Whipped: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel(39)
She was also looking at Cud. “Such a cliché, the poet as obscene drunk. Contrary to local legend, he’s the world’s worst lover.”
Arthur didn’t care to speculate on how she knew that. Becky’s camera was now on Stoney and the black woman, Gelaine, who was pulling on leggings by the open trunk of the Mercedes. Stoney seemed torn between ogling her and her car. She in turn was admiring the Fargo.
“Yo, Canuck, I love your truck,” she said, after peering into the cab. “Authentically cool.”
Stoney didn’t miss a beat. “All scrubbed up and ready for you, gorgeous.”
“Wait,” Taba said, clinging to Arthur’s arm, restraining him from racing to his truck’s rescue. “They haven’t seen us.” She led Arthur to a bench behind Makepeace’s delivery truck, out of view but within earshot.
He didn’t want to spoil Taba’s fun, but wasn’t able to relax until he fished into a pocket and found the Fargo’s ignition key, which he displayed to her triumphantly. It usually stayed with the truck but Arthur had removed it. Here was a rare opportunity to enjoy Stoney’s misfortune.
Stoney had been rhapsodizing about the pickup, the most prized of his many vintage vehicles, and now was holding open the passenger door. “Front seat of an old bone-shaker like this is the only way to see the real Garibaldi. I know all the secret coves, I got stash beaches, stash lakes, waterfalls. I got one special place only God and Bob Stonewell’s ever been to. Half an hour there and back.”
“Well, let’s fucking go.” Gelaine shouted up to her friends. “I’ll be back in half.”
Stoney gave her a hand up, then went to the driver’s side. Arthur fought his Pavlovian response to rescue the Fargo, tightened his grip on his key. Stoney got behind the wheel, then softly voiced what sounded like a profanity.
Arthur expected to see him scrambling around for a hidden key and was shocked to hear a familiar sound, usually pleasant to his ears: the rich rumble of the Fargo starting up. Either Stoney had a spare key or it had taken him ten seconds to hot-wire the ignition. By the time Arthur launched himself from the bench, the Fargo had backed out and moved onto the road.
From the patio, Becky filmed the Fargo as it accelerated away, then turned her camera on Arthur as he ran onto the road, shouting and waving, then ceasing his useless pursuit, out of breath.
§
Arthur had his own stash of hideaways, and the one to which he was escorting Taba was on East Point Ridge above Hopeless Bay, a stiff twenty-minute climb — they’d left their packs at the store — which paid off with views of meadow, forest, and rocky shores; the green islets and sparkling sea beyond; and, Arthur hoped, of Stoney driving the purloined Fargo. The path was little more than a deer trail, and he’d had to assist Taba over fallen logs and a root mass.
Throughout the climb, Taba politely endured Arthur’s complaints about Stoney and his rustling of the truck. She merely chuckled over it, urging him to relax: it wasn’t the end of the world, he’d be back, carpe diem.
The climb brought them at last to a mossy knoll with a full-compass view, but no sign of the Fargo.
“Stunning,” said Taba. “Thank you.” She startled him by rising on her toes to plant a quick, soft kiss on his lips, then spread her arms to the horizon, the distant Olympic Mountains, her cropped hair flaming even redder in the sun. “I have arrived,” she shouted. Her announcement echoed back. “I am nowhere!” Nowhere, nowhere, the hills replied.
“How does one arrive nowhere?”
She turned to him. “Because when you realize there is nowhere to go, you have arrived. Though you’re still nowhere.”
She was mocking the slogan above the Transformers’ gate. Arthur had to laugh.
“So, do you come here a lot?” she asked.
“As often as I can.”
“Always alone?”
“‘In solitude, where we are least alone.’ Byron. Sorry, yes, quite alone.”
“Until now.”
“Yes.” Arthur wasn’t sure what the rules were here, alone on a hilltop with this saucy single mom. He hoped matters would not go too far. But he could still feel the softness of her lips from that quick kiss, and felt confused, conflicted.
They settled on a carpet of moss under a giant arbutus with its reddish papery bark, its trunk and branches snaking skyward above them, a complex, colourful canopy.
“This is softer than my mattress,” Taba said, lying back.
There was a strong essence of invitation wafting from her, red hair splayed on the moss, legs slightly parted, arms behind her neck.
He dismissed the carnal urge this prompted. He was having a testosterone issue, that was all. He was still suffering the spell of horniness prompted by the tiddly Austin litigator. He was a married man. He believed in his vows, even if someone else didn’t. Fortifying his resolve was the spectre of performance anxiety, always hovering, chiding him. You can’t get it up, Arthur. Don’t even try.
Quite right. Taba will be only a friend, a willing ear, a confidante. A female buddy with whom he could share misgivings about the Transformers. Maybe about his life companion and her star candidate. But that would be too confessional, too self-pitying.
The silence was uncomfortable, so, lacking anything original, he offered Lowell’s hoary rhetorical question: “‘What is so rare as a day in June?’”