Bad Desire (3 page)

The girls were gone. It was as if the late afternoon light had swallowed them. How could they disappear?

Halfway down the block, past the point where he had last seen them, he pulled into the alley, quickly backed out and resumed his search. The sun was going down; the sidewalks, lined with palms, were nearly deserted. Slater knew he shouldn't stay here. Every minute had its own risk. And yet, as he looked for her, all his other preoccupations left him.

They were coming out of Sweeney's, a café the juniors and seniors used as a hangout. Two of the girls sauntered out first, followed by the others, boys and girls straggling out together. And there she was—her proud head, the cascade of her tawny hair, the way her clothes clung to her as if she wore nothing underneath. Keeping his distance, Slater pulled to the curb.

She looked tall. It was only on those occasions when he stood close to her that he realized, all over again, that she wasn't. At about five six, she was a little taller than the other girls in her class, but she was so well proportioned, her body so lush and overripe, that she seemed to rob them of light. Now she draped her arms lazily behind her head, lifting her white-gold hair and fanning the back of her neck, and then letting her hair slide and uncoil through her fingers. His stomach tightened into a hard knot.

The boys were flirting with her, obviously paying court to her. One of them bounced a soccer ball against his forehead, keeping it alive in the air. Another, a good-looking kid about her age, put his arm around her and slipped his hand into the hip pocket of her jeans. Outwardly, she went on talking and laughing with the others, but her fingers came back behind her, closed on the boy's wrist and withdrew his hand.

Slater couldn't take his eyes off her.

There was a period of confusion when the boys separated themselves from the girls, saying so long, wandering out across the street, tossing the ball. But then, before anything else could happen, she, too, was breaking away from her friends, waving good-bye.

The old red and brown station wagon whisked by Slater's side window. Rachel Buchanan. Slater glimpsed her as she drove past and his face went pale and hard with hate. He slid lower in the seat, his knees rising on either side of the steering wheel.

He felt lacerated by her arrival. Now, even the air stank of danger. She had been threatening to expose him for several weeks now. She claimed she had found something he had given the girl, that she knew what he was trying to do. All he could think about was seeing her dead. There's no other way, he told himself. She'll go to the newspapers; the girl had just turned seventeen. The scandal would annihilate him. “She'll tell,” he muttered to himself. “
Goddamn her
, I know she will.” She'd tell his wife and destroy his marriage such as it was, ending all his plans. No doubt about it: Rachel would smear him with rumors that no amount of explaining would ever erase.

Slater started the engine. I want this over with, he thought. Just get it done. Then everything would go on as planned.

The girl stepped over the gutter into the street. Idling, the station wagon sat double-parked, waiting for her. The girl reached for the door handle, and as she grasped it, something rushed out of him. She turned suddenly. It was as if he had called to her and she had heard him. Her body twisted; she looked over her shoulder, and the shape of her back changed, the curves drawing in—the thrust of her breasts and her buttocks held for a heartbeat in sheer voluptuous power. Her hand came up, touching her hair, surreptitiously shading her eyes—she was looking directly at him. With her glance, he lost all thought.

For as long as it lasted, his eyes burned over her.

The moment evaporated like a bubble. She slipped into the station wagon and was gone. He watched the red taillights shrink in the darkening air. Now, there were five teenaged girls, careless and supple, walking away from him but there was no longer any excitement, no longer the magic.

He left Rio Del Palmos the way he had come, past the turreted high school and its expansive lawn, glowing with dusk. He took back streets, driving down the long, residential boulevards set at close intervals with palm trees, all severely pruned and crowned with tiny green shoots.

Minutes later, he caught the on ramp to the interstate and saw, up ahead, the rear of the brown and red station wagon. His foot eased off the accelerator. Through the wagon's back window, he could barely make out the shape of Rachel's gray head, but he could almost feel her flinty stare. With the sunset hitting his windshield, he doubted that Rachel could see him; still, he felt exposed. Once again he was in the throes of conflict: hatred for the old woman laced with tenderness for the girl.

He let the Jeep slide over into the right-hand lane, eliminating the chance that Rachel might spot him and gaining a better angle at the side of the car where the girl was riding. Her window was rolled down; wisps of her blond hair blew out, fluttering against the red paint; her hand dangled playfully against the wood-grained door.

Suddenly her fingers flicked out. Five. Then, very fast, she flashed her fingers twice more. Ten. Fifteen.

She would meet him in fifteen minutes.

He took his foot off the accelerator, deliberately losing speed, waiting for and then letting another car fill the gap between them. He glanced down at his speedometer, the needle twitching at forty-five. He accelerated to fifty and held the Jeep there. After a quarter mile, the station wagon changed lanes, its right turn-signal blinking. A gust of noise and color flew past Slater on the left; another car was edging past him on his right.

The black Mustang seemed to gain on him in inches; he saw the dusty front fender, the side mirror, the door panel. He turned his head and looked at the driver and the driver looked at him. Slater saw the light spark off the wire-rimmed glasses, saw the man's strange, smooth face.

Chill after chill struck him; for a split second his foot hit the brakes. Instinctively, as if to avoid a sudden crash, he twisted the wheel, careening out into the far left-hand lane. The hired killer was the last person on earth he had expected to see.

He doesn't know me
, Slater reminded himself.
I don't want him to know me
. Just do the job and get out. If he finds out who I am—I'll never get rid of him.

Damn
, he thought.
Damn! Damn! Damn!

The knot of traffic hurled on past, the Mustang with it. Slater fell back.
He saw me. I know he saw me
.

Now several cars back, he watched Rachel Buchanan's station wagon veer onto the Canyon Valley exit on a downward course. Moments later, the black Mustang followed it. Slater wiped the sweat from his brow. His foot pressed down. The raw, powerful sound of the Jeep opened up, roaring past the down ramp and the sinking black roof.

It was Thursday. Slater checked his watch. A quarter to six.

A maze of country roads crisscrossed the hills and valleys surrounding Rio Del Palmos and he knew them all. At the next exit, he left the interstate. When he stopped at the bottom of the grade, Slater was gripped by a seizure of fright, afraid to look behind him, expecting, against all logic, to see the dusty black Mustang materialize behind him. When he did look over his shoulder, nothing was there; no one was following him.

Off to his distant right lay the Pacific, but Slater turned away from it through the underpass, taking the two-lane blacktop called Old Sawmill Road. After a mile and a half, a ridge, strewn with boulders and wild brush, began to mount steadily upward on the far left side of the road. Four miles farther on, he turned in through a set of weathered gateposts, overgrown with honeysuckle. By maneuvering the Jeep around and backing into a stand of cedars, he was hidden from sight. Across the road, the rocky ridge stood at a height of thirty feet. In the valley on the far side of the ridge, the girl lived in the large stucco house with her grandmother.

They wouldn't have much time.

Shutting off the engine, Slater got out of the Jeep. He kept looking at his watch—in twelve minutes, he saw her at the top of the crest. Nimble as a young mountain cat, she came down the face of the ridge, following the old paths, grabbing a bush and swinging herself around and down. She dropped to the drainage ditch and came up, brushing her hands on the seat of her jeans; then she ran across the road, toward him.

Entering through the tangled gateway, she slowed to a walk. “I can't stay,” she said, still out of breath. “Why were you following me? I thought you weren't going to do that anymore.”

“I wanted to see you,” he said.

“Why?” she said, smiling at him but he could see she was tense. “Look, I just slipped away for a few minutes; I didn't tell her anything. I'll have to think of something to tell her.”

The leg of her jeans caught on a bramble—she reached down to pick it off and her breasts plunged abundantly against the cloth of her blouse. There was nothing insubstantial or ephemeral about her. Since she was a child, he had always felt protective of her, but now she had grown up. And still she was so young.

“I brought you something,” he said.

“I don't want you to give me things.” She sounded exasperated with him. “I have to hide them. Don't you know what she'd do if she found out about this?”

How nervous she was and he wanted to calm her. Slater grinned. “What would she do?”

“I don't want to think about it.”

Down the hollow distance of the road, they heard the sound of a motor traveling toward them at high speed. “It's coming this way,” she said. He caught her hand and felt her trembling transfer to him like a warm vibration. Slater drew her back beside the Jeep, into the clearing among the cedars. Through the roadside foliage, they watched the silver car fly past.

Again she smiled at him, that smile that broke his heart.

“Well …,” she said, “what is it? Hurry up and give it to me.” Her blue eyes, shot through with gold currents, looked up at him at a distance of inches.

Wrapped in white tissue paper, the parcel was no larger than his hand; he took it from his pocket and handed it to her.

“You shouldn't do this,” she said, ripping away the thin layers of paper. He saw the nervous falseness enter her smile. She was fighting to hold in her excitement, her eyes, the soft flush in her cheeks, all of her suffused with it.

She tore the last shreds of the paper away, and in her hand, a small gold sea horse appeared. It was hardly an inch long, encrusted with tiny jewels. “Oh, my God,” she moaned, under her breath. “Is this for real?”

“Of course it's real.” He started to laugh. “Don't you know I'd give anything for just one of your kisses?”

The seconds were passing quickly; he knew their time would soon be over and yet he continued to look at her as long as he could. Only her face was before him, her eyes gazing at him, and what he was really saying to her with his eyes was inexpressible. Gently he placed his hands on her cheeks, framing her face, and then he kissed her. It was a chaste kiss like so many others he had given her and yet the little murmur she gave when their lips met was also the sound at the very center of his soul.

Her hand came up, tentatively, to touch his cheek and she returned his kiss. It was like a sacrament that passed between them. Her lips parted under his so that he tasted her warm, wet breath. For a moment, it was as if she were giving herself to him utterly—he could almost feel her ripeness enfold him. He wanted to take her in his arms even though he knew where it might lead, knew it was impossible. Then she drew away from him. “Whew,” she said, blowing through her lips and fanning herself. “I can't stand it.”

She turned as if to go and again looked at the jeweled sea horse. “I'm not so sure I should be taking this from you. Are you certain this is okay to do?”

Still dazzled by her, Slater said, “Of course, it is. When can I see you?”

“I don't know,” she said, starting to back away.

“Try for Saturday afternoon,” he said. “You know the place.”

“No,” she said. “I'll be getting ready for the prom on Saturday. I'm sorry; I really have to go.”

“No, Sheila, come—”

The cedar boughs whipped round her as she fled toward home. After a moment, even they denied that she had been there; the boughs were standing motionless, very full and very green.

It was almost six-thirty when the Jeep shot down the interstate, still headed out of town. Turning under the high trestles of the Bay Court exit, he again drove inland—the highway quickly becoming a narrower, secondary road running beside a freshwater stream.

The valley was burnished with purple shadow that evening. The setting sun cast the fields and wooded foothills in a rich, warm chiaroscuro. Long tree shadows lay across the road like bars and the Jeep ran smoothly through them, the light beating against the windshield in deep flickers. Once this road had been featured on scenic maps; the countryside was scattered with remnants of that other time—a caved-in souvenir shack, a crumbling drive-in restaurant. Slater passed by filling stations without signs or pumps. Now they were enclosed by fences; the landscape had reverted to pasture. Grazing sheep and goats wandered through the forgotten buildings.

Fifteen miles from Rio Del Palmos stood the remains of an abandoned almond grove. Many of the trees were dead—blackened twigs exposed to the wind—the rest would bear some leaves, nothing more. At an opening in the barbed-wire fence, the Jeep turned in on an old grassy trail, followed it for a hundred yards and dropped from sight over a rise. What was left of the trail, on the backside of the slope, curved down to a stream that ran in the crease between hills.

The draw was badly overgrown. Among chaparral and a stand of ancient oaks lay an old homesteader's spread. Only three of the buildings still stood: the house, a barn beyond repair and the stable that Slater had converted to a garage. At the edge of the yard where the stream ran past, someone long ago had built a dam, creating a deep rock pool, edged with sun-bleached boulders.