Voodoo Moon (14 page)

"Here I was all ready for some romantic talk. You know,
loveydovey
. It's still hard for me to sleep around. Without some sort of lovey-dovey, anyway. But you've probably slept around a lot more than I have and you're used to it."

"I haven't slept around that much."

"You faithful to your wife?"

"Absolutely."

"But you've been sleeping around since she died?"

"Not much. I've had two long relationships."

"That's all."

"God," I said, "you working on a new Kinsey report? And while we're at it, how many have
you
slept with?"

"I keep strict count."

"How many?"

"Should I count the one who was so drunk he fell asleep inside me?"

"That must've been a nice experience."

"And he was as big as a bear. It took me half an hour to get him off me."

"Don't count him. So how many?"

"Eight."

"Well, that's not bad."

"That's home runs only—"

"Ah. So just getting to first, second, or third—"

"That stuff's just sort of high school, don't you think? I mean, I don't think I should have to count that."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

She laughed. And put her head on my shoulder. "Some kinds of wines make me really horny."

"Is this one of them?"

"I'll have to see."

T
hat's how it went from roughly eleven-fifteen to eleven forty-five. I'd forgotten how easily she got drunk. Two modest glasses and she was well on her way.

"You want to see my underwear?"

"I thought you'd never ask," I said.

"I'm serious."

"Sure, I want to see your underwear. You want to see mine?"

"But that doesn't mean we'll, you know,
do
anything."

"Understood."

But it would be, I figured, a pretty good start.

So she stood up and dropped
trou
and showed me her underwear. They were
microbikinis
and almost totally transparent. The shape of everything could be seen. They had happy faces all over them. Except these happy faces were red and had tiny devil horns sticking out of them.

"Like 'em?"

"They're great."

"It was kind of embarrassing buying them. The clerk looked kind of superior when I handed them to her."

"She should've been embarrassed for selling them, then."

"That's what I thought."

She came over and got back on the bed. "I'm scared to try it."

"Try what?"

"Sex."

"How come?"

"Because I haven't enjoyed it for a long time. Not since I stopped getting those images in my head. I'm not too smart, Robert, as you know. I mean, Laura got the brains. Seeing those images—helping you and the police—that's the only thing I could ever do that mattered. And now I can't even do that anymore. And it's spoiled my whole life for me. Every part of my life. It's even screwed up my periods. Laura says that's impossible. But I know better."

"We'll just sleep if you want to."

"Won't you get horny?"

"Sure."

"Then what?"

"I'll resent you and then I'll probably make a vague pass at talking you into it and then I'll go to sleep."

"I could give you a hand job."

"Well, I could give
you
a hand job, too."

She laughed. "I guess I never thought of it that way. I guess you could, couldn't you?"

So we lay next to each other in the bed. It was still warm. We pushed the blanket to the end of the bed. "You mind if I turn that song up?"

"Huh-uh."

I actually hated the song. An unending string of love-song clichés sung by this sneering white kid with too much hair and too little talent. I seem to remember my parents saying something like that about Alice Cooper. But this kid didn't have mascara and a snake.

We lay like that for twenty minutes. Both of us in our underwear. Not quite touching.

"You have an erection?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

"You have an erection?"

A giggle. "No, but I am getting kind of horny, actually. Lying like this is kind of sexy. It's like when I was a freshman in college. I was still a virgin. There was this kid I really liked. But the AIDS scare was everywhere. So night after night we'd just lie on my dorm bed."

"Whatever happened to him?"

"I found out later he was gay. Or at least
bi
."

"See what you did to him? All those nights of bottled-up temptation."

Then her hand was on me. "Yeah, you've got an erection, all right." Then, "I guess we may as well do it, huh?"

"What changed your mind?"

"Hormones."

And she wasn't kidding.

W
e had two goes at it, one quick and frantic, the other, later, slow and tender. Afterward, she said, "I almost came."

"We can keep working on it."

"No, that's OK. I haven't even come close in a long time. That
must mean I'm better. You know, sort of working my way back to it."

"You want to tell each other how good we were?"

"You were fabulous."

"You were fabulous, too."

Then she rolled over and clung to me. "We shouldn't make fun."

"I'm sorry."

"I really did enjoy it."

"So did I."

"And it really was good sex."

"Yes, it was."

"And I hope we do it again sometime."

"I hope so, too."

It felt ridiculously good holding her, just as good as the sex. I pulled the covers up on us and we snuggled. She was my wife and she was the last serious woman, too, the crazy and sweet woman who'd recently dumped me for her ex-husband, and she was this night's woman, Tandy West herself, and she was all potential women, one of whom I hoped would help give some shape and meaning to my future.

And she was a snoring woman.

She snored quietly, the way a kitten does. She didn't let go of me. She clung like a kid and I clung right back. I kept stroking her and putting little kisses on her head and forehead and shoulder and it was fucking wonderful.

Eventually, I slept, too.

W
aking up so abruptly, I immediately thought of danger. But there was no danger, there was just prairie wind slanting hard prairie autumn rain against the window and the door and the roof, and the kitten mewls and tiny nervous fits of Tandy's nervous limbs, arms and legs thrashing, jerking in response to something terrible that was stalking the corridors of her mind.
I had to pee and pee I did, closing the door against the steady noise of the yellow stream.

When I got back to the bed, the mewl had become nightmare cries. I rushed to her, held her, rocked her the way I would a child.

Then she was awake. Wide startled eyes. No recognition at first. Who was I? Bad guy or good guy? Then recognition, followed by her pushing away from me, heels of hands hurting my chest as they pushed. Then she was up, naked, pacing, screaming, "Don't say anything! Don't say anything!"

I had no idea what was going on. It was scary. All I could think of was a seizure of some kind. Or madness.

She just kept pacing, naked, arms flailing wildly as if she was being attacked, and then she'd abruptly put her hands to her head as if a headache were splitting her skull in half. And then she was sobbing. Fell to the floor. And sobbed. And sobbed.

I was scared to approach her. Scared not to approach her.

Two naked people in a shabby little prairie hotel room, her wailing louder than the wind, and me without a clue of what to do.

I approached her. Knelt next to her. She came to me instantly. Enveloped me, warm tear-wet face against mine, soft tender breasts to my chest, arms desperately tight around me.

"An image came to me, Robert. An image."

There was joy and fear in her voice, maybe even a real edge of lunacy.

"What kind of image?"

"An old railroad trestle bridge."

"Any idea where?"

"No."

"Any idea of what it means?"

"There's a body there. Buried. Long ago."

"Are you all right?"

"I don't know." Then, "Can we get in bed and you just hold me?"

"Sure."

So we got in bed and I just held her. "What if I'm wrong?"

"We'll look for the bridge."

"But what if I'm wrong?"

"Then you're wrong. It's not a big deal."

"I don't want people laughing at me."

"This is how it happened before, right? In your sleep?"

"Yes."

"And they were just images. Disconnected."

"Yes."

"Then why wouldn't this one be right?"

"Because it's been so long. I thought I'd—lost my power. You remember our conversation."

"Yes."

"Cheated on it. Sold out. And it went away."

"We won't tell anybody about it. We'll work on it together." Then, after a time, "You think we could ever fall in love, Robert?"

"Maybe."

"You're as lonely as I am."

She needed me to say something strong. Even if it was only momentarily truthful.

"Yeah. I probably am."

"Then it could happen for us?"

"Sure. It could."

"God, things can get so fucked up, can't they?"

I thought back to the restaurant tonight, and that attack of the
lonesomes
. This was nice. Maybe it wasn't love—hell, it wasn't love—but it was two people who liked and trusted each other having a little fleshly fun and connecting, however briefly, however superficially, with each other's soul. That was a lot better than the
lonesomes
any day, and not fucked up at all.

W
hen I woke up in the morning, we were totally entangled, so complicatedly, in fact, that my first act of the day was to smile. God only knew how we'd ever gotten
pretzeled
-up this way.

She said, "Oh, man, my breath is so bad. I eat so much garlic these days."

"Mine isn't any better."

"I didn't fart last night, did I?"

"Not that I noticed."

"I eat a lot of beans, too. I'm a vegetarian. I take stuff that's supposed to help vegetarians with flatulence but it doesn't always work."

"You're just fine, relax."

"I'm sure I look like shit, too."

"Bad breath. Farts. Looks like shit. You're just the girl I've been waiting for."

She laughed and jumped out of bed. "I'm doing it again, aren't I? Running myself down?"

"Yeah. You are."

She said, "I get the bathroom first."

B
ack in the first days of the prairie, the government had trouble rounding up soldiers to fight the various Indian wars. This was particularly true of the Black Hawk Wars in 1832 and the Civil War.

That's when they got a very bright idea. In addition to wages, the soldiers would be given land. In Iowa. All the way up to 120 acres. This served two purposes. The army got soldiers (or cannon fodder, depending on your point of view), and Iowa, not exactly teeming with new arrivals, got new voters and taxpayers.

The land back then was about $1.25 an acre. A hundred dollars could buy you a very nice farm. You'd stack rocks as a fence meant to define the dimensions of your land, and then you'd build yourself a
soddy
—a house made of sod—and then you'd move in. If disease, flood, or prairie fire didn't get you, you could have yourself a nice, ass-busting life for you and your family.