They discussed the big party they would throw when Eddie and Bryony came back, and what kind of delicious treats they should have, and how Bryony should wear her hair for the wedding. Up, it was decided. Wearing your hair up meant fine things, such as in the time of balls and galas with lords and ladies. But not harshly up, because Bryony was Bryony. There needed to be room for her hair to have its freedom.
“Where are you going to get married?” Syrina asked her. “Not out in the desert, I hope?”
Being a good and caring roommate, she knew all about Bryony’s fears, and how the desert longed to scrape its left fang down her femur, and what a terrible brute it had always been.
“My first thought is no,” said Bryony, “but perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad idea. To cancel out the desert with a wedding, something wonderful and amazing. To blot out the blackness with a thing of beauty. I wonder what Eddie will say?”
***
Back at his apartment, Eddie was making a rushed phone call to his mother while packing.
“Hi, Ma, it’s me. Things are going great, thanks. Hey, I wanted to tell you that . . . no, I didn’t see that news story on TV. Tell me all about it in a minute, Ma, because . . . oh, uh huh. Uh huh.”
Mrs. Warshouski lived back in Iowa and enjoyed a quieter kind of life there, although she tended to fill it with drama about who was dating who in the cul de sac, and the rising price of dairy products, and all of the child predators showing up repeatedly on Dateline, fairly knowing they were being lured into a trap but plunging along headfirst anyway. However today she was telling Eddie about an especially aggressive type of insect that was attacking her roses and it was of great concern to her, and she would not rest, no, not one second until this hated insect was no longer at large.
“Ma, I’m getting married,” Eddie finally broke in when his mother paused for breath. After he said that, there was a longer, greater pause. Mrs. Warshouski seemed to have forgotten how to breathe, stunned with Eddie’s rather impromptu and delightfully mystifying announcement. So, Eddie hoped.
“Is that true, Eddie? Really, for real?”
“Really for real,” he said.
To Eddie’s relief, there was much screaming and laughter and hopping up and down on both sides of the phone, and a good time was had by all while they relished this moment. Eddie threw socks and his razor and a clean pair of jeans into his backpack as he told his mother all about Bryony. He told her what Bryony looked like and the almost tinkling sound of her voice, and her habit of standing on the balls of her feet when she gets nervous because somehow that puts her in touch with the earth a little bit more.
“You’ll love her, Ma, you’ll love her,” he said, and promised to bring her by soon so they could meet. He was afraid, however, that the second his mother saw Bryony, her face would fall. He imagined her brown eyes clouding over as she pulled his new wife into her arms, holding her close and whispering: “Oh darling, oh my beautiful baby girl, how could life do this to you? How could anybody? It isn’t fair.”
Perhaps she would, because Mrs. Warshouski was a kind soul. That much was apparent by the good and fine way her son chose to conduct himself, even after spending several years outside the bosom of home. But Mrs. Warshouski is also a woman of spunk and will. It would be unfair if it wasn’t at least mentioned, and who knows, perhaps she would storm right up to fate, kick it smartly in the shin and say: “Oh, don’t you so much as dare look at us strangely, you naughty thing, for I simply won’t have it. I demand a fine quality of life for my son and that girl and I will not stand for you to hover around them in such a distressing manner. Now be off with you!”
Would this tactic have worked? What a delightful notion to entertain the possibility that it might have been the very thing that would send fate a-packing. Fate is a pushy thing of late, arrogant and sure of itself because it is seldom challenged, and it naturally assumes it can roll over everything and everyone in its way. What a bully fate has become.
But do not underestimate the mother of Eddie Warshouski, oh no, because she might come out on top, and it would certainly be a struggle to watch, wouldn’t it? Who would you place your bets on?
The unfortunate truth is we will never get to witness the grand grudge match that would have gone on between Mrs. Warshouski and fate. Eddie’s mother never receives the opportunity to meet Bryony, and it is a sad thing, and an unfair one, but that is the way that these scenes play out sometimes.
There was a murder, you see, and this murder ends something that could have been beautiful, as murders often tend to do.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
The Horror of Love
“Daddy, this is Eddie. I love him, and he loves me, and he is strong enough to handle anything that needs handling, and you’d better listen carefully because now I’m going to be Mrs. Warshouski. That’s W-a-r-s-h-o-u-s-k-i. Warshouski. Now let’s get everybody together because we really would like to get married soon, please.”
Bryony threw herself onto her aging father, who cried happy tears for his little girl. And Eddie reached out to shake his hand, but he was drawn into the hug, as well, and Stop kept saying: “Bless you, my boy.”
Eyes were wet and smiles were genuine and Eddie looked around the house and deemed Bryony’s childhood home to be absolutely lovely and worthy of her.
Then he turned and looked out of the window
toward
the
desert.
“It has always been this way,” Bryony offered by way of explanation, and Eddie had to go and sit down for a minute because his heart threatened to stop and his legs tried to give out.
“How can you live in such a place?” he asked Bryony’s father, who watched him with quiet eyes. “It wants her so badly, and is so angry. Doesn’t it feel like it wants to consume you, too, just because you are so close to her?”
“It does,” Stop said, and he sat stiffly into a chair next to Eddie. Eddie reached out to massage the kink out of the old man’s right leg, and Stop smiled at him. “It is angry and will always be angry, I think, until it gets her. But it won’t get her, not now. Not here. She has fled from it, and doesn’t belong to it anymore. It writhes and hisses and screams, and this leads me to believe that she belongs to a different fate now.”
Bryony watched Eddie’s face. She was certain he thought about the eyes he felt on the running trail, and about the unlucky women who had gone missing from the area. Death can be such a gruesome transformation.
A girl disappears, and a body turns up in her place, bereft and without soul. It is not a fair trade, not in the least, but that is exactly how it happens. There are bodies in the woods, bodies in the dumpsters. Bodies hidden in crawl spaces and in the trunks of cars and tossed into ravines. Bodies floating in the water and bodies with a thin skiff of dirt on top. They are soaked by the constant, weeping rain, not the strong desert rain Bryony had experienced, but a creeping, mewling rain. They are blanched and stepped over, and apple cores are hurled nearby. People, out walking their dogs, stumble upon them, this almost self-sustaining plethora of bodies
Bryony kissed her father on his cheek and then Eddie on his. “Why worry about this now? Daddy, Eddie and I have decided we would like to get married in the desert.”
There was silence, as she knew there would be, and Stop’s mind whirred, as she knew it would. She waited while he thought through scenarios and made decisions, and schemes and plans and then scrapped them all and began anew. Finally he nodded his head, and Bryony nodded with him, and the decision was made, precisely as Bryony had explained to Eddie it would happen.
“Yes,” Stop said slowly. “That is fitting. When would you like this to occur?”
Eddie and Bryony looked at each other and smiled, and Stop smiled, too, and there was a flurry of phone calls and little children running up and down the street to tell the news, and within two hours everybody in the town was cleaned and pressed and gathered out into the heart of the desert for the sacred and joyful occasion.
/> The minister, who was a very sweet man who milked the town’s three cows every morning, smiled at Bryony and shook Eddie’s hand firmly up and down. “You couldn’t be luckier,” he said, and Eddie agreed wholeheartedly. “You couldn’t be luckier.”
Bryony had a cactus flower in her hair, a striking red against her pale hair and skin. “Fie!” the desert cried when the flower was picked. “I refuse to be adornment for the one who I have yet to claim. The nerve. I shall hex you all at once!” But the desert can rant and rave all it wants, in the end it is still only terrain. The flower was plucked and nestled gently into Bryony’s smooth hair, and the irony was not lost on anybody.
Bryony looked around and her eyes filled with tears.
Everybody she had known growing up, give or take a soul or two, was there. She saw Samantha’s father and gave him a hug, remembering her friend’s pink casket and lackluster funeral. They never found her killer, but that is the way the world works sometimes, and he cried bitterly as he held Bryony and thought of his daughter and the wedding she would never enjoy. She saw the dear old women who had mother-henned her after her own mother abandoned her, she saw the old butcher who used to horrify the town’s children with obscure cuts of bloodied meat. And she saw Teddy Baker, he who first broke her heart. He stood there with his wife and their baby girl, and they smiled so happily at her that she had to smile back.
None of Teddy’s old high school friends came to the wedding, for various reasons. Two were dead, and the rest were in jail, all except one who was now an ophthalmologist in Michigan. Four of them succeeded in getting together one night, and at long last killing a young girl that they met at a rather wild party filled with all manner of unmentionable activities, and although it succeeded in quenching their exploratory curiosity about murder, the girl ended up in parts and the boys ended up in prison, so really nothing was won by this.
Teddy had a tiny daughter now, and had told her the story once of how he had single handedly saved Bryony’s life at the expense of her tender feelings. He had wondered aloud what would have happened if he had made the choice to call Bryony his own, and to stand up to his friends, constantly placing himself between fate and her soft flesh, and how they could have lived their life out together in happiness, perhaps.
Only it was never to be so. He had whispered to his baby that he wasn’t strong enough, and he knew he would have been worn down by the unyielding terror of the waiting and the fear of her tragic loss. He would have been a ground down shell of a man by the time that her death finally rolled around. Deep inside he felt what would have been the horror of love, and the sickening thought that perhaps he would have welcomed her death, even invited it, if it meant release from the constantly sharp edge of waiting.
He had confessed he was terrified that he, who could have been the loving husband of Bryony Adams Baker, would have finally snapped under the pressure and taken a knife to the throat of his darling wife, releasing first her and then himself from the weighty, oppressive shadow of fate. Who would have found them, he wondered? Who would have walked into their house and eventually their room, and found two blank eyed corpses, but hopefully they would have realized the relief, the relief of being free? Their hands would have been entwined, he just knew it.
Still, Teddy watched carefully as Eddie’s eyes darted around the desert and he put his arm protectively around Bryony, and he couldn’t help but remember. He remembered that first sweet kiss, and his ensuing distance from the Star Girl afterwards, but he always held close to his heart the secret he had kept. That he had single handedly saved Bryony’s life at the expense of her tender feelings. As he cuddled his own tiny daughter, he once again closed his eyes in relief at his decision so long ago. If only some high school boy would be so kind to his little girl when the time came. If only she, too, could live, hopefully forever. He opened his eyes and caught Bryony’s.
For a brief instant, he allowed himself to wonder what would have happened if he had made the choice to call Bryony his own, and to stand up to his friends, constantly placing himself between fate and her soft flesh, and how they could have lived their life out together in happiness, perhaps.
Only it was never to be so. Teddy wasn’t strong enough, and he knew he would have been worn down by the unyielding terror of the waiting and the fear of her tragic loss. He would have been a ground down shell of a man by the time that her death finally rolled around. Deep inside he felt what would have been the horror of their love, and the sickening thought that perhaps he would have welcomed her death, even invited it, if it meant release from the constantly sharp edge of waiting.
He was terrified that he, who could have been the loving husband of Bryony Adams Baker, would have finally snapped under the pressure and taken a knife to the throat of his darling wife, releasing first her and then himself from the weighty, oppressive shadow of fate. Who would have found them, he wondered? Who would have walked into their house and eventually their room, and found two blank eyed corpses, but hopefully they would have realized the relief, the relief of being free? Their hands would have been entwined, he just knew it.
Bryony, standing beside her groom, looked at Teddy almost like she knew what he was thinking, and they stood there for a second, frozen in a moment of time that nobody else shared, just the two of them alone.
Teddy dropped his eyes to the ground, and his wife took their fussy daughter and he was alone.
Bryony watched him for a second more before turning back to the minister.
“We are gathered here today,” he said, and as he continued, there was a happy shuffling of feet. Bryony Adams was getting married today. All was right with the world.
A snaky desert vine zipped its way across the sand, heading for her exposed ankle. The town butcher stomped on it with his feet, and the vine lay still. Scorpions and crawlies and all manner of dangerous creatures infested the dunes, but they were effectively stamped out and killed by the townsfolk.
“You simply shan’t have her tonight,” whispered a doddering old woman, a bit too loudly, mind you, but she was a kind and gentle thing, and those around her nodded in agreement. The desert recoiled in disbelief, but pressed on in its advances, only to be stymied at every turn. What a distressing turn of events for the desert at large.
Ah, but what an evening for Bryony!
Her eyes shone, full of Eddie Warshouski and everything he was. Her father stood beside her, and those she loved surrounded him. The moon was bright and large as it can only be in an unbroken sky, and the stars . . . Why, the stars were absolutely spectacular. They erupted in a meteor shower, falling down to the earth around them, coursing across the sky in a sea of white sparks. They were sky confetti, and celebrated the “I do’s” and the “You may kiss the bride” and they were positively dazzling when Eddie picked Bryony up and spun her around under the clear atmosphere. She laughed and the stars answered, and it seemed as though they were in her hair and on her eyelashes, and shining under her long white dress. There was much oohing and aahing and happy tears from all involved, and Stop’s stooped shoulders were petted and patted and his lined face hurt from smiling so hard.
“This is exactly right,” he said. “Exactly right.”
And everybody agreed, except for the desert, who was pouting off by itself in a most unflattering manner.
But the desert had a trick up its sleeve, oh yes it did. For it may be thwarted at the moment, but it will not be thwarted for long, and even now there was a rumbling deep underground that made the desert cease feeling sorry for itself. In fact, it began to smile, a harsh smile, a terrible smile, and anybody who witnessed it certainly would have been frozen in horror, pierced by the chill one feels when they drop something fragile, something that was given to them by somebody very dear who is now dead, and now they have nothing with which to remember them, and shall never be able to recall their features exactly ever again.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Are You Alive? Here Are Some Muffins
Det
ective Bridger stood outside the door for a second before knocking. He felt rather silly holding a basket of warm muffins, but his wife had insisted. The detective cleared his throat and tried to look extra official.
Rikki-Tikki answered the door. “Yes?”
The detective’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here?”
“Good to see you again, Detective Bridger. How’s our homicidal home invader?”
Detective Bridger smiled slightly. “I think that particular man is scared straight for a good long while. He didn’t want to confess to any of the other crimes until we threatened to put him in a locked room with Syrina. Suddenly he had a lot to say.”
“She’ll be pleased to hear that. What can I do for you, detective?”
Detective Bridger straightened. “I was looking for Miss Adams. I was going to . . . my wife . . . these muffins,” he said awkwardly, and held them out to Rikki-Tikki.
“She isn’t home right now.”
“When will she be back?”
“Not for a while.”
Detective Bridger stared at Rikki-Tikki and Rikki-Tikki stared right back. High in the trees a blackbird eyed the muffins greedily, but its sense of self-preservation convinced it to stay away. It flew off with shiny-eyed disappointment.
“Isn’t it unusual for a detective to show up at a young girl’s house with breakfast?” Rikki-Tikki asked.
Detective Bridger straightened. “I don’t appreciate your implication. I’m checking up on her to see how she was doing after finding that body. She seemed to be quite devastated by it.”
“You wanted to reassure yourself that she was still alive.”
Detective Bridger ignored this, although it was precisely that.
Rikki-Tikki held his hand out for the muffins and Detective Bridger passed them over automatically. Rikki-Tikki could see he was busy fitting the pieces of the puzzle together.
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