Trip Wire_ A Cook County Mystery - Charlotte Carter [32]
Taylor and Cliff were talking, but their voices filtered down as if they were calling to me from the top of a hill. I dragged myself out of the chair and into my room.
11
Was Cliff right? Was the end at hand, our little experiment in democracy—living right—all over? Freedom, happiness, community all finished so fast.
I lay awake, staring up at the ceiling that Mia had painted a velvety blue and then overlaid with silver stars. When I joined the commune, that pretty make-believe sky had been her welcoming gift to me.
I imagined her up on the ladder doing that for me. Perhaps Wilt had helped, in his way, standing at the base of the ladder, holding it steady with one hand, smoking a joint with the other. It made my heart ache.
“Sometimes, when you’re out with Mia, do black people ever look at you like you’re a bug? Like you give them the creeps?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s like you know what they’re thinking. It’s like, ‘How can you stand them? How could you be with one of them, after what they did to us?’ “
“And how can we?” I said.
Sleep overtook me at last.
Gently shaking me awake, Cliff interrupted a very involved dream I was having—not a good one. Bev, Jordan’s mother, was in it. She was begging Barry, who was all dressed up like a medicine man in a bad western, to give her sick baby some kind of miracle potion.
I came to with Cliff’s face looming over me. “What is it?”
“Beth called the cops,” he said.
“Shit. They’re here?”
“Not yet.”
“Damn, she had no right!”
The pressure of his hand on my shoulder slowed my movements. “Just a minute, Sandy. I know you’re mad and all. But I think Beth did the right thing. Some guy breaking in here like that—it’s nothing to be playing around with.”
“Who’s playing? I’m not playing, Cliff. I told you he wasn’t out to hurt me. He was looking for something in here.”
“Even so, Barry didn’t come home tonight. You’ve got to tell Norris you saw him in the Volvo. It’s getting too fucking weird.”
“I can’t help that, Cliff. Why don’t you tell Norris, or don’t tell him. Whatever. Just let me get up, will you?”
“Wait, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you get it? I don’t want you to go. I don’t want anything else to happen to you.”
His hand was now at the collar of my nightshirt. He leaned in to kiss me, but I stopped him. “What is this? More of what you said last night? You were serious about all that?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re fantasizing about what—you, me, and Jordan in a little cottage in the woods or something? You going to take us to Connecticut and we’ll have a boat?”
He looked away, unable to deny it. And oddly enough, now that I’d said it, in theory there was nothing so terrible about the idea. I’d never been on a boat.
He got me while I was thinking. A long kiss like the ones we’d had last night.
“Why me?” I asked. “How come you didn’t go after Beth . . . or Clea? Or somebody at school?”
“How many times do I have to say it? I want to be with you.”
“All right. But it’ll have to wait.” I pushed out of bed then. “I’m splitting.”
“Jesus Christ, Sandy. It’s one o’clock in the morning. Where are you going?”
“Home, I guess. I mean, to Woody and Ivy’s. I’ll catch a cab.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“You will not, Cliff. Now get out of here and let me get dressed.”
CHAPTER FIVE
FRIDAY
1
Woody was making me his famous apple pancakes. Which was mighty nice of him, in light of our last meeting. We had not talked since I freaked out on him and Ivy at the commune the day after the murders.
Ivy was still asleep. I had awakened the two of them at one-thirty in the morning, offering no explanation why I’d chosen that ungodly hour to come calling. I’ll explain everything tomorrow,