The Bridge

43

I sat in the hot-water tub as Séraphine bathed me. She scrubbed my head with some special soap laced with rose, ginger, and rosemary. Then she lathered a wood-handled scrub brush with some other sweet-smelling soap and commenced to clean me. She scrubbed my arms and chest, then leaned me forward and scrubbed my shoulders and back. She moved to the other end, and starting with my feet, worked her way up my legs. I leaned back in the tub and closed my eyes.

“Best goddamn bath I’ve ever had in my life,” I said.

She smiled and worked her way up my calves past my knees and scrubbed my thighs.

I looked at her.

She set the scrub brush aside, slid her hands under the water, and worked her hands up my thighs.

“I believe I’m pretty clean.”

She smiled.

“I believe you are indeed.”

She moved up and kissed me and I kissed her back.

She stood and got me a towel as I lifted myself from the water. I reached for the towel, but she held it back.

“I clean,” she said, “and I dry.”

She dried me some and I stepped from the tub. I took the towel from her and dropped it. I reached for her and pulled her to me. I kissed her, then turned her around and lifted her nightgown up. She raised her arms and I pulled the gown up and over her head. She turned and faced me.

“I will remember you,” she said.

“Remember me?”

“Oui,” she said.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“No place.”

“Then why do you say you will remember me,” I said.

She moved, taking my hand and leading me to the bed. She pulled back the covers and slid her slender body between the folds. I moved in beside her.

“You see something else?” I said.

Her blue eyes were moist. She said nothing. She just stared at me.

“Oh,” I said. “I’m the one that’s going?”

“What I know is what I told you.”

“Nothing else?” I said.

She shook her head.

“You’re not a very good liar,” I said.

“I’m not lying, Everett,” she said. “I don’t know how.”

“Everybody knows how to lie,” I said.

She shook her head.

“Not me,” she said.

“Then tell me something,” I said.

“What?”

“If you are going no place,” I said, “and you haven’t seen my inevitable demise, my Earth’s exit, why are you saying you will remember me?”

“I, too, live in uncertainty, Everett.”

“So you are going?”

She just looked at me.

“Are you?”

“I don’t know what will happen,” she said. “It is just something I feel.”

I laid back and put my hand behind my head and looked up to the ceiling.

“Some of what you told me the other night,” I said. “Some of that came to be.”

She didn’t say anything.

“How did you know?” I said. “Can you tell me?”

“I told you,” she said. “Your guides.”

I smiled.

“How did you know the name Cotter?”

She sat up on one elbow, looking at me.

“You don’t believe me, Everett,” she said. “You don’t believe in who I am and what I say.”

“I just said what you told me. Cotter is the name or alias of someone we’re after.”

“Oui,” she said, “but you think I know that because I know something, something I learned in the doing universe.”

“In the doing universe?”

“Oui.”

“What do you know about the whereabouts of Sheriff Sledge Driskill and his deputies Karl and Chip?”

She shook her head.

“Nothing,” she said.

“What do you know about Walton Wayne Swickey and G. W. Cox?”

“I don’t,” Séraphine said.

“The soldiers?”

“Nothing.”

“What else ain’t you telling me?” I said.

She shook her head and lay back.

“I don’t know anything,” she said dejectedly.

We just rested there. A long silence settled between us.

As unusual and peculiar as this union was between us, I felt more alive and somehow more aware of my surroundings.

I reached for her and I turned her face to me. She was warm. And seemed vulnerable for the first time.

“I believe you,” I said.

“You do?”

“Yes.”

She smiled at me.

“I’m glad,” she said.

“I do. I believe you when you tell me you will remember me, that you will do just that, remember me.”

She smiled warmly and I kissed her. She kissed me back, tenderly at first, then hard and passionately.

Lord...