Sundry Days (17 page)

Chapter 32

David

Words in Winnipeg

Rebekah and I are two boys again. Brothers.  David and Rob Fine. The desk clerk at the Birch and Bay recognizes us.

“You two are back again?”

But he doesn’t say it in a mean way.  He says it more like he’s surprised to see us, like he’s taken aback.

“Is Miss D. available?” I ask, figuring we’ve got nothing to lose. “Is there any way you can get word to her this time, that two of Captain Blinn’s crew are here and really would like to talk to her? It’s important.”

“Sure,” he says. “Sure. I’ll make sure she knows.”

He’s not being sarcastic. In fact, he looks a little sheepish, which is odd. The last time we were here he called us punks and told us there was no way he’d get word to Miss D.

“Just so you know,” he says now, “I did give your captain the note you left him—gave it to him when he was headed out. He read it, and then he went to talk to Miss D. Went right up to her house.  Brave man. I was told after that, if you ever came back here—which was highly unlikely—to make sure she knows.  I’ll tell one of the women, who’s almost done upstairs, to let Miss D. know. You can wait in your room.”

I didn’t even ask him for a room. There’s not much money left in the bottom of our backpacks. But he says we don’t have to pay in advance this time.

“You can settle up later,” he says. He gives us a key. Doesn’t even ask if we want to schedule any activities.

Maybe our luck is changing.  Who knows? In any case, Rebekah and I hurry up the stairs.  She says she sees a hot bath in her future.

It’s late now. Almost dark. We’re both hungry. Neither of us has eaten since breakfast. But we’re more hungry for each other than anything else.

We take a quick bath. Rebekah’s not interested in lingering this time. She just wants to get into bed.  Me too.

“Do you know how much I missed you, David?” she asks rhetorically as she works her way with kisses from my lips to my penis—which is very, very happy that she’s so intent on making up for lost time.

How could I ever live without Rebekah?

We don’t waste any time having some of the best sex of our lives.  Wild.  Boundless. We’re both slick with sweat when we’re finally spent. We take another quick bath and get dressed.

Then we go downstairs, to see if Miss D. is ready to meet with us.

“She says she’ll come to your room in the morning,” the desk clerk tells us. “In the meantime, dinner is on her.”

So we go to the dining hall.

“Why do you suppose we’re getting such a different reception this time?” Rebekah asks me as we eat.  The food is very good. We’re hungry.

“We’ll find out when we see her, I guess. Maybe the captain told her about us.  Maybe now that she knows you’re a girl, she wants to hire you.  She could probably always use another pleasure woman to work here.”

“Well, we’re almost out of money,” she teases. I know she’s teasing. “I could support you for a while.”

“Very funny, Rebekah.  Don’t joke about that. The whole time we were in Eden Falls I worried that some righteous old fart would claim you.  That he’d force himself on you.  It drove me crazy.”

“If anyone tried, I would cut off his balls in his sleep. I could do that, you know.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not real reassuring.”

Seriously, though, this whole conversation is putting me on edge. How are we ever going to get to a place where Rebekah and I can spend the rest of our lives together in peace?  Where no other men will want her or try to take her?

Rebekah once told me that the women of the Coalition have been trying for generations to breed jealously out of men. You can’t be a jealous man if your wife regularly has sex with several other husbands. But for some reason, I seem to have escaped their breeding efforts. I was clearly born with a huge capacity for jealousy, which always rises to the top whenever I imagine anyone else with Rebekah. Better not to even think about that.

I need to change the subject.

We congratulate each other about our escape.

“That was a brilliant idea you had to use Caleb as a messenger,” I tell her.

“Yeah,” she says. “But I couldn’t have done it without Willa. I hope she’ll be okay. Do you think there’s any chance Jacob will be gentle with her?”

“He’s counting on keeping her for a long time, so maybe he will,” I say. “But I think maybe you should have taught her how to cut off his balls in his sleep, since you know how. That would serve him right.”

She smiles at me.

“I did teach her some things.  That’s why I asked you to send the sea sponges with Caleb. It would be very risky for her to get pregnant right away. She’d probably die in childbirth.  Did Caleb ask you what was in the package? He didn’t even seem curious when he handed it to me.”

“No. He didn’t seem to care.  He took his role as courier very seriously. I’d been giving him stuff, you know. He looked up to me, I think. That’s probably why he was so loyal.”

“Well…,” she says. But doesn’t finish her thought.

“What?” I ask.

“I gave him things, too.”

“You did? What things?” What could she have possibly given him?

“Nothing. Never mind. It’s not important.”

“No. Tell me. I’m curious.”

Rebekah shrugs.  “I let him look at me.”

“Look at you? What do you mean, look at you?  He could look at you whenever he wanted to. He lived in the same house.”

“David,” she sighs, as if I’m being thick. “What do you think a 12-year-old boy would want to see?  What do you think would make him agree to run errands for a woman all the adult men considered used and from a wicked place?”

Now I’m starting to get mad.  I can’t help it.

“What did you do, Rebekah?”

“What did I do? Do you really want to know?”

“No. But tell me.”

So she does.

Why am I so furious? Why do I clam up and look away from her?

“David,” she says, “don’t be mad.  There was no other way. And it worked.”

“How could you do that, Rebekah? I can’t believe you would do that.”

“Well, if I didn’t, we would still be stuck in Eden Falls hell.”

“I would have thought of something.”

“Well, you didn’t, David.  I thought of something and it worked.”

She can see I’m fuming. Now she’s mad, too.

“Do you think I liked getting naked for a horny little boy?  Do you think I liked letting him put his grubby little hand on my breast?”

“I wish you hadn’t, Rebekah.”

“Wish I hadn’t?  Wish I hadn’t?  Who are you to wish I hadn’t? You didn’t come up with any ideas. You didn’t figure out a way to communicate. You didn’t have a plan. I did.”

We’re fighting now. Really fighting. Not yelling at each other. Not raising our voices. But taking jabs at each other. Rebekah is right. I didn’t save us. She’s the one who figured out what to do. But knowing that just makes me angrier.  I can’t get the picture out of my mind of Caleb ogling Rebekah, actually touching her breast. The little shit. And she let him.

This is the first time we’ve ever intentionally tried to hurt each other. Not physically, but worse.  A lot worse.

Rebekah’s face is getting as red as her hair. Then the tears start silently running down her cheeks.  He nose runs, and she starts sniffling. Her lips tremble. She bites them, and tries to look defiant.

I feel like crying, too. Finally, I tell her we should go back up to room. Finish this conversation there.

She throws herself on the bed and really begins sobbing. I pace back and forth across the room. Then, after a while, she turns and looks over at me.

“I’m sorry, David, but what choice did I have? He was only a stupid boy,” she hiccups and stutters through her tears. “He was harmless and it worked.”

It’s breaking my heart to see her cry like that. Rebekah never cries. She’s the bravest person I know.

“I’m sorry, too,” I gulp, coming to my senses. “I’m an idiot. Don’t cry anymore, Rebekah. Please don’t cry. I’m sorry.  I have no right to be mad at you.”

She looks up at me through her tears, and reaches up her arms for me.

We comfort each other then, but not with sex. Just by holding each other. We’re both exhausted.  She sniffles some more. And then she falls asleep with her mouth open.

I kiss her forehead. I don’t ever want to fight with her again. Not like this. But I’m guessing we probably will.  Even people who love each other as much as we do must fight sometimes—argue for stupid reasons. And I can be such an idiot.

It’s a good thing she loves me.

Chapter 33

Rebekah

Miss D.

I wake up early. I’m a mess. I hated fighting with David last night. I still don’t feel like myself. He was in the wrong, of course, not me. He realizes that now. He’s sorry. And so am I. After all, I knew he’d be upset about Caleb seeing me naked and touching my breast. I could have figured out a better way to tell him. Or maybe I shouldn’t have told him at all.

David’s pride was hurt. Probably still is. I knew it would be. He’s a very prideful man. And jealous. What a throwback, he is. A complete failure of female efforts to subdue men. His mother should be ashamed of herself.

So why is it that, deep inside me, if I admit it to myself, I love that he’s prideful? And jealous. It’s part of who he is, part of why I fell in love with him, if I’m honest.  He tells me that he’s always loved me, ever since he can remember. Well, I think I’ve always loved him, too—everything about him, even those traits that, by all rights, should have been bred right out of him, considering that Susannah is a know-it-all family counselor.

That’s mean of me. Susannah deserves better than that. She’s been a good and loving mother to me as well as David. She cares about me. I know that. I’ve felt it, even when I was so intent on giving her such a hard time. I wonder what she thinks of me now—now that her extremely difficult adopted daughter has stolen away her precious son.  Her David.  My David.

The Designer knows he stirs something in me. It’s not just that he’s so wonderfully made—his strong, lean, beautifully muscled body like a work of art to my eyes. His face, all angles and planes perfectly aligning.  His eyes—sensitive, kind, intelligent, and piercing my heart when he looks at me.

He just wouldn’t be David if he weren’t so stubborn sometimes—so prideful. If he didn’t get so jealous.

I try to push him out of bed. We need to be dressed when Miss D. comes to our room. Whenever that will be. But he doesn’t want to get up.  He reaches for me, and I can’t resist. We’re both warm and naked and musky from the night.  He touches me all over. Touches me in ways that get me so roused, I come before he even enters me.

Then I mount him, and go a little wild. A lot wild. I forget about everything. I forget about our fight last night. I forget about the time. I forget about our worries for the future. There’s only now. There’s only me and David in this world, and I want to stay in bed with him like this forever.

And then there’s a rapping on the door.

Oh shit. She’s here.

“David,” I whisper, “David, tell her to wait a minute.”

He’s laughing.

“This isn’t funny.  Tell her.”

David clears his throat and sits up.

“Is that you, Miss D.?”

“Yes.”

“Could you give us just a moment or two?”

“Fine,” she says.

We hustle out of bed, throw on some clothes, I straighten the covers as best I can, and we open the door.

She smiles at us, like she knows what we’ve just been doing.

Miss D. looks to be about as old as Susannah, and she’s very attractive for someone that age.  Her hair is curly and short, though not as short as mine. And she’s wearing a shirt and pants, but they’re not the kind men wear. Her pants are made of a silky, flowing lavender fabric, and the top is the same color and fabric, trimmed with white lace. Very feminine.

Her face is carefully made up, and she smells of perfume.

We tell her to please come in, and she sits in the only chair in the room. David and I sit at the edge of the hastily made bed, but not too close to each other.

“Well,” she says. “You two are the
brothers
Captain Blinn told me about. I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet you the last time you were here.”

“We’re sorry, too,” I say, “since maybe we could have avoided ending up in a really bad place.  Thank you for meeting with us now.”

David and I tell her a little bit about ourselves —how we love each other and are determined to be monogamists.

“We’re just hoping maybe there are some monogamist settlements around here that aren’t quite as deranged as Eden Falls,” says David.

“How long have you been posing as a boy, Rebekah?” she asks me.

How does she know my name? I haven’t told her my name. Maybe the captain told her.

Miss D. has been staring at me intently the whole time she’s been in the room. She hardly looks at David, even when he’s speaking.

“I started cutting my hair very short and dressing like a boy when I was pretty young. I did it so I could have some measure of freedom. Girls in the Coalition are very sheltered, very restricted, you know.” 

“Yes, I know,” she says. “So you say you came from Seneca Falls. That’s a long way from here. You must be very determined to live your own lives.”

We both nod.

“Your family name isn’t really Fine is it, David?” This time she looks at him.

David stares back at her blankly. He doesn’t answer. Why does she ask him this?  Why does she suspect? Why does she care?

“It’s Gardener, I think,” she says.

“And Susannah Gardener is your mother.”

Wait. How does she know that? What’s going on here? Who is this woman anyway?

“And your family name, Rebekah, before Susannah took you in? It was Laurelton, wasn’t it?”

I’m starting to panic. Because I think I know now who she is. How can this possibly be?

“Who are you?” I ask, boring a hole in her face with my eyes.

“My name is Dora Laurelton,” she says.