Chapter 6

Having gone to bed with Cecelia, I wound up getting up with her. Normally she doesn't hear my alarm clock and I don't hear hers – we actually do have two separate alarms – but that morning I heard hers, and was rolling out of bed just as she shut it off. She must not have realized I was up, for when she came out of the bathroom she gave a little start – and, I was happy to see, the start became a defensive maneuver. If I had been someone who wasn't supposed to be there, I'd probably have gotten hurt, for I was right by the bathroom door at the moment and she could have kicked or hit in any number of painful places.

Seeing it was me, though, she relaxed. "You surprised me, Darvin," she said, and wrapped herself around me.

"I didn't mean to. It's just that early to bed has resulted in early to rise. I did notice, though, that you haven't forgotten what I've taught you."

She pulled back a little, and raised a fist up to eye level – which is, since she's only an inch shorter than I am, the same for both of us. The thin curtains over the bedroom window admitted enough early light that I could see plainly, if not in the full clarity of day, the knotted knuckles of her clenched hand. "No," she said, "I haven't forgotten. I must confess that, in retrospect, my reaction was somewhat surprising to me; aside from your teaching, I have had no cause to prepare for violence."

"That's what training does, C – it teaches your body so that it'll react before your mind can. That's how you survive in a situation like that. If I thought you were going to face danger now and then, I'd run you through refresher drills occasionally to keep you at a higher pitch, but since the odds of you getting into trouble aren't any worse than those of any other woman, I don't bother. And I see this morning that I don't need to, either."

She regarded her fist a moment longer, and I looked down and saw how her bicep had risen in its hard knot when she brought up her hand. When I'd met her she was already as solid with muscle as any body builder, though nowhere near as bulky, and all I'd had to do was teach her a few ways to use that muscle if she found herself in a difficult situation. If she ever had to hit someone, there would be power behind it. Now she uncurled her fingers and put her palm on my cheek. "No, I don't – the last person I expect harm from is my husband, though you've informed me that the majority of wives who die violently do so at the hands of their husbands, or men who stand in that place. I know you, however, and you would no more raise your hand to me than you would voluntarily imbibe gasoline. I know, you see, that you love me." And she kissed me, long and slow.

"I do love you," I said when the kiss was over. "But right now I gotta get in the bathroom before I have a really embarrassing accident."

I could see her teeth as she grinned. "By all means, avoid accidents. I would hate to have to tell all my friends that my husband has no more control than a baby."

I couldn't think of a retort, at least not that early in the morning, so I let it lay, and went on into the bathroom. When I came out Cecelia was buttoning the front of a light blue denim dress, which I could see perfectly since she'd turned on the light. It reached to the floor, and the sleeves came to midway between her hands and elbows, flaring just a bit there. The buttons were black, and she'd embroidered a rough outline of the Sandia Mountains on the front in white thread. She'd made it on her industrial sewing machine, taking considerably less time than it would have taken before I got her the machine a few months before. She could work with heavier fabrics on the new machine, and work with them more easily, than she'd been able to with her old sewing machine, and the hand sewing she'd done sometimes for finicky work.

While she fastened the last buttons, I rummaged around in the dresser and found an old pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt with the vanilla Coke logo on it. "You're not going out today?" Cecelia asked from behind me as I slipped the t-shirt over my head.

"Naw, I gotta go through that stuff from the clinic. If I'm gonna figure out who's doin' this I gotta hear and read what he's got to say." I turned to look at her, and found her regarding me with her hands clasped in front of her.

She nodded. "In that case, I shall go rouse Darlia, and then fix breakfast. I shall cook enough for three, since you won't be eating. You do not, after all," she said, sarcasm suddenly heavy in her voice, "ever eat breakfast."

"No, I don't. And no matter what you might say sometimes about Red Hawk, I don't."

"I do recall a morning when you sat in the park and ate the same food that Darlia and I did, while refusing to acknowledge that it was breakfast." Her smile was serene, as though she were confident of victory in a battle of wits.

Not being as smart as I ought to be, I joined the battle. "Why should I acknowledge that which ain't so?"

Now she was grinning, and a finger rose and pointed at my chest. "The more important question is why you deny what is so palpably true. I know what meal I prepared that morning, and it was neither lunch nor supper. It was breakfast, and you ate it – and my memory has retained the fact irrevocably."

I shook my head. "Somebody's been lyin' to you, C. I ain't never et breakfast, and I ain't never goin' to neither."