One Kick (26 page)

Kick sank down into a white plastic lounge chair, tossed the magazine aside, and took off her mother’s flip-flops. The concrete under her feet was warm. She used her phone to scan the latest updates in James’s medical file and then sat watching the changing surface of the water, how the slightest breeze created ripples that changed how the blue light moved.

It was this blue light that drew Kick’s attention back to the magazine. It winked across the cover, reflecting off a pale face in a corner box. Kick reached for the magazine and squinted at it. She had been too distracted by her own image to notice it before—featured in the top right corner was a photograph of Adam Rice.
The New Face of Missing Children?
the copy asked.

Kick opened the magazine, paging past the images her mother had sold, and the quotes that her mother had given, and the ads for her mother’s book, until she found the half-page story about Adam. It was all a rehashing of what Kick knew. Even the photographs were recycled from other articles. The main image was the one that Kick had clipped and put up on her bedroom wall: Adam’s mother at the press conference, clutching her son’s stuffed elephant. The article had one new quote, from the utility worker who had seen Adam playing in the yard before his abduction. “I noticed him because of the monkey,” the utility worker was quoted as saying. “It looked loved, like a stuffed animal my kid’s got.”

A white butterfly alit on the surface of the pool and immediately started to drown.

Kick rolled the magazine up and stuck it in her purse, then unzipped the interior pocket and extracted the envelope from the Trident Medical Group. She unfolded it and stared at it dumbly; it was so official-looking, with its medical seal and the American flag stamp. Kick’s name and her mother’s address were visible through the plastic window. It hadn’t been a mix-up. She had given them her mother’s address on purpose because James always went through
Kick’s mail, and she knew that if he had intercepted the letter, he would never have given it to her.

Kick slowly extracted the typed letter from inside. The pool reflected off the white paper, rippling it with aqua light.

Seeing the report in black-and-white made it real somehow.

She didn’t like to swim. She didn’t even like baths. She didn’t like being in the water. It was one of her triggers.

She didn’t know why.

This place . . . she barely remembered it. But she remembered the pool. Even as a kid she had appreciated its color, that perfect Caribbean blue.

She heard the sound of plastic scraping against concrete, looked up to see Bishop dragging a deck chair parallel to hers, and quickly folded the letter from Trident back into her purse. He sat down, tossed the plastic Target bag with her overnight things on the ground at her feet, and then dangled a room key over her lap.

She took the key. Not a key card, she noticed. A real key. It was attached to a shiny red plastic key chain that had the number
18
stamped on it.

“They have a lot of seasonal employees,” Bishop said. The key chain on his room key was stamped with a
6
. “But Carla says that a few of the restaurant staff have been here almost twenty years. We’ll show them the photograph in the morning.”

“Carla?” Kick said, looking at him sideways.

“I think she likes me,” Bishop said.

Kick scanned the surface of the pool. She couldn’t see the butterfly anymore. “Are we spending the night here so you can have sex with a motel clerk?” she asked. “Not that I care,” she added quickly. “I’m just wondering, so when I’m eaten alive by bedbugs I’ll know at least it’s in service to a larger goal.”

“We’re staying because it’s late,” Bishop said, “and all the longtime staff will be here in the morning.” He stood up, scratched
the back of his neck, and looked away. “And so I can have sex with the motel clerk.”

“Good night,” Kick said, settling back into her deck chair.

“Good night,” Bishop said.

She felt him start to step away, a shift in the light where his shadow had been.

“Bishop?” she called. She was staring straight ahead, at the pool. She couldn’t see Bishop, but she knew he was still there. “You know how Mel said that Klugman spent the money he got for James on a new car?” she asked. “I remember that day. I remember looking for James. I found Mel and Klugman in the garage with the car. They told me that James was gone. And you know what I did?” It was the first time she’d ever said it out loud. “I went swimming.” The knot in her throat felt like a hand around her neck. James wasn’t allowed in the pool, so when they played, they had to play inside. With James not there, she could do what she wanted. She had played in Klugman’s pool all afternoon, happy that he was gone.

“You were a kid; you didn’t understand what it meant.”

Kick sat forward, distracted. The edge of the motel pool was ringed with ceramic tiles. She had remembered it wrong. The two pools, Klugman’s and the Desert Rose’s, had merged in her memory. “I was wrong about the photograph,” she said. “I thought it was taken in Klugman’s backyard.” She lifted her finger, the one with the wire talisman, and pointed at the shallow end of the Desert Rose Motel pool, where the lip was checkerboarded with black and white tiles. “It was here,” Kick said.

“THE KEY TO DOING
a back float is to relax,” her father said. Beth leaned back into his hand and let his palm support her at the surface of the water. The sky was the same color as the pool, and her body burned with excitement at Mel’s attention. “Just stay clam and relaxed,” her father said. “And do what I tell you.”

They weren’t alone in the pool; there were other grown-ups: the big man in the black swimsuit with the pale legs and the arrow tattoos, and his wife, who didn’t like to be splashed, sat on the edge with their legs in the water. The pool cleaner, who always said hello to her, was using a pool skimmer to scoop up the dead palm fronds.

Her father’s voice always made her calm, and she knew that if she just did what he said, he would keep her safe. “Very slowly, tip your head back until your ears are underwater,” he said, guiding her forehead back with his hand. “Good. Now lift your chin.” It was scary. The water seemed so close to her eyes. “More. Point it up toward the sky.” She lifted it a bit more. She could feel her whole body becoming more buoyant. The water was at her mid-cheek. “Keep your head centered,” he said, “arms a few inches from your sides. Keep your palms up. Now arch your upper back just a few inches.” He moved his hand along her spine. “Lift your chest just a bit out of the water.” He moved a hand and held it just above her belly. “Now lift your stomach until it touches my hand,” he said. She pushed her belly out until it met his palm. “You’re such a good girl, Beth. Now bend your knees and open your
legs slightly.” She did what she was told, and he withdrew his hands and stepped away, and for a moment she was terrified, all by herself, in water above her head. Then the thrill of her achievement hit her and she squealed with delight. She was floating. “Listen to your body,” her father called from the edge of the pool. “You’re doing it.”

KICK POUNDED ON THE
door to Bishop’s motel room. After a minute the door opened a few inches and Bishop peered out across the chain.

“I want to talk,” Kick said. She had come straight from her room and was barefoot, wearing what she’d bought at Target for sleepwear: a black tank top and boxer-like pajama shorts.

Bishop closed the door in her face. Kick waited. Bugs batted against the caged light fixture overhead. Every room was fitted with a chain lock above a standard doorknob lock, both easily defeated. All Kick would have needed was a paper clip and a rubber band. She hadn’t even locked her room, because why bother?

Kick heard the chain drop.

“It’s two a.m.,” Bishop said. He was standing in the doorway, wearing black jeans he’d clearly just pulled on, and no shirt or shoes. The scratch marks she’d left on his arms looked like they had been drawn on with a shaky red ballpoint. A plastic jug of juice dangled from his hand.

Kick peered past him, into his room. It looked identical to hers. Green carpet. The same psychedelic tropical leaf pattern on the bedspread. The bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in. “Are you alone?” Kick asked.

Bishop looked over his shoulder into the clearly empty motel room. “Uh, yes?” he said.

Kick was relieved. Purely on Bishop’s behalf. Because he had probably dodged an STD, and self-restraint was not exactly his style. “I thought the motel clerk might be here,” she said, walking past Bishop into his room. His air-conditioning worked better than hers, and she crossed her arms, her skin pebbled from the artificial chill. It smelled like mildew and stale cigarette smoke. A print of a coyote howling at the moon in the desert was bolted to the wall over the bed. His suitcase was still packed, next to the wall. “Or has she already come and gone,” Kick said.

Bishop closed the door, took a slug from the juice, and wiped his mouth with his hand. “You know, contrary to popular belief, I can go a night without getting laid,” he said.

Kick snorted.

Bishop turned his desk chair around and sat in it, and Kick caught a glimpse of the stitches that still peppered his back. His laptop was plugged in behind him on the wood laminate surface that passed for a desk. He had been sitting at his computer when Kick had knocked, she guessed. The laptop was closed, but it was on.

Besides the desk chair, the other seating options were the bed and a stained orange-upholstered reading chair.

Someone was listening to a Spanish-language radio station on the other side of the wall.

Kick didn’t know where to sit. The carpet felt sticky under her feet. She stepped over to Bishop and took the jug from him and tipped it into her mouth. It was orange juice, sweet and pulpy. She looked at the label. Fresh-squeezed. There was no way he got this at the pool vending machines, which meant that, at some point earlier that night, he’d made the twenty-minute trip into town without her.

She passed the jug back to him and he took a swig.

“Was there something in particular you wanted to talk about,” he asked, studying her, “or did you just want to infect me with your insomnia?”

He didn’t seem to register that she was practically naked.

“How many women have you had sex with?” Kick asked. The question sounded as awkward out loud as it had in Kick’s head.

“More than you,” Bishop said. His gray eyes were fixed on her. “I mean, I don’t know that. I’m assuming.” He grinned to himself as he took another slug of juice. “I don’t know what you’re into.”

Kick let herself stare at him. The scar on his neck was beautiful, as thick as yarn.

She had thought that she would tell him about the Trident Medical Group, about the test results, that he might talk her out of what she was thinking. But that’s not why she was here. The back of her neck was on fire.

A mariachi band started up on the Spanish-language station.

Bishop rested the jug on his thigh and looked at her expectantly.

Kick hesitated, then took the juice from his hand, tipped it down her throat, and drained it.

“Help yourself,” Bishop said wryly.

Light-headed, Kick tossed the empty jug behind her on the carpet, wiped her mouth, and climbed on Bishop’s lap, straddling him.

She was startled by how surprised he seemed. The muscles in his chest tensed and he lifted his hands reflexively from the chair. Kick guessed the paramedic and the flight attendant had been more subtle. At that moment Bishop could have stopped her cold with one devastating rejoinder, but he didn’t. He lowered his hands back to the armrests and was motionless. It flustered her. She didn’t know what he wanted. She thought he wanted sex, all the time. She couldn’t bring herself to make eye contact with him, worried that he’d look horrified or something. Instead she divided his sum into parts: the angle of his jaw, the smiling scar across his neck, the black hairs on his chest, the sinewy muscles of his scratched arms. Her whole body buzzed with warmth now. She interlaced her fingers at the nape of his neck and pulled his mouth to hers. Their tongues
met. He tasted like orange juice. She moved her tongue around his mouth, exploring him. He kissed her back but he was cautious, and he still hadn’t actively touched her.

When Kick had played out how this would go, she wasn’t sure what she wanted him to do; part of her had wanted him to give her a fatherly speech, pat her on the head, and send her back to bed.

But something had changed, and she felt overcome by an almost desperate physical longing that was making all her other plans seem hazy. Her fingers, behind his neck, brushed against the nylon thread that sutured a wound.

She rocked forward in his lap. She could feel his abdomen clench, heard him inhale, and then his hands brushed up along her thighs to her lower spine. A pulse of pleasure radiated down her legs as he pulled her toward him, his tongue pushing deeper into her mouth and his hands moving under her shirt. He pulled his mouth away from hers as he lifted her shirt off over her head, and she realized how out of breath she was. She expected him to ask then the usual questions: if she was “sure,” or “ready,” or “okay.”

She knew what she’d say. But it never came up. He picked her up and carried her to the bed, and after that they didn’t do any more talking.

KICK FELT FOR HER
underpants in the dark with her foot, managed to find them, inched them over to the bed, and pulled them on. The air conditioner was blowing full blast, making her sweat-dampened skin cold. Bishop was asleep on the bed, a motionless silhouette, breathing like a tranquilized goat. Kick found her shorts balled up in the bedsheet and wiggled them on. The digital clock on the bedside table said it was 5:15 a.m. She shifted her weight carefully off the mattress onto the floor. Her tank top was somewhere on the carpet by the desk. She crept across the room, found her shirt on the floor, pulled it on, and unlocked the door.

Kick was good in the dark. Stealthy. That’s what she was thinking, anyway, when she was suddenly aware of the sensation that she was being watched.