Hunted Dreams (8 page)

I hope he’s right
, Katana thought with no little fierceness.
If this is a dream, it means sometime I’ll have to awaken
. Better than some of the other scenarios she’d concocted during her more lucid moments
.

But awaken to what? Sitting here, bare legs shining silver in the moonlight, palms smeared with red, she couldn’t remember any other life. All she knew was her name.

Enough of that
, she told herself.
Concentrate on getting through this and finding a way to wake up
. Maybe Reed could help.

Who
was
Reed, anyway? The first person to speak directly and coherently to her, for one. A person who treated her not like a victim, a monster, a goddess, but another human being.

Katana thought she heard a shuffle from beyond the door. She slowly, quietly, drew her sword from its leather scabbard and placed it carefully across her legs. The house remained silent.

If she was dreaming, then wasn’t Reed just another part of her dream? A more distinct, kinder, less threatening version of the man at the dinner party? After all, her subconscious had gifted her a sword and the memory of her name—why not a companion as well? Perhaps Reed was the physical—well, sort of —manifestation of her more rational side.

If that was the case, she was grateful to her subconscious for so prettily packaging her rationality. She would have expected more tweed and sensible shoes and less broad-shouldered, caramel-skinned lusciousness. Heck, maybe he was a gift of another kind as well.

But, well, where was he? God knew her memory was spotty, but he seemed to appear in maybe five percent or so of her dreams. If he represented rationality or truth, why wasn’t he here, telling her she was too old to experience this scene, that it felt wrong somehow, that it had to be a dream because her palms had already healed?

She shook her head, and glass scattered to the floor. For now, the dream explanation fit best; she’d do best to think through the implications in order to find a way to escape these—
nightmares
.

A sigh drifted to her from across the dark room.

Reed spent the early part of the day immersed in yard work. He mowed, he pruned, he communed with nature and the less violent aspects of his physicality. In the early afternoon, he drove to a home improvement store for some supplies, and, contrary to all dire predictions, used Paul’s cash to purchase them without a single threat to his life.

Later in the day, his respite ended with a single car ride. Reed, his tall and bulky body crumpled into the passenger’s seat of Mari’s Kia, shook his head at her as she shut off the engine.

“Why else would I have you dress up,
guapo
?” she teased. “You want lessons in being Broschi. Well, consider this a major one, grasshopper. When starving, this is one of the best places to refuel.”

“This is wrong,” he said quietly.

She quirked her mouth and shook her head as if he were being a silly, silly boy. “Why wrong? Name one person who leaves here feeling the worse for our presence. Now come on, stick in the mud. Give me this one lesson, okay, and then we’ll grab some ice cream afterward.”

Like I’m some kind of recalcitrant kid
, he thought. He took advantage of the time to temporarily escape the car and restore circulation to his abused legs. Mari immediately joined him on his side of the car, linking their arms and assuming a somber expression.

They made a handsome couple, he knew: he, big and dark, she petite and sweet-faced. Both wore dark, somber colors, although Reed hadn’t known the reason behind Mari’s insistence on them an hour ago.

“No, Mari,” he murmured as another couple, this one two well-dressed Black men, moved past them and approached the nearby door.

She winked at him and spoke with carrying quietness: “Would you hold that door for us, too, please?” When one of the men turned to look, she smiled sweetly at him. His return smile was more subdued, but he held the door.

Reed, gritting his teeth, walked with Maricruz to the doorway. Inside the impressive building, a small crowd milled about in front of a set of double doors. Darkly clad people spoke in quiet tones, and some dabbed their eyes with facial tissue from one of the handful of dispensers scattered throughout the room.

They passed a picture collage mounted on a tripod, crafted with more love than artistic ability, featuring a fierce, stout Black woman in various stages of her long life. Mari grabbed a program from a table sitting just outside the doors. ‘In loving memory of Wilma Clay-Caldwell’ scrawled across the top in an elegant, looping font.

“Did you know her?” Reed murmured, already knowing her answer. She threw him a quick, impish look before organizing her features into something much closer to grief.

Mari drew them to the opened doors.

“Welcome,” a short, dark man in his mid-forties said quietly, respectfully.

“Thank you,” Mari said thickly with every appearance of a forced smile.

Reed nodded at him.

A moment later, he found himself sitting in a padded pew next to Maricruz. He hadn’t sat in a pew since he was a teenager and his god-fearing mother had dragged him to church most Sunday mornings.

Shortly thereafter, the service began. Reed, feeling like every kind of a fraud, listened as friends and family discussed the long and fruitful life of this amazing woman who, while poor as dust, always managed to feed those with less and donate her time to various charities. On Reed’s left sat a long-legged, scissor-thin White woman with crispy blond hair and a dark, artificial tan. She sobbed quietly next to him, soaking tissue after tissue with mascara-black tears. At one point, she blindly grabbed his hand, perhaps intending instead to snatch the Kleenex lying next to it. He felt her intense grief, a breath-stealing pressure that threatened to snap his ribs. Breathing deeply, he squeezed her hand, and when she looked at him, he looked back.

On his right, Mari, small, lush, and beautiful with her tear-glassed eyes and trembling cupid’s mouth, emanated only a low-grade, animalistic excitement.

After the eulogy, delivered stoically by Wilma’s stone-faced oldest son, the reverend opened the floor for “words of remembrance.” Three people spoke, one Wilma’s eight-year-old great-granddaughter. She spoke through tears of Wilma teaching her to make cookies. “I remember,” she almost whispered into the microphone, “her telling us how to separate the dry and wet ingredients. And when they were done cooking, Meemaw let us eat them all before they got cool.”

After the little girl had finished, Maricruz rose and walked sedately to the front of the room.

“No,” Reed breathed. But of course, she did.

Mari stood behind the blond-wood lectern and adjusted the microphone. She clasped her hands in front of her and swallowed with apparent nervousness or grief. Her brown eyes glistened. “I don’t know many people here,” she began with a brave smile, “and yet I feel I know you all. Everyone here is united in love and admiration of one of the strongest and most beautiful women I’ve ever known. And that’s what she was best at, you know? She brought people together, made us look past our differences and focus on what made us all sisters and brothers.

“I never knew my own mom. She died when my brother and I were little kids. I’m not saying Wilma was like a mom to me, because I don’t want to take anything away from her children. I know she was a tough mom, but she loved you kids like nobody’s business. But I can say she’s what I imagine, or at least hope, my mother would have been like.

“One of my favorite memories is when I volunteered one time with her at the church. She’d done something really nice for me the day before—I don’t even remember what it was. Anyway, I brought in a pot of flowers to thank her. She tsked and scolded me, but I could tell it meant a lot to her. Later that day, a neighborhood woman came in crying. She had a black eye and was sobbing like her heart had broken. Wilma took her some juice and a muffin and sat down with her for a long time. Over an hour later, I was wiping down a window ledge and saw the woman leaving. She was holding the flower pot in both hands, like it was some kind of life preserver.”

Mari stopped for a moment and looked down at the floor. After a few seconds passed, she raised her head and delivered a watery smile. “We never discussed the flowers, but I always knew what a kindness she’d done for this woman. But that was Wilma, wasn’t it?” She cast her eyes down, hesitated, and then stepped out from behind the lectern.

On her way back to their pew, a creased, majestic Black woman in her seventies grasped Mari’s hand and pressed it fiercely between hers. Mari closed her eyes for a moment.

The memorial broke up soon after, and people drifted quietly to their cars for the graveside service. Outside, several people approached Mari with a hug, a handshake, or a tearful word of thanks. Mari smiled sweetly and offered them heartfelt condolences.

Once inside her little white Kia, Mari turned to Reed with a grin. “Time for ice cream!”

Dinner that night consisted of thick, seared steaks, giant baked potatoes, and grilled garlic asparagus. Reed ate everything on his plate and happily accepted seconds when offered.

“I haven’t seen that kind of appetite since we first brought Berto and Mari home,” Paul teased, dabbing his mouth with his linen napkin.

“You wouldn’t be so hungry if you’d quit resisting opportunities to feed,” Mari scolded Reed. She sat opposite him at the table with Alberto on her left. Paul, out of some kind of
Father Knows Best
episode, occupied the head, or maybe foot, of the table.

“It was a funeral,” Reed said flatly.

Alberto gestured with his loaded fork. “Best place for a quick fix, man. Sometimes I slip in and sit way in the back. I feel better when I go with Mari, though. She do her ‘he was like the grandfather I never had’ speech?”

“It was an old woman,” Mari said, smiling.

“Whatever. Anyway, everyone leaves feeling like a million bucks because of Mari, so we totally pay them up front for their services.” He took a happy drink of ice water.

“If Quina were here, she’d reprimand you for talking with a full mouth,” Paul said mildly.

“Where is Quina?” Reed asked. He was only too happy to change this entirely unappetizing discussion.

“Bringin’ home the bacon,” Alberto said while making railroad tracks with his fork tines in his baked potato.

Shaking his head at Berto, Paul replied, “Tuesdays are her busy days at the university. She won’t be home till eleven or so.”

“She teaches Psychology?”

Paul nodded.

“And what do you do, Paul?” Reed asked.

“I’m an entertainment lawyer. I negotiate contracts for people in The Industry.” In Los Angeles, only one industry had earned the capital “I.”

“You have more spare time than I would expect a lawyer to have,” Reed said, and ate another bite of his excellent steak.

As he’d expected, Paul didn’t seem to take offense. Smiling, he said, “We’ve managed to do pretty well for ourselves. After way too many years of working sixty-hour weeks, I got to a good place with my clients and firm. I worked hard while Quina was in grad school and then trying to find a full-time professorship. Now is my time for a bit of relaxation.”

After a moment of silence, Reed decided to voice something he’d been wondering for days. “Are you and Quina. . .?” He waved his hand in an ambiguous gesture, but his meaning was clear.

Paul smiled again at him. This round, pink-cheeked lawyer’s smiles could power a generator for years. “‘It’s complicated,’ as the saying goes.”

Before Paul could elucidate on that intriguingly vague comment, an older, voluptuous Mexican woman poked her head into the room. “Excuse me,” she murmured, eyes downcast.

“¿Si, Luisa? ¿Puedo hacer algo por usted?”
Mari asked smoothly.

Luisa nodded and spoke briefly and quietly. Mari rose and followed her.

“A visitor,” Berto translated, biting the head off his asparagus stalk.

A moment later, a very young woman all but stumbled into the room. Trembling on the cusp of her twenties, White, thin and angular, the woman sported a tank top and jeans, short and spiky hair that almost perfectly matched the blue of her enormous eyes, and several sloppily wrapped bandages. She glanced wildly about the room before plunking down beside Reed and grabbing the remainder of his second steak from his plate. Holding it in her unsteady right hand, she tore into it with her perfect white teeth.

“Hi, Cor,” Alberto said. She waved a greasy pinky as she took another snarling bite.

“Help yourself,” Reed said.

Cor’s blue hair rose as she lifted her face to him. Her eyes managed to focus very slightly. “‘M hungry,” she mumbled around her mouthful of steak.

“Hunters got to you?” Paul asked with his usual, good-humored mildness.

Cor nodded and muttered something that Reed thought might be “stupid bitches.”

After a minute, she seemed to resurface. “I got lots,” she mumbled through the wad of meat paste coating her mouth, “to tell you all.”

“Eat up,” Paul offered—rather belatedly, Reed thought. “We’ll debrief tomorrow when Quina’s home and after you’ve had a good night’s sleep.”

Cor nodded, and bits of charred meat flew from her mouth. “For now, just know the jig is up.” She gestured toward Reed with a greasy hand. “Pretty boy here? The Clan is all sorts of interested in knowing him better.”