I agreed quickly, thinking more about her kisses than the information I was supposed to get from Add. But when it occurred to me (while nuzzling Melissa’s neck, so beautiful in the firelight), I was pretty pleased with myself. It was going to be easier than I thought. “Let’s see if there’s more rum,” I said.
A while later we had found the rum and downed it, and Addison had found us. “Let’s be off,” he said to Melissa gruffly.
“It’s early yet,” she said. “Can we bring Henry with us? I want to hear about his trip, and show him our house.”
“Sure,” Add said indifferently. I waved goodbye to Steve and Kathryn behind Melissa’s back, and felt pretty slick when I saw Steve’s startled expression. The three of us took off down the ridge trail. Add led Melissa and me across the valley without a word or a look back, so he didn’t see Melissa’s arm around my waist, nor her hand in my pocket. The pocket had a hole convenient to her, but I was none too comfortable with Add right in front of us, and I didn’t respond except with a kiss on the bridge, where I could trust my footing. Stumbling along the path up Basilone I could feel the rum in my blood, and Melissa’s fingers groping in my pants. Whew! But at the same time I was thinking, how am I going to ask Add about the scavengers and the Japanese? The rum sloshed my thoughts when I considered it, but it was more than the drink. There wasn’t a good way, that was all there was to it. I would have to cast without bait and hope for the best.
The Shanks house was one of the old ones, built by Add before hardly anybody lived in Onofre. He had used an electric wire tower as the framework of the place, so it was small but tall, and strong as a tree. The shingled walls sloped inward slightly, and the four metal struts of the tower protruded from the corners of the roof, meeting in a tangle of metal far above it.
“Come on in,” Add said hospitably, and took a key from his pocket to unlock the door. Once inside he struck a match and lit a lantern, and the smell of burnt whale oil filled the room. Boxes and tools were stacked against the walls, but there wasn’t any furniture. “We live upstairs,” Melissa said as Add led us up a steep plank staircase in one corner. She giggled and pushed my butt as she followed me up, and I almost banged into one of the thick metal struts of the old electric tower.
Nobody from Onofre Valley had ever been on the second floor, as far as I knew. But it was nothing speciaclass="underline" kitchen in one corner, blond wood tables, an old couch and some chairs. Scavenger stuff all. A stairway leading to a trapdoor indicated another floor above. Add set the lantern on the stove, and commenced opening windows and throwing back the shutters guarding them. There were a lot of shutters. When he was done we had a view in all four directions: dark treetops, every way. “You’ve got a lot of windows,” I said, rum-wise. Add nodded. “Have a seat,” he said.
“I’m going to change clothes,” Melissa said, and went up the stairway to the floor above.
I sat in one of the big upholstered chairs, across from the couch. “Where’d you get all this glass?” I asked, hoping that would be a start on my ultimate subject. But Add knew that I knew where the glass came from, and he gave me a crooked smile.
“Oh, around. Here, have another glass of rum. I’ve got rum better than the Nicolins’.”
I was fine on rum already, as I’ve mentioned, but I took a glass from him.
“Here, sit on the couch,” Add said, and took back the glass while I moved. “It’s got the better view. If the air’s clear you’ll see Catalina. If not, then the great sea. Getting to be your second home, I hear.”
“My last home, almost.”
He laughed long and loud. “So I hear. So I hear. Well.” He sipped from his glass. “Quite a pleasant evening, this. I like Tom’s stories.”
“So do I.” We both drank again, and for a moment it looked like we had run out of things to say. Luckily Melissa came back down the stairs, in a white house dress that pinched her breasts together. Smiling at us, she got a glass of rum for herself, and sat right beside me on the couch, pressing against my arm and leg. It made me nervous, but Add gave us his crooked smile (so different from Tom’s crooked smile, which came of a busted mouth—Add only pulled back one side of his), and nodded, seeming satisfied with how cozy we were. He leaned back and balanced his glass on the worn arm of his chair.
“Good rum, isn’t it?” Melissa said. I agreed that it was.
“We traded two dozen crabs for it. We only trade for the best rum available.”
“I wish we were going to be trading with San Diego,” Add said peevishly. “Was San Diego as big as Tom said it is?”
“Sure,” I said. “Maybe bigger.”
Melissa rested her head on my shoulder. “Did you like it down there?”
“I guess so. It was quite a trip, I’ll say that.”
They began to ask me about the details of it. How many little towns were there? Were there railroad tracks to all of them? Was the Mayor popular? When I told them about the Mayor’s morning target practice they laughed. “And he does that every morning?” Add asked, rising to get us refills.
“So they said.”
“That must mean they have a lot of ammunition,” he said to himself in the kitchen. “Hey, this bottle’s polished.”
“You bet they do,” I said. It seemed like there would be a way to get the conversation over to the scavengers pretty soon, so I relaxed and began to enjoy getting there. “They’ve got all those naval warehouses down there, and the Mayor has had every one of them explored.”
“Uh huh. One moment; I have to go downstairs and get another bottle.”
The second his head disappeared down the stairs Melissa and I kissed. I could taste the rum on her tongue. I put my hand on her knee and she tugged her dress up so I was holding her bare thigh. More kissing, and my breath got short. I kept pushing the dress higher and higher, until I found she wasn’t wearing anything under it. Blood knocked in my ears with the shock of the discovery. Her belly pulsed in and out and she rocked over my hand, pushing down on it. We kissed harder, her hand squeezed my cock through my pants, and my breath left me entirely, whoosh, whoosh!
Thump, thump, answered Add’s boots on the ladder, and Melissa twisted aside and threw her dress down. Fine for her, but I had a hard-on bulging my pants, and Melissa gave it a last malicious squeeze to make it harder still, giggling at my expression of dismay. I drank my rum and scrunched around in the corner of the couch. By the time Add had gotten in the room and broken the seal on the new bottle I was presentable, although my heart was still pounding double time.
We drank some more. Melissa left her hand on my knee. Add got up and wandered the dimly lit room, peering out the windows and opening first one and then another, adjusting the circulation, he said. The rum was clobbering me.
“Doesn’t lightning ever hit your house?” I asked.
“Sure,” they both said, and laughed. Add went on: “Sometimes it’ll hit and a whole wall of shingles will pop off. Later when I check them they look all singed.”
“My hair stands right on end,” said Melissa.
“Aren’t you afraid of being electrocuted?” I asked, patiently rolling out the last word.
“No, no,” Add said. “We’re pretty well grounded here.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means the lightning runs down the corner poles into the ground. I had Rafe out to look at the place, and he said we’re in no danger. I like to remember that when the lightning hits and the whole house shakes, and blue sparks are bouncing around like hummingbirds.”