A Time of Predators

Yes, she would love to live in San Francisco. She slid under the covers, and Caliban immediately flopped beside her hip with his chin on her thigh, still purring wildly. Motorboating, her mom called it. San Francisco. She and Ricky. All right, she was only nineteen, and her folks wanted her to finish college before she got married, but still...

As the light faded, a majestic freighter had slipped blackly under the bridge. On Marin County’s sun-pinked bills the tiny fireflies had begun to gleam, as the residents had begun turning on their house lights.

She and Ricky sat on the seawall with the tide swirling a yard below their dangling feet. The fireworks were shot off from the end of the breakwater beyond the yacht anchorage. It had gotten chilly with dark, so they had a blanket around them, over their shoulders, and Ricky kept his arm around her waist with his hand cupped up under her breast. She hadn’t made him take it away; she found it harder and harder to say no to him. It seemed so right with him, somehow. Each time a rocket faded to darkness, he kissed her.

And the end of this fairy-tale day had brought realization of her love for him. Lying in bed with Caliban beside her, she could remember lying back against the leathery-smelling bucket seat of the Triumph, her eyes shut against the lights of oncoming traffic on San Mateo Bridge, her thoughts drifting, so that the question just popped out unbidden.

“Ricky, how well did you really know Paula Halstead?”

“How well...” He licked his lips. “Debbie, where did you get the idea that... that I... uh...”

So she told it all to him: about not thinking a brush of fenders in a parking lot was his real reason for wanting to see Paula Halstead alone; about wondering at his reaction to news of Paula’s death...

“...of course, you don’t have to tell me, Ricky, if the memories are too painful or... or anything...”

The oncoming lights cast his strong, handsome profile into bronze silhouette against the blackness flanking the bridge, and he didn’t say anything for the longest time. Until they were off the bridge, actually, on the road to the Nimitz freeway. Gaps in the traffic cast Rick’s face into alternate illumination and shadow here, and he spoke when no car was coming.

“I hadn’t ever meant to tell you about it, Deb; that’s why I made up that accident thing. It was just... something that happened. We... met in this fancy cocktail lounge, by accident, sort of, and—”

“I knew it!” she exclaimed in soft triumph. “I felt it!”

“She... wasn’t happy at home, her husband, that professor, he... didn’t satisfy her. She took me over to her motel room, and we...”

When he trailed off, Debbie said, “Did you... more than once...”

“Never again, Deb.” By the lights of an approaching car, his eyes were limpid with honesty. They took the on-ramp which shot them into the booming northbound traffic of the East Bay freeway. “But that wasn’t the end of it, see? She wouldn’t leave me alone. Kept calling me up at home, kept waiting around outside Jaycee... She was always after me to come over to her place on Friday nights when her husband was off teaching that seminar.”

Debbie’s face was tragic. “Then that Friday night you were going to go over there and—”

“—and tell her I didn’t want her to bother me again. Ever. But she didn’t know that’s why I was coming, and I guess that when I had that flat tire and didn’t show up, didn’t call, she just...”

And at that instant Debbie had known she was in love with Rick Dean. All the way in love, the marriage kind of love. He had been through so much pain. Parked in front of her folks’ place, he had held her so tight that she could hardly breathe, for a long time wouldn’t turn his face to her, so she bet that he’d been crying; and when he had raised his head, his eyes had been deadly serious.

“You’ve got to promise me, Deb, that you won’t tell anyone, what I’ve told you tonight — not ever. It would kill that professor to find out about her, I bet, and... I mean, she’s dead and all, so...”

“I understand, darling. And I promise.” She had turned toward him with her eyes shut and her face solemn. “And I love you, Ricky.”

Yes, she thought, the happiest, most important day of her life. With a contented sigh, Debbie slid lower and reached for the light switch.

As Debbie’s bedside lamp went out, Rick pulled up in front of his folks’ darkened house in Los Feliz. He cut lights and engine, sat behind the wheel without moving, going over it. He didn’t feel now like going down to the oceanside cabin with his folks tomorrow, as he’d promised; but at least it would give him time to get alone on the beach and think. He really had to think, now.