Indigo Springs (22 page)

“You can’t go,” I say. “Astrid, there are people out there who want to kill you. Unless you plan to hide in the unreal forever, your safety is at risk.”

“You’d rather Sahara got her?” Patience slays me with a reproachful frown. Her body changed when she slid through me. She is an Aztec goddess: copper-skinned, with coal-colored hair. Her hands are exquisitely symmetrical, and she smells of cocoa.

“What part is this?” Astrid melts into confusion and I pass over the cards. She sighs, almost petting them as she thumbs through the deck.

“Give her a minute,” Patience murmurs to me. “Ev? Sweetie, you okay?”

“Damn glad to be out of that cell,” Ev says. Her
a
’s are drawn out into goat-bleats:
da-a-am, gla-a-ad
. She peers at me suspiciously.

“Hello, Mr. Burke,” I say. “I’m Will—I interviewed you Monday, remember?”

“Sure. Good cop to Artie Roche’s bad. Been interrogating Petey? You won’t get anything out of him.”

“Will’s okay, Pop,” Astrid says. “You’ll see.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“Let’s get going, shall we?” Ev offers Patience a gallant bow and her arm, and they set out.

Consulting her cards, Astrid looks at me. “Coming?”

What can I do but fall in beside her? “I thought you’d jump at the chance to be with Sahara again.”

Looking tired, she rubs her throat. “She’s no good for me.”

“You love her.”

“You said it yourself: She doesn’t forgive. If you remember to tell Roche anything, it’s that. I’m just another magic toy to her now.”

“What do
you
want from
her
?”

She doesn’t answer.

At the top of the canyon, the heat is less intense, the land less barren. Chalk-white grass fuzzes over a series of rolling hills, and man-sized jade formations jut upward through the sod like teeth cutting up from gums. Shivering puddles of vitagua lie in the shadows of the stones.

“We need to head east, Will? That’s the fastest route out of the compound?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“East,” Patience affirms.

“You don’t have to come,” Astrid says. “I’m no kidnapper.”

“You’ve got to return to custody, Astrid.”

“You’re welcome to tag along and try to change my mind. Right, Patience?”

Patience nods, skipping in her pointy shoes.

“What was I talking about?” Astrid asks.

I look at her blankly.

She consults the card in her hand. “The Astrid day dinner. My big date with Sahara.”

“What?” I see paint crawling over yet another card. Astrid is going on with her tale, as though we are all still locked away in the underground vault.

It takes me a second to switch gears. “Did you tell her you wanted a romantic relationship?”

“I didn’t get a chance. She stood me up.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I got to the restaurant on time. I’d dressed up—she’d bought me this strapless blue sheath, Indian cotton, very pretty—and I put on a touch of the magic lipstick. But no Sahara. Finally she called. Said she had to work late.

“I drove to the station, turned on the radio. She was on the air all right, playing love songs for strangers.”

“Did you go in?”

“No, just listened—sulked, really—then decided I didn’t want to confront her in the parking lot. I drove around town until I was damn near out of gas.”

“You were disappointed.”

“Yeah. But then I decided that I’d wanted an answer from her—about us—and this was as good as any I’d get. I’d pretend dinner was no big deal….”

“No big deal,” I echo.

“I’d let it drop and we could stay friends.”

“You thought that would be enough?”

“What else could I do? She didn’t want me.”

“Were you surprised?”

“Well, I’d got my hopes up. Ma was better and I’d learned so much about the vitagua. Everything seemed possible. But—”

“You’d allowed yourself to hope, then been crushed?”

“Yeah. What was wrong with me? I had to wonder. Wasn’t I lovable?”

Fishing the painting of the lovers out of her deck of cards, she passes it over. The image is finally complete.

I can guess what Astrid will tell me next.

Jacks was out washing paintbrushes on the back porch when Astrid got home, pouring water from an antique bottle onto the bristles, letting the red-brown liquid spatter down onto a pile of stones. His expression was guarded.

“What are you doing?” She was so tired that the unfamiliar pumps she’d worn to the restaurant felt like leghold traps. Her purse weighed fifty pounds.

He set the bottle aside. “Working on a painting. The gallery thing looks like it might come through.”

“But you’re guiding tomorrow.”

“I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to. Sahara’s careening around upstairs in a dither about where you got to.”

“God.” She slumped.

“You two fighting?”

“I’m the one who’s going to be Mrs. Skye one day,” Astrid said. “Old, broke, alone. Your kids will be wangling this house out from under me.”

Jacks wiped his hands on his shirt. “You know better.”

“I have to get cracking if I want a family.”

“What’s wrong with—?” He made a vague gesture encompassing the house.

“Sahara’s only here until she finds someone interesting. Ma won’t live forever and you…”

“What about me?”

“You’ll marry some art promoter and move to Paris.”

“Where I’ll blend in perfectly with the intelligentsia, no doubt.” He rubbed his nose, smearing it with paint-juice. “You’re not doomed to solitude.”

“When’s my life gonna start, Jacks? Am I ever going to stop existing in bits of Albert’s past?”

He kissed her.

There was nothing gentle or hesitant about it. His lips met hers with all of Jacks’s characteristic directness. Crackling with the passion he kept bottled so tightly, the contact was sudden and startling.

She kissed back, barely knowing why. When they broke, they were forehead to forehead, gasping.

“We’re brothers,” she managed.

“Barely in-laws.” He took her face in his hands.

And Astrid responded. She wanted Sahara, but as her hands twined in his hair she threw herself into the embrace. She clung to the solidity of Jacks, the unmoving never-leave-her presence of him. Heat burned up from her belly and she met his tongue with hers, pulling his shirt with tight fists. When he fastened his teeth on her earlobe, she groaned.

He reached back and up, accidentally catching her coiled earrings on his sleeve, tugging them for a quick painful instant as he unlatched the door.

“She’ll hear us,” she whispered.

A painful pause—they couldn’t, not out here.

“Windows,” Jacks said, leading her to his studio. They slid between the tall panes and into the basement.

Groping and necking, they worked their way down the hallway to Jacks’s room, falling onto his thin mattress. Astrid was yanking his shirt, socks, wristwatch, scrabbling at the garments with her fingers and teeth. She had him half-stripped before he’d gotten a hand inside her dress.

“You’re not gonna be alone,” Jacks said hoarsely, his thumb brushing her nipple. Astrid felt tears threaten and raised herself to his mouth again.

Upstairs she could hear Sahara’s tread bump-bumping on the wood floors as they fumbled with nylons and condoms.

Jacks’s hands were everywhere, but it was his eyes that were feeding the flood inside Astrid, an intent gaze she had seen on him a thousand times since the days of Dad and Olive’s whirlwind courtship. Jacks’s face with nothing but Astrid in it, and why hadn’t she taken him seriously? Now he was sliding against her, inside her, and she drew him deeper as with every thrust he whispered the things she needed to hear: “I’m here, I’m staying.”

His love, naked at last and Astrid battered it against herself, driving onto Jacks, trying to shove him through the sealed door to her heart.

Then as quickly as it had begun it was ending, their breath coming short, the emotion discharging like bursts of lightning. Stifling a moan, Jacks fell beside her on the pillows, his breath warming her cheek.

“I love you,” he said. His bones felt like knobs through his skin.

She kissed him hard, pulling him close.

She woke to find Jacks sitting up, nestled in pillows with one hand caught in hers. With his free hand, he was pushing a line of acrylic paint along the wall with the bristles of a worn-out paintbrush. Random patterns covered the wall in red and gold as far as his arm could reach.

She sighed and stretched, shifting her weight off his leg. “You must be squashed.”

He nodded, kept painting.

“Whyn’t you push me off? You have to go to work soon?”

Another swift affirmative jerk of the head.

He thinks I’ll have regrets, she thought, and shook herself awake. “That’s too bad,” she said, and kissed him.

Gratified surprise broke across his face. The resistance in him gave like a breaking dam, and Astrid threw herself against his lips, telling herself how it could be: marriage and kids and trips to art galleries on the weekends…

…and chanting, of course, shared secrets.

Jacks lifted and turned her. She curled against him…and then he wobbled. Instead of joining they rolled off the bed, fetching up against the closet door. Astrid banged her head on the knob.

“What happened?”

“My leg’s asleep. Couldn’t take our weight.” His face darkened. “This isn’t what you want.”

“Don’t. I’m lucky to have you, Jacks. I’m
glad
.”

He stood, rocking the pins and needles out of his leg. His face contorted, and his erection drew in on itself.

“Jacks…”

He grabbed up a bundle of clothes. “I can’t be late.”

“Jacks, it’ll work out.”

“Will it?” His voice was strained. “Is that what she’ll say?”

“She?”

“Your romance consultant.”

“Sahara doesn’t care who I…” The words snagged in her throat like fishhooks. “Who I end up with.”

“Who you love?” He vanished into the hall.

“Sahara won’t care,” Astrid repeated. It was true. Sahara wouldn’t—didn’t care.

Her sinuses tickled unexpectedly. Her eyes watered.

“I’m in love,” she said slowly, trying it out. She kicked her legs free of Jacks’s tumbled sheets—tried to anyway, but they wouldn’t come loose. She grabbed the knob of the locked closet door, levering herself upright and triggering a sudden memory of Albert.

“If you ever have to run for it, Bundle, don’t hesitate. Leave it all behind and go.”

She’d answered: “I’ll never run. Never leave Ma. You shouldn’t have picked me….”

She jerked away from it, as if burned, and the door bounced open.

“I’m in love, Sahara,” she said, rehearsing the words. “I’m in love with…Sahara, I’m…” She stepped into the closet, breaking through cobwebs, shivering at the cold touch of the concrete floor. There was a small box on the floor in the back corner.

Another chantment? No. Astrid groped for it, struggling with its dusty latch. Inside were two piles of twenty-dollar bills.

Had Albert squirreled this away? She flipped through the bills, thinking there might be a note, an explanation….

Nothing. Just more mystery.

“I’m in love with Sahara,” Astrid whispered. In all these years she’d never said it aloud.

What was she going to do now?

“I love her,” Astrid said, louder now, voice steady.

She grasped the closet door again and was peppered by remembrances.

She had sneaked into the house and absorbed some extra vitagua from the fireplace. The new grumbles had contented her for a while…until they had told her everything they could. Hungry for more, she had gone back, working her hand into the fissure in the fireplace hearth, touching the ice on the unreal side, listening, learning.

Albert caught her there, crouched with her hand in the ice, mumbling to the glaciers. He yanked her away, and the vitagua in the unreal had heaved, chasing her. The hearth cracked, and spirit water splashed the inside of the chimney, the red bricks.

He’d been so angry, so afraid.

Astrid backed away from the memories, fumbling in the salad of blankets for her date dress, her date shoes. The stockings had runs in them; she left them on the floor. As she searched for her purse, her hand fell on Jacks’s chanted watch. The piece of tape with Dad’s handwriting was still there. The label was almost unreadable.

Perfect timing. Suddenly enraged, she wiggled her shoe on. After dropping the watch, she crushed it under her heel. Gears popped and vitagua oozed out of the broken clockwork. She wiped up the droplet with her hand and left the pieces on the floor.

There—her purse. Astrid found the lipstick. She applied it using Jacks’s grime-spattered shaving mirror. Her face changed, becoming smoother, glamorous.

She went to find Sahara.

At the foot of the basement steps she paused, seized by a mix of turbulent emotions—apprehension, determination, wretched affection.

What would Sahara think if she emerged from Jacks’s domain? Instead, she slipped out through the studio, easing herself into the yard through the same window they’d used last night. Getting in had been easy, but this time she got her skirt tangled in plants: ivy mostly, and a rhododendron that seemed intent on invading the studio.

Blinded by the sun, she fumbled her way inside.

She got two steps before a sound in the living room—Sahara’s humming, accompanied by a metallic tapping—rooted her to the floor.

“You’re back!” Heavy things thumped on the carpet and her friend burst into the kitchen. “Where were you?”

“Where were you?”

“Frankie got sick at the last minute—had to have his stomach pumped.” Sahara was uncharacteristically dressed down, clad in a sweatshirt with cut-off sleeves and a ratty pair of jeans. Both garments were smudged with white.

“Did you paint the ceiling again?”

“Astrid, did you hear what I said?”

“You did paint.” She inhaled, smelling fumes. It was cold in here, chilly as the inside of a grocery store.

“Stop avoiding,” Sahara said. “I couldn’t make it to dinner, okay?”

“It’s not important.”

“No? You stay out all night and it doesn’t matter?”

“We don’t need to talk about this.”

“I had to
work
,” Sahara said. “Astrid, I came to this shitty town to be with you. You’re my only friend—”

“Friend.”

“—only one who gives a rat’s ass if I live or die—”

“Don’t sweet-talk me.”

“I don’t want you mad!”

Astrid searched her face, finding real anxiety. “You didn’t ditch me?”

“I swear.”

She swallowed. “There’s something I need to tell you. Sahara, I love—”

A metallic clink from the next room interrupted her.

“Don’t you dare vague out on me now, Astrid Lethewood,” Sahara said. “You love someone?”

She looked into the dark eyes and her courage fled. “Jacks. I love Jacks.”

A pause. Then Sahara threw her head back and laughed. “Jacks? You do not.”

“Why?”

“You’re too gay for him.”

“I’m not gay, I’m bisexual.” She blushed as she spoke; she had never said either word aloud before, not when speaking about herself. “What does that mean? ‘Too’ gay?”

“Jacks is all wrong for you. He’s sulky and quiet, and he’s got more food hang-ups than Gandhi. You need someone with some goddamn
joie de vivre
.”

“I fucked Jacks last night.”

Sahara’s jaw dropped. “You did not!”

“We did.”

“I’d have heard.”

“We were
quiet
.” She forced the words out.

“How passionate could it have been if the neighbors didn’t have to call animal rescue?”

“You know how he feels about me—”

“Whole town knows! So? Just because the kid has a  thing for you doesn’t mean you’ve got to humor him—”

“Humor him?” She was starting to get angry. “I fucked him, I love him, it’s…”

“What, a done deal?”

“Yes,” she gritted.

“Jesus. This is what you wanted to say last night?”

She looked away. “It makes sense, Sahara. He knows about the vitagua, he’s…”

“A good lay?” Sahara asked.

Astrid’s face got hotter. She’s leaving, she thought. Sahara leaves me; Jacks never will. It’s the right choice. A normal life. Invisibility.

“Well…” She could almost see wheels turning in her friend’s head. “I guess it could work….”