Seaview Read Free Page B

wasted El Greco, one arm on the back of the chair behind his head, his smile, the slant of cheekbone and dark hair. A small, plastic, crescent moonlight, with a face with little red eyes, sat on a shelf above Richard’s head, and music was playing. He felt the tips of her fingers, her nails, on the small of his back, down over his buttocks, as she moved in behind him; she nipped his leg. The legs of the one he was in came up to gather his hips. The music was Santana, Little Feat, and the Doobie Brothers, various driving and loping popular pieces to which the three of them adjusted their movements. But really it was the two of them: he was in the middle, and though treated as he imagined a god might want or a man of wealth and power, it was the two smaller creatures who had control.
    The one behind him squeezed something and ran cool fluid on him; he felt a thin line, delicate, but with a gravity like mercury, run down his inner leg, some gathering at his anklebones; the other one squealed and talked. He pulled her hair, held handfuls of her flesh; her heel bumped down his spine. For all he knew, the one behind him, in her somewhat mechanistic approach, could have brought the gun with whatever container held the cool liquid, could have placed them on the floor beside his foot. Andthen she could have caressed his flanks with one hand and taken the gun in the other, and what he felt of metal and thought was rings or hard nails or the edge of some instrument would be the barrel touching the delicate meat there. She could have been moving his passage toward some emblematic action as the other urged him on. And when he exploded or arrived some place they knew of, or almost arrived there, she could have
pulled the trigger, and he would have seen the final eyes in the plastic moon before he saw snow.
    He came back to the cup in his hands, lifted it, and finished the coffee. Then he took the yellow check to the cash register at the end of the counter. He dug in his pocket and brought his hand out; in his palm was some change and two white golf tees. He picked out the amount of the bill and handed it to the girl. Then he turned and left the restaurant.
    He walked on the crunching gravel past the two cars and toward his own. It was very hot and still, the sun at its apex, and he could see that the two men across the road had quit working and were drinking liquid from a gallon jar. They were talking with the women, who had turned halfway from the road and were looking at them. One of the men saw him looking and nodded. The two women turned to look but gave no sign.
    The light on the trunk lid made him squint, and when he opened it it took him a few moments to focus on its contents. There was a suitcase, a garment bag, and a couple of blankets in the bottom. On top of the blankets was a wide-brimmed plantation hat. He took it out and put it on. Shielded from the sun, he felt much cooler. He lifted the blankets and put them on the suitcase. Under them were the heads of four golf clubs sticking out of the canvas mouth of a narrow, white Sunday bag.
    He pulled the bag free and leaned it against the car’s bumper; it had been resting on a canvas tarp that covered the odds and ends of clothing and household goods which filled the trunk’s bottom. Tucked in the fender well was a gunny sack with a number of golf balls in it. He took the sack out, glimpsed the bulk of the two matchboxes in a pillowcase wedged up behind it, and put the sack on the gravel beside the clubs. He felt somebody behind him and turned around.
    â€œHi,” said the Indian from the restaurant. “You like this place?”
    He was not sure if there were any layers in the question,
but the Indian had a very open face and his smile was not forced, so he answered him directly.
    â€œNot much,” he said.
    â€œThat’s good, I don’t like it either. You play golf?” The Indian was eyeing the clubs and the gunny sack. Close up, he looked older