But she alluded to times, during those intervening years, of bad relationships, lapses back into drug use, and almost abandoning herself to the downhill crash of that earlier life that she had barely pulled out of.
“She’ll find her own way,” Sara finally agreed. “You ready for a refill?”
“Sure.” Monks drained the bit of vodka left in his glass and handed it to her.
She went to the kitchen and came back a minute later, carrying the full glasses like a waitress, except that she was naked and dripping wet. Monks watched her the entire time. He loved to look at her-her smooth olive skin, dark-nippled breasts soft and etched with the lines of mothering, lush black V disappearing between her thighs. Although he had witnessed many births, he would clasp her slim hips and touch the soft petals of her labia in near disbelief that a child could have passed through. The older he got, the more fascinated he became by the beauty and resilience of women.
She knew it, and took her time getting back into the tub.
“You feel guilty about us, too,” she said.
Monks started to deny it. But, like most of her insights, it bore truth.
“There’s a part of me that says I don’t deserve anything this good.”
“Maybe it’s an Irish-versus-Italian deal,” she said. “You brood about things forever. We just do them, then we scream at each other, or go to confession, and it’s over.”
“I don’t think it’s that cut and dried.”
“Okay, it never is. But-I don’t know exactly how to put this. You’re a tough guy in some ways, but you’ve never really gotten down.”
“Gotten down?”
“Compromised yourself, to get what you wanted.”
“I’ve done plenty I’m not proud of,” Monks said.
“I mean really down and dirty, hon. Like, there were a couple of times I blew guys for coke.” She watched his face. “Shocks you, huh?” she said.
“A little,” he admitted, annoyed with himself for his prudishness.
But she seemed amused. “It helps you learn to get over things. You realize it’s not the end of the world. So what about fucking in a hot tub? Does that slam you with extra guilt?”
Monks slid his hand up the inside of her thighs to their wet, furry juncture. She closed her eyes and scooted her rump forward, pressing into him.
“Sometimes guilt makes things sweeter,” he said. “Any mick can tell you that.”
It was the strangest apartment building that Monks had ever been in, an old brick tenement hung with laundry, but the front walls were missing, so he could see right into the rooms. He was talking with a pixie-ish young woman, standing where the doorway would have been. She was pretty, her skin very pale, her hair orange.
That will be fine, then, she said earnestly. Monks agreed, but her features started changing, becoming bearded and disheveled, and she was speaking angry, accusing words. Disturbed, Monks drifted on, through a vaginal labyrinth of deep purples and reds.
Now there was something behind him, following, that he didn’t like at all. A name was coming into his head, with an “F” sound. Federico. Francesco. Freefreefree-
He ran, but the world around him had thickened into an endless swamp. His legs were like chunks of lead, his steps agonizing. He clawed at the decayed cypress knees that thrust up around him, pulling himself along, but it was way too late, because whatever had been following was not really behind him at all, it was already in him-
Monks said, “Haaah,” and struggled to sit up. His eyes were open. He was in Sara’s bed, with her sleeping beside him. He put his hand on her flank. Her breathing was undisturbed. Glad that he hadn’t awakened her, he settled back again and closed his eyes.
But a page from Pilgrim’s Progress, its Gothic etchings forever seared into his childhood memory, opened in his mind.
…he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apol-lyon.
Monks got up quietly and carried his clothes to the living room to dress. There was no chance of getting back to sleep.
The green LED readout on the microwave read 3:13. He opened the liquor cabinet and looked at the vodka bottle. But he knew that if he started, he wouldn’t stop, and come dawn, he would be wide-awake drunk. He started heating water for coffee instead.
His own dream had fit a pattern that was common for him-images that had recently been in his mind, blended with elements of absurdity, and ending in a helpless attempt to escape. The young woman’s face, melting into an ugly blur that recalled the homeless man on TV. The comforting birthlike passage giving way to a world that was harsh and dangerous. Federico and Francesco, Italian names stemming from his earlier talk with Sara, his mind groping for the “F” that it linked to the threat.
Freeboot.
In the aftermath of the fire, law-enforcement authorities had quickly identified Freeboot. His real name was James Reese. He had grown up semiferal in the northern California backwoods, part of a loose clan of dope growers and outlaws. As he had claimed, he’d spent a lot of his later life in prison. It also seemed true that he had experienced some kind of conversion-not religious, but intellectual and political-that had turned him from a run-of-the-mill loser into a serious figure who won the respect of other inmates. He had cleaned up his act, even getting his prison tattoos filled in to symbolize his turnaround. With his last sentence in Folsom served without incident, he faded off the radar of the criminal-justice system.
But there was another factor in the equation-a psychologist with the all-American name of Mary Jane Wilson, and an unsavory past of her own. Twice, as a high school counselor-once in her home state of Ohio, and later in Missouri -she had been dismissed for seducing teenage boys.
Hard-pressed to find work, Mary Jane had ended up as a counselor in the California prison system. She had her own ax to grind against authorities now, and, like many of the convicts, she felt at heart that she had been perfectly within her rights to do what she had done, that it was the law that had wronged her.
One of her clients at Folsom was James Reese. It was during that time period that he had his “epiphany.” The two of them bonded, him taking the name Freeboot, and she Shrinkwrap. The details of what followed were unclear, but an overall picture emerged from what solid information was available, what Marguerite had contributed, and guesswork.
About four years ago, Shrinkwrap had moved to the North Coast, where she falsified her record, deleting the dismissals, and set up shop. Here in the heart of pot-growing country there were plenty of troubled kids. She quickly became popular with them, although this time there were no reported incidents of sexual misconduct. If she was at it again, she kept it well hidden. She bought an isolated rundown farm near Lake Pillsbury and turned it into an informal retreat for her young clientele. Using intuition and her skills as a psychologist, she determined their susceptibility.
When Freeboot got out of jail and joined her, he brought with him a rhetoric-charged agenda and a training program cobbled together from his superficial reading of history, folklore, and paramilitary creeds. The chosen candidates were carefully brought up through levels, their loyalty constantly tested, their personalities systematically broken down and rebuilt along fanatical lines, with the reward of belonging to a secret, super-powerful elite. Drug use was encouraged, especially of methamphetamine-which, Monks had learned, had been given to kamikaze pilots and Nazi soldiers to make them more alert and aggressive, enabling them to function up to ten days without sleep. A popular form of manufacturing the drug was even known as “the Nazi method.”
Freeboot also acquired Motherlode, who had the extra qualification of being a wealthy heiress. Besides a hefty trust fund and other investments, she happened to own the property up in the wilderness north of Lake Pillsbury. He married her and set up a second camp there-the place where Monks had been held.