Sighing, she settled onto a smooth benchlike ledge, and the water covered her to the shoulders. She stretched out her legs, let them drift upward. Something that felt like a summer wind blew against the side of her left thigh. She put her hand there, moved it against the pressure, and found a hole low down in the wall—a hole that gushed hot water. She went to it and sat in front of it. The heat pushed against the small of her back and spread out against her. She moaned with pleasure.
Suddenly a rushing sound filled her ears. All the water in the spa began to froth and bubble. It seemed to throb, pulsing against her skin.
Nate came out of the darkness. He had the wineglasses, the bottle, and the towels. He set them near the edge of the spa, filled the glasses, then climbed down. He handed a glass to Robin. She took a drink. The wine was cool in her mouth, but once swallowed, it seemed to glow inside her, radiating warmth.
Nate sat across from her, only his head and glass-bearing hand above the surface. His body, reddish in the murky crimson light from the bottom of the spa, was visible but blurred through the roiling water. His face was smudged with shadows. Distorted and unfamiliar.
“You look like the bogeyman,” she said.
“Thanks a bunch. You look kind of like an evil queen yourself.”
She cackled. “Who’s the fairest of them all, ducky?”
One of his feet stroked her skin. “The fairest is Robin. Cock Robin.”
Cockless Robin.
Poppinsack.
“A bum called me that,” she said. The water was very warm now. Cozy. Steam drifted off the churning surface, a pink mist that was shredded and scattered by the breeze. She drank more wine. “Cock Robin,” she said. “He also called me Cockless Robin.”
“Bastard,” Nate muttered.
“He was a funny guy. I actually liked him at first. Poppinsack. He really had a way with words. He reminded me of those medicine-show guys you see in old cowboy movies. Hawking a cure-all from the back of a wagon. You should’ve seen him, all decked out in a buckskin jacket with fringe, feathers in his derby hat.” Nate’s foot dropped away from her shin. “A real character. I liked the guy, and then he robbed me.”
“Robbed you?”
“Yeah. While I was sleeping on the beach. Before I even met him and he acted so friendly and gave me tea. All the time he was being nice to me, he knew what he’d done.”
Nate shook his head slowly from side to side.
The theft had been buried inside Robin like a secret shame. Sharing it with Nate felt good and right. She needed to tell him the rest.
“My money? I kept it in my underwear.” She expected a hot rush of embarrassment, but it didn’t come. “I was asleep and he stole it out of my underwear. God knows what else he did…his hands in there. Then he goes and calls me ‘Cockless Robin.’”
Nate muttered something that was lost in the gurgling sounds of the water.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I wanted to kill the creep.”
“I did.”
“What?” Robin asked, certain that she hadn’t heard him correctly.
“I killed him.”
She gazed at Nate, stunned. She set her wineglass down and went to him. She knelt between his legs in the swirling hot water and put her hands on his thighs.
“An old guy with a walrus mustache,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I killed him Thursday night.”
“I don’t believe it,” Robin said. But she did believe it. Nate was too grim to be joking. “How?” she asked.
“You know about the trollers.”
“You’re a troller?”
“I was. Not anymore. After what happened to the old man, I lost my stomach for it. It was awful. And it was my fault. They couldn’t have started the Ferris wheel without me. I had the key. We didn’t know he’d fall, but…”
“How did it happen?”
“We cuffed him to the safety bar of one of the gondolas and took him up. The bar wouldn’t hold him. He fell. He fell from the top, screaming. Then I took his body out on my surfboard. I took him way out, belted to it, and dumped him.”
“God,” she muttered.
“It was the night I met you.”
She remembered waiting for Poppinsack that night. Waiting in the fog with her knife, then getting spooked and hurrying away to find safety under the house beyond the public beach. “I was going to take him,” she said. “I was going to get my money back. I was waiting for him in the dunes.”
“Well, we killed him.”
“I might’ve,