When the two others emerged, Roberto gestured with both guns and said sharply, “Everybody inside. Single file. No, wait a minute.” He had Bobbie come take the pistol and go first.
The dog jumped to its feet when they started for the door. Dorothea said, “No Brillo. You stay here and keep watch for burglars.”
The tall boy smothered a nervous giggle and clutched, blushing painfully again, at his crotch.
Roberto sneered, “You could have just turned around and let go. These girls wouldn’t mind if they saw something anyhow.”
Be careful, Dorothea told herself grimly. Don’t let yourself hate him too soon; it could lead to a bad mistake.
They filed through the house, Bobbie and the girl Quita leading them, Roberto bringing up the rear.
Ellie Stern whispered wretchedly, “I can’t tell you how —”
“I’m sure you can’t,” Dorothea said acidly. Christ, she was angry.
Helplessly Miss Stern shook her head. “It just seemed to happen, I don’t know how.”
“Think about it and maybe you will.”
“Shut up, I said!” Roberto made a fierce stabbing motion with the rifle, and Ricky stumbled forward and caught himself against Dorothea.
It must have been an effect of his own fury and helplessness at that moment that made Dorothea think she saw someone else, a shadowy flicker of movement, behind Roberto’s shoulder and against the bright afternoon sun of the yard.
The key clicked, locking the studio door.
Ellie went to the tall windows that lined the north wall. They looked like fixed storm panes, and they were fitted outside with black iron grillwork.
The perfect prison, she thought bitterly, an artist’s studio. Sinks for water, lots of open space for people to lie down in, with a toilet off the end of the room.
Everyone moved around the room looking it over, except Joyce who slumped in the one chair, a big green one, and wept. Ellie knew she should go over and comfort the girl. What she wanted to do was to slap her and make the drizzling sobs stop. So she stayed where she was, looking out of the useless windows, her back to Joyce and to all of them. She couldn’t face them, least of all Dorothea Howard. That poor man staying here as Dorothea’s guest — Heaven knew what those Cantus wanted with him, keeping him out there with them. Of all the harmless, pathetic figures, thin as a rope ladder, what could they —?
Suddenly Alex snarled at Joyce, “You’re okay, they didn’t lay a hand on you, so quit yowling, will you?”
Joyce’s teary moaning increased in volume.
Ellie turned at last. “Alex, what’s wrong with you? You act as if Joyce is a criminal, instead of these — these friends of yours.”
“‘Criminal,’” he mimicked. “As if that had anything to do with anything. You know, I learned more from them in one morning than I could learn in a hundred years from you and your drawings and junk.”
“Alex,” she said, “what is the matter with you?”
“Fuck it, what do you think? I’m on their side! They shouldn’t have locked me up in here!”
“On their side!” Ellie exclaimed, outraged. “How can you be on their side?”
“Jesus, you’re really something, you know? Pictures, books, ‘use your eyes’ — what a lot of crap!” He flung out his thin, muscular arms. “If you believe in all that stuff yourself you’re really a case, you know that?”
Jeff said apologetically, “He’s just upset because of his buddy that got killed the other week.”
“What buddy?” Ellie asked.
“You know; Peter Kesselman that was killed in a motorbike accident.”
Ellie remembered Mary Morgan mentioning this tragedy, but it had slipped her mind. She said to Alex, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. Was he a close friend?”
“What if he was?” Alex said. “He’s dead anyhow.”
Dorothea Howard came out of the bathroom patting her face dry with a paper towel. Her eyes looked sore and her cheeks were blotchy. When do I get to cry in private, Ellie thought, her eyes welling with tears.
“Can someone tell me who these people are?” Ms. Howard said.
Everyone told her. She listened quietly. She didn’t even seem scared; you wouldn’t guess that she was, if you couldn’t see that she’d been crying.
“They’re just running away from the cops, is all,” one of the Twinkies ended shyly, and they all waited for Ms. Howard’s answer.
“Then they’re not likely to stop here for long are they?” she suggested. “They’ll rest a little, talk it over, and go on running, I would guess. We can wait them out, if we’re sensible, without any big problems.” She turned to Ellie. “When are you all due back at the school?”
“Tonight.”
She seemed to consider this carefully. “All right, listen, people. Your parents will miss you tonight, and help will come. But meantime everybody might as well pick a spot and settle down. We may well be here all day, and they may lock us up when they leave.”
The kids groaned, but you could tell by the tone that they were relieved. They believed what she said. Thank God somebody else was ready to take over here. Ellie felt gritty and ragged, inside and out. Ms. Howard hadn’t spent the morning in the van with a gunman, driving in constant terror of more road blocks, bullets flying, people maimed or killed.
The kids drifted around and settled on the floor in a disorderly row, most of them with their backs against the solid wall across from the tall windows.
And now we’ll have an art class, Ellie thought wildly, to keep our little minds occupied.
She turned to stare out the windows. Scenarios of disaster raced through her mind. Roberto letting loose with the pistol and killing at random. Roberto and Bobbie ( Bobbie? But what did she really know about him?) getting drunk (there must be liquor in the house) and turning for the fun of it to brutality and rape. Her breath caught. Burning the place down out of drunken carelessness, with all of them locked in here helpless to escape. Ellie had always been terrified of death by fire.
Joni must have told someone by now. The police would wait until there was a chance the Cantus would be sleeping. Then they would sneak up to the house — but the dogs, Ms. Howard’s dogs, would give the alarm.
It didn’t matter. There would be no police. Joni wouldn’t say a word, not while the Cantus were loose and might find some way to pay her back.
Ms. Howard was right, of course: keeping calm would save them. Then any killing would happen somewhere else, to someone else, to be seen in fragments on the tv news some night later on when all this was over.
“I’m getting hungry,” Jeff muttered.
God, Ellie thought, I couldn’t eat a thing, my stomach’s all bunched up like a fist. I’ll never sleep soundly again, never take another confident step in this sinkhole of a world, never be able to trust another stranger. They’ve spoiled the world for me, these damn Cantu people.
Oh, it’s not fair, she mourned. How can I have come from the dangers of New York, that have never touched me, to this? It was funny, in a ghoulish way.
But it won’t be so bad; it can’t. Dorothea Howard lives here; she must know this kind of people, and she’s not falling apart. It really would be all right, she told herself. The clarity of the light denied atrocity. The beauty of the landscape stood against it. Without some external threat to spark the fugitives’ own terror, the chances of survival were good.
She walked over to sit down next to the painter. “I really am sorry,” she said in a low voice.
“Yes,” Ms. Howard said. “I got that part.”
Ellie steeled herself to describe the possible complications and danger from Joni and the police. Ms. Howard should know all about that, since she was in charge now. “Listen,” Ellie whispered, “there’s something else. One of my kids, on the way up here —”
Blanca was tired. She had tried to nap in the van, but sleep had been impossible. Now she sat with her arms around her knees and stared at the tv in the front room, with t
he others. So far there was no mention of them, so she guessed that slinky bitch who got away hadn’t said anything.
Good. Blanca needed some time to think and rest. It was all right with her that they sit still a little and not decide anything. The asthma didn’t worry her — she’d taken her medicine and done everything right, and the dogs lived outside, not in the house. But you didn’t want to overtire yourself and trigger an attack.
Besides, they shouldn’t make plans, not with the cancer man sitting right there listening to every word. Blanca had found a good place to lock up the whole bunch of them, the room the old lady called her studio, but Beto had kept the cancer man out. “He’s the only man in the place,” he’d said, “and I’m talking to him, not some stupid old lady.”
But the cancer man wouldn’t talk. He just sat there with his eyes closed no matter how much Roberto shouted at him, and nobody wanted to actually touch him.
Roberto ignored him now. Only Blanca looked at him where he sat quietly on the couch with his eyes closed. He was creepy. He was like a wooden skeleton figure out of a Caretta del Muerto. Death wasn’t coming for him; it had him. He gave Blanca the shivers, the kind of shivers that kept you riveted, waiting for what came next, like a good horror movie. After all, he couldn’t do anything to anybody, and no matter how scared Roberto was, Blanca knew you couldn’t catch cancer the way you caught a cold from someone who had it.
Roberto sat cross-legged on the rug, lovingly rubbing the parts of the shotgun with an oily rag while he watched the tv news and wrangled with their cousin. Bobbie whined and complained like a little kid. All his high spirits had gone when Beto pulled out the gun — Blanca had seen it happen, like a light blinking out in Bobbie’s eyes when he saw the pistol — and now he wasn’t just glum, he was getting really edgy, you could see it. His nervousness was making Blanca nervous too.
He said that when the class didn’t get home tonight, the parents would call the cops. Roberto said by the time they did, we would be long gone.
Feeling more and more tired as she spoke, Blanca said, “I don’t know why we should go right away. There’s nothing about us on the tv. Nobody knows where we are yet.”
“We’ll go when I say so,” Beto said. “Shut up, the both of you.”
“What about going back?” Bobbie said. “I mean, we were just going to ride up here with these people, but now it’s some kind of, well, it’s turning into kidnapping, and somebody could get hurt with all these guns and all. They can really put you away forever for this stuff.”
“Man, you shut your face,” Roberto said viciously, “or I’ll stick that rifle-barrel right through your ears, man, one side to the other.”
Blanca knew what the trouble was — the trouble with all of them. Though nobody spoke his name, the memory of Mr. Escobar seemed to hang in the room, making everybody feel bad. Sometimes people you knew got killed in car accidents or even in a fight if it was real bad and knives or guns came out. But this was different. A person goes to an outdoor celebration, and the next thing you know some cop, some complete stranger with no reason to hurt him, he doesn’t even know his name, he shoots him! It doesn’t mean anything anymore that Mom always talked so warmly of Mr. Escobar but never ever encouraged him the wrong way, even though she liked him so much. He was wiped right out of her life and her family’s life and the lives of all his friends, just like that: gone. He hadn’t been anybody special. Now he was nobody at all.
Blanca knew how it felt to have a cop bust your arm. What did it feel like to have one shoot you? (She remembered a glimpse of somebody, was it Mr. Escobar himself, leaning on some big barrels and covered with red all down the front of his shirt — don’t think about that.) To die in a cold white hospital room, for no reason, trying to figure out what you did to get shot?
Bobbie said, “We could leave them all locked up here and take off, right now, while we have a good head-start. But it might be better to go back and try to tough it out.”
Roberto locked the shotgun together. “Okay, I got my weapon. Bobbie, you go take that guy back and lock him up with the rest of them. I’m not making plans with a spy from the enemy sitting right here.”
Bobbie picked up the rifle and stood trying not to look as if he was aiming at the cancer man, who got up slowly and walked out of the room without a word. Bobbie followed.
Blanca said, “I think we should have some dinner or something. It doesn’t look like anybody’s hot on our trail, and I’m kind of tired.”
“You’re always tired,” Beto grunted. He stood up with the shotgun in his arms. “I’m going to take a look around this place myself. Stay here and watch the tv in case there’s something on about us. When Bobbie comes back, tell him to stay. I got to think about things.”
As soon as he left the room, she got up and went to the carved wooden cabinet in the corner. Sure enough, inside a row of liquor bottles gleamed darkly. She opened them one by one and tipped the contents over the window sill. Then she threw the empty bottles as far as she could into the brush. The effort made her shoulders ache, but she knew that if Roberto got hold of something to drink she would no longer have any influence over him at all. He might do something crazy, and everything would be wrecked.
Bobbie was glad to return Mr. Maulders to the others. He hated the Englishman’s cough.
The old lady was waiting. She was standing by the studio door when Bobbie opened it, and for a minute he felt a twitch of fear in his gut. What if she had a knife? He couldn’t jump back and slam the door fast enough —
But she just touched Mr. Maulders on the arm as he stepped in past her, and then she said to Bobbie, “It’s after seven. Would you remind Roberto that we haven’t eaten?”
Bobbie frowned at her. He tried to summon a rough answer, to show her he was not just a kid, he was his cousin’s soldier. Drafted, for Christ’s sake, the minute Beto pulled that gun in the car and everything changed. It made him sick just to think about it. Here he was with a gun in his own hand, right now, pretending like he could shoot a person for giving him a hassle.
All he said was, “Yes, Ma’am, I’ll tell him what you said.”
Before he could close the door, she added, “Don’t forget to see that Brillo and Mars get fed too, please.”
“I did already,” he said, proud to be able to tell her that. “I’ll take care of them, don’t worry.” You had to take care of your animals, because people can sort of take care of themselves but animals can’t always. He thought about telling her his plans to become a veterinarian, but that seemed silly now. He locked the door.
Old fool, Ricky thought, raging miserably behind his closed eyelids. Weak, helpless, useless, miserable old wretch!
They had greeted him like a hero, the tear-stained girl Joyce shyly rising to offer him the green chair. He had only been able to shut off their solicitude by feigning sleep.
They didn’t know — how could they? — how he had failed them. Sitting there in the living room with Roberto, mute and clenched with an absolute inability to act, to speak, to rise to the occasion and overwhelm this angry boy, this armed child, for God’s sake!
I did nothing. I was afraid.
He dug his fingers into the arms of the chair. Useless. Worthless. Where was the gallant adventurer when Dorothea and these others needed him? Where was the blasé British hero, the veteran of a thousand dangerous encounters, the man of cool and steady and unfailing inventiveness? Where, in fact, was Dr. Who? All very well to joke, old boy, but it isn’t funny. You have nothing to lose, you’re a dead man anyway, but you did nothing, you attempted nothing, you didn’t even speak.
He opened his eyes slightly, afraid that someone might be hovering near him. He didn’t want to be observed locked in combat with his own thoughts. He longed to be alone.
Three of the kids had curled up on the floor to snooze, or try to. The two blondes, surprisingly, were investigating the picture racks, pulling out canvasses and looking at them. They murmured together over the pictures, oc
casionally giggling.
Dorothea was over by the loo with Ellie Stern. They had taped up a sheet of paper and were writing on it with charcoal: a list, to which one of the young people added something now, the word SOAP. The other items listed were TOILET PAPER, PAPER TOWELS, DRINKING CUPS, BLANKETS, and CUSHIONS. To be presented to their captors, no doubt. Good, ask for the simple amenities, keep things civil. Dorothea’s idea, no doubt. She kept her head. Thank God. Someone had to, and that teacher is absolutely no use at all, totally wet.
Like me, just now.
He closed his eyes again. What went wrong, what happened?
How many young men in trouble have I run into in my travels? It’s not as if this boy were the first. Hunkered down over skimpy fires, gun always in hand, growing more callous and more reckless by the month, most of them were hot-tempered boys to begin with: then theft, a fight, a murder sends them running for the hills. Outlawed, they stay childish, innocent in a way. A few are ideological firebrands, but even with most of those the political veneer comes well after the flight. They sometimes travel en famille, the girls as handy with guns as the boys.
But always before he had encountered such people from a position of strength, of a sort: a foreign writer, someone who might report the rebel’s side of things to the outside. Ah, but that was because he had been from the outside and on the outside, never involved, never right in the middle of things.
And never like this: sick, weakened, dying.
Oh, is that it? The excuse? That — which ought to have freed him to act because now he had nothing to lose?
But I have, he thought with a wrench of anguish. I have a little time left, whatever time, months or days or even weeks, that’s all I’ve got — how can I give up a moment of it? There is so little. It’s all so imperiled, hedged in with more and more restrictions, my last scrap of time — I couldn’t risk it, I couldn’t bring myself to dare.
“Ricky.”
Right at his ear, Dorothea’s voice; and he flinched — because of how she would look at him, speak to him, if she knew what a coward he’d been, how selfish, how small. To his horror and pain he found himself wishing she would go away and not speak to him, for fear she would look into his eyes and divine the truth that would make her despise him.
Dorothea Dreams (Heirloom Books) Page 17