Love Love (18 page)

“It's all right.” Kevin embraced her once more. “I'll be back before you know it.”

She was always the one left behind: her mother, then Brian, now her brother. Leaving someone was a lesser form of death, wasn't it? Because the fact was, when Kevin walked away from her, he would be gone from her life for the next eight days. For all she knew, he could very well be dead the second he stepped off the plane, fall flat on his face from a brain aneurysm. When the automatic doors of the terminal parted and Kevin gave her a thumbs-up, she felt another wave welling up from her chest.

Even though Kevin had satellite radio in his car, Judy kept it off on the drive back and listened to the tires cutting through rain, the occasional swoosh of the passing vehicle. The reflectors embedded in the yellow median of Interstate 78 glowed in the wetness, and slipstreaming through the black highway stretched out in front of her, she was fine, in a buoyant mood, even. She'd always liked Kevin's old house, which was way roomier than her one-bedroom apartment, and this was gonna be like a vacation, especially with Roger visiting. Actually, that was what she was supposed to ask on the drive up, if that was okay with Kevin, but why wouldn't it be okay? As long as she changed the sheets at the end, who gave a shit?

What she liked most about his 160-year-old house was the first floor, which was preserved in its original configuration and materials: tongue-and-groove walls, pumpkin pine floorboards that stretched twenty feet long, a pair of wooden columns supporting the structure that looked hand-chiseled. Sitting in his living room was like being transported to
Little House on the Prairie
times, the very definition of quaint. It was drafty as hell, but right now, the nights didn't get colder than fifty degrees, so she'd be fine wrapped up in a down blanket. She'd borrowed a couple of DVD sets of TV shows from the library and couldn't wait to start vegging out.

What she liked least about his house was its location. He lived minutes from the main drag of Harmony, but once she made the mountainous drive up Coleman Hill Road, it was Unabomber country. Even though she'd driven to his house at least a dozen times, she still had to keep an eye on the trip meter after passing the sign for the dairy farm, because otherwise, she'd miss the quick left turn. Which she just did.

“Goddamnit,” Judy said, and she spun a U-turn.

The place was creepy dark at night, but when she pulled into the gravel driveway, the motion floods thankfully kicked in. Kevin had replaced all his regular bulbs with low-energy compact fluorescents everywhere in the house, so she'd just leave them all on. She felt like a little kid for thinking like this, but she'd never been a fan of rural areas. Even though she hardly knew her neighbor in her apartment complex, their proximity trumped their anonymity. When she killed the engine and stepped out of Kevin's car, the trilling of insects was as disturbing as a continuous scream.

Judy hurried from the car to the door and almost ran into the garbage can, which had been pulled out from the side of the house and left directly in her path. Kevin must've done that to make sure she pulled it out to the curb, not so much for this week but the next one, because he assumed she would forget otherwise. She thought about not doing it just to spite him, but it was overflowing. She could conceivably do it in the morning, but as she recalled her brother's instructions, the garbage truck came at six.

She pulled the handle and dragged the hulking vat of plastic down the driveway. In the distance, something howled. After pulling it halfway, she had to pause to catch her breath and felt a twinge in her left ankle. Fantastic—she probably tweaked something. She felt
it again, and now she heard a noise cutting through the fallen leaves. It sounded sort of like those rumba shakers that the teacher shook in the modern dance class she took last year, except it was at a faster beat. And there it was again, coming from somewhere below, and then she saw it, a shiny long thing slowly slithering away from underneath the wheels of the garbage can.

She'd never seen a snake in the wild before, and strangely enough, her first reaction was one of admiration. It must've been at least five feet long, and under the faint light of the crescent moon peeking through the rain clouds, its sleek, smooth skin sparkled like metal. And then there was the sound again, the rattle, and the twinge Judy had felt in her ankle turned to a numb sort of burning, and now the full realization of what just happened shocked her cold. She backed away and circled wide of the snake and stumbled to the front door and dropped her brother's ring of keys as she tried to unlock it because her hands were shaking so badly and her entire right foot now tingled like it had gone to sleep and was it panic or venom that made her breathing so fast?

She fumbled open the door and felt for the light switch.

How long did it take for this poison to work through her body? Was she supposed to suck it out? Everything was blurry—was her vision affected? No, it was tears, tears of fear. She had to get herself under control. Even if she were to scream until her voice box blew, no one would hear her because her stupid brother lived in the middle of fucking nowhere.

She wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. It was still possible that all this was a psychosomatic reaction to looking at the snake, that what happened was nothing more than a muscle strain from dragging that garbage can. She sat on the floor and reached for her ankle—if only she'd worn her black leather boots—and saw what she already knew. There were three sets of bite marks, tiny red eyes looking back at her. She'd been bitten not once, not twice, but three times. How was that even possible? Did the snake have three heads?

Judy felt a strong vibration on the inside of her hips, and the sensation was like nothing she'd experienced before. What was happening to her? And as quickly as it came, now it was gone. And then again it was there, like a warning, stronger than ever. She tentatively put her hand on her hip and found a hard, round nodule—her cell phone.

Maybe it would be funny later, but right now, her emotions jumped from terror to relief. It was the alarm she'd set for herself, but what was it for? No matter—she dialed 911.

“Nine-one-one, what's your emergency?”

Now her lips were tingly, too, and her fingers felt fat and slow.

“A rattlesnake bit me,” she said, “three times.”

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Judy Lee.”

“Do you need an ambulance?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“In my brother's house,” she said. As soon as she'd said it, she realized how idiotic her response was. But the dispatcher wasn't fazed.

“Can you give me an exact address?”

She knew it was on Buckhorn, but for the life of her—and it might very well be her life—she couldn't remember the number. She'd always hated math in school, all those numerals and operations and variables and angles a frustrating mystery to her.

“Miss Judy? Can you tell me the house number and the town?”

The woman's voice was getting softer, as if she were on the radio and the volume knob was turning down. It seemed to Judy as if she were no longer here, that she was watching what was going on from elsewhere.

“The town is Harmony. The street is Buckhorn Drive. It's one mile from the sign for Makepeace Farms. There are two cows sitting in lawn chairs. On the sign, not actually. Sixteen. That's the house number.”

“Okay, Miss Judy. The ambulance is on its way.”

“That's good,” Judy said. And it was. Maybe that meant she wouldn't die alone. “Are you allowed to stay on with me, or do you have to go?”

“I'll stay with you until the paramedics arrive,” she said. The woman had a deep, reassuring voice. As Judy closed her eyes and felt the faint rhythm of her own heartbeat, her ears filling with something between a bee's buzzing and white noise, she thought back to her mother. When she'd been a child, the best part of getting sick was having her mother at her bedside, her concerned face hovering over Judy's. That was so long ago, and yet it seemed so very real. If she reached out, Judy was certain she would touch her.

PART II

THE MONTH OF OCTOBER

 

14

W
ith his rolling suitcase in tow, Kevin stood at the foot of Powell Street and considered the hill ahead of him, and the hill above that one. Who in their right mind would build a city on terrain like this? But build it they did. None of the surrounding structures were as tall as the skyscrapers of Manhattan, but like any big city, every conceivable space was occupied by restaurants and stores and galleries and, of course, Starbucks.

Twenty-five years ago, his mother was attending a weekend conference for Korean translators in San Raphael, and his father had gifted an airline ticket to Kevin. He didn't think it was such a great trip, but his opinion changed the night his mother drove them across the Golden Gate Bridge and down Lombard Street. To go from the vertiginous expanse of that suspension bridge to the ski slope–inspired one-way road—this wasn't a city, it was an amusement park. Kevin had never been so far away from home with just his mother, and as they walked down Fisherman's Wharf, past the crying cluster of sea lions and the bright beacon of Alcatraz, she seemed more like a friend than his mother. He accompanied her to her sessions held in the hotel ballroom, and they ate lunch together with her colleagues. He'd never felt more grown up.

He wished his mother were here now, for a variety of reasons, but mostly so they could revisit these streets. After crossing three intersections, Kevin's heart pounded and his calves burned, a shameful surprise since he was technically still an athlete. He paused in front of what looked like a park: palm trees swayed in the October breeze, a tourist posed next to a heart-shaped metallic sculpture, and rectangular patches of grass sprouted in between concrete stairs that led up to a stage where people danced the tango. As Kevin neared them, he heard a trio of musicians in the corner, a violin, a keyboard,
and a man squeezing a palm-size cousin of the accordion. Couples twirled about the dance floor, one of them having gone all out, the pencil-thin mustached man wearing a one-piece all-black suit like an ice skater while the woman was in a skin-tight red dress with ruffles. Her hair was pulled into a bun, and when they touched their cheeks together and marched in lock step with their hands clasped and arms extended, the audience clapped and whooped.

Watching them, Kevin recalled the time he and Alice enrolled in the beginner dance class at the studio located in a strip mall. The place was called It Takes Two, and before it was a studio, it had been a candle shop, and even though nothing of the old store remained, the smell of those candles lingered on. Depending on where they stood, a different scent would assault them: vanilla near the entrance, cinnamon by the water cooler, a bouquet of roses by the stage where the teacher demonstrated the dance of the evening. The class had been an anniversary gift to her, and what he remembered most was watching Alice dance with other men. That was something the teacher had insisted on, that they switch partners to get acquainted not with the people but with the moves. Even though Kevin had never taken a single dance lesson, he was good at it, nimble on his feet and loose with his hips. Tennis required muscle control, the execution of small steps at a much quicker pace than introductory dancing. The women complimented him as he waltzed and jitterbugged and swung, but Kevin found himself time and again looking across the room for Alice in another's arms, laughing and twirling like a stranger. What he felt wasn't jealousy but rather curiosity. Seeing her with another man was a pleasantly dislocating sensation, as if he were in a parallel universe where they had yet to meet. It was exciting to pretend they could start over, that they could somehow do it better this time around. When it was his turn to reunite with Alice, she took his hand, and he pulled her close to him.