The Methuselah Gene (21 page)

“A mob hit?”

She blinked at me rapidly.
 
“I didn't say that.”

I nodded thoughtfully, and considered the caution, bordering fear, which had lived with her in this space she called home.
 
“Is that why your house looks like a man lives here?
 
Why there are no photographs of you anywhere?”

She got up and left the room for a moment.
 
I was about to apologize for my indiscretion when she came back with a pair of men's pants.
 
She held them up in front of me, and smiled.
 
“Close enough?” she wanted to know.

“The legs are a bit long, but the waist looks about right.”

“Good.
 
I'll cut and cuff them for you.
 
The alternative is to cut and patch the hole and area of dried blood from those other pants with material, but this is easier.”

“You have a sewing machine?”

“No, I have band saw.
 
It's out back.
 
I've taken up woodworking.”

I chuckled involuntarily.
 
“Do you have men's underwear too?”

“Why—don't you want to wear mine?”
 
The question took me by surprise.
 
Her too.
 
Then, after breaking the tension I felt with a grin, she surprised me again by sitting on the arm of the couch right next to me.
 
“Do you know what it's like to live in a prison of your own making, Alan?”

“I . . . think I know what that's like.”

“Do you?”
 
She studied my face.
 
“Retired people live in gated communities where all the houses look the same—close together, no yards.
 
Like in a prison.
 
But even out here, in all this vast expanse, you come to have a different sense of self, too.
 
Big city life seems remote, alien.
 
No one is in a hurry.
 
Afternoons are long.”
 
She paused.
 
“It's different, but for me it's the same.
 
As a visitor, you aren't afraid to tell me who you are, but I can't tell you.
 
Do you know how that is—not feeling you're home, not sharing your past with someone?
 
Only the present moment?”

“All we have is the present.
 
But you're right, the past made us who we are.”

“No one can know me like they know you, that's right.
 
My name's not even Julie.”

“Doesn't matter.
 
A rose by the name of
Gertie
is just as beautiful.”

Trite though it sounded, she smiled.
 
“My name's not
Gertie
, either.”
 
She looked down and pursed her lips, as though deciding whether to throw off the other part of my comment.
 
“And I'm not beautiful, either.”

“The eye of this beholder thinks otherwise,” I maintained, almost at a whisper.
 
“And how you got here isn't as important as who you are now.”

She scanned the floor, as if she'd lost something down there, or I had.
 
“Who am I, then?
 
A teacher, pretending in a small town.
 
A spinster, an actor.
 
Hiding here alone.”

“No,” I said.
 
“Not alone.
 
Not anymore.”
 
Her gaze seemed frozen on one spot beneath her, but she said nothing.
 
“After all,” I confessed, “what am I?
 
A bachelor, also in hiding.
 
Afraid of . . . whatever.
 
I'm an actor, too.
 
When the women I once dated didn't care for the real me, I began to pretend I was someone else.
 
That didn't work either, but out of habit I never stopped pretending, even with myself.
 
Then all my friends got married, and suddenly they didn't have any free time.
 
I felt abandoned.
 
Like they dropped out of the world.
 
Except it's their world, really, isn't it?
 
Not mine.
 
I'm the one who dropped out of theirs.
 
And then I wasn't in anyone's demographic anymore.
 
The advertisers don't target me now because I'm not up and coming.
 
And I'm not already there either, wherever there is.
 
Career, marriage—where do I fit in?
 
Too soon for early retirement.
 
Too soon to sell me an assisted living condo yet, or even a time share on a cemetery plot.
 
So who am I to anyone?
 
A bachelor, a social outcast, frowned on by everyone.
 
Even by the vast almighty and sacred sporting industry.”

“Alan, the holdout,” she noted, glancing up with a wry but plaintive smile.
 
“What about your family?”

“Sister and father still alive.
 
Rachel's nice, you'd like her.”

“And your dad?”

“We haven't really spoken in years.
 
Wouldn't know what to say.”

“Say anything.
 
Say, ‘Hi Dad, how you doing?'
 
Then take him to dinner.”

“He lives in Florida, since a stroke took Mother.”

“Is he okay there?”

“Had a nervous breakdown years ago, but he's fine.
 
By now I'll bet he's hooked up with some nudist who has four grown kids . . . some liberal lady shares weed with him by candlelight in her Jacuzzi.”

“You bet?”

“If I were him.”

“Really.”
 
She looked dubious, now.

“So how's your relationship with your old man?”

“He's not an old man yet.”

“I didn't mean—”

“I know, silly.
 
But I can't talk about that.
 
And don't change the subject.
 
Promise me you'll go to Florida, take him to dinner?”

“Okay, Florida it is,” I said.
 
“Guess I need to see how geezers live, since it's inevitable I'll become one someday.
 
Time does that to men.”

“Yeah?
 
What's it do to women?”

“Makes you into little old ladies need help crossing the street.”

“Sounds nicer.”

“Women tend to be nicer.
 
That may be why you live longer.
 
Unless you're bitches, in which case you live a lot longer.”

She smiled, then asked, “What about love?”

“Old folks do it too, I think.
 
They just don't make movies about it.”

She chuckled.
 
“No, silly, I mean—”

“I know what you mean.
 
And I never really thought about how it might last.
 
The real thing, I mean.
 
At least I didn't until I came here, and found you.”

I half expected her to laugh.
 
It was just a ludicrous statement to make, even though I didn't plan to make it.
 
But as with any truth, spoken so easily, so matter-of-factly, it produced an effect.
 
What it did to the woman next to me was make her brown eyes suddenly tick-tock between my own, as if the screw that had wound them tightly and slowly for so many years had finally snapped.

Looking down at my mouth, she leaned slightly toward me, then, like a tremulous flower leans toward the sun.
 
I closed the gap between us, feeling an identical need inside of me, too.
 
The surprise of this couldn't be easily explained.
 
At least not by science.
 
But the miracle also came with the knowledge that even here, in the middle of nowhere, two people could find each other on the same road, and somehow intuit more about themselves than the facts could ever tell.

The ringing phone woke me first.
 
I wasn't sure how many times it had rung, but when I picked it up there was a click, a dial tone, and then the line went dead again.
 
Julie became restless in my arms, the ceiling fan's blades slowly turning above us in a rhythm that had matched my own.
 
I stared at the clock on the nightstand beside her heavy pine four-poster, which now bore the softly illuminated numerals 5:41.
 
Then I shook her warm shoulder.
 
She made a purring sound, and turned into me.
 
“
Humm
?”

“Someone knows I'm here,” I whispered.
 
“I have to go.”

Her hand found mine.
 
“You can't,” she said, startled awake by the thought.
 
“Not without me.”

“I should have left last night,” I insisted.
 
“It's too dangerous.”

“But you're injured.
 
You need me.”

I slipped my free hand behind her head.
 
“Yes, I do need you, but—”

“You need me, Alan,” she repeated, with emphasis.
 
In the near darkness I could just see her smile.
 
I could also hear that she enjoyed saying it.

“Okay, then,” I conceded.
 
“But hurry.
 
Let's get dressed.”

“Can't we at least wait until sunrise?”

I turned on the table lamp, then squinted past her to the nightstand on the other side.
 
I blinked in disbelief at what I saw there.
 
Noticing my shocked expression, Julie turned her head toward what I now stared at fixedly.
 
Then she looked back at me, and met my gaze, her eyes own widening.

“That glass,” I said, “is it half full . . . or half empty?”

“I . . . I'm sorry,” she replied.
 
“I . . . I must have . . . have gotten up, middle of the night.
 
Thirsty.”

“Oh Julie . . . no.”

“I wasn't thinking.”

“No.”

“It's out of habit.
 
It was an accident!”

“Oh God.
 
Maybe . . .”

“What?”

“Maybe it wasn't enough to . . .”

“To what?”

“How do you feel?”

“Feel?
 
I feel fine.
 
Happy, until now.
 
It's not the water.
 
We're not even sure this is connected to the drinking water anymore, remember?”
 
She paused, uncertainly.
 
“How much would I have to drink to be affected, did you say?”

“I'm not sure, but I think we should find out before it's too late.”

“Too late for what?”
 
Fear and a suggestion of anger now edged into her voice.
 
I was scaring her.

“Let's just get out of here,” I declared.
 
“Maybe someone staying at the rooming house can drive us, or we'll walk to the next town if we have to.”

“On your leg?
 
It's eight miles to . . .”
 
She stopped suddenly, cocking her head toward the window.

“What is it?”

“Hear that?”

“What?
 
No, I can't—”
 
But then I heard it too.
 
The sound of tires over dirt and gravel.
 
An approaching car, finally pulling up out front.

“The Sheriff?” Julie asked, getting up.

I gripped her arm, listening intently.
 
The car's idling engine stopped.
 
A car door softly shut.
 
Then another.

Two men.
 
Not one, but two.
 
And the sun was not even up yet.

I flung Julie's pants to her, and pulled on my own.
 
Shoes came next.
 
No time to tie them.
 
I stuffed our bed pillows under the sheet, then cut the light as we fled the room toward the back door.

A crescent moon cast a funereal pall over the empty field behind the house.
 
I stood in the open door, revolver in hand.
 
Julie stood behind me.
 
“Where are they?” she whispered.

My heart thudded thickly in my chest as I stared at the ragged patch of grass we'd have to cross first, and at the dangerous open ground beyond it, stretching to the safety of the corn.
 
I stuck my head outside and tried to see around the corner toward any possible shadows cast by the faint silver moonlight.
 
“Maybe they're waiting around the side,” I whispered back in the unnatural silence, “expecting us to run.
 
I'll go check the front windows.
 
Wait here.”