This Perfect Day (23 page)

She nodded. “I remember,” she said.

Later in the week she took a new Français book that he had found and tried to read it. He sat beside her and translated it for her.

That Sunday, while they were riding along, a member pedaled up on Chip’s left and stayed even with them. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” Chip said.

“I thought all the old bikes had been phased out,” he said.

“So did I,” Chip said, “but these are what was there.”

The member’s bike had a thinner frame and a thumb-knob gear control. “Back in ’935?” he asked.

“No, ’939,” Chip said.

“Oh,” the member said. He looked at their baskets, filled with their blanket-wrapped kits.

“We’d better speed up, Li,” Lilac said. “The others are out of sight.”

“They’ll wait for us,” Chip said. “They have to; we have the cakes and blankets.”

The member smiled.

“No, come on, let’s go faster,” Lilac said. “It’s not fair to make them wait around.”

“All right,” Chip said, and to the member, “Have a good day.”

“You too,” he said.

They pedaled faster and pulled ahead.

“Good for you,” Chip said. “He was just going to ask why we’re carrying so much.”

Lilac said nothing.

They went about eighty kilometers that day and reached the parkland northwest of ’12471, within another day’s ride of ’082. They found a fairly good hiding place, a triangular cleft between high rock spurs overhung with trees. Chip cut branches to close off the front of it.

“You don’t have to tie me any more,” Lilac said. “I won’t run away and I won’t try to attract anyone. You can put the gun in your kit.”

“You want to go?” Chip said. “To Majorca?”

“Of course,” she said. “I’m anxious to. It’s what I’ve always wanted—when I’ve been myself, I mean.”

“All right,” he said. He put the gun in his kit and that night he didn’t tie her.

Her casual matter-of-factness didn’t seem right to him. Shouldn’t she have shown more enthusiasm? Yes, and gratitude too; that was what he had expected, he admitted to himself: gratitude, expressions of love. He lay awake listening to her soft slow breathing. Was she really asleep or was she only pretending? Could she be tricking him in some unimaginable way? He shone his flashlight at her. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted, her arms together under the blanket as if she were still tied.

It was only Marx twentieth, he told himself. In another week or two she would show more feeling. He closed his eyes. When he woke she was picking stones and twigs from the ground. “Good morning,” she said pleasantly.

They found a narrow trickle of stream nearby, and a green-fruited tree that he thought was an “olivier.” The fruit was bitter and strange-tasting. They both preferred cakes.

She asked him how he had avoided his treatments, and he told her about the leaf and the wet stone and the bandages he had made. She was impressed. It was clever of him, she said.

They went into ’12471 one night for cakes and drinks, towels, toilet paper, coveralls, new sandals; and to study, as well as they could by flashlight, the MFA map of the area.

“What will we do when we get to ’082?” she asked the next morning.

“Hide by the shore,” he said, “and watch every night for traders.”

“Would they do that?” she asked. “Risk coming ashore?”

“Yes,” he said, “I think they would, away from the city.”

“But wouldn’t they be more likely to go to Eur? It’s nearer.”

“We’ll just have to hope they come to Afr too,” he said. “And I want to get some things from the city for
us
to trade when we get
there,
things that they’re likely to put a value on. We’ll have to think about that.”

“Is there any chance that we can find a boat?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “There aren’t any offshore islands, so there aren’t likely to be any powerboats around. Of course, there are always amusement-garden rowboats, but I can’t see us rowing two hundred and eighty kilometers; can you?”

“It’s not impossible,” she said.

“No,” he said, “if worse comes to worst. But I’m counting on traders, or maybe even some kind of organized rescue operation. Majorca has to defend itself, you see, because Uni knows about it; it knows about all the islands. So the members there might keep a lookout for newcomers, to increase their population, increase their strength.”

“I suppose they might,” she said.

There was another rain night, and they sat together with a blanket around them in the inmost narrow corner of their place, tight between the high rock spurs. He kissed her and tried to work open the top of her coveralls, but she stopped his hand with hers. “I know it doesn’t make sense,” she said, “but I still have a little of that only-on-Saturday-night feeling. Please? Could we wait till then?”

“It
doesn’t
make sense,” he said.

“I know,” she said, “but please? Could we wait?”

After a moment he said, “Sure, if you want to.”

“I do, Chip,” she said.

They read, and decided on the best things to take from ’082 for trading. He checked over the bikes and she did calisthenics, did them longer and more purposefully than he did.

On Saturday night he came back from the stream and she stood holding the gun, pointing it at him, her eyes narrowed hatingly. “He called me before he did it,” she said.

He said, “What are you—” and “King!” she cried. “He called me! You lying, hating—” She squeezed the gun’s trigger. She squeezed it again, harder. She looked at the gun and looked at him.

“There’s no generator,” he said.

She looked at the gun and looked at him, drawing a deep breath through flaring nostrils.

“Why the hate do you—” he said, and she swept back the gun and threw it at him; he raised his hands and it hit him in the chest, making pain and no air in him.

“Go
with you?” she said.
“Fuck
with you? After you killed him? Are you—are you
fou,
you green-eyed cochon, chien, batard!”

He held his chest, found breath. “Didn’t kill him!” he said. “He killed
himself,
Lilac! Christ and—”

“Because you lied to him! Lied about us! Told him we’d been—”

“That was
his
idea; I
told
him it wasn’t true! I told him and he wouldn’t believe me!”

“You
admitted
it,” she said. “He said he didn’t care, we deserved each other, and then he tapped off and—”

“Lilac,” he said, “I swear by my love of the Family, I
told him it wasn’t true!”

“Then why did he kill himself?”

“Because he knew!”

“Because you told him!” she said, and turned and grabbed up her bike—its basket was packed—and rammed it against the branches piled at the place’s front.

He ran and caught the back of the bike, held it with both hands. “You stay here!” he said.

“Let go of it!” she said, turning.

He took the bike at its middle, wrenched it away from her, and flung it aside. He grabbed her arm. She hit at him but he held her. “He knew about the
islands!”
he said. “The
islands!
He’d
been
near one, traded with the members! That’s how I know they come ashore!”

She stared at him. “What are you talking about?” she said.

“He’d had an assignment near one of the islands,” he said. “The Falklands, off Arg. And he’d met the members and traded with them. He hadn’t told us because he knew we would want to go, and
he didn’t
want to! That’s why he killed himself! He knew you were going to find out, from me, and he was ashamed of himself, and tired, and he wasn’t going to be ‘King’ any more.”

“You’re lying to me the way you lied to him,” she said, and tore her arm free, her coveralls splitting at the shoulder.

“That’s how he got the perfume and tobacco seeds,” he said.

“I don’t want to hear you,” she said. “Or see you. I’m going by myself.” She went to her bike, picked up her kit and the blanket trailing from it.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said.

She righted the bike, dumped the kit in the basket, and jammed the blanket in on top of it. He went to her and held the bike’s seat and handlebar. “You’re not going alone,” he said.

“Oh yes I am,” she said, her voice quavering. They held the bike between them. Her face was blurred in the growing darkness.

“I’m not going to let you,” he said.

“I’ll do what
he
did before I go with
you
.”

“You listen to me, you—” he said. “I could have been on one of the islands half a year ago! I was on my way and I turned back, because I didn’t want to leave you dead and brainless!” He put his hand on her chest and pushed her hard, sent her back flat against rock wall and slung the bike rolling and bumping away. He went to her and held her arms against the rock. “I came all the way from Usa,” he said, “and I haven’t enjoyed this animal life any more than you have. I don’t give a fight whether you love me or hate me”—“I hate you,” she said— “you’re going to stay with me! The gun doesn’t work but other things do, like rocks and hands. You won’t have to kill yourself because—” Pain burst in his groin—her knee—and she was away from him and at the branches, a pale yellow shape, thrashing, pushing.

He went and caught her by the arm, swung her around, and threw her shrieking to the ground.
“Batard!”
she shrieked.
“You sick aggressive—”
and he dived onto her and clapped his hand over her mouth, clamped it down as tight as he could. Her teeth caught the skin of his palm and bit it, bit it harder. Her legs kicked and her fisted hands hit his head. He got a knee on her thigh, a foot on her other ankle; caught her wrist, let her other hand hit him, her teeth go on biting. “Someone might be here!” he said. “It’s Saturday night! Do you want to get us
both
treated, you stupid garce?” She kept hitting him, biting his palm.

The hitting slowed and stopped; her teeth parted, let go.

She lay panting, watching him. “Garce!” he said. She tried to move the leg under his foot, but he bore down harder against it. He kept holding her wrist and covering her mouth. His palm felt as if she had bitten flesh out of it.

Having her under him, having her subdued, with her legs held apart, suddenly excited him. He thought of tearing off her coveralls and “raping” her. Hadn’t she said they should wait till Saturday night? And maybe it would stop all the cloth about King, and her hating him; stop the fighting—that was what they had been doing,
fighting—
and the Français hate-names.

She looked at him.

He let go of her wrist and took her coveralls where they were split at the shoulder. He tore them down across her chest and she began hitting him again and straining her legs and biting his palm.

He tore the coveralls away in stretching splitting pieces until her whole front was open, and then he felt her; felt her soft fluid breasts and her stomach’s smoothness, her mound with a few close-lying hairs on it, the moist lips below. Her hands hit his head and clutched at his hair; her teeth bit his palm. He kept feeling her with his other hand—breasts, stomach, mound, lips; stroking, rubbing, fingering, growing more excited—and then he opened his coveralls. Her leg wrenched out from under his foot and kicked. She rolled, trying to throw him off her, but he pressed her back down, held her thigh, and threw his leg over hers. He mounted squarely atop her, his feet on her ankles locking her legs bent outward around his knees. He ducked his loins and thrust himself at her; caught one of her hands and fingers of the other. “Stop,” he said, “stop,” and kept thrusting. She bucked and squirmed, bit deeper into his palm. He found himself partway inside her; pushed, and was all the way in. “Stop,” he said, “stop.” He moved his length slowly; let go of her hands and found her breasts beneath him. He caressed their softness, the stiffening nipples. She bit his hand and squirmed. “Stop,” he said, “stop it, Lilac.” He moved himself slowly in her, then faster and harder.

He got up onto his knees and looked at her. She lay with one arm over her eyes and the other thrown back, her breasts rising and falling.

He stood up and found one of his blankets, shook it out and spread it over her up to her arms. “Are you all right?” he asked, crouching beside her.

She didn’t say anything.

He found his flashlight and looked at his palm. Blood was running from an oval of bright wounds. “Christ and Wei,” he said. He poured water over it, washed it with soap, and dried it. He looked for the first-aid kit and couldn’t find it. “Did you take the first-aid kit?” he asked.

She didn’t say anything.

Holding his hand up, he found her kit on the ground and opened it and got out the first-aid kit. He sat on a stone and put the kit in his lap and the flashlight on another stone alongside.

“Animal,” she said.

“I don’t bite,” he said. “And I also don’t try to kill. Christ and Wei, you thought the gun was working.” He sprayed healer on his palm; a thin coat and then a thicker one.

“Cochon,” she said.

“Oh come on,” he said, “don’t start that again.”

He unwrapped a bandage and heard her getting up, heard her coveralls rustling as she took them off. She came over nude and took the flashlight and went to her kit; took out soap, a towel, and coveralls, and went to the back of the place, where he had piled stones between the spurs, making steps leading out toward the stream.

He put the bandage on in the dark and then found her flashlight on the ground near her bike. He put the bike with his, gathered blankets and made the two usual sleeping places, put her kit by hers, and picked up the gun and the pieces of her coveralls. He put the gun in his kit.

The moon slid over one of the spurs behind leaves that were black and motionless.

She didn’t come back and he began to worry that she had gone away on foot.

Finally, though, she came. She put the soap and towel into her kit and switched off the flashlight and got between her blankets.

“I got excited having you under me that way,” he said. “I’ve always wanted you, and these last few weeks have been just about unbearable. You know I love you, don’t you?”

“I’m going alone,” she said.