After Eccles left, I sat on the sand and tried to clear my head. Within a few minutes I witnessed another episode of eagle-induced chaos out on Three Arch Rocks. Hundreds of birds lifted from the bird sanctuary in a raucous cacophony of fear. The eagle circled the largest of the rocks in a leisurely manner, orbiting the cloud of seabirds for a while before coasting down for its next meal. “Time to move,” I told myself. “Unless you want to be eaten alive.”
I walked back up the hill to my house and then drove over to Emily’s neighborhood. I knew that Emily was at work, but I was curious about what her neighborhood was like during the day. I parked on the other end of the street from her house, sat on the flattened seat of my Mustang for several hours, and I tried to stay alert. Nothing happened aside from my butt becoming numb. There was a small amount of traffic in the neighborhood. A few cars came and went. Then a maroon Chevy van went past me, tapped the brakes in front of Emily’s house, and continued on its way. I waited to see if the van would come back. It didn’t.
I waited another half hour before driving over to the Cascade Gold Creamery. I drove around the parking lot until I located Emily’s car, and I picked a slot nearby. I bypassed the self-guided tour, went directly into the creamery cafe, and ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and iced tea. I paid for my meal and took a seat at one of the tables which afforded a view of the ice cream line. I could see Emily in her server’s apron and hair net. She was friendly and gracious to every person who came through the line. The men who ordered ice cream seemed polite and non-threatening. Emily smiled from time to time. Even with the hairnet on and no makeup, she was a looker.
The other server in the ice cream line had bronzed skin and straight black hair. He looked young enough to be in high school. I didn’t see any customers or co-workers loitering or staring at Emily. After twenty minutes, I left the restaurant and went back over to Emily’s neighborhood. I sat in my car for several hours until Emily came home, and then watched her house for another hour before finally succumbing to the twin tortures of my full bladder and my empty stomach and going home. The maroon van never returned.
When I got home, there was a red Camaro SS with Texas license plates parked outside of my house. I carefully pulled around the Camaro and parked against the curb. I could hear music coming from inside my house. I got the thirty-eight police special from the glove box and held it against my leg as I opened the front door. Eminem’s Lose Yourself was thumping from the stereo. A woman with a narrow waist, an oversized top, and thighs that looked powerful enough to crush coconuts was doing push-ups in front of the stereo. She wore a hot pink exercise thong that looked too small, and she had a shotgun leaning against the sofa.
I turned the volume down on the stereo.
“Sandy,” I said. “We meet again.”
“Hey there, superman,” she said, pausing in the middle of a push-up to look my way. Then she pushed off hard against the floor and popped to her feet. I was wrong about the exercise thong. It was much, much too small. Manners would dictate that I not stare, but it was impossible not to. She picked a towel off the sofa and wiped the sweat from her face. Her blond hair had grown out since the last time we’d seen each other. It was shoulder length now, and fell in delicate corkscrews.
“I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in. You’re looking well,” she said. “Beach life seems to suit you.”
“You’re looking very … fit,” I said.
“You’ll make a girl blush with talk like that,” she said.
“I think it would take a lot more than that to make you blush.”
“I’m as delicate as a hothouse flower,” she said in an exaggerated southern belle accent. She blinked her eyelashes rapidly for effect. “I’m going to take a shower and put my hoop skirt on. You can put your dress uniform on and take me to the officer’s cotillion tonight.”
“Can you wear a bustle with a hoop skirt?” I asked. “I always wanted to take a girl wearing a bustle to a dance.”
“I think hoop skirts and bustles are mutually exclusive, but do you really think I need a bustle?”
She turned around and showed me her backside, cranking one hip out theatrically to flex the oversized muscles on one perfectly rounded gluteus maximus.
“I think you have the bustle problem covered already,” I said.
“I’ll take that in the spirit I’m sure it was intended,” she said. “It’s shower time.” She put the towel over her shoulder, picked up the shotgun, and headed for her bedroom.
As she walked across the living room I said “How did you get in?”
She stopped and turned slightly in my direction. I could see the well-defined outlines of the muscles in her back produced by years of dedicated weightlifting. The shotgun dangled casually from her right hand by the pistol grip. “The front door was locked, so I climbed over the rail onto the deck. The sliding glass door was unlocked, so I let myself in. You should put a piece of wood in the track for that slider so it can’t be forced open by undesirables.”
“I’ll do that,” I said.
“You’re glad I’m here, aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Okay. Just wanted to be sure. You’re hard to read sometimes.”
Then she shrugged and went into her bedroom. A couple minutes later, I was standing by the sink when she came back out with a towel wrapped around her. It must have been a challenge for her to adjust the towel for maximum modesty. Like the thong, the towel was simultaneously too small to cover her figure and perfectly sized to maximize the appeal of her feminine attributes.
She gave me a small smile as she went into the bathroom and closed the door. I was left alone in the kitchen with the thirty-eight on the countertop and Eminem still playing through the stereo.