“I don’t know you, do I?” a man’s voice said.
She shaded her eyes, frowning until she saw him—on the porch, in a high-back bentwood chair, wearing a rumpled white suit and gold vest. His hair was sinfully thick and wavy, sinfully white and long, a perfect match for his beard.
“You’re not one of my ex-girlfriends, are you?”
She smiled and shook her head, walking across the dry lawn as she gestured at the car. “That there’s John Bannock. He says you’re a friend of his?”
The man sat up. “John? He’s back? Who the hell are you?”
“Lisse Gayle Montgomery,” she said stiffly. “You’re George Trout, ain’t you?”
“Damned either way,” he said, bowing without standing. “He dead in there or what?”
She stopped at the foot of the steps. “Tired. Exhausted, more likely. We’ve been kind of on the run.”
Trout sagged back, and she saw the lines around his eyes, his mouth, saw the way he wouldn’t meet her gaze. It wasn’t her, she knew she didn’t look that damn bad, but before she had a chance to say anything, she heard a car door slam, and John rose over the roof.
“Damnit, John,” Trout yelled.
“Damnit yourself, George,” he said amiably. “How about getting off your butt and helping me with my things.”
“No.”
Lisse blinked.
“No?” John pretended to clean out an ear with his finger. “What do you mean, no?”
“I mean I am not setting foot off this porch, that’s what I mean. I mean I am never leaving this house again, that’s what I mean. I mean if you want help carrying whatever the hell you think you can’t carry on your own, wish for it, son, because I’m not moving.”
John looked almost comical, gaping the way he did, and Lisse felt sorry for him, returned to the car and muttered, “I’ll get the carton, you get the suitcase, okay?” When he stared stupidly at her, she added, “Close your mouth, you’ll catch flies.”
She opened the passenger door and yanked the seatback forward, had the carton in her arms when he opened the trunk and said, “I don’t get it, Lisse. He’s acting weird, I don’t get it.”
‘You ...” She felt something in her chest, something breaking apart. “You don’t get it? He’s acting weird?” And she began to laugh. Silently, and hard, until the carton fell from her grip and she sat sideways on the front seat, shaking her head because she didn’t want to laugh, it really wasn’t all that funny, but she couldn’t resist it. Dear Lord, she couldn’t resist and she just wanted it to stop.
She closed her eyes tightly, opened them, and he was on his knees in front of her, holding her hands, whispering something, she couldn’t tell what, but the earnest, fearful look on his face quickly stopped the laughter.
“Don’t you feel it?” she asked, pleading.
“Feel what, Lisse?”
“Like it’s Alice time, you know? Like we’ve run off the road and dropped right into a rabbit hole, you know what I mean?”
The look on his face then was as good as a slap.
“Don’t you dare,” she said, snapping her hands away. “Don’t you dare, John Bannock.”
“Lisse, it’s been a long trip and—”
She felt her skin tighten, felt the sandpaper in her eyes. “You think I can’t know about Alice in Wonderland.? You thinking again I ain’t nothing but a dirt-poor waitress got caught in your damn nightmares, that I don’t know about things? Book things? Learning things? Don’t look so surprised, it’s all over your face. You think—”
“John,” Trout called. “Is everything all right?”
“Don’t,” she snapped when he turned his head. “I ain’t done yet.” She lifted a finger, held it in front of his face, forcing him to stare at it, to pay attention. “Two nights I slept with you, John Bannock, and you ain’t touched me once. I cleaned you up when you was drank and scared out of your mind. I lost a job on account of you. I—not a word, John, not a word—I come all the way up here because you needed me and... and because maybe I guess I needed you, too, though the Lord knows I surely don’t know why. So do not... do not ever again think that I am stupid. Do not ever again treat me like I am not a person, like I do not exist, you hear me?’’
She glared, and the finger began to tremble, and when he curled his right hand around it gently, she swallowed, and nodded once, and said, “Good.”
And smiled.
“Goddamnit, John,” Trout yelled, “I want an explanation!”
“When he hears it,” John said quietly, “I don’t think he’s going to want it.”
“I think he will,” she told him. “You haven’t seen him yet. He’s scared. Maybe...maybe more than you.”
* * * *
But not, she thought later, more than her.
Blue eyes in a crow.
Floating dreams.
They sat in the overstuffed living room, low flames in the fireplace reflected in the dark television screen to the right of the hearth. She had taken a shower and, at Trout’s insistence, checked through the closets of his spare room, not surprised, really, at finding women’s clothes there and in one drawer of the dresser. She picked a dark shirt a size too large, and jeans that fit just about right. No makeup, though, but she figured, hell, she looked a sight better than she had.
She couldn’t help noticing the room had only one bed, though, queen size and buried under a trio of thick quilts.
While John was in the shower, she sat in the large kitchen watching as Trout put together a hasty sandwich meal, answering his questions about New Orleans, nodding, muttering, stopping only when she told him about the kid, Levee Pete, and how he had died. Reverend Trask he dismissed with a disdainful wave and a curse.
TV trays in the living room, condiments and bottles of beer on the glass-top coffee table.
After starting the fire, complaining about the night’s chill, he dropped into an armchair, its back to the large front window blocked with heavy, floral drapes. She took the two-cushion sofa, and when John came downstairs, pushing at his damp hair, she found herself holding her breath until he shook off the offer of the room’s only other chair and sat beside her.
Dumb, Lisse, she thought, trying not to grin; you’re dumb.
They talked while they ate, talked after the meal was done. Explaining, speculating, arguing, cross-talking, wearing themselves out until Trout finally held up one hand.
“So what we have here is ... what? Signs and portents, that kind of thing?”
“I don’t know,” John said wearily.
“He says that all the time, but he knows better,” she contradicted.
Trout looked at her steadily, eyelids nearly closed. “And what does he know?”
She waited.
John said nothing.
She curled into the sofa’s corner, bare feet tucked under, leaning her elbow on the armrest. Watching the flames and the sparks. “I’ve been thinking...those people he talked to, there has to be more of them. All over. I’ve been thinking maybe something made them that way. I...John’s friend, that priest? he said John is marked, and believe me, I believe it now. Maybe to find out why those people are the way they are, maybe to stop more people from getting that way.” She shrugged and looked to John, who only stared at his shoes. “I guess, anyway.”
Trout reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one from a silver lighter and blew smoke toward the ceiling.
“If it’s true,” John said softly, “why me?”
“If it’s true,” Trout told him, “the why you isn’t as important as the what next.”
“George, I have to tell you . . . I’m getting a little angry here.”
Trout smiled crookedly, cocked his head, and sighed. “Damn, you hear that?”
Lisse listened, and nodded.
Hoofbeats on the road.
Trout heaved himself from his chair and went to the window, pulled aside the drapes from the center, and cursed. “Black as pit
ch, are they nuts?”
When John didn’t move, she uncurled herself and stood beside Trout. White darts from flashlights and electric lanterns danced over the road, over the lawn, and she could see the shapes of a half dozen horses and riders as they moved left to right and out of sight past the trees.
She could still hear the horses.
“That ranch place?” she asked, turning around.
John nodded. “Les, Les Burgoyne, he and Fran, his wife, like to take people out just after nightfall. They claim it’s almost as good as a haunted house ride.”
She believed it. Up off the ground, nothing but horses’ hooves for sound, seeing only what the flashlights allowed, seeing stuff where the flashlights used to be ...she believed it.
Trout returned to his chair, picked up a bottle of beer and turned it slowly in one hand. “There’re a couple of things you’d better know, John.”
“If you mean the house, I already saw them.”
“Ah.”
Lisse stayed behind him, glancing out at the night, glancing at John looking old and weary.
“If you don’t mind,” John said, “I’d rather not deal with them until morning.”
A hand waved expansively. “You’re welcome to bunk, you know that.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” He coughed quickly. “We appreciate it.”
She couldn’t see the older man’s face, but she sensed a smile, probably thinking he knew something.
“There’s something else, though,” George said, finally drinking from the bottle, wiping his chin although he hadn’t spilled a drop. “Rod Gillespie escaped from Denver the other day.”
John looked to the ceiling. “Jesus, you’re kidding.”
“No sir, I am not kidding. Apparently, despite law enforcement’s best efforts, he’s still loose and probably heading this way. There are a couple of bodies between Colorado and here they think are his doing.”
Lisse let the drapes close. “Who’s Rod Gillespie?”
Neither man answered for a moment; then John said, “Seven or eight years ago—”
“Eight, I think,” Trask said.
“—he was working for Les Burgoyne, not a lot of money but he couldn’t hold a job anyplace else. On a Saturday night, I think it was, he got home late, drank too much, and beat the hell out of his wife, Annette, locked his son in a closet, and beat the hell out of his daughters, Sharon and Kim. Kim ...” He shook his head. “Kim was only six at the time. He raped her, strangled her, then took his car and drove to the other side of town, to one of those shopping centers we saw. He robbed a liquor store, gunned the clerk down, drove home with a case of whiskey and sat on the front porch, drinking straight from the bottles. When the cops finally got there, he had gotten his rifle out.”
“The son of a bitch,” said Trout, “with more whiskey in him than blood, shot up two policemen, got in his car, and ... the luck of the damned and the drunk, got away.”
“You’re kidding.” Lisse returned to the couch and curled up again.
“Seven months later, he turns up in Colorado Springs, gunning down a couple of college kids in a bar. This time he didn’t get away. Lots of legal wrangling, people screaming for his head in two states, and Colorado got him. Consecutive life sentences. After which,” he added wryly, “he was supposed to come back here so we could fry his little ass.”
“And he’s out?”
“Yes, my dear, he is out.”
There was nothing she could say. Maybe there were a few questions, but by the expressions on their faces, she knew they didn’t want to talk about it. It was bad enough the man was free.
A faint rumble outside, and John looked up, surprised. “Rain?”
Trout rolled his eyes. “If you can call it that. Last couple of nights, we’ve had some thunder, some lightning, just enough rain to settle the dust. It’s all gone by morning.”
Lisse started to say, “That’s better than nothing,” but a huge yawn cut her off, and she smiled sheepishly at the others. “Not the company,” she apologized.
John yawned as well, they laughed awkwardly, and after some fumbling and mumbling, Trout hustled them off to bed, claiming none of them were in any shape to think straight, much less make any sense.
Half an hour later she was under the sheet and quilts, watching as the ceiling was washed with lightning white. There was as much distance as possible between her and John, yet she couldn’t help feeling he was only a finger touch away.
Finally she rolled onto her right side, tucked her hands under her chin, and listened to the storm that didn’t bring any rain.
* * * *
“You awake?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“You hear that?”
“The thunder?”
“No. Listen harder.”
She did, and frowned until she understood what he meant. Without thinking she swept the covers aside and hurried over to the small window that looked over the porch roof to the road. A distant lightning flare showed her nothing.
“You know,” he said, “you are not entirely invisible.”
She whirled, glared, and hurried back to bed.
A finger touch away.
“It was a horse, wasn’t it,” he said as she lay there, shivering a little, not all because of the chill.
That’s what she heard, or thought she heard, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him. Nobody, not even his rancher friend, would ride a horse this late at night in weather like that. Hell, even in westerns they tucked the damn things in for the night.
She rolled onto her back, left arm at her side.
Very softly: “Lisse?”
Very softly: “Yeah. I think so.”
She felt movement then, a sliding across the sheet. Her hand shifted, and bumped into his, and before she could move it away, his fingers covered hers.
Holding her breath.
Closing her eyes.
“I just want you to know,” he whispered, “I’m falling asleep. I don’t want to, but I am.”
Breathing again, and smiling at the ceiling.
He squeezed her hand once, and she squeezed it back. Once.
He sighed so softly she wasn’t sure she heard it.
He sighed again and said, “Trask is wrong.”
Or maybe he didn’t.
She wasn’t sure.
She was floating.
* * * *
2
1
T
he smells woke him up.
Subtle things, signals that he wasn’t in a hotel room anymore, that he wasn’t in Louisiana or Texas or New Jersey or Maryland. Even inside there was autumn in the air. In the few seconds before he sat up, he smiled lazily and stretched. Grateful he didn’t have to travel anymore. Grateful he didn’t have to talk to people who looked back at him with not a whole lot inside.
He stumbled through the rituals of waking, stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and said, with a grin, “Prez, you look about as stupid as you feel.”
He moved down the carpeted stairs, smelling coffee and toast, hearing voices in the kitchen. He stopped in the hall when he heard his name:
“John works with numbers, my dear. Perhaps he thought there was something to it last night, but he won’t this morning.”
“He saw what he saw, Mr. Trout.”
“George. Please.”
“Thank you. But he still saw what he saw. And did what he did.”
“There are, as they say, rational explanations for everything. Even what I saw.”
“All those people you write about, they always do things sane?”
He stepped through the doorway and said, “I’m hungry and I want to go home. What’s for breakfast?”
“Brunch, you mean,” George said sourly. “It’s practically noon.”
John shrugged. He felt better than he had in a long time, had obviously needed the extra hours of sleep, and despite the looks he got, didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty. He made a
sandwich, poured some juice, and ate while George flipped through the morning paper, pointing out stories that proved beyond a doubt that the world was going to hell in a handmade basket.
In the Mood - [Millennium Quartet 02] Page 23