The Whisper Garden
Page 21
Bob led them into his living room, where they found three people were in a rapidly escalating political argument. Arguments that could sour the tone of the early stages of his party were a thing that Bob simply would not tolerate. Fortunately, he had a distraction in tow, and didn’t mind throwing a near stranger in front of a bus for the greater good. “Everybody, this here’s Jeremy, now I’ve only known him for thirty seconds or so but I already know he’s just perfect for our dear Sarah. That is unless Sarah is already steppin’ out on the man she hasn’t stopped talkin’ about for the last month, in which case this is a strange man, but it’s probably best we call him Jeremy anyway. I see that Jeremy has brought a guitar, and if I know anything about men with guitars, they love whippin’ their instruments out. So Ron, honey, why don’t you let Jeremy have that chair so he can show us what he can do?”
As commanded, Ron let Jeremy have the only chair without arms in the room, and Jeremy settled in to play. The argument was forgotten, and Bob was tickled that Jeremy had responded perfectly to being put in the spotlight in a room full of strangers. He hadn’t had an opinion on whether Jeremy was a good match for Sarah when he said that he was, but now Bob distinctly approved of the boy.
The punch was blue, citrusy, and very easy to drink. Jeremy’s cup only lasted through two songs. Not wanting to stop playing, he asked Bob. “May I have some more of this blue stuff? It’s very good. What do you call it?”
“Of course you can, that’s why I made it. You already know its name – it had another name, but after a couple of cups, everybody would just call it the blue stuff. So why fight it? That seems to be what it wants to be called.”
After an hour or so of playing, Sarah asked Jeremy if he would mind helping her take her wings off, because the party was starting to get crowded. He didn’t understand why she would need help – she took them off by herself most days – but he couldn’t resist her outstretched hand.
She led him through the house to Bob’s bedroom and closed the door. It wasn’t just her wings she wanted help getting off. They tried, mostly successfully, not to disturb the pile of coats on the bed too much.
A few minutes later they rejoined the party. Sarah was calm and poised, while Jeremy tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to contain the stupid grin on his face.
Mardi Gras Day
10:00 a.m.
The phrase ‘hung over’ seemed too mild to Jeremy. He felt like some divine power had picked him up and changed all his settings. His brain was working considerably slower than usual. He saw lights if he moved his head too quickly, or even if he only moved his eyes too quickly. His joints felt like they had been randomly loosened or tightened, or maybe he had just forgotten how to make his body work together as a unit. Disjointed was a good word to describe how he felt – disjointed and in pain. The scary part was that his current state was an improvement.
Though he hadn’t crawled into bed until almost six in the morning, he woke at about ten, too uncomfortable to sleep any more. He crawled out of bed and tried to call Sarah. He was afraid she might be angry with him; he wasn’t sure how much of a fool he had made of himself at the party. He had certainly felt witty and amusing at the time, but in the cold light of a hangover he was fairly convinced he had merely been an idiot.
He hadn’t been able to reach Sarah, so he decided to attempt the best hangover remedy he knew … he had gone out in search of a greasy breakfast. He had found one, but he had also found a few thousand drunken tourists. Fat Tuesday can be ugly to a man with a category-five hangover. He watched part of a parade, not because he felt like it, but because it was slightly distracting.
After a couple of hours, when he felt like he was tired enough that he could go back to sleep, he wandered back to his house. He wasn’t sure if sleep was the only true hangover cure, or merely just the best way to wait one out, but either way he felt like a few hour’s nap would do him a world of good.
Jeremy opened the door to his house and was immediately struck by an overpowering odor. Part rotted meat, part vinegar, part something else he couldn’t quite place. Jeremy was nauseated. He was calmly trying to decide if he should try to find the source of the odor or throw up first, when Mojo ran across the hall in front of him.
Jeremy said, “I guess that explains the smell. How did you get in here, and what dead thing did you drag in with you?”
Jeremy started sniffing for the source of the smell. It seemed to get stronger near the garden. He went out to the garden to investigate. He stood in the middle of the garden sniffing around. The smell was definitely stronger.
Mojo ran in front of him. After he had decided to pick the cat up, but before he had really started moving, he heard a voice say, “Duck.”
He ducked and grabbed the cat. He wasn’t sure why he scooped up the cat. Perhaps it was because that had been his intent before he felt the imperative need to duck.
Aldous’ machete breezed through the space where Jeremy’s head had been.
Jeremy saw the motion over his head, and past his shoulder he saw a naked leg, and the dangling face of an alligator skin.
The crouch Jeremy had dropped into was not unlike the starting position for a foot race. He ran, barely avoiding Aldous’ follow-up swing with the machete. He had a good head start and a lot of motivation, but Aldous had longer legs and a deranged fury and was gaining on him as he tried to reach the stairs. Jeremy’s thoughts, other than a repeated expletive, shit shit shit shit shit shit shit, were focused on one thing: the gun he had left under his pillow.
Jeremy grabbed the stair’s railing with his left hand and swung himself around so he was heading up the stairs. The problem was that running up the stairs meant running past Aldous. Jeremy was five steps up the stairs when Aldous grabbed his ankle though the banister.
Jeremy dropped Mojo on Aldous’ face. In some ways a cat is the ultimate throwing weapon; it has five pointy ends, and almost always lands claws first. A thrown cat isn’t likely to be lethal, but it is going to be one hell of a distraction – which is the real function of a thrown weapon. Mojo certainly distracted Aldous. The cat was only on his face a moment before it ran off, but in that moment it tore numerous cuts on his cheeks, eyelids and forehead.
Jeremy used the distraction to make it up the stairs. He was almost to the bedroom before Aldous freed himself from the cat and started up the stairs. Jeremy dived onto the bed, hand sliding under the pillow, reaching for the gun, praying Aldous hadn’t taken it. Aldous reached the top of the stairs.
For a moment Jeremy couldn’t find the gun. In his fitful drunken sleep he had pushed it up against the headboard. Finally his hand closed around the cold rubber of its handle, and he felt hope. Jeremy swung himself around, pointing the gun as Aldous stormed through the door.
Aldous’ face was a bloody mask. He was wearing an alligator hide like a poncho. Jeremy shot him.
The snub-nosed pistol held five shots, and the time that Jeremy had spent dry firing it served him well. He did not jerk off target. He actually tried to aim. The first shot went wide. He had pulled the trigger before the gun was pointing at his target, but the next three hit Aldous’ torso squarely.
Aldous did not seem to be slowing down, so Jeremy raised the pistol and fired his last shot at Aldous’ face.
Mardis Gras Day
11:00 a.m.
On Tuesday morning Harper started pedaling his bike around the French Quarter, looking for a house that looked both rich and empty. That wasn’t hard to do; on Mardi Gras, everyone was either celebrating the holiday or finding some place to get away from the celebrations. He found several likely candidates. He rode his bike around for a while before going back to the first house that had caught his eye. It was a nice house in the north-east corner of the Quarter, not far from Bourbon Street, and not far from Rampart, either.
He rode up to steps and climbed them, taking his bike with him. He rang the bell. He knocked loudly. H
e waited a good long time and did it again. Then he reached under his jacket and pulled out a pry bar. The door was equipped with a deadbolt, but deadbolts are only good so far. In this case, so far was only about half an inch. He slid the bar between the door and the frame, leaned on it a little, pushed the frame back a little more than that half inch, shouldered the door and it swung open, with the deadbolt impotently poking out.
He had practiced the art of door-prying; from the street it didn’t look like he had done anything but lean on a sticky door. He stepped inside, carrying his bicycle with him. A black cat ran past him into the house. He had never seen a cat that cared when its owner’s house was being burglarized. This one just seemed happy to be let in.
He was in an entry hall. There were stairs in front of him and a room on either side. There were a lot of curios on display in the hall. They seemed to be mostly antiques, but were nothing he could recognize. He had no idea if they’d get him ten dollars or two thousand at a pawn shop.
Trying to make sure he was alone he called out in a loud voice, “Hello?” After he got no response he settled down to his work. First he closed the door, using the knob on the inside to unlock it so he could close it. Then he parked his bike, aimed out the door for a quick getaway if he needed it. Then he started to look around. The stuff that was laid out on the table in the hall was interesting, but didn’t look like it would be worth much, and even if it was, he didn’t like to try to pawn easily identified objects.
There was a mirror on the wall over the table full of odd knick-knacks. Harper jumped when a grinning devil face replaced his reflection. It took him more than a few heartbeats to realize it was some sort of cheap practical joke.
His heart was still pounding as he started to look for anything worth stealing in the room on the right. The place reeked of money, all the furniture was antique, but antiques don’t carry too well on a bicycle. The room felt like some sort of an office, a doctor’s office maybe. There was a papier-mâché skull on the antique table that looked like it was being used as a desk. There was a Fender Stratocaster sitting next to the table – definitely pawnable, but uncomfortably awkward to carry on the bike.
Nothing in this room looked good. He’d come back for the Strat if he couldn’t find anything else. He was looking around in the room across the hall when the black cat jumped up on the back of the couch.
Startled, Harper jumped like he had stepped on a tack. He was twitchy, and fear has a way of building on itself. His normal breaking-and-entering jitters had been amplified by the stupid trick mirror, and the cat jumping into his field of view had been just about enough to set him off running into the street. The house kept feeling creepier and creepier; even that fake skull was starting to seem pretty damn ominous. He was thinking he should just snatch the Strat and split, calm down somewhere with a couple of beers before finding some other house to rob, when he heard the whisper.
The whisper sounded distant, and had a wind-in-the-trees quality to it. He had to strain to hear it. It said, “Wayne.” Harper’s real name was Wayne, but nobody but his mother ever called him that, not since grade school. As if to provide some clarification the whisper added, “Wayne Simon.” Then the voice added, “Wayne Garrett Simon.”
Under his breath Harper said, “Busted.”
“No, not yet. But you will be if you keep this up. You’ll get busted and learn more about prison life than you ever would reading Elmore Leonard books.” Not only did whoever owned the voice know his name, it knew what he liked to read. It knew who he was.
Harper started inching his way toward his bike. If he could get to it, and get the door open, he could be down the street before anyone could catch him. Trying to find some courage, he asked, “What do you want from me?”
“From you? Nothing. For you, everything. Change your path, Wayne. Give up stealing, before you slip up or your luck turns.”
“I’m not going back into trucking, and that’s all I know how to do.”
“So don’t go back into trucking. Find some band that needs a harp player. Buy a notebook and write a novel. You’ve read enough of ‘em, you know how they’re put together, and now that you have spent a year or two living outside the law, you’ve got an edge over just about everybody. You know what it’s like to be a criminal.”
Harper made it to the door. He said, “Ta ta, I’m out of here.”
Despite his urge to flee, he hesitated long enough to hear the response, “That is fine. Ride out of here. Just don’t ride into jail.”
Mardi Gras Day
Noon
Sarah woke up with a headache, a ravenous hunger and an overfull bladder. Once she could persuade her body to move, the bladder was the easiest problem to remedy. Just a few steps from her bed to her bathroom. From there it wasn’t terribly difficult to deal with the hunger. A few more steps into her kitchen and she was feasting on generic toasted oat loop cereal. The headache, however, was a tougher problem.
Sarah’s headache felt like it started somewhere near the center of her brain and extended out a few inches past her skull, like a fuzzy helmet of pain. Everything was being filtered through that fuzzy helmet: every sight, every sound, every smell. Coffee would probably help, but only if she could get past the smell. She couldn’t bear the thought of brewing any. Maybe she could sneak up on it, buy some some place that didn’t smell overwhelmingly. And while she was at it, maybe she could find some aspirin.
It sounded like a good plan of action, but unfortunately it involved moving. Eventually she willed herself to get up and get dressed. She noticed that her answering machine was flashing. She pushed the button. She had slept through a call from Jeremy. He sounded worried – had they had a fight? She didn’t remember one.
Had she drunk enough to black out? She didn’t think so. She remembered the Lundi Gras party. She remembered coming home and going to bed. Jeremy had had a lot to drink and was getting, well, a little over the top, but he wasn’t the only one. What was in that blue stuff?
She tried to call Jeremy back, but got no answer. She left a short message telling him she wasn’t mad at him. She tried his cell phone – no answer. Maybe she would drop by to see him if her headache got any better.
Sarah went back in her bedroom and struggled into some street clothes; jeans, a T-shirt, a jacket. Her feet seemed too far away to bother with socks; she just slid them into a pair of white tennies.
She hit the street and the smell of the street hit her back. Sometimes living on a parade route was not a good thing. It was almost enough to make her turn around and go back to bed. The noise didn’t help much either, and there wasn’t even a parade passing at the moment. She couldn’t understand why people would stand around in the rain waiting for a parade, but here they were.
A quick stop in Walgreen’s solved her immediate quest. Aspirin was easy to find in the drugstore, and a bottled iced coffee from the cooler solved her problem of how to get coffee into her system without having to smell coffee.
She stepped out of the store and debated with herself for a moment. Left would take her to Jeremy, right would take her home and back to bed. She turned right. She would take a nap and call Jeremy later.
She was almost back to her apartment when the noise of the first marching band hit. They were still a couple of blocks away, but the sound was like a wall of thunder. For some reason it didn’t hurt her head. Maybe the aspirin was kicking in. But even though it didn’t hurt, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep through it.
Rex was coming. That meant she had somehow slept through Zulu. How was it possible to sleep through the noise of one of the biggest Mardi Gras parades?
What had been in that punch? Her headache had receded to the point where it no longer extended outside her skull. She decided to watch some of Rex. The bands shook the earth and reminded her of high school. The floats were spectacular. It wasn’t long before she found herself reaching for beads.
Her apartment was far enough away from the Quarter that the crowd of spectators was fairly tame. The only drunks she could see were the krewe members on the floats.
About the time one of the krewe members pointed at her, held up some of the really nice beads, and did the universal pantomime for ‘raise your shirt’, Sarah decided she had had enough for a while and needed some coffee. She went up to her apartment.
She started her coffeepot and tried to call Jeremy again. There was still no answer at his house, still no answer from his cell phone. Of course it is kind of hard to answer a cell phone when it is sitting in its charger, but she had no way of knowing that Jeremy had forgotten to take it with him when he left the house on his own hungover pilgrimage.
After two cups of coffee, Sarah began to feel almost like herself. Her head still hurt a little, but a good mood had somehow blossomed. She decided she should go see how Jeremy was doing. She followed the parade down St. Charles. It would have been faster to cut a street or two over, but it was more fun to follow the parade.