Hard Fall (15 page)

Huff explained unnecessarily, “
That
is their explosives expert, if you can believe it.”

“I can believe it,” Daggett answered.

He is sitting in the sixth row, a couple seats in from the aisle. The man at the podium is in the midst of a lecture on Progress in Plastics, which ends up a history of plastic explosives. A bone-thin man with virtually no hair and an aging voice that's impossible to hear, he quickly loses the attention of those in attendance.

Daggett spots a profile in the third row that he finds much more interesting than the lecture. She has high cheekbones, a Roman nose, and a funny little smile. She's dark and bashful, blushing over something the woman in the seat next to her has whispered. And when she glances over her shoulder at him, like a teenager in Algebra II, he understands they are talking about him and he feels a warm flash of embarrassment and lust pulse through him. They both quickly look away.

The lecture continues and he wonders how he can introduce himself. This is the last course of the three-day seminar and he can't believe he didn't notice her until now. He experiences a brief flirtation with guilt; he's been with Carrie only six months and here he is plotting a way to meet this total stranger. Mentally undressing her. He convinces himself it's a healthy reaction to a boring lecture, and when they are finally dismissed he sticks to his own aisle and intentionally avoids any chance of contact. He doesn't need that kind of temptation.

Three months later he sees her again, and this time it's on the Maryland shore while out for a walk on one of those hot summer afternoons where you think if you're ever going to die, now's the time, things are so perfect. But they're made more perfect with the sight of her. The sand burns his feet, so he stays on water's edge, chasing a group of feeding sandpipers along in front of him. They scurry furiously to avoid him, then take to flight, landing twenty yards in front, only to run again as he draws closer. An endless chase. He doesn't recognize her at first, perhaps because of the large sunglasses she's wearing, or perhaps because his attention is more fixed to her stretched form and the tight single-piece suit that molds to her like body paint. He walks past, she up the beach toward the small clapboard cottage, he ankle-deep in the foaming reach of the low waves as they come to shore.

It's on his way back, as he's trying hard not to stare, that he hears a clear voice call out with a false German accent, “Zee ahhd-vent of plassteeks brought purr-fek-shun oont power-ta-bill-it-tee.” Sitting up, glasses pulled down that Roman nose, squinting eyes staring over the rim, she smiles coyly, her raised brow asking, “Remember?”

He does remember—how could he forget?—and he leaves the safety of the cool water and heads toward her, not noticing the hot sand beneath his feet. “Third row,” he says.

“That's me,” she admits. “And as I remember, you took out of there like it was a house afire.”

“I was running late,” he said.

“You were running. I was aware of that.”

He can't think of how to reply. They introduce themselves. She's Lynn Greene, at the FAA now. Explosives. He's prepared to turn that into a joke, but thinks better of it. He's already flirting. Carrie and Duncan are back at the cottage only a few hundred yards down the beach. He doesn't need this kind of complication, but he can't seem to pull himself away. She's pretty, there's no denying it, but that's not the attraction. It has something to do with her inquisitive expression and the humor that waits behind her eyes.

They make small talk. He remains standing. She shields her exposed eyes from the sun, but can't stop squinting. Sand clings to the backs of her arms like glitter. Her dark hair is ribbed from a wide-tooth comb that she uses between swims. The comb is spilling out of her overturned straw beach bag, along with a bottle of lotion and several hardcover novels, one with a bookmark. They talk authors. She avoids best sellers. He eats them up. Then they talk movies and jointly come to agreement on the brilliance of
Annie Hall
and Woody Allen in general. “You talk shellfish?” Daggett asks, quoting from a favorite scene. They laugh, she with her head back, her red lips open wide, the lowered sunglasses pushed back up her creamy nose.

Daggett says good-bye and hurries off.

“Running again?” she calls after him. It stops him and he turns to look back at her. She waits a moment before smiling and lying back down, with a tug on her suit.

He'd like to tug the suit right off her, and she knows it.

It's several more days of long walks before Daggett finds himself pacing the water line outside her cottage. She's in a terry cloth robe, the same ribbed hair, when she appears through the screen door and calls out, “High tide will eventually bring you closer to the steps,” and waits for him to approach the cottage. The way she wears the robe it's easy to fantasize that she's not wearing anything underneath it. Her leg jumps out as she's standing, peering inside the ancient refrigerator, calling out the contents to him: iced tea, beer, diet Coke, an orange, an apple. It's a deep brown leg and it tucks itself back inside as she closes the refrigerator and hands him an iced tea in an aluminum can. She takes a beer for herself. He doesn't remember having made any request.

She sits down across from him. The kitchen table is tiny, the recipient of dozens of coats of paint, the latest a marine green. There are clean dishes stacked to the right of the sink, a cantaloupe in the window. The room smells of salt water, and suntan lotion, of violet bath soap and coffee. The door is open to the bathroom. Its fixtures are old, the shelves littered with women's things. A bra hangs from the shower curtain rod. He feels like he's lived here for weeks.

Five minutes stretch into ten, ten into twenty. She drinks another beer. She hands him one and he doesn't refuse. It's easier than any conversation he's ever had. Thoughts swirl around in tangles. Knots. He tells her about Duncan, but leaves out the paralysis. He tells her that he's divorced, and finally explains his relationship with Carrie, that the three of them are in a cottage just down the beach, though as he hears himself tell it, he doesn't quite know the author. Lynn Greene doesn't seem the least bit bothered by any of it. The humor remains, the closeness. She doesn't pull back and start building walls. She doesn't threaten, though she certainly flirts, which after a while strikes him as part of her personality. She's the hot-blooded variety, and she's comfortable with that. The closest she gets to a come-on is “We all need distractions,” but it's said in a way that confuses him and leaves the interpretation up to him, and he decides to let it go.

Two hours pass. It's her beer going flat that tells him how long it has been. He excuses himself. “I'm not running this time,” he says. He's trying to tell her something, but he's not sure why. She's amused.

“I enjoyed it,” she tells him. To him, her comments sounds as if they've made love. And he realizes they have been making love for two hours. Making love with their clothes on.

When they're out on the porch and he says good-bye for the second time, it's Lynn Greene who spots Carrie first. Carrie is standing down by the receding water of low tide, looking up at them. Misunderstanding. Assuming. Burning. Carrie turns abruptly and in stiff-legged strides splashes her way first at a fast walk, then at a run, back down the rose-colored beach.

Daggett wants to say something, to apologize, but he's not sure whom to apologize to, or what to apologize for. He's back on the beach, in no particular hurry, well aware that Lynn Greene is not just a passing acquaintance, and that Carrie is not far off in her assumptions.

Standing there in a parking lot filled with the haze of petroleum smoke and the chaos of the firefighters, Lynn Greene smiled at Daggett privately, her eyes sparkling. “Cam Daggett!” she shouted, as only long-lost friends shout. Huff rocked his head in disbelief. Daggett felt his face warm and his stomach turn. She came toward him excitedly, in long strides. He wasn't sure how to receive her. He wanted to swallow her in his arms—but not in front of Huff.

A sudden and thunderous explosion caused a hundred people to dive to the ground simultaneously. Daggett and Lynn Greene ended up close to each other. Only a few feet apart, it was not the explosion that stunned Daggett, it was how beautiful she looked, even in fear. Even these many months later.

“It always was fireworks with you, Michigan,” she said from the corner of her mouth. “How the hell you been?”

She didn't give him time to answer. The explosion threw a piece of the plane's wing onto the horse stables, and as its flaming fuel drained onto the roof, a sheet of fire wrapped itself around the building. The scream of the trapped horses pierced the fading rumble of the explosion. Firemen fled in a hasty retreat coming straight at Daggett and Lynn, who were already back on their feet.

Lynn stopped one of them with a blunt straight-arm. “What about the horses?” she asked, incredulous.

“You fuckin' kiddin' me?” the fireman replied, a quick glance to Daggett for support. “Dog food, as far as I'm concerned.”

“Bullshit,” said Lynn Greene.

She took off at a full sprint toward the stables. Without fully understanding his own actions, Daggett found himself only a few steps behind her. “Lynn!” he called out. But she ran on, pretending not to hear.

The inside of the stables, thick with the black, oily smoke, was filled with the deafening panic of the horses as they cried and kicked for freedom. Lynn turned to Daggett—she
knew
he was there—and hollered over the cacophony, “You take that side!” She sprang a stall door open and was nearly stampeded by the fleeing horse. Daggett body-blocked her off her feet as the horse hooves fell within inches of them.

“Lynn!” he shouted in protest. The roof burned, a ceiling of orange flame. A large section of wall collapsed. Several horses escaped through the resulting hole. She pushed him off.

“You take
that
side,” she repeated, coming to her feet and continuing down the line of stalls. One by one they liberated the Thoroughbreds, who raced out of the building with white eyes and frantic hooves.

He glanced overhead to see a full third of the burning roof about to fall in. Again he shouted to get her attention. He pointed. She looked to the roof but then shook her head in defiance. She freed two more horses. Daggett realized the quickest way—the
only
way—to get her out of here was to save every last horse.

Water began to rain down on them—the firemen had turned their hoses on this building. Two men in oxygen masks and orange rubber suits, with black boots and thick gloves, appeared out of the billowing smoke. One of them shouted angrily, his voice muffled by the mask: “Get the fuck out of here!”

The piece of the roof caved in, but it was at the other end and it fell into empty stalls. Lynn and Daggett ignored the fireman. They opened the two remaining stall doors simultaneously and the escaping horses knocked the fireman off his feet. With his heavy protective clothing and oxygen tank, he came clumsily to his knees. Lynn offered him her hand but he waved her off furiously.

Daggett and Lynn ran from the smoke into the welcome air, followed only seconds later by both firemen. They turned in time to see the stables fully aflame. Loose horses, their eyes bright with fear, chaotically sprinted for freedom, scattering people in their way.

The remaining section of roof gave way, and seconds later, the walls folded in. The building lay almost flat. Flames leapt fifty feet into the air chasing a billowing spiral of thick smoke.

“You could have been killed!” he said angrily. It was at that moment he realized the depth of his feelings for her.

“No,” she said confidently, shaking her head, eyes tracking the flames. Her face glowed in the orange light. “It isn't my time.”

“Your
time?
” he asked, now more furious than ever. Next thing she'd be reciting horoscopes.

She looked over at him, taking her eyes off the fire. “You know these things, Michigan.” Then she took his hands into hers and squeezed. He forgot all about the fire. “Sometimes you just know.”

Perched on the thin lip of the hotel bathtub, Daggett's feet hung down into the steaming hot bath water. Every so often his feet protested like this, stiffening like boards. A good long soak was the only solution.

“It's not right,” he said in a voice that resonated loudly in the small, tiled bathroom. He had a thing about rightness. “We need to keep going on this.”

A moment later, over the drone of a television commercial for a bamboo steamer on the ubiquitous CNN, Lynn Greene declared encouragingly, “It's dark. We'll start up again at first light.”

“It has nothing to do with darkness—it has to do with the report of chemicals being on board the plane. Did you see those people in those spacesuits? Jesus, what a sight! That's what cleared everyone out of there. You see how the TV crews ate that up?”

“And for good reason. What if the site
is
contaminated?”

“All the more reason to suspect sabotage, if you ask me. Chemicals? That's
Der Grund
's calling card. Not that I can prove it.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. The point is—”

She interrupted him. “The point is that we got very lucky. The fire neutralized the chemicals. That's the report I got. Without those wellheads burning as they did, we would have had a
real
disaster on our hands.”

“From my end, that's all the more reason to keep up the investigation. Waiting around for guys in space suits to analyze spoor samples—”

“You're disgusting! One night is not going to hurt anything. We'll get a fresh start tomorrow. If there's something there we'll find it.” She handed him one of the vodka-and-Rose's she had mixed using the supplies from the mini-bar.