Free Kissing the Beehive by Jonathan Carroll Page B

possibility. I loved seeing her, but not all the time.
    She seemed full of the kind of engaging contradictions I like in a woman: tough in her profession but vulnerable and affectionate with me, strong-minded and intelligent but also curious about the workings of the world and thus open to suggestion. One of the best things about our relationship was how well we communicated, including long conversations in bed after sex -- that dangerous, sometimes magical time when people tend to tell the truth more than usual.
    In Chicago, she was waiting for me in the hotel room. Sitting on the edge of the bed with the TV
    remote control in her hand, she was wearing a crisp white T-shirt, black skirt, white socks and black Doc Martens tie-up shoes. Her hair was back in a ponytail and the whole package made her look eighteen years old.
    I walked over to the bed and put a hand on her shoulder when she started to stand up. She turned off the television and smiled at me.
    "I hope you don't mind me sneaking into your room, Mr. Bayer. I'm your biggest fan. Will you sign my heart?"
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    I moved my hand to her cheek. "It's nice to touch your face again. I'm glad you're here."
    Her eyes were all eagerness. "Are you really? You weren't worried or anything?"
    "I'm worried and everything, but I'm still glad you're here."
    From Chicago we went to Denver, then Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and finished in San Diego. One radiant morning in Seattle while walking by the water, I told Veronica all I knew about Pauline Ostrova and the book I wanted to write. I told her about Frannie McCabe and growing up in
    Crane's View, what came after, and then about some of the people who had mattered along the way.
    We were sitting at a Starbucks coffee shop when I finished. The air outside was cool and crisp, full of delicious smells that kept changing with the breeze -- wood smoke, ground coffee, the sea.
    Veronica wore a pair of large black wire-rimmed sunglasses that made her look alluring and powerful.
    Her face was so changeable. One moment she was Lolita, the next, the president of some multinational conglomerate.
    "Thank you."
    "For what? You look famous in those sunglasses. Aren't you Veronica Lake?"
    "I mean it, Sam. Thank you for telling me your story. It's a dangerous thing to do. Telling someone leaves you open and vulnerable. I think I've done it a total of three times in my life."
    "Think you'll ever tell me?"
    She slipped off the glasses and put them on the table. Tears glistened in her eyes. "I don't know yet. Whoever says I love you first, loses. That line has always frightened me. You already know I love you. If I tell you my story too and then things go wrong between us, I won't have much left."
    "You sound like a member of one of those tribes that believe if someone photographs them, they lose their souls."
    She put the heels of her hands to her eyes and rubbed them back and forth. "Your story _is_
    your soul. The longer you're with someone, the more you trust them, the more you're willing to tell. I believe when you find your real partner, you tell them everything until there's nothing left.
    Then you start from the beginning again, only this time it's their story as well as yours."
    "No separation of church and state? You even have to use the same toothbrush?"
    Her voice was low but very firm when she spoke. "You buy two blue toothbrushes exactly the same and keep them in a glass so you never know which is which. Yours is mine and mine's yours."
    "Those are pretty tight quarters."

    The offices of Black Suit Pictures were in a modern high-rise a few streets back from the ocean in Santa Monica. You parked way below the building and rode up in an elevator to an altitude you did not want to visit in that forever shaky part of the world. Two nights before in San Francisco, a small earthquake had jolted us very much awake minutes after we got into bed. Sex that night was more "please hold me" than anything else. We laughed about