Sweetie's Diamonds (46 page)

“I see it,” she said.
 
“There's a little piece of debris… hold on.”
 
She took a washcloth, wet it in the warm water, and then carefully pulled his bottom eyelid down as far down as it would go.
 
Using a corner of the washcloth, she dabbed his eye until the tiny piece of concrete came out.
 

“There!”

“Oh, thank you,” he said, immediately feeling the relief.
 
He turned to the mirror and looked at his eye, blinked a few times, and smiled.
 
“Good as new.
 
Sort of.”

They came out of the bathroom and he asked her if she wanted something to drink.

“What do you have?”

“Well, let's see.”
 
He went to the wet bar and unlocked it with the tiny key that came with the room.
 
“Looks like the usual stuff.
 
Beer, wine, some of those little airplane bottles of hard stuff.
 
Sodas, water.”

“Wine, please.
 
Red or white, it doesn't matter.”
 
She sat in the easy chair by the desk and said once again, “I can't believe it's over.”

Belgrad opened a small bottle of red wine for her and poured himself a glass of vodka on ice.
 
He handed her the wine and said, “It isn't over, Diane.
 
You still have to deal with the authorities in Illinois, remember?”

“That seems so trivial compared to what we did tonight.
 
Nick, Aaron Valentine is
dead
!
 
He can't haunt me anymore.
 
I can't tell you how great I feel.
 
It's like a huge weight has been lifted.”

Nick sat on the bed and held up his glass.
 
“Cheers.”

“Cheers,” she repeated and took a sip.
 
The taste of wine was welcome and for once she wasn't using it to combat anxiety.
 

“Diane.”

“What?”

“
Are
you Dana Barnett?”

She blinked.
 
“No.
 
I thought you believed that by now.”

“Who are you, then?”

“I'm Diane Boston.
 
Before I was married I was Diane Barnett.”

“No it wasn't.
 
Your name was Diane
Wilson
when you got married.”

She put her glass on the desk.
 
“That's just a name I was using.
 
I didn't want Valentine or his people to track me down.”

“Why would they track you down?
 
You're not Dana, right?”

“No, but I look like her.
 
She was my twin.”

Belgrad contemplated the woman sitting across from him.
 
She was a bundle of contradictions and paradoxes.
 
At times he believed everything she had to say but too often he was never sure she told the truth.
 
Just in the half-day he'd been around her, Belgrad was certain she was consciously careful not to reveal her true self.
 
She wore a mask and protected it with fervor.
 

In normal circumstances he could have used a dozen tricks to penetrate the façade but the problem was that he was intensely attracted to her.
 
He had always liked Gentile women although in his heart of hearts he knew he'd never marry one.
 
If he married at all.

“You're Jewish, aren't you?” Diane asked as if she had read his thoughts.

“Yes.”
 

“Do you practice it religiously, if you'll pardon the pun?”

“No,” he answered.
 
“I grew up in an orthodox home, kosher and all that.
 
And I was orthodox well into adulthood and while I was working in Israel.
 
I kept kosher and observed the Sabbath, obeyed all the laws.
 
But I suppose you can say I became jaded.
 
The things I saw in the Middle East turned me against religion in so many ways.
 
That's not to say I don't believe in God, because I do.
 
I'm still
religious
and I still take pride in my heritage, but I'm no longer orthodox.
 
Am I making sense?”

“Sure,” she said.
 
“I was raised a Baptist but I'm not anything now.”

“I did a lot of undercover work in Israel, infiltrating terrorist cells, that sort of thing.
 
When you're undercover you can't always stop what you're doing to say your prayers or stop using electricity at sundown on Friday night.
 
I slowly lost the need to do those things, and frankly I lost the will to pursue my spirituality.
 
There's just… too much evil, too much death.
 
Too much hatred.”
 

They were silent for a few minutes, basking in the stillness of the room.
 
Diane finished her glass and poured the rest of the wine into it.
 
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.

He shrugged.
 
“Go back to New York.”

“When?”

“I don't know.
 
When I'm ready.”
 

She nodded.
 
Her earlier joy had dissipated into something more melancholic.
 
“Poor Eric,” she said.
 
“What happened to him was horrible.”

Belgrad frowned.
 
“Yeah.
 
But you know, Diane, he was involved in a world that had a lot of dark corners.
 
He knew the risks.”

“He had a good soul,” she said.
 
“So did his sister.”

He narrowed his eyes at her.
 
“You knew her?”

Diane looked away and took a sip.
 
“Uh, no.
 
Dana knew her.
 
I heard about her from Dana.”
 

“And you don't know what happened to her?”

“Are you interrogating me?”

“I just want to know.”

“No.
 
She died in that incinerator, along with my sister.”
 

Belgrad felt that it was lie but he also sensed that
she
believed what she was saying.
 
Whatever had happened to her back then had permanently affected her perception of what actually occurred.
 
He supposed he'd never know.
 

She changed the subject and attempted to lighten up.
 
“So, you really think you can fence my diamonds?”
 
She smiled and wiggled her eyebrows like Groucho Marx.
 

He laughed.
 
“I'll make some calls tomorrow—er, today.
 
After I get some sleep.
 
I'm pretty sure I can get you something nice for them.
 
I, uhm, know a lot of Moses and Hiram's customers.”
 

“I won't take less than a million,” she said, half-kidding.

“You won't have to.
 
And now I'm going to take a shower,” he said, standing.
 
“You can, uhm, you can sleep in the other bed if you'd like, or if you'd like to shower after me, you can…”
 
He felt awkward and tongue-tied.
 

“Go ahead, do what you need to do,” she said.
 
“I'll just sit here.”
 

He went into the bathroom and shut the door.
 
Diane could hear him unbuckle his trousers, slip them off, and turn on the water.
 
She heard the shower door close when he stepped inside.
 

Diane stood and slowly walked to the bathroom door.
 
She quietly opened it and looked inside.
 
Already the room was steaming up but she could see the blurry image of the hairy man through the glass door.
 
She felt a stirring within that she hadn't experienced in a long time.
 
She had not had a lover since her ex-husband and suddenly she wanted one.
 

The heat and steam brought back a memory of two blonde women standing beneath a spigot and making love while a camera rolled.
 
For them it wasn't acting.
 
Diane didn't know where the recollection came from and thought that perhaps she had seen it in one of Dana's films.

Why did she remember that?

Diane slowly removed her clothes and opened the shower door.
 
Belgrad looked at her but didn't seem surprised to see her.
 
Wordlessly, she stepped into the small stall and closed the door.
 
He put his arms around her and drew her to him.
 
Their wet bodies pressed together, warm and slippery, and their mouths joined, and then their tongues, and then their hands began to roam and touch and caress...
 

D
arren Marshall had breakfast at a Denny's in Midland and then drove back to Garden City to hunt for the Barnett ranch one more time.
 
This time he stopped at the gas station where the toothless old man worked to ask him if he knew where the property was.
 
The old man recognized him and inquired, “Are you enjoying our fair city?”

Marshall answered, “It's truly the garden spot of Texas.”
 

The sarcasm flew over the old man's head and he grinned wider.
 
“We think so.
 
How can I help you?”

Marshall explained what he was looking for and the man replied, “Sure, I know the place.
 
I remember ol' Roy.
 
He was a character.
 
Kept to himself up there on his ranch, didn't come into town much.
 
He's dead now.”

“Can you help me find the ranch?”

The old man gave him the same directions as the librarian did.
 
Marshall said, “I tried that last night but couldn't find it.
 
Maybe I'll have better luck now that it's daylight?”
 

“I should think so.
 
Reckon there's enough daylight today!”
 
The old man laughed.
 
The West Texas sun was painfully bright and the temperature was close to one hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
 

Marshall thanked him and drove on.
 
He followed the directions to a tee and sure enough, this time he found a break in the barbed wire fence exactly seven and a half miles north on Route 33.
 
A cattle guard separated the highway from a dirt road lined with mesquite and sagebrush.
 
Marshall turned left and followed the rough drive for nearly two miles until he finally spotted a building on the horizon.
 
As he got closer he saw that the property consisted of a large two-story house, a barn with a weather vane on top, a tool shack, a small cabin, and what appeared to be a wood building used for processing cattle.
 
There were no animals in sight, though, except for some chickens clucking in a pen on one side of the big house.
 
A woman's white sundress was flapping in the breeze, hanging on a clothesline on the opposite end.
 

Marshall pulled in front of the house, got out of the car, and went to the front door.
 
There was no sound aside from the wood creaking in the wind.
 
He knocked on the door and waited, but nothing happened.
 
He knocked again and called, “Hello?
 
Anyone home?”
 
There was still no sign of life.
 

He walked around to the back and saw a woman some fifty yards away in what appeared to be a vegetable garden, only there weren't any vegetables.
 
To Marshall it looked like a patch of mud.