Picture Perfect (31 page)

A
long time ago, when the world had just begun, six young women lived in a village set beside a huge boulder. As was their custom, one day while their husbands were out hunting, they went out to dig for herbs. Some time passed, each of the women rooting with her digging stick, and then one of the wives found something new to eat.

“Come and try this,” she told her friends. “This plant tastes delicious!”

Within minutes, the six women were all eating sweet onions. They were so tasty that they ate until the sun set. One of the wives looked at the dark sky. “We'd better get home to cook dinner for our husbands,” she pointed out, and they all left.

When the husbands came home that night they were exhausted but happy, since they had each killed a cougar. “What smells so awful?” one man asked as he stood in the doorway of his lodge.

“Maybe it is some food that has spoiled,” another husband suggested. But when they leaned over to kiss their wives hello, they realized where the odor was coming from.

“We found something new to eat,” the wives said, bubbling with excitement. They held out the onions. “Here, try them.”

“They smell terrible,” the husbands said. “We won't eat them. And you're not going to stay in the same lodge as us, not smelling like that. You'll have to sleep outside tonight.” So the wives gathered their things and slept beneath the stars.

When the husbands left to go hunting the next day, the wives returned to the spot where they had dug up the wild onions. They knew their husbands didn't like the smell, but the onions were so delicious that the wives could not help but eat them. They filled their bellies and stretched out on the soft red earth.

The husbands came home that night, gruff and irritable. They had not caught any cougars. “We smelled like your onions,” they accused, “so the animals ran away. It is all your fault.”

The wives didn't believe them. They slept outside a second night, and a third, until a week had passed. The wives kept eating the onions that were so delicious, and the men could not catch any cougars. Frustrated, the men yelled at their wives, “Get away from us! We can't stand your onion smell.”

“Well, we can't get any sleep outside,” the wives countered.

The seventh day, the wives took their woven ropes with them when they went to dig the onions. One wife carried along her baby daughter. They scaled the large rock beside their village and turned their faces to the sinking crimson sun.

“Let's leave our husbands,” one wife suggested. “I don't want to live with mine anymore.” The wives all agreed.

The oldest wife stood on the boulder and chanted a magical word. She tossed her rope into the sky, and it hooked over a cloud so that the ends hung down. The other wives tied their own ropes to the one that was swinging and then they stood on the frayed edges of the ropes. Slowly they began to rise, swaying around like starlings. They moved in circles, passing each other, reaching higher and higher.

The other villagers saw the wives ascending in the sky. “Come back!” the People called as the women floated over the camp. But the wives and the little girl kept going.

When the husbands returned that night, they were hungry and lonely. They wished they had not driven their wives away. One of them got the idea to go after the women, using the same kind of magic they had. They ran to their lodges and brought their own ropes, and soon they too were rising in the night.

The wives glanced down and saw the husbands coming after them. “Should we wait for them?” one woman asked calmly.

The others shouted and shook their heads. “No! They told us to leave. We won't let them catch us.” They danced and swung on their ropes. “We will be happier in the sky.”

When the husbands were close enough to hear, the wives shouted for them to stop, and the men stayed right where they were, a little behind their wives.

So the women who loved onions stayed in Sky Country. They are still there, seven stars that we call the Pleiades. The faintest of all is the little girl. And the husbands, who will not go home until their wives do, remain a short distance away, six stars in the constellation Taurus. You can find them shining up at their wives, wishing maybe that things had turned out a different way.

—Monache Indian legend

I
N
the dark, beneath a pouch blessed with good medicine, Cassie told Will the story of her life. She talked the whole night. At times Will only watched her; at times he held her while she cried. And when her voice fell quiet, Will sighed and leaned back against his nearly new couch, painfully aware of the awkward and suffocating silence. Cassie sat now with her head bowed, her hands clasped between her knees.

Will could not have said how, but he'd known Cassie was going to show up on his doorstep. He'd known before she flattened her shirt against her stomach that she was pregnant. He'd known that it was up to him to spirit her away. What he could not understand was how, even now, she could worry about hurting Alex.

“I just have to leave for a little while,” she said abruptly, startling Will. She nodded slightly, as if she was still trying to convince herself. “It's the end of February now, and I'll have the baby in August.”

“I could be wrong,” Will said carefully, his first words in hours, “but I don't think Alex will just sit around for six months, waiting.”

Cassie turned her face up to his. “Whose side are you on?” she asked.

The problem was that Alex Rivers had the money and resources to find her anywhere. “What I need,” Cassie mused, “is a place where he'd never even think to look.”

And that was when Will understood why the spirits had brought Cassie to him at St. Sebastian's, a week ago. He pictured the tar paper shacks that served as houses in Pine Ridge, the willow skeletons of sweat lodges that dotted the plains like the carcasses of mythical beasts. Like everyone else, the government had basically forgotten about the Sioux; most Americans didn't know living conditions like theirs still existed. For all intents and purposes, the reservation could have been on a different planet.

Will listened to the fragile hitch of Cassie's breathing and turned her hand over in his, palm up, as if he could read her future. “I think,” he said quietly, “I have just the spot you're looking for.”

 

S
O AFTER BEING IN
L
OS
A
NGELES FOR ALL OF TWO WEEKS
, W
ILL
F
LY
ing Horse boarded a plane and headed to the place he hated more than anywhere else in the world.

When he arrived in Denver to make the connecting flight, his throat tightened up and his head spun. He was imagining, already, the red dust of the Pine Ridge Reservation; the vacant-eyed Lakota, who waited for their own lives to speed by them. He stared out the scratched window of the plane, knowing it would be at least an hour, but still expecting to see the sharp, rocky needles of the Black Hills. He pictured them ripping through the belly of the little plane, scattering gray and wine-red luggage.

Beside him, Cassie was asleep. He wanted to wake her up, just to remind himself why exactly he had come full circle when he'd been running in such a fixed line. But she'd had so little rest the night before that the skin beneath her eyes was blue-bruised. He envied her—not her exhaustion, and certainly not her life, but her ability to look at this trip as a fresh start instead of a foot-dragging trudge backward.

He would get her set with his grandparents, but that was where his obligation ended. He'd go back to L.A. and pick up where he'd left off: days filled with traffic detail and speeding violations, and stifling, quiet nights. He could make detective in another year, and if he got out more with the guys, he could find some leggy young thing to stretch across the other half of his bed.

The truth was that he did not understand his newly adopted city. He couldn't remember the LAPD's special rules about arresting politicians or celebrities. He didn't know what to say in bars when flawless women told him they read crystals, or were on the water diet. His breath caught every time he merged on the freeway and saw a rolling carpet of cars, more people concentrated in one steel knot than in the entire town where he'd grown up. But regardless of what he cared to admit to himself, this is what he would tell the Lakota people he saw during the weekend:
Life's great out there; I'm on the fast track; I wouldn't trade it for the world
.

In her sleep, Cassie's head lolled to the right, coming to rest on his shoulder. She restlessly crossed her arms over her abdomen, protecting her child.

Now,
that
was something Will could understand. Not the ego-serving me-first attitude of Los Angeles, but the concept of extended family. Hell, his own parents had died, but there had always been people to look after him, even if it meant giving up something in their own lives.

Will breathed in the honey of Cassie's hair, shocked by the smell of his own shampoo. He rested his cheek against the curls, calmed by the awesome responsibility of being her deliverance.

 

D
URING THE EIGHTY
-
ONE YEARS HE HAD BEEN ALIVE
, C
YRUS
F
LYING
Horse had made and put up fence posts, taken care of cattle, dug potatoes, ridden broncos for prize money. He had been a rodeo clown, he had repaired roads, he had exterminated rattlesnakes. Up until three years ago he had been working at a factory that manufactured fishing hooks, but now he just fashioned hooks for the hell of it; he was technically retired, which as far as he could tell only meant there was never enough to make ends meet. And this was even with Dorothea working three days a week in town at the cafeteria. She brought home minimum wages, a perfume mixed of grease and labor, and the leftover fish sticks and meatball subs. But Cyrus worried more about filling up his day with activity than about a lack of money. He had relatives, and that was the Lakota way—you took care of your own, even if you barely had a pot to piss in.

He sat on a stump outside his government-built house, the wood having softened to his bottom after all this time. The snow was melting; it was still cold, but nice enough for you to forget winter if you stayed long enough in the sun. Today, he was doing a crossword puzzle. It was not exactly a mental challenge; he'd gotten it from Arthur Two Birds, who had erased all his pencil answers, so even when Cyrus got stuck he could take out his bifocals and peek at the shadows of the words that wouldn't come.

His face was lined, like the craggy landscape of the Badlands, the otherworldly patches of the Black Hills where, as a child, he had believed evil spirits lived. Of course, he knew now that evil did not seat itself in rocks. Instead it seeped into people, becoming as distinctive a part of them as their scent or their fingerprints. Had he not seen it in the glittering blue eyes of the
wasicu
^•
clerk at the BIA? In the tired mouth of the banker who had repossessed the first truck he'd ever bought? In the dazed, drunken glow of the traveling salesman whose careening car had killed his only son a hundred years ago?

Cyrus sighed and bent his head to the frayed paper. Some of the clues were beyond him:
Marla's man
had filled in as
Trump
, which Cyrus had always believed was an ace; and apparently
Bert's buddy
was
Ernie
. He was especially pleased when he'd get an answer without having to check Arthur's work.
“Outcry of the greedy,”
he read aloud, tapping the pencil to his temple. He hunched closer to his lap, carefully forming the letters in the four little boxes.
M-I-N-E.

“He can really dish it out,”
Cyrus said, turning the phrase over and over, giving emphasis to different words in hopes that the answer would come in a flash.

“Chef,”
said a voice behind him; then a light laugh. He hadn't even seen Dorothea approaching, but he nodded and filled in what now was crystal clear. He rolled the pencil into the crossword puzzle and stood up, stamping slush from his boots. He followed his wife into their one-room house.

Dorothea shrugged off her parka and began to unpack containers of coleslaw and turkey loaf, the blue plate special of the day. Her hands fluttered nervously over the plastic tablecloth like two scattering birds. Finally, she sat down and turned bright black eyes to her husband. “Today,” she told him. “
U

´ yelo
. He is coming.”

Cyrus looked at the plump curve of her hips, the heavy braid of white hair that quivered down her wide back. She had always been in touch with the spirits. He sank heavily into a chair across from Dorothea, pretending to be annoyed with her mystical hints. This was a game they played, one that had been going on for sixty years. He stabbed at the turkey loaf with his fork. “You're crazy, woman,” he said gruffly, when what he really meant was,
You are my life
. “How can you know this?” he said.
You can still amaze me
.

Dorothea made a noncommittal sound. Then she turned her head and sniffed, as if the answers came to her on a Chinook wind. She swung her gaze to him, level and dark, and she pointed a bent, knotted finger. “You watch,” she said, the trace of a smile peeking out from behind her warning. She reached across the table and grasped Cyrus's hand with a strength and a conviction that speeded his pulse. He looked up at her.
I love you
, she was saying, clear in this space between them where there were no words.
Walk beside me forever
.

 

A
LEX MADE TWO PHONE CALLS
. T
HE FIRST WAS TO
H
ERB
S
ILVER
, ordering him to postpone the production of
Macbeth
indefinitely; to warehouse all the scenery and props in Scotland and send everyone else home until Alex sent further instructions. The second was to Michaela, telling her to anticipate the publicity such an abrupt change in schedule was going to cause. “I don't care what you leak to the press,” Alex said wearily. “Make up some excuse that doesn't sound like I'm covering for a stay at the Betty Ford Clinic.”

“What's really going on, Alex?” Michaela demanded, but Alex couldn't speak past the closing of his throat. He hung up on her before he was forced to recount what had happened.

Cassie had left him. Again.

Except this time it was different. There hadn't even been a fight, a catalyst. She had just taken off as if it had been premeditated.

Alex stretched back on the bed and touched the pile of clothes she had been packing for Scotland, clothes that wouldn't make a hell of a lot of difference now. Goddammit, last week had been perfect. He had been keeping himself in check, refusing to let it start all over. And it had been working: when he laid his hands on Cassie he'd been gentle and tender and everything she deserved. He had watched Cassie, in return, giving him tiny pieces of herself—a kiss here, a question there, a memory. Alex had been gathering these tokens like wildflowers, waiting for the moment when he would have all of her, a lush bouquet that bloomed in his presence.

He had given her back her past, with a few details missing that she'd obviously figured out herself. He never meant to hurt Cassie, God, not Cassie, and every time he struck her he swore that it wouldn't happen again. He wasn't just saying that; he really did mean it. If he could have found a way to turn the red rage into himself instead of toward her, he would have done it in a heartbeat.

Alex rolled to a sitting position and looked out at the rainy morning. He'd spent most of last night with John, scouring the neighborhoods surrounding Bel-Air. John had even checked the police station, discreetly. None of the airlines or bus depots had had a passenger with her name, married or maiden. Finally, Alex had given up. He'd gone to sit in the bedroom, not sleeping, just waiting for her to come back to him.

She had to come back. If the press found out that Cassie had left him, or even that she was missing, all kinds of rumors were going to fly—about infidelities, divorce, maybe even the sorry truth. Whatever form it took, the publicity generated would decimate his chances for the Oscars. He had always been able to count on his sterling reputation.

Alex ran his hand over his stubbled jaw. She had to come back. He couldn't live without her. Cassie was the only person in his entire life who had reached into him and pulled out the fine, glowing soul and said over and over,
Yes, you are good
. He remembered that once in the redwood forests they had seen two separate giant sequoias that had twined around each other, leaning into the same sun, until they had grafted themselves together into a single tree. He would not admit this to anyone but himself, but Cassie was, simply, the point at which Alexander Riveaux ended and Alex Rivers began.

 

A
T EXACTLY NINE O
'
CLOCK
,
A MAINTENANCE MAN UNLOCKED
C
ASSIE
'
S
office door at UCLA for Alex. “Thanks,” he said, staring at the man, unsure of whether or not he was supposed to tip him. Alex closed the door, checking the leather swivel chair for Cassie's imprint, searching out clues that would suggest she'd recently been there.

He was sifting through the research on her desk when the door swung open. “Good morning,” a gravelly voice intoned, and Alex glanced up to see Archibald Custer bearing down on him, his hand held to the voice microphone at his throat. “Oh.” He let his eyes sweep the room, searching for Cassie. “I was told your wife had been ill. When I saw the light on, I thought…well, I was just looking for her.”

“She isn't here,” Alex said, gesturing. “You probably noticed.”

Archibald Custer stared at him strangely. “But
you
are,” he said.

Alex glanced down at his fingers, clutching a manila file marked
Personal and Confidential
. His thoughts tumbled over each other: Cassie was not here. Cassie had not told Custer her whereabouts, or he wouldn't be looking for her also. “She asked me to send her some things,” Alex said, pretending to be completely surprised when Custer raised his eyebrows at this mention of Cassie being somewhere other than L.A. “Ah…she must not have had a chance to phone you yet. Her father's been hospitalized, in Maine, and she was called in to look after him.” He glanced at his watch, an easy prop. “I'm sure she'll be getting in touch with you in no time. Family emergencies, you understand.” He tapped the file on the edge of the desk. “Is there something I can ask her for you? Or send to her with all this?”