The Border Lords (13 page)

A few minutes later she had eased into a strange dreamlike state in which she felt physical sensation somehow after the fact, and she felt emotions not quite when she thought she should feel them, her whole being tilted off its axis. It wasn’t a bad thing. She drifted in and out, aware of everything but focused on nothing. Vivid memories of girlhood, the Rockies and the rivers and her beautiful Boulder home, brother Scott and brother Jake, all of the several Labs they’d always had as family dogs coming back to her in singular detail. Friends. Relatives. Trips. School. College and swim team. On and on. It felt like a hallucination of some kind, but it was a factual hallucination—nothing invented, nothing changed.
Like floating on a cloud of your own life
, she had thought,
on the cloud of your history
.

Suddenly she had free-fallen back to this earth, this room, this bed, and she renewed her full devotion to the man surrounding her, straining deep into her with a need for something she badly wanted him to find.
My gift to you, husband. From me. Here. Oh. My. God.
She had pulled his face down and kissed him as she came, as her pain inverted and blossomed into a pleasure that she had never had before, one so large and consuming that she knew she was getting only a small part of it. Sean, too. He growled and began to quake and he shuddered and shuddered more and he was like a man discharging electricity. How long could it go on? Finally he collapsed onto her and Seliah stroked his hot wet hair and said,
I love you so much, so much
, and she saw the clock said eleven twenty-two and then he was in her again, driving powerfully, yearning and unsated, searching for her rhythm once more. Seliah searched, too. Gradually she found it and led him to it, a spark of pleasure waiting for her at the end of each long, slow stroke.
Our love
, she thought.
Our journey.

“Give me a child, Sean.”

“Soon. When I’m finally home with you. He will be perfect. She will be perfect.”

Seliah was regular with her pills but out of motherlike speculation she had noted the moments of possible conception. Which one was best? The twelve forty-eight? The two oh five? The three twelve? The four forty?

 

 

Now she looked over
at him sleeping and she ran her hand over the sheet and felt his hardness and took her hand away. What was this? What had happened? She touched herself, and beneath the surface pain she felt the ache of unsatisfied desire.

She slipped from the bed and into the bathroom. She brushed her teeth without water and looked at her reflection and wondered why it had been impossible to behold the night before. It didn’t seem so bad now. She ran a cool shower. The sight of water unsettled her. It took some willpower to let it have her but she was exhausted and finally she tilted her head back and let the jets beat against her scalp and run down her straight white hair. Her eyes were closed but she could sense the bathroom door being opened and shut, and feel a cool gust of air as Sean came into the shower behind her and ran his hands down the length of her hair as the water rushed down. She moved back into him. He told her about how great it was to fly
Betty
again, and how much he looked forward to taking her up, and they could make a nice little spot for Daisy behind the seats, though she would probably be a little bit miffed when Seliah deposed her. He wondered if they could get her an aviator’s scarf. He was thinking maybe Colorado was in their future, back closer to her roots. Seliah heard him take the shampoo off the rack and she felt the cool puddle that dropped to the crown of her head; then she felt his big strong fingers spreading it over her hair. When it was spread he began kneading it in, working up the lather. It smelled of grapefruit, lovely and light. He massaged her hair and scalp and neck and shoulders. Indescribable pleasure in this. He bent her head back for a long, cool rinse, rubbing firmly at her temples, then gently tilted her face forward to rinse the other way. He parted her legs and slowly entered, cupping his hands under her butt and lifting her to her tiptoes. She braced herself on the shower wall, the tile cool on her palms and her cheek, and let the water come down.

“Don’t stop.”

“Can’t.”

“Don’t ever.”

An hour later they finished together, an ecstasy she could hardly stand, but not quite get enough of. She turned to him, her legs trembling, and saw the smile on his big face and the love in his eyes. She saw no wildness in them, just love and gratitude and relief. He held her for a long time under the cool water; then he soaped her and washed her.

“What if we make something grow in here?” she said, patting her tummy and whispering into his ear past the water.

“When I’m home. When this is over.”

“But we’re not right, Sean. We have to be right to be parents. And we are clearly not.”

“No.”

“I love you. I love doing all this. But I should be able to control it, like normal people. See? Even when I’m talking about controlling it, I can’t.” She kissed his ear, running her tongue along its contours.

“I can’t control it, either. Maybe we’re really
not
normal people, Seliah.”

“Then what are we? There must be an explanation. Should we try another doctor?”

“I’ll go online.”

“I’ve
been
online. According to them we might have flu, PTSD, fibral neuralgia, lead poisoning, toxic levels of mercury, rabies or syphilis. Or maybe HIV, schizophrenia, hysteria, drug interactions, environmental toxins. And it’s possible we’re being poisoned by someone and don’t know it. Online won’t cut it, honey.”

“Okay. It has to be a flu. Or a reaction to something. Last week I had headaches. They were terrible.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I can’t tell you everything. I think, yes. We should go to a doctor.”

“We can do it together.”

“Okay. Good.”

“And we’ll go to another doctor for the baby. We’ll make sure the baby is perfect.”

“He’ll be just a cell or two, won’t he?”

“You can’t be too careful in the first trimester.”

When he had finished washing himself and gotten out, Seliah was still there, the water that she had loved for so much of her life splashing over her body. It was good again. Water was good. Maybe all she had needed all along was her husband. This was the beginning of their new life. She lifted her mouth and drank from the stream.

She took a few extra minutes to comb out her hair and put on some makeup that fit her mood. Even though she would be a mother soon, and it was early morning and the fierce desert sun was already outlining the curtains with bright slashes of light, she was still hungry for something dark and primitive, so she painted her eyes and brushed her lashes thick and hollowed her cheeks and painted her lips dark plum. In the mirror she saw a platinum-haired, blue-eyed predator. She smiled at herself. Little white fangs in a blood-drenched mouth. She growled, then giggled. Her pussy was tingling and wet and when she brushed it with her finger she felt the air cool on its outer fold. She left the towel tied up under her armpits and stepped out.

 

 

They spent nearly all of Monday in bed,
curtains drawn, AC blasting, both televisions turned to sports and muted, with breaks for room service and brief naps. They ate ravenously and drank fruit juices by the quart.

They broke a few times so that Sean could e-mail her sweet, lovesick messages. They didn’t want ATF suspecting they were both AWOL. Seliah e-mailed him lovesick words in return, playing along just in case someone at ATF had found a way into her hard drive. They laughed and tried composing such letters while having sex in exotic positions. Their e-mails heated up. They joked about Charlie and Janet reading them and struggling to keep their clothes on. More laughter, then more sex.

Daisy slept at various stations within the suite, following the narrow slats of sun that got past the curtains.

In the long twilight Seliah put on her running clothes and loped out into the cooling desert where she ran along flowering gardens and country club ponds and a golf course closed this month for re-seeding the fairways. There were towering palms and plaster walls hung richly in bougainvillea. Even in the waning light the bracts vibrated with color. Every green and living thing was framed by the clean beige desert sand. She glided past man-made waterfalls and fountains and ponds and creeks, water gushing everywhere. Every inch of her was sore but the motion helped her gather the pain into one big neat package and will it all away.
Maybe we could move here
, she thought:
Raise the baby here in the good, clean desert heat. Sell the San Clemente house. The prices here are cheaper.

When she got back to the suite Sean was gone. All of his things were gone. Daisy, too. It was like they’d never been here, like the whole thing was some fever dream she’d had and she would wake up soon in her San Clemente bed, trying to remember all the good moments of the last twelve hours.

All that was left of him was the light scent of his shampoo and shave cream, and a handwritten note on the Rancho Las Palmas stationery:

Seliah took the note and sat on the bed and looked around at the darkened room. The curtains were tightly drawn and the blanket still covered the dresser mirror. She gathered a handful of bedsheet and wiped the tears from her face. She could smell him in it, his wildness, his unsated needs. She stood and ripped the bedsheet with her teeth, then tore it to shreds with her hands. Seliah sprung up and pulled down the blanket and saw herself in the mirror but again she couldn’t stand the sight of herself. She picked a vase off a side table and threw it hard into the middle of the mirror and saw a circle of glass splash into shards and spatter to the tile floor.

“Fuck you, Sean.
Fuck
you.”

Bradley did
Larry King Live
the next evening with a fresh haircut and his left arm in a sling. He sat up straight for the interview and he looked sharp in one of his tailored LASD summer weight shirts. He tried to sound objective as he answered the questions and gave his account, downplaying his role as hero, giving large credit to Deputies Vega, Clovis and Klotz.

“They saved my life,” he said.

Then King cleared his throat and sat forward. “Three dead, Bradley. A deputy-involved shooting. There’s an ongoing investigation and it’s possible that you and Deputy Vega will face disciplinary actions or even criminal charges. Talk to me about that, will you?”

“I can’t, Larry. It’s department policy. All I can say is that the LASD Internal Affairs teams are professional and thorough and they’ll do the right thing.”

“Are you worried?”

“No, I’m not.”

“You know, there’s been no neighborhood backlash thus far. No cries of misuse of force. Do you think there’s a sense that these alleged Gulf Cartel kidnappers got what was coming to them, taking a little boy who is an American citizen?”

“People love Stevie Carrasco.”

“You know we wanted to have him on, but we had to respect the privacy of his family. That’s number one, in a case like this. What can you tell us about him? How did he behave that night? Do you know yet if he was the one to actually set off the silent alarm?”

Bradley nodded and furrowed his brow. He had invented the alarm story for Theresa Brewer, to explain their appearance at the kidnappers’ house. And she had passed it along to FOX News, which later solidified the tale for scores of thousands of viewers. Bradley figured when LASD dispatch checked the tapes and found no such alarm call, they’d blame FOX for the error. And he also figured that this seemed like a good moment to wash his hands of it.

“Larry, I don’t know who set off what. So far as Stevie goes, he’s brave, cool and tough as nails. He didn’t shed a tear. But his old man did when he got Stevie back, is what I heard.”

“I’m sure you know that his father is a convicted felon. A former member of the violent prison gang La Eme?”

“I’ve never met him. I’d guess that even gangsters can love their children.”

“How’s your chest wound, Deputy Jones?”

 

 

“Oh, yes,
gangsters love their children!” said Rocky Carrasco. “You’re quite a philosopher for being a dumbass cop!”

He smiled as Bradley walked into his El Monte lair an hour later. They bumped fists semi-elaborately. Bradley went to the fridge and got a cold Pacifico and plopped down on the leather sofa in front of the big-screen TVs. There were three of them, each tuned to picture-in-picture mode, which, when coupled with Rocky’s digital recorder, gave him all the Mexican football matches and
Pimp My Ride
and
Wild Planet
and
Simpsons
he could handle. Rocky pulled a remote from the waistband of his baggy Lakers shorts and muted all three monitors.

Bradley had shed his uniform and sling and now wore plaid shorts and a white Lacoste tennis shirt and flip-flops and a narrow-brimmed hat. He raised his left arm gingerly to the sofa pillows. The little bayonet of a potato peeler had gone in two full inches, the doctors had told him, and it had sliced through a goodly portion of pectoral muscle but stopped short of the major blood vessels that lay deeper. They’d cleaned it out but left it unstitched so the wound could drain and heal. They’d given him twenty thick, sterile adhesive pads and pumped him full of antibiotics and told him to take a week off from any demanding physical work.