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  When snow was busy blanketing the highways, providing a good nights’ work for the plowers, and time was the only commodity you had an abundance of, there was no need to hurry. This woman knew it as well as she knew her own name. She made him lie back against the pillows while she unbuttoned his jacket and shirt, slid him out of his pants, ran her hands over him as if she was searching him down for hidden weapons. If he put up a hand to touch her back, she tsked him and stroked it across her own breast before placing the hand back down on the bed. The sight of her stiff nipple beneath the flannel shirt—he thought his heart would gallop right out of his chest.

  Then she undressed herself, letting him watch. He sat up for this. She was no flamenco dancer. Her body wasn’t hewn of muscle and bone and long hours at the ballet barre, but she did make fine use of the mirror.

  She stood up and stepped out of her jeans, kicking them away. His favorite red panties hugged her bottom. She flicked them away with her thumbs until they were nothing more than a bright handkerchief against muddy green carpet. In front of the mirror she ran her hands over her hips, down in between her thighs, back up to her breasts, cupping and lifting them in her hands, looking all the while at the two halves of herself reflected in the cracked glass. Owen watched her take inventory, his blood rushing into his ears. Didn’t she know she had more than everything he needed, more than he deserved? No, she wasn’t hearing anything he had to say on the subject, she was deep inside herself. She pressed her hands to her belly now, against the overlapping scars, as if by covering them with her palms she could will them invisible. He saw her face nearly break then, and orders be damned, he’d had enough of this waiting game. He stood up and went three steps to her, turning her to face him, pressing her back against the mirror, pinning her there with his hands over her upraised forearms. She gasped with cold when the glass met her back. He bent his knees slightly, cupped her behind and lifted her up onto her tiptoes, then onto his erection, moving carefully until they were joined, his penis so deeply planted inside her it he felt it touch the end of her passage.

  He began to rock toward her, carefully holding back, scared he might hurt her, trying not to upset the delicate balance it took to hold her this way. Each nerve between them quivered. It wouldn’t take long. Already Maggie breathed harshly in his ear, and he had found her rhythm, started moving against her relentlessly, until her cries grew hoarse and ragged.

  He jockeyed forward, holding her to him, forcing her to fall into orgasm, feeling her body arch up tautly, then slacken until she lay against him dead weight, breathing unevenly, the spirit of her far away, walking by itself on some rocky landscape. Walking back toward him, finished, she started to cry. He held on to her, feeling the warm fluid their friction created sluice down her leg, well up between them where he held one of her legs up tight against his flank. Her breathing settled, but the tears kept on spilling. He kissed her forehead. “What’s wrong, sugar? Did I go too deep?”

  She shook her head no. “I just feel sad.”

  “Why?”

  She sniffled and scrubbed her eyes. “This was incredible, but you’ve got to let me down.”

  They disengaged, and she shocked him, pulling him down to the bed, moving down his chest until her face was at his belly. He held on to the back of her head, lifting her hair until her neck was exposed. The sight of her pink skin, the thought of where her mouth was—he was harder than he’d been before. “You don’t have to,” he whispered.

  She stopped for a moment and looked up at him, wet-faced from crying and sweat. “But I want to.”

  She reached up and put his hand back on her neck and continued exploring him with her mouth. He didn’t last very many minutes before he was over that same ridge she’d gone to, and somewhere in the back of his conscious mind, he was thankful they had no neighbors on either side of them to hush this human music.

  For a long while he lay there, spent, her face against his chest, quiet. It seemed like hard work just trying to reorder his breathing, running his fingers through her hair. Finally he said, “Whew. I feel like I been slingshot to the moon and back. Is it polite to say thank you?”

  “Oh, I think so.”

  He tucked her hair behind her ear, traced its outline with his fingers. “Maggie, tell me what got you crying earlier. Something I did?”

  “No. I just miss my son. Thanksgiving is tomorrow. I keep wondering who’s going to fix him his vegetarian turkey. Make him bow his head and act thankful, even if he isn’t.”

  He heard the sadness choke off her words and knew that whatever he might try to say, none of it could make up for what was hurting her. “Well, my goodness,” he said. “What have we here?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This business right here. My necessary equipment seems to still be in working order. I thought the days of twice-in-one-night were long past me, but if you’re interested, I’m willing to risk a try.”

  Later, wrapped in blankets, Maggie’s head tucked into his shoulder, he had one comment. “That business about the toilet paper. I believe you. Rich folks don’t mind spending to frip up the basics. Were you that rich, Maggie?”

  “Never.” She snuggled up, and whether she was lying or telling the truth didn’t at that moment seem important.

  She slept like an overtired child, occasionally fussing her way through dreams. Owen lay there beside her, wakeful despite the marathon they’d run, thinking hard. Maybe it was motels, giving permission to let everything tip over to physical sensation. The sight of her down there on the shabby bed, asking permission to let her please him—he would never forget her eyes wide open to him, risking him saying no.

  He thought of Sheila, her wild requests to copy positions she’d read about in those marriage books, her purple bra where the nipple area was nothing more than a lacy cutout. For her, solutions to their problems came in the form of naughty lingerie, sex toys ordered through the mail he was always afraid Sara Kay would discover, an aggressiveness that made him want to run away. She worked herself into a sweat going after passion, as if she might rope it once and forever hobble its feet. All those times he’d failed to conjure what she needed—what a sorry husband he’d been. In a motel room or on a patch of soft ground, desire lay somewhere between two people, didn’t it, a tiny invisible vapor that probably entered the body someplace unlikely, like the ears or the feet, charged its way into your heart and blood, and made you brave, making love standing up in front of mirrors, leaving a steamy imprint of shoulders and buttocks on the cheap glass, you two locked together, falling in a heap to the bed.

  The flamenca duende tapped a stiletto-heeled rhythm over his worries, forcing them back into the dark earth. When she succeeded in tamping one down completely, she arched her long neck and shouted, “Olé!” and went onto the next. Drifting into sleep, Owen smiled, thanked her, and slept hard, not moving once the remainder of the night.

  9

  RED CHILE RISTRAS HUNG IN DROOPING, SNOW-DUSTED ARCS from the eaves of the café where Owen suggested they have breakfast. The special was a spinach omelette stuffed with mushrooms and queso blanco, only $4.99, including potatoes and toast. Owen ordered that, so Maggie asked for coffee and raisin toast. He’d spent enough money on her, and she could do with a spartan meal after last night’s feast. This morning in the motel she’d woken before him, turned from the thin, doubled-over pillow to observe his sleeping face. Sleep changed everyone. Bone-tired or catnapping, sleeping adults once again became baby-innocent. She’d never seen him so relaxed. Now Owen’s cheeks were stubbled with a fine sheen of whiskers, blond against his tanned face. His tough skin made him look older than he was, but that wasn’t just the result of years of working outdoors, or even the sexual gymnastics of last evening—she sensed it was worry. He was generous, funny, thoughtful, an able and considerate lover, but his past was curtained off in an opaque, seductive drape, and behind it she guessed were events that troubled him. She’d pieced together her own ideas: He’d left behind m
ore than his drinking self, some other terrible person he’d been back then now lay in that smoldering wreckage. Whenever a sheriff’s car drove by, he became decidedly calm—maybe he’d been involved in something left of the law. Or it might be something else entirely, some self-inflicted punishment for his own failures—his wife’s infidelity, his daughter’s bad choices—when lovers came to each other at this stage in life, they were tired of telling life stories and offered only the highlights.

  She would probably never know the man well enough to say for certain what he’d run from. Whoever he was back then, this was Owen now, drinking his coffee and chatting with the waitress. Give him five minutes, he’d know her favorite color, shoe size, all her pets’ names. If he’d chosen to be a salesman, that charm would have made him wealthy by now, his past forgotten in all that success. But he wasn’t; he was a clerk in a hardware store, and about as open as the Blue Dog library. You could check out only five books at a time, and in two weeks you had to return them. Now, as unlikely as the possibility seemed a few months ago, her neighbor was also her lover.

  When her world had begun to fall apart in her California house, she thought she’d spend the rest of her life there, alone, raising Peter. Instead, she’d come to New Mexico so others could raise him. Sometimes she made herself recall the house she’d left behind, standing with perfect posture next to the lapping water, remembering how, on the surface, everything couldn’t help but look cleaner near the ocean—perhaps that was California’s best trick—the white sailboat clusters, the tart scent of ocean, the unflagging sunshine. You couldn’t see the PCBs fouling the water, the widening hole in the ozone. You couldn’t even see her unhappiness. She’d broken free from a husk more beautiful than the one she wore now, honest but plain. Mrs. Raymond Sweetwater. Dear Margaret. Giver of parties. The wife of a man who was going places. A smart dresser. Someone you could depend on to help sponsor a charity event. Now, having reclaimed her maiden name, she was Maggie Yearwood, someone who rented a house, slept with her neighbor, tried to paint, and heard nothing but silence from her son, who was home with his foster family in this very town.

  Owen said, “You’re about as quiet as a tree full of owls this morning.”

  Maggie smiled at the image, wishing she possessed the bird’s legendary wisdom. She bumped his knee beneath the table with her own. “Happy Thanksgiving, neighbor.”

  “Back at you.”

  She took his hand and ran her fingertips in between his knuckles where the skin was a shade lighter, and softer. “Probably too late to buy a turkey, let alone cook one.”

  “How does cheese and crackers in front of the woodstove strike you? Some cider? That break too much with your traditions?”

  She wanted to laugh, burst out with the stories of different Thanksgiving menus she’d attempted over the years, wild-rice stuffing, searching for saffron to make paella, tofu fajitas—how all of them had not so much failed but ended in domestic wrecks of one sort or another. Owen would understand. He’d laugh along with her, even at the sad parts, because in retrospect all that stuff seemed like so much bad acting. But she didn’t need to say anything, he knew what she felt just by looking at her. “Cheese and crackers in front of the woodstove sounds perfect.”

  He kindly avoided the road that ran past Riverwall school, pointing out little shops off the avenue and museums she might have missed hearing about before they headed north. Peter wouldn’t be at school, of course. She couldn’t help it—it still hurt. Maggie knew she could have forced the issue, could have made herself an unwelcome guest at the Hidalgo dinner table, but all that would have netted Peter was yet another uncomfortable holiday meal to add to those he’d previously celebrated. Did they fix a southwestern supper on Thanksgiving, steaming tamales, roasting corn, or were they traditionalists? Would they make him peanut-butter sandwiches, considering Peter’s stance on meat? Maybe they ate out, at a place like the Red Cloud, regular food, nothing remarkable. Her boy—fifteen years old, heading into his first Christmas season in New Mexico. She hoped he was in a warm place, lying comfortably on the floor, playing a soundless version of Sonic the Hedgehog, that video game where if you traversed enough hurdles, stomped enough of the plants that snapped at you and stole your golden rings, you ascended from impossible chase sequences to an odd-looking maze that kept turning as you maneuvered your way around, trying to capture glittering “chaos gems” for extra points and longer “lives.” Weren’t they all, holiday or not, trapped in just such a sequence, white-knuckling the controls, hoping?

  “Owen,” she said. “Pull over. If I’m going to live in this state, I have to learn to drive in snow.”

  He stayed awake just long enough to make certain she was pointed on the right highway, then tipped his hat forward and went to sleep. White crystals whirled against the windshield. Every so often the intermittent wipers came on, scraping a clean arc through the accumulated snow. It made her think of her sister, one minute there for her and Peter, helping out; the next, attending to her own selfish whims. Nori’s logic—you needed a manual to decipher it. It’s all in the way you view things, Maggie thought. One minute you’re positive there are patterns in what piles up, and that it all means something significant. The next minute something scrapes it away and you have to start all over. She lifted her right hand from the steering wheel and touched Owen’s leg. He turned toward her slightly but didn’t rouse. He trusted her enough to sleep. No matter what failures lay behind her, his trust counted for something.

  Just before the big left turn toward Blue Dog, Owen sat up. “You shouldn’t have let me sleep like that.”

  “Why not? You were tired.”

  “I could have helped with the driving.”

  “I grew up in Massachusetts, where snow is serious. I asked to drive, and besides, you drove all the way down.”

  “Call me old-fashioned, I just think a man ought to do the lion’s share of the driving, especially in bad weather.”

  Maggie gestured to the snowy fields outside. “All this is adventure to me. It’s Thanksgiving, I’m wearing my blue jeans, didn’t even buy canned olives, and I’m driving in a snowstorm. It feels refreshing.”

  “You trying to tell me skipping turkey is about the worst thing you ever did in your life?”

  She signaled for the left turn. “No, I’ve done worse. I used to lie every week at confession, back when I was a good Catholic girl. So good that I never once told the priest about my impure thoughts regarding Bradley Madison, or how much I resented my beautiful younger sister. The sins of omission, Owen, they’re just as bad as the real thing.”

  “That’s a fine way to bring up a little girl—have her sit in a dark box once a week and tell some celibate old fart she’s thinking about boys. You and this Bradley fellow—anything come of it?”

  “He taught me the fine art of French kissing behind the candlepin alley, but that’s all. I was a virgin until I met Raymond. All around me everyone was practicing free love because that’s how it was in those days. I probably would have done the same, had anyone asked, but no one did. What about you? What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

  “Do we start from the cradle? If so, we could ride bad road till Easter.”

  “Owen, you’re the most upright person I’ve ever met. If you found a dime on the sidewalk, you’d spend ten dollars locating its owner. Were you always such a saint, or did you develop this trait late in life?”

  He bristled. “You want me to drive now?”

  “No, I want you to answer me.”

  He stared out the window, shifted position in the seat.

  “Owen.”

  “Don’t.”

  His voice was low and solemn, and she instantly regretted she’d teased him. “I’m sorry. I can be a first-class idiot sometimes, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “I guess you have good reason to ask me questions, and a right.” He rubbed her arm with his knuckles. “I’ve done some things I’m ashamed of—you know any man who hasn’
t? I stopped drinking and I follow my twelve steps, though they don’t lead down the same path others might take. But there was a whole period of years where I was what you might call reckless. Once I jumped off the tip of a twenty-foot-high roof, this silly bar with a huge steer head constructed out of plaster on top. Seemed like an awful good idea at the time.”

  “Twenty feet? Didn’t you get hurt?”

  “Oh, lady, alcohol is the cheapest form of insulation you’ll find. I cracked my leg some, but it didn’t cripple me.”

  She looked at him, waiting for more from this polite man who wouldn’t share his checkered past. “What else?”

  He offered nothing. The fierce look on his face almost frightened her. In a few miles they would bump down the gravel road and park the car in front of the Starr farmhouse. Joe Yazzi’s presence would smooth over the awkwardness she felt now between them in the car. They could share Thanksgiving crackers, play three-handed hearts.

  Embarrassed at how far she’d pushed him, she concentrated on taking the road slowly. Owen had told her over and over again that the faster she drove on rock, the sooner she’d be having body work and a paint job done. The old Starr farmhouse wasn’t hers, but it looked like home, all two stories, the red roof laden with snow. She could see RedBow racing across the pasture; he knew his master was home, and any minute, she expected both dogs to bolt from Joe’s company and chase the car until they parked. Everything would be okay. They had nothing but long winter days and nights ahead of them.

  But as she cornered the loop in the road, she saw dual sets of tire tracks. They led to two cars parked where she usually left the Landcruiser—a burgundy Range Rover replete with rhino bars and the bumper sticker: LUXURY RENTALS, BERNALILLO. Next to the Rover there was a Colorado state trooper’s car.

  Her first thoughts were of Joe. Then, “Oh, God.” She looked at Owen. “Something with my son, maybe? But why Colorado?”