Free The Confession by Domenic Stansberry Page B

old underground station over in Berkeley. They were playing music from Windham Hill. Strains of Art Pepper mingled with ocean waves and the digitized crying of whales. The jockey mixed in a little Thelonius now and then, and mumbled something incoherent about the Coming of the One. On the other end of the cove, meanwhile, I could see a couple out on their deck, sunbathing. They lay leeward of Golden Hinde on the sheltered side of the bluff, and towering above them was Mt. Tamalpais, serene and dappled under the light, with its spiritual retreats, its spas, its Beaux Arts homes overlooking the canyons. From my deck, I could see the mountain, and Highway 101, too, rippling over the mudflats along the fringe of the old redwood forests that had been sluiced down a hundred years before. The sounds of the traffic carried across the inlet, and I thought about the people in their cars, in their houses, in the prison, all connected somehow in this current moment. Then the music was over. We were into the news hour, fresh atrocities everywhere. Serbs and Croats. The Israelis. A girl in Petaluma, kidnapped from her bedroom. And in Marin County, a verdict had been reached in the Dillard case.
    Guilty.
    Not just of murder, the jury decided, but murder premeditated—and rape.
    Outside the wind grew erratic. It blew hard for a while, then died away. In one of its waning moments, I settled deeper into the water, closing my eyes, taking in the sun. Then the wind blew cold again, and I decided to hell with it. I got out. I put on my muscle shirt and my shorts and went down to the Paradise Gym. I worked out for a good hour. I made my mind empty, focusing on that depth, that place inside where there are no thoughts. It was hard to dwell for long on that inner void. The great wellspring, the Buddhists called it. I could sense its presence but I could not enter. Even so I kept pumping. I felt hot prickles on my legs. The sweat streamed down in rivulets.
    I exhausted myself and went home.
    By the time I returned to Golden Hinde, it was late afternoon and Elizabeth still hadn’t returned. Though we’d made love several times these last weeks—rough and sensuous, a little bit frantic, my face pressed into her shoulders, her backside, my hands on her breasts—there was still something unsettled between us. I tried the hammock out front, despite the wind, trying to dream the breeze away, to drowse beneath the chill. For a minute I was back with my mother in Baltimore, and I was just a small lad with my head resting against her chest as she rocked on the porch. I felt my mother’s hand in my lap. I squirmed at her touch. I raised my head.
    Elizabeth came toward me now, walking up from the house. I was glad to see her. She wore a dark skirt and an imported blouse—a bright fabric, mottled blue and carmine. It was an exotic print, with buttons in the back. The color brought out the fairness in her skin. She approached me with a sense of purpose, a stride I recognized from the tennis courts.
    I raised myself to the edge of the hammock and smiled. I wore a yellow polo shirt and white slacks. She faltered. My glance had an effect on her. My gray eyes, my good looks. (I have always had my conceits, my vanities. An infatuation with clothes and style, the surface of things. They overcome me even now, these frailties, a desire to look good, to be admired. Though perhaps these are not such awful flaws, I think. Perhaps they are common trade.)
    “I want to talk with you,” she said.
    Elizabeth stood with her arms by her side, and her voice quavered. I heard her resolve though, and it occurred to me we were at a crossroads of sorts. “There are things we need to discuss.”
    “We lost the case,” I said. “Dillard was convicted.”
    “I want to talk with you,” she said again.
    She folded her arms. Something in that gesture summarized everything that had happened between us in the last three years. There was the skirt that fell just at the knees; the