The Triggerman Dance

The two agents, dressed in suits, stood in the shade of the trailer awning, trying to be comfortable and inconspicuous here at the High Desert Rod &c Gun Club, which they certainly were not. John glanced up the dirt road toward the club house, where the property caretaker, Tim, was sweeping off the steps as an excuse to look down on the visitors and their gleaming chopper.

"The secret agents," he said with a small smile.

"The city editor," said Weinstein without one.

Boomer smelled shoes as John unstacked three plastic lawn chairs he'd bought to entertain guests, but never used. Bonnie watched from beneath the trailer, with black Belle already asleep beside her. John dusted off the seats with his hand, and offered them to Weinstein and Dumars. He opened up the trailer windows and returned to the deck with beers.

He opened the bottles, gave one to each of his visitors, and

sat.

"Nice trailer," said Weinstein, without looking back at it. He looked instead at John's flat-soled moccasin boots, his worn duster, brown vest and the eternal fedora.

"Thanks," said Menden.

"I can tell by your face that you read the letter."

John said nothing. He had in fact read the letter ten times, each reading bringing him closer to her, each reading taking her farther away. It was a sublime torture. To see actual words written by her hand, words revealing her love for him, her heartache over Joshua Weinstein, her confusion and her fear, was something that John never thought would happen. All of the distance he had put between Rebecca and himself closed again, in a rush, when he read that letter. Almost closed, because no matter how hard John imagined her as he lay in the trailer bed that night, his eyes locked shut and all his powers focused on the task of summoning her back to the present—if only long enough for the good-bye he never got to say—the final distance could never be closed. She was beyond him, and during all his days on earth, he knew, she would stay that way. She had dabbed her scent on the paper.

"You only stayed in Orange County a few weeks after the shooting. You gave up a pretty plum job, cashed out your retirement, closed up your house in Laguna. Why?"

John took a drink of the beer and decided that even if, according to the ways men should live, he had wronged Joshua Weinstein, he still didn't much like him.

"You're the spy, Mr. Weinstein. You're the gatherer. You know a lot more about me than I know about you. Why don't you tell me why?"

Weinstein had set his beer on the deck and loosened the knot of his necktie. His nine-to-five pallor was luminous in the sunlight filtered by the awning.

He looked across with an expression John took to indicate sympathy, but read as little more than a bureaucrat's professional interest.

Joshua said, "My mother used to tell me that to be happy in life, you need three things: something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. You had them all. Then you lost Rebecca and tossed the other two away. You traveled some, then came out here to lick your wounds—"

Rebecca. The sound of the name takes John Menden back to her. As clearly as if it was yesterday, no, as clearly as if she were there right now, he feels the warm October sunlight on his skin the evening they sit on the balcony of the old Laguna Canyon house and he actually touches her for the first time. She has a scar that runs from the base of her right thumb across to the center of her palm, and that clean thin line of tissue—a line he has seen and contemplated so many times before—is soft beneath his finger as he traces its length across her hand, then back to the thumb again. She says a gypsy told her it cut across her lifeline but not to worry because all wounds are superficial compared to fate. She looks at him in a way that is both innocent and knowing, both assured and inquisitive. Rebecca's hair is golden in this autumn light. Her skin is fair and her eyes are blue. Her nose is longer and sharper than the popular notion of beauty. Her face is slender. Her mouth is wide, full-lipped, healthy. She wears a frank red lipstick that frames, when she smiles, her very white and even teeth. She is vain enough, and practical enough, to know that her smile is her best feature. She also assumes that she is not particularly beautiful. He knows that she is not beautiful, though his eyes have made her perfect.

John has always believed that he can judge a person's character by their face, that no amount of acting or cosmetic alteration can change the truth of a face. In the case of Rebecca, he had seen it all very clearly the moment he met her in the Journal lobby. She was bright, curious, forgiving, optimistic and possessed a hopeful soul in spite of the darkness she tried to hide. Rebecca Harris, he immediately saw, was the kind of woman he wanted to spend his life with. He saw her ring, too, and realized he would not.