The Middle of Somewhere(25)

“Wind did that?” Liz said.

“Up at Mammoth, near Red’s, it blew a hundred eighty miles an hour. They said it was a fluke event. The jet stream, instead of staying north of thirty thousand feet, decided to touch down in the Sierras.”

“That’s insane,” Dante said.

“If you ask me,” Brensen said, picking up his tent pole, “this whole goddamn place is insane.”

Brensen had snagged the only campsite on the shore of the lake, but there were others on the far side of the outlet stream. Liz deposited her pack at the first one.

“I hope you love it, because I’m whipped,” she told Dante.

“It’s paradise.”

She set up the tent while he inflated the mattresses and fluffed the sleeping bags. He set beef stroganoff on the burner and she headed to the stream for water. Lake water was fine, but moving water was better.

She marveled as she had each evening at how much better she felt once she’d shed her pack, made camp, washed and changed into her (relatively) clean sleeping clothes. As she picked her way around boulders and over logs, her leg muscles felt sore, but comfortably so, as though content to walk farther with a normal burden. Her body impressed her. She typically asked it to work hard an hour a day during a run or at the gym. Now she had suddenly asked it for ten times the effort, and it had responded—not without complaint—but it had responded all the same. Countless neuromuscular junctions, firing away, thousands of times a minute, tens of thousands of coordinated impulses orchestrated by her brain, functioning smoothly behind the veil of her consciousness. If only her emotional self was a fraction as capable.

She knelt in the grass at the lip of the stream. Water burbled over mossy rocks. On the opposite bank, a robin probed the coarse turf as if it were a suburban lawn.

“You up here on vacation?” Liz asked it.

It cocked its head as if considering the question, bounced to a hillock and flew away.

She propped a bottle between her feet and began pumping. The jet of water hissed as it sprayed into the empty bottle. So long, Aquamira. Fresh water was on the way.

“You alone?”

Her hand slipped off the pump handle and hit the bottle, knocking it over. She righted it and swore under her breath.

She knew it was Payton before she looked up. He stood too close, casting a looming shadow. The sun was setting over his right shoulder, blinding her. She blocked the sun with her free hand. His mouth was half leer, half smile, but she couldn’t make out his eyes under the bill of his cap.

She said, “You shouldn’t sneak up on people.”

“I wasn’t sneaking. I didn’t want to shout from over there”—indicating the way he’d come—“and ruin the quiet for everyone.”

She wanted to stand, but he hadn’t given her enough room. “Can you back off so I can put my arm down?”

He crouched. His knees were an inch away from hers. “Better?”

Her face flushed, and her pulse picked up. “What do you want, Payton? I’m busy here.”

“I asked you if you were alone.”

“I would be if you left.” To busy her hands, she dropped the float in the current and resumed pumping.

“I can do that for you.” He reached for the pump.

She blocked him with her elbow. “Back. The hell. Away.”

He snorted and inched backward—a retreating spider. “Here?”

“Try Ohio.” She gripped the pump tightly to calm her hands.

“Now, now. I’m just trying to talk to you.” His tone was conciliatory. “I came here to ask you something.”

The water hissed into the bottle. Ssshhh. Ssshhh.

He picked up a slender stick, holding it like a baton. “Rodell seems to think you’re afraid of me. But I disagree. I think it’s something else.”

Her hand stopped in midstroke.

He waved the stick in front of her, as if teasing a kitten. “What do you think, Liz?”

She capped the bottle and scooped up the equipment, holding it to her chest as she rose. Tubes dangling and dripping, she strode past him toward her campsite.

“Have a nice evening,” he called after her. “And don’t worry. No chance of a storm tonight.”

? ? ?

Liz lay huddled in her sleeping bag facing Dante, who was on his back, eyes closed. She couldn’t imagine how she would feel now if he weren’t there beside her. She hadn’t said anything to him about Payton. What could she say? Replayed in her head, no sentence or gesture was anything worse than awkward. Except it had been.