River: A Bad Boy Romance (22 page)

River kisses her on the top of the head, and without saying a word, Maddy knows exactly how he feels about her, because she feels the same way too. If she had to die in this moment, locked together like this, she knows she'll have never experienced anything else in her whole life that has made her happier. She holds on to him as tightly as possible, for as long as she can, desperate for this moment never to end, worried that before too long it will.

C
laudia is trying to ignore it. The sick's been cleaned up, Miguel has fallen back to sleep, his stomach full of drugs and shitty, own brand tomato soup, Elouise is playing quite happily in front of the television, throwing plastic balls against the screen, Connor has gone off to school, and Javier, a bundle of nerves when he left the house, apparently due to the importance of the presentation he was due to give that afternoon, should now be at work, going through the finer details of his pitch. The house is back to normal, even Miguel's bout of sickness fitting sadly into that description, so why does she feel so anxious? Why can't she take her mind off what she saw and heard this morning?

She checks that Eloise is ok, and then decides to do the laundry to try and take her mind off it. She goes from room to room, collecting dirty T-shirts, socks and underpants, until she has a basket overflowing at the top. As she goes, there's one phrase flying constantly around her head, she's sure she heard her husband say this morning - 'Madeleine Parker will die.'

She decides again, having decided already that morning, when she first heard it spoken, that there are many ways of interpreting that phrase, and she can no longer remember, or at least doesn't want to, how it was that her husband said it. That alone would be fine, but that coupled with Javier's strange behaviour and the thing she saw on his computer screen, has made Claudia both angry and confused.

It has made her so angry it fact, that she finds herself stuffing the dirty laundry so violently into the machine, anyone would think she was trying to push it through the bottom. Did she really see what she thought she saw? Did she really see letters cut up from a newspaper? If she was concentrating harder at the time, or knew what it was she should be looking for, she might have remembered what it said.

It is then, with the dirty laundry punched all the way into the bottom of the machine, that she thinks of looking. She doesn't snoop on her husband as a rule. They have a strong bond of trust between them that neither one of them has broken before, unless absolutely necessary, and she doesn't do it now light heartedly. She wouldn't do it at all if she didn't think there was any other way around it. What happened this morning has affected her so much, there's no way she'll be able to go on for the rest of the day unless she makes some attempt to find out what it is her husband is up to. Calling him and asking is out of the question, which leaves her only one remedy. His computer.

She sits down on the stool in front of the computer and turns it on. There are two profile options, Javier and Claudia, although Claudia has only ever used her own a handful of times, and hardly at all in the last few months. She clicks on the icon Javier has for his profile, and is prompted to enter a password. She types in Miguel08, and the home page screen boots up. While it is doing so, Claudia checks on her daughter, who is now surrounded by different coloured light plastic balls and engrossed in a favourite cartoon of hers. Even though there is no one else in the house, apart from Miguel sleeping soundly upstairs, Claudia shuts the door tightly to the laundry/office room, before placing herself back in front of the screen, her heart beating wildly.

She clicks open the chrome browser and immediately checks the history, which has been cleared. She opens the two other browsers on the system and each one says the same thing. Undeterred, she opens up a new browser page and directs it to the login site for Gmail. She knows Javier has a Gmail account, the name of which she puts into the relevant section. She tries Miguel08 as a password again, but it doesn't work. She tries Connor10, Eloise12 and Claudia81, but none of them work. She slaps the top of the tumble drier out of frustration, which is acting as an impromptu desk.

She tries several combinations of possible passwords, but not a single one of them gains her access. She growls, ready to give up. Whatever it is that her husband is doing, she'll have to find out by calling him. Either him, or one of his colleagues. She shuts off the laptop, waits for all the lights to turn off, and then spots it. A blue light still flashing, amongst the assorted stack of hardware Javier has piled without grace on a shelf he made exactly for that purpose. As Claudia gets nearer, she realises it's the scanner bed. Quickly she lifts up the lid, hoping that what she will find inside, isn't what she expects it to be. Horror dawning on her face, she lifts out the ransom note, as clear as day, the glue still a little sticky from that morning's work.

Maddy, alive and well, and about as far away from death as she has ever been, hangs her hand out of the car window, carving shapes into the wind. She remembers doing this as a child, letting her whole arm lift into a swan's neck, and drop spectacularly into a sort of wave shape, before being caught and chastised for it by her father who maintained the ridiculous belief that he should be in control of her window at all times, in case the young girl saw fit to throw herself out of it.

She has torn the long black dress into a skirt, and wears that now with one of the new T-shirts, her shoeless feet up on the dashboard, where the sun warms them through the glass. River smokes, the perfectly rolled cigarette dangling from his lips like it was always meant to be there, and the grey twirl of smoke lifting in a perfect column, before being whipped away by the breeze from her window, and fading like a passing thought into nothingness.

River has his hand almost permanently on her leg, smoothing the skin there and making it his own. The stereo idles between classic rock 'n' roll, and country rock, providing a suitable soundtrack for the landscape they find themselves in.

“What did you dream about?” Maddy says, breaking the silence.

River looks at her quizzically. “How did you know I was dreaming?”

“Because I wasn't”, she says. “And besides which, I don't think you were dreaming. I think it was a nightmare.”

“It's nothing”, River says. “Sometimes I don't sleep well, that's all.”

Maddy rests her head on his shoulder and hugs his arm. “You can tell me if you want”, she says. “I won't judge you. You know my secrets already.”

“There isn't much to tell”, River says.

“There's always something to tell”, Maddy says, “everyone's got a story.”

“Yeah well, I don't”, River says.

Maddy squeezes him tighter. His stubble is beginning to grow back, and she likes the way it looks on his face. “Well maybe we can give you one”, she says. “One that you like better than the one you are pretending you don't already have.”

River takes a long pull of his cigarette and then drops the butt out of the window into the wind. He looks down at Maddy, and Maddy looks up to him, smiling a cheeky little smile that puts dimples into the side of her face, and makes her even more kissable than normal.

“I might like that”, River says.

“I dare say you might”, Maddy says.

The world here is dry and dusty, as though it's been washed, left out in the sun and forgotten about. The only things that grow are cactuses, and a type of thorny bush weed that has a thousand or so derivations, none of which are of any use for anything but getting in the way. In the summer the sun beats down so hard, it can make even the sanest of men stir crazy with fury, and even now, at the back edge of one of the mildest winters in years, River can feel that heat on its way, like a sickness creeping in.

“I grew up not far from here”, he says, without being prompted. “A couple of hundred miles across that flat expanse of death and nothingness you see all around us.”

Maddy is back by the window carving animal shapes she'd long since forgotten about, into the warmness of the running air.

“My father used to beat me. He was a horrible man”, River says. “The devil himself wouldn't have had a patch on him.” There is another cigarette between his lips, as though he's somehow magicked it there. “I got away as soon as I could, but I could never stay away for too long, there was always something that kept bringing me back. Guilt, dependence, familiarity, money, need, you call it what you like, there was always something. Always an excuse. Whatever it was, I couldn't stay in one place for more than a few months at a time. On the road or back with my folks. Either way I'd go between the two like a god damn yo-yo. Right up until it happened.”

“Until what happened?” Maddy says.

“Until enough was enough”, River says. “You want to know why I am what I am? You want to know my story?”

“If you want to tell me it”, Maddy says diplomatically.

“Well I don't know if I do. I've never told anybody else.”

“Maybe you've never found the right person to tell”, Maddy says, back alongside him now, interlocking her fingers with his.

“What are you, like my psychologist now?” River says sarcastically.

“I reckon I've had a decent amount of experience to be so”, Maddy says, wistfully.

“Perhaps you have”, River says.

Cars drive past in the other lane, kicking up dust as they go, which he watches hypnotically in his rear view mirror. River doesn't know how to start, all he knows is he wants to. There are a thousand stories to tell, all of them so jumbled up inside his head, he's forgotten the order. He's kept them locked up for so long, he thought he'd never be able to find the key, let alone want to let them out again.

“If I tell you what I'm going to tell you, you can't tell anyone else, you promise me. I'm telling you because you told me a secret, and because you trusted me. And because I like you more than I believed was possible.”

“I won't tell anyone else”, Maddy says. “I promise.”

“I'm here with you because of a man named Buck Tavern”, River says. “He's the only person in my life apart from that goddamn horse Lightning, to have ever done anything for me.”

“Who is he?” Maddy says. “Is he family?”

“Kind of”, River says. “I've known Buck for a long time. He caught me trying to steal from him when I was ten years old.”

“Ten?” Maddy says.

“I told you I've been running away for as long as I've known how.”

On their right, a collection of derelict buildings rise out of the dust like a set of badly looked after teeth. A young Mexican boy dressed in dirty clothes, and leading a mangy dog, both of them several days from a good meal, pick their way through the rubble. He has a stick which he whacks on what's left of a stone wall, and one of his shoes is missing - lost to the mud that morning - although it doesn't seem to bother him. Maddy catches his eyes as they drive past, dark as the night, and he watches them go. She thinks to wave to him, but only after they've gone, and by that point it's too late.

“We're close to the border here”, River says. “I can feel it.”

“We're not crossing yet?” Maddy says, worry straining her voice.

“Not yet, Princess”, River says. “We don't have a crossing point for a while yet. Besides which, we haven't had anywhere near as much fun as I promised you.”

“It'll be ok?” Maddy asks.

“It'll be ok”, River says. “I'm not ready to leave you just yet.”

“You'd risk getting caught to spend a few more hours with me?”

“Well we've got to have a second date, haven't we?” River says.

“Who says we've even had our first yet?” Maddy says, squeezing his hand tightly. “I don't want to lose you.”

“You won't lose me, Maddy”, River says. “I promise you that.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Maddy says.

“Usually when someone asks that, the question that follows is something the other person won't want to answer.”

“Why aren't you in Mexico already?” Maddy says. “Why are you risking delaying getting there at all. If you get caught, they'll put you in prison.”

“Oh, Maddy”, River says. “You caught me out. You really want to know why I'm not there already?”

“Yes.”

“I really have to say?”

“Yes.”

“Because you're not the only one having fun. If I have to spend the rest of my life in prison, for the time I've spent with you so far, I'll take it and die a happy man, knowing that I made the right decision. I had to stay long enough to know. Now I've stayed, it's harder than I thought it would be to pull myself away. I figure the time we'll have today is a calculated risk, one I'm more than happy to take. Besides which, I might need it to make sure that in a month's time you'll come and find me. Because if you don't, then at least I'll have had two dates instead of just one.”

“I told you, we haven't even had the first one yet”, Maddy says. Again, she rests her head on his shoulder, getting herself as close to him as possible, feeling an urgent need to do so. “Anyway, I might get tired of you after today”, Maddy says, laughing at her own joke. “Maybe you should have just stuck at one.”

“We'll see”, River says. “When you see what I've got planned for you.”

“You have a plan?” Maddy says.

“I've always got a plan, Princess”, River says, sliding his hand along Maddy's leg, until it ends up under her skirt and between her thighs. “Haven't you worked that out yet?”

Maddy squeezes her legs together suddenly, trapping his hand strongly in place, before it reaches its intended destination.

“What did you steal from him?” Maddy says, after a moment.

“Buck owned a series of casinos, still does actually. I used to hang around outside and pickpocket the people that came in and out. I didn't steal directly from Buck, but I was causing a nuisance and giving his business a bad name. Instead of calling the police, he gave me a job. He's been giving me jobs ever since.”

“Was the bank one of his jobs?” Maddy says.

“Exactly”, River says. “Buck used to do the big jobs himself, for the buzz, but this one he decided to give to me. He'd either had enough or he figured it was all getting too risky, and he was getting too old. He's a legitimate and very well respected business man after all, and I know he's keen to keep his public image like that.”