Fire and ice (20 page)

He opened a few drawers. The second held a purse, a couple of scarves, gloves, and three nightshirts. He found what he was looking for buried beneath the nightshirts.

But it wasn't the discovery he made, or even the unconscious fears it confirmed that gave him pause; it was what it came wrapped in that held him rooted in place, immobile, speechless with shock. One trembling hand smoothed the vibrant blue spill of silk, the rich fabric catching on the roughness of his skin, and he had a sudden and unbearably clear recollection of the time and place when he had seen it last. He forgot who he was and the shame that had become invested in that man, he forgot the disgrace that had caused his reduction in rank and his posting to Newenham, he forgot even the bloody, lifeless sprawl that had been Bob DeCreft. He looked at the length of blue silk and was instantly transported back in time to those few halcyon days in Anchorage, so long ago and so far away.

It was the first week of September again, two, going on three years before, an Indian summer of warm, golden days and crisp, clear nights. Liam had driven to Tok, where Wy had picked him up in a plane she'd borrowed from another pilot (they had always been discreet to the point of paranoia), and they had flown into Anchorage, landing at the Lake Hood strip. The alder and birch and cottonwood were a continuous, rippling golden mass, the sky a bright, deep blue, and the peaks of the Chugach Mountains wore only the faintest layer of termination dust, winter as promise instead of threat.

They had four days. They biked the Coastal Trail, shopped along Merrill Field for parts for Wy's Cub (including a set of tundra tires whose possibilities Liam found perfectly appalling), bought Liam a new pistol (a Smith and Wesson 457 that kicked like a horse and cost more), stocked up for the winter at all the used bookstores, held hands through a movie, had gyoza at Yamato Ya and four-cheese pizza at L'Aroma and pasta alla arrabiata and too much red wine at Villa Nova.

They had four nights. They came home every evening to the Copper Whale Inn on the corner of Fifth and L to spend long hours in the enameled brass bed, loving and sleeping and waking to love again. Their host, a friendly, chatty young man, thought they were newlyweds and left them to themselves. They would have been grateful, if they'd noticed.

There were discoveries. They both loved raspberries, playground swings, the American Southwest, the sound track from the movie The Last of the Mohicans. Flying terrified him; it was her profession. He'd quit smoking, but walked slowly through the smoking section of a restaurant inhaling deeply for his nicotine fix. "In lieu of a bowling alley," he told her, grinning. She wore contact lenses she had to remove for twelve continuous hours once a week, and after he got over the mild shock he decided he kind of liked her in glasses. He listened to classical music, she sang backup for the Ronettes, and they wrangled over the radio settings in their rented Ford. She wanted the tipsy clams at Simon and Seafort's, and when there were no reservations available he asked the hostess, "Well, then, do you maybe have something left over from lunch?"

They read to each other from Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, and they talked, nonstop, an unceasing flow of communication on every level that amazed them with its ease and empathy. "I didn't know," she said one night. "I didn't know I could talk to a man about everything, about work and poetry, about music and the movies, about society and sex."

Oh yes, the sex. They came together the first time like thunder, ardent, urgent, demanding, and it was so easy and so effortless and so incredibly satisfying that they both lay stunned in the aftermath.

Later, when there was time for play, she bound his wrists with a long blue silk scarf and he, the man always and forever in control, astounded himself by lying back and loving it. He made her come and come again, with his hands, his cock, his tongue, and she was amazed at her response and, she confessed, her head hidden in his shoulder, a little alarmed at her loss of control. He rolled to his back and said, "Feel free," and she startled them both by slithering down his torso and taking him in her mouth, until he was as mindless as she had been. "Jesus, woman," he said the fourth night, "is this the way it is with everyone? Have we been missing out?"

"No, Liam," she said, a little sadly. "It's the trusting."

He craned his head to look down at her. "What? What do you mean?"

She looked up to meet his eyes, and repeated, "It's the trusting." She blushed slightly. "Like the other night with the scarf. You trusted me not to hurt you. I trusted you not to be shocked, or offended."

After she was asleep he lay wakeful, turning her words over in his mind. He had put their attraction down to chemistry, plain and simple. He'd felt it before--not this strongly, true, but there had been times in his life when he had come together with a woman with whom he had absolutely nothing in common but sexual attraction. Why should this be any different?

But it was, and he knew it.

Later, he roused to find himself alone in the bed, and sat up to see Wy in one of the chairs in the bay window that overlooked Knik Arm. Moonglow silvered her hair, cupped her breast, gilded a smooth hip. He heard a soft, muffled sound and realized she was crying. "Wy?" he said, getting out of bed and dropping to his knees next to her. "What's wrong, sweetheart?"

She wouldn't look at him. "I'm going home tomorrow."

"What? But--Wy, we've got a week. Is something wrong, did somebody call?"

She shook her head.

"Then why? We planned this for three months. I want my week."

She looked up. "Liam, I have to go. And you have to let me."

He made as if to touch her, stopped himself when she warded him off, one hand upraised. "I always knew we had to go back. I always knew I had to let you go. But we agreed on a week." He was beginning to be angry. "I want my seven days."

She swiped at her tears with the back of a hand. "I can't do this. I don't do this," she said, angry in her turn. "I don't know how I got here. You are married," she said, and repeated it a second time as if to remind them both, as if both of them needed reminding. "You are married. You're a father."

What could he say? It was true. "Don't leave. Please don't leave. You promised me seven days. I want those seven days. Then we know if it's real. Then I can make some decisions."

"No you can't," she whispered.

"Wy--"

She shook her head fiercely, and he stopped. When she spoke again, her voice was so low and so filled with pain that he could barely hear it. "I can't do this. I can't live like this, live with it. I can't live with what we're doing, what we might do. And I hate all this sneaking around. It makes me feel cheap." After a moment, she added, "It makes us cheap."

"But--"

"No! Liam, don't." She held out her hands, and he put his own into them, the despair welling up like a black tide. "You have responsibilities. You can't turn your back on them. You shouldn't try."

"But--"

"No, Liam. You know I'm right." She paused, and he was silent. Her attempt at a smile was shaky. "You see? You know I'm right. I'm flying home tomorrow. Alone. You can take an air taxi."

He traced the back of her hand with his thumb. "All right," he said at last. "Call me in a couple of days. Or I'll call you."

She shook her head. "You know you can't." She took a deep breath, let it out, and continued in a steady voice, "And I won't be there long. I've found another job."

"What?" The panic was sharp and immediate. "Where?"

She shook her head. "I'm leaving on Wednesday."

"Wy," he said, drawing her name out. "No. Don't do this."

She put gentle fingers over his mouth. "We'll both be better off if we don't see each other after tomorrow." Again, she tried to smile. "It's not our time, Liam. Maybe in the next life."

She took him back to bed then, and they made love in a fury of pain and loss and despair, and when he woke the next morning she was curled in a ball against his chest, her shoulders shaking, her face wet against his skin.

She refused to let him drive her to Lake Hood, saying her good-byes at the car. She looked down at their clasped hands. "I've gotten used to this hand," she whispered. "This hand in mine. Your skin against mine. Warm. Strong. Holding me."

He couldn't speak. It took him three tries to get in the car, until finally she gave him a gentle push. "Go on. Go on, now. Your son is waiting."

Chin up, shoulders back, eyes blinded by tears, she walked steadily down to the intersection of Fifth and L. She did not look back. He knew, because he watched her in the rearview mirror, her hair a dark blond tumble against the blue silk scarf wrapped round her neck, until the light turned green and the car behind him gave an impatient honk. He stepped on the gas and started through the intersection.

When he looked up again, she was gone.

"Harry, dammit, I know it's not in the job description but try for a little friggin' compassion, would you!"

Wy's voice, angry, impatient, and just a little frightened, brought him back into the present with a jerk. He looked down to discover that he'd wound the scarf around his wrists, straining the delicate fabric between them. With an effort, he freed himself and replaced everything as it had been. He closed the drawer again and, still moving softly, went back out into the living room.

There was a framed poster on one wall with the title INTERNATIONAL SPACE YEAR 1992 running across the bottom. It had a couple of galleons sailing rough seas out of the bottomleft-hand corner of the frame and into space in the upper-right-hand corner of the frame, with ringed planets and gas giants and moons and comets interspersed with blueprint drawings of spacecraft.

Wy was a big follower of the space program. She wanted someday to go to Florida to watch the shuttle take off, and stay to watch it land, and in between to live at Spaceport. "Did you ever think of becoming an astronaut?" he'd asked her, and she had replied, with a twisted smile, "My parents wanted me to become a teacher. So I became a teacher."

He'd wanted to ask her how she had made the jump from teacher to pilot, but the memory was so obviously painful that he left it for another time.

In those days they were easily distracted. That other time never came, and soon afterward she left.

This time, he thought, staring at the poster, this time he would know it all.

Wy's voice became edgy and defensive. "I said you'll get it, and you will. I keep my word, Harry. And I pay my debts."

Footsteps came down the hall. Liam looked around to see Tim Gosuk standing in the doorway.

"Hey," Liam said.

Tim's expression was aloof, giving nothing away. "Hey."

They regarded each other in silence for a moment. Everything Liam knew about kids could have been written on the head of a pin. On the other hand, he'd been a trooper for over ten years and knew more about human nature than most shrinks. He was also older and tougher and probably smarter than the boy, which would help. "Finish studying for your civics exam?"

Tim looked toward the kitchen and back at Liam. He was still dressed in urban punk: bagged-out jeans, oversized plaid shirt, and backward baseball cap. At least he didn't have a do rag. "Yeah," Tim said finally. "What's it to you?"

His voice was curt but not necessarily challenging. Liam shrugged. "Just making conversation." He wasn't going to force himself on the boy, but he was equally determined not to be shut out. "What other subjects you studying this year? What grade are you in, anyway?"

"Eighth."

"Really?" Liam said, adding mendaciously, "I thought you were older. So?"

"So what?"

"So what else are you studying? English, history, what else?"

It was the boy's turn to shrug. "English, history, what else."

"Math?"

Tim made a face, the first natural expression Liam had seen there. Aha, a breakthrough. "Algebra."

"Yuck."

The boy made a noise somewhere between a snort and a grunt. "It's not so bad. Mrs. Davenport is a good teacher. It's hard, but she makes it fun."

"I was lousy at math," Liam observed. "Never got all that business about x's and y's straight in my head. Geometry was better; I liked fooling with the volume of all the figures." He grinned. "And I liked Mary Kallenberg, who sat next to me in geometry class and helped me find the area of the three different kinds of triangles. Can't for the life of me remember what they're called now."

"There aren't three, there are six," Tim said promptly. "Right, isosceles, equilateral, obtuse, acute, and scalene," and he actually smiled.

"Yikes. You're scaring me." Liam smiled back. "Not much call in the trooper business to figure out the area of a right triangle."

"You don't use it, you lose it," Tim said, his words an uncanny echo of Moses'. "Mrs. Davenport says that a lot. She loads us up on the homework like you wouldn't believe."

Inwardly Liam marveled at the way the boy's face had metamorphosed from sullen, wary, potential juvenile delinquent to animated, intelligent teenager. In this persona, it was easy to see why Wy had taken him on.

The smell of something wonderful wafted in from the kitchen, and their stomachs growled in unison. Both males were surprised into laughter. Mutual laughter, once enjoyed, is a hard thing to step back from. "Maybe if we go into the kitchen and squawk like seagulls she'll feed us," Liam said.