Infamous (37 page)

“Don’t be,” he said.

“What am I supposed to say to your mother?
Hi, how are you? Yeah, I had a small lapse in judgment last week, and had sex with your son
.”

“That might be, um, too much information.”

“You think she’s not going to know?” Alison asked, glancing up from the road and over at him. “Mothers know these things. And you know
how
she’s going to know? By looking at you. It’s all over you, it drips from you. It oozes. You might as well be wearing a shirt with an arrow pointing at me saying
I had sex with Stupid.”

He had to laugh. “You’re not stupid,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?” she said. “I had sex with you way too soon. I didn’t even know you—I
still
don’t know you. You’re, like, the King of Withholding Information and I completely didn’t
see that. It’s as if, when I get into that gotta-have-sex place, my brain shuts down or I see only what I want to see. Like that old saying.
Love is blind
. Not that what we did had anything to do with love,” she added hastily.

“For the sake of full disclosure,” he said, because her description of him as the King of Withholding Info hit a little too close to home. He could talk until he was blue in the face—as long as the subject was Jamie. Or his sister and nieces. Or anything else for that matter, anything that wasn’t intensely personal to him or his life. “That’s not entirely true. I’m in love with you.”

They were driving up the mountain, heading for the pass that would take them down into the desert valley, and Alison pulled over onto the shoulder and hit the brakes hard. The Jeep stopped in a skid of dust and gravel as she turned to look at him in outraged disbelief.

“Don’t you dare,” she said.

“Don’t what?” he asked. “Tell you the truth? I tried
not
telling you the truth, and look where that got me.”

“Yeah, into my bed, you jerk,” she said. “God
damn
you, A.J. You’re not allowed to
love
me. What’s wrong with you?”

“Allowed?” A.J. said with a short laugh. “I’m not
allowed?
I don’t think you get to decide that.”

“I don’t
want
you to love me, or to think that you love me or whatever this is that you think you’re feeling,” she said, as she hit the gas and pulled back onto the road, again with a spray of gravel and a squeal of the tires. She was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. “Is that better? And for the record, even though I brought up sex? Which I really shouldn’t have done even though your mother
is
going to know, so I’ll just have to deal with her disapproval when it comes, but I
am not
sleeping with you again. Because face it, that’s what this is really about. You don’t love me. You just said that because you don’t want to be bored on the trip north. Seven hours on Henry’s private jet—you probably figure we can spend the entire time doing the nasty.”

“I didn’t even know we were taking a private jet,” A.J.
protested. “And for the record, I don’t think there was anything even remotely nasty—”

“Oh, stop playing the innocent yokel,” she said. “You know damn well what I mean. And let me say it again: I am not sleeping with you.”

She was protesting just a little too much, but A.J. kept that comment to himself. Because she had, after all, brought up the subject of sex. Why would she talk about it if she weren’t thinking about it?

Truth was, it was hard
not
to think about, sitting close to her in the car like this.

“I meant what I said this morning,” she told him. “Your alcoholism is a deal breaker. I know that makes me a bad person—so be it. It’s a huge issue for me. I’m happy to be friends. I can be a very good friend. I will not enable you and I can be ruthless with the truth, which is exactly what an alcoholic needs in a friend.”

“Recovering alcoholic,” A.J. interrupted her.

“It’s moronic to call it that,” she said, “because you’ll never be …” Her voice wobbled and broke. “Recovered.” She made a noise that was part laughter, part despair. “Ah, God, A.J., I like you so much, I really do, but I just can’t do this, and damnit, I’m watching myself teetering on the edge of that slippery slope, because
I’m
the one who can’t stop thinking about the fact that we’re going to be all alone on that airplane, with that big private bedroom—I’ve flown on Henry’s jet before. And God, the sex we had was so good, and the way you made me laugh was even better, and I see myself backing into this … this … 
thing
. Just this weekend. Just this week. Just until the shoot ends … And suddenly I’m doomed. I don’t want to hurt you, but I
will
walk away from you. I will. Sooner or later. Probably sooner, because I can’t live like that again. And whatever happens? I will not
—will not
—let myself fall in love with you.”

And there they sat, in a silence that was really quite noisy, considering the sound of the big tires on the road, and the Jeep’s hardworking engine as they continued to climb up the mountain.

Jamie wasn’t in the Jeep, offering encouragement, but A.J. could hear him, anyway.
She’s scared, kid. Don’t let up. Don’t quit
.…

And he finally broke the silence. “It’s a disease,” he reminded her. “I was genetically predisposed. I got it from my mother’s side of the family. She’s fine, but her father was … Anyway, you probably are, too—predisposed—so it’s a good thing that you choose not to drink. Still, who knows? You could go, too. You come with no guarantees, either. And how about cancer, Alison? That’s something Jamie reminded me about this morning. Does cancer run in
your
family? Can you write me a guarantee that you won’t get sick and die?”

She shook her head. “That’s not the same thing.”

“That’s what I said, too, but … When you think about it, it’s
exactly
the same thing,” he said. “Would you seriously throw me away because cancer runs in my family? That’s pretty stupid, so I guess I
should
be wearing a shirt that says,
I’m in love with Stupid.”

“Stop saying that,” she whispered. She was driving much too fast as she took them over the crest of the mountain and down the other side, as if she were trying to get away from him.

“Why?” he asked, holding on to the grab bar. “You only want
some
of the truth? I made a mistake. I make them from time to time, on account of my being human and yes, occasionally stupid. I should have told you about Jamie right from the start, and I’m sorry that I didn’t. I should have told you about everything. I’m an alcoholic Gulf War vet, thank you very much. I lost a kidney in Hor al-Hammar, and my liver was damaged, too. Which makes all those years of hard drinking even more self-destructive, but I’m doing okay—I’m doing quite well actually, health-wise. Thank God. Mentally, I’m also feeling pretty good, especially since you helped me prove that Jamie’s not something my brain fabricated. That’s a
huge
relief. But I have to be honest. It’s been awhile since I’ve attended an AA meeting, and my friend Lutz—he’s a former Navy SEAL—he was verbally bitch-slapping me when he found out I never finished the twelve steps. He’s in
the program, too. Along with a lotta guys I served with over—”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Alison interrupted him. “Just say
Oh well?
And instead throw away everything I learned from my mother, growing up?”

“You really think
she
was a good teacher?” A.J. asked.

“You
know
what I mean.”

“You’re not a child anymore,” A.J. said. “And I’m not your mother.”

“I don’t want you to love me.”

“Then stop being so fucking amazing.”

She laughed at that, but then shook her head. “But I’m not,” she said.

“Being with you makes me happy,” he admitted, “in a way that I haven’t been in a really long time.”

“I refuse to be responsible for your happiness,” she said quietly.

“I’m responsible for my happiness,” A.J. told her. “I don’t want to hurt you either, and it kills me to see how hard this is for you. But I’m not going to just slink away quietly into the night. Not this time.”

“Oh, shit,” she said.

“I’m sorry, I’m
not,”
he said. “It’s too important—”

“No,” she said. “A.J.—oh, shit—I have no brakes.”

“What?”

A.J. looked down at the floor beneath Alison’s feet, and sure enough she had the brake pedal pushed all the way down. She stomped it again and again, but he could see that there was no resistance.

The Jeep was going too fast and began to pick up even more speed. The road ahead of them was steep but relatively straight—for now. But signs were posted warning of an impending curve—a big one. Thirty miles per hour, another sign said, with a picture of a truck on two wheels, tipping over.

“Use the emergency brake,” A.J. said, even as Alison was already frantically searching for it.

“I don’t know where it is!”

“Left-hand side,” A.J. said. “Look low, under the dash.”

“Got it!” Alison said.

“Don’t pull it too fast,” A.J. warned.

“Slow and steady,” she said, “I know—oh,
shit!”

It had come off in her hand—a little plastic handle that was now completely useless. She handed it to A.J. as if he could somehow fix it from where he sat.

“Downshift,” A.J. said.

The car had an automatic transmission, but it could still be downshifted. Alison grabbed the shift and went from overdrive to drive to third, and the engine whined horribly.

But the Jeep didn’t slow.

She shifted lower. Second.

Nothing. Just more noise.

“Jamie, where are you?” A.J. said.

“He’s not here?” Alison asked, her eyes glued to the road in front of them. It was clearly getting harder for her to control the Jeep. The speedometer read sixty-five. Seventy. And that big-ass curve was coming.

“No, he’s not,” A.J. said as he reached over and helped her hold the wheel. “Come
on
, Jamie. I need some help here. Switch with me, Alison. Quickly, while the road’s still relatively straight.”

She didn’t argue. She just scrambled out from beneath him as he lifted himself over her and into the driver’s seat.

“Climb into the back,” he told her as he struggled to keep the Jeep on the right side of the double lines. “And strap yourself in. Other side of the car from me and be ready to throw your weight, hard, to the right. Jamie, for the love of God, where
are
you?”

“What?”
Now
she argued.

“Get into the back,” he ordered again as—thank God—Jamie popped in.

“What the hell?” Jamie said from the backseat. “Kid, you know, you’re going just a
little
fast.”

“Brakes are out,” A.J. told him tersely. “I need to know what the road looks like ahead—if there’s any traffic. Or a runaway truck ramp. I could use one of those. Find me one, will you?”

But he’d been on this road coming into Jubilation, and he hadn’t seen one then.

Jamie instantly disappeared.

“Get. In the back,” A.J. said again to Alison. “Right-hand side. You’ll have a better chance of surviving an impact back there.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, finally scrambling over the seat. “What about
you?
A.J., I don’t want you to die.”

“Good to know,” he said as he approached the big curve. He’d been on similar mountain roads plenty of times before. The speed limit was thirty, but the curve could be handled by an experienced driver at forty-five. Fifty, and the tires would squeal. Fifty-five and you’d skid. Sixty-five you could maybe do if you turned the wheel hard to the right, and went way over the double yellow line and into the left lane, into the oncoming traffic.

Please God, let there be no oncoming traffic.

And please let him have missed seeing a runaway truck ramp. Cut into the side of the mountain, it was an enormous pile of gravel that would grab at the tires and slow them down. There should be one here—why wasn’t there one? If he survived this, he was going to write someone a letter.

“There’s a driver’s side airbag,” he told Alison now. “Plus, Jamie’s here, he’s going to help us.”

As if on cue, Jamie popped back in, into the front seat this time. “No ramp, but no other cars,” he said, and A.J. repeated his words for Alison to hear. “Nothing coming in either direction, for miles. But kid, there’s a curve coming up that’s gonna be a bitch.”

“I know,” A.J. said. But first there were a series of smaller curves—slight bends in the road, at least comparatively.

“After you make it around that curve,” Jamie shouted over the whine of the engine, “there’s a kind of a cutaway about a quarter mile farther down the mountain, right-hand side. It’s not a ramp, but it looks like some kind of big parking lot, like it was flattened and cleared for trucks to access, I don’t know, maybe a barite mine. You’ll have to bust through a fence—nothing more than a run-down chain link,
gate’s not even locked—then you’ll have about a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty yards to play with. At the edge of the clearing, to the left, there’s a cluster of orange barrels. They might soften your impact—at least more than the mountain will.” Jamie’s face was lined with worry. “I wish I could help you in some way, A.J.”

“Just keep watching for traffic,” A.J. said, focusing on the road. One more slight curve to the left, and then the big one to the right. “Get ready to lean right,” he shouted to Alison.

If he turned the wheel too hard, they’d flip. If he didn’t turn hard enough, they’d go through the guardrail and off the side of the mountain.

And then, there it was. In front of him.

A long, tight, hairpin curve that made the rest of the road—and any oncoming traffic—disappear from sight.

“I’m ready. You’ll tell me when, right?” He felt Alison as she reached forward to touch his shoulder and then the back of his neck, her cool fingers briefly in his hair.

“I will.”

Her life—both of their lives—were in his hands.

Never had he been more glad that they were steady.

He turned the wheel, trying to stay in the right lane for as long as he could.