Dragonfly

by Farris, John

  "Bull," Lizzie muttered, and fixed her eyes on the expanse of screen, which featured human equivalents of Gothic architecture. "I let Bruiser out to do his business. Did you see him anywhere?"

  "No. Lizzie, I. guess I came to say goodbye."

  She looked around in shock. "Goodbye?!"

  "Lizzie, there are things I have to—"

  "Joe, you don't understand! Abby will die—he'll let her die—if you don't help her!" She scrambled up from the cushion and reached him in two long strides. "She's the only friend I've got in the world! Please don't leave her like this!"

  "Lizzie, aren't we exaggerating—"

  Inches away, Lizzie rose on her toes to almost equal his height. Eye to eye she said, "Sometimes I exaggerate but I don't tell lies. It's no lie what's happening to her! Luke doesn't have a clue. He's a bad doctor! They should take away his license!" She seemed to lose her balance, and Joe put an arm around her, then realized, when she went slack, it was what she'd had in mind. He almost grinned, but he didn't know what Lizzie would do if he belittled her; she needed calming down so he hugged her, as paternally as possible.

  "Lizzie, let's just sit and talk about this."

  "Okay." Her face was pink and her eyes misty. "But all you have to do, honest, is take her to a hospital; I mean a good hospital like in New York, where they can find out what's really wrong."

  Lizzie made a process of sitting again on her pillow, hampered by the tightness of her blue tube dress, which caused her to look as if she were popping from a chrysalis at both ends. She had taken off her shoes. Her little toenails were lacquered the color of candy apples. She scrunched over, offering Joe a corner of her pillow. He sat with his legs cantilvered and his hands clasped between his knees.

  "Lizzie, for one thing, Abby's not my patient and I can't take her anywhere."

  "You can if she says."

  "I'm afraid that would cause some problems around here."

  "So what?" Lizzie said, going from simmer to boil again. "All that really matters is her life!" She turned her face away from him, angrily. "I hate the way you're talking. I thought—"

  "Thought what?"

  "She really likes you, Joe. Abby would trust you."

  "And I like Abby. A lot. Can I think about this without you going off like a rocket?"

  Lizzie hunched her shoulders and wiped her eyes.

  "I don't know what there is to think about. You took a Hippocratic oath to help people who need help. Didn't you?"

  Trying to distract her for a few moments, Joe said, "Are you a big wrestling fan?"

  "I like it, I guess. Abby's the one, though. She says it's a... a diversion for the mentally arrested, but you ought to hear her holler when they get to going at it. She hates that guy," Lizzie continued, indicating a big fellow with wild blond hair who wore a muzzle like a fireplace grate, presumably because if he was unmuzzled he would bite off someone's hand. But it didn't restrain him from bellowing dire insults at a nearly naked, baby-oiled behemoth, who bellowed back as they strove to raise the excitment level a little, the sluggish bloodlust of the assembly.

  "Do you play a lot of sports?" Lizzie asked.

  "I boxed until I got too old for it."

  "How old is that?"

  "See these gray hairs, Lizzie?"

  "They're silver, not gray. They look really neat."Lizzie put her arms around her knees and rocked, a little unsteadily, on the pillow, looking sideways at him. "I'll bet you played football."

  "Not my idea of a good time. I did some junior rodeo in high school. Calf roping, bronc riding." He thought about Vance and Patty Pachek, whom he hadn't seen in years. Cards and letters mailed from various points of the compass.I'll make it soon. But by now they knew better, no matter what hopes they retained.

  "Rodeo? In Illinois?"

  "I wasn't born there, Elizabeth. I was raised in Arizona, in the lettuce belt outside of Phoenix." Just telling her that much made him feel firmly grounded, someone with an honest if modest heritage, whereas for most of the evening he'd felt as if he were splitting in half, right down the middle of his clouded psyche.

  "Do you own any horses?"

  "No. I like boats better."

  "Your boat is named the Dragonfly," Lizzie said excitedly, as if she were subject to periodic fits of ESP.

  "You bet. But I don't have her anymore. She was pirated." He wondered if he'd said too much. Not that it could matter now. He felt comfortable talking to Lizzie, wanting to linger even though he knew he should be on his way back to town.

  Her ESP was still ticking. She turned her face sharply to him. Joe smiled reassuringly at her, but with an almost unendurable heaviness in his chest that would have sunk him like an anchor in the ocean. Her own smile trembled.

  You know what, Lizzie? I'm just Goddamned tired of lying to people.

  "Lizzie, I'll see what I can do."

  Joyous and starved for affection, she threw her arms around him. Her eyes dripped a few more tears. He held her comfortingly, although he felt the one in need of comfort, and stared at the big screen. Tag team match. The preliminary motions that the wrestlers were going through betrayed the ordeal of lions in a cage: boredom, even apathy. He imagined Abby sitting here, often alone, whiling away another insomniac's interminable night watching a similar, sullen ritual of strength with its climax of thudding, groaning, orgasmic fakery. Consummation, however routine. Which may have explained why Abby, isolated from and deprived of the raunchy, gory, tasteless-but-filling excesses of life, found the wrestling matches so appealing.

  Lizzie, not unexpectedly, raised her head, her lips tenderly parted, and kissed him with a touching awkwardness. Her eyes were closed, her fledgling body tense. Still, for Joe, the experience had no sensual content; it was like being nuzzled by a pet rabbit.

  He put a thumb beneath her chin and lifted it slowly. Lizzie looked out at him from the erotic midpoint of a rosy fantasy and said with a quaver, "It's okay. Nobody's here." She took a breath and quoted him inaccurately. "You said I was the woman for you. I mean, you can kiss me—all you want. I'll never tell anybody about us. Never."

  "Elizabeth Ann, I'm not afraid of going to jail; but I am concerned about perdition."

  She closed her lips on the translucent braces, and lowered her eyelashes like shades of disappointment, yet it was not exactly a full surrender of the fantasy that worked its druggy lull between her pale temples. He extricated himself casually and with good humor and was rising from his corner of the pillow, hearing his knee pop, when someone said from the doorway, "Dr. Bryce, there's a limousine waiting to drive you back to town."

  It was Flora Birdsall.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  "It's such a lovely garden, don't you think?" Flora said to Joe, in the sort of neutral-friendly voice of one who knows she will be overheard, and wants no gossip made of the moment. "I wonder if you'd mind walking with me for just a few minutes. I have a headache, and the night air would do me good."

  "Certainly, Ms. Birdsall," Joe said, wondering what she was up to.

  They were well away from the lights of the house, on the path that led to the old cemetery, when Flora detached them both from amiable chitchat and spoke her mind.

  "You son of a bitch."

  "Now, Flora. This isn't how it looks."

  "Oh, really, 'Dr. Bryce'? Let me tell you how it looks: as if you're screwing everything in sight down here, including.that—that child I found you with." Indignation caused her to hiss like a serpent gliding over a grass mat. "She can't be a day over fourteen!"

  "Give me a break," he said irritably "Lizzie has a little crush on me, that's all. She's scared and, except for her cousin Pamela, nearly friendless. Also she's convinced herself Abby is going to die."

  "Oh, my God," Flora said, in a hushed, graver tone, passing a hand over her eyes as if she were actually praying, "what have you done? What are you involved in here? The poor woman is crippled. I suppose she's in love with you, too. All wrapped around your little finger. I've th
ought a lot of things about you, Joe; but I never let myself believe that you could be so heartless."

  "Do you mind if I explain?"

  They had come to an open place; she turned. Her face by moonlight appeared to have sagged from fatigue and stress; her jawline was like the crimped crust of a pie. There was injury in her deep-set eyes. Wounded, they seemed even more beautiful than he remembered. To their left the Spanish moss on a broad twisted oak looked like the gray rags of Confederate men hanged more than a century ago. To their right Pandora's Bay was as bright as the pearls Flora wore in a double strand at the base of her throat.

  "What can you possibly explain? How long have you been here—operating, Doctor?" She licked her lower lip, as if her unaccustomed malice had settled there, like a glowing spark.

  "I arrived in Nimrod's Chapel late yesterday."

  "Yesterday?" She seemed not to believe him. "My God, you're already like one of the family."

  "I'm good at what I do," he said, looking patiently into her eyes.

  "Oh, obviously." But her mood was losing ire, and his gaze, mildly amused, made her uneasy. Flora looked around, clasped and unclasped her hands. "You have to leave," she said. "It's over. I won't permit it to go on."

  "Okay."

  She hadn't anticipated this response. She continued, as if an argument were called for, "Because if you don't leave, I—I will take matters into my own hands. I'll erase you, Joe. Faster than I created you."

  "Flora, I need another day. Maybe two. That's all, then I—"

  "Aren't you listening?" she said fiercely. "Your project here is finished. You're not taking one penny—"

  "I don't want money. I only want to help Abby. It may be that Dr. Thomason has missed something about her condition. What happened tonight could be an indication that she's in serious trouble. I think she had an allergic reaction, not a seizure: the spasms, the vomiting, the way her muscles were writhing—her electrical circuits were overloaded. But it couldn't have been an insect sting, and most spider bites block nerve signals, which would cause an opposite reaction."

  "As if you knew anything about it."

  "I do know some medicine, and I read a lot. Thomason's a garden-variety GP. I'd like to convince Abby to see a specialist in neurological disorders, have a complete set of skull films and a myelogram done. I know who to call for a referral. If she agrees, I'll take her myself, and then I'm out of it."

  Flora started to shake her head. Joe, on the alert, said suddenly, "Let's walk."

  "What's the—"

  "And we need to keep our voices down. Do you smell it?"

  "I don't—"

  "Come on. Back to the house."

  Fright nipped at Flora's heart as she walked beside Joe, and she was startled by the sight of Bruiser, the Barony's mastiff, noiselessly crossing the path ahead. But Bruiser was no bolder than a shadow, ignoring them as he went about some nocturnal errand of interest only to a dog. Still, she resisted the urge to link arms with Joe.

  "I don't understand," she complained, in a low tone.

  "Somebody's outside for a smoke. Behind us, near the big oak tree."

  "Who?"

  "I didn't see anyone. Whoever it was didn't want to be seen. I'm trying to remember what we've said that might get us into trouble."

  "Us?"

  "I exist only through the good graces of a CIA spook who can wipe me out with a few keystrokes on her supercomputer. You made me, out of less than even God had to work with when He made Adam. But theprocess also works in reverse, doesn't it? Your continued existence depends on my good graces. We're quite a pair, aren't we, Flora? Inseparable, when you think about it."

  Flora thought about it. Her steps dragged. Joe watched her. She raised a hand to rub one temple.

  "Is your headache any better?" Joe asked.

  "You shit."

  "I'm not making any threats, Flora. I wish you all the happiness that Miller Harkness undoubtedly will bring to your union. But I need to go on being good old Doc Bryce for a while."

  "To help Abby, you said. Your motives are pure, you say. For once in your life. Your respective lives."

  "I have a shady side. And I like to think I have a good side, Flora."

  She stopped abruptly. "You have nothing. You are nothing, except when you're pretending to be someone else."

  It was his turn to be wounded. "I know who I am, Flora."

  Her eyes flashed, contradicting him.

  "I see you as scared, Joe. Yes. Right now, you're very frightened. Because it won't be so easy without me. Oh, you can call yourself by a hundred names: birth certificates, Social Security cards, driver's licenses, all those phony things you can buy for yourself. But they don't give you the identity you crave. The deep sense of security I gave you. A foolproof background to build on, with your photographic memory and your actor's tricks. You've spent a great deal of time on Dr. Joe Bryce, haven't you? And you are so convincing. You just don't want to give him up."

  "I can give him up."

  She put a hand on his arm, fiercely. Then withdrew, as if the reciprocal tension she tapped into doubled her shock: like disturbing a ghost in a forbidden closet.

  "Oh, Joe. I couldn't get enough of you. When we were together it was like I had no mind of my own. But what have I done to us? So foolish. Joe, I'm begging you. Give up Bryce. Find your own life, before it's too late."

  "I had a life." He spoke reluctantly, with weighty effort, as if he were rolling a great stone of grief away from the mouth of a cave in which the trials and despair of that life lay in deposit. "And it was smashed all to hell. I'd like to go back to try—and fix it, but I can't. Go back. Because it's dark. It's very dark back there, Flora. And I never want to get close enough to see. What's in the darkness."

  The weight of the stone rolled back against him; he shuddered. This moment of nakedness recalled to Flora the last night they had been together, his confession of the humiliating violence that had been done to him.

  "It must have been so awful for you."

  "Don't be sorry. I'm okay, Flora." His tone lightened, just when she thought she wouldn't be able to bear any more of his self-torture. "I'm in control, I really am. Just don't do anything to hurt Dr. Joe eBryce." He spoke cheerfully, but his expression laid a glacial chill on her heart. "He's not a bad guy. The more I understand of him, the better I like him."

  In spite of herself, she wept.

  "Baby. I see now. I should have seen, all along. You need to get help."

  He shook his head and smiled in amazement.

  "Hey, nothing to worry about. I'm going to have a few drinks tonight, more than a few, maybe, and in the morning it'll be great. I'm not hurting anyone. I'll never hurt anyone, the way I was hurt."

  Her voice, already low, had dwindled to a whisper. "Oh, God. There's nothing I can say, is there? God, I'm shaking like a leaf. Go on. Just go, Miller's driver will take you to the hotel."

  The wind was up; the moon was out of sight. He bent to kiss her cheek but she drew away from him, almost in horror. The black mastiff padded past them silently and unexpectedly on his way to Abby's workshop. The huge dog seemed, in Flora's freezing mood of remorse and fear, loosed from a deep pit of hell, unpredictable and perhaps dangerous. Flora couldn't move for trembling.

  Joe said nonchalantly, as if unmindful of the state Flora was in, "Good night, and thanks for the limousine. I sincerely hope we'll see each other again, Ms. Birdsall."

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The phone in his room at the Planter's House rang for a long time until Joe was sufficiently conscious to make the attempt to answer it.

  "I just knew if I was persistent it would pay off. Have a late night last night?"

  "Uhh." The voice wasn't immediately familiar. Her Southern diphthongs were muffled, as if one side of her mouth were packed with gauze after a tooth extraction.

  "Hey, Cap'n Joe. This is your writer friend. How you be?"

  "Um. Wow. Hungover, I'm afraid."

  "Where did you g
o after you left here?"

  "Some place in town. Where they park the shrimp boats at night."

  "The Dead-Cat Bounce lost its liquor license, I hear; so you must have been at the Lost Sea Turtle Café. That's were we go all go when we're lonesome for sea turtles and other pets. What were you drinking?"

  "I stuck to beer." He coughed, gently, so his head wouldn't fall to pieces. His right hand felt sore and was swollen; he couldn't make much of a fist. "I got in a fight."

  "You did? Who with?"

  "Norse."

  "Did you punch him out?"

  Joe thought about it. "I hit him twice. Mostly to calm him down. But he can't take a punch."

  "He likes to brag that he's a black belt something-or-other. I gotta hear about this."

  "Not mad?"

  "About Norse? Huh-uh, why should I be?"

  "You sound— How're you feeling?"

  "Headachy. My tongue is sore. Luke wants me to stay in bed, but I'm not gonna. We both could use a dose of sea air, right? Can you get packed and be ready to move in an hour?"

  "Packed? Move where?"

  "You'll see. You'll like it. I'll be around to get you at one-thirty."

  "Abby, the room is spinning, I kid you not."

  "Poor guy," she said. "So we'll make it two o'clock sharp. Be down front, would you, I can't come up. Bye now."

  Joe put the receiver of the phone back and lay there rubbing his sore head. He'd slept in his boxer shorts. Slept alone, no reminder of lost sea turtles or other pets in his bed. He dreaded the next two hours, although he was usually quick to sober up. Sea air sounded like a good bet. And Abby's determinedly cheerful mood made him feel better too. He wanted her company.

  As far as Norse was concerned, he couldn't decide if he'd behaved badly.

  Before Norse had come into the café with two girls and his alpha-wolf posturing, Joe had been all right, sitting quietly by himself at a bend of the horseshoe bar, drinking long-neck Buds slowly and methodically, watching a playoff game from the West Coast on ESPN. His mind and emotions were frozen in neutral. The Dodgers were playing the Mets, 3-2 in the fourth.