Decatur (33 page)

“Got in a fight with my ex- girl,” Gar sounded so down. “She cut me, see?” He touched the tiny stitches on his lip and let a lock of his hair fall over his eyes. “I just want a woman I can talk to you, you know.”

Adele felt torn for an instant, but Gar seemed so lonely and sad that before she really had thought it through she had rolled down the window all the way and asked him if he wanted to come home for supper.

“Aw, I couldn’t put you out like that, Adele. I haven’t had a home-cooked meal for weeks but it’s just too much. She never cooked.” Gar said regretfully, one hand on his slim waist, the other big paw leaning on the open window of her car.

“I have sirloin steak. You can’t get a sirloin steak to serve one, so if you don’t come, half of it’ll go to waste,” Adele said, thinking maybe she’d fire up the grill that hadn’t been used since Kurt died.

“Steak, that does sound good,” Gar said, suddenly feeling better. He was going to get off the streets, and get fed. It might be just what he needed to keep going.

Marilyn took a long shower after Weston and Max left. Gretch shrugged out of her tweed trousers and man’s shirt and pulled on a pair of white Brook’s Brothers cotton pajamas from the alligator hide suitcase. She then riffled through Max’s record selection and selected out a Deutsche Gramophone recording of Mozart’s Piano Concertos. Choosing number 20 in D minor, she took the black record with the yellow label, putting the needle down on the third groove. The music, at once sublime and thrilling, filled the apartment. She settled herself in her friend’s Eames chair and lit a cigarette while Rowley kept an eye on both her and the closed bathroom door. After awhile Marilyn came out, with a towel wrapped around her head and the plaid robe tightly knotted.

“That sounds nice. I’m just going to get my uniform from the laundry room. Work tomorrow,” she said.

“Take the dog,” Gretch instructed, her eyes closed and listening to the music.

Marilyn thought it over and whistled softly for Rowley who followed at her heels as she padded down the apartment building hallway to get her uniform and panties out of the washing machine. They could dry in the bathroom, she decided.

The picture of the cropped grey-haired professor smoking in cotton men’s pajamas with her polio leg up listening to Mozart was comforting in a way to Marilyn, as she hung her black uniform over the shower rod.

“Marilyn,” called Gretch in an easy way, “I know you want to get to bed, and frankly I don’t sleep much anymore, so why don’t you take Max’s bed? This chair and ottoman will do me just fine.”

“Oh, no I couldn’t, Dr. Wendell,” Marilyn said, stepping out in the hall, combing her damp hair with a plastic pocket comb.

“Gretch, and you will. Tell me, when did you first notice that you had abilities?” Gretch asked as the music rose and fell in beautiful waves.

Marilyn hesitated for a moment but she was too tired to put up her customary defenses and the music was so exquisite and the little professor so bright eyed that she shrugged and settled herself on Max’s leatherette bench. “Well, I think I always had them, but they got stronger,” the words seemed like they were slipping out of her as the professor smoked and the music played.

“They did. When did you notice that?” Gretch asked, moving one hand to the piano concerto like she was conducting.

“When I was nine,” Marilyn’s dropped to a whisper.

“What number am I thinking of now, Marilyn?” Gretch asked.

“33,” Marilyn answered, relieved more than she wanted to admit that the professor was taking a different tack.

“Good, and now?” Gretch asked again rapidly.

“72.”

“Good.” The oboe line was marvelous with the piano trilling below, thought Gretch and the Instrument before her was truly talented. “See the Buddha on Max’s stereo speaker? I want you to move it for me,” Gretch said.

“Oh, I don’t do that. I mean, not on purpose,” Marilyn said, feeling on high alert.

“You did in the graveyard. I think you can,” Gretch said evenly, her eyes olive green and intent looking straight at Marilyn like she could see inside her.

Marilyn bit her lip. She had made a promise to herself long ago that she wasn’t going to direct her ability to move objects, but Gretch was right, she could do it if she wanted to. She looked at the Buddha, sitting in golden serenity on top of the cabinet. “I’ll try,” she said softly.
The jewel is in the lotus
. Then the molecules in the room seemed to thicken into a path between her and the statue. Ions streamed between them and the statue lifted from the speaker vibrating in the air.

“That’s very nice. You can let it down now, Marilyn. I think you might want to consider expanding your employment horizons. ISCAR might be a better place for you than the Surrey Restaurant. Think about it. And get to bed. We’re all tired.” Gretch pushed herself up to her feet as the Buddha settled back down. She lifted the needle on the record player and the music stilled and Marilyn yawned, suddenly overcome with sleepiness.

When she was sure that Marilyn and Rowley were safely asleep in Max’s bedroom, Gretch limped over to the big picture window and pulled up the blind, pursing her lips and looking out onto the asphalt parking lot. Tree branches soft with new leaves all silvery grey in the streetlight waved, and she saw the shadowy forms of what looked to be a bunch of kids running down the block outside of Max’s heading towards Charlesworth University. She shook her head and opened the side window to the big picture window, sniffing and listening, on guard. The voices were dim and receding as they ran away but there was something there, some little sliver of fear vibrating in their tones. She lowered the blind and shut the side window and went back to the Eames chair, slipping off her brace with a sigh. Gar was out there somewhere and coming for them, but was there something else too? Then, concentrating on her breathing, she put herself under.

Gretch came out of her body easily after years of practice, years of making herself see her hands and feet in dreams, daily meditations, and the way the polio drove her to master her spirit since part of her body had failed. She walked easily as her spirit self, a spritely figure in white, as her sleeping form slumped in the leather chair, the brace leaning on the ottoman. She turned the doorknob to Max’s bedroom and slipped inside.

Rowley was half-barking in his sleep in muffled bursts at the foot of the bed. Gretch carefully made her way around him and hovered above the slumbering form of Marilyn, whose hair spread like glossy black stain on the white pillowcases. She was filled with empathy for the sleeping woman, whose journey and abilities had cast her in a precarious role that she would never escape from. Gretch had come some distance on her own personal journey, and while she had very real brushes with evil both by humans and other paranormal beings in the universe, she had also been touched by those who were sentinels of the light. They had guided her and shared their ancient wisdom so that she learned their ways, and gradually over time became a custodian, a trustee, of the luminous.
And this one needed her
. She breathed deeply in and then carefully exhaled her essence, it came through her, expanding to cover Marilyn in a protective glistening net, layering in over Marilyn’s own soul and strengthening it for the journey ahead. Like the Guardian she was, Gretch laid a light protective web over the woman who had drawn them all together and put them in the middle of the cosmic pull between the dark and the light.

Marilyn felt a cooling breeze cross her face and soothe her. She had been sweating, trapped in a phone booth suffocating somewhere down in the dark and the phone had kept ringing and ringing and she had been afraid to answer it, afraid because she knew who was there. Then the door of the phone booth opened and there was a sweet light air filling the space and she felt stronger, so, picking up the phone, she spoke into its black handset firmly, even before the rasp could begin. “Don’t call here again,” is all she said. The phone fell away and she felt herself float up towards the light and onto a restful plane of sleep.

CHAPTER FORTY
The Things We Offer Up

Sam Reed decided to check in on his patient of the afternoon because he hadn’t been able to get the young priest out of his mind. It was nearly ten and the E.R. had settled down with his own shift over. At home his children would be asleep but he didn’t mind his long hours at the hospital, in many ways he felt more comfortable here than he did there. Or at least more useful. He hit the elevator button for five, hoping that maybe seven hours on the locked ward had calmed Father Troy. He felt all nervy himself. He buzzed to get in, standing at the big double-thickness glass doors that opened onto the nurses’ station for the mental patients. A small pixie of a nurse with a silver page boy waved and the doors clicked, unlocking, and Sam Reed pushed them open and went through as they closed behind him and relocked.
St. Mary’s really was a modern facility
.

Connie Pender had been the senior RN on this floor for three months and was still getting used to it. The pay on this ward was the best in the hospital except for the surgical nurses and she had taken several courses over the past three summers to get her certificate of mental health nursing, but the administering of drugs and restraints had a way of wearing a person down and she wondered if she was going to be able to cut it in the long run.
Maybe after Eileen her oldest got her braces off she could go back to what she really loved, pediatric care. It could be heartbreaking but when it worked it was beautiful.
But now that nice young ER doctor that everyone put so much store in was here, no doubt to check on the priest that had been admitted before her shift had begun. She pulled out his chart and intercommed for Lumley, the orderly, to come up to the nurses’ station.

Lumley was overweight but he could put down a patient in two seconds flat if he had to and he didn’t mind working the mental ward because he came from a family of crazies and it just seemed like old home week most of the time.
The folks here weren’t bad, they were just tired, mostly from the drugs, and a little disoriented. Sometimes they’d get rowdy and Lumley would have to put them in restraints but even that wasn’t much more than tying grandma to the bedposts when she’d have her fits.
He eyed the young doctor walking in step with him to room number twelve where the priest was
, no psychiatrist this one, nope, he was too down to earth for that.

Father Troy was coming out of it. The evening had passed in a syrupy haze with some truly terrifying nightmares of beings with nothing but maws for faces but whatever they gave him was wearing off and now he could really feel what had happened with Gar - the name washed over him with a mix of revulsion and fascination. He felt aching and lost and he looked down at the hospital pj’s draped around his skinny legs illuminated in the nurse’s night-light. They were swimming on him, he had lost so much of what made his substance, it was odd, and he began to pick at his wrist. But when the door opened and the big fat orderly came in with the young doctor who had seen him some time, what time, earlier, Father Troy looked at them, crouching on his bed, hiding his face at first in shame but then quickly glancing up. They had what he didn’t, both of them. You could feel it. It stirred something in him. Before he knew it his hand had shot out and he had grabbed a hold of the doctor’s arm, “Gimme,” he said, because words had lost their beauty to him, they were just sounds you made to get and get by.

Sam Reed felt a curious feeling come over him as he saw the priest in the half-light, it was as if every other positive impression he had of man had been erased, but when Father Troy reached out and grabbed onto his sleeve his reaction was immediate
, get the hell off me;
jerking away and stumbling back, as Lumley smiled a jagged little grin and said, “Hey we don’t touch others, here, Father.”

Father Troy squinted. Lumley looked like a fat slug to him. The urge to do what had been done to him coiled back up as suddenly as it had unwound. What had been done to him? He looked down at his body, it looked so scrawny and yet it was all he had. God was an illusion for fools, and worse.

“You’re going to be seen by the staff psychiatrist, Father Troy. I think the police want to question you too, about the man who robbed you,” Sam Reed said as a way of explaining what he was doing there now that it seemed ridiculous that he had come to check on a patient he couldn’t bear to set eyes on.

“The man who robbed me is gone and what he took I can never get back,” Father Troy said, beginning to rock himself and closing his lids, feeling their weight like cement cinder blocks on his eyes.

Gar’s teeth tore at the steak, still raw and dripping blood. He squatted, ripping the beef with his hands and stuffing it into his mouth and then chewing, chewing as the precious seconds slipped by. He was on the brick backyard patio of Adele’s little ranch house in South Shores, the nice new neighborhood by Lake Decatur, and the small black grill in the shape of a wide shoe box on metal legs was shooting flames in the night sky. Gar grabbed the lighter fluid and squirted another stream of high octane fuel onto the coals, and flaming tongues threatened to lick the roof as he ate the uncooked sirloin,
burn baby burn
. There, it was done. Finished, he dropped his head into his hands, grateful for the privacy of Adele’s back yard fence, chewing the last bite mournfully, never more aware of the monster he had become than at that moment. Adele was now in the bedroom where she had hoped they would go, but instead was turning the sheets red. But he had left her with her essence intact, gone back out to the grill to wait, and in the time it took for him to eat the meat, she had escaped her mortal bonds and him, it was the least he could do.

The night had unfolded as a fairy tale for Gar and now at the end of it he was faced with the beast in his own being. Adele had shown him into the garage like they were old friends, and they found the coals and lighter fluid among the stacks of newspapers and rags. Gar noted that she should really have someone clean it out for her, and said he would do it himself if he had to and had been momentarily dazzled by her grateful smile. She needed a man and was sweetly transparent about showing it. He set up the grill for her then, opening the stiff paper bag of briquettes, giving them a soak with the lighter fluid and lighting the match. Adele applauded him and said that she loved to grill out but hadn’t for a long time.

In the kitchen she washed iceberg lettuce and chopped a red onion and grated carrots, making what she called a “steak house salad”, slathering it with a homemade dressing of lemons, sour-cream, blue cheese, and a dash of olive oil and steak sauce, while she hummed a little happy song to herself. Gar sat at the counter feeling his emptiness like a vast predatory bird sailing invisibly through the house.

She eventually told him how her husband had died of cancer and that she had been so lonely ever since. She pulled out two Miller beers from the back of the fridge and when Gar refused she opened one anyway for herself and found herself confessing that she still loved Kurt. Even though he was gone, she sometimes talked to him, and on foggy mornings thought maybe she would see him coming down the walk with the newspaper tucked under his arm just like she used to. Adele’s eyes were like lanterns in the kitchen, they lit everything inside her.

It wasn’t that she was beautiful, she wasn’t. But when Adele kissed him ever so lightly as she passed with the steak on a white patterned platter with a little chefs dancing around the edge, it woke something in him so painful he had to bite his tongue so he wouldn’t cry aloud. He knew she was kissing him, the way he kissed others, because they were there and warm but inside she was really always kissing Kurt. The way he was always kissing Marilyn in others, the meager substitutes, and then every so often in whatever body she found herself in; he was loving her spirit, the spirit that had captured him centuries ago. His head fell forward in grief but Adele didn’t see it, she was stepping out into the backyard patio with a little seductive wiggle to her walk. He felt his heart rip open as the screen door banged and Adele called back, “Gar, you’re going to have to cook the steak, us women just don’t have the knack.”

He knew then he’d have to kill her because if he slept with her it would only make it worse “Coming,” he called back as he looked in the utensil drawer for what would work so it would be quick.

As his hands fished around through the knives and meat forks, grater blade and scissors, he finally faced what he had been hiding from. The truth was, he had let Marilyn escape as Khandar the young monk with the dazzling smile because he couldn’t bear to

lose her forever, and he had loved every line, every grey hair of the Shaker Sister Ellen, consumed with so much desire that he would lie awake feverish at night, and the beautiful novice Isabella with the long chestnut hair, she had captured him first but it was Marilyn that they were all reaching for. The anxiety of not knowing what would happen to her had always stopped him. If he had taken her spirit earlier, the emptiness would have only multiplied infinitely. He couldn’t bear it. The long hunt was a delaying tactic, a way of kicking the can down the road, only now he was down the road. And he was going to have to do what he had put off, or die trying. This was his curse but he promised himself he would abstain with Adele as he opened the door with a deep breath and the long kitchen knife up his sleeve. Adele would be with Kurt forever and that was his white plume to love. It was at least something.