The Triggerman Dance

But he knows he is past it. She shivers and tightens around him—all of her—hands and fingers, arms and stomach, legs and mouth. He tries to be still but she forces him hard up inside her and John imagines the wash of dark red blood. Thinks it's imagination anyway. She's still shuddering and holding him tightly and he's aware for the first time of the nails jammed into the twin peaks of his ass and the cool-wet pain around them, of the groans vibrating from her throat into his, of the hissing of her nostrils tight against his face, and of the power of her legs clamped hard at his sides. All he can think to do is just wait, locked here like this. So he waits while her arms close around his shoulders and head, and the inside of her is jerking and he hasn't got clue one whether this is pain or pleasure until he looks down at her wide open eyes and the look of surprise on her face and the little lines at the edges of her mouth that suggest a smile. He tries to hold still but suddenly here comes a wholly unpostponable surge of effervescence that feels like a long fizzing string being drawn out of him. Out it goes. Then the riotous discharge of voltage, all the mixed up thoughts, the sweet shakes.

Time does pass.

"Oh," he finally says.

"Oh."

"Oh."

"Oh, my!"

chAPTER 34

When they wake up it is almost two. During their sleep someone has brought the sides of the blanket over them against the afternoon breeze, but John can't remember doing it and Valerie can't either. John's neck is stiff from the ground. Valerie's hat has blown up on its side against a toyon tree and stayed there. Her dress, which twenty-three years ago protected Carolyn as Carolyn protected her, is now wrinkled everywhere and spotted with blood. She stands in the clearing, twisting the stained part around so she can see it, and looks down at the material. John packs up the basket in a heavy silence that seems to him breakable only by meaningful discourse. But he can't think of anything to say that can approximate his feelings at the moment.

"The spring," Valerie notes. "I'll dip it in the spring to get out the stains."

"Are they bad, Val?"

"They add a primitive cache to the garment. It's a keepsake, after all. Imagine what I can tell my daughter about it."

"You all right?"

"I'm great. Don't you think so?"

She looks at him with the same matter-of-factness she looked at the stains with, then a little smile breaks across her mouth, but fades as her eyes well with tears.

"I sure do."

"Let's just walk with our arms around each other. We'll go see the spring in the cave and I'll wash the stains in the water."

"You know you could just take it to a good cleaner."

"I could tear it into gun rags, too."

They emerge from the trees, John with the basket again and Valerie holding her big flowery hat.

"I feel like a teenager who just got away with something," she says.

"Me, too."

"Twenty-two years one way, then you're another. I feel like I'm supposed to think of everything differently now. I don't feel really different, though. There's a pain down there, and some blood on my clothes. I know what it is to have a man inside. I've made the offer and had the taking. But I'm not so sure this is the most revolutionary moment of my life. I mean, I was really crushed when I found out there wasn't a Santa Claus."

"I guess I don't know what you mean."

"Well, you know, just a time when the illusion is gone. Or the change is made. The page is turned. You've thought about it a lot and then it happens and you're still the person you always were. It's good. You're still there."

"I'm glad you're still here."

She turns her face to him and consumes him with the darkness of her eyes. He can tell she's going to ask him how he feel about it and he wishes she wouldn't. Too many gradients of the truth to register. Too much complexity to unite.

But she doesn't ask that, exactly. She looks away, out toward the water and leans her head against his shoulder.

"Does this mean I have to love you?"

He laughs. Then, quietly: "I don't think so."

"Well, I do. So there."

"Then that's a good thing."

John marvels for the millionth time in his life: How can a woman lead you to say something that's true in the way you say it but not true in the way they hear it? Somewhere in between the meaning changes direction, like a signal bounced off a relay. You both know it, which complicates rather than simplifies.

"Good?" she presses.

"Good."

"Look, I gave my body to you. With it came my soul, my love, my devotion. You took all of me. And I expect all of you back. Every last cell of you. I demand love, affection, sacrifice—and I demand it forever. I demand that you love, cherish and honor me, 'til death do us part. I expect to be your new religion."

"Sucker," he says.

"Get down on your haunches, raise your paws up to me, and bark. Bark your adoration."

"Woof."