Chaingang

“Yes,” was all she said. Yes. That's what I think. That's what I feel. Yes was enough.

“As far as the Ecoworld deal having anything to do with it. I don't know. Five minutes ago I thought it might. At this second I don't believe that it does. Five minutes from now I may change my mind again. We don't have real facts. We're working from suppositions based on what others are telling us. And we know the legendary Marty Kerns isn't giving us anything. This CCC deal still looks fishy as hell to me, I don't care if there is a serial murderer out there somewhere."

“This thing says that World Ecosphere surveyed ‘small towns throughout the middle-American states, from the northern heartland to the South, in search of the perfect community for development.’ Jeezus! Royce—I just thought. Sam was supposed to make all this money by buying up surrounding land and what they called ‘access properties.’ This was supposed to be one of the perks for setting up the deal, see? He'd be in the know and all, and nobody else would know about it, so he could buy land at reasonable prices. Then when the Ecoworld park was promoted nationally, the ‘nothing ground’ he'd been buying up would have become choice real estate."

“So?"

“First—he was reluctant to wade in and invest. You know, he never totally trusted these guys—it was all so bizarre. And he'd seen some of these pipe dreams fall apart. But what I'm saying is, I just recalled that there was a big flurry of paperwork on it. The company had their access routes that they didn't want him ‘muddying up'—I remember that particular phrase. It was fine for him to cash in on surrounding land and whatnot, but there were certain areas he wasn't to mess with. This was when it was all real secretive, and they had a code name and stuff."

“A code name?"

“Yeah. I just remembered that. He wasn't supposed to refer to the Ecoworld project by name in any fax or cable or whatever. There was a mound of telegrams and night letters and stuff—and I know he wasn't carrying all that around in his briefcase. I'll bet all the paperwork is still tucked away—either in the office or at home."

“Think you could find it?"

“I can't imagine where to start looking that I haven't already looked. It probably wouldn't tell us anything we don't already know. Joseph Fisher would probably let us look at their copies if we said something."

“Maybe ... What was the code word?"

“Oh...” She thought for a while. A lot of time had gone by, and her mind didn't seem to want to function. “Rampage? No ... mm ... something about the waterworks. Ramparts! That was it.

“The idea of a code name—Sam thought it was kind of silly. As if somebody would know what the heck Ecoworld meant. I just finished reading about it and I still don't know."

Mary had turned in the seat, and her skirt pulled up more than she meant it to. He kept his eyes on the road, but that was okay. He knew every sweet dimple and lovely curve. He knew all too well what those beautiful legs looked like.

“I'm sorry, Mary,” he told her.

“Hm?"

“You know—” He didn't say it. Just covered her hand with his. “Everything.” He let it go.

She thought he seemed different. In school he'd been the least likely guy to end up as some skanky doper. He was more like the Royce she remembered.

“Yeah,” she said, and it was as much a whispered prayer as anything else.

Royce took his hand away. Without saying anything, she'd spoken to him in the intimate language of old friends and lovers, and there was no way on God's earth he'd put a move on her. All he wanted to do was start over. Turn the clock back and start acting like a man for a change.

He'd told himself a thousand times he was over her, always knowing that was complete bullshit. You didn't “get over” Mary Perkins, with that soft skin and that mouth and those sweet ways and those legs. You didn't get cured of her. Mary was fatal.

She'd left a part of herself in every place where they'd been together, like a Persian cat shedding small, fluffy balls of itself, insubstantial but real legacies that would catch in the currents of the air like microscopic tumbleweeds, and come back to whisper to you.

Just about the time you'd kicked the Mary habit, you'd chance upon an errant long hair in an unexpected place, and you'd hear that lovely voice, her throaty, warm contralto, or you'd see that natural, sexy, skinny-legged, loose walk of hers in your mind, or you'd smell the fragrance of her memory, and—wham! No cure. Jonesin’ for Mary. It dawned on him that it had been days since he'd done lines. How weird. His new jones: Mary-wanna. Hey, Mary ... Wanna?

Mary knew she was feeling something toward Royce that she shouldn't. It was an emotion she'd been fighting.