Kiss (9 page)

Landon moved toward the showers.

“I don’t understand why you think shutting me out will be good for Rudy!”

“That’s the problem, Shauna. You don’t understand much. You go flying through life with one eye closed and then act surprised when you crash into a tree. You are going to take this whole family out, every one of us, one at a time if you don’t grow up and get yourself straightened out.”

Grow up? Get herself straightened out? Her mind reeled from the verbal battering. No matter what she did, her father would tell her she was wrong. Worthless. Undeserving.

When she failed to retort, Landon McAllister threw the whole weight of his body against the swinging door and separated himself from his daughter once more.

Shauna spun on her heel and screamed her frustration.

It only took a few minutes for her offense to melt into tears. She rushed outside and stepped directly into Wayne, who caught her.

He wrapped his arms around her, the most natural move in the world. The pleasing scent of his shirt, fabric softener mingled with cologne, gave Shauna the fleeting thought that he paid attention to details and might treat her with similar care.

Maybe she would remember something, some place where rejection couldn’t touch her, leaning just so against his chest.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.

He did not let her go. And he did not try to tell her what to do. He simply held her up.

“I don’t deserve your support in all this,” she said. “What I’ve done is . . . unforgivable.”

“Everybody needs someone.”

“Why are you so willing to help me?”

Wayne didn’t answer right away. He rocked her gently. “Maybe I need you too.”

“For what? I’m a public fool, a criminal nobody, with no past, no job, no friends, nothing worth—”

“Stop.”

She stopped.

She tilted her head back to look at him. His eyes frowned at her, not the way her father’s always did, condemning. This frown struck her as wounded.
Why would you say those horrible things about yourself?

“You’re going to pull through this,” he said.

Where did his faith in her come from?

She wished she could remember the history they shared. It was so unfair to him that she couldn’t.

Because he believed in her, she would remember.

She kissed him before deciding that kissing him was the right thing to do.

He took one step back and released her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, not sure whether she felt foolish or amused.

“I didn’t . . .”

“Didn’t what?” She matched his step and lifted her arms around his shoulders. His muscles relaxed.

“Nothing.” He smiled. “You’re full of surprises.”

Wayne bent his head, tentatively enough that she didn’t have to stretch. He pulled her closer and touched his lips to hers softly, lightly, demanding nothing. He tasted like ginger, sweet and spicy.

Shauna felt so safe, so protected, that her simultaneous disappointment came as a shock. Had she been expecting electricity, familiarity? Some sudden restoration of all her lost files?

Even so, all the awful realities of her awakening stood aside for a few seconds as he held her. She would take that gift.

Wayne broke their connection first and pulled her into a slow squeeze. She felt his breath at the nape of her neck.

“Brought you a present,” he said, reaching into his jacket and withdrawing a cell phone.

“What’s this?”

“A phone.”

“You know what I mean, smart aleck.”

“New number. The media got hold of your old one. Some guy from the
Statesman
was calling daily after the accident. Scott Norris, I think. And people claiming to know you. Some shrink even. Probably has plans to use you to become the next Dr. Phil. I stopped answering pretty early on.”

It was just a phone, but somehow Shauna saw it as a declaration of his faith in her. “That was really nice of you. Thanks.”

“Mr. Wilde is going to take care of the bills until you’re back on your feet. And I programmed my number already. In case you need anything. Though I plan to stay close. Speed dial number two.”

She tried it. His phone rang in another pocket, and she heard it as nothing less than a lifeline.

She kissed him one more time. “You just keep saving me,” she said.

The relative peace of Shauna’s evening with Wayne did not last into her dreams that night.

Football field: offensive forty-yard line. Shauna leaned forward, ready, waiting for the quarterback’s call, less than two yards from a sweating, focused defensive back.

“Blue fifteen! Blue fifteen! Set! Hike!”

She lunged left in a fake before cutting right, then straightened out and slipped past the defender without touching him. Her cleats found purchase in the short turf and she pushed off for the X-post pattern, straight over the middle of the field, strong and fast.

Faster than any other player on the Sun Devils’ team. She was, after all, a sprinter first, football player second.

She loved this play. Loved the adrenaline kicked in by the risk of aiming dead center, where getting hit was almost always a given.

She flew, barely touching the grass, propelled by the huffing of that committed defensive back.

One one thousand . . .

“Step it up, step it up! Get a move on, Spade!”

The crowd was on its feet.

Two one thousand . . .

The DB was fast, but not fast enough. Her breathing flowed in sync with her heartbeat. She looked up, right, over the shoulder. The corner of her eye detected the free safety coming at her from ahead. She was the hot read.

This pass would come early.

Three one thousand . . .

She focused on the arcing pigskin and reached out.

The pebble-grained ball connected with her arms like a desert burr.

And the defensive players connected with her, the DB catching her high in the ribs, the free safety hitting low on the back at the hips.

She heard an electric crack and the backs of her eyelids lit up with streaks of falling stars. She heard the crowd wince in unison. Tingling nerves shot out around her waist and began to squeeze her breathless.

Don’t drop the ball.

She held tight with both hands as her rubber torso unfolded from its unnatural S shape. Her legs went out from under her, and she hit the turf face first, smelling and tasting damp dirt through the mask. Gravity, velocity, and the great weight of another hulking body crushed her.

The falling stars faded to a clear night, and the roar of the stadium fell to a murmur.

And she heard herself screaming. She had never felt pain like this. Spears plunged the length of her legs and out her heels, plunging and plunging. An in-visible iron band constricted around her hip bones. Her pelvis would soon snap.

Someone dropped to the turf beside her.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Oh! It was not okay!

“Shauna! It’s okay. I’m right here.”

Someone grabbed her wrist and held it to the ground.

She cried out and opened her eyes. She saw stars . . . through a window. A window over . . . the head of a bed. Her bed. Wayne was sitting on her bed, leaning over her, holding her wrists down on the mattress.

Khai rushed in and turned on a lamp on an old oak dresser. The room burst into warm yellow form. Dresser, bed table, overstuffed chair. Three card-board boxes. Woodblock prints on the walls. A historic map of Austin, Texas. Wayne, in a T-shirt and flannel lounge pants. Khai in a terry robe. She cinched the belt and held it closed at her throat.

Shauna’s breathing settled, and Wayne released her arms.

“You okay?” He rubbed his eyes and shifted to the edge of the bed.

She could only nod.

“That must have been a doozy,” he said.

She covered her face with her hands. “It was so real. I’m sorry. That’s never happened to me before. Not that I remember anyway.”

“Want to talk about it?”

How to talk about a nightmare like that? Did it even qualify as a night-mare? Her, playing football? Closer to a comedy.

“I should make tea,” Khai said, and she left the room as quickly as she’d come in.

“I wasn’t afraid,” she started. “In fact, I was playing football for some college team. I don’t know a thing about football. How could I have a dream that was so vivid?”

“Tell me what happened.”

Shauna told him, as best she could recall. To her surprise, the details of the dream hadn’t faded as they often did when she awoke. As she relayed the scene, Wayne did not interrupt her once.

When she finished, he said, “The coach called you
Spade
?”

“Can you explain it?”

“Sounds like a dream I would have had.”

Shauna had thought she was dreaming of being Wayne, but dreaming his dreams? That was a knotty idea.

“I used to play football,” he said.

“Really?”

He cleared his throat. “A little. Not really built for it. I was fast but got sick of getting nailed. I took a hit in college and called it quits. Not too unlike your dream there.” He stood and ran a hand through his hair.

“That’s weird.” She shivered. “It was one of the most realistic dreams I’ve ever had. I can’t see the appeal of that sport, from the inside I mean. I’ve never felt pain like that.”

Wayne nodded slowly and folded his arms. He looked at the floor. “Good thing it was only a dream.”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “Good thing.” But though her shivering had stopped, her hands were still shaking under the covers, and a quiet, irrational voice at the back of her mind wondered if the whole episode was something far greater than a figment of her imagination.

8

The sounds of heavy Suburban tires grinding down gravel woke Shauna in the predawn hours of Friday morning. Landon’s entourage was putting him back on the campaign trail.

At six, unable to go back to sleep, she stumbled out of bed.

The five pill bottles on the nightstand suggested that she should put some-thing in her empty stomach. Shauna tapped out each pill into her hand and, cupping them, went into the kitchen.

Khai was already working, chopping vegetables. Shauna set her medicine on the table, then found a loaf of sourdough bread and dropped a slice in the toaster. Khai’s wide ceramic knife
click click clicked
through an eggplant on a plastic mat. When she finished cubing the vegetable, Khai set down the knife and pulled a mug out of the cabinet in front of her. Without asking, she filled it with tea from a pot resting on the back of the stove, then set the cup in front of Shauna on the counter.

“Thank you,” Shauna said. She sipped and closed her eyes. Jasmine. Mild and barely sweet.

Khai put the eggplant in a bowl and resumed her work, crushing several garlic cloves with the broad side of her knife.

The toast popped up, and Shauna balanced it on top of her mug as she went to stand by the window. Outside, at the bottom of a long hill, the river rushed toward town. She tried to eat, but the bread formed a hard ball in her throat.

Khai glanced her way a few times.

“That can’t taste so good,” she said after a minute, scraping the chopped garlic into the bowl with the eggplant. “I had a brother who would eat nothing but dry toast for a time.”

Shauna tossed the bread into the trash and came to peek at the contents of Khai’s bowl. “With your fancy cooking?”

“Well, I didn’t know a thing about cooking then. He was fighting cancer. That toast hurt his throat, but it settled his stomach.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He’s better now. God made a way. We came to the States for treatment.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Twelve years or so.” She rinsed her knife in the sink and reached for a towel to dry the blade.

“You ever go back?”

Khai shook her head.

“My mother was from Guatemala,” Shauna said. “I go down there twice a year. It’s one of my favorite places in the world.”

“I can understand that,” Khai said, smiling. “A strong sense of place keeps us close to our families.”

Or alienated from them,
Shauna thought. “Did you move right to Texas when you came to the States?”

“No. New York, Florida. We were in Mexico for a while. My brother’s still back East.”

“Is he your only family?”

Khai’s hands, holding the knife and wiping it dry, stopped their motion so briefly that Shauna wasn’t sure if they’d truly paused or not. But then Khai nodded, barely. “I’m sorry about your brother,” Khai said.

“They won’t let me see him.”

The conversation lagged behind the women’s thoughts about their siblings. Shauna had the fleeting thought that Khai didn’t get to see her brother often if he was all the way out in New York. But that thought was eclipsed by her own sadness of being completely cut off from Rudy even while they were on the same property. Shauna returned to the window, scooped up the pills off the nearby table, and swallowed them with her warm tea.

“Do you have any more of that soup?” Shauna asked. “What did you call it?
Tom fam
?”

“
Tom yam.
That Wayne finished it off,” Khai said, jerking open a cupboard door. Shauna studied the housekeeper and leaned against the windowsill.