Rapture

by Thomas Tessier

  Back at the house a little later, Jeff followed a hunch. Cognac was the only form of spirits George Lisker ever touched. It took a few minutes, but Jeff found the solitary bottle, on the shelf in the broom closet. He didn't need another drink, but he wanted one, and poured a double measure.

  He sipped the liquor slowly, enjoying it. As he drank and smoked, the grin on his face would not go away.

  So, he thought, Mike had never made it with the wonderful Georgianne. Never even got a finger in, as he had so charmingly put it. Jeff still couldn't say why this pleased him, but it did, undeniably. Enormously.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The funeral service was short and dignified. Once again, more people attended than Jeff had expected. After the burial, everyone went back to Uncle Roy's place. By the time Jeff got home it was early afternoon. He stripped off his clothes and stood under a cold shower for twenty minutes. Then he sat on the edge of his bed, a large towel wrapped around his waist, and stared at the floor.

  There were things to be done around the house, but he couldn't concentrate on them. His mind didn't seem to be functioning smoothly. Putting on a pair of light slacks, a sport shirt, and his loafers, he went out for a drive, acutely aware that he was surrounded by scenes of his past. The high school, the football field, the baseball diamond were all still there, more or less unchanged. But Ramona's Pizzeria had been absorbed into a plastic pizza chain and some of the bars had new names. The Alcazar movie theater was now a roller disco, and a rather forlorn-looking one at that. Next to it was an alcohol-free teenage night club. Jeff felt old.

  He parked and went into a package store. A few minutes later he was driving again, a can of cold beer wedged up against his crotch and eleven others stashed under the seat. It was stupidly enjoyable, this cruising of the old ground, even if he was thirty-eight. He hadn't done this in about twenty years, but it still felt good. Sometimes it was the best thing you could do in a small town.

  After a while, he got on the New Haven Road, heading south out of Millville. He was curious, but he still wasn't sure he had enough nerve. It could be terribly awkward or embarrassing. Would he really be able to think of anything sensible to say?

  When he got there, he hesitated, but turned the car onto the Slaton driveway and went right up and around to the house. A small brown pickup was parked in front of the garage. Jeff turned his motor off and sat for a moment, looking at the house and the yard. The windows were uncurtained and the lawn needed mowing, but the place still had a peaceful, secluded feeling about it. The nearest neighbors were a couple of hundred yards along the road, in both directions, and at the back of the lot was a wooded hillside that rose steeply. The birdbath and swing set remained, but Jeff knew the Slatons were gone. Yet he was glad he had come.

  Getting out of the car, he walked slowly toward the house, went up the half-flight of stairs to the back porch, and knocked on the door. The kitchen, he saw through the window, was completely bare. Not a sin gle appliance or piece of furniture had been left. But someone was inside; he could hear a power tool in use. He knocked again when the loud buzzing stopped for a couple of seconds, but it started again. He tried the door, which was unlocked.

  He went through the kitchen, which seemed too small, then the dining room, which also appeared to be cramped, and finally came into the living room, which was larger and closer to what he remembered. The place was empty, even the built-in bookshelves on one wall. The good feeling he had experienced only a few minutes ago now seemed to be leaking out of him, and he thought about turning around and leaving. But the power tool upstairs went silent again.

  "Hello!" Jeff called out quickly.

  "Yeah," a voice answered. A young man, perhaps in his late twenties, clumped down the stairs in a rush. His face, arms, and hair were covered with a fine dust. "Yeah, what can I do for you?"

  "Uh ... is this your house?" Jeff asked. There was a very slight chance this person was one of Georgianne's younger brothers.

  "Yeah, the sale's gone through now, but the agent hasn't taken his sign away yet. Sorry, if you were interested."

  "No, it's not that. I used to know the Slatons years ago," Jeff explained. "I wondered if they were still around."

  "Oh. No, the Slatons are gone."

  The young man made it sound as if the entire family had been wiped out.

  "Gone?"

  "Yeah. To Florida, I think."

  "Did you know them?"

  "No, not me. They moved out before the house was sold. It was a while ago now"

  "Okay." Jeff gave the room a last quick glance and started to go. "Thanks anyhow"

  "If you want to get in touch with them, you could ask Mrs. Brewer," the young man said. "I think she knows where the Slatons can be reached."

  "Mrs. Brewer?"

  "First house up the road on this side."

  "Going toward town?"

  "That's it."

  "Okay, thanks. Maybe I will."

  Jeff turned the car around in the back-in with the netless basketball hoop and drove down to the road. He shifted into neutral and sat there for a moment, trying to make up his mind. Did he really want to take this thing any further? What was the point? She wasn't even your girlfriend, he reminded himself unhappily. He had gone through Kathy, Joanne, and Betsy, and a couple of minor flirtations, during the years in which he had doubled with Mike and Georgians. But of all those he'd known, friends and classmates, Georgianne was the only one who still interested him. He had thought about her m1py times. In fact, he realized, he'd never quite stopped thinking about her. Georgianne had always been there, somewhere, in his mind. And this could well be the last chance he would ever have to do anything about it.

  He put the car in gear and began driving slowly to ward the center of Millville. As soon as he saw the house, Jeff smiled. A woman was weeding a flower bed along the front walk. He took it as a good omen: he was meant to know what had happened to Georgians. He pulled the car over to the side of the road and left the engine idling.

  The woman stood up to face him. She wore a checkered bandana on her head, slacks, sneakers, and a print blouse of hideous design. She was pudgy and sixtyish, but, with a three-pronged garden tool in her hand, she looked ready for anything. Jeff put on his best smile.

  "Mrs. Brewer?"

  "Yes."

  "My name is Jeff Lisker, and I grew up here in Millville. I used to know the Slatons real well. Georgians was a good friend and classmate of mine, but we lost touch as the years went by. I live out in California now and I'm just back on a visit to see my family. I thought I'd catch up with the Slatons, but they've moved, and I was wondering if you could tell me where they are now."

  The elderly woman had listened to this little spiel carefully, and now she considered it for a few seconds before deciding that it sounded reasonable enough.

  "Oh, the Slatons. They're a wonderful family," Mrs. Brewer said. "You know that Jack died five, no, six years ago."

  "No, I didn't. I'm sorry to hear that."

  "Yes. He had the cancer, but it come on him real sudden and it didn't take long. So he didn't suffer the way some do."

  "Well, that's something."

  "Now, Donnie, he went to college down in Florida, and then he got a job teaching there, in Tampa. And little Jack went to UConn, and got himself a good job at Anaconda, right up here in Waterbury. But the whole company moved to Chicago about four years ago, and he went with it. Both the boys are married now and have kids of their own."

  Jeff nodded with every sentence, trying to keep the woman moving along. Apparently she was going to tell him the whole tedious story.

  "Well, the winters got to be too much for Doris," Mrs. Brewer continued enthusiastically. "That driveway is murder when there's any snow at all. And ice? Oh! It's impossible. And being all alone up there in that house just wasn't good for her. So she finally put the house on the market in January, which wasn't a good time for that, but she'd had enough and she moved down near Donnie in Tampa. Now she has a nice
bungalow-style condominium. I've got some snapshots of it inside."

  "Good for her," Jeff said impatiently. "But-"

  "Now, you said you were Georgianne's friend?"

  At last. "That's right," Jeff said.

  "Well. Georgianne worked in Boston for a year or two after she finished college, and then she married a young man by the name of Sean Corcoran. Did you know him?"

  "No, I don't think so."

  "I've met him a couple of times," Mrs. Brewer said, "and he's a very nice person, very nice."

  "That's good."

  "They have one child, a daughter. Her name is Bonnie. Now if you're a friend of Georgianne, you know she was always very bright."

  "Yes."

  "Right. Well, I hear from Doris how the kids are doing, you know, and Bonnie is just fantastic at schoolwork. They say she has a brain like a computer."

  In the computer field this is no compliment, but Jeff didn't tell Mrs. Brewer that. Now that he was finally hearing some real news about Georgianne, he was having a hard time absorbing it.

  "They live in Foxrock, over near Danbury," the elderly woman went on. "Sean teaches high school there. They have a very nice house. But it's kind of sad, isn't it, the way families are so scattered these days. Connecticut and Chicago and Florida ..."

  Jeff nodded sympathetically and took a step back toward the car. He had what he wanted, more or less.

  "Thanks very much for your help."

  "I'll tell them you were asking for them. Doris still calls up from time to time. What'd you say your name was?"

  "Lisker," Jeff replied softly, turning away. "Thanks again." He got into the car.

  "What was that?" 8

  Mrs. Brewer hadn't caught it, but she knew she'd heard the name the first time. It would come back to her sooner or later. She had read about this somewhere. The trick was not to try to force it. Once you saw or heard something, it was in your mind for good. Maybe you couldn't always find it just when you wanted it, but eventually it would pop up again. All it took was patience.

  She watched the young man drive away, noticing the New York license plate on the back end of the car, and then she got on with her weeding.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jeffs talk with Mrs. Brewer had left him determined to finish his business in Millville as quickly as possible. He no longer had the slightest reason to linger. He took Uncle Roy and Aunt Kitty out to dinner, and then spent all of Wednesday morning sorting through personal effects at the house. It was a strange experience. Most of the things to be thrown away belonged to him, not his father. Junk, he considered it, left over from childhood and adolescence, things he'd never bothered shipping out to California. When he was done, he had filled several trash bags.

  Tuesday night, after taking Aunt Kitty and Uncle Roy back to their house, he had come home and sat in the living room watching television and drinking the rest of the beer he had bought. It was another silly luxury, like cruising around that afternoon. In California, he saw little television. Now, in the house where he'd been raised, it was impossible to resist, and the shows were right out of his past: Wally and the Beaver, Bilko, Dobie Gillis, Twilight Zone, The Honeymooners, and Love that Bob. It was like being on vacation, something he hadn't done in more than ten years; and it had taken a funeral to achieve it.

  Perhaps if he had been able to do something like that with Audrey, something as simple as sitting up late once in a while and watching old TV shows ... She had divorced him because he was a workaholic, and because he showed no willingness to change. But he knew it was foolish to think that anything could have saved their marriage.

  Audrey had never understood or accepted that he simply couldn't afford to take much time off from work. He and Ted had just started their own company, entering one of the riskiest and most competitive areas of the computer-science field. For the first five years, neither of them had ever put in less than ninety hours a week. To do so, they were convinced, would be suicidal. Then they'd be damaged goods; they'd never get the money or the business to start over.

  You had only to glance upstate to Silicon Valley to see how many others there were, breathing down your neck, and to learn the lesson of all those hundreds of failures, bankruptcies, and personal catastrophes. Somehow, amazingly, Jeff and Ted hadn't burned out. Jeff had lost a marriage and Ted was a walking pharmacy, but they reckoned they were lucky. The pace was still furious, but they were down to sixty-hour weeks, and the company was secure now, thriving.

  Jeff had sat up watching the reruns with a Connecticut road map open on his lap. He kept glancing down at it, as if he expected it to change. He had forgotten all about 1-84, the highway that had come through Waterbury about the time he had graduated from high school. He hadn't paid much attention to it then, but it fascinated him now. It was an alternate route to New York and, judging by the map, a quicker one. But the interesting thing about it was that it passed through Danbury.

  After piling the trash bags in the cellar Wednesday morning, Jeff took care of the rest of his business. He arranged for the gas to be turned off and the telephone service disconnected. He filled out a changeof-address card at the post office. Hudson had asked him to leave the water and electricity on; they would be useful when the realtors showed the house. As agreed, Jeff delivered a slim folder of outstanding bills and other papers to the lawyer's office.

  Back at the house, he packed his suitcases and checked every room one more time. I'll never see this place again, he thought, and for a moment he couldn't get his feet to move. Yes, on the whole he had been happy here. Happy enough, and that was probably as much as anyone could hope for.

  He locked up, put his things in the car, and drove across town to say good-bye to Uncle Roy and Aunt Kitty. He gave them the house keys and a card with his office address and number on it.

  "I think I'll take 1-84 back to New York," he said as they stood out on the front lawn.

  "I should've thought to tell you," Uncle Roy said. "It's faster that way, and a better ride."

  "It goes through Danbury, doesn't it?"

  "Yeah. Well, over it."

  "Danbury's getting to be quite a big city," Aunt Kitty said, offering last-minute Connecticut news. "Lot of new business and development."

  "Yeah, Union Carbide set up headquarters there a few years ago," Uncle Roy added. "Quite a setup."

  "That's right," Jeff said quietly. He was suddenly interested. "I remember now hearing that Union Carbide was in Danbury. When that Bhopal disaster was in the news."

  He was genuinely sorry to leave his aunt and uncle. They had always been good to him. As he drove north toward Waterbury, he had to face again the unhappy thought that this might be the last time he'd see them both alive. Yet, to him, the whole damn Brass Valley reeked of death, and he was glad to be leaving it. Even the brass giant, Anaconda, had packed up and moved away, according to Mrs. Brewer. Old industry had made this gritty area, but that was the past. New technology had taken over, and it would rule supreme at least through Jeff's lifetime.

  Traffic was light Wednesday afternoon as he headed west on 1-84, leaving Millville, Waterbury, and the Brass Valley behind. It was a short drive to Danbury, and he hardly noticed the miles passing. Too many thoughts were crowding his mind. A lot of things had happened in a few days, some by accident and some by design. On Sunday he had missed route 8, the Waterbury exit, the immediate result of which was that he had come up the New Haven Road instead, past the Slaton house. Then, when he'd gone to the house on Tuesday afternoon, it could have been locked up and empty, but it wasn't. The new owner had been there to steer him to Mrs. Brewer, who in turn had been out in her front yard, making it impossible for him to drive by without stopping. Then, looking at the road map, he had discovered 1-84, a way back to La Guardia Airport through Danbury. Not to forget the conversation with Mike Rollins, which seemed to have a bizarre significance for Jeff. Something had been taking shape in his mind, and now he knew what it was. Since he was here, and since it was possible, he wan
ted to see Georgianne again. Once would be enough, he thought. It was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

  He nearly lost his nerve, letting two or three Danbury exits pass before he finally got off the highway. With no sense of direction, he drove around the outskirts of the city until he spotted the Mortlake Motel. It was neither great nor terrible, but, like most motels, bleakly adequate. The package store across the road was a plus. After checking in, he bought a sixpack, returned to his room, and picked up the phone.

  "Lisker-Benedictus Future Systems. May I help you?"

  Jeff loved to hear that. More than his own name, those four words told him who he was, what he was. Lisker-Benedictus Future Systems. Beautiful. Once in a while he used his outside line to call the front desk and hear those words; then he'd hang up, satisfied. They had considered shortening it to Future Systems, but eventually discarded the idea because Jeff was so opposed to it. He loved the sound of it the way it was. A few seconds later he was put through to Callie Shaw, personal assistant.

  'Callie, this is Jeff."

  "Hello," she said brightly. "How are you? Where are you?"

  "I'm fine and I'm still in Connecticut. I wanted to check in with you because I've been in and out a lot the last few days and I didn't know if you'd been trying to reach me."

  No. There's no real news here, Jeff. Nothing exciting or important to report, so I didn't want to bother you."

  "Just the usual day-to-day madness."

  "Right, yes," Callie said with a laugh. "We're coping. Pretty well, I think."

  "Okay, glad to hear it. Now listen, Callie. I'll be staying on here for another day or two, which will bring us into the weekend, so you might as well not expect to see me until Monday."

  "Fine. I'll make a note of that."

  "I won't be at the number I gave you," Jeff said. "In fact, I can't really give you a number, because I'm doing a lot of running around, seeing people and tying up loose ends-family business. What I'll do is give you another call, either this time tomorrow afternoon or else the first thing Friday morning. Your time. All right?"