Whatever Lola Wants (45 page)

“He could be.”

Her smile was private. “You hedge all your bets, don't you.”

They let a silence hang. Today Sarah had on a plaid blouse, slim jeans, white sneakers. Carney wore a blue shirt, chinos, and hiking shoes. His elbow ache was mostly gone.

They reached the far end of the pond. Where the spring had burbled the stones were dry, the water below stagnant. A splotch of green emulsion hung invader-like between surface and depth. Did it rise from below, or wash in? At the far end no water spilled out downstream.

She touched his wrist, he turned, she pointed: a dragonfly, its shaft black, wings banded silver-blue, iridescent. “A male,” she whispered. “He's mosquito hunting.”

“Good for him.”

“Look.”

He landed on a swampgrass stem. He twisted his tail under, and forward, tip to thorax.

“That's his abdominal pouch down there.”

“What's he doing?”

“See on his thorax? That's where his penis is. But his sperm develop down in the tail tip. He's loading up. Look at him! He's sticking his tail tip into the pouch there, it's the pouch that hides his penis. Now he's dribbling the semen in drop by drop.” She suddenly stared up. “Look!”

Carney followed her gaze. Another dragonfly.

“He'll have spotted her before. He's got immense eyes, they see in every direction. He's been following her flight. She's up there in his territory.”

The male rose, swept across the water, and up. The sun caught his wings, a blue sheen. Above her now, he followed her lead.

She darted, and fed. Then he was behind her, over her. His legs grabbed her long body and, still flying, held on.

Sarah chuckled. “It's an embrace. Watch.”

They flew together, paired. Then he was carrying her. He looped his abdomen again.

“For her this time. He's got tail-tip hooks to clasp her, they fit in pits behind her head.”

His tail at her neck completed the coupling. Then his legs released. The two swooped, one presence. They found a shoot of sunny swampgrass and settled there. She looped herself forward, tail half circled to his abdomen.

“See? She's stroking the sperm sac open. If we were close enough we'd see his penis grasping her and then intruding.”

She was under him, bent round, affixed.

“They'll stay like that for maybe an hour. Know the technical term for that position?”

“What?”

“The wheel. He's filling her with sperm.”

They walked slowly to the cabin.

“Then what happens?”

“Oh, they'll fly off. Apart, but together. They'll find sticks, maybe some rotting grass. She'll land, make a hollow, away from wind and light. He'll hover and flit about. She'll squeeze the fertilized eggs into the mud.”

“And when they hatch, the next generation's there?”

She laughed. “It's way more complex than that, but basically, yes.”

Inside the porch a couple of flies buzzed, and a moth. At the corners, active spider webs. “You want to catch that moth, put him outside?”

“He's not bothering me.” It whirred past her head. “You?”

“Not at all.”

She waited. “Did you understand at all, that evening?”

“Two possibilities. One, you were looney-tunes bats. You took a vow, you deep-ended. Or deep-ended and took a vow.”

“Deep-ended.” She shrugged. “Maybe I have.” She thought about it. “The second?”

“You don't like flies and you leave them to the spiders. It makes no difference, one mosquito more or less. You got rid of it because you didn't want it to bite you. You didn't kill it because you drew that line. Your vow.”

She sat back. “Not bad.”

Felt like she'd given him a grade of 75 when he deserved 98.

“The pond's a mess.” She spoke quietly. “Something's blocked, down there.” She shook her head. “Hard to say what it'll take to open it.”

He laughed. “How about a Roto-Rooter.”

She ignored him. “We're due.”

“They say that about California, Vancouver—”

“Lots of little tremors out there. We don't get many. There the loose shale absorbs shock waves. Here it's older rock, long striations. Easy for a tremor to travel horizontally, build by increments.”

“Not likely.” It felt like she wanted this, the land to take some sort of revenge.

“Possible.” She turned to him. “I went to Intraterra. To confront Handy Johnnie.”

“Yeah?”

She had driven, armed, onto Terramac land. An iron bar and road-spikes stopped her. A little man with a dumb grin, on his hip a portable phone, leered at her. No entry.

She wasn't defeated. She spun the Jeep around and headed to Richmond, to Intraterra headquarters. She stepped into the one-time Anglican Church. “Ex-shrine of a voided sectarian heaven become a temple for terrestrial venturism, as Theresa once said.”

Carney laughed lightly.

The red pack had been heavy on her shoulder. She set it down and stared. No inner walls. Blocking the way sat a receptionist, first impression of Intraterra North, the young woman no antagonist to evolving style. Her gelled black hair spiked, spines on a chestnut. Over the right ear a padded hook held an earphone and mouthpiece, the speaker the size of her pinky nail, a green plate, smallest of ten, the longest an inch and a half extension of emerald lacquer. Rings on her fingers, a dozen easy, and rings in her left ear, seven. Plus two in each nostril. Under her electric-green blouse, shoulders to embarrass a Heisman Trophy winner. The rest, better hidden under a desk, wasn't; beneath a surface of clear plastic, black trousers with tight cuffs, ankle-high two-inch-platformed red canvas shoes. After work, would she play football or basketball?

Carney laughed again.

By comparison with the fingernailed athlete, Sarah, her yellow sundress clean, had felt innocent of the act she was about to commit. “I'd like to speak to John Cochan.”

No eye contact. “Got an appointment?”

“Yes.”

“No you don't. He doesn't have appointments today.”

“I called. His secretary made it.” A lie.

“What's your name?”

“Sarah Yaeger.”

“He's not here.”

“Who isn't?”

“Mr. Cochan.”

“Why'd you ask me all that?”

“Policy.”

“Look. I want to talk to Cochan.”

“Sorry, hon. Can't today.” The secretary opened a see-through drawer, took out a package of M&Ms, popped one in her mouth.

Sarah picked up the backpack. It felt heavier than before. “Who's that over there?”

“What's the difference, hon?” The gray-tech eyes, black-lined, looked up for the first time. Curiosity, not interest.

“I'll talk to him.” She marched away.

“Hey, you can't go through here!”

Sarah knew she could, she just had. She saw the man on the stage pick up his phone, then glance toward her. She guessed Ms. Fingernails wasn't running the hundred back behind.

The chancel man put the phone down, straightened a sheaf of papers, centered them on his desk, adjusted his tie, walked to his door, pulled it ajar and stood blocking the entry. A solid round figure, all charcoal-gray three-piece suit with long flat ears.

Sarah walked up the steps. “You're Mr. Cochan's associate?”

“That's right.”

“I had an appointment with him. I understand he's not here. I'll talk to you.”

“About?”

“May I sit down?” Yes, a pin-stripe, near invisible.

“If you could give me an idea?”

“Your explosion last Wednesday night. About ten.”

“Ah.” He thought for a moment. “Please. Come in.”

Sarah and her bag did. She sat in an uncomfortable chair.

“We will be brief. I have a lot of work.” He smiled, and shrugged apologies.

From the lilt of an accent she figured him from Quebec. “What's your name?”

“Aristide Boce. And yours?”

“Yaeger, and I live on the piece of the land you were blasting under last Wednesday.”

“I'm sorry, that's not possible. I'm not sure what you mean by blasting but I assure you Intraterra doesn't carry out its projects beneath other people's homes, hmm?”

“Yeah well it crashed right up through. And it's made chaos of the water system.”

“Now look, young lady, this isn't—”

“Forget the young-lady bullshit. You screwed up the groundwater with your Terramac.”

“That's impossible.”

“Somehow you've managed it.”

“Now listen, the receptionist can make you an appointment with our assistant engineer—”

Sarah had stood up. “No, seeing your baby engineer isn't on. Just give Handy Johnnie this.” She reached into her pack and pulled out a plastic bag. She set it on the desk, took it by the bottom and held it upside down. What last week had been the two rainbow trout, now splatted across wood and paper. Viscous glop mushed over the files, heavy juices oozed under the telephone and dribbled onto Aristide Boce's pin-stripe lap. He'd pushed the chair back, leapt up, with bare hands brushed at the liquid, stared at his fingers— Thorough disgust.

“I'd left the fish wrapped up in the ice house,” Sarah said to Carney. “I had a weird sense I'd need them. The sunny ride to town did a lot of good.” She chortled, spiteful.

Carney smiled but would not laugh. “Those fish needed a good burial.”

“Martyrs to the cause.”

As well, more evidence—though not yet proof—of possibly connected cavern and water systems under this piece of geography. “Did Milton say anything about his talk with Leonora? What she's learned about the legal implications of the blasting, depending on where it is?”

“She told him she was working on it. She and Dalton Zikorsky—he was the lawyer for
RAPT
—they need some kind of additional background, and then they'll file a restraining order, make Cochon stop blasting until the precise sites of the explosions can be determined.”

Carney nodded. “Can't they just bring in some inspector from the county office?”

“That's what they need the restraining order for,” Sarah said.

The
RAPT
lawyer Zikorsky, from what Carney knew of the man, was not whom he'd have chosen for this role. But Leonora was in charge of the legalities.

At the moment of leaving, Carney realized he was asking Sarah to have dinner with him. Say, tomorrow or Friday evening? Halfway between his farm and Burlington was Twenty Oaks Inn, a favorite, eighteenth century. If she was visiting Theresa he'd pick her up in Burlington. She knew the place, she said. She'd find her own way there. They agreed on Friday.

Fish ooze on Boce's pants. Her little fits of malice intrigued him.

•

The God Joan deigned to speak with me. A casual “Nice day” for starters. Yes, I agreed, it was, and did not ask her if, since
AA
ing, she'd ever had a non-nice day. Then: “What do you do here?” Well now, how curious, this sudden interest by a God. True, Lola had become intrigued with my stories. But over a period of time. Had Joan heard rumors of my narratives? “I find stories to tell.” Bafflement took Joan's face from brow to chin. Suddenly she came right to the point. “Have you seen the God Lola?” Aha! So she'd been delegated. She'd done her job and now wanted to get away from me, quick as possible. “No,” I said truthfully. I could've added that I had no idea where Lola was, but that would have been true only in the specific. The no alone proved sufficient; instantly Joan wafted away. I guess word of my pleasure in storytelling hasn't reached the Gods, let alone excited them.

•

9.

John drove the Saab. The
clock said 11:03. The gate of the Village of Richmond Memorial Park said An Interdenominational Cemetery, which meant all kinds of Protestants lay buried there. Johnnie, a technical Catholic, had followed Priscilla's ways in such things. Benjie's coffin was brought here, a quiet place. Before the accident Johnnie had paid no more than passing attention to the gray headstones, or the green of the grass. Now he drove through the gates guided by the habit of ownership, and swung right along a drive.

It had been the worst of days. At the hospital they said the cut on his head was not deep, no apparent problem, but they kept him six hours just to be sure. He'd walked out, better things to do, important things. He drove himself home, nothing wrong with his head, he knew that even as she'd driven him to the hospital. He'd sat beside her all the way to Richmond. They said nothing. Now up the drive. He stopped the Saab. Charge Fatface for assault? Not worth the time.

She turned to him. “Johnnie—”

“Not a word. Not one word.”

Inside the girls ran to her. She hugged them, asked them to go with Diana. She took herself to the guest room. She lay on the bed, and wept.

Johnnie had heard her in there, crying her life away. Well, what did she expect?

Sheriff Henry
Nottingham
,
in T-shirt and jeans, cool in the night heat, leaned against his private car. He stared across the cemetery and the valley over to the eastern hills, a hazy half-moon hanging two of its diameters above the horizon. The years of his job had taken him around the county, he knew it all, its wealth and welfare, its roads and woods, its kitchens, politicians, back rooms, dole. He patrolled the northern border and till recently kept control over the influx of illegal workers from Quebec, limiting it to those from families whose men had for generations crossed over to work in Merrimac County. Since the seventies some women too, but from the old families. His preference had long been to keep the crime rate low and judges' burdens light by working out arrangements between perpetrator and victim: a real estate broker, rumored driving while drunk insensate, might suddenly contribute heavily to the Little League; a kleptomaniac wife, caught in the act, would agree to accept a year's responsibility for the Meals on Wheels program, feeding the aged and bedridden; two teenage boys from good families seen breaking into the Texaco station might pay back the pilfered cash, volunteer to serve as Big Brothers for a couple of unfortunate younger kids, and both the teens' fathers would generously give their time stomping door to door in mid-winter for the County Hospital's drive to enlarge its paramedic service. In much of daily life Sheriff Nottingham helped keep the balances, and enjoyed doing so.