Talia put her elbows on the table and concentrated. Words were like cats (if you thought hard enough about it, pretty much everything was like cats, or unlike them, or whatever). Chase after cats or words and they’ll outrun you every time. Sit still, act like you don’t care, and they’ll be all over you (another lesson that David could benefit from learning).
It wasn’t uptight, it was …
Guarded. Yeah, that was closer. He was friendly and all, and obviously loved Dawn to death, but it was like his eyes were turned in—as if what happened inside his skull was the realest thing in his world. Talia loved to write, but she knew the difference between inside and out and which was important. She wasn’t sure David did know this, and she’d been nearly blown out of her panties when he’d blurted out his news about the baby. It was touching as hell but out of character, as if he’d decided that it was worth interacting with real people for once. Of course, with what had happened to his parents, maybe it wasn’t so surprising that he took a cautious approach. Maybe that was simply good sense, and one of these days he’d see his own shooting star—or hopefully something less obvious, as Talia believed David might think wake-up calls delivered via shooting star a little beneath him, too—and relax a little.
Clichéd though the star had been, it had worked. You didn’t need fancy, not with things that counted. Ed used to say you could play half the songs in the world (and pretty much all of the good ones) with just three chords.
God, she hoped David liked her book.
If he did, surely that was a good sign. In her heart of hearts she knew she wrote for herself, but shit, a little money would come in handy and it would be kind of cool to go into libraries and see her book there, women waiting patiently for their chance to take it out and spend a little time in Talia’s world of wonders.
We’ll see. No point waiting on it. Not when there’s so many more words out there to write.
She had her hands raised to go back to typing when she noticed something was up with the cats. During the time she’d been working, the cast of feline companions had been in flux. Some went out via the flap in the door; others came in. It was getting late now, though, after eleven, and … she counted, and confirmed what she’d already known (if you love cats, you know if they’re around without having to check)—everybody was inside. All present and accounted for. Five spread over the couches. Two underneath them. And two …
It was the two on the table she noticed first. Sandy and Pickles. They’d been curled up at the far end (they were siblings and usually slept together) and then both raised their heads at the same time and stood up.
Talia heard a rustling, looked around, and saw most of the cats on the couches had done the same.
She wasn’t fussed by this—they did it all the time, feline senses picking up on small creatures of the night unwisely straying too close outside. A mouse, vole, rat, whatever. At this time of night most of the cats would muse on it for a minute and then settle back down, reasoning that there’d be plenty of opportunity for terrorizing wildlife the following day, and it was late, and really it was pretty comfortable and warm inside.
Only Tilly—who Talia saw was now jumping down from the couch, tail up—would generally elect to make something of it. Though the smallest and one of the oldest of her cat friends, Tilly operated a Zero Tolerance and Nuke From Orbit approach to anything that strayed near her territory, and could be guaranteed to go and chase the living crap out of whatever was outside, sometimes returning with the remains in her mouth as an offering to the big human she lived with.
Now, however, she saw that Tilly had hesitated about halfway to the trailer door. She sat down abruptly. Looked back the way she’d come. Trying to pinpoint the noise from outside, presumably, which Talia hadn’t even heard. Pickles and Sandy seemed to be doing the same, and none of the other cats had settled down yet either.
Kind of odd, but cats got ideas into their heads once in a while and just as quickly forgot them. Whatever. It was getting late and she had at least another blank line break in her before it was time for—
Someone knocked on the door.
Talia froze, hands still poised. There was no doubt that’s what it had been. There were trees near the trailer, but none of them came close enough for a branch to have made the sound. It had come from the door, too, not the roof—a straightforward rap rap rap. Not loud. Like you’d do if you were half expected. But people didn’t come visiting Talia, not down this road, and certainly not this late.
“Who’s there?”
Her voice was strong. Talia Willocks had never taken any shit, and if some happy asshole had gotten themselves lost then they needed to know right away who they’d be dealing with when and if she opened her trailer door.
The cats were all looking in the same direction. Talia hit the key combination to save her work, strode over to the door, and opened it.
“Who is it?”
There was nobody outside. She looked both ways and plodded down the little metal stairs. From here you could see from her lot (somewhat overgrown; she didn’t care much about the outside) down the twenty-foot path to the road. There was no one there either.
A hundred yards up the way was the graveyard. Its proximity had never bothered her. It was where you put dead people, right? Dead people wouldn’t do you any harm. Ed lay up there, along with the other people who shared his death day, and hundreds of others who’d passed over the years. The thought had never yielded any comfort but on the other hand, neither did she mind.
She looked in the other direction. The road came to an end forty yards down the way, replaced by the foot-worn path of those who wanted to head down to the high-sided and rocky creek that had given the town its name, generally to make out. Talia’s best bet was that some young couple, likely a few brews down, had rapped on her door as a joke—before tearing off down the path.
They’d’ve had to be quick, though. And it was kind of cold tonight. Colder than most people would find appealing for al fresco activities of the hot and heavy kind. There was a frisky wind, too. Talia couldn’t see a fallen twig or anything obvious lying on the ground, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
There was a soft feeling against her leg, and she jumped before realizing it was just Tilly cat, come to see. Talia bent down and scratched her head. The cat tolerated this for a moment and then wandered off.
Show’s over, I guess.
Talia yawned massively. Maybe she didn’t have those extra few paragraphs in her tonight after all. Could be the little fictional people were going to have to stay frozen in place for tonight.
Someone called her name.
She whipped her head around, heart stopping in her throat. She heard the wind moving the branches of the trees behind the trailer and along the road.
Meanwhile, Tilly nosed around in the long grass, not looking like a cat who’d detected any disturbance in the ether. She pounced on something—real or imaginary—and then trotted back up the steps and indoors.
The wind kept blowing, then died a little. Either way, the wind hadn’t been what Talia had heard. It couldn’t be, because it didn’t make sense, but it had sounded like someone had called her name.
A man’s voice. Soft, somewhere up the road, between here and the church. And yes … there it was again.
It hadn’t called out “Talia,” though. It had sounded like Tally-Anne. Her real name, the one she’d been given at birth, which no one ever used now. No one had called her by it much even in the old days. Her mother and father, when they were still alive … and a man long dead, whom she’d once loved.
Talia stayed on the steps, pulling her robe tight but getting colder and colder, for ten more minutes.
She didn’t hear anything else.
Chapter 37
Kristina wasn’t alarmed when she realized someone was following her—only surprised it had taken so long. Truth be told, she’d been wandering around in the hope it might happen. She would prefer not to be called upon to
tell that truth, though. She’d rather stick with what she’d told John, that she was heading over to Swift’s to collect the book for next week’s reading group. Which she dutifully did before taking a long walk uptown and back, including both Bryant and Union Square Parks and getting nothing for her trouble but feet that were sore enough to be a real pain when it came to working that evening.
She’d been convinced that somewhere along the way she’d have company. Lizzie, hopefully, but if not then one of her friends, who could presumably lead her to Lizzie. Eventually she got bored and headed for home. Well, maybe bored wasn’t quite right. It was …
Disappointed.
And more than that.
Back when she was sixteen there’d been this party in Black Ridge. She hadn’t really known the girls throwing it—they’d been Ginny’s pals—but she’d run into them a couple of times on the street and on nights when Kristina and Ginny and Henna had managed to slip into bars (not an impossible feat in the mountain backwoods of Washington State, if the three of you are tall for your age and, let’s face it, somewhat cute). They hung out all the time, at one another’s houses, at the Yakima mall when they could get a ride. They did everything as a group back in the days when it was essential to feel people had your back and were walking side by side with you into the strange rooms of adulthood. Henna and Ginny lived up the road, two houses apart, and the unspoken arrangement was they’d come walking down toward town, pick Kristina up, and head together into what passed for the bright lights of Black Ridge, there to behave as badly as possible within the limited options available.
Anyway, this party had been set up and the word was it was going to be major. It was even themed—everybody had to turn up dressed in black, white, and red. This presented a challenge for Kristina. Her mother was not one of those maternal souls who relished guiding her daughter toward adulthood. She had other things she wanted to inculcate in her, but not that. Kristina was forced to pick up the basics by herself, which frequently left her feeling that she hadn’t got stuff quite right. She didn’t have many clothes, certainly nothing that would look sufficiently kick-ass at a party that—Kristina was sure—was going to be life-changingly grown-up. Word was a bunch of boys were going to be there—new boys, different boys, not the ones who always hung around or who you saw at school.
Kris gathered together what she could. She had a black skirt that she thought she looked kind of okay in. She found some red stockings cheap in town. She had a white blouse. The last wasn’t in any way cool and in fact made the whole ensemble look a bit odd, like some waitress who’d got dressed in the dark, but it was the best she could do and if the deal was it had to be black, white, and red, then that’s what you had to do.
She showered. She put on makeup—somewhat inexpertly, as she didn’t have any good stuff and her mother had never shown any interest in giving her tips. She looked at herself in the mirror and wondered how changed she would be, how many things she would have learned and done, by the end of the night. She dressed in her black, white, and red clothes. She looked in the mirror one more time and wished herself luck.
She went downstairs cautiously. Her mother was in position on the sofa, watching TV. Permission had been granted for Kristina to go to the party. Kristina’s mother believed, entirely correctly, that her own reputation within the town would stop anybody from getting fresh with her daughter. That, at any rate, would be a charitable interpretation for her not minding her daughter going out: Kristina knew that not giving a shit also played a part. Ginny’s and Henna’s parents had been told artfully constructed mistruths about the event—excitement over which was by now causing Kristina to hyper-ventilate—and believed their daughters were going to a study session at another girl’s house, a session that could go on very, very late. The tactical advantages of drinking vodka, assuming it was available (on the grounds that it didn’t leave a smell on your breath) had been discussed and agreed upon by all three girls.
Kristina’s mother ran her eyes up and down her daughter and grunted. “What do you look like?”
She went back to watching her show. Kristina’s father would have said something nicer, but he was dead, and he wouldn’t have wanted her to go out. Kristina decided she didn’t want to wait downstairs. She grabbed an apple from the kitchen—she knew she ought to put something in her stomach before all the vodka—and returned to her room. She could wait there. She could see the street corner from her window. As soon as the girls came into sight—and they’d probably be along soon; it was coming up for seven and the party was due to start at eight—she’d race downstairs and leave the house.
She sat on her window seat, gnawing at the apple, forcing herself to eat almost half of it despite the butterflies in her stomach. She waited. And she waited.
And they didn’t come.
On Monday the school was full of stories about the party. The shadows cast by stories, anyhow. The people who’d attended only really talked to other people who’d been there. There was a lot of sniggering and implication and innuendo. Ginny had an outrageous hickey on her neck that came close to getting her sent home from school. There was talk of things that had been drunk and whispers of other, even more glittering deeds.
When Kristina diffidently asked Henna what happened, why they hadn’t come to pick her up, her friend shrugged.
“You didn’t call to make plans,” she said.
“But you always pick me up on the way into town,” Kristina said falteringly. “I just assumed.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you assume too much.”
Basically it transpired that, though nothing had ever been said, the other two girls felt Kristina took them for granted. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but that was that.
Kristina didn’t stop seeing them. They were her friends until she left town at eighteen and spent the next decade spiraling around the country and the world. They hung out and had some good times.
But sitting by yourself in a window and waiting, watching as the light turns and the night comes in, trying to work out what could have delayed things, whether you should call or if that made you look desperate or uncool, whether it had gotten too late or if it was still possible she would hear the doorbell—as it was now too dark to see them coming down the street … Kristina thought she’d always remember how that felt, and most of all how it had been to finally give up (she lasted until half past nine) and take the dumb fucking clothes off and go downstairs to get something proper to eat. Her mother had still been in her chair, the television off, staring into space.
She looked at Kristina. She didn’t say anything, but she smiled. It was a bitter little thing.
If you’d have asked Kris, she would have said that evening was far behind her. But maybe evenings like that never get behind us. When you’re young you’re very raw, and if the world smacks you it really stings.
And when friends betray and forget you, it scars.
When Kristina realized what was going on in her head she laughed at herself, sent up a prayer that Henna had put on even more weight than the last time Kris had seen her, and headed home.
Just before she turned onto their street she remembered they were out of milk. And … well, pretty much everything else. She stopped by the Not Very Good Deli and gathered up some organic two percent and random cookies. It was as she was zoning out in front of the dried pasta—a clear indication of having run out of inspiration: if there’s one food people who work in an Italian restaurant tend not to crave on nights off, it’s pasta—that she felt something. If you asked a scientist about it, he or she would put it down to a glimpse or a reflection, but it wasn’t. Kris knew humans aren’t confined by their bodies or skulls. They seep. With some strong souls, they can even stretch, sometimes for long distances.
She didn’t turn to look.
She walked to the register as if nothing was happening, paid for her purchases, and stepped outside. She dawdled up the street, trying to figure out what to do. Should she head somewhe
re more private—or find a way to signal John that another meeting could be about to happen, to see if he could get in on it as well?
“Hey,” said a voice, suddenly very close.
It wasn’t a woman’s voice. It was a man’s.
Kris turned. It was the man in the coat. The man who’d been watching her in SoHo the night before. “You talking to me?”
“I think so,” he said, smiling. He gestured up and down the street. “I don’t see anybody else, do you?”
Kristina realized he was right. Something twisted in her stomach. Meanwhile the man took a couple of steps closer to her.
She faced him down. “I don’t know you, do I?”
“No. I don’t know you either. But I saw you last night with some people I do know.”
“Yeah, I saw you too. What’s your point?”
“What were you doing with them?”
“Look, Mr …”
“My name is Reinhart.”
“I need to get home. My boyfriend’s expecting me.”
She hated falling back on the my-boyfriend’s-waiting ploy, but something about the man in front of her said this was a situation she needed to exit as quickly and decisively as possible.
“Of course. Someone like you, there will always be a man waiting. But by the time this boyfriend starts thinking ‘I wonder where dear Kristina’s got to?’ it would be too late, you see.”
We Are Here Page 21