Bestiary (15 page)
Authors: Robert Masello
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers
He was lying beside her, his hands still moving on her body. He was aroused, too—she could feel him nudging her hip, anxiously. Damp already.
But something in her was still failing to click. Ever since the baby, she’d been slow to arousal, and quick to sleep. Maybe it was the pressure of everything, from having a baby to moving to L.A., from the new house to the new job. He slipped one hand between her legs, parting them.
She was still dry, and knew it. He’d know, too, in another second.
“Do you not want to do this?” he said, his voice husky. He was trying to sound okay with that, but she knew he wasn’t.
“It’s just that I’m so tired.”
He moved his fingers against her, in one last-ditch attempt. And Beth willed herself to squeeze down against them, to rub herself on his fingertips. He licked them, and tried again.
He was kneeling now between her legs. Lifting her hips.
Her hair hung down in her eyes, her face pressed down against the pillows. She spread her knees.
He reached past her, grabbed the pillows, and pushed them under her. She let her belly rest on the cool, smooth cloth.
His hands gripping her, holding her in place, he pressed himself against her from behind, first probingly, then hard. But she was still dry, and she could tell it must be chafing him as much as it did her.
“Should I get some . . . lubricant?” he said in a strained voice.
“No,” she said, arching her back, “just go on.”
“You sure?”
She didn’t answer, just nodded her head.
And he pushed harder—slowly, then deep. He was in, but to Beth it still felt rough and tight. She wasn’t really ready, she wasn’t really receptive.
He pushed again, even deeper, and it felt—to both of them now—like every centimeter was a battle.
“Can I . . . ?”
“Yes,” she said, “yes . . .”
She knew his rhythms, she knew what he was asking. And where she used to want him to wait, to wait as long as possible—and he was good at that, very good—right now all she wanted was for him to finish.
And she knew he knew that.
His hands clenched her hips, and he pulled her back against him. She moved her knees as wide as she could. He moved into her, then out, then in again, several times. Faster. Suddenly, he groaned, and grew very still, arched, immobile, against her hot skin. She, too, stayed still, waiting for him to subside. A few moments later, he bent forward, resting his head between her shoulder blades. She could feel his breath, ragged, on the nape of her neck. She let her knees, starting to ache now, come together.
Carter rolled off of her and onto his back, one hand resting flat on his chest.
Beth moved the pillows out of the way, and lay on her side, facing him.
His eyes were closed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just—”
“It’s okay,” he said, his eyes still shut.
“No, it’s not, I—”
“Beth,” he said, “it’s alright. I shouldn’t have pushed it.”
She moved closer to him, and he draped one arm around her head and shoulder. She did love the smell of him. Now if only she could get that . . .
feeling
back.
feeling
back.
She wanted to tell him that, she wanted to explain, and make it up to him somehow, but before she was really aware of it, before she was able to utter another word, she was fast asleep.
And Carter could tell—her breathing went suddenly low and steady. Her lips were slightly parted against the pillowcase.
He lay on his back, in the dark, thinking. While, most of the time, sex left him nicely drowsy, it wasn’t having that effect tonight.
He knew that new mothers often had some trouble getting back into the groove; he’d read the articles, he knew about the bonding process she was going through with Joey. He would have liked to have the old Beth back—their sex life had always been vigorous, to say the least—but he understood that he was going to have to give it some more time. No, that wasn’t really the reason his mind was still churning.
What was keeping him awake was everything else—Pit 91, the La Brea Woman, Gunderson’s publicity plans. He wanted to turn it all off, but the longer he lay there, the more his mind continued to go over it all. He envied Beth the deep, untroubled sleep she seemed to be enjoying. There was no way, he knew, that he was going to get there himself, not this early. Without waking her, he moved her head away from his shoulder, brushed the long dark hair away from her lips, and got out of bed. He put on some jeans, the
T. rex
T-shirt, and his rubber thongs, and went across the hall to check on Joey.
T. rex
T-shirt, and his rubber thongs, and went across the hall to check on Joey.
The moonlight was coming through the blinds, but even without that, he would have known Joey was awake. Not that he was making any noise; he seldom did that. But as Carter leaned over the edge of the crib, he could see that Joey’s eyes—a kind of gray blue—were open, as if he’d been simply waiting for his dad to come in. It was nearly always like this, and Carter often wondered if that was the way babies were—were they such finely tuned instruments that they woke up the minute anyone got near them? Never having had one before, he had no means of comparison.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” Carter whispered.
Joey wiggled his legs, wanting to be picked up.
Carter leaned in and lifted him. “How was your day?” he asked, as if expecting an answer. “You and Robin have some fun?”
The baby calmly studied Carter’s face.
“You think your daddy’s good looking? Someday I’ll show you my whole T-shirt collection.” He bounced his son on his arm; Joey was wearing white cotton pj’s with little red roosters all over them.
Carter carried the baby downstairs to the kitchen, where he deposited him in the high chair, while he finished off some of the Chinese food leftovers. But he still wasn’t feeling sleepy. What might help, he thought, was a short walk and a cigar.
Beth forbade smoking in the house, and wasn’t crazy about the fact that Carter did it at all. But Carter had been hoarding a fine Macanudo that Gunderson, of all people, had stuck in his pocket when Carter had first told him about the find in Pit 91.
“Want to take a walk?” Carter asked Joey, who was forming a small bubble between his lips. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
While he’d have thought twice about a late-night stroll with a baby and a cigar anywhere else, in Summit View it posed no problem; who was gonna see him? There was never anyone on the streets even during the day. And at this hour, on a hot night, he could count on seeing no one.
The street they were on—Via Vista—was the last one in the development, and it dead-ended in the hillside just above. It was wide and curving, and dimly lighted by the lampposts, which were fairly few and far between. One of their neighbors had once told him that the homeowners’ association had voted to keep it that way; they wanted it to have the feel of living out in the country—which, to some extent, they’d done. Although the 405 freeway was just a few minutes away, up here it was dark and quiet, and the air smelled of the dry brush in the canyon behind the houses.
That was another thing Carter found so surprising, and unexpected, about living in L.A. Yes, you heard all the time about the traffic and the sprawl and the smog, but no one ever told you about how intimately nature was woven into the fabric of the city. In New York, you had Central Park, and the occasional green pocket here and there, but in L.A. you had mountains and canyons, beaches and ravines, everywhere you went. Looking off to his left, there was a tennis court—several of them dotted the development—but just beyond its fence the land fell away, and quite steeply, into a dense forested valley. All Carter could see in the summer moonlight was a deep, dark cleft, with the rolling flank of the Santa Monica Mountains in the distance. The only sign of civilization in there were the towers that rose up, well above the treetops, to carry the high-power lines. Atop each one a red beacon light went on and off and on again.
Carter strolled slowly, careful to blow his cigar smoke away from the baby. Joey rested his head against his father’s shoulder, but if Carter had to guess, he’d bet the kid’s eyes were still open. What did babies think about? What
could
they think about? Without a sufficiently developed cerebral cortex, it was unclear how much they could process, and what, if anything, they would ever be able to remember. When would it be, Carter thought, that he’d be able to tell his son about the man he’d been named after? Giuseppe—or Joe—Russo, Carter’s close friend and associate. The Italian paleontologist who’d brought into Carter’s life the greatest discovery he’d ever made—and who had paid for that discovery with his own life.
could
they think about? Without a sufficiently developed cerebral cortex, it was unclear how much they could process, and what, if anything, they would ever be able to remember. When would it be, Carter thought, that he’d be able to tell his son about the man he’d been named after? Giuseppe—or Joe—Russo, Carter’s close friend and associate. The Italian paleontologist who’d brought into Carter’s life the greatest discovery he’d ever made—and who had paid for that discovery with his own life.
Carter took another puff of the cigar, and scanned the windows of the neighboring houses. The only lights that were on were over the garages. Was anybody home, he wondered, in any of them?
Joey stirred in his arms.
And would his son ever understand just what a miracle child he was? Carter had been told it was impossible for him to father a child, that a boyhood illness had rendered him sterile. And then, in defiance of all the odds, Beth had become pregnant after all. Carter could still recall the surprise on the fertility expert’s face.
Via Vista stopped, on the south end, where the scrub-covered side of the hill rose up. Carter turned around, and leaving the sidewalk, headed back down in the center of the street. It’s not like there were going to be any cars up here. Looking all the way down the wide, curving road, he saw only one thing moving, and at first he thought it was just a shadow.
Then it moved again, and he knew it wasn’t.
From here, it looked like a medium-sized dog, maybe a collie. The first thing that occurred to him was that it might be that stray dog Beth had told him about. It had come up from the canyon side; maybe it lived in the brush somewhere.
Carter continued on, his flip-flops slapping the concrete street, enjoying his cigar . . . when the dog stopped and looked up the street at him.
And now he could see it was not a dog. The snout was too narrow, the bushy tail was held straight down from the body. This was a coyote, the first one Carter had seen since his fieldwork in Utah.
And the only one he’d ever seen in the middle of a street.
Nor, he suddenly realized, was it alone.
Several other shadows slowly emerged above the lip of the scrubby hillside. Skulking low, along the ground, walking on their toes—digitigrade—with that distinctive gait of their species.
Carter stopped in his tracks; his grip on Joey instinctively tightened.
One of the pack was loping toward Carter’s front lawn.
The bowl. With the water in it. They’d come up looking for water. In Utah, Carter had once seen a coyote leap an eight-foot wall to get to a cattle trough.
He’d also seen one take down a lamb with a single savage bite to the throat.
He quickly surveyed the area. The nearest house on his left was black and the low fence in front of it would offer no protection at all.
To his right, there was only the tennis court. But it did have a high Cyclone fence around it—high enough even to keep a coyote from leaping over it.
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