Heat by Michael Cadnum Read Free Book Online Page A

if I had done her a big personal favor. I couldn’t bring myself to say you’re welcome, staring into the silhouette of her head, her hair the kind that doesn’t take much of a curl, a lank wave down to each shoulder. I told her I wanted to hear more about tornadoes.
    Mrs. Jovanovich was a white-haired woman who walked with two silvery canes. Her family had owned land near Pebble Beach, and her husband had been a television producer. Now her only daughter lived in England, and Dad shepherded her estate through insurance payments, lease agreements, even helping her buy a new hearing aid when an improved model was advertised. This was typical of the kind of support Dad gave his clients, and it was clear to me that Mrs. Jovanovich must have suffered some heart flutter or the legal equivalent of a fainting spell that kept him on the phone to London or to a doctor.
    But when Mom asked how did it go, looking up from a mess of paperwork, I didn’t know what to tell her. She meant: Tell me you father didn’t marry a cliché blonde, a brainless flirt. But I didn’t want to go into detail and have to tell her that Dad had never shown up.
    â€œShe knows all about hogs,” I said.
    â€œNo kidding,” said Mom, with greater interest than I expected.
    â€œYou don’t want to live downwind,” I said. “If you raise too many pigs per acre it’s bad for the water table. The manure soaks into the ground.”
    â€œHarvey must love hearing about that every night,” she said. Everyone called my Dad by his entire first name, never Harv.
    â€œHogs ate a boy’s fingers off,” I said, since the subject seemed to intrigue Mom. “He passed out from the fumes, and the animals thought he was fodder,” using Cindy’s exact words.
    The drive from Oakland to Sacramento takes a couple of hours, some one hundred miles through metropolitan fringe, dairy-cow hills, and at last the flat pasture land that used to be an inland sea, according to Rowan. In prehistoric time, he means, although sometimes during winter a levee breaks and again the valley turns into ocean.
    Denise suffers from hay fever, and she is almost superstitious about taking antihistamines before a meet, worried they might make her pee test come out false-positive. I tell her this is unlikely in the extreme, but athletes trust suffering.
    Some schools rent little yellow school busses, or own cute little vans with REDWOOD PREPARATORY or CARMEL HIGH SCHOOL lettered on the door panel. The academy rents air-conditioned Peerless Stage busses, the same conveyances gamblers charter for the long trip to Reno. The bus was not half full, even with the chaperones, the volunteer supervisors, wives of dentists, and professors on sabbatical. The seats have head cushions, and the armrests have obsolete ashtrays, little metal doors you can flip open and see the old freckles of ash even professional maintenance cannot completely remove. The seats cushions are green velour, very comfy.
    Denise and I are among the leading lights of the swim and dive team, and we are also the youngest members, so the other athletes leave us alone. There is no chill involved, it’s all amiable. But Denise and I often lunch together, or swing into the back seat of a bus, and they give us a nod or a wave and let us be. Miss P came to the rear of the bus, hand to hand along the seat backs, asking if Denise was okay.
    â€œSnot,” said Denise, sounding like someone talking from inside a pillow. “My head is full of it.”
    Miss P shook her head sympathetically and hunched to get a better view of the dry, empty fields. “Adrenaline will clear it,” said Miss P, and this was true. A sudden shock, or anticipating the gaze of five thousand strangers, will clear your sinuses before you even suit up.
    â€œMy head feels like it’s this big,” said Denise almost peacefully.
    â€œI’m allergic to acacia,” said Miss P, and