“Hell, no,” she says. “A mountain zephyr can’t scare me off.”
I’m not used to this much open space; it scares me a little, though I’m not going to admit that to Jain. We’re above timberline, and the mountainside is too stark for my taste. I suddenly miss the rounded, wooded hills of Pennsylvania. Jain surveys the rocky fields rubbed raw by wind and snow, and I have a quick feeling she’s scared too. “Something wrong?”
“Nope. Just remembering.”
“What’s it like on a ranch?”
“Okay, if you don’t like people,” she says slowly, obviously recalling details. “My pa didn’t.”
“No neighbors?”
“Not a one in twenty miles.”
“Brothers?” I say. “Sisters?”
She shakes her head. “Just my pa.” I guess I look curious because she looks away and adds, “My mother died of tetanus right after I was born. It was a freak thing.”
I try to change the subject. “Your father didn’t come down to the first concert, did he? Is he coming tonight?”
“No way,” she says. “He didn’t and he won’t. He doesn’t like what I do.” I can’t think of anything to say now. After a while Jain rescues me. “It isn’t your hassle, and it isn’t mine anymore.”
Something perverse doesn’t let me drop it now. “So you grew up alone.”
“You noticed,” she says softly. “You’ve got a hell of a way with understatement.”
I persist. “Then I don’t understand why you still come up here. You must hate this.”
“Ever see a claustrophobe deliberately walk into a closet and shut the door? If I don’t fight it this way—” Her fingers dig into my arms. Her face is fierce. “This has got to be better than what I do on stage.” She swings away from me. “Shit!” she says. “Damn it all to hell.” She stands immovable, staring down the mountain for several minutes. When she turns back toward me, her eyes are softer and there’s a fey tone in her voice. “If I die—” She laughs. “When I die. I want my ashes here.”
“Ashes?” I say, unsure how to respond. Humor her. “Sure.”
“You.” She points at me. “Here.” She indicates the rock face. The words are simple commands given to a child.
“Me.” I manage a weak smile.
Her laugh is easy and unstrained now. “Kid games. Did you do the usual things when you were a kid, babe?”
“Most of them.” I hardly ever won, but then I liked to play games with outrageous risks.
“Hammer, rock, and scissors?”
“Sure, when I was really young.” I repeat by long-remembered rote: “Rock breaks scissors, scissors cut paper, paper covers rock.”
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s play.” I must look doubtful. “Rob,” she says warningly.
“Okay.” I hold out my right hand.
Jain says, “One, two, three.” On “three,” we each bring up our right hand. Hers is a clenched fist: stone. My first two fingers form the snipping blades of a pair of scissors. “I win!” she crows, delighted.
“What do you win?”
“You. Just for a little while.” She pulls my hands close and lays them on her body.
“Right here on the mountain?” I say.
“I’m from pioneer stock. But you—” She shrugs. “Too delicate?”
I laugh and pull her close.
“Just—” She hesitates. “Not like the other times? Don’t take this seriously, okay?”
In my want I forget the other occasions. “Okay.”
Each of us adds to the other’s pleasure, and it’s better than the other times. But even when she comes, she stares through me, and I wonder whose face she’s seeing—no, not even that: how many faces she’s seeing. Babe, no man can fill me like they do.
And then I come also and—briefly—it doesn’t matter.
My long coat is wrapped around the two of us, and we watch each other inches apart. “So much passion, Rob . . . It seems to build.”
I remember the stricture and say, “You know why.”
“You really like me so much?” The little-girl persona.
“I really do.”
“What would you do for me, if I asked you?”
“Anything.”
“Would you kill for me?”
I say, “Sure.”
“Really?”
“Of course.” I smile. I know how to play.
“This is no game.”
My face must betray my confusion. I don’t know how I should react.
Her expression mercurially alters to sadness. “You’re scissors, Robbie. All shiny cold metal. How can you ever hope to cut stone?”
Would I want to?
11
Things get worse.
Is it simply that I’m screwing up on my own hook, or is it because we’re exploring a place no performance has ever been? I don’t have time to worry about it; I play the console like it was the keyboard on Nagami’s synthesizer.