Our Infinite Sadness

House Tour

Ben made another wardrobe change, hopefully his last of this long day, into Lycra, Gore-Tex and his favorite orange rock shoes. Edythe praised him in her inimitable fashion with the declaration that he looked positively tasty. They dumped two heavy duffel bags full of bouldering gear into the back of the old Chevy. Ben took her cheek in his fingers, and she looked up at him calmly, with a content smile, while he scrutinized her eyes in the bright afternoon.

"Goldish gray, now," he appraised. "Also beautiful. Not normal yet though. I mean, not normal for you. Your family will surely notice."

"Don't really care," she easily said. "Let them look. They're all utterly convinced that I've lost my mind." Honestly, how much did it really matter that her family were ready to have her committed? Or that Clytemnæstra was on her way, to only God knew what end? Or that Rex and the others to varying degrees would be blaming her now for bringing down on their heads whatever would follow? Well, she would know soon enough.

Ben took the driver's side, and they were off.

He had no idea where they were going. Edythe navigated, and she promised that she would not let him miss the concealed turn onto her family's hidden drive.

They were finally free of that diabolical house and the endless thin pretexts for absconding back to his bedroom, where they surely would have ended up, had they stayed for one more minute. Ben still felt astonishment that she had expected rejection. He didn't understand her strange, unfamiliar alchemy, any more than she did, but of one thing he was absolutely certain: she tasted far too good and right to be poison. He didn't believe that, at all. Her kiss was an enticement, and her sweet lubrication below had the effect of a potent aphrodisiac. The exact opposite of numbing.

Ben decided that she didn't know herself at all.

He paid no attention to where they were going, being only vaguely aware that they were headed on the northwest road toward La Push. As the last vestiges of civilization dropped away and ceded to densely packed trees, Ben imagined himself on his way to Jacob Black's house. They drove past the last of the narrow switchback roads, and he began to wonder if indeed Edythe lived beyond the undeveloped no-man's land between Forks and the Quileute and Macah reservations along the shore.

Edythe asked him if he was nervous.

He shook his head, yet he appeared to contradict himself, saying, "Sure, a little. I've met your father on a gurney, but this is a much different context. Mostly though I'm thinking about our second kiss."

"Oh?" she inquired, with a quick rush of recollected pleasure.

"You didn't seem as anxious. I think it went much better. Now that I understand the dangers." He didn't really believe the dangers, not for a second, but he did appreciate her concerns, and he didn't want to argue about it. But she couldn't read his mind, and she didn't have to.

Edythe nodded and quietly agreed, "You're right. It did go better. And it was a relief to me. For you to know why kissing is hard for us."

He said, "I only know that our kiss was heavenly, and I hope we'll kiss again."

She smiled and assured him, "Oh, we will. Ben, slow down. We're coming up on the turn. More. Slower. Down to ten, or you'll never see it."

She wasn't kidding. The gravel turn looked like a drainage gutter, barely wide enough for the truck's tires. The hood of the truck pushed through thick overhanging vegetation that yielded to open space, and then they rumbled down a paved track no wider than a fire trail. Ben had taken this route innumerable times since childhood, most often as a passenger staring listlessly at the road's blurry shoulder, and he had never once seen this turnoff. The surrounding trees leaned low over the truck's cab, giving the effect of a serpentine tunnel.