The Rise and Falling Out of Saint Leslie of Security (17 page)

At least she had Gun—Gun who was dying, she reminded herself. Gun, whose fate was to slowly lose power and turn stupid. She couldn't help wondering if Gun reflected her own fate. She didn't know what she would do without the head mem in her skull, guiding her, softening the edges of her memories. She reached for her food and ripped furiously at it. Her stomach burned with hunger and she swallowed without chewing; the knot of meat hurt all the way down. She ate in silence. When she was through, she put the plate on the floor and wiped her fingers on her bare thighs. The meat was an unpleasant lump in her abdomen. When she looked at Roger, his dull expression no longer made her angry. She felt sorry for him again, and responsible. He blinked, then carefully watched her.

"I was hungry,” he said, mouth still full, as he set down his own plate.

"Roger. I'm so sorry."

"For ... what?"

"For what happened yesterday."

"Yeah. Right.” He rubbed at his forehead. Then his hand dropped to a pale knee. “I keep wanting to blame you, you know. If only you'd never shown up, I tell myself, I would have never gotten involved in all of this. I mean you've got to know by now I was never a part of the Sons of Man thing, not really. I've always been a big talker, but an even bigger coward. I've never really admitted that to anyone. I have an ... umm ... friend ... who's always believed in me. And I've always put on such a big show of indignant outrage at the behavior of Washington for her. I always wanted to show her what a brave man I was. But really what've I ever done? I was just showing off. But she was willing to take it at face value. She was so much stronger and honest than me. I just pretended at everything.

"It would be nice to go back and apologize to her for my posturing. I never treated her right.” He stared for a moment at the fire. Leslie waited, watching flames brighten his eyes with their reflection. “That's not going to happen. I killed that guy. There's no turning around. My whole life's upside down. I've lost everything, including my self-respect.” He laughed. “And, oh, I
want
to be angry. I
want
to strike out at something, at you, because how can it possibly be
my
fault? I want to blame it all on you. But I know better, Leslie. I know I'm to blame."

The lump in Leslie's stomach soured.
No
, she wanted to say,
it is all my fault
. Arguing over it, she knew, wouldn't help either of them, even as the guilt filled her like the spreading out of a cracked egg. She heard Tom Russell's voice: ‘
He'll get a fair trial....'
and before that—’ ...
an Atheist and an unborn'.
She turned to watch the fire and her face heated quickly. “Roger,” she said. “You may have saved
my
life in Boston, as well as your own."

He shook his head. “I don't know anything about that. I wasn't thinking about saving your life. I was just scared out of my mind. I wasn't thinking about anything. I just ... lost it."

Leslie grasped his hand. “Do you think heroes aren't afraid? They act when they think they are being cowards."

Their gazes met and Roger smiled in gratitude. “That sounds like something
I
might have said once.” His hand moved from hers to touch her cheek. The side of her face was still tender, but this time she forced herself not to flinch. “Thank you."

She uncrossed her legs, leaned toward him and brushed his shoulders with her fingertips. Her guilt was slowly beginning to feel like a desire to reassure him. She reached her arms around his back, the hair of his chest rough against her. Her good cheek rubbed against stubble on his chin, as his hands moved to press her shoulder blades. She moved a shoulder loosely under the feel of his hand. She raised a hand to caress the back of Roger's neck through coils of still-damp hair; her fingers brushed his ear, the side of his head. Then she caught herself and pulled slightly away, one arm still wound under his.

"Don't worry,” Roger whispered. “I'm not going to do anything to you.” He sighed, pressed her back, and she let him pull her closer again. Her left breast gave against him. She closed her eyes as he moved a hand to slide between her flesh and the fabric of her bra. Leslie felt his thumb rub over her right nipple, but his motions didn't seem aggressive. It was more as if he sought comfort, and the feeling was mutual.

A part of Leslie felt maternal toward him. Both the sensation on her breast and the mothering feeling stretched pleasantly through her belly, softening, smoothing, relaxing. They sat quietly for a while, only the rain, the fire and their breathing in her ears. Then Roger spoke again.

"I really do sympathize with you, Leslie. Even your wanting to have this baby. I want you to know I'll help you in any way I can.” He smiled, and the lines around his mouth and eyes bore no scorn or sarcasm in them. He kissed Leslie's nose and when his lips moved away, her skin cooled with the moisture left there. “We've still got a ways to go tomorrow. We should probably get some sleep.” He rose awkwardly, trying to conceal the swelling at his crotch with his hands. Leslie smiled to herself at his embarrassment, but didn't say anything.

As Roger went to the kitchen to turn off the light, Leslie took Gun and the scrambler with her to the bedroom, crossed the wedge of light from the doorway, and approached the dim outline of the far mattress. The light went out behind her and she heard Roger stumble to the other mattress. “Goodnight, Leslie,” he said. “Thank you."

Leslie placed Gun and the scrambler carefully on the floor at the head of the cot. Then she got under the thin blanket and lay down. At first she couldn't sleep. She turned on her side and tried to make out the still outline of Roger. He was motionless.
I truly
am
sorry
. She listened to his heavy breathing. She was exhausted, but didn't feel sleepy.

As she lay there she became aware of a slight, almost indiscernible odor of cinnamon and musk in the room; it was the same as the smell she'd noticed on Roger in Boston, and Leslie fought down the same vague sense of panic she'd felt there. “Roger,” she said softly. “Do you smell something?"

She listened to him sigh and roll over. “Are you kidding me?” Then he paused and she imagined him sniffing the air. “It's that aftershave again, I guess. It must be the Atheist's choice when they're on the lam. What's your problem?"

Leslie felt her heart racing. “It scares me."

"You can hardly smell it,” he said. “You need to try and sleep.” He stirred in the darkness again, then went quiet.

She knew he was right. The head mem was already washing through her fear like a soft tide, caressing inside her, compelling her to relax. Slowly, it helped her become drowsy. She relaxed until her eyes closed and she dozed off.

An unseen presence beside her cot stirred her. She couldn't see and she reached out, her wrist colliding with the soft skin and rough hair of an outer thigh. Her other hand thrust out to rest on the knob of a knee. “Roger? What's wrong?"

"Leslie,” he whispered. “I can't sleep."

She pulled her hands away and pushed herself up to sit on the cot's edge. She could barely make out his pale frame in the darkness. An arm swept toward her and his hand rested lightly on the back of her head. She let it draw her forward, reaching for his thigh. Her right palm rested higher this time; two fingers brushed the mat of hair at his groin. Her other hand grasped the bony ball of his hip, while she softly traced her fingers through the hair around the base of his cock. He was already stiff. She made a ring around him with thumb and forefinger and gently squeezed. He dug his fingers into the hair at her nape and let out a breath. He was thicker than she expected, but not very long. When she took him into her mouth he slid in almost all the way without making her cough. She moved her tongue along the underside of him while he moaned.

It didn't take long for him to finish. Leslie was surprised when the shaft expanded and cum spat thinly once, then twice, in the back of her mouth. As he pulled out, going immediately flaccid, she moved the stringy fluid on her tongue, some of it bitter, most of it salty. She swallowed, suppressing the slight desire to retch she always felt.

Roger was stroking her ear and neck, panting. “That was nice.” She realized he couldn't see the smile she'd forced to her lips for him and let it evaporate.

"I can make room on my cot if you want.” She lay back down and slid to the side while he crawled in beside her, not touching her. They lay like that for a minute, uncomfortable in the silence. Then Roger said softly, “Goodnight, Leslie.” She closed her eyes and forced herself to relax again. Before she fell asleep, she noticed that faint smell again. Cinnamon and musk.

There's just the faint shade of the smell in her dream. Yet it's an ominous presence filling the room around her. It mixes with her own sweat, liquid fear seeping from her body. She smells his aftershave as the back of her head slams against the wooden floorboards, and her vision shatters then slowly swims blurrily together. He pins her down roughly with his chest and legs, a wiry forearm across her throat. She can barely whisper, “Please don't,” as he thrusts, piercing.

I'm so dry, how can he penetrate me?

And then she catches her breath and clamps her eyes shut against the sudden pain. He's punishing her—for what, she can't even remember. “This is the way it will be,” he yells in her face, spittle foaming on her cheek—until she can be good. Be good! She wants to be good. She wants to disappear from this, gasping the thick air. Her panic shakes her, and she flails against him, but she can't get out from under his weight. That smell, in her sleep, awakens the memories slumbering beneath the new shape of her mind, the soft sheet of the head mem. Even in the consciousness of her dreaming she can feel the inner motion of the head mem; she feels as if she's spinning out of control, but the feel and smell of her father are slowly disintegrating, slipping back into their induced slumber. “Are you ready, Leslie, ready, Leslie?” she hears. “Ready Leslie, ready Leslie, ready.... “

At first she didn't know what woke her. The camp was quiet—even the rain had stopped—and gray light spilled from the window between the cots, the beginnings of an overcast dawn. Roger still slept beside her, on his stomach now with one arm hanging over the edge of the mattress, drool soaking the sheet. Rubbing her face with both hands, she sighed. Then it happened again.

"...Ready, Leslie."

She was instantly alert. “Gun? Gun, how did you—” A wave of nausea crested thickly over her, then subsided. She reached over Roger, her fingers collided with the scrambler, then Gun. “Shit,” she muttered as the scrambler slid a couple feet away from the cot.

"Are you alone, Les? It's ... Tom."

She raised Gun and tried to turn it off. “Gun. Stop. Disengage—"

"I love you, Leslie."

She grew still, staring at the firearm.

"It's true. I love you. And I'm so worried about you. Security has gotten very nervous. And you know the more nervous they are the more dangerous they are. Now there's your friend's murder of Rhodes to contend with. I believe they want to activate your head mem and be done with it. I can't let this happen to you. Please, Les. I only want you back here with me, safe."

"You know it's not that simple any more."

"No. You're absolutely right. But we can work something out when you're safely back in Washington."

Leslie closed her eyes. “I need time to think."

"You don't have any more time—can't you understand that? Security wants to close in, whatever it takes. I can't control it. All I can do is get to you before they decide to take over your head mem. I know you're somewhere in the Adirondacks right now. If you just tell me where you are I could be there within two hours. Meet with me—just me. Let's not let this get any more out of control than it already is. Please Les. I thought you loved me once. Please. We need to just talk this out."

Then Gun went quiet.

Roger stirred and, without looking, Leslie knew he'd been awake through her conversation.

"You heard."

"Yes.” He sat up.

"I'm sorry.” She looked at him.

He shrugged his shoulders, found his shorts on the other cot and went into the other room. With Gun and the scrambler, Leslie followed him. She watched him pull his clothes from the cold mantle and dress.

"Russell let me escape twice now—but he's not a fool. If he catches up with us again I doubt we'll be getting away."

"I don't really understand what he was trying to accomplish just now."

"I know. It doesn't make sense. If Security's close, why would he bother to contact me and possibly alarm us into fleeing? Was he trying to scare me into surrender? Or was he trying to warn me about the rest of Security? Or was he trying to convince me to believe that he's my only true hope?"

Roger pointed at the scrambler.

"I guess it doesn't matter, does it? I mean, they can't get a location on us while you've got that belt."

Leslie put Gun and the scrambler on the floor, then retrieved her own clothes and put them on. Dry, but cool and a little stiff. Roger was already on his way out the front door. When she picked up the scrambler, panic felt like it stitched her lungs to her chest. There was supposed to be a little green light on the buckle—had she turned the thing off when she knocked it across the floor?

She sighed. Her thumb had been over the light, that's all; it was still on. Leslie shook her head and swung the device around her waist. As she holstered her Gun under her summer jacket, she wondered what Roger would have thought if she'd actually turned the thing off. It certainly would've panicked him, and he didn't do well when he was panicked. He would have been convinced she did it on purpose.

Who knows what he would have done?

She wiped at her face with an open palm, sighed again, and followed him out the door.

On the porch she stopped as Roger jumped to the rust-colored pine needles on the ground. But for the whistling of a few unseen birds, and the whispering of a stream picking its way through rocks and roots to the Hudson, the surrounding woods were still—Leslie had almost forgotten how quiet forests could be. The fog was thinning. The trees were dripping.