Her black clothes blended with her black bedspread, giving her face a ghostly quality. The blinds were open and the night was dark; the glass so black it could have been painted. Somewhere out there, over the tops of the houses and past the highway, was the ocean. The orange tabby—Carrot, he thought it was called, one of Mattie's favorites—was curled into a ball at the end the bed, doing his best to ignore them. Another cat, a lean gray one whose name he could never remember, brushed against his leg.
"Alex's place," he said. "I called him. They've got a spare room."
"The Turret House?"
"That's right. You think you can turn that music down, by the way?"
"You want to put me up in a B&B?"
"No, I want to put you up with Alex and Eve. And just short term. A week maybe."
"Okay. Um . . . why?"
He nodded at the stereo. After glaring at him another few seconds, she gave him a sigh for the ages and stretched for the knob, turning it down not as far as he would have liked but at least enough that he could hear himself speak. He could almost even hear her.
"Thank you," he said.
"So what, I've worn you out already?" she said.
"It's nothing like that."
"Then what's the deal?"
Gage debated how much to tell her. He hated lying to her. Zoe was already convinced that pretty much everybody lied pretty much all the time; he didn't want to prove her point. But he didn't want to scare her either. She'd had more than enough scares to last her a lifetime.
"It won't be long," he said,
She snorted. "You're not going to answer my question?"
"I'm just . . . probably going to be gone a bit. I might be helping somebody."
"So?" she said, shrugging.
"So I'm not entirely comfortable leaving you here by yourself."
"What, afraid I'm going to get pregnant?"
"Zoe—"
"You can relax, Uncle Gary. We use protection. Mike's real careful about that sort of thing."
"Okay, that's really more information than—"
"And really, we don't do normal sex all that much. I like the kinkier stuff, personally."
"Stop. Stop right now."
She smirked. She was clearly enjoying herself. "I'm just trying to make sure you don't worry, Uncle Gary."
"Please don't call me that," he said, and his voice turning brittle even though he was trying to stay calm. "I've told you before."
"Call you what?"
"Uncle Gary."
"What part don't you like? The uncle or the Gary?"
"Both."
"Okay. What should I call you then? Dad?" She spat out the last word as if it was coated in mud.
"Just Garrison is fine, thanks."
"You're not my Dad."
"I never said I was."
"My Dad's dead."
"I know. I'm sorry."
Her eyes had turned misty. They were in tornado country now. Their relationship was like an aluminum trailer on concrete blocks. With no firm foundation, one wrong word would bring on the gale force winds and blow them both away.
She blinked furiously and looked away. "What if I have Mike come stay here?"
"Zoe, that's not going to work."
"I wouldn't be alone then."
"It won't be for long," Gage said. "I promise. And you like Alex and Eve, remember?"
It took her a long time to answer, and when she did it was a mumble.
"What's that?" he asked.
"I said okay," she said sharply. She focused on the band posters on her ceiling, not meeting his eyes.
"So I can take you over there tonight?"
She sighed. "I'm going over to Charlotte's to study, okay? But she'll drop me off afterwards."
"All right. Can I drop you off on my way to Alex's? I can take your things over there for you."
She shrugged. It wasn't exactly a yes but it wasn't a no, either. An hour later, though, she was waiting by the door, sitting on her packed suitcases and reading a Kurt Vonnegut novel.
* * * * *
The Turret House was on the west side of 101, down a winding road lined with tall yellow grass, abundant green skotchbroom, and a few emaciated firs. The three-story bed and breakfast was the last house on a street nestled against the grassy dune overlooking the dark expanse of the Pacific Ocean.
The brown shake siding blended into the darkness, making the glowing yellow windows all that much more stark. There were two wrap-around decks, on the second and third floors. Technically, it was really four stories, but the fourth was a turret overlook that was the building's most distinctive feature and gave the place its name. Alex always insisted that the bed and breakfast had been Eve's idea, a necessary evil to help defray the costs of semi-retirement, but Gage suspected that his friend actually enjoyed all the activity that came along with it. Unlike Gage, Alex had never been very good at being idle; the bookstore wasn't enough by itself, apparently, to inhabit his every waking thought.
There was only one car in the gravel parking lot next to the house, a red Toyota Prius, but that was no surprise considering it was a Wednesday in December. Eve's yellow Volkswagen Beetle was parked in the carport next to Alex's Sienna. Gage checked his rear view mirror. No one was there but a stray cat slinking across the road.
"So?" Carmen said. "You satisfied nobody tailed us or do you want to circle the block another two times?"
"Just being careful, sweetheart."
"I love it when you call me sweetheart. I feel so empowered."
"How about sugarbums? That better?"
"Oh, much. It's like the feminist movement never happened."
She'd changed since the office, now sporting designer jeans, black boots, and a pink cardigan over a white cotton blouse with a low pleated neck. The flower clip in her hair matched the embroidered flowers on her sweater. He knew from experience—usually from watching her dress while he lounged on the bed—that it was the sort of outfit that was meant to appear casual while actually taking her an excruciatingly long time to get just right. That perfume—what was it, marshmallows and roses?—probably took her an hour to choose just by itself. He didn't know why she bothered. Alex and Eve already loved her and wouldn't have cared if she'd come dressed in a paper sack.
After parking in one of the open spots, the two of them headed up to the porch, him with his cane in one hand, Carmen's hand in the other. Antique ship lanterns lighted the way. The night was pleasantly warm and clear, the wind nearly nonexistent. A window was cracked open and he heard the clink of a metal pot. Someone humming.
With his hand on the doorbell, Gage leaned over to Carmen and whispered. "Remember what I said?"
"Yes, yes," she said, with the roll of the eyes, "don't bring up religion, politics, or the state of the American family. You know, maybe she's not even going to join us."
"Oh, she'll join us."
He hit the button. A few seconds later, Eve was at the door, dressed in a blue-and-white patterned apron. She was darker then her husband, a creamy olive complexion that called up images of Mediterranean women in Greek togas, with long silky black hair that always gleamed as if she'd just stepped out of the shower. More than a few guests had seen pictures of her grown daughter and asked if it was her sister. It was only up close, with a good view of the crow's feet around her eyes, that she revealed a little of her age.
"Garrison, sweetie," she said, giving him a big hug. She smelled like tomato sauce and pasta, with just a hint of lavender.
"Sweetie," Gage said, with a glance at Carmen, "is such a nice word. Not as nice as sweetheart, but pretty close."
"Get your hands off my man," Carmen said.
Eve laughed. It was the kind of laugh that made strangers instantly love her, rich and inviting.
"What, there isn't enough of Garrison to share?" she said.
"There's barely enough of Garrison for me," Carmen said.
"I'm standing here, you know," he said. "And I have feelings."
T
he two women embraced, all smiles and happy sisterhood, and then three of them went in the house. The inside was a bit over-the-top with the ocean theme—a weathered boat wheel in the corner, a blue runner patterned with sea shells and sand dollars, a painting of a lighthouse on every wall—but Alex said the tourists loved it. Gage suspected it was really Alex who loved it. Despite the kitschy decorating, Gage always felt a few extra pounds of stress disappear when he walked inside. Warm cherry wood walls and soft lamp lighting. The endless walls of books. The smell of wood smoke. The halls were narrow, the ceiling low, the windows few, but it never felt dark. It was cozy.
Alex and Marilee were waiting for them in the sunken living room, glasses of wine in hand, the fire in the hearth painting their faces with flickering orange hues. The ocean visible through the bay window behind them was a dark velvet blue under a black sky. They hadn't bothered to turn on any lamps, but Gage could clearly see that Alex's wine glass was empty where Marilee's was still mostly full.
"Garrison!" Alex said, bounding out of the wicker chair faster than Gage had seen him move in years. "Carmen! So glad to see you!"
Marilee, who was not a small woman, was a bit slower getting off the couch. She wasn't fat so much as large; everything about her was proportional, just in a much bigger way. In a sense, she was like an inflated version of Eve. She had the same olive complexion and dark hair—what you could make out behind the layers of make-up—and when they were standing next to each other, the similarities were obvious in the slant of their noses and the slate gray shade of their eyes. The big difference was the warmth in Eve's eyes was more of a searing judgmental heat in Marilee's.
"Hello Gary," she said. "Still got that cane, huh?"
Gage was always amazed at her insult to word ratio—her ability to pack as many insults into a sentence as possible. He'd seen her, what, three times in his life? And yet she always knew where to prod with the stick.
"All the cool kids have them," he said. "And you may have forgotten, but I really do prefer Garrison."
Her lavender dress billowed around her feet as she shuffled forward. She dressed well, and people may have been more inclined to notice if not for the massive gold cross around her neck. Affixed with every colored gem imaginable, it was perhaps the most gaudy thing he had ever seen.
Alex, who reached him first, said, "No Zoe?"
"She's coming later. Oh, I forgot her bag in the—"
"I'll get it," Alex said, hustling out of the room.
"Coward," Gage whispered.
Carmen elbowed him in the side. Since Eve had managed to disappear into the kitchen, it was just the three of them. Somehow, even though Marilee was a step lower in the sunken living room, she still seemed to be looking down on them. They were also close enough now that her perfume was overpowering; it was as if they'd walked into a potpourri factory.
"Young strapping men like you shouldn't have canes," Marilee said. "Have you prayed about it? God has always kept me healthy, so long as I've stayed true to His word. Did you read the Bible I sent you at Christmas?"
"I saw the movie version," Gage said. "And thanks for calling me strapping."
"I'm Carmen, by the way," Carmen said, extending her hand. "Carmen Hornbridge. It's a pleasure to meet you. Just ignore Garrison. I always do."
Marilee studied Carmen's hand, then shook it. "Marilee Andreou," she said. "I'm Eve's sister. I don't see a ring on your finger. Are you two engaged to be married?"
"Marilee!" Eve scolded from the kitchen. "You leave those two alone! They're quite happy without your meddling."
"Well, it was just a simple question," Marilee huffed. "Marriage is a divine creation. I hope you're not living together in sin."
"Marilee!" Eve said.
"Right now, we're living apart in sin," Gage said.
"Well," Marilee said indignantly.
"Not as divine, maybe, but a lot of fun."
"How about a little wine?" Eve said, bustling into the room with two glasses of chardonnay in-hand. When she thrust them into their hands, she shot Gage a warning look before smiling at Marilee. "Did I tell you Carmen owns the local newspaper? She's very good. Maybe she could tell you a little about it."
As conversation changers went, it was about as subtle as a fire alarm, but it did get them onto less dangerous ground. Eve prodded Carmen with a few follow-up questions, how she got into journalism, how the Internet was changing things, and that got Carmen going. Gage knew she probably would have gotten going without any prodding.
Unlike him, she was always game to avoid conflict if possible, and she gamely played her part this time around, even overlooking Marilee's derisive remark that the only thing worth reading in the newspaper were the obituaries and astrology sections. Carmen talked them right into dinner, when they sat down at a spread of roasted lamb, vegetable salad with tender grilled eggplant, red peppers, and feta cheese, as well as several trays of pita bread. It wasn't until they were sitting that Alex mysteriously reappeared to light the candles.
"Get lost on your way to the van?" Gage asked him.
"Sorry," Alex said, "had to take a business call. It was urgent."
"Really? Somebody needed to find a copy of Catcher in the Rye before a big test tomorrow?"
This got Marilee going on all the "junk" that was published today instead of good Christian books. Alex sliced at his lamb with a bit more gusto than was really necessary, considering how tender the meat was, but he didn't argue the point. Eve mentioned how the town was growing and Marilee wanted to know how many churches there were—not including the Mormons, of course. Carmen talked about the trouble the schools were having with all the new kids, with the budgets being so tight, and Marilee sniffed that they'd all be better off homeschooled by good Christian parents anyway.
Despite everyone's best efforts, the conversation kept coming back to religion, often religion tinged with conservative politics, until Alex apparently decided he'd had enough. Either that or there was nothing left on his plate he could skewer into tiny pieces.
"I have a question," he said.
"Uh oh," Gage said.
"What does everyone think of this whole God's Wrath business? Dreadful stuff, isn't it?"
"Oh honey," Eve said, and it was clearly meant as a reprimand.
"What?" Alex said, reaching for his wine glass. Gage noted that Alex had mostly finished off his third glass; it was also obvious in the slight slur which had crept into his voice. "I thought it'd be an interesting topic of conversation, especially considering what we've been talking about. Religion. Now here's a bunch of very religious people. They call themselves Christian. But here's the part I don't get. Here's the part I don't understand."
"I wish we'd talk about something else," Eve said.
"No, no, this is interesting," Alex said. "What I don't get is this. Christians say all you have to do is believe in Jesus and you get your Amtrak ticket to heaven. But what about people like the God's Wrath folks? They cut up that one biology teacher in Wyoming into twenty-seven pieces. Twenty-seven!"
Marilee winced. Eve looked like she was going to be sick. Carmen fidgeted with her napkin. The God's Wrath killings had been just the sort of thing that Gage, in his comfortable Oregon Coast retirement, had studiously tried to avoid learning too much about, but even without a television it had been nearly impossible. Even getting his news primarily from newspapers and magazines, he couldn't skip past all the articles now. A fundamentalist Christian cult whose chief demands were that the United States government adopt the Bible as its only constitution and that the country's schools use the Bible as its only textbook, they'd been mostly ignored as harmless crackpots until lately.
That was because until lately their efforts had been restricted to releasing video diatribes on the Internet and occasionally disrupting speeches and political events—all anonymously, a bunch of angry men in white robes. The similarity of their robes to those worn by other angry men, minus the pointy hats, seemed to have been lost on them.
Then the killings started a year ago and everyone took them a lot more seriously. First, they'd killed a biology teacher in Texas who'd refused to teach intelligent design despite the local school board's requirement. Two months later it was a Democratic state legislator in Tennessee who wrote an op-ed in the local paper about why he wouldn't agree to put the Ten Commandments on display in the Capitol building. A month after that a blogger on a liberal website, whose main area of focus was the separation of church and state, was found dead in his apartment. And so on. Nine murders in all, all ghastly stabbings, the God's Wrath cult taking credit for all of them.
Or at least a sub group of God's Wrath. So far, the authorities hadn't been able to glean who was behind the murders, despite catching a number of "members" at various demonstrations. It had grown organically, apparently without much structure or chains of communication other than the ones everyone saw, which made it difficult to stop.
"Well, I don't think those are true Christians," Marilee said.
"But if they believe in Jesus, don't they get into heaven?" Alex said. "If they're sitting in the electric chair and have a deathbed conversion, don't they get a free pass through the pearly gates?"
Marilee was silent a moment. "I suppose they do. I wouldn't call it free pass, but if they repent their sins, and they really believe—"
"See, that's what I don't get," Alex said. "How can a mass murderer get in just by saying I'm sorry and then, what, believing? How can that erase all the wrong they've done?"
"David Berkowitz," Carmen said.
"What?" Alex said.
"The Son of Sam," she said. "You know, the guy who cut up all those people in New York in the seventies? There's a YouTube video of him saying he's been saved by Jesus. He sounds sincere. Maybe he means it."
"What's YouTube?" Gage said.
"If he means it, he's going to Heaven," Marilee insisted.
A Desperate Place for Dying Page 5