Read The First Rule of Ten for Free Online

sun.
    “Man,” Mike said. “That lady’s so outdated she’s back in.”
    She spotted us watching from the window, and waved.
    “I’m going to let you handle this one,” Mike said. “I’ll keep examining the entrails here.” He went back to work on my computer.
    I stepped outside and waved back. She walked right over and offered her hand. I caught a faint whiff of stale incense.
    “My name’s Barbara Maxey,” she said, her voice pleasant. Her palm was rough and dry, like she did a lot of outside work.
    “Tenzing, Tenzing Norbu.”
    “You’re a long way from Tibet.”
    That was interesting. Most people I met had no idea that Tenzing was a common Tibetan name.
    She gestured toward the house. “I’m guessing Zimmy Backus doesn’t live here anymore.”
    “Not for a couple of years,” I said.
    “Is he …?” Her face creased with anxiety.
    “No, no, he’s fine, as far as I know.”
    She looked relieved.
    “I used to be married to Zimmy,” she said, “but I was part of the living-out-of-a-van era. B.S., we called it back then. Before Success.”
    “No kidding, you were married to Zimmy?”
    “Wife number one. The one before the Japanese wife. I never lived up here.” She took in the view, and a wisp of regret passed over her features. “It’s beautiful. A beautiful place to be.”
    I waited. After a moment, she half smiled at me. I was oddly touched.
    “They still together?” she asked.
    I told her about the bass player, and she winced at the indignity of it.
    “Zimmy and I hooked up as drug buddies first, before we made it official. We never had much of a marriage. We went through a major mountain of cocaine before we split up. Four years of haze and hell is what it was, and I was the one keeping the engine stoked with coke.”
    I’d only known this woman for 30 seconds and we were already deep into her marital and pharmacological history. Usually that kind of instant confession turns me off, but there was something endearing about Barbara’s candor, an underlying sadness that kept her confession from seeming in any way self-serving, a ploy to arouse sympathy. I found myself wanting to protect her.
    I told her I’d bought the house from Zimmy, and gave her a quick synopsis of Zimmy’s life since.
    “Pear farm?” She shook her head. “That must be some different version of Zimmy than the one I knew.”
    “I think rehab really worked for him.”
    “I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “I had to join a cult to get clean. And then the cult ended up being worse than the dope. I mean, it only took six weeks to get off coke, but ten years to escape that freaking place.”
    “How long have you been out?”
    She gave me a wide, full smile, and I saw the stunning young woman she must have been before drugs and disappointment had their way with her.
    “Since yesterday.”
    How bizarre was that? Today was my first real day of freedom, and hers, too. I was intrigued. Why had the universe arranged for us to meet on such a hopeful day for both of us? It seemed auspicious, and my heart perked up at the possibilities.
    Barbara gestured at my house. “That’s why I came here. This house is the only place I thought I might find somebody I know. I have nowhere else to go. The group I was in, they didn’t allow any communication with anybody from our past. No phones, no letters, nothing.”
    Nowhere to go. That feeling, I understood.
    “What about your family?”
    She shrugged. “No family. Just me.”
    I understood that, too.
    “Where did you get the car?” I asked.
    She ducked her head. “Stole it,” she said. “It belonged to them.”
    “The cult?”
    She nodded sheepishly. “But I figured I had something coming to me, with all the crap I put up with from them.”
    She scuffed at the dirt. She was wearing old work boots under her dress, an oddly attractive combination of masculine and feminine. It occurred to me she might like to come inside. Have a cup of tea.
    “When’s the last time