Man Hunt (29 page)

landed on his sandaled feet with triumphant glory. He had won!

"No fair," someone behind him yelled.

He turned to look but no one was there. Only the metal campfire ring browned with rust and blackened with soot and their folding chairs still surrounding it from the night before. Dew from that morning still clung to the side of the aluminum frames.

"Yeah-huh," he said to the nobody who was somehow still there. "I won fair and square. You said first one to step on the Frisbee was the winner."

The nobody said something else, something contradictory but it didn't matter because the Frisbee and the fire pit and the chairs were already gone. He was sitting on a horse now and the somebody was in front of him on another horse. A black one with lots of white speckles that reminded him of the stars in the sky in a weird sort of way.

"And this one's Orion belt," the nobody said. He saw a finger pointing to a curving line of three speckled spots on the side of the horse's neck. "But it's all wrong because this horse is so fat," the nobody said. He looked and, yes, the white-speckled black horse was very fat. It was funny. They laughed about it but it wasn't the right laugh and the other flippy flappy sound wasn't there with it.

Then the speckled horse pooped a giant turd

that's
'Terd' with an 'E' but shitty just the same

and they both groaned and laughed again.

"This is going to take forever!" the nobody said, and he saw he was back at the campsite now. It was the day before. They were all struggling to put up the monster, sixteen-person tent, except two of the poles were missing from the box and using sticks wasn't working out and it was starting to rain and this was going to be the worst vacation ever.

"This is going to be so cool!" the nobody said, and now they were at an outdoor concert. The band was one they had actually heard of and he thought he even knew the words to one of the songs and this was the coolest vacation ever.

"A hole in one! A hole in one! A hole in one!" the nobody said, and he was putting the little blue ball– dark blue, not light blue 'cause light blue was a
girl's
ball– toward the windmill but the nobody had just ran to the other side of it and was screaming and laughing and telling him he'd never gotten a hole in one before.

"You don't have the
guts
!" the nobody said. And it was his brother, of course, not a nobody. And he did too have the guts. Just because he'd never done it before didn't mean he wouldn't do it now.

"I do too!" he shouted down. His brother was all those ladder steps below him, down on the concrete patio that surrounded the pool. He was already wet and drippy because he had already jumped off the high dive.

"Then jump!" his brother yelled. And it wasn't mean at all, it was encouraging. His brother believed he could do it, and then suddenly he believed it too so he jumped and his dry, blue swim shorts billowed in the wind and then the tremendous
thwapping
overpowered them both.

He looked up, awed at the glorious sight above them. A helicopter! A real-life helicopter! And they were going to ride in it!

They had been waiting for an hour for all the people in front of them in line. But that was okay because each flight was a full twenty minutes and it took them all over the campground. They would even fly over the horse stables where they went riding yesterday.

"Maybe we'll see your fat, poopy horse!" he yelled, and his brother laughed so loud it almost sounded like the greatest laugh in the whole wide world.

Then it was their turn and they had to hunch over to avoid the colossal buffering of the wind that beat down on them from above as they ran to the helicopter's open doors.

They put on their seatbelts and their headsets. They smiled open-mouthed like playful dogs. And then they were lifted up by a giant hand of God but no it only felt that way it was
amazing
how much thrust the helicopter had!

"This is awesome!" his brother yelled into the headset, and he could barely hear it over the chaos of the rotors.

"I know!" he yelled back. "Best. Day. Ever!"

His brother laughed then, pure and clean like a polished silver vase.
That
was the greatest sound in the world. It was the laughter of joy and love that even the helicopter rotors couldn't blot from the world. And his brother had done it when he had said something funny and perfect and right.

They flew over the horse stables and then across the open fields. Far down below them four horses were grazing. But when the helicopter noise came nearer they started to trot away.

"Cool!" his brother said, and the pilot zoomed lower, and the horses broke into a gallop, and his brother turned to him and he didn't have a face but he yelled, "Check it out,                    !"

He woke from his strange trance and felt his foot slipping. Before him was mile upon mile of rolling waves. Below him was crashing death. Obe pinwheeled backwards, suddenly not ready to fall, not ready to die.

Then his heel fell off the edge of the cliff and he went down. The back of his thigh hit the rocky ledge and he bounced outwards toward the abyss and the black rock below. His arms pinwheeled again, slapping flat rock and clutching for a crack, a root, a thorny bush of white roses.

There was nothing but the flat rock and his face slammed home while his arms splayed out long and far. He stopped. Didn't slide. Didn't slip. He was pressing with all his might with arms and chest. His nose screamed white lightening but he didn't care and didn't pass out. Pain was nothing. Pain was temporary.

He searched with his toes on the cliff wall but found nothing. He spread his legs wide, hoping to shift his balance forward. And then he found it. A little notch right under his right knee. It was a perfect little hollow, and he dug his knee in and found his foothold. In seconds he was pushing up and rolling back onto the rocky plateau.

On his back now. Staring at the billion stars. Legs dangling over the edge. Heart screaming and slamming. Cold sweats bursting from his temples and forearms and neck. A shooting star flew across the sky, but he barely managed to notice it.

"What was that?" Obe did manage. The only answer that came was the continued rush and slam of the deadly ocean waves below.

CHAPTER 15

The drive to Charles' apartment took fifteen minutes. Josie followed him up a flight of stairs and past doors leading to other apartments. When he opened his door, he made her stand in the doorway with her hands over her eyes and count to thirty. She did so, without cheating, and listened to him scramble around trying to clean up. Just before she got to thirty, she realized she had been enjoying the moment, and she had to steel herself again.

This is going to be harder than I thought,
she realized,
but not for all the reasons I had been expecting.

The apartment was just like he had said: small, unkempt, and in desperate need of the female touch. In the living room, a couch and accompanying broken-legged coffee table faced an elaborate entertainment center, complete with large screen HDTV, BOSE stereo system, and what looked like three or four high-level gaming systems. Beside this monstrosity was a motorized spinning tower of digital entertainment selections, both audio and video. Aside
that
was another one just like it housing only games. Josie thought of the meager choice of half-dead DVDs in the little workout room a whole world away and felt true jealousy. Nothing else was in the living room. Not a single end table. Even the walls were blank.

There was a small dining room. It contained an industrial cable spool laid on its side to serve as a table, two folding chairs, and in the corner a pinball machine that looked like it was from the 1970s. Charles explained his older brother had bought it at a yard sale and given it to him as a moving out present. He was ridiculously proud of it. It's only downfall, he said, was that it was so loud he couldn't play it at night. In the opposite corner was a plant stand made of unfinished wood. There were two plants in it, both cactuses. One was using a hollowed-out soccer ball as a planter.

As Charles continued giving his little tour, Josie had to hide a smile when he brought her into the adjacent kitchen. Dirty dishes overflowed the sink, an old microwave sat squarely in the center of the only small counter space, and the cabinets were nearly empty, as was the refrigerator was stocked only with a case of beer, a bottle of mustard, a lone box of leftover Chinese food, and some sauce packets stamped with the name of a local pizza place. Charles did have, she saw, a healthy collection of coffee supplies. The coffee maker had been given its own rolling table that was up against the short, windowed wall.

They spent much of that late night sitting on the couch and talking. Josie created enough of a story to satisfactorily explain her past six years, but she carefully guided most of the conversation to more details about Charles. Not once did he remember that earlier he had said he wanted to hear of her remarkable life in Hawaii. It was a relief. It meant less pressure to maintain her cover story, and it confirmed that Charles hadn't mysteriously become a romantic, caring gentleman after all. Deep down he was still an insensitive jerk. If this truly had been the start of a rekindled old flame as he was already assuming, the relationship would have been just as doomed as it had been the first time.

Throughout the conversation, she played him like a child. He didn't recognize that her hair flips, laughs, or fingertip touches were calculated moves, but he reacted to each. Sometimes he smiled happily, contently. Sometimes his eyes opened wider for a second and his brows lifted. Twice he very carefully and quickly readjusted his threatening erection while she looked to the side. And always his eyes slid to her breasts, her slim waist, her rounded hips and thighs.

By the time the little digital clock on his cable box read 4:00, his behavior had become aggressive enough to begin making moves of his own.

By 4:15 his hand was on her shoulder.

Josie just smiled and imagined bashing his fingers with a hammer.

By 4:20 the other hand reached and rested on her thigh.

Josie just smiled and imagined tearing the skin off his knuckles with a cheese grater.

Before 4:30 ever had a chance of coming into the world, Charles' hand had slid up to her waist and then quickly to her left breast where it alternately rubbed and squeezed. The room filled with awkward silence while he fondled her, staring at his own handiwork.

Josie just smiled and pictured the look on his face with his testicles grated free of the skin, bashed with the hammer, grated again for good measure, and then ripped off and stuffed into his screaming maw of a mouth.

Moments later he led her to the bedroom where a wooden straight chair held an alarm clock alongside lone mattress laying directly on the floor. The room stank of testosterone and feet. It was dark. It was tiny. The air was not only foul but stale. The bedding and even the mattress itself looked unwashed. For the first time, Josie began to feel nervous.

The whole night she had been the woman controlling the man. Her moves were planned to help her attain a long-term goal: getting her rapist to Hawaii voluntarily. But now, the control would shift. He would overpower her, and the goal was very short term.