Page 41 of The Forest of Lost Souls

“So you don’t have time for small talk? How my day was, how yours was, whether we saw a good movie lately?”

“Whatever you get from me, you don’t get small talk. You don’t get to humiliate me by making me play girlfriend.”

His soft laugh is knowing and self-satisfied. “Honey, if I want to humiliate you, I got more interestin’ ways than that. Sadly, you continue to underestimate me when you think you won’t eventually be into this relationship and havin’ fun. You just need to get over not doin’ this by choice—and you will.”

“What does that make me, then?”

“What does what make you?”

“Doing it not by choice but doing it anyway.”

“Practical,” he says. “It makes you practical.”

“It makes me what I could never be.”

“You’ll be surprised what you can be.”

“Not as low as you.”

“You’ll find yourself lower, darlin’. And likin’ it. So tell me about Belden Bead. What befell the poor man?”

“First I’ve got to set the soup to simmer.” She turns to the pot on the stove and picks up a ladle and stirs long enough for Deacon to do what she believes and hopes he’ll do.

She sets aside the ladle, puts the lid on the pot so that it’s canted to let the steam escape, faces him again, and sees he’s done it. He’s in his chair where she wanted him, but his wineglass is the one she meant for herself, the fuller of the two. Deacon distrusts her enough to switch the stemware and wait to see what happens.

She settles in her chair and picks up the glass meant for him and drinks from it without hesitation. She takes more than a sip, a lavish swallow.

Part of her strategy is to lead him to believe she’s drinking to excess in order to numb herself for the ordeal of going to bed with him. He’ll think she’s drinking on an empty stomach; however, less than an hour before he arrived, she ate a substantial meal of steak and eggs, high protein that will digest slowly and somewhat delay the wine’s effect. While she tells him about Bead and endures his questions, she should be able to consume two generous servings of cabernet faster than is wise without losing her edge—maybe three or four glasses if she can pull off another trick that she’s set up.

She asks him to slice off a heel of the uncut loaf of sourdough and pass it to her. He watches as she butters the bread and takes a bite and swallows and drinks more wine. Then he butters a slice for himself. He drinks more judiciously than she does as she recounts the threat Bead made to have her evicted, describes why she began to suspect he intended to kill her, and comes at last to the bear spray and the gunfire and the backhoe.

Through all of that, she has poured a second glass from the bottle on the table and nearly finished it, while Deacon has drunk little more than half of his first serving.

His eyes, previously a sooty shade of brown, look almost black and as deep as wells. “So you’re sayin’ it was an accidental death?”

Vida shakes her head. “He shot himself when he meant to shoot me. That’s not accidental. That’s stupid.”

“You have more of that bear spray?”

“Got to have it. There’s always bears.”

“Just so you know, I’m quicker and smarter than Belden.”

She watches him swirl the wine in his glass.

He says, “You dug a mighty big hole for the man.”

“Wasn’t for the man. It was for the car. A man as small as he was hardly needed a hole at all.”

“You could’ve dug no hole, called the sheriff instead.”

“Sheriff Montrose sold himself to Boschvark even before you got the top job and started sucking on the New World Technology nipple.”

Deacon is amused or pretends to be. “That won’t work.”

“What won’t?”

“Offendin’ me until you turn me off. All you do is turn me on more. I don’t take offense.”

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