“Let’s leave it at burn down your house.”
“If we have to…”
“We do.”
“So are they going to arrest him?”
“I doubt it. The evidence is circumstantial at best, and the NSA is not going to help you with this.”
“Why?”
“Because we don’t give a shit about your house.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you just care about me.”
“Right, Mr. Roberts—just about you.” Yslan turned from him and looked out the window at the dark lake across the six lanes of traffic. “But there’s this too. We couldn’t find any connection between Yolles and your credit card or loan problem—or the condemning of your building.”
He nodded and mumbled the Sesame Street ditty.
“You can’t keep a tune, but I think you’re right.”
“Yeah, but how do you explain all four happening at the same time?”
“Coincidence?”
“I wouldn’t have thought that someone like you would believe in coincidence.”
Yslan nodded slowly and poured two glasses of Chablis. “Normally I don’t. But Yolles wasn’t behind the credit cards or the loan or the building thing. We’ve got really good sources and Yolles is clean—about those three things. Clean.”
“Yeah. I figured that.”
“You did?”
“A wee bit redundant to try and kill someone and have his credit cards cancelled.”
Yslan nodded. “The coincidence was the timing, not that two different people wanted to hurt you.”
Decker thought, Two people—Yolles and Charendoff.
Yslan watched Decker closely. Finally she said, “Two people, but only Yolles is contained—at least for the moment.”
Decker stared out the window for a long time. Finally he said, “Someone up here betrayed me, didn’t they?” His voice was barely a whisper.
“You know the answer to that question. You’ve known that all along. You even know who it is—although you’re not letting yourself see. You’ve known from the beginning.” She took a small disc and handed it to him. Then she gave him his digital player.
He looked at her and she shrugged.
He turned from her and sat in the bay window seat and watched the snow swirl and swirl and swirl. It seemingly as unwilling to land as Decker was to face the obvious truth.
When he finally did, his heart broke.
EMERSON REMI
Emerson liked the Royal York Hotel on Front Street across from the grand old Union Station. The Canadian Pacific Railway knew how to build spooky old hotels. Not as filled with quality ghosts as the Algonquin, but enough ghosts of interest to keep him happy—especially since this was Decker Roberts’ hometown. His other-world compatriot’s hometown.
He pulled on his raccoon coat—he hadn’t had a chance to wear it since he left Princeton. Momentarily he regretted not buying a kilt, then stepped out into the frigid night air.
But he didn’t feel the cold because the dreadful aloneness that he’d lived with—carried on his back was more like it—since the death of his grandmère was gone because he knew he was finally at home—no longer alone.
GARRETH SR.
Garreth Sr. watched Decker’s silhouette in the bay window of the Lakeshore hotel, room 218. He’d followed Decker all day.
He had no backup—only the knowledge he’d garnered almost forty years ago on a wintry day much colder than this.
YSLAN AND DECKER
“Decker? Are you all right?”
Decker got up from the bay window seat but didn’t look at her.
“I’m sorry, Decker, I really am. But it’s him for sure.”
Decker nodded.
She signaled him to approach the table. When he looked down there were photographs: a man outside, then inside Leena’s restaurant. The same man two tables away from him and Trish at Rancho Relaxo.
“This is the same guy you showed me last night, the one who was watching the house I grew up in.”
She nodded.
“Who is he?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me.”
“Well I can’t, because I don’t know who he is.”
“Think Decker, think.”
“I don’t fucking know. I don’t know him.”
“Is that the truth, Decker? The truth?”
“Yes. Yes and yes. I don’t know who that is.”
“You’re a lousy liar, Decker.”
“Be that as it may, I don’t know who the fuck that is. Got it?”
Yslan nodded.
“But you know who he is, don’t you?” Decker demanded.
“No.”
Squiggly lines. Special Agent Yslan Hicks had lied to him again.
He headed toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m getting back to my life. I suppose it would be too much to expect you and your guys to leave me the fuck alone.”
“Yeah. That would be too much to ask.”
Straight lines—three of them. A solid truth.
52
CRAZY EDDIE
THE PASSAT DROVE ITSELF TOWARD EDDIE’S HOUSE. UP WINDERMERE, then right along the Queensway then swung up through High Park. Halfway through the fabulous park Decker noticed a large patch of light. Generator-supported portable lights were shining on a stand of trees. Up in those trees were twenty or thirty nice Canadian boys with hair driers blowing the snow off the branches. He shook his head. Americans. They shoot up here because of the cost advantages but they keep on forgetting that we have a real winter in ol’ Toronto. No doubt there’s a film shoot set for the first thing tomorrow morning in the park—a summer scene perhaps. Can’t have snow on the trees for a summer scene, so send those nice Canadian boys up those trees.
At Bloor he turned right and crossed Parkside, then headed into what the locals call “the Indians”: Indian Road. Indian Road Crescent. Indian Grove, etc.
He parked the Passat across from Eddie’s house and just sat in the cold as his breath misted the windshield. His mind wandered from image to image: Eddie licking the ice cream cone and announcing, “No change—still tastes like chocolate”; seeing Eddie on the ground on Yonge Street, and first passing by him despite recognizing him; Eddie’s infinite kindness and patience with his wife—and finding them together one night—and closing the door before either of them could see him.
He felt the phone in his pocket and said aloud, “Call me, Seth. Come on, call me and stop me from doing this.”
But the phone did not ring, and before he knew it he had opened Eddie’s front door and was standing in the hallway.
He could see Eddie back in the kitchen doing that peculiar hop thing he did with his bad leg when he wanted to cross space quickly. He heard Eddie singing and could smell something tomatoey. Odd. Eddie seldom cooked.
Decker saw Eddie do that funny hopping thing again as he recrossed the doorway to the kitchen—and Decker decided. He would get his stuff from Eddie’s bedroom and disappear.
He closed the door behind him and headed toward Eddie’s bedroom. He reached for the door handle.
“Don’t.”
He turned. Eddie’s considerable bulk filled the door to the kitchen. “Don’t open that door, Decker.”
“Why?”
“’Cause you’re either going to get your stuff and disappear forever, Decker, or you’re going to move in permanently to my home—make it our home. Well? Which is it?”
Decker didn’t respond.
“Well, I’ll make it easy for you. Come out back.” Decker almost didn’t see the football as it came directly at his face. He blocked it just in time. The thing was hard. Would have broken his nose for sure. “Pick up the ball—meet me out back.”
Decker did.
The snow in the backyard was almost a foot and a half deep. An arc light high on a telephone pole illuminated the considerable length of the yard.
Eddie appeared on the small stoop still wearing his
apron. He signaled for Decker to throw him the ball.
Decker did.
Eddie whipped it back at Decker. In the cold—it hurt to catch.
“I don’t get it, Decker.”
“Get what?”
“Why you don’t hop a damned plane to Victoria.”
“And do what when I get there?” Decker threw the ball to Eddie.
“Track down Seth. What the fuck are you doing here when your son is way the hell out there? I’d do anything—I did everything to get my daughter back.”
Decker heard the change of tense.
“Catch!”
Eddie lofted the football high in the air. Decker looked up, tracking the ball. He reached up for it just as Eddie’s full weight struck him in the chest and he fell to the ground—tackled, a great umph of air coming from him. He looked up. Eddie was standing over him, breathing hard.
“Get up!” he shouted.
Decker struggled to his feet.
“Down and out,” Eddie ordered. Eddie hopped back.
Decker raced six yards, then cut hard to the right. The ball almost took his head off as he made the turn. He tipped the ball in the air and caught it just as Eddie’s body smashed into him a second time, driving him hard to the ground again.
“Get up. Get the fuck up!” Eddie screamed. “You want to live in my house? You at least try and find your son.”
Decker got to his feet, feeling a pain in his side, and said, “I didn’t do anything, Eddie. But what did you do? What?”
“What I had to, Decker. What I had to.”
Then he understood—it was so obvious! Eddie had access to everything. He even put in the bid on the house in the Junction without asking. And, oh fuck, Eddie had been showing him over and over and over again what was going on but he hadn’t allowed himself to see it. The guest room that Eddie slept in while Decker slept in Eddie’s room! And the doll. The damned doll. “When’s she coming home, Eddie? When’s your daughter coming home?”
“Soon. Very soon, I hope.”
“Is that what Charendoff promised you?”
Eddie didn’t answer.
“Is it?” Decker demanded. Eddie couldn’t meet his eye. “And what did you have to do for that asshole in return?”
“Warn you, Decker. Warn you not to fuck with him. Fuck, man it was only money. I gave Charendoff access to your passwords that allowed him to drain your bank account that got your credit card canned and sprung the call of your bank loan.”
“And condemning my studio?”
“Yeah that was Charendoff—and me, too.” Eddie took a deep breath then said, “Fuck, man, it was just money.” For the first time Decker saw Eddie deflate—become a cripple. Then he mumbled, “Look what I had to do to try and get back my daughter, and she’s still not here and I have no idea if she’s ever going to be here. Look what I had to do—why don’t you do a damned thing to get back your son?”
Decker didn’t remember how he got to the airport or much about the flight to Victoria. He assumed the NSA was tracking him but he didn’t care. He cared that when he arrived in Victoria it became obvious that somehow Seth knew he was coming and had erased almost all trace of himself in that city.
The only things Seth couldn’t get rid of were the hospital records, which Decker managed to see as his next of kin. They were identical to the ones he’d seen on the three huge monitors in the Cincinnati synagogue.
Decker spoke to librarians and teachers, to street kids and hookers, to cops and preachers, to surfers and skateboarders, but no one claimed to have ever seen Seth.
Finally he found the beach where Seth surfed and shortly thereafter a hostel where surfers stayed. On a small bed in a back room he found Seth’s old leather satchel. In it were three catheters, strong antinausea drugs, and a pad of paper. On the top sheet in Seth’s messy handwriting was a note to him: “I saw your show. Hideous direction but clever script—although you really don’t know dick about the people of the city or the Junction.”
Decker picked up the pad, and an eight by ten colour photograph fell to the floor. It took his breath from him. It was of the boy encased in ice in the Stanstead stream, his mouth open, a hollow scream caught in the eternity of death. He turned the picture over. “This is what happens when you get close to people, Dad. Stay away from me.”
On the afternoon of the winter solstice, when the sun barely cleared the horizon for five hours, Decker’s heart was so heavy that he staggered to the Victoria airport and bought a ticket for the only place he could think of—the only place that he had any hope of finding relief. Houston, Texas—the home of the Rothko Chapel, a place that had healed him before. A place by, about, and for people like himself. A portal.
53
THE ROTHKO CHAPEL
THE IRONY OF MARK ROTHKO’S CHAPEL BEING IN THE HEART of evangelical oil country; that it was initially intended for a Catholic college; that the artist killed himself before seeing the completion of his masterpiece was not lost on Decker as he entered the strangely hunching bomb-shelter-like structure.
He’d been in this ghost-filled chapel a thousand times—no, a thousand thousand times before, and never before, just as every time a person sees the ocean knows that he’s been there before. Its pulsing waves a perfect match for the beating of his heart—its depths like the darkness of his mind.
And each time he’d been there he’d ignored the tall lamppost standing outside the entrance—like a gibbet waiting for a condemned man.
Inside, the massive black triptych on the north wall greeted Decker upon his entry—offset by two identically sized panels one to either side on slanted walls. The balance forced Decker’s eyes to his left then his right. In both cases—east and west—to offset triptychs that pulled him toward them. Then around, to face the south wall, where a single massive black canvas hung—the only single canvas on a straight wall. It assaulted him, pushing him back to the centre of the room.
The very centre of the sacred space.
Then Decker sensed him more than saw him.
He heard the monk’s pure voice sending single note after single note up to the ceiling and then heard the cascading chords of sound raining down upon him—releasing him from his earthly bounds—and him rising.
Decker didn’t know if there were others in the chapel. He didn’t care. They didn’t stand between him and the greatness of the mad artist’s work. The man had clearly drunk so deeply of the pure jet stream—been to the valley and returned with the images in these fourteen extraordinary panels and the building he designed to house his sacred vision.
Decker turned and faced the dark pulsing of the triptych on the north wall. Took a deep breath and felt the cold approach and something heavy and metal in his right hand. Then the pulse of the painting took control of his breathing, and his heartbeat slowed to match that pulse. He felt himself lifting his arms and turning in a slow spin. Rothko’s panels passed by him in stately procession—slanted blackness, offset triptych, slanted blackness, massive blackness, slanted blackness, offset triptych, slanted blackness—then the perfectly proportioned triptych on the north wall seemed to open its darkness to him—and he knew, beyond knowing, that he was through the portal.
54
DREAM HEALING
THE SUN BEAT DOWN ON DECKER’S SHOULDERS. HIS HAIR was matted to his forehead.
“This place is the temple of dream healing at Epidaurus. Now look about you,” Brother Malcolm said. Decker did. “You have been seeking this place for a long time, Decker.”
Decker looked up and read the motto above the temple gate: Pure must be he who enters the fragrant temple.
“Think nothing but holy thoughts,” Brother Malcolm continued, “because you are badly out of balance. It is why you are here.” Decker looked around him and sensed the timelessness of this place. “Christ will not walk the earth for another five hundred years. You have brought some gifts for Asclepius, the god of this place. After your long journey here you have eaten very little, avoiding the
foods that will prevent dreaming—wine, meat, certain fish, and broad beans. Last night you bathed in the cold water of the fountains. This afternoon you saw the sacred plays in the theatre, listened to the birds sing in the perfumed groves and danced the sacred dances. Now step up to the statue.”
Decker approached the giant statue of Asclepius. Incense filled his nostrils as the incantations of the priests floated on the still air. He took a wheat cake from his sack and offered it up to the god—and he felt lighter in his heart. And he was lighter in every way. There was a smile on his face. He turned—and gasped.
It was suddenly dusk.
He moved toward the temple, then stood—waiting. Somehow he knew that he had to be invited to enter the sacred dream chamber.
“It is the hour of the consecrated lamps,” Brother Malcolm said. “It is several days later. Your health has improved, but you are not yet in perfect harmony. You offer up money to the god for the sacrifice.”
A wide slash of blood marked the ground in front of Decker, a ghastly crimson slur.
The priest had performed the rite on a sheep.
Brother Malcolm said, “It is time. You are invited into the dream chamber.”
Decker found himself lying on one of the many raised ivory slabs, wrapped in the blood-flecked skin of the sacrificed sheep. He looked around him. There were many others wrapped in sheepskins on their ivory slabs. The person closest to him had obscured his features by drawing the animal skin over his face.
Decker turned and watched the movements of the yellow serpents on the floor below him. They were not poisonous, but there were so many and they were so large. He reminded himself that they were nourished by the god. The temple servants extinguished the torches. The air was heavy with incense. In the darkness Decker heard the famous anchorite Hildegard of Bingen’s even more famous hymns sung by Paul Sheel’s clear voice and the swish swish swish of the serpents against the rough floor.
“Sleep,” Brother Malcolm said.
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