The Most Wanted

  There was a bed in there, a bed the size of Utah, though clearly made before anyone except actual kings used the term “king-sized.”

  “Hey,” Charley said.

  “Hey yourself.”

  “This is a really old bed,” I said.

  “Really old, and really big.”

  “I didn’t know they had beds like that then,” I said, running my fingers across scuffs and dabs left over from an apparent attempt to paint it blue. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, with four curved posts topped with smooth orbs the size of softballs.

  “Must have been for a really big person,” Charley said. “Or two really big people.” He turned to me. “Hi, Annie. You look like you been rode hard and put away wet.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me if Arley’s okay?”

  “You wouldn’t be here if Arley wasn’t okay.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask about the baby?”

  He smiled broadly, looking up from the peg he was gently pounding into one of the sideboards. “Tell me all about the baby,” he said.

  “She’s perfect.”

  “Ahhh . . . she.”

  “Yes,” I said, “and I am pretty terrific also, although not too calm. . . .” He held out his arms, and I walked into them, pillowing my head on his chest. The top of my head fit just under his chin, as I had imagined it would. “I haven’t slept in thirty hours, Charley. I’m, as they say, packing a piece. I’m probably being followed by a killer who thinks I’m keeping his wife from—”

  “I heard about that.”

  “And I just helped a fifteen-year-old give birth to an eight-pound baby girl.”

  “Named?”

  “Desiree.”

  “Ahh. No, Desiree Anne.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Just a hunch.”

  “She told you.”

  “Arley loves you, Anne,” Charley said, pulling off his bandanna. “She’s lucky to have you.” I lifted my face and we kissed, adjusted and kissed again, our mouths encountering each other like old friends learning that nothing much had changed since the last time they were together.

  “And there is,” I said, into Charley’s half-open mouth, “this one other thing.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is you, Charley. What am I going to do about you?”

  “Do you want a beer?”

  “Uh, sure. But wait a minute. I just kissed you. Do you think this is a good idea?”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s one of the things you have to worry about.”

  “You don’t?” I cried, standing back from him. “You don’t?”

  “No, I don’t,” Charley said, and then he made a sort of bow, and a flourish with his hammer. “And now a historic first! Anne, this gorgeous bed isn’t going to cost you a little more! It’s going to cost you a little less! It’s going to cost you—and this is the only time you’ll ever hear me say this, Anne—nothing!”

  “Charley, be serious.”

  “I am serious. It’s not going to cost a thing.”

  “I don’t mean about that.” I fit myself back into his arms, and he let his wrists slide slowly and softly down my back. “Okay, I’ll bite. How come this gorgeous bed is going to cost me nothing?”

  “I got it from a family down the street who were throwing it out. Couldn’t bear the memories of their mother’s last illness in it. . . .”

  “Right in it? And what was it, bubonic plague?”

  “She died of old age. Peacefully. And the mattress was new the year before.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that! What about those sheets?”

  “Those were an extra set. But they’re probably as old as the bed. Hand stitched. Like it?”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Well, I thought it belonged here.”

  “Thank you, Charley.”

  He kissed me again then, a longer, more confident kiss, a kiss with intentions. We rocked together, nearly losing our balance, turning our faces this way and that to get deeper. I felt Charley reach down and free my blouse, his hand sliding gently underneath to cup my breast. We sat down on the bed. Then he unbuttoned his shirt, and I noticed what looked like a tangled squirrels’ nest made of glossy green leaves flung over the carved headboard. “Funeral flowers thrown in as a bonus?” I asked.

  “It’s mistletoe.”

  “Witchcraft?”

  “No, you know. At Christmas, people hang mistletoe in the hall, and whoever stands under it gets a kiss.”

  “Charley, I do know that much about Christmas. But this isn’t Christmas.”

  “I know.”

  “And if somebody was going to be kissed under that mistletoe, the somebody would have to be lying down.”

  “Right. That was my idea.”

  “But you didn’t even know I was going to come here tonight.”

  “I knew—well, I hoped—you’d come here eventually. It didn’t have to be tonight.” We lay down, and he kissed me again, balletically removing my jeans, my bra, even my socks. He drew the hand-stitched sheet, water cool, up over my hips. I reached to open his belt.

  “Charley,” I said, “this isn’t something we should do.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay?”

  “I thought you and I had the same feelings, or I wouldn’t have let you kiss me.”

  “Let me kiss you? You were the one who kissed me! Don’t get the impression this was all my idea. . . .”

  “You don’t want this?”

  “I . . . yes, I do. But I’m . . . I’m marrying Stuart.”

  “You are,” he said. “Are you.”

  “I am. I think. He . . . he agreed. He said he’d have a child, if that was what I had to have.” Charley kissed me again, more urgently, stroked my belly, and gently dipped his fingers into me, one by one. It was disconcerting. It took my mind off things. “But, Charley, he doesn’t really want to get married . . . he just doesn’t want to lose me . . .”

  “I wouldn’t want to lose you.”

  “And he doesn’t want kids. He just agreed to it.”

  “You don’t have to want to, to be good at it.”

  “But you said—you had to want it more than . . .”

  “I said that for me, it had to be the thing you wanted more than anything else. Not for everybody.”

  “Do you want more children?”

  “More than anything. When I find a woman I want more than anything.”

  “You mean me? But, Charley, I’m forty. I don’t know if I have time to have more than one baby. . . .”

  “We don’t have to have all the babies. Just one. Or two.”

  “Charley, I’m so much older. . . .”

  “That’s supposed to be a good deal for a woman.”

  “But . . .”

  “It means I’ll be able to keep up with you.”

  “It’s nuts.”

  “Do you want to sit up and talk, Anne?”

  “Not really.”

  We settled back down, and I opened my eyes to take in Charley’s work-chiseled body, the reddish tufts on his chest, the lathe-turned muscles of his legs as he removed his pants. Naked, he rolled his leg between mine, and helplessly, I began to chafe myself against him, vibrating, tightening.

  “Listen,” I said then.

  Charley sighed.

  “Wait. Just please listen. Arley had a baby tonight, which was mostly a terrible mistake. But also, somehow, something that makes everything else in the world feel . . . possible. You know?”

  A life warrant, I thought.

  But I didn’t say it. I kissed Charley and said nothing.

  “Annie,” Charley whispered, “I know. I know.”

  “And we don’t have any birth control.”

  “I didn’t think we needed any.”

  “You mean, we’re going to just . . . ?”

  “Just hope for the best.”

  “But I’m not like that! I’ve spent my whole life dealing with what??
?s left over from reckless behavior. That’s what I do. I’m not reckless, Charley.”

  “I’m not reckless, either, Annie. I’m not irresponsible and I’m not a kid. If I make you pregnant tonight, I’ll be a good father. And if you’ll let me, a good husband too.”

  “Husband? Husband?”

  As it happened, I did not get pregnant, not then. Though not from lack of trying.

  Just as well: I wouldn’t have known who the father was. Stuart had left for Florida only three days before. Three days in which so much had transpired—so much that was outside our life together—that our life together felt distant.

  My God—I hadn’t even told Stuart about Desi.

  Charley was up before me, whistling, brushing his teeth with a brush he got out of the downstairs bathroom. What else did he keep here that I had never noticed? I sat cross-legged on the bed, trying to get my mind around things, trying to rationalize what looked sleazy in the morning light. I had, after all, never even seen the inside of this man’s house! What if it was as bad as his rattletrap truck? What if he had no house at all and was just screwing me for a place to stay?

  I got up, kissed Charley good-bye, went back to my apartment, and burst into tears. I left a message on Rachael’s answering machine, telling her in sister code—in case a nephew should press the button—what I’d done. I was glad Rachael wasn’t there, not because I didn’t think she’d treat me gently—I knew she would—but because I was ashamed. Still crying, I began scrubbing counters, and when the phone rang, I almost didn’t pick up, thinking it would be Charley or Stuart. But it wasn’t either of them. It was Jeanine, who said she’d been looking for me everywhere.

  “You have to move Arley,” she told me.

  “Well, the house should be ready in a few months, maybe less. Charley’s really working at it, and he’s getting help. . . .”

  Charley.

  Charley kneeling on the bed. Pulling me to him, my legs a wishbone.

  “It has to be sooner than that.”

  “Well, with the help he’s getting—”

  “It has to be tonight.”

  “Jeanine!”

  “It has to be.”

  “Jeanine, Arley gave birth eight hours ago.”

  “Okay, tomorrow.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A couple of things. None of which means I don’t love you, or Arley, or even Arley’s baby.”

  “Cut to the chase, Jeanine.”

  “Jack thinks, and I think, and the agency thinks—”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. . . .”

  “Cut that out, Annie. Just listen.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  Jack and Jeanine and her adoption agency, it turned out, thought a couple of things. They thought Arley might not be safe at the apartment, even though, technically, no one was supposed to know she lived there and, theoretically at least, Dillon didn’t know it, either. But there were other risks to consider. Like the safety of the other birth mothers and their children, for one. The fact that Jeanine no longer had any justification, however fragile, for giving Arley shelter at The Terrace—since she clearly was not going to offer Desiree for an adoption placement—was another. Not to mention, and Jeanine didn’t, the fact that she shouldn’t have housed Arley at The Terrace in the first place.

  I understood. But I had no idea where to turn.

  “Now, don’t worry,” Jeanine was saying. “I’m sure we can sort something out.”

  “She’ll just have to come to my place,” I told her flatly.

  “That’s not a good idea. You know it isn’t. You know he’s got to know exactly where you live.”

  “We could take her to her mother’s. I hear she’s got an empty room.”

  “Nice, Anne.”

  “Well, a hotel, then. If the police are so concerned about her, how about a hotel? In, say, Vancouver?”

  “We’ll think of something.”

  “I should be over there right now. She’s going to see a TV any minute. Or a newspaper.”

  “I don’t think she’s going to be thinking about TV or newspapers this morning.”

  “Someone’s going to tell her.”

  “Well, why don’t you go over there, then? What are you doing?”

  “I’m cleaning the counters.”

  “Why?”

  I started to cry again and fought a serious urge to tell Jeanine everything. Fortunately, she spoke before I could. “I’ll come over in a little while, and we’ll figure it out.”

  That day, I did see the inside of Charley Wilder’s house. It was clean, basic. Well, primitive. Arley and the baby slept in the bedroom little Claude usually used, where a futon on the floor looked up on a ceiling of mother and baby frogs on lily pads. Charley and I slept atop the quilt on his bed, which had a headboard he’d made himself from a slab of petrified wood.

  Not that anyone slept much. Thin wails from newborn Desi, the new calculus between Charley and me, the undercurrent of unease and threat . . . we all acted like transients laid over in a bus depot, our slumber shallow and tense. Charley and I didn’t make love. It would have been unseemly.

  But in the morning, Jeanine came with good news. Her father was a minister, who’d once mentored a wealthy parishioner’s son back home after he’d run away. In gratitude, the man, a rancher named Mallory, had given Jeanine’s dad keys to one of his three vacation homes, a hunting cabin in the hill country. He’d also given him carte blanche about using it. Jeanine’s dad had called his friend and told him about Arley. And Mallory said the child was welcome.

  “It has everything she needs, and it’s clean, and there are good neighbors in the fancy houses right up on the ridge,” Jeanine said. “And nobody could find it. Even my dad can’t find it half the time, and he used to take us out there all the time when we were kids.”

  “Will she be safe there, Jeanine?” I asked.

  “She’ll be fine. It’s only about a half hour from here, you know, by Uvalde. Jack’s parents live out near there, in the woods.”

  “What about wildlife? Coyotes and stuff?”

  “She’s not going to be bothered by coyotes, Anne. And the only wildlife in those woods are quail and people who live in those little tar-paper shanties . . .”

  “What? Which people?”

  “Like, hippies, Anne. Guys who want to be like Thoreau. Except not as . . . successful.”

  “What if they’re dangerous?”

  “Anne, the biggest danger to Arley right now is her own husband.”

  That was a fact. But the cabin turned out to be a miracle; it redeemed Jeanine entirely for ejecting Arley from The Terrace. She and I drove out there, with a trunk full of baby supplies.

  Then, I had to go back to the hospital. I couldn’t postpone telling Arley the truth any longer.

  She was nursing. Awkwardly, but gamely, she kept readjusting the baby’s head, which was round and rosy as an Indian River grapefruit. Arley beamed at me. “She’s got the right idea but the wrong area. She’s not good at geography either.”

  “Arley.”

  She heard it in my voice. And she shut down. The peculiar flatness she seemed able to summon at will took over, as it seemed always to do when she sensed bad news on the way.

  “Dillon, right?”

  “Honey, we aren’t sure.”

  “Did he rob somebody or something?”

  “Arley, look at me.”

  She looked up. Her lips were deliberately firm; but a wince, a momentary request for mercy, crossed her face at the lines of her eyes. “What?”

  “Your sister, Langtry. She’s . . . she’s gone, Arley.”

  “You mean, she disappeared? Because that’s no big deal, Annie, Langtry was always one to take off. . . .”

  “She didn’t take off. They think someone took her. Kidnapped her. She was in her room . . .”

  “My room.”

  “Arley.”

  “Okay.”

  “She was in her roo
m and the police think it’s possible someone broke in and . . . there was blood on the wall. . . .”

  “Hurt her?”

  “They think someone must have hurt her.”

  “Killed her?”

  “We don’t know for sure; she could have just been hurt. It might not even be her blood. They’re testing the samples now. . . .”

  “They think Dillon did it.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “They think he was looking for me.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said quickly, moving to put my arms around her.

  “I’m not afraid!” she cried, pushing my arms back, holding Desi close to her chest. “I’m not afraid!! It just makes me sick is all! It’s fixing to make me hate my baby, and I love my baby! No . . . !” She went on fiercely, as I tried again to touch her.

  “You’re going to be okay, Arley. We’re going to take you to a safe place . . .”

  “I have my apartment.”

  “That’s the thing. The police think, and Jeanine thinks, that you won’t be safe there, if this is as bad as it seems.”

  “Annie,” she said softly, suddenly just a child. “That’s my own place. . . . please . . . you tell them . . .”

  “There’s a pretty cabin in the woods, Arley. You’ll be safe there until the house is all ready. Charley says it will be real soon.” I was talking to her as though she were three, and I was embarrassed by the Mister Rogers lilt in my voice. “There’s a porch swing, and a yard to walk in with the baby.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, I’m grateful. It just doesn’t matter.”

  “So we have to go. As soon as the FBI agent gets a chance to talk to you.”

  “I don’t know a single thing. There’s nothing to talk to me about.”

  “She still has to talk to you.”

  “You mean we have to leave today?”

  “Yes, Arley.”

  “I just had a baby! I’m all . . . sore! What if the baby gets sick?”

  “Doctor Carroll says she’ll be just fine. And so will you. You’re young and strong. . . .”

  “Well, I don’t believe Dillon did any of this stuff. And if he did, he’s just . . . he’s evil. He’s a punk and a liar. And he’ll never see our baby, never.” Arley raised her head, and I could see her forehead glistened with sweat. “Annie, do you think she’s okay?”