“Huh?”
“You were going to ask where I came from. Shreveport. Near there, anyway.” Her forehead touched the glass, cool from the air-conditioning and warm from the sun. Suddenly she was tired; so very, very tired. Her knuckle slipped down to the narrow sill. A shrug with her eyebrows. “There wasn’t a whole lot to do for someone like me up there. High school diploma, barely. Didn’t want to end up like my girlfriends, marrying straight out of graduation, a couple of kids before they was even twenty.” Another shrug, this one with her shoulder as her hand left the sill and buried itself in her hair. “It was either here or St. Louis, and no offense, but I had no desire to see St. Louis.” She glanced at him, half-smiled. “They talk funny up there.”
He smiled back, with one eye in a partial squint as if he wasn’t sure he had to take it back.
She turned her back to the pane and folded her arms across her chest, studied the floor while she bit softly on her lower lip. “I am on the wrong side of thirty, got no skills to speak of... hell, I’d even make a lousy whore.” She laughed, more a grunt. “I’m not about to jump in the river, understand, but the idiot that called this town the Big Easy was a jackass. It ain’t easy. It ain’t easy at all.”
“Why ...”
She looked at him.
“Why don’t you go back home?”
“What for?”
He wouldn’t meet her gaze. He moved the recorder off the computer, eased the computer to one side, pulled it back, pushed it away again, and sat back. Stretched his neck. Scratched the side of his nose.
“Hey,” she said softly. “Are you a preacher or something? One of those guys who don’t wear that collar?”
He almost laughed. “No. Why?”
“ ‘Cause I’m telling you stuff, that’s why. I don’t know you from anybody, I just got my ass fired, and I’m telling you stuff. Something about you, I guess.” She shook her head in quiet amazement, shifted a little against the heat that warmed her back, and narrowed her eyes, lifting a finger to her lips. “You know, you look like somebody.”
“Oh, God,” he said, raising his hands to shoulder level. “Please. Don’t.”
She leaned forward, peering at him. Nodding. “You know what I’m talking about, huh?”
“Yes,” he said flatly. “They called me Prez in college.”
“Maybe,” she said, “I’ll just call you Abe.”
“Maybe,” he answered, “you could just stick to John.”
Strange, she thought; strange guy. Not in a bad way, not like that white suit. Just... strange.
A quick smile—sort of—and a hesitation in case he had something to say, and she pushed off the sill and picked up her purse.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really. I didn’t mean... you know.”
“Don’t worry,” she told him, checking to be sure the paycheck was still in there. “I’ll manage.” Mentally crossing her fingers, wishing on a star, avoiding cracks in the sidewalk, running from black cats. “No problem. I’ll be all right.”
She looked out at the city again, shaking her head slowly. Nothing down there. What the hell had she been thinking of?
“And thanks, Lisse.”
“For what?”
“You know. Getting me home. Here, I mean.” She heard him grunt. “A heck of day yesterday. Weird.”
She held the purse against her chest, watched the ghost of a cloud head down toward the Gulf, and spotted a quartet of pigeons wheel over the water, taking their time.
It all moved so slowly.
“You know,” she said, “I had the strangest dream last night.”
Silence; he was listening.
Her eyes half closed, warmth on her face, chill on her back—as if she were sleeping again.
Sleeping, and floating.
“I was flying. Kind of flying. Just drifting along with the current, nothing to worry about, nothing up there but me and the clouds and all that soft air.... Lord, I think I could have stayed up there forever. I think...” Cocking her head, listening for him listening. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it was. It was nice, until the bird.”
His chair moved.
She didn’t look.
She didn’t want to lose the warmth on her face.
“I was drifting...floating, I guess ... and I looked over and there he was. Big old crow flying beside me.”
He whispered, “I know.”
She frowned, at the words and the image. “I’m not sure, but I think he scared me. Crows aren’t... they don’t scare me. I mean, I don’t have a thing about them, you know? But this one, he looked at me. He flew along, and he looked at me. And—”
“Blue eyes.”
She snapped around, warmth gone, breath nearly gone. “What?”
John’s left hand nearly covered his mouth. “He had blue eyes.”
* * * *
She batted away the obvious question with an abrupt frantic gesture. She did not... she absolutely did not want to know how he knew that. She didn’t get it, she did not want to get it, and as she headed for the door, she refused to look at him. There was a life to get on with here, such as it was, and she was not about to get involved with bull like this.
When she opened the door, he didn’t stop her.
When she stepped into the hall, he did not call after her.
But when the door swung slowly to, she let her right heel catch it before it closed.
He had said something in his sleep, that’s what it was, and she had heard it and had let it influence her own dream; or he had said something while she had labored with him to his room; or the world was filled with bizarre coincidences and this was just one of them.
Nothing more; nothing less.
But she didn’t move her foot.
Face it, Lisse Gayle, your life needs serious repairs and you don’t have the hammers and nails and what all else you’re going to need to get the job done.
Far down the hall she saw a housekeeper’s cart parked outside someone’s door, its laundry bag already packed with dirty sheets and towels, a rag hanging over a bottle of glass cleaner. She heard the faint hum of a vacuum cleaner.
You could do that, she told herself; you could get a job doing that.
Lord, Lord, what the hell am I doing?
She went back inside; John was still at the table, slipping a tape into the recorder. He looked up, but said nothing, eyes red rimmed, cheeks taut, hair still drying from the shower. No question about it—he was a mess-and-a-half.
“Patty’s your wife?” she said.
“Ex-wife. Yes.”
“Joey’s your son?”
“Yes.”
“You’re writing that book about executed people?”
“Yes.”
“You get paid for it?”
“George Trout pays the expenses.”
“Who’s he?”
“One of my tax clients. He writes books. The one I told you about, the one who used to be a librarian.”
“So?”
“So he wants me to do the work, and he’ll show me how to put it together.”
“Somebody’s going to print it?”
“It’s already sold, yes. On his name.”
“Those are the tapes of those people?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the computer for?”
“I have to type in all the conversations first. Word for word. So I know what I have, so I can take out what doesn’t seem right.”
They stared at each other.
“You going to talk to any more dead people?”
“One. Maybe. I don’t know. I may not have to.”
She tapped her foot.
“You going to stay here until you’re done with that stuff you already have there?”
“No.”
She looked to the window, to the city washed out by the sun.
“Okay,” she said, not feeling nearly as strong as she sounded. “I can type.”
* * * *
8
A
twilight room, with filtered light through thin white curtains. Two single beds whose plywood headboards are bolted to a pale plaster wall. Trailer-truck traffic makes the floor vibrate, and in the distance, a church bell.
“Mom?”
“What is it, Joey?”
“Mom, what are you doing?”
“I’m tired, honey, I have to rest. It’s Sunday, remember? A day of rest? You should know that.”
“I’m not tired.”
“You’re never tired.”
“So?”
“So sometimes, dear, big people, like me, have to rest. I’m hungry, I need some sleep, one more step and I’m going to drop.”
“Mom?”
“Now what?”
“What about Dad?”
“Later, Joey. We’ll talk about him later.”
* * * *
2
The armchair was too comfortable, but John didn’t want to move. The air-conditioning was on low, the sunlight was pleasantly warm, and his head had finally stopped feeling as if it were going to sink beneath his shoulders. Or explode. Or implode. At Lisse’s insistence he had managed to keep down a light breakfast; at Lisse’s insistence he had poured the Jim Beam down the bathroom sink. The fumes had come close to bringing up the food, but he had managed. Just.
“Are you an alcoholic?” she had asked.
“Nope. Just a sometimes drunk.”
He didn’t think that made her feel much better, but it made him feel a whole lot better than he’d felt when she had hit him with the purse. Damn, she must have an anvil in there. He rubbed his sternum at the memory, yawned, and watched her at the table.
Although he wouldn’t admit it, he had been surprised at how fast she had taken to the computer. A half hour’s instructions, a few answered questions during the next sixty minutes, and now she sat there with earphones on, transcribing yet another section of tape. It was tedious work at best, yet she seemed more proficient at it than he was. She claimed it was from being a waitress, having to listen to ninety people all talking at once, all demanding special orders, all wondering if this thing here could be substituted for that thing there, and not mixing anything up.
She listened better, she said, that’s all.
Watching her work, he didn’t doubt it.
He shifted, stretched out his legs, and stared at the notepad lying in his lap. Things to do before he left New Orleans.
First, he had to contact George and make sure it was all right to hire Lisse. He didn’t think there’d be a problem, but with Trout footing the bills, paying the credit card charges John rang up every month, he wanted to be sure.
Then he had to get himself one of those portable printers. A yeoman machine, not a luxury item. It was one thing seeing all those words on a screen, or listening to the ghosts for hours on end, but something bothered him. Something he knew was in all that talk, and he suspected he was too close to it, had heard it too often, and he wanted to see it right there on paper. Black and white. Something he could touch, feel, move around, stare at.
Put side by side for comparison if he had to.
What he needed was to focus.
He hadn’t realized it before, but he had become scattershot. The ghosts, the actual prisoners, Patty and Joey ... he hadn’t understood how depressed all that had made him, how it had dampened his mind, turned his brain to a slug...hell, no wonder he’d been drinking like it was going out of style. Anybody would, listening to those people, and worrying about his son, and waking up every morning with nothing more but the same old same old.
It was enough to make a man not give a damn.
He stretched and yawned, twisted around to face the TV set bolted to a swivel base on the low dresser. He used the remote control to turn it on, winced at the faded colors and colored static, and made the rounds.
“Damn,” he said.
“What?” Lisse said, looking up, distracted.
“Nothing.” He used the remote for a pointer. “Practically every channel’s got some preacher on it.”
“Honey, this is Sunday and it’s the South, remember? Now hush, I’m almost done with this part.”
The array fascinated him, made him lean forward as he lowered the sound so he could listen without disturbing her. Six programs in all, ranging from a man and woman preaching from a set made to look like someone’s living room, to a man in flowing sacramental robes in what appeared to be a huge cathedral made of gold and silver.
A choir of six; a choir of more than one hundred.
Congregations in fervent prayer, in vibrant song, attentively listening to a full-throated sermon; some eyes closed, some hands raised, swaying with the music, nodding with the exhortations, bobbing and bouncing in their seats as the minister grew more heated, more excited, roaming the stage or the aisles, Bible in one hand, the other fisted or pleading or sweeping the air ahead and above him.
He knew those places.
He had been there, and he had left.
“John?”
“Wait.” He slipped out of the chair and swiveled the set around to face the bed. “Here.” He sat on the edge and patted the mattress beside him until she joined him. “It’s ...” He frowned and changed the channel. “It’s all the same:”
“I don’t—”
“Listen,” he said, free hand covering his mouth, fingers drumming on his cheek. “Listen.”
* * * *
“He will take those seven gold vials and one each will he give to each of seven angels, and make no mistake about it, they will be opened, and they will...”
“... seven seals which will be broken one by one, until the last, which will be the last, my friends, and...”
“The Beast. We cannot forget the Beast.”
“Riding! Riding among the heathen, scythe and sword, to smote them, to smote us, my brethren. Us! From the throne, across the void, and whether we want it or not, they will be here. They are here. They cannot be ...”
“All it takes ... all it takes is an acceptance of the Lord as your personal Saviour. A whisper in the ear of God is all it takes, dear friends, for...”
“There will be no quarter for saint and sinner alike.”
“The trumpet. The trumpet.”
* * * *
“The end of the world,” he said in quiet amazement, muting the sound, letting the remote dangle between his legs. “Did you hear it? Every single one of them is talking about the end of the world.”
Lisse shrugged. “So? It’s all that Millennium stuff going around. Isn’t that when we’re all supposed to die and go to heaven or something?”
“So they say,” he whispered.
She took the remote from his hand and turned the set off. “Another thing you got to remember, these preachers, aside from the fact that I think most of them are crooks, they’ve been dooming and glooming ever since they all worked out of tents.” She laughed, and bumped his shoulder with hers. “Not that I blame them.” She looked to the window. “Out there ... the way things have been, they’re just using what they got, I guess.”
He stared at the blank screen, seeing Lisse’s reflection, a wavering ghost watching him watching her.
Scattershot.
Still, he took the remote back and ignored her scowl when he switched the set on again.
“Don’t tell me,” she said wearily, “you’re going to watch football. The Saints suck, I’m hungry, and in case you haven’t noticed it’s just about noon.” She pinched his arm. “You could use a couple pounds yourself, by the way.”
He nodded, not really listening, rocking slowly as he watched the ministers blur into one another, all Scriptures and song, until he found himself at CNN, and stopped.
“Damn,” he said.
A large crowd, more than a hundred, marched behind police barriers outside the capital building in Baton Rouge.
“Hey, look,” he said. “Take a look.”
They carried placards and banners, wore sandwi
ch boards and special T-shirts, held up crosses and rosaries, chanted and sang, and used bullhorns and cardboard megaphones.
“But nobody’s in there,” Lisse said. “All the government people are home. It’s Sunday.”
In the Mood - [Millennium Quartet 02] Page 7