Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams (13 page)

“I’ve got Uber,
and Lyft on there.”

David shook his
head, “I’d rather not.”

Phil shrugged,
“Double tap man, I’ve got most of the local companies on speed
dial.”

David nodded,
impressed with his own turn of fortune more than Phil’s disaster
preparedness plan.

“You never know
right?” Phil’s eyebrows raised in slightly smug pride.

David agreed,
you really didn’t. He told the operator for Delta Cabba that he’d
be walking towards the city on, he looked at Phil, who whispered,
“Saint Leonard Road.”

“Saint Leonard
Road,” David repeated. The operator asked where he would be
heading, and David was about to offer his home address when he
thought better of it, “Yeah, just to the town center at Prince
Frederick.”

He handed the
phone back to Phil, “You’re a brick man, seriously. Lifesaver.”

“I could drive
you to Prince Frederick!”

“I’ve got to
make this trip on my own Phil. I really appreciate the offer
though.”

Phil put a hand
on David’s shoulder, and withdrew it quickly when David let out an
involuntary groan. “Any time bro.” He grimaced as his eyes poured
over the devastation that was David’s state of dress, “Seriously
though, what the heck happened to you?”

David raised
his head, but the muscles of his neck, warm and angry as they were,
brought his eyes back to the roadside, “I’d tell you Phil, but then
someone would probably make me kill you.” Phil laughed, then
looking at the dark patch surrounding David’s crotch, he stopped
laughing, and started coughing.

“Look, Simon
was it?”

David
nodded.

“Look Simon,
I’ve got a ton of clothes in the back here,” he patted the van
twice, “Let me fix you up.”
David sighed, not sure he could trust reality any longer, “No, no,
I’m fine.”

Phil punched
the side of the van, “Simon, man, you are so not alright. You’re
the most badly fucked up sight I’ve seen in a long time, and I do a
lot of really stupid things, I mean … I’ve seen some really twisted
individuals. Take some clothes. It is the very least I can do.”

David pushed
himself upright, hands on his knees, flashing a ruined smile at his
new friend Phil, “Never look a gift horse.”

Phil, who had
managed to live thirty-six years without hearing the expression,
frowned, “Nope, never look a gift horse.” When in Rome, he thought
to himself as he walked around to the back of the van.

Now dressed in
khaki shorts, a green ringer, and flip flops, David waved to Phil
as he pulled away. He started down the road in the opposite
direction, and had only been walking for two minutes when he saw
the taxi, the cartoon font DC encircled by the times roman ‘Delta
Cabba’. David waved, and limped out into the road, making sure he
caught the driver’s attention. The driver passed him, signaling,
then performed a clean U-turn and pulled up next to David. The
passenger side window slid down smoothly, “Where to?” the voice
from inside the cab called out, unexpectedly gruff and
demanding.

“Prince Fred?”
David replied, hoping that in the act of shortening the town name,
he’d come off as sounding like one of the locals.

The driver
tipped his head back slightly in acknowledgment that this was the
correct response.

“Jump in.”

The cab driver watched
David hunker down suspiciously in the back seat.

“You drawing
heat?”

David caught
site of the driver’s face through the rear-view mirror. The man’s
expression was one of sarcastic entertainment rather than genuine
interest.

“If you gotta’
know, I’m having an affair with a girl in Port Republic, but I’ve
got family out this way too.”

The cab owner
looked impressed, “That how come you’re all beat up?”

“Pardon?”

The man
dispensed with the illusion of driving and glanced over his
shoulder, pointing, “You know, your cuts and bumps, you get them on
account of your nocturnal indiscretions?”

David laughed
painfully, “Sure, sure. I’ve taken some flak for it, but what’s a
guy to do right?”

“Right, right.”
This guy, the cab owner nodded … affair my ass.

The rest of the
thankfully short drive went by in stony silence until the car
wheezed to a stop on the main strip of Prince Frederic. “That’ll be
twenty-two sixty.” David was outraged, but smiled, and handed over
thirty, “Keep the change.

He wasn’t sure why
Prince Frederic had come to mind, but he put it down to hunger.
He’d eaten at an Outback Steakhouse there, once upon a time, when
he was a child, and Hannah had been barely grown enough to be
seated at the table. It was one of those odd memories that had
etched permanently into his repertoire, and for the most trivial of
reasons. Nonetheless, there it was in his mind’s eye, a vivid
window into an incident that would hold no sway or relevance ever
again. As he looked at the store fronts, trying to figure out if
one of the stores would let him use their phone, he rubbed his
mind’s eye. Salt. That was how that particular evening had become
so indelibly etched. Excited by everything on the menu, he had
ordered a rack of ribs, and a side that was mostly an onion, but
looked kind of like someone had battered and deep fried a
chrysanthemum. When the meal was brought out, David had proceeded
to reach across the condiments in the middle of the table and spoon
what he assumed to be salt over everything, then he had sat teary
eyed, grimacing, too embarrassed to tell anyone that he’d ruined
his meal with sugar.

Well, that was
all behind him now. Here he was, a grown man, back in town, and he
walked towards a coffee shop, a smile forming as it occurred to him
that he always read the packets now, even in a coffee shop, where
they would all be sugar, or sweetener of some sort.

“Do you mind if
I use your phone?”

The girl behind
the counter, teenage, red haired, tattoos peeking out from her
neckline and under the cuffs of both short shirt sleeves, tilted
her head sideways, eyes wide, mouth falling open. She scratched her
shoulder, and David was pretty sure she managed to sneak a quick
sniff of her armpit as she did so. “You gotta buy something.”

David nodded,
“I’ll take a coffee.”

The girl
pointed at the large blackboard which hung on the back wall, but
David now couldn’t take his eyes off the girl’s mouth. She had the
worst teeth. How, he wondered, does an individual allow that to
happen inside their mouth?

“You gonna’
order something, or what?”

David drummed
the counter with his fingertips, “I’ll have a large Americano, with
four shots of espresso and room for cream.”

The girl’s
smile was hostile as she walked towards the large Italian made
espresso machine. David waved to her, and then pointed towards the
phone, which sat at the end of the counter. The girl raised a
nostril and looked away in acknowledgment, downcast eyes managing
to convey a hostility of such specificity that David shuddered. As
he walked to the end of the counter, he noticed that conveniently
(at least for patrons of the store,) there were business cards for
several taxi companies arranged in neat piles beside the phone. As
he picked a card, more or less at random, he watched the red head,
half convinced she would spit in his coffee.

“Yes, hi, I
wonder if you could send a taxi right now?” The man on the other
end of the line mumbled something that David couldn’t make out, and
David asked his pardon.

“I said …” he
sung, stretching the word ‘said’ into a little aria of exasperation
at the indignity of having to repeat a sentence, “We’ve got your
current location in the system, we just need to know where you’re
heading.”

“Brentwood.”

“I need an
address sir.”

David gave the
man an address, someone from Stephanie’s carpool group, but his
mind had already checked out of the conversation. The red head had
sneezed over his cup before placing the lid on, nice and tight.

“What’s your
name kid?” David heard the words come out of his own mouth, and
could do nothing to change that this had happened. They’re out
there now, he thought, let them go … In his mouth brain, he had
sounded like an old school detective, about to drill a suspect. In
his actual brain, he realized immediately that he sounded like an
asshole.

The girl
flicked her head, which had no effect as her hair was tied up in a
ponytail, “Brook.”

“Babbling
Brook.” David responded, aware that this only served to compound
his apparent personality deficit.

“No. Just
Brook.” The girl smiled awkwardly now, flashing all of her
yellowing teeth in their full horror.

David stared at
her mouth for too long, “Brook, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to
ask you to fix me another coffee.”

“Why?”

He nodded
towards the waxed cardboard cup which sat on the counter between
them, “Because Brook, as much as I’ve grown to like you in the past
couple of minutes, and that’s a whole heck of a lot, I am not yet
ready to swap spit with you.”

Brook’s mouth
opened wide, her lower lip curling over her bottom teeth (thank
god), her jaw pushing forward. She picked the cup off the counter,
staring deep into David’s eyes. David nodded, “I can see it Brook,
don’t worry. I see the flames. I see the fires of hell you’re
imagining for me.”

Brook hid her
head behind the glistening chrome machinery, blushing.

As he watched the taxi
pull up outside, David began to suspect that feigning sleep would
be implausible. The taxi was a 2010 Honda Accord, a fine car in its
day to be sure, but as far as this taxi was concerned, today was
clearly not its day.

“Sorry I took
so long getting here, had to gas the bitch up.” The driver leaned
towards the open passenger window, morning sun gleaming on his
balding head. David hated the driver, immediately, from his thick
jawed unshaven and pock marked face, right down to his ripped, and
god he hoped … coffee stained jeans.

“It’s all good
my man.” David lied, hating himself for his half-assed attempt at
camaraderie.

“You been out
partying bro?”

David opened
the rear passenger side door and climbed in apprehensively,
pondering on the unfortunate series of catastrophes which would
have led to his mother stooping low enough from grace to fornicate
with this fuckwit’s father. “Something like that br ...” He managed
to stop himself before he finished uttering the loathsome
appellation “bro” and he ended instead on a weak, “yeah …”

The driver
turned in his seat and faced David, “So?”

David was
confused, until he realized that the driver must have either not
been told by the dispatch office, or had already forgotten where
David was heading.

“Brentwood.”

The driver
turned up the radio which was tuned to a talk station, and craning
his neck over the headrest slightly, he asked David if he minded.
David muttered his unenthusiastic approval.

The voices of
three brash and opinionated pseudo-intellectuals hammered out a
heated debate over the succession and appointment of President
Lucas Miller and what it meant for America.

“What do you
think to Miller Bro?” The driver watched David through the rear
view mirror, clearly awaiting a response. West had warned David
about the danger of revealing anything about his identity, so David
offered a noncommittal, “He seems okay, I honestly don’t pay enough
attention to politics.”

Of course,
David had been on first name terms with the then Vice President
Lucas Miller and his wife, now First Lady Petra Miller. What was
there to say about Miller? As far as David was concerned, he was
really a carbon copy of Allan Tiernan. He even looked like he could
have been family.

“Man, I’m not
into politics either, for real. I mostly listen to this shit for
the sports desk.”

“Right.” Sports
was a topic that David felt inadequately equipped to discuss. He
didn’t follow any teams, he didn’t watch many games and he knew
this made him difficult for a lot of guys to relate to. The driver
seemed to be perceptive enough at least to pick up on David’s lack
of gusto for sport, focusing his eyes on the road ahead, apparently
listening to the radio show.

Garry Watzchek
wasn’t listening to the radio, he was rifling through his mental
index cards, trying to find a more appropriate opening gambit to
try on with his passenger, “You read much?” he ventured.

David licked
his lips and thought about deflecting the offer of conversation
again, thinking to himself that literature might turn out to be the
lesser of evils when it came to making conversation with this
loathsome prick. He wrinkled his nose and rubbed his brow slightly,
bracing himself for the worst, “Yeah I read some …”

Garry Watzchek
smiled inwardly as he navigated the car along Solomons Island Road.
He had a pretty good knack for breaking down people’s barriers and
he was pleased with himself that this guy had only taken him …
what, three minutes?

“So what kind
of stuff do you read?”

David watched
the trees race by as his breath fogged up the window, “I read a lot
of factual stuff, books on physics, history, things like that.”

Garry nodded
his approval, “Physics man, that’s some heavy reading right?”

“Yeah, I
guess.”

“You read any
of Fenyman’s books?” Garry mentally patted his own back, confident
that his passenger would warm to him now. In the back seat, David
bit his knuckle discretely, wishing that the driver had been a
history buff. The name Fenyman was familiar to David, but he wasn’t
sure what he had written. He tried bluffing, “Yeah, he’s quite the
character.”

Garry laughed
and nodded, “He really knows how to make that shit relatable
right?”