interrupted.

“Don’t need to be an authority as long as you give it all you’ve got. Get in there and give it all you’ve got. Right Di? That’s what our Di does, and that’s what counts. Isn’t that right?” Hank Jarrett’s lean, firm face was creased into a lean, firm smile. “You taking part in the Sacramento meet next week, Fielding?”

“No, I’m not—” James would have gone on to explain that he wasn’t a swimmer and that he had only been a spectator and not a participant in Diane’s class, but somehow before he’d managed to get the misconception cleared up, he was being taken in to see Diane’s diving trophies and from there to look at trophies of other types, including all the animal parts that Diane had already introduced him to.

The next fifteen minutes or so of conversation consisted of a lot of unilateral comments on the joys of hunting in general, on specific thrills occasioned by the deaths of several of the room decorations and with the relative merits of various body parts as far as their record book standings were concerned. Meanwhile, Diane was tagging along, poking James now and then and making funny commiserating faces behind her father’s back, which made it even harder for James to keep his mind on the information he was receiving. He learned with varying degrees of attentiveness that the polar bear didn’t quite make the book, that the elk had been within a few points of establishing a record, and that five of the large assortment of deer had nearly made it, but not quite. The whole roomful, it seemed, had died in vain. It was a sobering thought.

“Diane got this beauty when she was only thirteen years old,” Jarrett was going on. “Handled herself like a veteran. I started her out on a twenty-two when she wasn’t much more than a baby, and she took to it like a duck to water. A real natural with firearms, this girl.”

Diane pantomimed a two-fisted quick draw and ka-pow at her father’s back, and James looked away quickly to keep from grinning.

Mr. Jarrett was pointing up at a head with exceptionally large antlers. “My own personal record is this old bruiser,” he said. “Nailed him just a few miles from here five years ago. Just look at that spread. That’s almost twenty-five inches. And eight points is very unusual in this day and age, let me tell you.”

James counted the points. He was quite sure his stag had a lot more although he’d never actually counted them, not realizing the precise number was of any special significance. Right about then he was distracted by a particularly intimate poke from Diane, and while he was still trying to recover, the phone rang. Hank Jarrett excused himself and hurried upstairs.

Diane sat down on one of the leather couches, and James collapsed beside her. She was sitting with her feet tucked under her and her back held very straight, so that the print on the front of her tee shirt was very prominent—and only inches away from his shoulder. Today her shirt was blue with large black print that said, “Don’t Touch Me.”

“Let’s see,” she giggled. “Where were we when we were so rudely interrupted?”

“Well,” James said, “you had your bag behind you, and I was trying to get it.”

“Like this?” She put both hands behind her back, which further accentuated the topography under the printed message. James leaned toward her and put both hands around to where the bag had been, which of course resulted in pressing his own chest against the message and bringing his lips to within a couple of inches of hers. For the space of two or three very pronounced heartbeats, he waited to see if she was going to pull away, but she didn’t, and a moment later he leaned a little more and their lips touched. Her lips were warm and soft and a little bit moist and they moved a little under his. It was very electrifying, and it would have been even more so if he hadn’t been slightly distracted by wondering if he was doing it right and if she could tell that he hadn’t done it very often.

After a few seconds she pulled away. But she didn’t pull very far away, and unlike Heather Rubenstein, she didn’t ask him why he had wanted to do that. Instead she only smiled at him in that half-teasing, half-inviting way, and he was just leaning forward again when he became aware of a very disturbing noise:
whirr-thud, whirr-thud, whirr-thud.
It sounded a lot like a golf ball rolling down stairs, and unfortunately that was exactly what it turned out to be. The ball reached the floor and rolled across the room into a corner, and a moment later Jacky came into view at the turn of the stairs. James got up quickly and went to stand with his back to a wall. Diane stayed on the couch, but she turned so that she was able to keep her eyes on her brother, too. Jacky followed the ball into the corner, picked it up and came back across the room. He stared at James, and James stared back. The frown was familiar.

“You’d better come back over here,” Diane said. “If he misses you there, he might hit the picture window.”

“Don’t worry,” James said. “I doubt if he’ll miss.”

But Jacky seemed to be in a particularly benevolent mood. After glaring at James for several seconds, he toddled over and glared at Diane, all the time passing the golf ball back and forth between his fat little hands, but not making any attempt to throw it. He had turned around and was headed back toward the stairs when he suddenly detoured toward Diane’s beach bag, snatched out her bathing suit and increased his pace to a trot. Diane leaped to her feet and over the back of the couch in one swift, sinuous movement, raced after Jacky and snatched the suit away. Even then, although Jacky cocked his arm at her, he didn’t actually throw the ball. Instead he only stomped up the stairs, turning to glare down at them every few steps.

Diane put her suit back in the bag and put it on top of the wet bar. “Yesterday he flushed one of my suits down the toilet,” she said. “The little creep.”

“I hope it wasn’t the pink one,” James said. “I really like that one.”

“Do you?” She made her eyes innocently round as if she couldn’t imagine why anyone would notice her in a few old scraps of silky pink. “No. It wasn’t that one.” She sat back and patted the couch beside her. James was on his way toward her when the golf ball started down the stairs again. That was the way things went for the next half-hour. Just when things began to get interesting, the golf ball would start down the stairs, followed by Jacky. The mood was pretty much spoiled because, even though Diane seemed to be able to ignore Jacky’s presence, at times James found that he couldn’t. It was impossible to concentrate on what was in front of him—even when it was Diane—when the back of him was expecting to be golf-balled at any moment. At last Diane got up off the couch and said impatiently, “Look. I’m starving. Why don’t we go upstairs and get something to eat.”

But there were problems upstairs, too. In a little room just off the kitchen, which seemed to be a kind of office, Hank Jarrett was still on the phone and sounding disconcertingly threatening. All the time Diane was getting out various kinds of edibles, her father’s voice was bouncing off the quarry tiles and double-glazed windows and echoing back from the interiors of the rustic cabinets. Under cover of the roar, Diane asked, “Want some chips?”

“Sure. Thanks.” Charlotte, who had a thing about empty calories, wouldn’t approve, but if they’d done Diane any physical damage, it surely wasn’t evident.

“—and tell that fathead Meyer, I’m prepared to sue his ass off—” echoed around them as they nibbled on potato chips and stared into each other’s eyes. “Cheese bits?” Diane whispered.

“Why not?” James whispered back.

“And Steve. You get that information to Dunc before you go home. You hear me. It has to be today. Keep calling the office, and try the club. Try the goddamn club every fifteen minutes.”

“He’s talking to his lawyer,” Diane said. “He usually yells when he’s talking to his lawyer.”

It didn’t seem to bother Diane at all, but James found the whole scene a little unnerving. When Hank Jarrett finally came out of his office, his expression seemed strangely familiar. James found himself checking for a golf ball. Of course, there wasn’t any, but James decided not to risk outstaying his welcome, anyway. So he thanked Diane and Mr. Jarrett for their hospitality and headed for home.

Diane walked with him to the end of the drive. When they got to the road, she stopped and leaned back against a tree—on the side away from the house. That time the kiss lasted a long time.

On the way home James made two important decisions. The first one was that he was probably in love, and the second one was that he was going to stop telling Max about Diane. At least he was going to stop telling him everything. It had been all right to make humorous daily reports when the whole thing had been only a part of the Don Juan Project—but now that his relationship with Diane had turned into something much more significant, the reports would have to end.

Thinking back over the letter he’d written to Max after he first met Diane that day on the beach, and even the one he’d written only last night, he felt a little bit disloyal. The thing was he’d been a bit sarcastic about Diane’s enthusiasm for guns and hunting. In fact, he’d actually gone so far as to make a crack about dangerous romances and how he was developing a fellow feeling for the males of certain other species, such as the black widow spider, doomed by their biological urges to lethal pursuits. He saw now that the crack had probably been very unfair. Of course, a fifteen-year-old girl would be enthusiastic about hunting if she’d been reared by a hunting family. She probably just hadn’t gotten around to thinking the whole thing through for herself yet. He’d have to discuss it with her a bit more. Possibly point out some of the irrational ideas connected with it. And in the meantime he would simply write to Max and tell him that he didn’t feel it was right to be humorous at the expense of a very significant long-term relationship.

The next afternoon, when he called Diane from the booth outside the snack bar, she said, “Oh, I don’t think you’d better come up now. We’re awfully busy getting ready to go to Sacramento. We’re leaving tomorrow, you know.”

“Tomorrow. For Sacramento,” James said, aghast.

Diane giggled. “Don’t take it so hard,” she said. “It’s only for a week. We were going to go in a couple of days anyway, because of the swimming meet, but now Dad says he has to be there sooner because of some trouble with a planning commission or something. But we’ll be back next week. I’ll see you then, okay.”

“Do you have to go?” James asked.

“It’s a very important meet. We’re all going. Our whole family and my aunt. My Uncle Duncan is going to be one of the judges. He’s already in Sacramento, and the rest of us are flying down tomorrow. See you next week. Okay?”

“Sure,” James said. “See you next week.” He hung up the phone and went into the snack bar to drown his troubles in a Dr. Pepper.

A
S HE APPROACHED
the entrance to the hidden valley, he became aware of an anxious, almost guilty feeling. He had not been there for more than a week, had not in fact given the valley and its magnificent occupant more than a few minutes thought. But now, as he made his way down the steep incline into the canyon, he suddenly identified his vague discomfort as being related to guilt.