Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

Solomon hated me and the Circle of Elders still hates me because I stopped turning over my Social Security checks to the Purity Fellowship Foundation. But a lot of the women here think I’m just fine. In fact, just before you got back, a couple of Solomon’s widows came over, hinting that they wouldn’t mind marrying me. So what do you think of that, Miss Priss?”
    I grinned, not faulting their taste. Despite his age, Saul was a fine-looking man and a kind one besides. The women could do worse, such as with that pimply-faced Noah Heaton. I wondered if the widows Prophet Davis planned to give Noah were the same ones who had expressed an interest in Saul. Shivering, I looked up at the sun for warmth, but a dark bank of clouds had blown down from the north. After the midday heat, the freshening wind felt almost too cool for comfort. A hawk soared overhead, something struggling in its claws. The same hawk I’d seen during my morning run? Or a different hawk, different victim?
    I tried to joke my sudden apprehension away. “Saul, Saul. Hugh Hefner has nothing on you.”
    He blushed and cleared his throat, started to say something, then stopped. At first I thought his discomfort came from my crack about his popularity among the compound’s women. When he eventually spoke, though, he proved me wrong. “That, ah, brings me to the second thing I need to talk to you about. Ruby has been pretty nosey about your, um, monthlies.”
    “Monthlies?”
    “You know. Your curse.”
    “Oh, you mean my menstrual cycle. What about it?”
    His blush deepened. “She says, ah, that she hasn’t found any indication that you are, ah…”
    “Tell her I use tampons. And that I flush them.”
    He shook his head. “She knows better than that. She says you’re just using your, um, period as an excuse to avoid sex with me. And that if you keep doing that, she’s going to tell Prophet Davis and the Circle of Elders and they’ll refuse to sanctify our marriage. Then you’ll be out. Or maybe pawned off on some other man.”
    I groaned. “Damn, Saul. The woman’s a jealous bitch.”
    Saul’s glare reminded me that Ruby was still his wife. “Maybe she is a bitch, maybe she isn’t. If you’d gone through what she’s gone through…Ah, forget that. It’s beside the point. But we’re going to have to put on some kind of act if this thing is going to work. Tonight you come along to my room. Here’s how we’ll handle it. Before I moved down here from Salt Lake I saw this cute movie with Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. They were in some restaurant and she, um…”
    “She faked an orgasm. Right there among the Caesar salads.”
    He grinned. “That’s the movie, all right. I hope you can make it sound as authentic as Meg did.”
    I grinned back. “Oh, don’t worry, husband. I’ll make you sound like the stud of the year. Which reminds me. Ruby’s your wife, your real wife, so what’s the problem between you two? If she’s so interested in me carrying out my wifely duties, why isn’t she doing anything about hers? I didn’t hear her trooping down the hall to your room last night.”
    Saul looked up at the glowering sky, perhaps searching for the hawk that had caught my eye earlier. It had vanished, and only scuttling clouds filled the gray vacuum which remained. When he found nothing there, he lowered his eyes to the compound, where several men had gathered in the dirt circle and stood chatting by a rusting Mercury. Every now and then a sentence, carried by the wind, reached me. They were talking about butchering goats.
    “Hey, husband. I asked you a question.”
    Saul continued to pretend fascination with the bib-overalled men. “Question? Oh. Yeah, you did, but the problem between Ruby and me doesn’t concern you.”
    “In a murder investigation, you never know what’s going to turn out to be important. So tell me. What’s up with Ruby?”
    Saul finally stopped staring at the men and after heaving a big sigh, told me everything I wanted to know. As with most troubled relationships, his and Ruby’s problems had begun long before they even met. Ruby’s dead husband had been forty years older than she when he “married” her at the age of thirteen. He had been brutal, too, turning her wedding night into little more than rape. The next morning she’d gone for comfort to her sister wives but found none. Instead, they told her it was a woman’s lot in life to submit to her husband’s demands, that a woman’s hard