American Dreams
Page 22
Higgins backed into the room and waited for the call. No, no surrender. He told them everything he wanted. They knew he was serious, didn’t they? They agreed to all his terms. It would take thirty minutes.
Higgins calculated his chances. The good battles all unfolded like a flash fire, but this damned thing was dragging on and on. He would take them both in a car that the police would promise not to follow; he would change to a taxi after ten blocks, and then another. When he thought the odds were in his favor, he would take them into some building with access to other buildings. The cops might even play fair, Higgins calculated, because they would count on finding him later, when the couple was safe.
Higgins pulled back the curtain a few inches to study the street. He saw cops in the street below.
The shot that came through the glass took most of Higgins’ face with it. There was blood on the walls and pieces of his brain on the chair and bed and carpet. Blood pumped up out of severed arteries.
Mrs. Michaels stood with her hands up and a frozen face. To her mind it was more than mere death. The bloodiness, the raw tissue red and pink, it was all so grotesque and erotic. She crossed over the edge she had lived so near. She went to the other side of the mirror. She wasn’t ever coming back.
The Reverend Michaels reacted very differently. He was revitalized. The noise, the violence of the man’s death, the violence manifestly of his life, the scrambled face on the carpet, all of this swept through the Reverend, and even if he could not find the words, he was envious. What had he been these past years but as dead as this man on the floor?
The phone on the table rang eight times before the Reverend Michaels heard it. By that time two huge cops shouldered the door right off the hinges and one of them picked up the receiver.
61
The man who used to be Lawrence Georges had brown hair now and the beginning of a beard. He wore fashionable glasses and dressed well, something Georges himself had never done.
He parked his rented car in front of a bar and went inside to make a phone call. It was a large place with a band and girls dancing naked and a lot of people standing along a bar and in booths. He went back to the phones and after he had placed a lot of change on the counter, he called Eloise at the bookstore where she worked. She took a short shift there each day now.
“This is your old friend,” he said.
“Hi, old friend.”
“I’ll call you from where I’ll be. Then you can come out there. I thought over everything you said. I can take care of it. We’ll get married when you want to.”
“Oh, please, don’t go so fast.”
“Sure; I understand.” He thought he could see her smile, a smile with a lot of sweetness in it, and he ached to have her with him. He had planned so well, planned on everything but her.
“Didn’t I always take good care of you,” he asked.
“Except maybe the first time you said hello.”
Eloise Samson sometimes thought she ought to have stayed on tranquilizers another ten years. When the children were out of college and married and the world had changed several more times, she might be ready to get back on. This man had come into her needful life and loved her—what was she, stone? Now he wanted her to go to Seattle or Portland, for God’s sake, or somewhere else she didn’t know a soul, and she couldn’t know exactly where or when or why. Her head hurt every time she thought about what she had done with her life.
It was true, she thought, just too true: when her husband was killed she had felt freed from a bondage that the two of them created together. She had thought that she would be her own person, but she hadn’t liked it. Maybe she could never handle it. And now this one.
Well, he would treat her better than Mac had. She thought that if he ever got her out there, the rest would follow. She wanted to go, more than anything, and she didn’t want to. Ohhh, she thought, if my mind were only clearer.
“I’ll miss you,” he promised, “every minute until you join me.”
“All right, old friend.”
He could hear the struggle in her voice. “You know I love you, and when I can tell you some of the details, you’ll be proud of me. It was a work of art. But the memories won’t be any fun unless you’re with me.”
“All right, old friend. But you know I’m proud of you anyway. Take care.”
“Talk to you soon,” he said.
On the way out he looked at the women dancing. One of them had a perfect body. He paused and stared. God, it was her! Exactly as he remembered. Several minutes passed, a song ended, another began. He realized that he didn’t have anything to say to her.
Besides, the man she had slept with was dead now.
Outside he walked to his new Ford. In the trunk was a new attache case. Inside the attache case were check books, traveller’s checks, and cash, representing two million of Harry Benton’s money.
Slipping the engine into drive, the man who used to be Lawrence Georges, certain Eloise Samson would follow, was on his way to Seattle.
62
“Whatthefuck,” said Harris the parrot. “Whatthefuck.”
“I’ll tell you what the fuck if you don’t keep quiet,” Carlyle shouted as loudly as a sick and prostrate man is able.
GeorgiaAnne playd her guitar, sweet melodies, and the sound rose up towards the stars over Texas.
Daphne was sitting next to Carlyle on the couch, holding his hand.
“But Daddy,” she said, “I’m sure of it.”
“Well, little sweetheart,” he said with uncharacteristic gentleness, “you’re a grown woman now and you can sure do what you want. Even if it’s something no Carlyle ever was guilty of before, thinking, I mean.”
Carlyle tried to laugh but he couldn’t. He was feeling old. He had never realized that he was going to feel so old. He thought that he wasn’t worth much anymore.
What was good was his feeling that GeorgiaAnne would be with him until they put him into the ground. She would want to stay, no matter how many years it was. And it was a sweet mystery to Carlyle, who had begun to think that he was a crazy man all his life, that he could hold the love of such a woman.
Daphne walked away from the house. All the stars in the sky seemed to compete for her eye. The vast amplitude of the heavens felt like home to her now. What she remembered about growing up, about school, was that the books and the teachers had all the answers. There was nothing left to find out. And somehow life had seemed no bigger than fifty miles of Texas highway. We know everything, they seemed to say, therefore nothing is possible. Now she knew the truth. Nobody knows anything, therefore everything is possible. The opportunities glittered like stars. No matter how far we go, it is only a beginning.
“GA, sweetie, that sure is pretty but I’m in the mood for something more lively.”
“Whatthefuck,” Harris said with authority.
“Damned bird,” Carlyle said. “Must be from New York.”
GeorgiaAnne sang a dirty version of Camptown Races that always made Carlyle smile.
“Eastside ladies screw all night, doo dah, doo dah …”
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1984 by Bruce Price
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2487-7
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Price, Bruce;, American Dreams