After (41 page)

After, they are breathing hard and sweating, and he grins up at her. A huge, guileless grin.

“Damn, woman. You are something else.”

“Oh?” she teases.

“I mean, if you were putting on an act, just don't tell me.”

She laughs. “No, I wasn't putting on an act. Sex should be fun, right?”

For a second he looks stunned. Then he laughs again. “Well, you can bet it's been a while since I . . .” His grin fades, and looking away he says in a lower voice,

“Well, I don't mean anything against Karen. She's great. I mean, she was real good to all of us. But she sure didn't do none of the stuff we just did.”

A half-smile bends one corner of Eva's mouth. It's hard to guess what exotic activities he could mean, unless it's that she'd teased his nipples, or that she'd been on top. “Well, not having a choice takes the fun out of it,” she says, her voice quiet. Matter-of-fact.

“What did she say? That I forced her?” Rick sounds horrified. “I didn't. Never.”

Eva dismounts. Sits beside the prone, glistening lumberjack, gazing down at him, hugging her knees to her chest. “There are different kinds of force. You didn't have to threaten her or hold her down for her to feel like she didn't have a choice.”

A couple days later when Eva goes to Joey, there's no surprise. And no eagerness.

“Rick said you'd be coming,” he says with a shy smile, then backs away from the door and invites her in with a gesture.

“Are you settling in okay?”

“Yeah, thanks.” He nudges his thick black-framed glasses a millimeter or two higher on his nose. “Diego and Evan and the others have been great.”

“You're not regretting coming?”

After a moment he says, “I'm glad you all turned up, that Karen's here, now. I'm still working out if I think it's a good idea for me to stay.”

“Why?”

Joey gives Eva a long, steady look. “I think it might be better for Karen if I go.”

“Did she say that?”

“Not to me.”

“Not to me, either,” Eva says.

“Has she told you? How it was with her and Bill and us?”

“A little.”

Joey gives her a little nod and pushes at the bridge of his glasses. “I think maybe me and Rick have done her enough harm. Maybe it'd be easier for her to make a new start here, if we weren't around. Really, I only came in case she was getting herself into trouble, coming here.”

“You did that for her?”

“It's a pretty small thing. Everything considered.”

“Have you talked to her since the day the three of you moved here?”

“Not really, no. I've steered clear of her. Just to give her space, you know?”

“Want me to ask her for you? If she'd rather you and Rick left?”

“No. It's all right. She'd never say it, even if she wanted us gone.”

“Maybe not.” Eva catches his hand on its way down from nudging his glasses.

Gives him a smile. “I hope it works out for you to stay.”

Then she gives him a close, warm hug. Joey sinks into her embrace, wrapping his arms around her, resting his cheek against her head. When she pulls away to smile up at him, when she tries to caress his face he catches her hand.

“Rick told me you'd come. I mean, he told me that you'd . . . But I don't think we'd better.”

“You know I'm here because I want to be, right? “

“I'm glad. Glad it's not like it was, with Karen. But I guess I'm feeling a little fucked up about things. Guilt's not much of an aphrodisiac.”

“Want to talk about it?” Eva asks.

“No.” He nudges his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and gives her a sad smile.

Not two hours after Eva leaves, there's another knock at Joey's door. Karen.

“Do you want to come in?” he asks her. When she steps forward, he backs away, opening the door wide. He doesn't shut it, so she does.

“Eva says you're thinking of leaving.”

“Yeah.”

“And she said you wouldn't . . . You turned her down.” Joey doesn't say anything to that. Just looks down at the floor. “Why didn't you sleep with her?”

Joey meets her eyes. “Karen.”

“Is it because you'd rather be with me?”

“Karen. Please. I know it's worthless, telling you I'm sorry. And I know it's late, but I'm trying to do the right thing.”

“You figure you owe me?”

“Yes.”

“Then answer me. Would you rather be with me than her?”

“Yes.”

She tells him, “Take your shirt off.”

For a long time he stands there, still, staring at her. He looks scared. But he does it. When she pulls her t-shirt over her head and drops it on the floor, then reaches back to unclasp her bra he says, “Karen? What are you doing?”

She doesn't answer him. She just slips the straps of her ivory bra down her pale arms, and drops the second garment on top of the first. Shaking, his eyes welling up and going red, Joey moves toward her, slow, careful, puts his arms around her, pulls her gently against him, their bare chests pressed together.

“I thought you wanted me,” she says in a small voice.

“You don't have to do this, Karen.”

“That's the point.” She writhes out of his embrace, looks into his face. “Kiss me.”

In a series of slow motions Joey pulls off his glasses, sets them aside atop a tall dresser, never taking his eyes off Karen, then brings his hands to her face, barely touching her cheeks with the tips of his long, pale fingers, leans in, and gives her one soft kiss on her cheek.

“A real kiss, Joey.”

His hands shaking, his bloodshot eyes filled with fear, he leans in once more, and touches her lips with his, gives her the faintest hint of a tender kiss. She laughs. Then, clutching his head in her hands, she pulls him to her, presses her mouth to his, finds his tongue with hers, sucks at his lips until he melts into her kiss. Still kissing, she drags his hand from her waist, presses it over her bare breast, then cups her palm over his cock, rubbing it through his pants.

“Karen,” he pants when he manages to pull back from her mouth, “wait. Please.”

“Get undressed, Joey.”

“Come on, Karen. You don't want this.”

Her voice a low growl, a heavy threat, she says, “Don't you dare tell me what I want. Get undressed.”

While she watches, he strips out of his pants and briefs. Karen goes next, prying her shoes off with her feet, then sliding her jeans down, taking her socks off with them as she works them over her feet.

They stand there, Joey watching her face, Karen staring at his semi-erect prick, fingering the elastic of her panties, as if any second she will pull them down. But she freezes there.

“Karen?”

When she doesn't move or speak, Joey comes closer. And as he comes closer, her shoulders, her whole torso starts to shake, a faint trembling, at first, like a vibration, then a violent, convulsive shuddering.

“You do it,” she breathes. “Take them off.”

He comes close enough to touch, touches her arm, whispers, “It's okay. You're safe. I won't hurt you. I won't let Rick hurt you. I promise. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Karen.”

She starts to cry and he puts his arms around her, carefully, like he's afraid she might shatter under his touch. Little by little he pulls her close, against him, rocking her gently in his arms. Holds her as she cries. Then he takes her to the bed. Lays her down.

Lies down beside her. She is shaking as he pulls her close, so the lengths of their bodies are pressed together. He combs her hair back with his fingers. Kisses her cheek.

Her lips.

“You're safe here. With me. I promise,” he tells her.

“Why don't you?” she asks when she's done crying, her voice small, as if she was far away. “You said you wanted me.”

“Not like this, sad and scared.”

She laughs.

“I know,” he says. “I never knew you were so sad and scared, before. I never let myself. I guess I convinced myself it was all right. That you were all right, how things were. Convinced myself it was different with us, you and me, not like with the others.

That your nights with me were a reprieve. Thinking about it since we've been here, though, I think every time I touched you, really, it was a rape. I was raping you.”

Joey is crying as he says this to her. “I don't know how I could have been so...

Because I meant it, every time I told you I loved you. I did. I do. Maybe I just needed you so badly, I tricked myself into believing you were loving me back, all those months, all those nights. Tricked myself into thinking my big crime, all that time, was not getting you away from Bill and the others.

“So, now, I'll hold you. You can sleep here in my arms, if you want to. But I won't touch you. And in the morning, I'll leave, and I'll convince Rick to come with me, if it'll make it easier for you to start fresh, here.”

When Joey wakes up the next morning, Karen is awake, still in his arms, looking at him. Once he's awake, though, she doesn't want to stay. Without saying anything, she gets up, gets dressed, and leaves.

Another day she tells him, “You weren't so wrong. I didn't know what to make of things, myself, things between us, back in Guthrie. Most of the time, I felt like you were my friend. And sometimes, when you were in my bed, it felt good. How you'd hold me.

Kiss me. Even your touch, the way you were with me, I felt we were making love. It was never like that, with the others.”

For a long time she's quiet, and Joey waits. Finally she says, “That night I came here, I wanted to make you fuck me.”

Joey's face goes red. She's never said “fuck” in front of him, before.

“That's how I mean it,” she says. “Fuck. I wanted it to be ugly and bestial. I wanted you to make me hate you. I wanted to punish you for all those nights in Guthrie when I wanted what we had to be love, but instead, it felt like I was a whore. Like you were just using me, because I was the one who happened to be there.”

“I hate that it felt like that to you,” he says, brushing a single finger over the back of her hand.

“I'm so angry,” she says. “I remember what it was, being in love. Feeling loved.

Feeling like I belonged to myself. I don't know if I'll ever feel that way again.”

It's a long time—days, then weeks—but one night after dinner in the mess, after an evening walk together, after Joey escorts her to her room, Karen invites him in.

“I don't know how I'll be. That night I went to your room, I thought I'd be so brazen, and I just fell apart.” Karen's fingers fidget. Her shoulders hunch. She struggles to steady her gaze level with Joey's. “But I think I'd like you to stay.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“They ain't back yet?”

Riggs stops chewing. Scowls up at Lott. “No.”

Lott slides onto the empty bench across from Riggs. “Been gone a long while, haven't they?”

Riggs shrugs, staring into his bowl of chili.

“You know, I can't understand how the Major and John let little Eva go off on these rescue ops. One of these times, instead of them coming back here with new folks, someone out there's gonna be going back to wherever, our little Eva in tow.”

After four months and thirteen excursions, the rescue parties have, on three occasions—four, counting the Guthrie mission—returned with survivors. Including Karen and Joey and Rick, there have been seventeen additions to the community. Four women, thirteen men.

“Stop trying to rile me up, Lott. Your head games don't work on me, anymore.”

Lott laughs. “Oh, no?”

“No.”

“Then how come you're not eating?”

“Just not hungry. That's all.”

“'Course.” Lott laughs again, a soft, bemused chuckle. “Probably you were worried already, them taking so long getting back. You didn't need me to point it out to you. Just like you don't need me to point out what'll happen, when the day comes she doesn't come back with them.”

Riggs looks up from his coagulating dinner.

“That girl's got a real sweet spot for you. Don't she? Long as she's around, you get to play Daddy. Get to be Uncle James to Hope. Funny, isn't it?” This time when Lott laughs, it's a nasty wheeze. “Of all people, our Eva's brought you into her little nest.

Given you a family. But you already know, without my having to say a word, the day that girl gets snatched up and carried off, that's the last day you'll hold that baby. That's the last day John and the Major let you within a hundred feet of that green-eyed faerie.”

Riggs's fists clench until his knuckles turn white. When he lurches to his feet, Lott doesn't flinch. He just waits for the blow with a grin and a look of expectation. But Riggs stomps off without punching Lott's teeth in. When he gets to his quarters, when he's locked the door and found a dark corner, he sinks down, holding himself, shaking, his eyes reddening in rage. Or fear.

* * * *

Still, quiet, Eva watches Hope, flitting, humming, her eyes bright and quick, lighting on this and that as she arranges her paintings—each one like a vivid amalgam of Basquiat, Bacon and Van Gogh—on the wall by the two cribs. Now and then, Hope glances toward Eva, and beams when Eva gives her a serene smile. When she's turned the entire wall into a mural-collage of bright colors and fantastical creatures and realms, Hope scampers over to Eva and plunks down beside her on the love seat.

“You're so talented, Hope. I'm almost glad there isn't anyone to teach you, that you're not studying past masters and wandering through museums every weekend. I've never seen anything like your paintings. I'd hate for anything to cloud over the way you see things.”

Eva combs her fingers through the silky strands of Hope's copper hair, gazing into the girl's glinting green eyes. They all do this, like they are trying to fathom the pattern of her silence. The depth and texture of her hidden thoughts.

Smiling, Eva says, “Sometimes I wish you would talk.”

Hope gazes back at Eva, and after a moment, her lips, curved in a placid smile, part. Eva presses her fingers over the girl's mouth. For a long while, Eva sits there, staring, startled.

“Your silence is a kind of power, Hope. Keep it as long as you need to. The first time you speak, you'll be heard.”

* * * *

Late one night, when Eva is in her eighth month, she tells Smith, “This time, I think Hope should stay with James.”