“It’s exciting,” Melissa said. “I like it.”
Add continued to play with the windows. When he was looking away Melissa took my hand and put it in her lap, trapping it between her legs. When he turned our way she released it and I yanked back upright. It was driving me wild. It got to where I didn’t wait for her to take my hand, but plunged for her whenever I could. We drank some more. Finally the windows were adjusted to Add’s satisfaction, and he stood over the side of the couch, looking down at me as if he knew what we had been up to.
“So what do you think that Mayor of San Diego is really after?” he said.
“I don’t know,” said I. I was in a daze—impatient to get back under Melissa’s dress, but very aware of Add standing right over me.
“Does he want to be king of this whole coastline?”
“I don’t think so. He wants the Japanese off the mainland, that’s all.”
“Ah. That’s what you said before, in the meeting. I don’t know if I believe it.”
“Why not?”
“There’s no sense to it. How many men does he have working for him, did you say?”
“I don’t think I said. I never really knew, exactly.”
“Do they have any radio gear?”
“Why, how did you guess? They’ve got a big old radio down there, but it doesn’t work yet.”
“No?”
“Not yet, but they said they were planning to get a man over from the Salton Sea to fix it.”
“Who said this, now?”
“The folks in San Diego. The Mayor.”
“Well what do you know.”
With all these questions I judged that it was a perfect time for some questions of my own. “Add, where did you get all this glass from?”
“Why, at the swap meets, mostly.” He was looking at Melissa, now—they exchanged a glance I didn’t understand.
“From the scavengers?”
“Sure. They’re the ones selling glass, aren’t they?”
I decided to tack a little closer to the wind. “Do you ever trade directly with the scavengers, Add? I mean, outside the swap meets?”
“Why no. Why do you ask?” He was still grinning his crooked grin, but his eyes got watchful. The grin left.
“No reason,” I said, feeling all of a sudden like he could see through my eyes and read what I was thinking. “I was wondering, that’s all.”
“Nope,” he said decisively. “I never deal with the zopilotes, no matter what you hear. I trap crabs under Trestles, so I’m up there a lot, but that’s the extent of it.”
“They lie about us,” Melissa said tragically.
“No matter,” Add said, the grin back in place. “Everyone collects stories of one sort of another, I reckon.”
“True,” I said. And it was true; everyone who didn’t live right on the valley floor, where their lives were under constant examination, had stories told about them. I could see how rumors would grow especially fast around Addison, him being such a private man. It really wasn’t fair to him. I didn’t know what to say. Obviously Steve was going to have to find some other way to get information for the San Diegans. I blinked and breathed deep and regular, trying to control the effects of the rum. Add had never lit more than the one lantern, and even though the single flame was reflected in five or six windows, the room danced with shadows. There were a couple more swallows of the amber liquor in my glass, but I resolved to pass on them. Addison moved away from the couch, and Melissa sat up. Add went to the kitchen corner and consulted a large sand clock.
“It’s been fun, but it’s getting late. Melissa, you and I ought to be abed. We’ve got lots of work to do in the morning.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“You walk Henry down and say goodnight to him real quick. Henry, come back and give us a visit sometime soon.” I got to my feet, unsteady but eager, and Add shook my hand, squeezing hard and grinning at me. “Careful walking home.”
“Sure. Thanks for the rum, Add.” I followed Melissa down the ladder to the ground floor, and then out the door into the night. We kissed. I leaned back against the sloping wall of their house to keep myself upright, one leg thrust between Melissa’s as she pressed against me. It reminded me of the first time we fooled around at the swap meet, only this time I was drunker. Melissa rubbed up and down my thigh, and let me feel her some more as she kissed my neck and breathed umm, umm, very softly. Then:
“He’s waiting. I’d better go upstairs.”
“Oh.”
“Good night, Henry.”
A peck on the nose and she was gone. I shoved off from the wall and staggered across the little clearing into the woods. There were foundations out there from the old time, the remnants of houses it looked like. Everything was gone except the concrete slabs, cracking under the weeds. I stumbled onto one of these and sat down for a bit, looking back through the trees at the Shankses’ tower. There was a silhouette in front of the lights in the living room. I tasted the finger that had been feeling Melissa. The blood rushed to my head. It seemed a terrible amount of trouble to stand again, so I sat awhile and recalled the feel of her. I could see her, too—the silhouette was her—moving about the kitchen part of the upper room. Cleaning, I guessed. I don’t know how much time passed, but suddenly their kitchen lantern went dark, then reappeared—once, twice, three and then four times. That seemed a little odd.
Off to my right I heard a twig snap. I knew instantly it was people, walking over another foundation. I crawled silently between two large trees and listened. Around to the north of the house there were people, at least two of them, not doing a very good job of moving through the woods quietly. Valley people would never have made such noise. And there was no reason for any of them to be up there anyway. All this occurred to me rapidly, no matter that I was drunk. Without thinking about it I found myself flat on my stomach behind a tree, where I could see the Shankses’ door. Sure enough, shadows on the other side of the little clearing resolved into moving shapes, then into people, three of them. They walked right up to the door, said something up at the second story.
It was Melissa who let them in. While they were still on the first floor I slipped through the trees quiet as owlflight, and hauled butt over to the wall of their house. I blessed my speed (fastest in Onofre by far) and held my breath. Only then did I wonder if I really wanted to be there. That’s drunkenness for you—sometimes it can speed action by cutting out the thought.
From the ground I could hear their voices, but I couldn’t make out enough of what they were saying to make sense of it. I remembered seeing blocks of wood nailed to the side of the house next to the door, making a ladder to the roof. I shifted along the wall to them, and step by step I ascended the blocks, taking a minute for each block so they wouldn’t creak. When my head was under one of the windows I stopped and listened.
“They’ve got a radio,” Addison said. “He says it isn’t working yet, but they have someone from the Salton Sea coming out to try and fix it.”
“That’s probably Gonzalez,” said a nasal, high voice.
A deeper voice added: “Danforth is always bragging he’s got equipment right on the edge of working, but it doesn’t always happen. Did he describe the radio’s condition?”
“No,” Add said. “He doesn’t know enough to judge it, anyway.”
They had been pumping me! Here I had gone up there thinking to pump them for information, and they had been pumping me instead. My face burned. And what was worse, Melissa had probably arranged with Add to come on to me after I had gotten good and drunk, to distract my attention from the questions! Now that was ugly.