Shadow Season (8 page)

“Bad thoughts? About us?”

“An ill will, she said.”

“What’s that even mean?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Does it even matter? They’re all fucking nuts out here. Crystal meth has taken over this valley in a big bad way. Could she have been using?”

“I suppose, but it didn’t seem like it to me.”

“You would know?”

“Probably.”

“You can’t tell who’s cooking or distributing. Whole families are involved now. The children act as couriers. They bathe the babies in one washtub and cook in another. They’re raised in the life, it’s normal and natural to them.”

“Sure.”

Finn tops it as the worst street drug to come into vogue the last couple decades. Fuckers are making it in their bathtubs, burning out their eyes with gas fumes, selling corrosive poison because they’re screwing up the proportions of acetone, methanol, and lye. Some of the cookers use paint thinner. It’s getting harder to get pseudoephedrine and iodine nowadays, so these parttime chemists who never finished high school are experimenting with anything that looks like it might have a similar chemical composition. Finn once made a bust on a lab where the teen idiots thought the red phosphorus they needed came off the heads of matches. They’d scraped thousands, not realizing that the phosphorus is on the striker pad. You could only guess at how many people they’d poisoned because they’d gone to the wrong website for instructions.

Still, it still feels odd that it happens here in the hills, the farmhouses, the backwoods. When Finn was a kid this was always his father’s idea of heaven. They’d vacation up around this way a couple times a year. His old man would talk about retirement and how he planned to live out his days fishing, hunting, playing the harmonica, whittling. Finn’s mother would say, You’ll slice your fingers off and I’ll be stuck cutting your steak for you for the rest of my life.

Roz opens the fridge and gets out a full bottle of Chardonnay, uncorks it, and pours two glasses. She sits beside him on the couch, pressing the cold wine lightly against his forearm. He takes the glass and sips from it, wishing he had a double shot of Jameson instead.

She places her hand on his leg and her fingers slide toward his inner thigh, coaxing. Sometimes this means
she’s worried about him, sometimes it’s a subtle demand for sex. The first time she ever touched him like this was in a grease trap all-night diner, where she spoke in a husky, lust-laden voice and implored him to stop Ray.

She’ll never age for him. She’ll always be twenty-five, wearing the white nurse’s uniform that he first saw her in.

She always tells him when she dyes her hair, reading the colors off the boxes and saying each name with a kind of glee—
Light Golden Chestnut, Creamy Caramel Twist, Almond Rocca, Chocolate Cherry
—they make him hungry. But his image of her will never change. She remains a brunette with natural red highlights that shimmer like copper when she throws her head back. Her hair will always be cropped short. Even when his hands are working through cascades of it falling past her shoulders, he can see only the boyish haircut, parted on the left and feathered across her forehead.

Her smile is knowing and slightly coy. Her laughter discriminating but thick, and she usually raises the back of her hand to stifle the sound. Eyes expressive and full of interest. Lips glossy as if she used balm, but later he found out this is entirely natural.

He remembers how, as she checked Ray’s bandages and fed him ice chips, gentle but tough as she explained how he might lose the foot, Finn thought she’d be the perfect girl for Ray.

Roz likes to talk in bed. Not the fun, dirty stuff, just whatever’s on her mind while he’s trying to get his groove.

Somehow the opening maneuvers of their lovemaking cause her to consider the great questions of her life.
He’ll be working away, doing his thing, seeking out her nipples with his tongue, pressing back her knees, slotting himself in, and in the middle of it she’ll suddenly ask something like, Do you think it’s wrong that I haven’t spoken to my father the last fifteen years?

It gets distracting. He loses his place a lot. He wonders what it would be like if he started talking that way, riding her to the edge and then blurting out, Roz, honey, I’m going to kill Ray someday.

As uncomfortable and angry as Roz gets with the idea of Vi coming on to him, she’s also titillated. Jealousy causes a spike in her desire for him. Whenever she sees the girls helping him out in any way, Roz moves in and gets a touch territorial.

“How’d the shopping excursion go?” he asks.

He’s clearly shifting topics as Roz’s hand grows more insistent on his thigh, but he needs a chance to focus. The throb of a headache is starting up beneath his scars, which always makes him think that the metal plate there is dinged, dented, turning to rust.

“A good time. I always have a good time with Duchess, even if we’re doing nothing. She’s a storyteller, has hundreds of relatives, and every one of them has taught her a grand and moral lesson. They all have such wonderful names. Her father is Justice James the Third. Her sister is Sweet Forgiveness. She mentioned a cousin called Truth and I’m still not sure if he’s real or just a metaphor.”

He’s a metaphor, Finn thinks, they all are.

“At least this town has gone out of the way to dress up for the holidays,” she says. “They’ve got lights strung up on the lampposts and hanging over Main Street, and
there’s a huge tree in front of the courthouse with hundreds of candy canes and decorations. They don’t want to act like the place is shutting down store by store. They’re trying to keep their spirits up.”

“I bet the guys who’ve lost their jobs at the mill and factory think it’s all a big waste of time and money.”

“And it is, but it’s important too, right? You know that. You’ve got to play the game, keep up the mask, the false front, otherwise what’s the point? You give in and run.” She finishes her glass and pours another. “They seem to have a thing against Santa, though. They’ve got Jesus and Rudolph all over the place, the chipmunks, the wise men, the Virgin Mary, but no Santa. I’m serious. Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”

“Yes,” he admits.

“I’m serious.”

“You said that. I agree, it’s kind of strange.”

She’s always spotting some kind of weird subversion or sedition up here because she’s so bored. Like they’ve got a cult in the sticks to stamp out St. Nick. Back in the city, she clipped articles about dirty cops and mob informants and a corrupt mayor. She knew firsthand that conspiracies existed, and it shook her faith in the world, got her searching beneath appearances. The scrapbook is under the bed. Finn picks it up sometimes just because he likes to feel the weight in his hands.

“Maybe it’s a backlash,” she suggests. “This isn’t exactly the heartland but it might as well be. They might hate Catholics here as much as they hate anybody else, so good-bye St. Nick.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Finn says, thinking,
Santa’s a Catholic front man? But what, Rudolph’s a WASP?

This is one of the reasons why he likes Roz so much. She always comes at the world from a different perspective, sees things he never expects no matter how much time they’ve got behind them.

Her fingers return to his leg, massaging, assertive and determined. She leans in and kisses him with a mouthful of wine, which she allows to run down her chin to splash his shirt. She likes doing things like this, leaving signs behind her, making a mess, so that later when he’s cleaning up he’ll think of her.

He says, “Hey now, that bottle was eight bucks, don’t waste it.”

It brings a throaty chuckle out of her that works into him until he’s hard and needy. This is Finn at his best and worst, and she knows it.

Wrapped in each other’s arms, still kissing, she lets him lead her to the bedroom even though he’s got to brush his back against the bare walls to get there. He still can’t fully concentrate. He’s assailed by the idea of not having any pictures or paintings and wants to ask if it bothers her. Three years of these cold, impersonal rooms, but she never said anything about it. Finn begins to speak but her lips tighten on his and she swallows his words down her throat.

They fall backward onto the bed. Roz enjoys undressing him. She’s adept and softly scratches at his chest and neck as she eases off his shirt. She kisses his belly button, catches skin between her teeth. She presses her fingers against his toned stomach, then quickly undoes his belt. She unzips him, and works his
pants off. He’s thankful that she offers so many caresses and nips. Sometimes, especially when he’s excited, he can forget the contours of his own body. He needs his skin to be on fire.

She digs her nails into his ribs. He likes it and says so. She laughs in his face. She scratches harder.

In a moment, Roz is naked. She feeds Finn her breasts and he suckles them for a long while. Again the throaty chuckle escapes her as he eases his erection forward into her hand.

Pumping gently she brings him to full hardness. She spits in her hand and jerks him faster as he juts on his knees. She leans up and kisses him passionately and slides his cock across her belly. He relishes the feel of her flesh.

The things that can drive you out of your head. He holds her legs open and licks her calves and fits himself at the edge of her cunt and waits.

She laughs again and bucks forward and he’s inside her.

“Say my name,” she tells him.

When it’s like this, she wants to hear Rose, not Roz. It’s her real name, but she gave it up a long time ago. But she comes back to it in bed.

“Rose.”

“Again.”

“Rose.”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“You’re Rose, a beautiful rose.” First time they met, she said, I’m Rose but everyone calls me Roz.

He asked, Why?

Why what?

Why do they call you Roz if it’s not your name?

She answered, I suppose because I let them.

Finn fills her tightly and her juices are already flowing thickly, dappling his pubic hair. It’s a smell he enjoys as he plunges and keeps his pace slow and even, going deep so she knows every thrust has a real meaning, a true purpose, whatever it might be.

Everyone needs affirmation. Roz moans and the sound is laced with a sweet, self-indulgent giggle. Sweat streams across his face. The wind chimes are clacking together out front, the solid thunking nearly in perfect sync with his action. He decides he’s got to get some prints up. Renoir, Van Gogh. The snow pounds against the bedroom window, urging him on, a force of will to add to his own.

It’s telling him, Come on, come on. The hum of the wind is impatient, almost angry. He can feel its attention on him.

This is a natural reaction for him, treating the sounds of inanimate objects as if they were people. His psychiatrist says it’s normal for someone in his
situation, under these circumstances
, to personify
things
—stressing the word “things” in such a way that there’s almost a sexual connotation. My thing. Your thing. Let’s discuss this thing. She tells him that the brain is deprived and needs to be fed. He’s an imaginative man, she says. She’s right. He kicks into high gear.

Finn gets in too close and bumps his forehead against Roz’s. They both say “ow.” She whimpers, “Don’t close your eyes.”

He thought they were open but realizes now they’re not. “I won’t.”

“Look at me,” she groans. “I will. I am.”

“You have such beautiful eyes.”

Women have always loved his eyes, and he never appreciated it. They’re brown, not blue like most of the girls he knew went for, but they’re flecked with gold and somehow that always got to women.

Roz licks his eyelashes. It invigorates and repulses him.

His cock continues to heat inside her as he quickens his tempo, and the quick burn of orgasm is already nearing. He locks hands on her hips and pulls her toward him so violently that she’s instantly seated on top of him. Snow snaps against the glass like it wants him to turn and look for a photo op. Hey, over here, over here. He worries about Harley. He wants to know why she asked, Do you want to die?

Won’t Ray be surprised when the blind guy shows up ready to kill or die in the middle of—

The honest rake of Roz’s nails recommits him. She grunts and stiffens as he slams forward. Like always he’s thankful that he can get her off first. She cums hard and immediately orgasms a second time. He holds himself deeply inside her and leans down until his nose brushes her and says, “You’re lovely, Rose.” Her pussy tightens to such an extreme that he lets out a yelp.

Roz pants, and when he’s nearly there she says, “Did you know Duchess’s granddaughter was denied entrance to St. Val’s?”

God fuck it.

Fighting to retain his rhythm, Finn flubs cresting on the wave of climax. Roz zigs to his zag and misses meeting his thrust. He hisses in frustration, and now he’s thinking about what that scene between Duchess and Judith must’ve been like.

With the lightest touch to the small of his back Roz calms him and gets him back on track so he can finish. He locks up and grunts and spills himself inside of her.

Finn drops forward and turns on his side, pulling her to him so he doesn’t slip free. His expression must be ludicrous and she whispers, “Sorry.”

“Jesus Christ, Roz!”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“God damn, honey!”

“Let’s just—I mean—”

They relax like that for a while and lightly stroke each other. The tips of their tongues toy together. He lies back with a few bad thoughts starting to squirm loose. The storm is knocking at the window. It wants him to turn and look. Over here, over here.

Roz is about to say more, she’s at the point that she wants to discuss
things
, but Finn feigns sleep, wondering if she’s visited Ray in prison lately.

Some of these things he can speak of, some he never will. He keeps them under wraps because he needs them there, constantly being fed into the furnace. It’s what warms him, it’s what keeps the engine going. He is planning to kill a man and he thinks that, even though his shrink only hears about twenty percent of what he says, she might catch wise to that. It doesn’t much matter.