Silent Joe (28 page)

It all cost almost a month's salary, but I hardly spent my work money because my house is paid for. Will and Mary Ann bought it for me when I started working full-time. Mary Ann wanted me in on the dizzying Orange County real estate market as early as possible. It's worth about $50,000 more than they paid for it, and all I've really done is run the vacuum and water the trees.

June's home was an upstairs apartment overlooking Newport Harbor. I stood on her porch and listened to the yacht lanyards ringing against the masts and the echoing cries of seagulls. My knees felt weak. I'd worn my best suit and hat. I rang the bell and waited.

She opened the door and stepped aside to let me in. Her smile went funny when she looked at the gift basket and jewel box in one of my hands, the flowers and chocolates in the other. "It's great to see you again," I said.

"Joe, nice to see you too, but you shouldn't have brought me all that.''

"You don't have to take it."

The darkness that crossed her face was genuine. I felt like my heart was about to stop beating.

"Well, come in."

"Thank you."

The apartment was drenched in sunlight. The walls and carpet were white. Through the big picture window the harbor water twinkled and the bright clean boats rocked. A big yacht motored across the channel.

"This is beautiful here," I said. "It's like being in a postcard."

"They actually shot one from the roof of this building. Here, let me take these things, I guess."

She took my gifts and set them on a glass dining table. She was wearing a silk, coffee-colored dress and brown shoes with heels. Her legs shone. I could smell the seawater through the open windows but I could smell her perfume too. She looked down at the basket and chocolates, the jewel box and flowers.

"Overkill?" I asked.

"Uh-huh. We'll figure out an appropriate response later. But I will put these roses in some water. They're beautiful, Joe. I've always loved the lavender-colored ones. They symbolize something but I forgot what."

I watched her take a big crystal vase from a cupboard, put in some water, cut the stems and arrange the flowers. She carried it to the fireplace mantel. The tops of her arms were dark and the undersides were pale. I helped her move some pictures and get the vase arranged in the middle.

She stood back and considered. The lavender roses stood out against the white paint of the mantel and the wall behind it. So did June Dauer. I'd never realized what a beautiful color brown was. Or how harmonious; two browns could go together: the flat dark brown of the silk and bright glow of her skin. She looked like something fresh and graceful being born out of something dry.

The Unknown Thing again. It had me.

"Nice," she said. She looked at me and really smiled for the first time.

The sunlight coming through the window behind her caught her curls. Her eyes were dark and bright. "Thank you, Joe."

"The pleasure is mine."

She shook her head but she was still smiling. "You know what effect you have on me, the way you're so polite and always saying please and thank you and my pleasure and all that?"

"No."

"You make me want to scream profanities at the top of my lungs."

I smiled and looked away. "I feel like that sometimes, too."

"Really?"

"The thought track that runs through my head while I'm speaking, it doesn't always match the words. I'll call a man 'sir' and feel like breaking his arm."

"You ever do it?"

"Once."

"Really?"

I shrugged. "I pretty much had to. Academy stuff, competition and hazing and all that. It worked out okay. They were going to wash this guy out anyhow."

"Well, on that happy note, let's go eat."

I'd picked a restaurant that was one of Will's favorites, a quiet Italian place on Balboa Island. The table was quite small, and it forced us face-to-face in a way that I would have found unbearable with anyone but June Dauer.

She got prettier by the minute. We drank a bottle of Chianti that lasted all the way through dinner, then we had dessert and cognac. My ears hummed pleasantly and my body felt warm and light. Like I was filled with helium and I could float up and rest against the ceiling if I didn't clamp my fingers to the side of the chair.

After dinner we walked around the island and June showed me the different places she'd lived in when she was a student at UCI. We watched the sunset from the west side, where the bay front windows threw orange reflections and the ferry chugged back and forth loaded with cars. Her skin went gold and her chocolate eyes turned to a light tan as she squinted out. Like the flank of a lion. More browns I'd never noticed—subtle and glorious.

When the sun went down the sea breeze came up cool and she moved up against my side. I put my arm around her shoulder. I'd never done anything that dramatic with a woman before, but she didn't flinch or recoil. I started to take it away and apologize, but caught myself.

Her skin was cool, with tiny bumps on it. I had never touched anything that exciting in my entire life.

When she let us back into her place, it was dark. But you could see the silver water of the harbor and a pale bank of fog moving in from the west.

She opened the French doors to the deck, then turned on a lamp by the couch, just one click. The room filled with soft light and shadow, and cool damp breeze. Then she took the jewel box off the table.

"Come sit on the couch with me," she said.

I sat at a respectful distance and looked out the window. The tops the tall masts swayed in the moonlight.

June set the gift box on her right knee. "I'm afraid to open this."

"It was just to show how pleased I am."

"You can overdo things, Joe."

"I'm capable of that, June."

She looked down at the box. It was wrapped in silver paper that caught the light. Her leg nearest the lamp was shot with the same light but the one closest to me was rounded with shadow. I looked at the place where her legs met her dress and felt a deep, rising ache.

She unwrapped the gift as women will: slid off the bow, worked up the tape with her fingernail, peeled back the wrapping paper, folded it, set aside. The box was black velvet. She opened it. Even in the soft light I could see the red glimmer of the rubies stretched against the dark liner. Like a hundred tiny brake lights caught on a miniature freeway.

"Ah, Joe."

No way to read her inflection.

"They're rubies," I said.

"I see that. This is much too . . . much. Really."

"Really?"

She looked at me. "Yes."

"Okay. Here."

I stood and held out my hand. She put the box in it. I walked out to the patio.

"Joe,
no."

I dropped it ten feet down into the bay.

She was suddenly standing beside me at the railing, looking down.

"Shit, Joe—my bracelet!"

"It's floating."

"Not forever, it won't! I'd rather have it on me than at the bottom of the harbor."

"You could have said that before I threw it in."

I pulled off my shoes and coat and handed her my wallet. I'd left my guns in the trunk of the Mustang.

"Oh, man," she said.

I dove in to make as little splash as possible. Then I surfaced and breaststroked over to the bobbing box. The water was cold but it felt good on my face. Like ice. I put the box in my mouth and turned to swim back.

Then I heard a splash behind me and the surface broke and June Dauer's shiny wet head appeared.

"Cold,"
she said.

I tried to say yes, ma'am, but got only, "Yeah-meah."

"What's that in your mouth, Fido, a box of rubies?"

I nodded. She paddled up closer. Breathing in and out fast like you do when it's cold. I could feel her legs churning next to mine and smell the warm human breath on the surface of the water. Our feet knocked, then our knees. She locked one hand on the collar of my shirt and pulled the box out of my mouth. In place of it came her mouth, and a warm tongue. I pulled her close with one arm, felt the pumping of her legs echoed in the smooth muscles of her side. Started to sink. Had to let go and scull with my hands to keep our heads up. That made my body drift away a little. She laughed and grabbed my shirt and pulled herself closer, putting the box back in my mouth. She laughed low and kind of wicked, then confidently pressed a hand to my personal area.

"You're a cold hard man, Joe Trona."

"Yeah-meah."

"Can't say yes ma'am, no ma'am, pleased to meet you, how do you do, my pleasure now, can you?"

"Ah caw saw maw pwashure."

"You can say my pleasure? Mean this?"

The water felt like ice down there. She reached down with both and I felt a tug. Then I could feel her hand
directly on me
through all that ice and it was a sensation I'd never imagined.

"Wow," she whispered.

I pulled the box from my mouth and kept treading water with clenched in my hand.

She let go and locked both her hands on my cheeks and kissed me hard. I tried to get things back where they belonged, but the zipper stuck and I started sinking. Then she spun off with a splash of silver water and to a ladder built into the bottom of her patio deck.

She climbed up ahead of me with her silk dress stuck to her body and her legs straightening up the rungs and the patio lights catching the water streaming off her.

She helped me climb onto the deck, took the box from my mouth and set it on the patio table. I turned away, still trying to get myself presentable, but she put a hand on my shoulder and turned me to her and locked mouth on mine again. She aimed me through the French doors and guided me inside. I backpedaled. I bumped into some things but nothing crashed. Through the living room with the lavender roses on the mantle. Past the kitchen, past the dining room with the chocolates and the gourmet coffee basket, down the hallway with the framed pictures receding along both sides of my vision, but really all I could see was her forehead angled below mine and one cheek and the glimmering blur of one as she pushed me into the bedroom, marched me through a ninety-degree turn and into a bathroom. Her mouth never left mine. I felt her reach for something and heard the hiss of the shower. She reached for something else and I heard a hum overhead and felt the warm exhale of a heat lamp on the back of my neck. The door shut and it went dark. Almost dark. Looking past June's tilted-up cheek I saw the top half of us in a mirror over the sinks.

It took a while to get off our clothes. We held each other and kissed deeply and shivered while we waited for the warmth from the heat lamp to melt down over us and the steam from the shower to build up. It didn't take long. Or maybe it did. That kiss could have altered my perception of time and I couldn't get a look at my watch.

Then the click of the shower door and the step up and in, and hot water streaming down. Soap suds and shampoo lather and this smooth, supple, strong rubbery body against mine, hands spreading and exploring and stroking and exploring again. Unbearable pleasure. She got down on her knees and washed me. I told her to take it easy on the personal area but it seemed to me she deliberately didn't. I stood there, hard as a statue, arms braced against the tiles, shaking as she stroked me into the dark. When she was done I got down and washed her the same way. She was wetter than water. Then she cried out quietly and dug her fingernails into the back of my scalp and pulled my face into her. Another small cry. A growl, actually. Then amperage. Fingers strong on my skull. While her shudders got faster the hot water finally got through my skin and into my muscles and bones. And I felt so light again, like in the restaurant. I thought I could float to the shower ceiling and grab the nozzle like a balloon caught in a tree and watch June from above.

Not that I wanted to. We got out and tried to dry off in the steam. Damp with sweat, she led me to her bed. When my skin hit the cool night air the bumps came up under the sweat and it felt like invisible flowers blooming. She threw back the blanket and pulled the sheet over us. We began making love at 10:13. I know because June had a digital clock on the bedstand with big green numbers on it. We began again at 12:25, 3:19, 5:58 and 8:44. At 11:40, 2:05 and 8:20 we were eating in bed—ice cream with chocolate syrup; leftovers from the restaurant; microwave sausage and pancake breakfasts served in small partitioned plates with the syrup bubbling hot from a divot in the plastic. We made love again later that morning, then I left. Walking down the stairs from her apartment my legs were sore and my personal area was sore and so were my jaws.

And I was happier than I'd been in my life, with the possible exception the first time I stepped into Will and Mary Ann's home in the Tustin hills. The two experiences were very much alike. My heart pounded and my ears rang. And I greedily saw and smelled and felt everything I could see a smell and feel, because I was pretty sure that my new home—and
June
Dauer—would be taken away very soon.