of forbidden assignations, which can amplify sex into a druglike addiction. What I wanted from Jet was everything: her present and all that remains of her future. She wants the same. Our general plan is simple: After my father dies, I’ll return to Washington, with or without my widowed mother. A month or two later, Jet will tell Paul that she believes they need some time apart. This will lead to a trial separation, then to discussions of divorce, while I—the cause of this action—will have long been out of the picture. At some point during this phase they will deal with the issue of their son, Kevin, whom Jet wants to bring to Washington to live with us.
The plan is sound, as such things go. The problem is that, for Jet, that final matter is a deal-breaker. She will not leave Bienville without Kevin. Yet she insists that Paul and his father will break every law on the books to ensure that she never takes him away. Since the Poker Club exercises absolute control over the chancery judges in Bienville, Max Matheson can dictate the terms of Jet’s divorce. Yet somehow, we’ve allowed ourselves to ignore this fact. Since my father has not died, we’ve contented ourselves with stolen hours, pretending the risk is minimal. For three months, we’ve drifted along on a tide of bliss, believing our plan must eventually come to fruition of its own accord.
Paul’s suspicion under the Prime Shot tent showed me in one gut-wrenching minute how blind we have become. Our long-range divorce plan is meaningless now. Paul already suspects Jet of infidelity. If we keep taking these risks for even a week, he’ll discover the truth. But if we stop seeing each other, what then? My father could die tomorrow, or he could live another six months. Can we go six months under conditions of absolute separation? Can I live every day as an actor in a theater of the absurd? Can Jet?
Could we live six months without water?
You think you know everyone in a small town, but you don’t. Besides, Bienville isn’t that small. Not like Soso or Stringer or Frogmore. When I was a boy, Bienville proper had twenty-four thousand people in it, and outside the city limits the county held another fourteen thousand. That meant a school system big enough to make a certain amount of anonymity possible. If you went to a private school, for example, there were always kids at the public school you didn’t know. I knew most of the boys in town, of course, from playing ball and riding bikes and swim team and a dozen other things. But the girls—especially the girls at the public school—were mostly a mystery to me.
Several boys in my neighborhood still went to public school, and one—John Hallberg—was a good friend, though he was a year older than I. One weekend John took me to the movies with him, to sneak into Highlander, which was rated R. When we arrived at the cinema, we found three public school girls he knew waiting in line for Pretty in Pink, which was the movie we were pretending to go see. Two were the ubiquitous archetypes of my childhood, freckled and blue-eyed, one with dirty-blond hair, the other with light brown curls. But with them was a girl unlike any I’d ever seen. Her skin was as dark as a summer tan, though it was only March, and her jet-black hair reached almost to her behind. She was tall for her age, but what captured me from the first moment was her eyes, which were huge and dark above angular cheeks that descended to the dramatic V of her chin. And they took in everything.
John introduced this exotic creature as “Jet,” which I assumed was a nickname, albeit an unusual one for a girl. I would learn later that her given name was Jordan Elat Talal. “Jet” was an acronym coined by her aunt, one that even her mother used. And though this “Jet” was the same age as her friends, she seemed at least a year older, probably because she didn’t giggle or blush or cut up the way they did. When one of her friends invited Hallberg to skip Highlander in favor of Pretty in Pink and John said no, it was the dark-haired Jet who suggested the girls try Highlander instead.
One of the blessings of my life was that I wound up with Jet Talal sitting on my left in