Raven Stole the Moon (28 page)

They got back to the bar and went inside. The place was about half full of drinkers having a good time. An older guy was behind the bar this time, probably the day kid’s father, and he waved to Jenna as she walked across the room. Eddie didn’t stop. He said good night over his shoulder and went up the stairs.

Jenna went over to the bartender.

“Tom from the store said he spoke to Livingstone, and he’ll run you out there tomorrow morning. Go on over to the store and he’ll take you out.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep, that’s it.”

“Well, thanks for the message.”

“No problem. And don’t worry about the noise. I’ll clear these yahoos out in a little while.”

Jenna thanked the man and went up to her room with Oscar. She sat on the bed and took off her boots, and then she got herself pretty worked up over the scene that Eddie had pulled in the woods. How dare he lay a trip on her like that? Like Jenna’s supposed to offer him some kind of security. Jenna just wanted to be close to him. What made him think that that would lead to a fantasy life together?

She knew she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep with all this raging through her mind, so she left her room and knocked on Eddie’s door.

“What?” he called out from inside.

“I need to talk to you for a minute.”

Jenna heard his footsteps and then the door opened.

“What?”

He leaned against the doorjamb with a bored look on his face.

“Look,” Jenna started, “if you think I’ve been playing with you, I feel real bad about that, okay? But I’ve got a lot of problems that I’m trying to work out and a lot of things I’m trying to deal with. I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow or next week or next year. I can’t guarantee anything, I can’t make any commitments, I can’t promise you anything. But I want to be with you now because that’s what I want. If you want to be with me, then great. If you don’t, because you’ve got other issues with me or whatever, then I’ll have to live with that.”

His expression didn’t change one bit, which made Jenna mad. She wanted some kind of reaction. But it didn’t happen.

“Fine,” Jenna said, “Good night.”

Eddie closed his door.

Back in her room, Jenna lay on top of her bed for a good twenty minutes listening to the jukebox through the floor before she realized he wasn’t coming. She thought he had understood, finally, but she knew now that even though he talked big, he was only in it for himself. He didn’t have the ability to see past his own needs and to offer himself to her. He was a grudger, like all men. A grudger and a lesson teacher. Cut off their noses to spite their faces. And they’re all too dumb to know it.

She undressed to her T-shirt, brushed her teeth, and got in bed. The music had stopped and there were only a few voices and the smell of cigarettes coming up from the ground floor. She turned off the lights, leaving the bathroom light on as a night light, and rolled over on her side, alone again.

She woke up, thinking she had heard something, and looked at her watch. It was midnight and the light from the moon was still outside her window. Then she heard it again. A soft knocking. Tap, tap, tap. She slid out of bed and went to the door. Tap, tap. She opened it a crack and saw Eddie standing in the hall. They looked at each other silently through the small slit the door made and there was a hesitation, a decision hanging in the balance. Each could retreat if he or she wanted, but unless preventive action were taken, the momentum of his knocking on the door would carry the situation to its final conclusion.

Without a word, Eddie put his hand flat against the door and pushed it open. He stepped into the dark room and closed the door behind him. Jenna stood before him, seeming almost childish with her bare feet and messy hair, her T-shirt stopping just above her navel, innocently exposed below. She stood before him and waited as he moved to her, placing one hand in the small of her back and pulling her toward him. He smelled like cigarettes and he felt like a man, heavy, with thick, almost damp clothes, a protective layer men need to fend off the elements. He moved slowly, sliding his hand up her back and under her hair. He pulled her head close and they kissed, and she could smell the alcohol on his breath. He had been downstairs. He went down for a drink and ended up having a few. He talked with the locals. The kid was there. The one that ran off when Jenna started talking about the kushtaka at the cookout. He and Eddie talked about Jenna, and they felt they both understood her better now.

Jenna felt so small and vulnerable. She wanted to be engulfed by Eddie. She wanted to be smaller still, so she stepped back and pulled her shirt off over her head. Now she was naked and his eyes swept over her and she hoped he liked her more now that she was before him with nothing to protect her. He was so big, tall, and covered all over, and she was a little thing with nothing on. They kissed again and he ran his hand down her back, cupping it under her buttocks. She pulled his shirt out of his pants and slid her arms underneath, encircling his waist. He was so warm. She felt his sling under his shirt and she remembered that he was injured, only one arm working, and even though he tried to be a man with his bigness and all of his clothes, he was still just a boy. So she took his hand and led him over to the bed, sitting him down. She kneeled at his feet and untied his laces, pulling off his boots and socks, and she was happy to see his feet, such beautiful feet, with toes that looked like toes, not super long fingers stuck on the end of a foot. She reached up, unbuckled his belt, and unbuttoned his jeans, pulling them off as he held his weight with one arm, sliding them down his legs and off, onto the floor. Then she slipped off his boxer shorts. White with blue stripes. She stood and took off his flannel shirt and then pulled his T-shirt off. He was almost as naked as she. Only his sling remained, which Jenna unbuckled and slipped off.

Now Eddie was as vulnerable as Jenna. He was no longer large and remote. Jenna stood before him, now, and looked down on him, sitting on the bed. He waited for her to tell him what he could have. He wanted her, she knew, but having been stripped down by her, he was afraid to do anything without her consent. She took his head in her hands and held it to her breast as he lightly sucked on her nipple and she stroked his hair. He reached his arms around her to hold her but pulled back suddenly, wincing in pain. It was his arm. He had moved his bad arm in the wrong way and a searing pain shot into his neck. Jenna laid him back down on the bed and looked at the scar, a dark line in the dim light. She reached out and ran her fingers softly down the length of the scar.

“Is it okay?” she asked.

He nodded. She bent her head down and kissed the scar. It made her feel strange to be this close to what was once Eddie’s open artery. This was a place from where his lifeblood had poured. This raised line of scar tissue held together a wound that almost killed him. She ran her tongue along the scar and he moaned.

“Does it hurt?”

“No, it feels good,” he said.

She moved up to his mouth, kissing him deeply and pressing her body to his. She had seen him several times without his shirt, but still, the feeling of his hairless chest surprised her. It was cool and soft and it felt good to rub against.

“There’s a thing in my jacket,” he said between kisses.

“A thing?”

Jenna smiled and climbed off the bed. She picked up his jacket from the floor and found a condom in one of the pockets.

“So, you planned this all along?” she asked, tearing open the package.

“Wishful thinking.”

She straddled him and sat back, feeling him inside of her and reveling in the sensation. It had been so long. They made love quietly, softly. The light that trickled out of the bathroom caused a sparkle in Eddie’s eyes, and emotion filled Jenna’s chest. She had thought of Eddie practically every waking instant in the past week. She had wanted this. This moment in which there were no barriers, no pretenses, none of the little jokes people make to hide their emotions. And now she had it. They were open to each other, naked in mind and body, not having sex but experiencing each other, and she liked it, she wanted more. In this moment, as Eddie clenched his fists and leaned his head back, emitting a short grunt of satisfaction and resolution, Jenna fell in love with him. It was now that she knew she would stay with him. She knew that they both wanted each other the same way, stripped of everything. No past, no future, just the present seconds ticking by, one by one, and the two of them together, alone in the wilderness, safe from any kind of danger. She didn’t have an orgasm, but that hadn’t been her objective. She had opened herself and let him inside her. That was all she needed. This is it, she thought. There is nothing else. This is it.

She collapsed against his warm body and held him tight, not letting go, not letting him pull out, not wanting him to see the tears in her eyes. But he knew. He could feel her shaking against him. He could see through her.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded silently, her face pressed against his shoulder.

“What’s wrong?”

The tears were more now, there was no hiding them. She couldn’t hold back and she was crying now. He tried to pull away so he could look at her face, but she wouldn’t let him.

“Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“There’s nothing wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head but remained clenched to him.

He stroked her hair until she relaxed at his side, breathing heavily, not responsive to his movements. Then, thinking he was alone in wakefulness in the dark room, feeling this was his only chance, he told Jenna that he loved her, and Jenna heard, but she was already spinning backward into her dream, where she ran through the bright field of sunflowers shouting to Eddie that she loved him, too, and that she would always love him, but Eddie couldn’t hear Jenna’s dream, he didn’t know, couldn’t know. All he could do was look at the ceiling and wonder how he could be so lucky and so unlucky at the same time.

A
LL MORNING
, R
OBERT SAT BEHIND HIS DESK, UNABLE TO MOVE.
A painful knot in his neck made it difficult to think. A ringing in his ears made it impossible to concentrate. He sat in his chair, staring blankly out the window at the cars passing by on the freeway below him.

Bobby’s funeral was two weeks ago, and he was fine most of the time. Work was the same as it ever was, boring, uncreative, unrewarding. At home, he and Jenna had achieved a delicate balance. It was a very guarded and defensive dance they did, each waiting for the other to move before responding with a counter-move. Sometimes Robert felt as if the house were an ice-skating rink and he spent most of his time trying to keep from bumping into Jenna. He hoped that soon things would get back to normal, but he feared this was the new norm. There is no going back to normal. It’s ahead to normal or it’s no normal at all.

Robert swiveled around when he heard the knock on his door. Steve Miller was standing in the doorway.

“Got a minute?” Steve asked.

Robert nodded and tried to shake himself out of his daze. Steve stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. That was strange. Robert never closed his door unless he was firing someone.

“The in-laws leave yet?”

“Yeah,” Robert answered. “They left last week.”

“That must be a relief.”

“Yeah. I don’t know. When they were here, at least we had a common enemy. We had to present a unified front to them. Now it’s every man for himself.”

Steve sat down.

“I was here talking to Chuck Phillips about a deal we’re putting together with First Bank. I wanted to stop by and see how things were going.”

“Well, they’re going, you know. The world doesn’t stop for one man.”

Robert turned back to the window. He didn’t care about Steve Miller, who dropped by. As if Robert were in a hospital. Dropped by for a visit.

“Everyone in the investor group is very sorry about what happened.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, you know, they feel terrible about the whole thing. Terrible.”

“Yeah, well, thanks.”

Robert hoped Steve would get up and show himself out and this encounter would be done with. But Steve wasn’t going anywhere.

“Robert, I have to talk to you about something.”

“Can’t it wait? I don’t really feel like talking right now.”

“No, this is important.”

Robert swiveled his chair back around to face Steve. Steve had a serious look on his face. It was his negotiating face. Robert had seen it countless times at conference tables, picking over fine points of contracts, pounding out details that meant little to the clients but meant the world to Steve.

“What?”

“Robert, they’re shutting down Thunder Bay.”

Robert sighed. Good fucking riddance.

“The Japanese group has backed out, and there’s nothing left to do but shut the whole thing down. Maybe in a few years things will be different.” He paused. “I thought you’d want to know that.”

“That’s it?”

“No, not really. Look, my group has really taken a bath on this. They borrowed a lot against the commitments and now our group has to ante up the loss, and it’s a real hardship on everyone.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because, even though the core group has got the shit end of the stick on this whole fiasco, they want to show how bad they feel about your boy passing on. They’d like to offer their condolences by way of giving you a little something for your grief.”

Robert was confused. Steve was talking around something, he could tell, but his mind wasn’t sharp enough right now to figure out exactly what.

“I have here, for you and Jenna, a certified check for seventy-two thousand dollars, which, we all know, doesn’t come close to making up for the loss you feel. But at least maybe it can make things a little better.”

Robert’s expression hadn’t changed a bit. He didn’t really understand. They were offering him money. Should he be offended or thankful? Was it an insult or a kind gesture?

“I don’t get it,” he said, finally.

“There’s nothing to get, Robert. The people I work with are genuinely upset at your misfortune and they want to offer you something. That’s all.”

Steve snapped open the locks on his briefcase and pulled out a business envelope, which he slid across the desk to Robert. Robert took the envelope in his hand. It was expensive stationery, linen, smooth and silky feeling, light cream-colored with a red monogram on the upper left corner. The monogram read “RGB Group, LP.” Robert looked inside and saw a check made out to him, stamped and punched, for seventy-two thousand dollars.

“That’s very kind of you, Steve. I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything, Robert, really.”

Robert and Steve sat across from each other for a few moments, not saying a word, nodding their heads. There was something going on, Robert knew it. Why else would Steve just sit there nodding. If this was the only thing he wanted to talk about, why didn’t he leave?

“There’s one other thing,” Steve said, holding up his finger. “It’s a little item of business I need to take care of to wrap the whole Thunder Bay business up for the lawyers.” Steve pulled out another envelope and unfolded several pages. He passed the pages across the desk to Robert.

“What is it?” Robert asked.

“It’s a ‘hold harmless’ document. You know, releasing RGB from any liability for what happened.”

Robert stared at the papers. Hold harmless. He was having a hard time concentrating. His neck really hurt. What does it mean? The words were linked together in complicated sentences. Waive the right to recourse through the court system.

“I can’t read this right now. What does it mean?”

“It says that what happened up there was nobody’s fault and that you don’t hold RGB responsible. That’s all. No biggie. Sign it, and it’s all over.”

“But what is this, waiving my rights?”

“Look, Bob, it says you’re not going to sue us. That’s all. It doesn’t mean anything more or less than that. I mean, you weren’t going to sue us, anyway, were you?”

“No, I guess not.”

Robert leaned back and tried to concentrate. He hadn’t thought about that. About suing. It was too much to think about right now.

“So?”

“I should let my lawyer take a look at this, I think.”

Steve groaned and shook his head.

“We’re trying to avoid lawyers, here, Robert. Look, this is man to man. My group made a generous contribution to you and your wife, and now you should thank them by signing on the dotted line. Your lawyer is going to tell you not to do it. But I have to be honest, if you did try to sue RGB, you’d lose. Everything would come out. About Jenna not knowing how to handle a boat, about her not making the kid wear a life jacket. No court in the world would award you any damages. I mean, I’m not pointing any fingers, here, but come on. How is RGB responsible? You’d end up with a ton of legal bills and no settlement. And, on top of that, Jenna would be put through a very painful ordeal.”

Steve took a deep breath and let what he said sink in with Robert.

“I just handed you a check for seventy-two grand,” he went on. “Very generous.
Very
. You sign the papers and that’s that. We can all put this behind us and get on with our lives.”

Robert buried his head in his hands. Steve was right. They wouldn’t sue, and if they did, they would lose. Bobby wasn’t wearing a life jacket. How are investors responsible for that? It was a stupid mistake and the price was high. But still, he didn’t know how Jenna would feel about this. He felt like he was being bought out.

“Steve, I don’t know what Jenna’s going to say.”

“So, don’t tell her now.”

Robert shook his head. Steve had thought a lot more about this whole thing than Robert had. Steve had the answers.

“Wait to tell her. She’s grieving, let her grieve. No need to bother her about any of this. Take the money, set up an account, and when the time is right, surprise her. Then it’ll be like a bonus. It’s not a bad thing, Robert; it’s a good thing. I swear.”

Robert just wanted to go home and take a nap. He was tired and his head hurt and he wanted out. So he signed the papers. He kept one copy for himself and Steve took the other. Steve stood up to leave and looked down at Robert.

“It’s the best way, Robert. It’s over now. Quick and painless. We can move on to greener pastures now.”

Steve left Robert alone in his office wondering if he had done the right thing, feeling that he had been bullied into something he didn’t really want, but not caring, really. Not caring about anything. Because Robert had been deflated. He just realized it. The ringing in his ears he had been hearing since Bobby’s death was all the air escaping from his body. And now, it seemed, the air was all gone. The ringing was no longer there. He was a flat balloon on the surface of the moon, where checks meant nothing and legal documents meant less than that. Nothing comes of nothing, said King Lear. And that’s what Robert had. A whole lot of nothing.