Garden of Evil (18 page)

She kissed him again, and again, and again. ‘I'm going to go fix my hair, and pretty myself up, and maybe we can meet up later. How about that?'

Jim didn't quite know what to say. Of course he wanted her, but her talk about the Garden of Eden and God had distinctly unsettled him. She sounded almost like Simon Silence, with his strange quasi-religious comments and his talk of God-Not-So-Very-Almighty.

‘Well, sure, fine,' he said. ‘Maybe you'd like to come up for a drink. Say around nine, nine thirty?'

She leaned forward and whispered in his ear, and her breath was like hot thunder. ‘I'll suck it for you.'

Jim found himself smiling like an idiot. He thought:
How else am I supposed to react
?
Say, ‘Great, I look forward to it, but do you mind if we have a little less of the Old Testament talk?'

Summer gave him a little finger-wave and disappeared back into her apartment. Jim stood there for a few seconds, his cheek still singing with pain. Inside, he could hear Kenny Rogers singing
You Picked A Fine Time To Leave Me, Lucille
. (‘. . .
with four
hungry children and a crop in the field
. . .') He had never felt so detached from reality in his life. This simply wasn't the way that things worked. You didn't see seventy or eighty dead souls standing outside your window and then come home and have a pole dancer-cum-beautician slap you across the face and tell you that, as far as she was concerned, the wrath of God amounted to a hill of beans.

He trudged up the last flight of steps and opened his own front door. Tibbles had emerged from his hiding place and was sitting on the kitchen table, where he knew that he wasn't allowed to sit. Normally he jumped off it as soon as Jim came home, but this evening he stayed where he was, narrowing his eyes, as if he were defying Jim to throw him off.

‘Well, how are you, fatso?' Jim asked him. ‘Gotten over the sulks, have you? Just remember that you belong to me, and not the other way about. Me owner, you pet, and you don't go all spitty and scratchy on me because if you do you'll get the same treatment again, only more so.'

He went through to the living room and switched on the TV, although he muted the sound. Outside, the sun was beginning to go down behind the yuccas, so that the sky looked like the grating of a huge furnace. He couldn't help thinking about what Simon Silence had written in his essay about Paradise.
Paradise will come on the day when the Fires are lit all over the world from one horizon to another
.

He went back into the kitchen and opened up the fridge. He had defrosted a pork chop yesterday so he supposed he ought to cook it and eat it today, although he didn't feel like it now. His tastes varied so much from one day to the next. What he really felt like this evening was chicken fajitas
,
with a hellishly hot chili sauce.

He opened his briefcase. The handle that he had attempted to mend was coming apart already and he thought that he would probably have to try repairing it again, or even buy a new briefcase. As he opened it, the pink-and-green Paradise apple that Simon Silence had given him came rolling out halfway across the kitchen table.

Tibbles sniffed it, and then immediately sprang off the table on to the floor.

‘What's the matter with you?' Jim asked him, picking up the apple and holding it toward him. ‘You don't like fruit? Well, no, of course you don't, you're a cat. I have to admit I never saw a cat eating a banana.'

Tibbles hissed at him and retreated into the living room, sway-backed. Jim felt a rush of annoyance, and had the strongest urge to pick him up and throw him out on to the balcony, or even throw him right off the balcony into the back yard. However, Tibbles turned around and fled into the bedroom, as if he could read Jim's mind.

Jim rinsed the apple under the kitchen faucet and bit into it. He wondered if he ought to have accepted it, considering how much he disliked and distrusted Simon Silence, yet he hadn't been able to resist it. It was so much more than an apple, as sweet and crisp as it was. It was almost like another installment in a continuing story – a story which was gradually making more and more sense with each Paradise apple that he ate. He needed to know how the story ended, even if it meant compromising his principles.

He went back to the living room to see what was on television.
Wheel of Fortune,
or
Mirror, Mirror
, or the news. He bit into the apple again, and this time he was flooded almost at once with a feeling of sadness and nostalgia, but bewilderment, too. He chewed it very slowly, and as he did so he could feel that warm wind blowing again, and the weary shushing of the ocean, and hear that faraway calliope music,
In The Good Old
Summertime.

He suddenly thought:
I know where this is. I remember. I know where this is and I know that something terrible happened. I have to go there. I have to go there now
.

He switched off the television and went through to the hallway. He lifted his khaki cotton jacket from the peg and left his apartment without calling out goodbye to Tibbles. As far as he was concerned, Tibbles could stay in hiding for the rest of his life and starve to death. One day he would drag his body out from under the bed, all mangy gray fur and bones.

With his apple clamped between his teeth, he hurried down the steps and climbed into his car. He swerved out backward into Briarcliff Road, narrowly missing a primrose-yellow Volkswagen Beetle being driven up the hill by a middle-aged woman in a matching primrose-yellow headscarf.

‘Watch where you're going, asshole!' she screamed at him.

‘Oh,
bésa mis nalgas
!'

Jim sped down Briarcliff on squittering tires and then headed west on Franklin, toward the ocean. Traffic along Sunset was crawling all the way, and he drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. As he drove, he finished his apple, and even sucked the core, then laid it carefully down on the seat beside him. The sweet-and-sour taste of it had at last brought everything back. The wind, the ocean, the seashore. The weeping of seagulls and the faraway music from the carousel.

It was almost dark by the time he reached Santa Monica Beach, with only a hazy streak of purple in the sky. He parked his car and walked across to the fine gray sand. He stood there for a long time, feeling the ocean breeze blowing in his face, and listening to the endless sound of the surf. About three-quarters of a mile to the south, he could see the candy-colored lights of Pacific Park, on Santa Monica Pier, with its Ferris wheel turning and its roller-coaster rattling, and he could hear people screaming as they went round and round and up and down on all of the rides.

It was here that it had happened, that terrible thing. It was right here, at this very place where he was standing on Santa Monica Beach, thirty-three years ago. Jim remembered it now, he remembered it all, and he remembered it so vividly that he found it difficult to believe that he had ever forgotten it. Or buried it, rather.

He was still standing there when – out of the darkness – a tall figure in white came walking toward him, from the direction of the ocean. When he was less than a hundred feet away, Jim recognized him. It was the Reverend John Silence, in his loose white shirt and his gold chains and his white flappy pants. He was wearing a straw skimmer with a black hatband around it, and he was carrying a black staff with a gold knob on top of it. He looked more like some strange kind carnival entertainer than a pastor.

‘Well, well, Mr Rook!' he called out, as he approached. ‘You made it! And much sooner than I thought you would! Congratulations!'

He came closer and held out his hand, but Jim didn't take it.

‘Reverend Silence. Do you want to explain to me what you're doing here, exactly?' Jim demanded.

The Reverend Silence shrugged. ‘Probably the same thing that
you're
doing here, Mr Rook. Reliving the past.'

‘This is a past I never wanted to remember, for Christ's sake. Like,
ever.
And this is a past which I had successfully managed to blot out of my mind, until you and your son started feeding me those apples. It
is
the apples that do it, isn't it?'

‘Yes, the apples! But you didn't have to take them, Mr Rook. And once you
had
taken them, you still didn't have to eat them. You could have thrown them in the trash. Or let them rot.'

‘So what do you spike them with?' Jim asked him. ‘Do you inject them with some kind of drug? Like scopolamine, maybe, or temazepam, or something like that?'

‘Of course not. The Paradise apple is the purest of apples. That is why it brings back all of your memories with such clarity. The Paradise apple is the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Mr Rook. That is why we call it the Paradise apple. You eat the apple, and you see
everything.
Why do you think God drove Adam and Eve out of Eden? They ate the apple and they could suddenly see everything. More than anything else they could suddenly see the many shortcomings of God.'

‘Aren't you supposed to be a pastor?' said Jim. ‘I thought pastors were supposed to exalt God, not go around telling everybody how fallible He is.'

‘Truth is what is important in this world, Mr Rook. Truth, not reputation. And something else is just as important, and that is for everybody to have a second chance. God never gives us second chances, Mr Rook. If you sin – or what counts for sinning in His eyes – then you are damned for all eternity. If you die, you stay dead for ever. At least you do if God has anything to do with it.'

He paused, and then he said, ‘What happened on this beach, Mr Rook, thirty-three years ago? Tell me, in your own words.'

Jim had thought that he would be able to talk about this easily, but without any warning at all he found that his throat had tightened up, and that it was difficult for him to get the words out.

‘Come on, Mr Rook. It will do you good. You have had it all wrapped up for so long, it's time to unwrap it, and remember it.'

Jim took a deep breath, and then he said, in a choked-up voice, ‘It was –
ahem
! – it was my dad.'

‘Go on. What did he do, your dad?'

‘He brought me here, to this beach. I was seven years old. He bought me a little shovel and a bucket and I sat right here and I tried to make a sandcastle, although the sand was much too dry.'

‘And then what, Mr Rook?'

‘He walked off. I didn't know then that my mom had told him that morning that she was going to leave him, and take me with her. Well, how could I? As far as I know he wasn't an easy man to get on with. Something like me, I guess. Anyhow, I found out years later that she had fallen in love with somebody else.'

Jim's eyes were crowded with tears. He took another deep breath and cleared his throat, and then he said, ‘I sat right here trying to build a sandcastle and my dad just walked off toward the ocean. He was fully dressed – coat, shirt, pants, even a necktie. I watched him as he went, and he just kept on walking. Into the surf to start with, but he kept on going. The water came right up to his shoulders, and then all I could see was his head, and then I couldn't even see that.

‘I remember standing up to see what had happened to him. I thought that he was going to turn around and come walking back, all wet . . . like this was one of his practical jokes. He was always playing practical jokes, like filling the sugar bowl with salt, and sometimes he used to kid people that he had a really bad stammer. But I waited and I waited and he never did come back.'

‘Didn't you
tell
anybody? Didn't you run to the lifeguard and ask for help?'

Jim shook his head.

‘But why on earth not? You had just seen your father walk fully dressed into the ocean, but you didn't say a word?'

‘I thought he was going to come back,' Jim said, miserably. ‘Whenever he left us before he always came back. How was I to know that this time was going to be any different? I was only just seven years old.'

‘So what did you do?'

‘I waited for him until it grew dark, and then I lay down on the sand and I must have fallen asleep. The next thing I knew it was early morning, and the sun was coming up, and some guy walking a dog was asking me if I was OK.'

‘A sad story, Mr Rook,' said the Reverend Silence. ‘A very sad story indeed.'

‘That's why I wanted to forget it. Now I'm going to have to forget it all over again, thanks to you and your son and your goddamned apples, and believe me that's not going to be easy. In fact it's probably going to be impossible. So thanks a lot, Reverend. I really needed some more pain in my life.'

For over half a minute, the Reverend Silence stood facing the ocean breeze with his eyes half closed, saying nothing. Then he took off his skimmer and pressed it against his chest, as if he were man paying his respects to a passing funeral. ‘It was that night, wasn't it – the night that your father walked into the ocean – when you contracted the pneumonia that almost killed you?'

‘How the hell do you know that?'

‘I am in touch with all things spiritual, Mr Rook, as well as all things temporal. You nearly died, but when you nearly died, you were given a very rare gift, so in a way your father did you a favor. You can see so much, Mr Rook. You can see so much! You don't know how much I envy you! And there are many others, much greater than I, and they envy you, too!'

‘What others? Who are you talking about?'

The Reverend Silence turned and smiled at him. ‘You saw your daughter today, didn't you, Mr Rook? How would you like to see your father?'

‘What?' said Jim. ‘I don't have to listen to this crap! I don't know why you're playing me like this, but I'm not taking it any more! You understand me? I'm going, and so goodnight, and I'd appreciate it if you'd take that creepy son of yours out of my class, OK? The sooner the better.'