by A B Plum
For a fraction of a second, Ryn imagined a thick, black, hairy monster’s arm snaking around Comfrey’s giraffe neck and pulling him—shrieking and kicking—under the bed.
“I’ll get you a clean one.” Triumphant as a medieval warrior, Comfrey sat on his heels and raised the retrieved glass over his head.
“You don’t have to—” Ryn repressed the urge to ask what else was under the bed. She waited until he stepped into the bathroom to say, “When you were a kid—did you sleep with your closet door open or closed?”
“You serious?” Comfrey returned to the bedroom, poured water from a stainless steel pitcher, and set the full glass within easy reach. “I’ve never known any kid who slept with the closet door open.”
Ryn released a quiet breath. Okay, she wasn’t so weird.
“My older brother, Max, used to scare the hell out of me.” Comfrey smoothed the covers, sat on the edge of the bed, and crossed his legs. “We shared a room—or at least we were supposed to share it. Max would get up in the middle of the night and open my closet about three, four inches.” Comfrey measured the distance, holding his two index fingers parallel.
Ryn wanted to laugh, but really, brother Max was a sadist.
“The next morning—early, early, ten or fifteen minutes before dawn—Max closed the door and later swore he hadn’t touched it. I must’ve been fourteen before I finally caught him in the act.”
Ryn laughed at the mock outrage on Comfrey’s face—his prune eyes wide, disbelieving. “I keep telling Max it’s a miracle I’m not an insomniac. He told me ghost stories that kept me awake all night. Real scary stuff when you’re five. You know, like little boys falling into such deep sleep they got buried a—”
Ryn’s right leg jerked, shifting the smooth sheets, and Comfrey stopped reminiscing. “Sorry. I want you to relax, and here I am giving you the creeps.”
“No,” she protested. “Listening helps. “I’m a little claustrophobic. The tubes and wires …”
Comfrey nodded. “Most people get a little wired—excuse the pun—after I connect them to the equipment. There’s no electrical current going into their bodies, but all this is unnatural.” He threw out his hand in a grand gesture. “Our nervous systems adapt to the unnatural with an extra jolt of adrenaline. I know mine did.”
“You’ve—gone through this?”
“Three or four times.”
“Why?”
“Umm. I wanted to experience what it felt like to try to sleep with half a dozen machines attached to me. Curiosity about my brain during sleep.” He pursed his lips, shrugged, and spread his palms. “This way I can speak from both sides of the bed. If that makes sense.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t go into brain surgery.” Ryn snickered.
Comfrey grinned. “How about you? How’d you get involved in rock music?”
Ryn’s brain whirred and her heart sped up. He’d turned the tables. Again. “I wrote a computer program for a college friend, and the rest as they say, is history.”
Comfrey didn’t challenge her on her evasion tactic.
Taking her cue, he stood and changed the subject. Did she need anything before he left? When she shook her head, he walked away, calling over his shoulder, “Pleasant dreams.”
Head back on the pillows, Ryn stared at the ceiling. A shadow in the far corner looked like a cat sneaking up on a mouse. The Rorschach cat triggered a memory of Beau’s face, twisted and anxious as he stroked Maj and listened to Ryn’s reassurances that she wasn’t taking drugs. She’d complied with his tearful appeal to cross her heart and hope to die if she was lying.
McCoy sat through the scene undoubtedly taking voluminous mental notes for The Inquiring Enquirer. Part of the deal she’d made with him before leaving for the clinic: Their bargain excluded exploiting Beau. McCoy had actually flinched at her tone.
Lowlife. Ryn sucked in a deep breath. Add Beau and McCoy to the “Do-not-Think-About-Tonight List. Thinking about the worm raised her blood pressure.
Instead of buying him new clothes, I should’ve stripped him naked and chased him through the Los Altos streets with a bucket of tar and feathers. She punched the pillows, turned on her side, and closed her eyes.
The dream started as it always did: falling, falling, falling through space like Alice through the hole. The sense of her body out of control—awkward, clumsy, without grace convinced Ryn she was falling—not flying. Strangled by both fear and lack of oxygen, she couldn’t catch her breath or slow her thundering heart as she plunged through endless, timeless space toward collision with earth.
Down there, she heard the muffled, bewildered whining and yipping of newborn puppies and smelled their fat, little velvety bodies. Heart bursting, she reared up, panting, drenched in sweat, struggling to jam the lid back on her subconscious as she fought the scream in her throat.
“You out there, Comfrey?” Ryn swiped the rolling sweat off her face.
“I’m here. Right next to the coffee pot.”
“Since I’m awake, what’re the chances of a cup of decaf?” Her whole body shook like a tree in a hurricane. Did he pick up the quiver in her voice?
“How about a cup of herbal tea? That way, you won’t mess up your EKG.”
Herbal tea was to coffee what dirt was to chocolate, but at that moment she’d drink muddy water. “Nothing with licorice, okay?”
“And I’ll resist the temptation to bring you comfrey tea.” He chuckled.
“Thanks.” She grabbed a tissue and blotted the back of her neck. Her skin smelled bitter and salty and terrified.
Comfrey bumped open the door with his hip, bringing with him the scents of cinnamon and oranges. He set a tray across her lap and laid a napkin across her chest.
He filled her cup without picking it up, pointed to a bowl with honey, and sat at the foot of the bed. Managing the honey spooked her. She laid the spoon in the saucer, stalling, trying to get the trembling under control. Could she pick up the cup of hot tea without spilling it all over her hands and the tray?
“What time is it?”
“Twelve past midnight. You slept for an hour and six minutes.”
“I had a dream.” She reached for the teacup but let her hand drop in her lap.
“You know what night terrors are—”
“I had a bad dream.” She touched the side of the teacup. Still too hot. Even if it was ice cold, she was sure her arms and hands would tremble like someone palsied.
“Your pulse jumped to two ten and blood pressure shot up to two hun—”
“I had a bad dream.”
“You were sweating like a Sumo wrestler and you still are.”
“Bad dream. Bad dream. Bad dream,” she chanted like a four-year-old.
“You can talk, but you can’t pick up a teacup. I’d guess you probably feel about four—or six or seven—or how ever old you were when your bad dream occurred the first time.”
Her heart was thumping as if all her arteries had shut down. Ryn clapped her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to talk.”
Comfrey sipped more tea and studied her over the edge of his cup. He tipped his head back, drained the cup, and started talking—non-stop.
Ryn lowered her hands. “I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”
“Because I’m only moving my lips.”
“Whaaat?” She jabbed a finger at him. “How old are you?”
“Trying to get your attention. Now that I have it—I’d like you to listen.” Comfrey held her gaze, his black eyes hard as coal. “When I say listen, don’t give me that ‘listening raptly’ expression you do so well as you tune me out.”
Her face and ears burned. “You’re pretty good. Very few people catch on when I set my face to listening raptly and then start daydreaming.”
“I have other skills, too. I help people deal with nightmares and night terrors. You insist you don’t have recurring dreams. You know I don’t believe you.”
Ryn twisted around in bed to look at the TV cam
era.
Comfrey stood, flipped a few switches over her head, and shut the screen over the bed. He unclipped the mic and put it in the drawer of the bedside table. “No more trying to sidetrack me. I told you the first time we met I can’t help you if you don’t trust me.”
The face of Garrett McCoy—aka Jack Kent—flashed and Ryn laughed. “Why don’t I fly around the room backwards a couple of times, Doc? Trust Island is out there in the middle of shark-infested waters.”
“The sharks are all sound asleep. Go on. Take a flying leap. With your long legs, you won’t have to swim a stroke. You’ll land in the middle of the island.” In the dim light, Comfrey regarded her with dark, mournful eyes—devoid of judgment. “Or, easier, what spooked you when Trisha came in at nine-thirty?”
Not easier. Ryn squeezed the handle on the spoon. If she banged it against the saucer, would the noise scare away the ghosts? “I thought she was my mother.”
“How long ago did she die?”
Tears clogged Ryn’s throat. Had she told Comfrey about Mama? When? What had she revealed? Whatever, only one more fact. “Twenty years ago.”
“What was she like? Do you look like her?”
“I look like my father. My mother was beautiful—black Irish.” Enough.
Ryn picked up the teacup and felt a surge of pride at her steady hand. She drank slowly, taking her time, watching Comfrey through her lashes. Say nothing.
“How did your mother manage to raise a young daughter by herself? Did your father leave you well provided for?”
Ryn closed her eyes, hearing Mama whisper, You awake, Ryn? The smell of her mother’s perfume—heavy, sickening—filled every corner of their tiny two bedroom-house bought after Daddy came home from the war.
“Did you sleep with her after your father died?” Comfrey, a bloodhound on the trail, would not give up. “Did you have your own bedroom? How far …”
Her eyes snapped open, Afraid she’d throw the spoon at Comfrey, she shoved it under the covers. Her mind raced in search of that flat, cold tone she’d so often used with Stone. She said, “My father left us a house with a mortgage. My mother worked two jobs—as a cashier in the corner grocery in Independence and as a hooker in Kansas City.”
Chapter 31
Trisha tapped on Ryn’s door, apologizing as she stuck her head in the room, “Mr. Daniels would like to speak with you.”
Comfrey’s mouth puckered. He spoke to Ryn. “This shouldn’t take long.”
He left without opening the TV screen behind the bed or retrieving the microphone from the bedside table. Wiggling her feet and ankles, Ryn tried to recall the expression on his face after her pronouncement about Mama.
Not shock. Or surprise. Or meanness. Definitely no meanness.
Meanness imprinted on her brain that cold afternoon on the third-grade playground of Lincoln Elementary. Moon-faced, piggy brown eyes dancing, Carolyn Hawkins, announced, “My mother says your mother’s nothing but a ho.”
Ho meant nothing to Ryn, but she slugged Carolyn Hawkins—her best friend since kindergarten—right in her righteous, Mormon, judgmental mouth. A red arc gushed from the cut. Miss Fluvog erupted with evangelistic fury and smacked Ryn’s butt, banishing her to the office of Miss Pedersen. The Principal, according to the older boys who had survived their ordeals, advised God on who should be sent directly to hell. No third-grade girl—according to Miss Fluvog’s shriek—had ever been sentenced to the principal’s office.
Burning shame gnawed away at Ryn’s stomach with every marble step she descended from her second-floor classroom to the first floor. With the logical certainty of a nine year old, she knew Daddy and Beauty were peering down at her from Heaven. Tears streamed down Daddy’s face and Beauty whined, putting her cold, wet nose on Daddy’s knee to comfort him because Ryn was such a bad girl.
What if Miss Pedersen told God to kick them out of Heaven?
When Mama came home from working her ten-hour shift at the grocery store at six-thirty, she found Ryn half frozen, huddled in the corner of the front porch, eyes nearly swelled shut from crying. No amount of coaxing could pry the story from Ryn. After supper, she went to bed, listening, waiting, praying that her fairy queen mother wouldn’t go out that night.
But just as she was falling over the edge of consciousness, Mama had appeared at the door and whispered, “You asleep, Ryn?”
Comfrey entered Ryn’s room, sat at the foot of the bed and without missing a beat, picked up where they’d left off. “How old were you when you learned your mother was a hooker?”
“Nine.” Sullen, but impressed by Comfrey’s straightforwardness. “I looked up h-o-e in the dictionary. Got nowhere for my effort.” She tapped the side of her head. “Having every junior jock hitting on me provided the necessary insight Webster’s didn’t and Mama wouldn’t.”
“How’d you handle your insight?” Fury lurked under his neutral tone.
“Like a bitch. Made my mother’s life more miserable than it already was. And, yes, I feel guilty—a waste of time since I can’t make my hardnosed stupidity up to her.”
“So you volunteer at Esperanza House.”
Most of the women there hooked to pay for their coke and booze instead of shoes and food for their kids. Mama’s death had taught Ryn not to judge any of them. “I’ll have to work there every day, twenty-four hours a day, for the rest of my life to make up for letting Carolyn Hawkins get to me.”
“Is that when your insomnia began—after Carolyn took it upon herself to open your eyes?”
Ryn impaled Comfrey with the look—the look Stone had said would freeze hell over and melt the North Pole at the same time. Her stinging skin felt ready to pop off her face. Her nostrils flared as she inhaled. The right corner of her mouth curled infinitesimally. At thirteen—almost fourteen, after practicing for days in front of her bedroom mirror, she’d started giving the look to Mama. She perfected the expression over the years. But Mama had never sent her to her room. Told her to wipe the look off her face, or smacked her for being insolent.
“Why’d you ever take up karate?” Comfrey drawled. “That look could turn a Sumo wrestler into a whining mass of blubber.”
“What about neuropsychiatrists?”
“Nothing scares us. Or,” Comfrey added, smiling widely, “disgusts us.”
Something in his eyes—compassion? empathy? pity?—peered back at Ryn, and she capitulated. She told Comfrey everything.
Once upon a time, a young soldier visited a friend in Groton, South Dakota. He knocked on the door where he thought his friend lived. A fairy answered. She was so tiny and beautiful and delicate that the young soldier fell in love with her at first sight. But, for many reasons, her parents disapproved of him. They sent her to another city, but the young soldier found her and married her before he returned to a distant country to fight in the war. He left his fairy bride with his parents. Not long afterwards, his daughter Princess Kathryn was born. When he came home from the war, the young soldier, the fairy queen, and Princess Kathryn bought a little house on Dawn Court in Independence, Missouri, and lived happily ever after.
Ryn recited the story in a dreamy, detached voice that should have put Comfrey to sleep. When she finished, he didn’t say anything but kept his eyes on his long fingers, interlaced in his lap.
Since she didn’t want him to ask a bunch of dumb questions, she said, “I must have asked my mother a thousand times why he died so young. She explained a thousand and one times, but I never understood how someone could die of complications from TB in 1981.”
Fighting tears, Ryn examined her fingernails. For a second she thought Comfrey was going to explain—from a medical viewpoint—how Daddy could have died. She didn’t want facts and concluded, “As far as I know, my mother never contacted her parents. The two of us alone didn’t really matter until I got the skinny from ole Carolyn Hawkins.”
Comfrey’s eyes came up to meet hers. Ryn thought she saw tears in his eyes. Then, he shifted his weight and she felt her ch
eeks burn. Why would Comfrey cry for her?
She threw her arms out like an actress taking a final bow on stage. “So, Doc—there you have it. The short version of how my mother became a hooker.” She snapped her fingers. “Oops, forgot to say that my dog, Beauty, a birthday gift from Daddy, died in there someplace, too. She was pregnant, and I still have nightmares about burying her and the puppies.”
Her voice dropped. Her head was pounding and she wanted to stop talking. She wanted to stop thinking. Any more confessions and she could forget sleeping.
In a rush, she said, “I’m aware that in all the trashy novels and on TV movies-of-the-week, the killer always has a deep, dark secret in her life which gets the better of her as an adult, and she starts killing to make the world pay for all her misery. Sorry to go against the stereotype, but I did not kill Stone.”
When Nurse Trisha, face glowing above her pewter-colored robe, tapped on the door and stuck her head inside again, Ryn had a quicksilver snapshot of the little blonde sitting out in the hall with her dainty, seashell ear glued to Ryn’s wall.
Comfrey’s jaw tightened, but his voice carried no irritation. Was Mr. Daniels demanding or neurotic or needy? Whatever his emotional state, Comfrey dismissed Nurse Trisha with the assurance he’d come along shortly. The immaculate cuffs on his shirt had inched up, revealing lots of dark, curly hair on his wrists. Ryn read the hands on his upside-down Phillipe Patek. If she told him more of her pathetic story, would he stay longer?
Would he care that Mama had gone to school the next day and demanded to speak with Miss Pedersen while Ryn sat paralyzed with terror in the outer office with the secretary craning her neck to hear? What would he think about Miss Pedersen calling Ryn, on the verge of tears, into her office and apologizing for the paddling she’d administered the day before? Would he want to know what Mama had said to Miss Pedersen? Would he believe Ryn had no idea? Never asked?
Comfrey stood, plumped the comforter, opened the screen behind the bed, and removed the bedside table.
Say something, dammit. Ryn dug her fingers into her thighs.