Devoted(105)
Her long, graceful fingers tightened around his hands. “What next step, Woody?”
“It’s nothing scary,” he assured her. “I just need some time to practice, to be sure I can do it right. I’m going to practice real hard. But before then, I just wanted to tell you.”
Into his silence, she said, “Tell me what, honey?”
He knew the words he wanted to say, for he had said them to her when first he’d been able to speak after his long silence, but words were only part of it, the smaller part. Woody closed his eyes and gathered all of his feelings about her: his recognition of her love for him, of her sorrow over the loss of his father, of her grace and profound tenderness, of her devotion and commitment to him, of the sacrifices she had made for him, of her talent as an artist and a pianist, of her great heart and the purity of her intentions. He took all those bright truths about her and all the emotions they evoked in him, and he wove them into a radiant fabric and wrapped them around fourteen words—You are an angel on earth, and I love you with all my heart—and he transmitted everything to her with the same gentle but irresistible force that Bella used when she sent one of her Bellagrams.
The Wire had existed for thousands of years. No one knew how long. Before they’d had a word for it, without even thinking about it, dogs had used the Wire long before undergoing a rapid expansion of their intelligence, had used it in a primitive way: to establish their territories, to warn one another of threats, to alert one another to a richness of prey to be chased down. The Wire, which might simply be labeled “telepathy,” had been part of that fund of knowledge called “instinct.” There were four kinds of knowledge: what was taught, what was learned from experience, what was intuitively known, and matters of instinct coded in the genes.
Having trusted in their instinct far more than human beings did, dogs had been prepared to use the Wire in a more sophisticated fashion when their intelligence reached a level at which they could understand how the gift could be better employed. In Woody’s case, he was unaware that the Wire waited in him for his benefit, and he unwittingly transmitted on it when his inability to speak had left him no other outlet in those hours when he’d been seized by despair, terror, and blind panic. But since the Wire was part of his genetic package of instinctive knowledge, surely every human being on the planet had the same potential to be telepathic.
And so he used the Wire to send his mother this valentine in September. He watched her eyes grow wide, wider than he had ever seen them, and he heard her breath catch in her throat, and he felt her hands tighten again on his, and he saw her tears come. She had cried earlier, too, when she heard his voice for the first time and he said he loved her. She was pierced more profoundly, however, by the power of the Wire and all that it could carry in addition to words. This time was different also because Woody wept, lifted by the message of undying love that she returned to him on the Wire, through the connection he’d opened for her.
During the 164 weeks since his dad died, his mom had on occasion caught him in tears. He always smiled and gave her a thumbs-up sign and, by other means, deceived her into thinking his were happy tears. But no lie, regardless of how well intended, could deceive in telepathic communication, because the truth of the sender’s motives was inextricably bound up in the emotions that were transmitted with the words. Now Woody’s mother knew that the tears he’d shed before had been in grief, but that these were truly tears of joy.
Suddenly she understood everything that had happened, realized what it meant, what must eventually happen, and she wired him, OMG, baby boy, you’ve just scared the hell out of me.
He knew exactly what she meant. She didn’t mean scared in a bad way. She meant the kind of scared that a dirt-poor person might feel if he won a billion dollars in the lottery and understood that nothing would ever be the same.
115
When the sheriff came out of the bathroom, naked and ready, Rita was still fully clothed, sipping cabernet. She gave him a full glass of wine and sat him on the edge of the bed and then slowly undressed for him.
For Hayden Eckman, watching Rita undress was as thrilling as what would follow. Avoiding the theatricality of a stripper, she removed each article of clothing slowly but with crisp efficiency and with a challenging stare that said, I am the law, mister, and you’re going to do just what I want. As a teenager who found girls as mystifying as they found him impossible, Hayden lived with his mother next door to Mr. and Mrs. Dowling, who were police officers. His adolescent lust was so intensely focused on Joyce Dowling, whom he watched through binoculars when she was sunbathing in her backyard, that he never quite got over her. The only thing that would have made Rita’s striptease more thrilling would have been if she had been in uniform and if her name had been Joyce.
Now, the sheriff put aside his half-finished glass of wine and welcomed Rita into his bed. She was lithe, lubricious, more ravenous than ever, she could not get enough of him, she was a sex machine, the ride was better than anything in his experience—until he fell asleep under her.
He woke in some confusion, for although he was naked, he was no longer in bed. He was instead in the bathtub. The water was cold. He was shivering.
Rita, now fully clothed, sat on the closed lid of the toilet, watching him.
Standing in the bathroom doorway, Deputy Andy Argento said, “Hey, he’s awake. That’s not supposed to happen.”