Martin thought of that year as a big fluke though. Usually the Messenger delivered no matter when or where. Despite his optimistic delusions, Martin expected they’d find a letter sooner or later. He prayed, however, they found one before the thirtieth. A day to prepare wasn’t realistic, especially given Teresa’s condition.
The blue toilet water had magically cycled green a moment earlier. Inside the rippling surface Martin’s face begged for a shave—soon he’d have a full blown beard. The father he no longer knew looked back at him with kind, sad eyes. You know I love you, right? Those parting words from his dad had been enough for the rest of Martin’s life. He didn’t have to go see his father to be at peace. As a kid his parents had always been ghosts anyhow. So let them stay that way. Poor Teresa should have known better than to dabble in the past.
Martin flushed the green water and went to wash his hands. Gazing beyond the chalky lime deposits and fingerprint signatures, another mirror-Martin met him eye to eye. The toilet water version had looked so much better, not this exhausted man plagued with worry. He pulled down his eyelids with his pointer fingers. Even the red hidden beneath had a tired, influenza color. Quit feeling sorry for yourself, he thought. Think about what Teresa’s going through and suck it up buddy. He snatched a hanging paper towel. Just one. Conserve. After the brown towel came apart in damp shreds he relented and took a second one to finish.
As Martin returned to their table, restaurant life rattled deep in his head: the clicking plates, the scraping forks, the blithe chatting—it all sounded like the digestive system of an enormous, annoying organism. And probably smelled like one too. He’d seen too many good diners and too many bad diners to know the difference. Dead ahead a skinny kid let a whole mouthful of hash browns tumble onto his plate in a steamy white pile. His mother silently reprimanded him by stabbing his fork back into the lump to force feed him. Okay, so this was a bad diner.
Since their visit to her mother, Teresa’s coughing and retching had worsened. She waited for him in the red booth, a serene lady bathed in crosses of sunlight, and even though her fist went to her lips for a silent fit, Teresa’s eyes were so alive they looked clairvoyant. The burden was lifted. It’d been a long time, but he’d waited for this moment patiently, waited for a glimpse of a healthy Teresa again.
The leather seat blew out underneath Martin. He shoveled down a pair of sunny-side eggs, short stack of buttermilk pancakes with banana syrup, and crispy hash browns (which scalded his tongue). He conceded that even though the place didn’t have cage-free eggs and fair-trade coffee, he wouldn’t let mediocrity ruin the relief every bite brought. He started to think they’d be okay. No matter what.
Teresa fondly watched him as he gobbled the parsley and fan of kale that decorated the plate. The level of oatmeal in her bowl had not lowered more than a centimeter. After drinking a quick sip of orange juice, he set his cup down and rotated it with the sides of his fingers. “I’ve pretended I don’t care anymore, but you know how lousy I am at putting up fronts. I think we should do as the doctor recommended and take the next step.”
She glanced away, her face falling out of the sunlight. “Martin, goddamnit already... let’s not bicker right now. Let’s not talk about chemo and radiation or any shit I won’t be doing. Can’t you get it? We can’t go that route. The Messenger doesn’t even like us to stay in one town for more than a week. Just forget about my lung and try to focus on what really matters. Take a look, it’s all around you.”
“Who says we give in? I’ll deal with Halloween like I deal with it every year.”
“You’re getting loud.”
He reached across the table and took her hands, tried not to read into why they were so cold in such a stuffy restaurant. “You were a fighter when we first met. Maybe the next doctor will actually help. It’s about time someone helped us for a change. Isn’t it worth trying?”
She pulled her hand up from under the weight of his. “I’m just slowing down after running so long. It’s natural to slow down.”
“You’re as old as you feel.”
Teresa made a patronizing how cute sound and pinched his cheek. He rolled his eyes and she shifted in her seat, undefeated. “Look, I’m not trying to piss you off, but I’m gonna go outside and have a smoke while you pay.”
“Go ahead then.”
She leveled her dark blue eyes at him. “I’ve cheated death for thirty Octobers, Martin. I don’t have the energy to fight something else. Let me be.”
Teresa scooted down the seat and stopped.
“Excuse me, folks.” Their waitress stood there in her rose uniform and dangling grape earrings. She set the check on the table. “You folks are all set—I’ll take that up whenever you’re ready.”
“Thanks.” Martin slid the black folder his way.
“There’s also this.” The waitress placed an orange envelope on the table. “The manager just told me or I would’ve brought it sooner. I guess one of your friends left this off earlier today.”
“Our friend?” asked Martin. “What did the person look like?”
The woman blinked back at him, speechless. She pursed her lips and shrugged, and then shuffled off.
After they paid and were outside, walking back to the van, Teresa laughed a little. “You asked her what the Messenger looks like. You still do that?”
“So?”
“Nothing, you’re just a broken record.”
“It doesn’t hurt asking,” he stated. “Maybe one of them will remember. I just want to know.”
“It doesn’t mean you ever will, Martin.”
He decided to let it go. They got into the van and drove down the blacktop road to a bleached out gas station. As they pulled up, he noticed a pair of stout biker women trading a muffled conversation the next pump over. He wondered what they could be talking about. Tattoo sleeves? Harleys? Tailgate parties at the football game? Leather chaps? Pabst Blue Ribbon? Mullets? None of those stereotypes probably, but at least it all sounded somewhat normal—safe. He liked that notion.
He took a deep breath of desert air and gazed to the road that stretched beyond them, a bitter gray line of cigarette ash flattened by time. He felt the heaviness of the drive before them, even though it might only be a few hours. His entire adult life had been spent on freeways and highways and tollways and side streets and thoroughfares and parkways and boulevards and lanes and avenues. How many red lights had they seen? How many road construction sites had they passed? How many oil changes? New places even looked familiar now when they arrived.
Teresa grunted as she fell into the seat. “All gassed up. Open the thing up for chrissakes, so we can get going already.”
He tore through the top of the intense orange envelope. The single page of vellum unsheathed like a paper blade. Teresa leaned in with him and they read the deep typewriter font burned into the pale beige surface.
TAKE NO MORE DETOURS AND HURRY WEST TO COLTON, CALIFORNIA. ROOM AT THE HAPPY MOON TRAVEL LODGE ON MOUNT VERNON AVE. STAY PUT IN THE ROOM AND KEEP UNDER THE COVER OF STORM CLOUDS.
REST WELL. NEXT LETTER SOON.
—Messenger
“The letters have never mentioned resting before,” said Teresa.
“Or storm clouds,” Martin added, tapping the touch-screen of their portable GPS. The multi-colored map pivoted under a gauzy film of leftover fingerprints. “Says Colton’s six hours off.”
“What do you think it means about resting?” she asked.
“I’m just going to assume we were supposed to be there earlier.”
“Don’t bring up the trip to my mother’s.”
“I’m not, let’s just get to Colton.” He continued stabbing the GPS.
Teresa took the envelope and pulled free a banded stack of thousand-dollar bills. An ATM card was tucked under the yellow band, which had a PIN scrawled across it. She peeled the fresh bills over and counted. “Looks like sixty grand.”
He turned the ignition. “We got a raise this year. Sweet!”
/> She took out a clove and dabbed it on her lower lip. He stared at her and Teresa chuckled. She shook the near-empty lighter and coaxed a flame out. Through a racing plume, she traced the foggy landscape outside, ignoring the severity of his gaze. He gave up and moved his eyes in the direction hers had gone. The desert rolled on, a dry echo caught between the earth and sky; it was endless, like them. They were always moving, all year long, some of the Messenger’s jobs small and some large, but only at the last thrashings of October did they see their real purpose. No year had ever gone by without him doubting its worth though, and with age the doubts haunted every crack in the road.
The clove cigarette crackled.
“What kind of person do you think the Heart of the Harvest will be this year?” Martin’s was only half-interested in his own question.
Teresa shrugged, in the moment incapable of caring either. When they met a Heart there was little choice in the matter. “Can you put on Sam Cooke?” she asked. “Please.”
He located the album on the CD changer and soon they were drifting on the sad-hopeful sound of A Change is Gonna Come. Martin knew the song was about civil rights but he pretended it meant something unique to only them. He pretended all the way to California.
FIFTEEN
Paul watched the fleet of limousines slither down the desert hill. Melissa drove, silently dismissing his presence. Paul didn’t give a fuck. Let the bookworm mope. He sank deeper into thought as he traced the caravan of limousines. Intermittently the sun struck bumpers and projected faint orange dazzles between the black exteriors. After surviving last night and this morning, this wasn’t an image Paul wanted to endure. He bent his head down and shuttered. The marrow seeds spread their dry-ice roots and every time a blossom opened, cold napalm filled his bones. He couldn’t believe his old pal Justin had gone through this. It made Paul slightly regret dismissing him as feeble.
A day later and Paul was watching people lose their heads just from a touch, and worse, he was beginning to understand what it took to accomplish something like that. Before sunlight had even painted the Mojave, Cole took him into the rolling dark morning and taught him two mental exercises. Both were meant to control the blossoms’ growth. The first was a color game. Concentrate on the spectrum, separate the colors, one at a time, and then two and three at a time, and then put all colors together. Darkness formed a wall against the barrage of information flooding into their minds from the Old Domain.
Once the wall was established it seemed natural to reopen a shutter of sorts and control what flowed in. Paul had happily learned this ability. He didn’t need to hear anymore songs from Cloth’s children. Paul had his shutter closed tight right now and it felt damn good to see the world as he remembered it. There were still worries however. Cole cautioned about closing the shutter too long with the seeds in bloom—this would cause some sort of unbalance in the garden cropping up in his lungs. You didn’t want too many black blossoms; you didn’t want too many orange.
Opening and closing had come so easy that Paul didn’t even recognize it as a skill when Cole had shown him. The big man almost kicked his heels he was so happy with this instant progress. Paul didn’t get it though. It was like receiving a gold medal for taking a leak.
Now the second exercise, that was the one that got Paul’s mind all loop-de-loop. Essentially, he had to touch an object—this morning, a rock fragment—and then push it with his thoughts. Only he wasn’t pushing the rock from one point to another. He was pushing particles into the Old Domain... and if he had the shutter open, the process was a great deal easier, as he learned with that chola back in the ghetto chapel. Everything in Paul’s head lurched forward when he pushed, veins wanted to disconnect from their beds and rip out of his face. All of those bits of matter that flaked off the rock’s surface tugged on particles in his face as though they were long lost couples reuniting. He could feel his skin wanting to join the departing rock molecules. But he wouldn’t let them; he concentrated on pushing only the stone. It took some sweat but he figured it out in a few minutes. This last part had left the well-scarred Cole dumbstruck. Probably a bit scared too.
Something about that fear had gotten Paul’s wheels turning about Bishop Cole Szerszen. Paul’s role had been far too static in Szerszen’s scheme. After watching the man in action with that Hector fellow, a new plan had come together. Paul Quintana’s plan.
Melissa stole a glance at the decaying quartz in his palm. Her hair was in a neat bun stabbed with chopsticks and her spectacles had slid down her nose. Paul thought that on a pretty Asian chick the look might have worked. It might have worked on any pretty chick. But he’d had his way with Melissa; Paul couldn’t pretend otherwise, couldn’t erase that more than embarrassing night. In fact, he didn’t want to erase what happened. It was going to set him free.
“Long day ahead,” sighed Melissa. “Why do you keep looking at that thing?”
Paul put the quartz in his suit pocket. He didn’t feel like talking much, not to her anyway, but there was an angry hive of questions buzzing in his head. This isn’t really the time or place, but what the fuck?
Reflections of the other limos crossed the sparkling lenses of her glasses. “Cole said conclave is tonight in Ontario.”
“Aren’t we headed the wrong way?”
“Ontario, California,” she explained.
She has no idea the things that could be done to her and her man, thought Paul. “How is my fellow Bishop, anyway?” he asked. “He didn’t seem too well. With that bandage over his head people are going to think the villagers finally got him.”
“You’re hilarious.”
Paul gave her an once-over. “You thought I was funny that one night though, didn’t you? In the archives… have you ever been with Cole there, I wonder?”
She didn’t say anything, too stunned that’d he brought it up.
“Do you ever still think about that night? Was I your favorite in the lot?”
Sideways revulsion: “Absolutely not.”
Paul glanced up wistfully. “I wonder what would have happened if everybody wasn’t both so sloppy drunk.”
“I’d be a whole lot happier.”
“I think a lot more would have happened, more coordinated at least. That’s what I think.”
“Cole’s sleeping in the back. Remember? You’re fuckin’ playing with fire here Quintana.”
“He’s out like a light.” Paul turned, his seatbelt restricting him at the throat. He pulled it loose. Despite his bravado, he lowered his voice, “Something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. I don’t care much for this power-play you two made on me. I didn’t want a thing to do with either of you. I needed to ascend—”
“To meet the Priestess of Morning,” Melissa pointed out. “There’s a real need.”
“—And now Cole’s trapped me into performing some ritual he’s probably better suited for, while he goes out to play insurrectionist and assassin. We’re doing this behind Cloth’s back on top of everything else?”
“Cloth will be told.”
Paul ignored this as misdirection. “I know Cole thinks I’m taking to all this jazz easily, but how do I know this Heralding ritual won’t kill me? I never asked to be a hand in killing the Archbishop. I could give a fly’s fuck if Sandeus stays seated for fifty more years.”
“You killed Margrave. Don’t twist this up,” she spat.
“Once the Archbishop is dead, won’t I be next? Tell me Melissa.”
“Sandeus Pager will never secede—”
“And he’s leading us to ruin,” Paul finished mockingly. “Somehow I don’t feel any safer with Cole as Archbishop. Come on, I might not even live to see those days. The Heralding may cash me out.”
“Cole’s survived every year he’s been through it.”
“Yay Cole! I hope his survival doesn’t have anything to do with that Pit Bull head on top of his neck.”
“Stop that!”
“Anyway, I would leave you guys alone if I could.
Really I would. Zilch is what you two mean to me. Zilch. But there are issues here—I have to take precautions, you see. I won’t be used and thrown away. I have plans to live a nice, long, happy life giving the Priestess of Morning her fair share of Quintana.”
“Just quit speaking to me. I don’t want to hear your voice anymore.”
“What? You think I’m disgusting?” Wait for it you ass! Stop smiling! Paul took out his cell phone, flipped it open and navigated to the video folder. Selected one of his favorites. He’d almost forgotten he had this one and then this morning he watched it again. Magical. It’d helped him remember he was still human.
The sounds of slurping, suction and moaning came from the little phone speaker. Melissa’s eyes twisted over and widened at the small image of her head going up and down between Paul’s legs. The view changed. From the waist down another man thrust into her from behind, his black slacks and boxer shorts bunched around his ankles. A grinning blonde woman, who Paul would have later that night, dipped underneath Melissa and began suckling a nipple. The file was too short for Paul’s tastes. He did admire the end shot, as Melissa pulled back from his penis, a long, white strand bending from her lower lip.
Melissa’s face looked prepared to split in half. “Paul! What—?”
“You looked right into the phone, precious. You saw me taking it.”
The dismay in her eyes told the story clearly. The camera phone memory had been lost in the mistake of that drunken night.
Paul folded up the phone and rested it on his lap. He tilted his head, playing a mock, sensitive version of himself. He could play that role when he needed to. Most people bought it. Melissa’s fists clenched the wheel now and blanched her knuckles white. Most people.
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