Brambleman (43 page)

This appeased her. Charlie signed the forms
and walked outside, then wheeled the bike to the stairs and carried
it up to the second-floor room. Inside it was frigid. He turned the
heat up, leaned the bike against the register, and collapsed on the
queen-sized bed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laid down
on a mattress. Within minutes, he was asleep.

He woke in near-total darkness. Only a thin
strip of light cut between the panels of the window curtains. He
jumped out of bed, threw on his boots, then sprinted out the door
and down the stairs. The desk clerk looked at him impassively.
“Yes?”

“I need to get a cab. Do you have the
number—”

She put up her hand to stop his question and
made a phone call. Within three minutes, a Yellow Cab pulled up.
Charlie was impressed with this transportation system’s
near-buslike efficiency.

“Where to?” asked the driver, who looked like
he might be related to the desk clerk.

“Toys R Us.” They drove in silence through
the thinning Christmas Eve traffic. Charlie glanced at his watch
and silently fretted that he was too late.

“Wait for me,” he told the cabbie when they
reached the toy store, which was, miraculously, still open. Barely.
He walked in and a manager locked the doors behind him.

He looked around in amazement and dismay. The
place had been ransacked. The popular toys were gone, but some
board games, dolls, trucks, building sets, and stocking stuffers
remained. He ran around grabbing things and throwing them in his
cart. He stood in the checkout line behind two black men, one in a
business suit, the other in a DeKalb Sanitation uniform. He
supposed they were absentee fathers trying to buy their way back
into their children’s hearts—just like him. Self-consciously, he
slipped on his wedding ring, hoping that somehow this would make
him invisible in the world of bad parents.

He made a generous donation to the junior
cheerleaders staffing the gift-wrap table and pushed a cartful of
brightly wrapped packages out the door to the waiting cab.

And then Charlie returned to the motel. For
dinner, he ate two Nip-Chees and drank a Diet Coke from breezeway
vending machines. In his room he watched
It’s a Wonderful
Life
long enough to see George Bailey jump from the bridge. He
gave a raucous cheer, then turned it off.

He dozed again and woke when the room’s
stultifying heat got to him. It was nearly 11:30 p.m. In the
bathroom, he splashed cold water on his face. He called the desk
and asked for another cab. He waited with his gifts at the bottom
of the steps. The same driver showed up.

“2567 Thornbriar Circle. It’s not too
far.”

Only a few minutes away, in fact. Inside his
old house, lights were on. No doubt Susan was up late wrapping
gifts, something they’d done together for so many years. While the
driver waited on the street, Charlie tiptoed up the driveway and
put the first batch of gifts in front of the door, then repeated
the process. As he returned to the taxi, the porch light came on.
Charlie dove into the rear seat. “Go!” he shouted as he slammed the
door.

“Back to the motel?”

“Head that way.”

The cab driver gave him a questioning look
but complied, following the route Charlie had taken when he left
home that rainy night nearly a year before—and what now seemed like
a lifetime ago.

As they approached the George Bailey Bridge
over I-285, Charlie said, “Let me out here.” The bemused cabbie
pulled over. Charlie paid him and got out. He watched his breath as
the car drove away on the near-deserted street, then looked up the
hill at the burned-out husk of the Pancake Hut, a monument to God’s
wrath. Two blocks further on was his cheap motel. As he started
moving toward it, the wind picked up, and his duster billowed
behind him.

The bridge trembled beneath his feet. On its
narrow walkway, Charlie stood and gazed out on the night traffic
rushing at him like a river full of stars. In the opposite lanes,
demon eyes receded. A driver passing by honked at him. Perhaps an
old neighbor, or simply someone angry at him for taking up
space.

In the distance, a church bell tolled twelve
times.

Charlie started walking again. He’d fulfilled
the contract, but he knew that his battle was just beginning.
Something evil wanted him dead. Which was reason enough to keep
going, since he was, after all, a contrary sort.

On Christmas Day, Charlie wished he could
have been a fly on the wall at Varmintville when Susan gave her
people the bad news:
He’s alive
! Or better yet, when Beck
and Ben did—that is, if their mother hadn’t destroyed his gifts.
But he wasn’t an insect, no matter what Evangeline claimed, so
instead, Charlie sat in his motel room and watched TV. Any thought
he had of going to the police—(and he didn’t think much of the idea
to begin with)—was quashed when news updates linked the Caravan to
a meth lab discovered in the fire-damaged warehouse unit next to
his. They’d have to figure out who he was on their own.

He received some good news the next day, on
the anniversary of his flight from Thornbriar. Jean called him that
morning and said, “The guy with the loft to rent wants to meet you.
He’s a history professor. Lots of books. You should like that.”

“Sounds nice,” Charlie said, envisioning a
stuffy, cramped old place filled with cat hair. Which would be
infinitely better than the nothing he had. Maybe he could get the
place without a credit check, which he was sure he wouldn’t pass.
“Uh, you ever been there?”

“I went with a friend who lives in the
building. Très chic.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I told him great things about you. By
the way, when you meet him, don’t act so … oh, how do I put it?
Homeless. Can you be here at noon?”

“Yeah, if I get my ass in gear.”

“Do so, then.”

When Charlie arrived at Bay Street
Coffeehouse in his newly laundered Christmas Eve outfit, Jean
introduced him to Dr. Edward Satalin, an Emory University
professor, who planned to leave on New Year’s Eve for six months in
France. He wanted to sublet his apartment as much as Charlie wanted
to get out of the motel, and a good word from Jean was all Satalin
required as a reference. The two men hit it off immediately.
Charlie tossed his bike in the back of Satalin’s Pathfinder.

They drove downtown, then turned south. “You
don’t even need a car,” the bearded professor said, pointing at the
Garnett MARTA Station as they passed it. “You can bimodal on MARTA
all over town.”

“Cool.”

“I really admire your …
greenitude
,
Charles. It takes commitment to ride a bike in weather like
this.”

“Oh, it’s nothing really,” Charlie said,
waving his hand nonchalantly. “I’m used to it.”

The loft was located on the third floor of a
converted Farm and Home Furniture warehouse on Castlegate, a street
crowded with three- to five-story buildings that ranged in style
from old brick to aqua-tinted glass and steel. The building’s north
brick wall sported a mural—repainted with loving care—of the
defunct company’s billboard, featuring a black-and-white Holstein
cow.

The professor’s lodgings were amazing.
Charlie loved Satalin’s spacious, open-room apartment, with its
high ceilings, heavy steel entrance door, polished cement floor and
exposed black ductwork. Best of all, it was furnished in an
understated, masculine style and had all the electronic amenities,
including cable and high-speed Internet. It was filled with stuff
Charlie would have chosen, if he’d had money. Eight-foot tall dark
cherry bookcases, equipped with a sliding ladder, took up an entire
brick wall. Satalin had thousands of books and CDs, most of which
were jazz and classical.
1
Beyond the balcony/fire escape stood a fence topped
with razor wire to thwart hobo invasions from the railroad tracks
behind the lofts. It was the best of both worlds—luxury, with a
hint of dungeon.

Charlie gladly agreed to hand over half of
his advance check up front to stay there until the end of June,
utilities included. He knew he was getting a great bargain. And so
with a handshake, the beleaguered writer went from squalor to
splendor. He hoped that he’d turned the corner and put the ugliness
of the past year behind him. Then he could concentrate on enjoying
his accomplishments and become the success he’d always daydreamed
he’d be.

* * *

On New Year’s Day, Charlie sprawled out on
Satalin’s weathered brown leather sofa clad in only a towel and
watched a bowl game on the big-screen plasma TV. His new work
clothes were in the dryer, and he had no plans to leave the loft,
since there was a bounty on his head and he was suspected of
running a meth lab. In the kitchen, a sirloin patty sizzled on the
Thermador gas range’s grill. Satalin had left a week’s worth of
food in the matching stainless steel side-by-side
refrigerator-freezer.

He’d figured out why he’d gotten such a great
deal on rent. While surfing the Net on Satalin’s desktop computer,
Charlie learned that his landlord was heir to an investment-banking
fortune. The professor didn’t need the money; he just wanted
someone to babysit the place.

Charlie got up and sliced a red onion with a
hundred-dollar knife. After eating and clanking dishes in the sink,
he settled back with the game. After a while, he grew bored with
the lopsided contest and turned off the TV. A freight train rumbled
by. Across the hall, a door slammed with a resounding
thump
.
He listened to the sounds of the building: Indian music next door,
pots and pans clanging upstairs. He wondered what his new neighbors
were like. Good-looking? Cool? Female? Alone, as he was?

Charlie pulled his clothes from the dryer and
dressed, then played a jazz CD, pianist Kenny Barron’s
Things
Unseen
. He searched Satalin’s shelves for a book to read and
picked one on ancient Greece, figuring that since he had this
history gig going, he’d start at the beginning, more or less.

After reading a chapter, Charlie again grew
restless. He needed to work. Yes, writing. That which had driven
him crazy would now keep him sane. The lumps and bumps in his hands
had disappeared, and with access to a computer again, he could
crank out some magazine articles. Or put together a new final
chapter for
Monster
, one with a furtive, bombed-out fugitive
feel.

Charlie sat down at Satalin’s glass-topped
computer table and turned on the desktop PC. An instant later, a
knock on the door caused his heart to skip a beat. How had the
varmints found him so quickly? He tiptoed in his white crew socks
to the door and peered out the peephole. It wasn’t a hillbilly with
a shotgun. It was
her
—the unforgettably upscale woman he’d
seen at Bay Street Coffeehouse back in September.
Danger
Girl
. He swung the door open, a look of wide-eyed amazement on
his face.

The woman’s expression matched his. “I came
by to see if you vur here,” she said. “You’re here, but you’re not
you.” She strung out the last word, puckering her lips and almost
purring it in an intriguing accent Charlie couldn’t place. Russian?
Transylvanian?

She was in her early thirties, he guessed,
with silky raven hair, and dressed entirely in black—jeans, thermal
Henley, and high-heeled boots adorned with silver chains.
Damn,
she
was fine
.

“I’m not myself today,” he said in an attempt
to recover.

“I’ve seen you.” She wrinkled her nose in
puzzlement, then snapped her fingers. “Bay Street Coffeehouse.
Jean’s place. I’m Dana. Dana Colescu,” she said, extending a hand,
which he gladly took. “You’re the writer.”

The writer
?
Cool
. She retrieved
her hand and peered around his shoulder. “Is Eddie—”

He stepped aside, hoping she’d come in. No
such luck. She gazed at him with questioning eyes. “Gone to
France,” Charlie said. “Without seeing England, as far as I
know.”

“So soon? I vas going to give him a bon
voyage—Oh, vell.”

He was sure that whatever she was going to
give him would have been worth sticking around for, the
overeducated fool. Charlie hoped that perhaps he could get the
“velcome” version.

“How did you end up here?” she asked.

“I’m subletting. Thanks to Jean, who
introduced me to … Eddie.”

“
Ah
… I’ll have to call her and find
out all about my new neighbor.” She flashed a seductive smile and
put a finely manicured hand on Charlie’s elbow for a moment before
withdrawing it. He decided she sounded like a vampire.
Vlad the
Impaler’s hot girlfriend
.

“She’ll tell you I’m a starving writer,” he
volunteered. “Quite crazy. Even daft.”

She stepped back to appraise him. “Too
well-built to be starving.” In truth, his bout of homelessness had
left him leaner, and riding his bike for the past week had toned
his muscles. “But, daft,
yesss
. Like a daft horse, big and
strong? I call you Budviser.” She laughed. “How tall are you?”

“Six-four.”

“Nice.” She nodded appreciatively. “Only your
clothes hint at hunger.” She pinched the fabric of his new
warehouseman’s shirt. He gazed at her hand in amazement.

“Things are looking up. My book is coming out
this month.”

“Vonderful! Vot’s it about?”

“History. Ethnic cleansing.”

Her eyes narrowed and her expression clouded.
Had he said something wrong? What if her family had been murdered?
How horrible! If he only knew more, he could console her properly.
Repeatedly. “Right here in Georgia,” he added. “Believe it or
not.”

Her face brightened as she pointed at the
floor. “This Georgia? Ah. I love to read it.”