Jacob's Ladder (4 page)

“You don"t know that.” I sounded hoarse, and I hoped Carl and JT thought it was just about cotton mouth. The way JT was looking at me made something compress my heart painfully—like shame. Because I knew I had only myself to blame. I knew what Sander was, and I should have walked away. But what did this virtual stranger know about it?

“Then stay out of trouble.”

I looked at his father, who kind of rolled his eyes and shrugged. I looked back down at my hands. “Sure. Sometimes trouble just…finds me, though.” Although he exhibited no outward sign of disappointment, JT"s intense focus dissipated. “Dad, I have to go get some shut-eye.
You
”—he pointed at me—“do whatever Alice and the docs tell you to do. Don"t make me come back here and kick your ass. Figuratively speaking, of course.”

Carl winced. “Son—”

JT turned to his father. “See you later, Dad.” He gave his dad"s arm a squeeze.

“I"m outta here.”

When the door closed behind Jason, Carl leaned over my bed. “Don"t mind my son. He"s like that. A whirlwind.”

“It"s all right. He"s probably had a long night.” St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder

17

“Yeah.”

A deep silence filled the room. I had never been one to wade in and fill them, and neither, it seemed, was Carl. Eventually he said, “You"re Jewish?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too.” Carl gazed down at me. “I"m not very observant.” I tried out a smile, but it hurt. “You noticed I didn"t leave my room.”

“That"s not… Oh. I see. Yes.” Carl grinned. Another silence followed. “I guess I meant to say I"m not a good Jew.”

“I know. Me neither.”

“My son is more religious. He thinks it"s a crime against God to fight like you do for pleasure or money. He worries about things like that. He"s fairly opinionated about it.”

I tried to think what that could mean. “Fight for pleasure?”

“Don"t get me wrong, I understand that it"s a popular thing, and people call it a sport, just not Jason. He has this idea that those fight clubs are barbaric, a return to the kind of blood sport that was popular in ancient Rome.”

“Fight club?” I tried to focus on Carl, but even that brief encounter tired me. I tried to think back on what I"d said while I"d been so sick.

“Yeah. No big deal. You just need to know you"re going to hear about it from Jason. He"ll try to talk you out of ever doing it again.” Something clicked in my memory. “
Fight club
.” I sighed. “I told him I was in a fight club.”

“Yeah.” Carl"s eyes were brown. I wondered where Jason"s green eyes came from.

“I lied. I don"t… I"m not a boxer. He can rest assured I"ll be avoiding anything like this in the future.”

“That"s good. He was building up quite a head of steam, and he can lecture like you wouldn"t believe.”

“I see.”

“Why would you lie?” Carl asked. “If you"re in some kind of trouble with the law—”

“It"s nothing like that.” I fought the desire to look away. Instead I stared Carl right in the eyes. “I told you the truth. It was domestic—my boyfriend. I was ashamed.”

“
Ah…Yasha
.” Carl sighed sadly.

“It"s over anyway. Even I"m not that stupid. Just don"t tell…anyone, okay? It"s embarrassing enough wearing it on my skin.” Despite my determination to hold Carl"s gaze, my eyes began to drift closed. “So tired.”

“Heal up.” Carl started for the door but then turned back. “How long do you plan to stay here in St. Nacho"s?”

18

Z. A. Maxfield

I dragged my eyes open. “Hell if I know. I never planned to be here in the first place.”

Carl started moving again. “You might want to rethink that. St. Nacho"s has a way of wrapping itself around you. I only stopped here for a burger, and that was forty years ago.”

“You"ve done well, though. You must have liked it here.” Carl frowned in concentration, as if he was thinking hard or remembering. “I don"t think so. Not exactly, no. But it didn"t let me go.” He left me alone in the room to wonder what the hell he"d meant by that. There were lots of things in my past that wouldn"t let me go. But that didn"t mean I wanted another one.

Rain began to patter against the window, and the sound was soothing enough that it drove away all my more pressing problems. I"d have to call Dan. Maybe Dan knew where this place was, and he could pick me up. I had been asleep on the bus in the dark when they"d left me off, and I had no clue.

Maybe I"d take a break right here, though, and look around after I got out of the hospital. I"d never heard of St. Nacho"s. What kind of a town was called St.

Nacho"s anyway?

Maybe I"d stick around long enough to find out.

St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder

19

Chapter Four

“I could have called a taxi,” I argued as JT helped me up into the cab of his truck. The thing was an early sixties Ford, a lacquer red F-100 Flareside, solid and beautiful, fully restored. It was a treasure. Not one of the early curvy trucks but big, square, and wide, its grille a toothy horizontal smile of chrome. A moment of intense covetousness caught me squarely in the chest.

“You"d have to wait hours for it to get here from Santa Barbara. St. Nacho"s isn"t a cab kind of town. On the other hand, if you stuck your thumb out, you could get a lift, probably even from someone who wouldn"t kill you for your wallet. So it all evens out.” JT had an engaging grin, and he was displaying it a lot.

The ignition was to the left of the steering column. The shift was “on the tree.” I sighed and ran my hands over the dash.

“This is a very fine truck.”

“I call it Mithril.”

I laughed. “I can see that. Tolkien. Gandalf said, „Mithril! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper and polished like glass."” JT gave an inelegant snort. “And everyone knows that the „beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim." Could I be a bigger geek?”

“Probably not.”

JT glanced at me. “Some things feel true and uncomplicated.” I guess I knew what he meant. There weren"t any bells and whistles, just a big wide bench seat, a glove box, and a tiny radio in the no-frills cockpit. But it was like looking through a window in time, and it still carried an earthy farm smell and the reminder of a bigger, more optimistic America.

When I looked up, I was caught in his gaze, and I had the absurd thought that he was both surprised and delighted by my reaction. As if we were kindred spirits and the truck was like a bond between us: a secret handshake or a code word that broke the silence and bridged the distance between us.

The individual springs under the car"s upholstery were stiff and sproingy, and they creaked as I looked around for a seat belt.

“There"s only lap belts.” JT seemed to read my mind. “This truck didn"t originally even have those. They added them later.” 20

Z. A. Maxfield

“Cool.” I dug between the seat cushion and back by the door and found the one side, then groped around on my other side to find its mate. “So has it always belonged to your family?"

“Yeah. Dad"s family used to have a farm up in Castroville.”

“Castroville?”

“The artichoke capital of the world.” JT keyed the ignition and adjusted the choke when the truck sputtered to life, smoothing it out. “In the sixties, when Julia Child started doing her
The French Chef
show, people started to get into gourmet cooking and fine dining. My grandmother thought it would be a good time to start going into high-end produce—white asparagus, Belgian endive, artichokes, different kinds of lettuce, and baby vegetables.”

“You"re kidding.”

“Nope. And she sent first my grandfather and then my dad around in this truck to the restaurants and farmers" markets in the San Francisco area. Dad was on a trip down to Los Angeles to see if he could open a market there and got stuck here in St. Nacho"s by a cracked radiator. While he waited for it to be fixed, he fell in love with the daughter of the man who owned the SeaView Motel.”

“That"s a great story. He mentioned that this town wrapped around him and wouldn"t let go.”

“Yeah, well. That was probably my mom who did that. Anyway, his brother took over the farm, but when it came time to get a new truck, my dad couldn"t bear to let them sell it. We"ve had it ever since. It"s mine now.” We hit a bump, and it jostled me enough to make me wince. I grabbed the seat next to my leg.

“I"m sorry. It doesn"t have the smoothest ride.”

“That"s all right. She can knock me around a little. I"m not that delicate.” It definitely rode like a farm truck. Nothing wrong with that unless you were beaten all to hell.

JT"s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I wanted to talk to you about that. Were you sick with the flu before or after you took that awful beating?”

“Look, I don"t know what your dad told you about me, but—”

“He told me that you don"t belong to any fight club,” JT almost growled. “He told me who beat you.”

“Great.” My hand tightened on the seat. “Just…great.”

“Was that the first time?”

“No,” I muttered.

JT stayed silent for a long enough time that I thought he was going to stay that way for the rest of the ride. After a while, when we were stopped at a red light, he turned to me. “I don"t understand that. I"m just called in to pick up the pieces.

Sometimes more than once at the same place, you know?”

“It"s not that simple.”

St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder

21

“I know that. Nothing"s simple.” When the light was green again, JT pulled out into the intersection. “I was shocked to find out is all.”

“What?”

“That a guy like you…” He never finished his sentence.

What did he mean by that? I looked out the window and didn"t answer.

“I don"t mean to pry,” he said eventually. “Only that as an outsider, you wonder.”

“What do you wonder?”

“When I was an absolute rookie, we responded to a call. When we got there, a woman had been stabbed several times and left for dead on the living-room floor.

Her husband was just sitting there, on a recliner, watching the game and drinking a beer. Before the police dragged him away, he said she"d asked for it and he"d given it to her. That"s the kind of shit I can"t wrap my mind around.” Poor JT. His earnest green eyes were shadowed, like the answer was something he expected to figure out, and the fact that he couldn"t made him feel like a failure. Like he lost sleep over it. Those eyes said JT took things harder than most. Maybe being an EMT was an especially tough job for him.

“Nobody asks for that.”

“I know that. Of course I know that.”

“So what do you wonder?”

“Why, I guess. Why, after the first time, the first blow, the first bruise, does anyone allow it to go on?”

“That"s a great question.”

“Well?”

“Don"t look at me. As you can see, I flunked that test.” JT grunted at me but said nothing further.

When the silence looked like it was going to continue, I ran my hand over the frame of the door, admiring what my dad used to call a wind wing. It opened smoothly, and I let the air wash over me. It was a pity they didn"t make those anymore—the little quarter windows that opened to focus a blast of air into the truck. It felt like the human equivalent of being a dog, shoving my head out the window, and letting my tongue loll. I"d always liked playing with a wind wing, aiming it until I felt like I was drowning in air, and since JT lived so close to the ocean this far north of LA, he probably wouldn"t need an air conditioner much, even if the truck had one. Which of course it didn"t.

What it did have was style: solid cherry-lipstick-colored cool.

We pulled into the parking lot at the SeaView, and the dip as the truck ascended the driveway caused me to clench my teeth until I saw the setting sun reflected on the glassy, waxed hood. My heart burst with longing.

“I"m so in love with your truck,” I gushed.

22

Z. A. Maxfield

JT"s green gaze landed on me and took my breath away.

My face heated. I yanked the plastic bag with my personal crap off the bench seat between us. I wished I"d never told JT my nickname. He seemed like a nice guy, but I wasn"t the sort of man to appreciate a nice guy. And even if he had been my type, if I knew anything at all, it was that when one guy beat you half to death, it wasn"t a good policy to pin your hopes on the guy who picked you up and dusted you off.

For me it wasn"t a good policy to pin my hopes on anything. I wasn"t good at picking men. Or rather I was clearly the quintessence of picking the wrong men.

Whatever.

“Thanks for the ride.”

“If you"re going to stick around for a few days, why don"t you let me show you the town?”

“I don"t think I"ll be here that long.” I pulled my key out of my pocket.

“What"s long? I could show you everything here in about fifteen minutes.” JT

leaned one hip against the truck. “I could buy you a beer.”

“No.” I stopped at the door to the motel room and turned to see he"d followed me and was standing just inches away. Something indefinable teased my senses: that same smell that felt vaguely familiar when he"d put me on that gurney. The laundry soap he"d used on his uniform shirt maybe, the disinfectant, or the latex. A light aftershave that bore the smell of the sea. I"d smelled it when I was so sick I didn"t know who I was, and I now realized why it triggered memories of my zeyde.

“You smell like the ocean in Jersey.”

His eyebrows rose. “You might be the first person who ever said that to me.”

“I don"t mean that in a bad way.”

“That"s good, I guess.”

“I"m not saying this right.” I closed my eyes and concentrated. “It"s like popcorn and suntan oil. Driftwood fires. Citrus. You smell like a particularly good day at the beach.”

“Everything smells like the beach in St. Nacho"s.”

“This is different. You make me anticipate…adventure. Saltwater taffy. Strong men and sword swallowers.” His face said he was lost. “I guess I"ve had one too many pain pills.”

“Yasha”—he squared his shoulders—“I"m going to ask. Even though you don"t want me to. Even though you say you don"t know.
Why
did you let someone beat you?”