CHAPTER NINE

RON’S EYES FLICKERED OPEN AND HE WAS INSTANTLY AWARE OF three simultaneous phenomena: Chandal was still lying asleep beside him; the TV set in the living room wasn’t on, which meant Kristy was also still asleep; and last night’s demons were gone. Burned away by the sun, blocked out by the sure thought that it was going to be a great day. He allowed a thin smile to tug at his lips. It had been weeks since he had experienced such a moment of complete and utter calm.

Out of chaos there had come order. He started to wake Chandal and then thought better of it. Just for a minute or so he wanted to cling to the light, heady sensation that now occupied his mind.

He lay still and closed his eyes. He could see the world spread out before him like a Triple-A travel map. In his mind’s eye, he buzzed competently along, avoiding the detours, and favoring the bypasses. He could see the whole country spread out three thousand miles to the east of him, and the whole Pacific Ocean three thousand miles to the west of him; and it all looked so goddamn magnificent. Sparkling clear and endless.

He laughed, tossed over on his side, and watched last night’s anxiety disappear immediately before his eyes in an azure flash. Finished. He fell back into a soundless, bottomless sleep almost instantly.

Outside, the day continued to lighten by small degrees.

He awoke a half hour later to the muffled disembodied voice of the local meteorologist. “... temperatures in the mid-eighties along the coast and ninety inland... bright and sunny... winds out of the south at five knots...” A small click and the voice ceased. Ron drew a luxurious breath, rolled over, and opened his eyes. Chandal’s hand slid from the clock radio.

“Morning, honey.” He yawned.

Chandal smiled lazily.

“How do you feel?” Ron asked snuggling against her side. He slid his arm across her thin rib cage to hug her.

“Good day for a vacation,” she said sleepily.

“That’s not what I asked you.” He leaned over and kissed the vein of her neck. Her arm came around his head, holding it there, her long fingers playing with his hair. “What I asked you—” he looked up at her, “was... how do you feel?”

“Hummm.” She smiled her second smile of the morning.

“Romantic?” he murmured.

“Is that the way most people begin a vacation?”

He touched the tip of his finger to the tip of her nose, ran it down to draw an O around the lushness of her soft lips. “We’re not most people,” he whispered and kissed the sleep from her eyes and from her mouth, passionate kisses that seemed to surge from desire left unattended for too many days. She must have felt it, because she pressed her body flush against his and began to rub her knee gently between his legs. He immediately felt the surge.

“Ronald!” she shrilled playfully. “I’m shocked.”

He took hold of her just as playfully and nuzzled her breasts. Then their mouths were together again, hands and arms touching, something deep within each of them breaking suddenly through muscle and skin and bone to come together in an intense, slow, tender, sensually magnificent love dance.

They made love without restraint, holding nothing back, having suddenly rediscovered the secret of total abandonment.

They remained locked in each other’s arms for a long time, feeling everything, saying nothing—allowing the moment to speak for itself. It all had been so natural, that was the wonder of it. So natural and so unexpected that it was impossible to know what the beginning had been—physical or spiritual—and once begun what boundary had been crossed. Only that some boundary had been crossed and that somehow a blending of spirit and flesh had been achieved.

Sunlight flooded the room now as Chandal disengaged herself from Ron’s arms and stepped naked into the bright glow of a July morning. He quickly reached out and clasped her hand and tried to lure her back to bed. She smiled, leaning over to kiss him. “Love you,” she breathed.

“Love you too,” he said, squeezing soft flesh.

Abruptly she pulled away from his playful hands and slipped into her robe. “I’m onto you,” she said and then switched to her early morning Army sergeant routine: “Kristy, come on—up. Get up, get up! The great day has finally arrived. Everybody up!”

Lying at peace, Ron watched Chandal brush through her hair and shake it out. It fell in soft waves across her face, obscuring her profile as she placed the brush on the dresser. Sun rays filtering in from the window waltzed through her hair, creating a myriad of highlights that rippled and danced over her soft skin. Rusty colors like the autumns of his youth.

The image carried with it an atmosphere of peace as strong as the fragrance of the burning of fall leaves behind his aunt’s house, golden and yellow and red; Ron could see himself coming down across the woods, forever a small boy, with spruce pitch stuck in his mouth and a triumphant gap-tooth smile; he saw it and breathed it, his eyes smiled peace.

“I never saw anything so beautiful in my life,” he said musingly.

“As what?” she mumbled and began to gather her hair, sweeping it up and away from her face. The gesture was deceptively simple, the sudden upsweep of hair accentuating her high cheekbones, showing off the elegance of her long slender neck. “What’s beautiful?”

“You are,” he said honestly.

“How can you still be that much in love after seven years?” she murmured, pleased.

“Well, I... Jesus, you know...”

“You’re pretty gorgeous yourself,” she grinned and popped out the doorway, leaving him to grope for the words that should have been easy to say and yet had remained inexplicably out of reach.

Ron lay in bed a while longer, marveling at how Chandal could leave a bed as smoothly as a porpoise sliding through soft swells. As for Ron, he took murderous pleasure in struggling up from the mattress, each part of his body finding courage at different intervals. He finally drew a cautious breath and leaped.

He stopped in front of the mirror. Christ. He looked haggard, with dark circles under his eyes, the eyes themselves narrow slits.

Forty... and today I look fifty. How the hell could he feel so good and look so lousy?

Chandal and Kristy were both dressed and seated at the kitchen table having their breakfast when Ron, still in his bathrobe, stumbled into the kitchen.

“You both dressed already?” he said peering into the refrigerator.

“Listen, Kristy and I are the quick ones in the family,” Chandal said.

Kristy scolded, “That’s right, Daddy. You’re always so slow.”

“Don’t be so smug, either of you,” he said, poking around between the bottles.

“What are you looking for?”

“Orange juice.”

“Green container.”

“Last week it was red.”

“Last week I didn’t have tomato juice, this week I have. Tomato juice always goes in the red.” Chandal rose and carried her plate to the dishwasher. “How do you want your eggs?”

“Don’t.”

“Want eggs?”

“Correct,” he said and swallowed the last of the orange juice straight from the green container. “What I want is to shave, shower and be on the road by—” He glanced at his watch. “Nine o’clock.”

“Kristy, got to hurry.” Chandal began clearing dishes.

Ron scooped up the morning paper and headed for the bathroom. He shaved slowly, meticulously, taking brief glimpses at the headlines.

“By the way.” Chandal popped her head into the bathroom.

“Humm?”

“Did you happen to see those lights last night?”

Ron tensed and took his time before responding. “When?”

“While you took your little dip.”

“You were watching me?”

“Of course. Pretty sexy, if you ask me.” She reached out with her finger and removed a glob of shaving cream from the corner of his mouth.

She paused. “Did you?”

“What?”

“Happen to see those strange lights?”

“No,” he lied. Then wondered why he had.

“Oh, well—” She disappeared down the hallway, adding: “The suitcases are just about ready to go.”

Ten minutes later, Ron stepped from the shower and groped blindly for a towel. He wiped soap from his eyes, but couldn’t wipe away the nibbling in the back of his skull. He hadn’t been wrong. The lights had been there. So what? The hell with it. He had made up his mind not to think about last night. He would have all he could do to get his dragging ass through the day.

He threw the towel aside and opened his eyes. He could see nothing in the steam-choked bathroom. Then a slight fluttering overhead. He listened. The fluttering was followed by a sharp, dull thud. A moment later, he felt the air move against his face, and something came to stand in front of him. “Chandal?” He stretched out his hand.

There was nothing.

He reached further, and this time he touched it. Now he was seized with vertigo and apprehension; his heart seemed to flutter, jolted him with an unlikely pain on the left side. More of the same when he took a deep breath. He gripped the towel rack as the light appeared before his eyes, and the child—like a floodlight had suddenly been let loose on her. He called out, “Del...” but it came out too weakly to be heard. His eyes were fixed on the child, and through the glare he could see the smile on the little girl’s face, the glow in her eyes as she reached out to take hold of him.

Impulsively he raised one hand, letting the tips of his fingers pass lightly over the child’s warm flesh. Immediately, he could feel a strange sensation passing through him. He lifted his other hand and slowly started to bring the child to him. Her fingers took hold. Restful, so suddenly restful, no sound, no movement, just the touching. Then a quiet hum that lasted for a moment until it was broken by the sound of his own heartbeat. He tried to fight the wave of dizziness that had come over him, to step back, and thought: I’m not going to make it. And still someone whispered, “Rest.”

He felt the floor going out from under him and his own weight forcing him down. He cried, “Chandal!” even more urgently, the sound of his voice rumbling off the walls. He raised his eyes, strained to see through the blur of light, searching for the little girl; above, around—where was she?

He turned, startled, and waited for the room to work itself into clear vision: the mirror, the sink, the bathtub, all of them thinly veiled with steam; and with relief, with overwhelming relief, the space directly in front of him which was now empty.

“Yes?” Chandal asked, opening the bathroom door. Steam swirled quickly into the hallway. She waited for him to say something. He stood silent, saying nothing, perspiration dripping from his naked body.

“Mommy, can I...” Kristy stopped outside the door and stared up at her father. Quickly, Ron covered himself with the towel.

“Please,” he murmured, “get her away from the door.”

“Kristy, how many times...”

“Mommy, I can’t find Jennifer.”

“Well, she has to be...”

“Get her out of here!” Ron screamed.

Chandal turned to stare at him. “All right, Ron. Take it easy.” Quickly she ushered Kristy away and closed the door.

Ron dropped on the edge of the tub, his heart still pounding. Through the flesh-wracking thuds, he could hear Chandal apologizing to Kristy for him. Then the house suddenly fell silent. There was no sound whatever; the house could have been perched on an invisible mountaintop in space. Then, far off but clear, he heard Kristy crying.

Chandal slipped quietly back into the bathroom and shut the door behind her. Slowly she inched forward and sat beside Ron on the edge of the tub. She took hold of his hand. “You all right?” she asked.

“Christ, I don’t know. I really don’t know.” But as absurd as the thought was, Ron reasoned in silence, it was possible, really possible, that he was on the verge of a breakdown. What else could explain it? No matter how steamy the room was, and airless, and suffocating, however tired he was, he couldn’t have fallen asleep, not on his feet, not that suddenly and completely. What in the hell had happened to him?

“Hey!” Chandal raised his hand and pressed it gently to her lips. “We love you, you know.”

Ron shook his head.

“Forget it, okay? Kristy will. She always does. That’s what the next four weeks are supposed to be about. Take some time off. Relax. We need it—all of us.”

“I know, but—”

“Enough.” Chandal rose and glanced at herself in the mirror. With a flick of her hand she brushed recalcitrant strands of hair from her forehead. “All right,” she said. “Now tell me what it was all about.”

“What what was about?”

“Your calling me in here in the first place.”

“It wouldn’t make any sense to you.”

“It never does. But try me.”

Ron frowned. “It’s those goddamn lights you saw last night. I—”

“The Palmer kids,” Chandal interrupted. “Kristy said they sneak into our garden all the time. To take little swims. At night they use the lanterns from their garage. I knew those were no ordinary lights.”

“Del... it was three-thirty in the morning.”

“So. The Palmers are crazy, you know that. Hey, come on, come on. It’s almost nine o’clock.” She kissed him on the temple and was gone from the room before he could respond.

Ron slipped on his robe, sitting at the edge of the tub. His body felt drained. The same kind of sensation as he sometimes experienced at his health club when stepping from the steam room. He looked at his leg. One of the small gashes from last night had opened up and a slight trickle of blood flowed down over his foot. He flexed his hands. His fingers felt sprained from a struggle. Struggle? With what?

For a brief moment, he had the feeling of not being able to tell whether he was awake or not. Then it passed. Kristy. He had to apologize to Kristy. But how, that was the question. He never was much good with apologies. Slowly he tightened the robe around his still moist body and left the room.