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1

Nina Reilly wiped her goggles and watched Paul swim. He stroked
smoothly, kicking underwater, moving up and down the lane without
stopping, like a pacing porpoise. He wore his yellow snorkel and
goggles, and she could hear his lungs laboring when he came
close.

Enjoying the pattern of the water on the ceiling of the
condo-association pool, she returned to backstroking in another
lane. Pull hard back with the arms, keep the legs stiff, and
windmill that water. The two of them were going nowhere, but it
felt like lovemaking, the cool slap of the water he churned up, the
water rippling back to him, a water bed without the plastic.

She touched the wall. He turned at the far end. As he swam down the
lane she had the strangest feeling about him, as if the pale watery
creature before her solidified before her eyes. Hanging on to the
rough concrete wall of the pool, she thought, he might swim toward
me with that silly yellow snorkel for the rest of my life. How many
years do I have left? Forty years, if I get lucky? She was in her
mid-thirties, Paul was over forty. How long did they have? A
lifetime? A summer?

Well, that's what I came down here to find out, she said to
herself.

He hit the wall and came up grinning, goggles fogged up. "Done?" he
said. Then, "What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"Your face says different."

"I'm trying to see the future."

"What do you see?" He pulled himself over until his face was inches
from hers, his hazel eyes reddened by the chlorine, the lashes
beaded, the water making rivulets along his nose, red lines across
his forehead and cheeks from the goggles.

"You."

"That is the correct answer. As your reward, I will sing you a song
I just made up." He pulled himself onto the edge of the pool and,
legs dangling, sang in a gravelly voice:

I am the creature from the lagoon

You're a blond coed starin' at the moon

I'll rise up drippin', a scary sight

Baby, are you ready, it's love-monster night--

"Like it?"

She hung in the water, her eyes at his ankle level. Tilting her
head back and holding the wall with both hands, she let her gaze
move boldly up his body, the strong pale thighs, the tight stomach
with a little hangover of flesh at the waist, the sensitive nipples
and broad shoulders. She said, "Are you going to wear your snorkel
when you rise up?"

"I'll do whatever it takes."

"It won't take much." A look passed between them, and Nina reached
over and squeezed his big toe.

"Let's wrap up in our towels and get back home," Paul said.

She mantled up onto the side of the pool, rested her knee on the
concrete, stood, and adjusted her swimsuit bottom. Paul brought her
the striped blue towel and they walked outside, down the path
beside the bougainvillaea, below the neighbors' balconies. In the
misty late afternoon they saw lights come on as people came home
from work. A line of birds sat quietly in the branches of the oaks,
paired off mostly, looking around. Peter Jennings pronounced the
news in fatherly fashion from somebody's living room.

Paul hadn't even locked the door to his condo. Inside, in the hall
with the bokhara rug that led to the living room, he said, "How was
it? The future?"

"Blurry."

He said seriously, "You know, this could go on forever or a day.
Either one is okay."

"No, a day wouldn't be okay."

"You going to make me a declaration, Nina? Finally?" He folded his
arms so the biceps bulged, Mr. Clean in a baggy wet pair of red
trunks in his narrow hallway, and waited for her to tell him she
was ready to link up her short time on earth with his. The
conversations lately had been skidding into turns like these. Paul
needed something from her, a formal statement, a closing of the box
lid.

She couldn't do that for him, unfortunately. "You can have the
first shower," she said, offering what she could.

"You are being oblique."

"You can even use my loofah."

"That's fine. We'll just continue to drift on the seas of
uncertainty. Until the sun becomes a supernova and the seas all dry
up."

Nina said, "I'll definitely say something before then. Just go get
dressed. I'll watch the sun go down on the balcony."

"And get the fish marinating," Paul reminded her.

"Sure."

But he hesitated. He could see that she had a problem and he wanted
to fix it. "The rash bothering you?"

"Yes. Go on, now."

"I told you, you can go in and get a shot," Paul said, still trying
to fix the wrong problem. "You wouldn't feel so irritable."

They had been quiet at dinner. Now they held each other in Paul's
platform bed, under the red-and-yellow Hudson Bay blanket.

A seashell night-light in the bathroom glowed dimly. Under the
covers, her nightgown was pushed up to her waist. Her ankles, rear
end, and forearms itched like fury. Damn right she was
irritable.

She had a grand case of poison oak, predator of the Central
California hills, because, oblivious to it, she had gone hiking
behind the condo last week. She had no one to blame but herself,
which irritated her even more.

And all of this specific irritation had wrapped itself around a
general core of irritation within her. Although Paul did not intend
it, circumstance had made of her the girlfriend who lives out of
the suitcase in the corner. She had no home anymore, only his home,
his street, his doors, his walls. She floated in his pool.

Living together was a revelation. Paul kept guns all over the house
and a locked gun case in the car trunk; she hated that. His study
was full of high-tech equipment she couldn't identify. He was
physically exhausting; he worked out religiously at his gym, ran,
played tennis, went rock-climbing, even played darts at his
favorite bar. He cooked and loved to drive and he listened to jazz
until late into the night. He had way too much vigor for her; he
made her feel like a slug.

She liked to read all day, swim a bit, have a walk around the
neighborhood with Hitchcock. She was a news junkie, loved to shop
on the Net, enjoyed sitting at the kitchen table taking notes for
that law-journal article she would write someday.

They weren't kids, and melding their lifestyles didn't come easy.
And sometimes, damn right again, she found this irritating.

But she wasn't ready to say these things, so instead she sat up and
searched the nightstand for her cream and said, "I told you, I got
a shot of prednisone when I was a kid when I had it bad. The next
morning I couldn't get out of bed, and my dad called the doctor.
Oh, he said, steroids can cause muscle weakness. I couldn't stand
up, my legs wouldn't hold me. I had to lie down for a week."

"It cured the rash, didn't it?"

Nina finished applying the hydrocortisone cream, slowly screwed the
lid on, and set it on the table. That question of his pushed her
irritation to a new flaming height.

Paul lay on his back, the sheet pulled up to his hairy chest, his
hands entwined behind his head, revealing armpits covered with the
same curling golden hair she loved so much, observing her. His
smooth skin was a reproach, and his self-assurance needed a good
kick in the rear.

"Do what you want," he said, too late. When he began rubbing her
back, she pulled away.

Her dog, Hitchcock, stirred on the rug, stretched and got up and
padded into the far corner of the bedroom, sensing gnarly human
vibes, looking for peace.

Nina said, lapsing into self-pity, "I feel like a crocodile."

"It's not that bad and it's not catching, honey. And I can't see it
in the dark."

She thought, if this love affair ends in a day I won't be able to
take it, that's the truth. I've been through enough. But I can't
live like this either.

"This will never work," she blurted out.

"Whoa," Paul said. "I thought we were having fun. What catastrophe
just happened that I missed?"

"I'm not cut out to be half of a couple. I'm a solitary person."
She scratched her forearm.

Paul said in a soothing tone, "Right now, we're together. Right
now, we're good."

He reached out a hand and stroked her hip prize-filly style. At
least this part of her anatomy had no rash. His touch calmed her.
The prickling of her skin seemed less intense.

She felt her blood heating up, rising to the surface of her skin as
he continued to massage, moving from her hip down to her thigh. His
hand slipped around to her front and his fingers cruised into the
danger zone. "Look," he said, "all that wine you drank tonight
dehydrated you and makes the rash feel worse. You'll feel better in
the morning."

"Grr." Nina pushed off his hand and jumped out of bed. "Leave my
drinking habits out of this." She marched around the cold bedroom,
arms crossed, thinking dark thoughts. Was there some secret smooth
path between men and women that she had yet to discover?

Paul got up on his elbow to watch her. "C'mon back," he said.
"Bedtime."

She didn't answer.

"Don't make me get out of bed. One."

The warning, issued in Paul's husky, determined voice, aroused
physical reactions, warmth and wetness.

"Two."

Against the white of the sheet, his skin appeared darker than
usual. He had an end-of-the-day roughness on his cheeks.

"Not till I'm good and ready!"

"I'll get you good and ready. Two and a half."

"No!"

Paul flung back the covers. "You're asking for it," he said. He
jumped out of bed. Nina slid open the screen and rushed out to the
deck, Hitchcock joyous at her heels.

Outside, bright stars. Wide oaks studding dark hills. Sage scent. A
motorcycle's red light winking on Carmel Valley Road. She stood at
the wood railing, back to Paul, wondering what he would do
next.

Excited.

He put his arms around her from behind and pressed against her.
"I'm sorry, honey," he said. "Whatever I did or said, I'm sorry."
Then he mumbled some things about how he loved her, and the
universe realigned in that shifty way it has. The anti-itch cream
began working and the self-pity dissipated, because he was pressing
insistently now, hard and ready.

His skin felt hot in the moist cool air. She let him lower her to
the plastic chaise lounge and push up the nightgown and then she
locked lips with him. He had hard lips, not the smooshy kind, lips
that made definite demands.

Leaves crackled under her on the plastic strapping, marking her,
but she was past caring. The Summer Triangle spread across the sky
above her half-closed eyes and how unimaginably distant blazed that
inferno of stars in the blacklit storm of energies--

"Ah!"

"Oh!"

"Uh!"

The light next door went on. The curious Mr. Mitts, Paul's elderly
neighbor, had awakened. The head of his fat tabby appeared on his
windowsill, ears pricked, and Hitchcock made a hopeless run for it,
barking and snarling and waking up the whole place.

"In we go," Paul whispered. He carried her in.

Paul lay drowsy beside her, his breath thickened into a burr.

"Paul?"

"Mmm."

"Are you awake?"

"No."

"Good night, sweetheart."

Paul didn't answer.

"You know"--she opened her eyes and let the moonlight fill them,
let herself talk--"I've been thinking some more about why I left
Tahoe. I wanted to be with you, I really did. I needed time off
from law. I was wrung dry. We both know that."

No response from his side of the bed.

She sat up in bed and reached for her cream. "I've been here at
your place for three weeks. Bob's gone to Europe for the summer, I
rented my house at Tahoe, and another lawyer is running my office
up there. Pieces of me are strewn all over the place."

She thought about that for a while, punching her pillow, searching
for just the right angle to rest her head. "Paul? I can't stand
that for long. Have you ever read about the shamans who go through
a ceremony of being blasted apart? Metaphorically, I mean. And then
they reassemble as new people. They have some guidance, though.
Traditions and dogmas. I don't have any guidance at all, and
smithereens of me are drifting around. What kind of new person am I
becoming?"

He turned as though he heard her and laid a muscular arm over her
chest, and the declaration he had asked for earlier launched itself
silently in her head. She thought, even though you're too
aggressive and you want to control me, I love you. But, Paul, I'm
afraid you want a sidekick. I can't be just a sidekick. I fought
too hard to be autonomous, free.

Free, such a rare state for a woman. Autonomous. A word too seldom
linked with the word woman.

She felt herself turning as moody as a three-year-old whose ice
cream had fallen off the cone. Damn it, she thought, touching a
finger to his tanned cheek. I do sort of want to be your doggone
sidekick, at the same time.

What happens now?

She spiraled down into anxious dreams.

The last one went like this: She was back in court at Tahoe,
dressed up, made up, sharp, making a closing argument in a murder
case. The ladies and gents of the jury watched intently as she held
up her arm and scratched her forearm meaningfully, one time
only.

Somehow in this dream logic everybody in the courtroom knew that
one scratch meant, he's innocent. The jury members lifted their
skinny legs and prepared to scratch back.

Just then the door opened and a lawyer named Jeffrey Riesner came
in wearing an Armani suit. He looked bewildered. Nina remembered
that he was dead and his face began to cave in and she ran out the
back. The forest closed around her and she ran on until she came to
a rock wall. She could hear his peculiar breathing behind her so
she scrabbled up to a high ledge.

He flew up after her like a wasp, to throw her off and kill
her--

She woke up, breathing hard, pushing the button on her watch to
make it light up. Almost 6:00 a.m. Thursday morning had begun. The
phone was ringing.

2

"Wuh?" Paul said. He removed his arm from where it had come to rest
on her chest.

Outside the sliding doors to the deck, ghostly fog, lit palely by a
young sun somewhere above. On Nina's right, Paul lay on his back
and went back to snoring. On her left, on a bedside table just big
enough for a lamp, a pair of glasses, water, and a book, the phone
continued to ring. She reached for it. It fell to the
floor.

Excerpted from PRESUMPTION OF DEATH © Copyright 2005 by
Perri O'Shaughnessy. Reprinted with permission by Dell, a division
of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

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