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Disclaimer: All characters and events in this story are fictitious, and any similarity to a real person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and unintended by the author. "The Pretender" is a protected trademark of MTM Television and NBC and the characters of that series are used herein with no mean intent or desire for remuneration. It is, instead, a tribute to innovative television, that rare and welcome phenomenon.
The Third Highway Series Part 10:
Little Wonder
Chapter 1
Witch1
DSA: date, 12/15/71.
The huge fans that were duplicating wind were set up facing twelve-year old Jarod, and the sim lab was chilled and pitch dark. He stood perched at the end of a catwalk set up above a large, circular trampoline, looking so very small. Sydney pushed that thought away: too emotional, it had no bearing on the experiment in progress.
"You're at ten thousand feet over the Cascade mountains in Washington State, Jarod. It's the night of November twenty-fourth. In the attaché case is two hundred thousand dollars in cash. You've high-jacked the plane and let the passengers off in Seattle. You've let down the tail stairway and you're getting ready to jump. Are you ready, Jarod?" Sydney asked, practically shouting to be heard over the fake "wind". The simulation was going perfectly, as was always the case with Jarod.
But Jarod's reply was unexpectedly agitated: "Sydney, I can't--it's too scary. The height. I didn't expect so much wind."
"The 727 was traveling at two hundred miles per hour, Jarod--you know that. The air temperature was seven degrees below zero," Sydney explained. It wasn't like Jarod to not have all the facts memorized--Sydney suspected the confusion was something he was reading from the simulation.
"But the cold--it's not what I thought. The wind chill would have been seventy degrees below zero. And the dark. Sydney, don't you see: he couldn't have done this at all if he didn't know what he was doing. No one could bring themselves to make this jump if they weren't mentally and physically prepared."
The answer surprised Sydney: the sim was going in a different direction than he had imagined. It had seemed, to him, like a cut-and-dried case. Jarod, however, clearly had a different spin on it. And it was these sorts of anomalies that interested Sydney the most.
"But suppose he was insane, Jarod, a desperate man," Sydney asked. "There is considerable speculation that this 'D. B. Cooper', whoever he really was, had no idea what he was facing --"
But Jarod interrupted him with an impatient toss of his head. Although still a young boy, Jarod had already shifted the balance of power during sims. He knew he was actually the one in control. "No," he told Sydney matter-of-factly. "He was prepared. He'd practiced the jump. It's not what it looks like. He was calm. He knew the odds, Sydney. I think he survived."
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Present day.
Somewhere over Wilbur, Eastern Washington
Until he was actually standing in the plane's open doorway, looking right down through 12,000 feet of hazy space at the vague patchwork of land below--and trying desperately, after that first timid glance, never to look down again--the reality of what he was about to do hadn't sunk in for Alex. It was one thing to contemplate jumping out of an airplane, one thing to listen to Jarod's patient, repeated instructions, but quite another, it turned out, to actually pry his fingers off the doorframe and step out into space.
He was aware of Jarod poised behind him, of the unexpectedly brutal rush of air just inches away, of his own thumping heartbeat. And suddenly conscious, as well, of a deeply hidden, half-formed thought that was floating untethered in his mind: that he could, if he wished, choose not to open the parachute. He could simply allow himself to die--which seemed very different from literal suicide. The awareness that the thought was there at all, that it had been drifting about in his mind for quite some time, was not making it any easier to let go of the doorframe.
It was all because of Laura, of course, of her and Jarod and the sick and empty way he'd felt ever since they'd returned from rescuing Jarod in Delaware. Jarod had been a mess, at first. Alex never did get a clear explanation of exactly who had done precisely what to Jarod, or why, but he'd seen the results and it hadn't looked good. Whatever else had happened, Jarod had been beaten within an inch of his life. It hadn't been hard to feel sympathy for the guy.
Then there had been Laura, who'd gotten completely hysterical on the plane when Jarod had fallen into such a deep sleep she couldn't wake him. He'd simply been utterly exhausted, of course, and, Alex suspected, sexually satiated. Alex had noticed the way Laura looked at Jarod instantly, the way she couldn't seem to keep from touching him, and he'd hated it immediately. They'd been together on the jet with just a completely exhausted and sleeping Angela as chaperone, and Alex could imagine very clearly what had probably happened between Laura and Jarod during that time. In fact, that mental image had been driving Alex nuts ever since. But whatever they'd been up to, once Jarod was asleep Laura hadn't been able to stop crying, even after they'd landed in Seattle and driven the still-groggy Jarod back to Laura's private island. So Alex had stayed that night, since he'd already been awake for well over twenty-four hours, tactfully moving his clothes into a guest room while Jarod was ensconced in Laura's big bed. And then he'd stayed a few more days, while Jarod was recovering, out of real concern for Laura, who kept having attacks of uncontrollable tears: crying jags that totally pissed her off, so that she was incoherently hysterical and mad as hell at the same time.
And then, one morning, Jarod was not only back on his feet, he was shaking Alex awake at five in the morning, insisting he go skiing with him and Paul, Laura's gun-obsessed security guy. Which he'd done, and had a great time. It was the first time Alex had seen Jarod in action, and he'd been a bit stunned by Jarod's effortless skiing. Alex had grown up on ski slopes and hadn't been prepared to watch someone else to take to the snow with flawless natural technique, tireless enthusiasm and a remarkable lack of macho male competitiveness.
Alex's experience with the climate of chummy male camaraderie engendered by the required regimen of sports at boarding school, prep school and then Princeton, had taught him the importance of being good enough at sports to fit in. But all too often there was a nasty edge of one-upmanship involved, a constant current of shark-like watchfulness for any sign of weakness. He'd seen it on Wall Street, too, of course: the afternoon squash matches that glossed only the thinnest of veneers over the brutal, predatory instincts of the competitors. It had always sickened him. Well-groomed macho thugs in fifteen hundred dollar custom-tailored suits pretending to be at the pinnacle of civilization: with hearts as dark and cold as the worst medieval dungeon imaginable. They were interchangeable with whatever stereotype of male callousness you cared to invoke: blue collar bigot, Mafioso-- it was all the same. Different taste in clothes and cars and women, but the same bullshit. It was the main reason he'd thrown away the influence of his family, daring to start his own portfolio based on the I Ching, a concept so incomprehensible to his peers and family his mother had actually campaigned--unsuccessfully, as it turned out--to have him removed from The Social Register. A fauxpas she was to regret when his business became wildly successful. But Alex had seen how shallow that entire world's "loyalties" were and walked away from it without looking back. He often did fantasize, however, about introducing Laura to his mother for the pure pleasure of watching his mother's horrified response. And Laura had told him more times than he wanted to count that he wanted her mostly to absolve himself finally and completely of his blue-blood, preppy background.
What amazed and delighted Alex about Jarod was his absolute innocence of those macho posturing associated with sports: Jarod taught Paul to ski simply, clearly, with an almost incredible degree of empathy. It was almost as if Jarod BECAME Paul so that he could directly communicate how to get down the mountain not just safely, but while having a hell of a lot of fun.
Alex saw that Paul was--for lack of better words--in love with Jarod: with his competent, self-confident masculinity, his kindness, his friendship, even his slight goofiness. Jarod was fun to be with, no doubt about it, and Alex doubted Paul had ever met anyone as easy to like as Jarod. He knew he never had--even though there was a part of him that would have been much happier to loath Jarod thoroughly.
After the skiing trip the three men had fallen into an easy rhythm of working out together in Laura's huge, elaborately equipped gym together everyday, then, when a big storm blew in off the Pacific, of driving down the coast together to surf. That was something Paul had done before, but Alex hadn't, and it was his turn to be taught by Jarod with a complete lack of ego, so that almost before he knew it he was keeping up with Paul--and having a great time. Of course, neither he nor Paul could match Jarod's skill level, but never once did Jarod rub that in or even seem to notice it.
Jarod did notice, however, one regrettable moment when Alex had allowed himself to be held under by a wave without struggling--it had been stupid, unplanned, idiotic. Jarod had been at his side instantly, although Alex could have sworn they were separated by way too much ocean for that to happen, and propelled him smoothly to the surface, almost as though he'd saved drowning men many times before.
"Now that," Jarod had told him very seriously while he sputtered water and gasped, "was not a smart thing to do. I can't let that happen again."
That's all he had said. Alex had felt like a little boy who had just been lectured about the price of misbehaving. Whether Jarod somehow knew what Alex was thinking--this half- assed suicidal tendency he'd developed--he couldn't tell. Jarod never mentioned the incident again. The concept, however, that Jarod absolutely would not let harm come to him--even self-inflicted harm--took Alex's breath away in it's simplicity. He should, perhaps, have felt somehow insulted. Instead it made him respect the man even more. Laura had tried to explain about Jarod--about why and how he was different--but Alex hadn't really believed any of it until he saw Jarod fully engaged.
They went rock climbing together too, and Alex found himself swaggering a bit, pleased that his body, which had been slim and toned to begin with, now had a hardness and glow of health that made him feel younger and more confident than he had in years.
What Laura thought of all this hearty male bonding, Alex didn't know. She'd hinted repeatedly that the book they were working on together could now be finished up as email and he knew he should leave. It was a pretty bizarre living arrangement--like some lame sitcom, Laura had said--not made any easier by the fact the Laura and Jarod couldn't keep their hands off each other. It seemed every time he walked into a room they were locked in a mouth to mouth embrace and, between crying bouts, Laura had a look on her face he could only describe as sex-dazed. Plus, Jarod had what seemed like a completely unconscious habit of putting his hand possessively on Laura's posterior. It wasn't a healthy situation, the three of them living in the same house. But he was having too much fun to leave.
Now, perched in the plane's doorway, his hands clenched tightly on it's metal frame--cold even through his gloves--he couldn't help but think of Laura. And smell her and taste her, and feel her lush warm body pressed up against his, hearing her laughter and the way she moaned --
"Time for you to go, now," Jarod yelled from behind him.
"Look, Jarod," Alex shouted above the noise of the wind and the engines, "no hard feelings, right? About Laura. I mean . . . I got out of your way . . . " Suddenly it was terribly important to have this out in the open. It had also occurred to Alex that Jarod had packed his chute. No matter how nice a guy Jarod seemed to be, there was always something just a little off about him.
"Of course not," Jarod shouted back, leaning close to Alex. "No problem. All in the past."
"Water under the bridge?" Alex asked hopefully.
"Well, actually, we're in a plane over dry land," Jarod answered in that literal-minded way Alex had learned to recognize. Alex turned a bit, beginning to explain the idiom, and Jarod used the instant of his off-balance to not so much push as gently hip-check Alex right out of the plane.
Alex had just a moment of stunned rage--Jarod had pushed him!--and then it happened, instantly, as soon as he was part of the air and the plane was out of sight. "Fuck her!" he thought, the words bursting into his consciousness with the force of revelation. And that was it: he was over her. Later he would wonder if it were some sort of weird miracle, his own personal Laura-epiphany, or if Jarod somehow knew the jump would cure him. But at the time, all he felt was relief and joy and an exuberant sense of his own life, which he knew would be just fine without Laura in it. He laughed out loud, the sound carried away by the rush of air, and opened his chute.
And by the time he landed, none too gracefully, but safely, he was not only completely, totally over Laura, he was even planning a way to get even with her.
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Suquamish Island
Off the Coast of Washington State
Laura eased the oven door open gently only enough to peek inside: the pie was bubbling over a bit, but not enough to be concerned about. She closed the door with care, unsure if at this point she could somehow hinder the baking process but unwilling, considering how much effort it had taken to get the damned thing this far, to take any chances. She jumped involuntarily at Jarod's voice behind her.
"Laura?" he said. "It's four in the morning: what are you doing? Hey: something smells really good."
She just turned and looked at him and he took in the flour sifted down over her clothes-- also some on her face and in her hair, he saw--the bowl of peach pits and limp, moist, discarded peach skins on the counter, the big wooden rolling pin--
"You're baking me a peach pie!" he exclaimed, genuinely surprised. "I'll bet it's that recipe Celeste gave me in New Orleans . . . "
"Well, what do you know: you really are a genius, aren't you?" she answered dryly, clearly not amused. "And would you care to guess if I'm having fun yet?"
"I didn't mean to make you mad," he continued, "it's only I've never seen you actually use the oven before. I was beginning to think it didn't work."
Her mouth twisted into an even deeper frown. "You're just digging yourself deeper and deeper into that hole, pal."
"Deeper?" he asked, looking around as if he expected to see a literal hole opening at his feet. He looked more closely at her face. The tracks of tears were evident in the film of flour covering it, and her eyes were swollen and red. "You've been crying again," he told her. "You know, you really don't have to worry about me. What we've been doing are really simple jumps."
"I'm more worried about Alex and Paul," she told him, brushing a strand of hair out of her face and leaving, Jarod noticed, even more flour behind. "I'm not sure you realize that not everyone is like you, Jarod. I'm not altogether sure you understand how different you really are. Not everyone is so damned good at everything: hell, most people never get as good at any one thing in their whole lives as you are at everything you do, on your first try! And Alex has always been something of a klutz . . . "
"Meaning clumsy?" he asked her. He opened the oven door and breathed in deeply. "You think that, but Alex is really a very fast learner. As is Paul," he closed the door. "The pie smells great!"
"Still," Laura said, trying to stick to the subject at hand for once, "I worry. So does Angela, by the way. She was in here awhile ago moaning that she and Paul are having the best sex of their marriage since you guys started doing--you know, all this guy stuff--but she's terrified he's going to get himself killed--"
"No one's going to get killed," Jarod reassured her. "You should really come with us. I have asked you to. I could teach you. Then you'd understand."
"No thanks," she replied. "If I want to stare sheer terror in the face I can just hop in a car and drive Route 5 at peak traffic through downtown. Better yet--let you drive. I don't need any more fear in my life than that."
"But this isn't about fear, Laura, " he explained: "It's about fun."
"But sky-diving is inherently dangerous--"
"It's much safer than you think," Jarod replied. "Jumping out of planes has been done so much it's more or less perfected. Not foolproof, but close. Now, what's dangerous is jumping off THINGS . . . "
"What the hell do you mean, 'things'?" she demanded.
"It's called 'BASE jumping'. For 'Buildings, Antennas, Structures, Earth'. Sort of a poor acronym. But descriptive. As you can imagine, you aren't nearly as high when you jump. But certainly high enough to kill you. So your margin of error is really low." Jarod had found an unused peach and took a big, sloppy bite out of it. "Great peach!" he informed the stricken-looking Laura.
She was standing there, clearly stunned past words. "'Buildings'?" she finally managed to ask. "You jump off BUILDINGS?"
"Well, actually I'm working Paul and Alex up to that. They aren't ready yet. But getting there. But, yes, of course, if you mean me, personally: I've jumped off buildings. Sure. The Space Needle is a fun jump, for example," he mused, looking down at the peach in his hand contemplatively. "Interesting landing. Lots of sculpture to avoid, you know? And security, of course. A heavily patrolled site. But I prefer the 'Earth' part, which means cliffs. El Capitan, for example, was a nice jump . . . " Jarod let the thought trail off and took another bite of peach, the juice running down his chin.
"What!" Laura blurted after another moment of stunned silence. "Are you totally nuts or just fucking suicidal? Hey--be a guy, get your sick thrills however you want, but don't drag Alex and Paul along to end up squashed like bugs on the sidewalk on your whim--"
"You don't get it," her told her patiently. "It has nothing to do with 'whim'. BASE jumping requires meticulous advance planning. Researching the site. Wind and weather awareness. Special chutes, special packing. Actually, I NEED Paul and Alex, both, if for no other reason than to get me off the jump site quickly, before the cops show up." He'd finished the peach and tossed the pit into the bowl with the others. "When will the pie be done?" he asked.
She was still staring at him, however, obviously not finished with her rant. But as he waited for her next outburst, he saw tears begin to well in her dark eyes--again. Immediately followed by a flash of rage: he knew how annoyed she was by these uncharacteristic, emotional outbursts. He sympathized--he was, well, he wouldn't say obsessed with being in control, exactly, but certainly concerned with issues of control, himself--and understood how angry she was that these crying spells seemed to overpower her. Still, he had to admit that anything that distracted Laura during her anger wasn't entirely a bad thing.
"What the fuck is wrong with me?" she demanded as the first tear washed a film of flour off her cheek, leaving a darker streak of tanned skin behind.
"Nothing is wrong with you, Laura," he reassured her, "it's just a response to what happened in Delaware.'
"Let me guess," she said, "you were once a psychiatrist."
"No," he answered very seriously. "Some things are just too awful to even pretend. But you saved my life. You saw how close that was--" for only a moment he got that creepy, distant look in his eyes, thinking about what had been done to him--"You came face to face with mortality. This is just a natural human response to--"
"Natural my ass!" she blurted out between sobs. "It's total fucking bullshit is what it is! I don't cry, Jarod: I never cry! But now they play some lame ballad on the radio and I'm whimpering like some pea-brained, doe-eyed sixteen year old bimbo. We make love and I cry. We fight and I cry. I start crying in line at the goddamned grocery store for no reason at all! I'm pumping gas in the Rover and I start to cry. I'm in here at four in the freaking morning because I can't sleep--which also never used to happen--baking a goddamned pie, for Christ's sake, and I'm crying. If this is so fucking 'natural', then when the hell is it going to naturally end?"
He walked around the kitchen island and took her in his arms. "I find it rather endearing, actually," he told her. "I can kiss the tears away. Which makes me feel needed. Which isn't a bad thing."
He brushed his lips against her face, amused by the unfamiliar taste of raw flour and pleased that her tears did stop as she raised her lips to be kissed. Laura was definitely easier to deal with when her temper was softened. He hated to see her cry--clearly, she'd never before in her life been overwhelmed by emotion--but the whole issue did have it's bright side.
"Now I feel I can't compete," she said miserably.
"'Compete'?" he asked, distracted by her mouth and the warmth of her body.
"Um--with jumping off buildings. For thrills," she finished.
He understood what she was getting at--that sex might pale in comparison to the high- adrenaline risks he took. He pondered it seriously, thinking back over their stormy "relationship"--if you wanted to call it that--and answered seriously: "Don't you be so sure about that. Making love to you is often a lot like stepping into freefall--without a chute."
She smiled and then laughed and kissed him harder, parting his lips with her tongue. "The pie," she told him, "has another fifteen minutes or so. Plenty of time for a quickie. Let's go to bed--look, you're getting covered with flour." She batted his shirt and a veritable cloud of flour floated around them. "My God, I must be covered with the stuff!" she exclaimed, suddenly touching her hair, her face self-consciously. "What the hell do I look like? Why don't I--"
"Why don't you take off your clothes," he suggested. "We should keep an eye on the pie. Besides, this may be the only room in this house where we've never done it . . . "
Laura looked around. "Where?" she asked. "I mean, there might be a good reason no one has sex in the kitchen."
"Lack of imagination," he suggested. "There's plenty of floor space." He was working on unbuttoning her blouse and she already had his tee shirt rolled up over his chest. She'd finally stopped crying, he noticed, and in fact was laughing, getting on her knees in front of him to work on his zipper.
"I'm still getting flour on you," she told him, working his pants down as he pulled his tee shirt over his head. "I think I got more flour on me than in the crust. Maybe it'll become some new, kinky little sex lubricant . . . "
"We could be making history," he agreed. "How long do we have?"
"There's an oven timer," she told him, pulling him down on top of her. "Just hurry."
"I don't like being rushed," he said, kissing her throat and working his way with infinite slowness down her body with his mouth and hands. "You're always in such a hurry."
"I don't like foreplay," she answered bluntly.
"No, you don't want to get bored, is all. It causes you to lose focus. That's different. As long as things remain interesting--" he explained between licking her smooth, flat stomach- -"you don't mind this."
She was moaning, pushing her body up against his tongue as he caressed the insides of her thighs, spreading her legs further apart with his palms, reaching to open her wetness with his tongue while pinching her nipples into hardness. And, inadvertently, pushing her right across the slippery tile floor.
Laura groped about with her right hand, looking for something solid to hold onto. She caught the bail handle of one of the lower cabinet doors and grabbed it as, suddenly in a hurry himself, Jarod shifted to kneel between her legs, steadying his erection with one hand.
They slid a bit further with his first solid thrust inside her and she gasped both at the pleasure of the sensation and at being bumped rudely across the floor. She tightened her grip on the door handle, but Jarod's next thrust was distinctly more demanding and she tugged the cabinet wide open, her attempt to grasp something else resulting instead in a small but noisy avalanche of pots and pans, which clanged and clattered against each other and the floor.
"Kitchen sex," Jarod mused: he was at a point where he was trying really hard to stay focused, however. Laura's laughter didn't bother him--he liked the spasms it was sending through her body, and therefore through his. But, with amazingly poor timing, the oven timer at that moment dinged it's reminder.
"Pie," he said, simply, pausing.
"Fuck the pie!" Laura answered. "No--I mean: forget the pie! Fuck me!"
But he was already getting up, stepping around pots and pans, heading for the oven.
Laura propped herself up on her elbows, a bit dazed and disoriented by the interruption, but then laughed out loud.
"What?" Jarod asked, not sure what was so funny.
"On, nothing," she answered, still laughing. "It's just I've never seen a great-looking guy wearing nothing but oven mitts and a huge hard-on before.
Little Wonder
Chapter 1
Witch1
DSA: date, 12/15/71.
The huge fans that were duplicating wind were set up facing twelve-year old Jarod, and the sim lab was chilled and pitch dark. He stood perched at the end of a catwalk set up above a large, circular trampoline, looking so very small. Sydney pushed that thought away: too emotional, it had no bearing on the experiment in progress.
"You're at ten thousand feet over the Cascade mountains in Washington State, Jarod. It's the night of November twenty-fourth. In the attaché case is two hundred thousand dollars in cash. You've high-jacked the plane and let the passengers off in Seattle. You've let down the tail stairway and you're getting ready to jump. Are you ready, Jarod?" Sydney asked, practically shouting to be heard over the fake "wind". The simulation was going perfectly, as was always the case with Jarod.
But Jarod's reply was unexpectedly agitated: "Sydney, I can't--it's too scary. The height. I didn't expect so much wind."
"The 727 was traveling at two hundred miles per hour, Jarod--you know that. The air temperature was seven degrees below zero," Sydney explained. It wasn't like Jarod to not have all the facts memorized--Sydney suspected the confusion was something he was reading from the simulation.
"But the cold--it's not what I thought. The wind chill would have been seventy degrees below zero. And the dark. Sydney, don't you see: he couldn't have done this at all if he didn't know what he was doing. No one could bring themselves to make this jump if they weren't mentally and physically prepared."
The answer surprised Sydney: the sim was going in a different direction than he had imagined. It had seemed, to him, like a cut-and-dried case. Jarod, however, clearly had a different spin on it. And it was these sorts of anomalies that interested Sydney the most.
"But suppose he was insane, Jarod, a desperate man," Sydney asked. "There is considerable speculation that this 'D. B. Cooper', whoever he really was, had no idea what he was facing --"
But Jarod interrupted him with an impatient toss of his head. Although still a young boy, Jarod had already shifted the balance of power during sims. He knew he was actually the one in control. "No," he told Sydney matter-of-factly. "He was prepared. He'd practiced the jump. It's not what it looks like. He was calm. He knew the odds, Sydney. I think he survived."
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Present day.
Somewhere over Wilbur, Eastern Washington
Until he was actually standing in the plane's open doorway, looking right down through 12,000 feet of hazy space at the vague patchwork of land below--and trying desperately, after that first timid glance, never to look down again--the reality of what he was about to do hadn't sunk in for Alex. It was one thing to contemplate jumping out of an airplane, one thing to listen to Jarod's patient, repeated instructions, but quite another, it turned out, to actually pry his fingers off the doorframe and step out into space.
He was aware of Jarod poised behind him, of the unexpectedly brutal rush of air just inches away, of his own thumping heartbeat. And suddenly conscious, as well, of a deeply hidden, half-formed thought that was floating untethered in his mind: that he could, if he wished, choose not to open the parachute. He could simply allow himself to die--which seemed very different from literal suicide. The awareness that the thought was there at all, that it had been drifting about in his mind for quite some time, was not making it any easier to let go of the doorframe.
It was all because of Laura, of course, of her and Jarod and the sick and empty way he'd felt ever since they'd returned from rescuing Jarod in Delaware. Jarod had been a mess, at first. Alex never did get a clear explanation of exactly who had done precisely what to Jarod, or why, but he'd seen the results and it hadn't looked good. Whatever else had happened, Jarod had been beaten within an inch of his life. It hadn't been hard to feel sympathy for the guy.
Then there had been Laura, who'd gotten completely hysterical on the plane when Jarod had fallen into such a deep sleep she couldn't wake him. He'd simply been utterly exhausted, of course, and, Alex suspected, sexually satiated. Alex had noticed the way Laura looked at Jarod instantly, the way she couldn't seem to keep from touching him, and he'd hated it immediately. They'd been together on the jet with just a completely exhausted and sleeping Angela as chaperone, and Alex could imagine very clearly what had probably happened between Laura and Jarod during that time. In fact, that mental image had been driving Alex nuts ever since. But whatever they'd been up to, once Jarod was asleep Laura hadn't been able to stop crying, even after they'd landed in Seattle and driven the still-groggy Jarod back to Laura's private island. So Alex had stayed that night, since he'd already been awake for well over twenty-four hours, tactfully moving his clothes into a guest room while Jarod was ensconced in Laura's big bed. And then he'd stayed a few more days, while Jarod was recovering, out of real concern for Laura, who kept having attacks of uncontrollable tears: crying jags that totally pissed her off, so that she was incoherently hysterical and mad as hell at the same time.
And then, one morning, Jarod was not only back on his feet, he was shaking Alex awake at five in the morning, insisting he go skiing with him and Paul, Laura's gun-obsessed security guy. Which he'd done, and had a great time. It was the first time Alex had seen Jarod in action, and he'd been a bit stunned by Jarod's effortless skiing. Alex had grown up on ski slopes and hadn't been prepared to watch someone else to take to the snow with flawless natural technique, tireless enthusiasm and a remarkable lack of macho male competitiveness.
Alex's experience with the climate of chummy male camaraderie engendered by the required regimen of sports at boarding school, prep school and then Princeton, had taught him the importance of being good enough at sports to fit in. But all too often there was a nasty edge of one-upmanship involved, a constant current of shark-like watchfulness for any sign of weakness. He'd seen it on Wall Street, too, of course: the afternoon squash matches that glossed only the thinnest of veneers over the brutal, predatory instincts of the competitors. It had always sickened him. Well-groomed macho thugs in fifteen hundred dollar custom-tailored suits pretending to be at the pinnacle of civilization: with hearts as dark and cold as the worst medieval dungeon imaginable. They were interchangeable with whatever stereotype of male callousness you cared to invoke: blue collar bigot, Mafioso-- it was all the same. Different taste in clothes and cars and women, but the same bullshit. It was the main reason he'd thrown away the influence of his family, daring to start his own portfolio based on the I Ching, a concept so incomprehensible to his peers and family his mother had actually campaigned--unsuccessfully, as it turned out--to have him removed from The Social Register. A fauxpas she was to regret when his business became wildly successful. But Alex had seen how shallow that entire world's "loyalties" were and walked away from it without looking back. He often did fantasize, however, about introducing Laura to his mother for the pure pleasure of watching his mother's horrified response. And Laura had told him more times than he wanted to count that he wanted her mostly to absolve himself finally and completely of his blue-blood, preppy background.
What amazed and delighted Alex about Jarod was his absolute innocence of those macho posturing associated with sports: Jarod taught Paul to ski simply, clearly, with an almost incredible degree of empathy. It was almost as if Jarod BECAME Paul so that he could directly communicate how to get down the mountain not just safely, but while having a hell of a lot of fun.
Alex saw that Paul was--for lack of better words--in love with Jarod: with his competent, self-confident masculinity, his kindness, his friendship, even his slight goofiness. Jarod was fun to be with, no doubt about it, and Alex doubted Paul had ever met anyone as easy to like as Jarod. He knew he never had--even though there was a part of him that would have been much happier to loath Jarod thoroughly.
After the skiing trip the three men had fallen into an easy rhythm of working out together in Laura's huge, elaborately equipped gym together everyday, then, when a big storm blew in off the Pacific, of driving down the coast together to surf. That was something Paul had done before, but Alex hadn't, and it was his turn to be taught by Jarod with a complete lack of ego, so that almost before he knew it he was keeping up with Paul--and having a great time. Of course, neither he nor Paul could match Jarod's skill level, but never once did Jarod rub that in or even seem to notice it.
Jarod did notice, however, one regrettable moment when Alex had allowed himself to be held under by a wave without struggling--it had been stupid, unplanned, idiotic. Jarod had been at his side instantly, although Alex could have sworn they were separated by way too much ocean for that to happen, and propelled him smoothly to the surface, almost as though he'd saved drowning men many times before.
"Now that," Jarod had told him very seriously while he sputtered water and gasped, "was not a smart thing to do. I can't let that happen again."
That's all he had said. Alex had felt like a little boy who had just been lectured about the price of misbehaving. Whether Jarod somehow knew what Alex was thinking--this half- assed suicidal tendency he'd developed--he couldn't tell. Jarod never mentioned the incident again. The concept, however, that Jarod absolutely would not let harm come to him--even self-inflicted harm--took Alex's breath away in it's simplicity. He should, perhaps, have felt somehow insulted. Instead it made him respect the man even more. Laura had tried to explain about Jarod--about why and how he was different--but Alex hadn't really believed any of it until he saw Jarod fully engaged.
They went rock climbing together too, and Alex found himself swaggering a bit, pleased that his body, which had been slim and toned to begin with, now had a hardness and glow of health that made him feel younger and more confident than he had in years.
What Laura thought of all this hearty male bonding, Alex didn't know. She'd hinted repeatedly that the book they were working on together could now be finished up as email and he knew he should leave. It was a pretty bizarre living arrangement--like some lame sitcom, Laura had said--not made any easier by the fact the Laura and Jarod couldn't keep their hands off each other. It seemed every time he walked into a room they were locked in a mouth to mouth embrace and, between crying bouts, Laura had a look on her face he could only describe as sex-dazed. Plus, Jarod had what seemed like a completely unconscious habit of putting his hand possessively on Laura's posterior. It wasn't a healthy situation, the three of them living in the same house. But he was having too much fun to leave.
Now, perched in the plane's doorway, his hands clenched tightly on it's metal frame--cold even through his gloves--he couldn't help but think of Laura. And smell her and taste her, and feel her lush warm body pressed up against his, hearing her laughter and the way she moaned --
"Time for you to go, now," Jarod yelled from behind him.
"Look, Jarod," Alex shouted above the noise of the wind and the engines, "no hard feelings, right? About Laura. I mean . . . I got out of your way . . . " Suddenly it was terribly important to have this out in the open. It had also occurred to Alex that Jarod had packed his chute. No matter how nice a guy Jarod seemed to be, there was always something just a little off about him.
"Of course not," Jarod shouted back, leaning close to Alex. "No problem. All in the past."
"Water under the bridge?" Alex asked hopefully.
"Well, actually, we're in a plane over dry land," Jarod answered in that literal-minded way Alex had learned to recognize. Alex turned a bit, beginning to explain the idiom, and Jarod used the instant of his off-balance to not so much push as gently hip-check Alex right out of the plane.
Alex had just a moment of stunned rage--Jarod had pushed him!--and then it happened, instantly, as soon as he was part of the air and the plane was out of sight. "Fuck her!" he thought, the words bursting into his consciousness with the force of revelation. And that was it: he was over her. Later he would wonder if it were some sort of weird miracle, his own personal Laura-epiphany, or if Jarod somehow knew the jump would cure him. But at the time, all he felt was relief and joy and an exuberant sense of his own life, which he knew would be just fine without Laura in it. He laughed out loud, the sound carried away by the rush of air, and opened his chute.
And by the time he landed, none too gracefully, but safely, he was not only completely, totally over Laura, he was even planning a way to get even with her.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Suquamish Island
Off the Coast of Washington State
Laura eased the oven door open gently only enough to peek inside: the pie was bubbling over a bit, but not enough to be concerned about. She closed the door with care, unsure if at this point she could somehow hinder the baking process but unwilling, considering how much effort it had taken to get the damned thing this far, to take any chances. She jumped involuntarily at Jarod's voice behind her.
"Laura?" he said. "It's four in the morning: what are you doing? Hey: something smells really good."
She just turned and looked at him and he took in the flour sifted down over her clothes-- also some on her face and in her hair, he saw--the bowl of peach pits and limp, moist, discarded peach skins on the counter, the big wooden rolling pin--
"You're baking me a peach pie!" he exclaimed, genuinely surprised. "I'll bet it's that recipe Celeste gave me in New Orleans . . . "
"Well, what do you know: you really are a genius, aren't you?" she answered dryly, clearly not amused. "And would you care to guess if I'm having fun yet?"
"I didn't mean to make you mad," he continued, "it's only I've never seen you actually use the oven before. I was beginning to think it didn't work."
Her mouth twisted into an even deeper frown. "You're just digging yourself deeper and deeper into that hole, pal."
"Deeper?" he asked, looking around as if he expected to see a literal hole opening at his feet. He looked more closely at her face. The tracks of tears were evident in the film of flour covering it, and her eyes were swollen and red. "You've been crying again," he told her. "You know, you really don't have to worry about me. What we've been doing are really simple jumps."
"I'm more worried about Alex and Paul," she told him, brushing a strand of hair out of her face and leaving, Jarod noticed, even more flour behind. "I'm not sure you realize that not everyone is like you, Jarod. I'm not altogether sure you understand how different you really are. Not everyone is so damned good at everything: hell, most people never get as good at any one thing in their whole lives as you are at everything you do, on your first try! And Alex has always been something of a klutz . . . "
"Meaning clumsy?" he asked her. He opened the oven door and breathed in deeply. "You think that, but Alex is really a very fast learner. As is Paul," he closed the door. "The pie smells great!"
"Still," Laura said, trying to stick to the subject at hand for once, "I worry. So does Angela, by the way. She was in here awhile ago moaning that she and Paul are having the best sex of their marriage since you guys started doing--you know, all this guy stuff--but she's terrified he's going to get himself killed--"
"No one's going to get killed," Jarod reassured her. "You should really come with us. I have asked you to. I could teach you. Then you'd understand."
"No thanks," she replied. "If I want to stare sheer terror in the face I can just hop in a car and drive Route 5 at peak traffic through downtown. Better yet--let you drive. I don't need any more fear in my life than that."
"But this isn't about fear, Laura, " he explained: "It's about fun."
"But sky-diving is inherently dangerous--"
"It's much safer than you think," Jarod replied. "Jumping out of planes has been done so much it's more or less perfected. Not foolproof, but close. Now, what's dangerous is jumping off THINGS . . . "
"What the hell do you mean, 'things'?" she demanded.
"It's called 'BASE jumping'. For 'Buildings, Antennas, Structures, Earth'. Sort of a poor acronym. But descriptive. As you can imagine, you aren't nearly as high when you jump. But certainly high enough to kill you. So your margin of error is really low." Jarod had found an unused peach and took a big, sloppy bite out of it. "Great peach!" he informed the stricken-looking Laura.
She was standing there, clearly stunned past words. "'Buildings'?" she finally managed to ask. "You jump off BUILDINGS?"
"Well, actually I'm working Paul and Alex up to that. They aren't ready yet. But getting there. But, yes, of course, if you mean me, personally: I've jumped off buildings. Sure. The Space Needle is a fun jump, for example," he mused, looking down at the peach in his hand contemplatively. "Interesting landing. Lots of sculpture to avoid, you know? And security, of course. A heavily patrolled site. But I prefer the 'Earth' part, which means cliffs. El Capitan, for example, was a nice jump . . . " Jarod let the thought trail off and took another bite of peach, the juice running down his chin.
"What!" Laura blurted after another moment of stunned silence. "Are you totally nuts or just fucking suicidal? Hey--be a guy, get your sick thrills however you want, but don't drag Alex and Paul along to end up squashed like bugs on the sidewalk on your whim--"
"You don't get it," her told her patiently. "It has nothing to do with 'whim'. BASE jumping requires meticulous advance planning. Researching the site. Wind and weather awareness. Special chutes, special packing. Actually, I NEED Paul and Alex, both, if for no other reason than to get me off the jump site quickly, before the cops show up." He'd finished the peach and tossed the pit into the bowl with the others. "When will the pie be done?" he asked.
She was still staring at him, however, obviously not finished with her rant. But as he waited for her next outburst, he saw tears begin to well in her dark eyes--again. Immediately followed by a flash of rage: he knew how annoyed she was by these uncharacteristic, emotional outbursts. He sympathized--he was, well, he wouldn't say obsessed with being in control, exactly, but certainly concerned with issues of control, himself--and understood how angry she was that these crying spells seemed to overpower her. Still, he had to admit that anything that distracted Laura during her anger wasn't entirely a bad thing.
"What the fuck is wrong with me?" she demanded as the first tear washed a film of flour off her cheek, leaving a darker streak of tanned skin behind.
"Nothing is wrong with you, Laura," he reassured her, "it's just a response to what happened in Delaware.'
"Let me guess," she said, "you were once a psychiatrist."
"No," he answered very seriously. "Some things are just too awful to even pretend. But you saved my life. You saw how close that was--" for only a moment he got that creepy, distant look in his eyes, thinking about what had been done to him--"You came face to face with mortality. This is just a natural human response to--"
"Natural my ass!" she blurted out between sobs. "It's total fucking bullshit is what it is! I don't cry, Jarod: I never cry! But now they play some lame ballad on the radio and I'm whimpering like some pea-brained, doe-eyed sixteen year old bimbo. We make love and I cry. We fight and I cry. I start crying in line at the goddamned grocery store for no reason at all! I'm pumping gas in the Rover and I start to cry. I'm in here at four in the freaking morning because I can't sleep--which also never used to happen--baking a goddamned pie, for Christ's sake, and I'm crying. If this is so fucking 'natural', then when the hell is it going to naturally end?"
He walked around the kitchen island and took her in his arms. "I find it rather endearing, actually," he told her. "I can kiss the tears away. Which makes me feel needed. Which isn't a bad thing."
He brushed his lips against her face, amused by the unfamiliar taste of raw flour and pleased that her tears did stop as she raised her lips to be kissed. Laura was definitely easier to deal with when her temper was softened. He hated to see her cry--clearly, she'd never before in her life been overwhelmed by emotion--but the whole issue did have it's bright side.
"Now I feel I can't compete," she said miserably.
"'Compete'?" he asked, distracted by her mouth and the warmth of her body.
"Um--with jumping off buildings. For thrills," she finished.
He understood what she was getting at--that sex might pale in comparison to the high- adrenaline risks he took. He pondered it seriously, thinking back over their stormy "relationship"--if you wanted to call it that--and answered seriously: "Don't you be so sure about that. Making love to you is often a lot like stepping into freefall--without a chute."
She smiled and then laughed and kissed him harder, parting his lips with her tongue. "The pie," she told him, "has another fifteen minutes or so. Plenty of time for a quickie. Let's go to bed--look, you're getting covered with flour." She batted his shirt and a veritable cloud of flour floated around them. "My God, I must be covered with the stuff!" she exclaimed, suddenly touching her hair, her face self-consciously. "What the hell do I look like? Why don't I--"
"Why don't you take off your clothes," he suggested. "We should keep an eye on the pie. Besides, this may be the only room in this house where we've never done it . . . "
Laura looked around. "Where?" she asked. "I mean, there might be a good reason no one has sex in the kitchen."
"Lack of imagination," he suggested. "There's plenty of floor space." He was working on unbuttoning her blouse and she already had his tee shirt rolled up over his chest. She'd finally stopped crying, he noticed, and in fact was laughing, getting on her knees in front of him to work on his zipper.
"I'm still getting flour on you," she told him, working his pants down as he pulled his tee shirt over his head. "I think I got more flour on me than in the crust. Maybe it'll become some new, kinky little sex lubricant . . . "
"We could be making history," he agreed. "How long do we have?"
"There's an oven timer," she told him, pulling him down on top of her. "Just hurry."
"I don't like being rushed," he said, kissing her throat and working his way with infinite slowness down her body with his mouth and hands. "You're always in such a hurry."
"I don't like foreplay," she answered bluntly.
"No, you don't want to get bored, is all. It causes you to lose focus. That's different. As long as things remain interesting--" he explained between licking her smooth, flat stomach- -"you don't mind this."
She was moaning, pushing her body up against his tongue as he caressed the insides of her thighs, spreading her legs further apart with his palms, reaching to open her wetness with his tongue while pinching her nipples into hardness. And, inadvertently, pushing her right across the slippery tile floor.
Laura groped about with her right hand, looking for something solid to hold onto. She caught the bail handle of one of the lower cabinet doors and grabbed it as, suddenly in a hurry himself, Jarod shifted to kneel between her legs, steadying his erection with one hand.
They slid a bit further with his first solid thrust inside her and she gasped both at the pleasure of the sensation and at being bumped rudely across the floor. She tightened her grip on the door handle, but Jarod's next thrust was distinctly more demanding and she tugged the cabinet wide open, her attempt to grasp something else resulting instead in a small but noisy avalanche of pots and pans, which clanged and clattered against each other and the floor.
"Kitchen sex," Jarod mused: he was at a point where he was trying really hard to stay focused, however. Laura's laughter didn't bother him--he liked the spasms it was sending through her body, and therefore through his. But, with amazingly poor timing, the oven timer at that moment dinged it's reminder.
"Pie," he said, simply, pausing.
"Fuck the pie!" Laura answered. "No--I mean: forget the pie! Fuck me!"
But he was already getting up, stepping around pots and pans, heading for the oven.
Laura propped herself up on her elbows, a bit dazed and disoriented by the interruption, but then laughed out loud.
"What?" Jarod asked, not sure what was so funny.
"On, nothing," she answered, still laughing. "It's just I've never seen a great-looking guy wearing nothing but oven mitts and a huge hard-on before.
