Page 44 (1/2)

"I need to hear your voice All the way All the way hoet hten up

I kept her on the phone until she drove her truck into the carport and switched off the engine

Sun or no sun, I wanted to go outside and meet her as she opened the driver’s door I wanted to be at her side with the Glock in my hand as she walked across the house to the rear porch, which was the entrance that she always used

An hour seemed to pass before I heard her footsteps on the back porch, as she walked between the tables of potted herbs

When she swung open the door, I was standing in the wide blade of ht that slashed into the kitchen I pulled her into htly that for a moment neither of us could breathe I kissed her then, and she arlorious and alive

No htly I held her, however, no matter hoeet her kisses, I was still haunted by that presentiment of worse losses to come

SIX

THE DAY AND THE NIGHT

32

With all that had happened during the previous night and with all that looine that ould h she didn’t know the reason for ht ofher was an aphrodisiac that put her in a entleman, remained downstairs in the kitchen We went upstairs to the bedroom and from there into the tiy, the only forht

Afterward, in a mood that made even the ht from sundown until dawn, about the ht Bay was now a Pandora’s box swarht I was insane, she hid her judg by the troop, which Orson and I had endured after leaving Bobby’s house, she broke out in gooseflesh and had to pull on a robe As she gradually realized fully how dire our situation was, that we had no one to e could turn and nowhere to run even if ere allowed to leave town, that we ue, with effects to coine, she pulled the collar of the robe tighter around her neck

If she was repulsed by what I’d done to Stevenson, she ed to suppress her emotions with remarkable success, because when I was finished, when I had told her about even the fragment of the doll’s face that I’d found on her bed, she slipped out of her robe and, although still stippled with gooseflesh, brought ain

This time, e made love, ere quieter than before, ently than we had the first tih tender before, theto each other with love and need but also with desperation, because a new and poignant appreciation of our isolation was upon us Strangely, though we shared a sense of being two conde relentlessly, our fusion eeter than it had been previously

Or er strips us of all pretenses, all a us more intensely than we are otherwise ever focused, so that we re: that our nature and purpose is,else, to love and to make love, to take joy from the beauty of the world, to live with an awareness that the future is not as real a place for any one of us as are the present and the past

If the world as we kneas this writing didn’t ht at us, the ambitions of two people didn’t amount to a hill of beans All that mattered was friendship, love, and surf The wizards of Wyvern had given me and Sasha an existence as reduced to the essentials as was Bobby Halloway’s

Friendship, love, and surf Get theone Get theh to kno precious they are

For a while we lay in silence, holding each other, waiting for ti that it never would

Then Sasha said, "Let’s cook"

"I think we just did"

"Iwhites," I said, ridiculing her tendency to carry the concept of a healthy diet to extres today"

"Now I know it’s the end of the world"

"Cooked in butter"

"With cheese?"

"Soot to keep the cows in business"

"Butter, cheese, egg yolks So you’ve decided on suicide"

We were doing cool, but eren’t being cool

We both knew it, too

We kept at it anyway, because to do otherould be to adood So were the fried potatoes and the heavily buttered English ht, Orson circled the kitchen table, hetto eyes at us e looked down at hi I put in your bowl," I told him

He chuffed as if astonished that I wouldpitiably at Sasha as though trying to assure her that I was lying, that no food whatsoever had yet been provided hiled, and pawed at the air in an all-out assault ofto earn a nibble He stood on his hind feet and turned in a circle He was shameless

With one foot, I pushed a third chair away from the table and said, "Okay, sit up here"

Ier attention, regarding ht a fully radical, way insane story from me, without any proof except a few months of diary entries by an obviously disturbed priest She probably did this because she is critically sex crazy and needs a man, and I’m the only one that’ll have her"

Sasha threw a corner of buttered toast at me It landed on the table in front of Orson

He darted for it

"No way, bro!" I said

He stopped with his mouth open and his teeth bared, an inch fro the morsel, he sniffed it with obvious pleasure

"If you help me prove to Ms Goodall that what I’ve told her about the Wyvern project is true, I’ll share some of my omelet and potatoes with you"

"Chris, his heart," Sasha worried, backsliding into her Grace Granola persona

"He doesn’t have a heart," I said "He’s all stomach"

Orson looked at e in put-down hu I said, "When someone nods his head, that means yes When he shakes his head side to side, that means no You understand that, don’t you?"

Orson stared atstupidly

"Maybe you don’t trust Roosevelt Frost," I said, "but you have to trust this lady here You don’t have a choice, because she and I are going to be together from now on, under the same roof, for the rest of our lives"

Orson turned his attention to Sasha

"Aren’t we?" I asked her "The rest of our lives?"

She smiled "I love you, Snow at Orson, she said, "From now on, pooch, it’s not the two of you anymore It’s the three of us"

Orson blinked atdesire at the bite of toast on the table in front of him

"Now," I said, "do you understand about nods and shakes?"