Red House Blues (7 page)

Chapter 6

Claire had ordered her to bed, handing her a
couple of pain pills and a glass of water.

“Stop fussing, Claire. All I did was hurt my
hand. You’re acting like I’ve had open heart surgery,” said
Suzan.

“You hand is not all that hurts, sweetie,
and well you know it. So get some rest. I’ll call you
tomorrow.”

Long after she heard Claire let herself out,
she stared at the ceiling, listening to the intimate sounds of the
building. Mrs. Bloomquist’s muffled footsteps on the floor above
her. A rose cane clawing the bedroom window. Wind shifting the
bones of the house. The cotton sheets were slime slithering over
her body.

How will I ever sleep again? Did Claire
remember to lock up? Maybe I should have checked my voice mail. Dad
might have called about Wayne and Gail’s new baby. So many things I
should be doing. I should be finishing that paper. Oh God, how am I
ever going to finish that damned paper?

The pills, I think, this feeling of
drifting. It comes from outside myself, insinuating as a draft
coming in around the door jam. It feels good. I close my eyes, my
pulse thrumming in my ears. The bed folds itself closer around me,
conforming to the shape of my aching body. I turn over on my side.
I am falling off the edge of the bed, falling slowly toward the
floor. Why don’t I hit the floor? Then, the floor is there, a
membrane, and I am passing through it like a leaf settling on the
surface of a pond then sinking, floating just below the surface
tension, suspended halfway between the invisible depths and the
invisible sky. What’s happening to me? Why don’t I drown? It
doesn’t matter. I am settling to the bottom of the pond, into the
silt and disintegrating leaves. So warm as sediment closes over me,
as I sink deeper into the nestling sludge. Something welcoming.
Fingers caressing my body, tendrils twining, hands clasping.
Tightening. Fingernails on bare ankles, bone biting into my wrists,
grasping, pulling me down, into the dark ooze of the bottom,
closing over me.

Suzan awoke sweaty and gasping, sprawled
over the side of the bed, her damaged hand crushed under her ribs,
pain worming its way from palm up through wrist bones and into her
elbow. She reached for the bedside lamp. The alarm clock showed
two-thirty. She had been out for six hours. Time for a few more
pain meds, she thought. Never get back to sleep without them. But
did she want to? What had she been dreaming? It faded so fast. Was
it swimming? The lingering taste of it didn’t feel right. Suzan got
up, walked to the bathroom, shook out a pair of pills and swallowed
them with a couple of handfuls of water.

Not enough pain pills left in the world for
what ails me, she thought. Those infernal notebooks. Notes from the
dead haunting her, taunting her. Where were they? What painful
truths did they contain?

She didn’t remember going back to sleep, but
when she next opened her eyes a watery morning light was seeping in
through the bedroom curtains. She was muzzy-headed and exhausted,
curled into a fetal knot under a pile of rumpled wool blankets. A
complete disaster. But sometime during the night she had arrived at
a decision that surprised her. She would go to Seattle and face
whatever awaited her there.

* * *

No matter where you are in America a train
station speaks of failure. The fact that you are waiting for a
train says you can’t afford a car, or your license was revoked, or
you are afraid of flying, or you are too young or old or feeble or
disabled or poor to travel long distances any other way. And
because you are at the bottom of the social pecking order you sit
in an uncomfortable plastic bucket chair, and sip machine-made
coffee, uncomplaining while you wait hours for a train that is,
according to the reader board, already delayed by thirty
minutes.

Suzan crumpled her empty coffee cup and
wedged it into an overflowing trashcan. Was there time to lean back
on the daypack and close her eyes for a few minutes? With her
recent brand of luck she thought it likely she’d fall asleep and
miss the only train for Seattle that day. She struggled to get as
comfortable as possible and shuffled through the magazines on the
sticky table. The only one not over six months old was Golf
Digest.

What time was it? She had no watch. Hated
the things. It was like having a pulsing sentient beast strapped to
your wrist counting out your allotted life span. Clocks and watches
dominate, control. Of course she realized where her aversion was
born. Her dad, being military, ran their household on an egg timer,
a clock in every room. Suzan had never been late for anything in
her life, even without a watch. It was a magical trick of
time-space, the tyranny of time undoubtedly bred into her,
inescapable as eye color or weak ankles.

She glanced at the round aluminum timepiece
above the ticket counter. Its hands seemed fixed in place.

The train had better hurry, she thought,
before I change my mind about going. What in the world could I hope
to accomplish anyway? I’d show up at Seattle P.D. sweaty and
clueless and they would tell me what I already knew. Then what? Off
to the address on Sean’s belongings to annoy a group of total
strangers. What was she thinking? If she did get someone to talk to
her about Sean she would come off as pathetic. The stereotypical
“grief stricken widow” the news media was so fond of parading in
front of every camera, all red eyed and haggard, with that
deer-in-the-headlights expression.

Outside, the gentle mist that was falling as
she arrived at the station had transformed into steady downpour.
Suzan regretted not tucking an umbrella into her pack. Rain was
sheeting over the waiting room windows, obscuring any view of the
track. She noticed near the vending machines a group of guys with
too many scruffy duffle bags and duct taped back packs were giving
some poor kid a hard time about his hangover. The waiting room was
packed with college types who had obviously started the Spring
break party the night before and would undoubtedly continue to
escalate it all the way into Seattle.

One of the kids gave another one a
good-natured shove into the Coke machine. Kids. That’s how she
thought of them, though they weren’t much younger than she was.
When had she started to think of herself as so old? It seemed just
the other day she and Sean, Tony and Claire had set off on Spring
break together with just as much wild joy as the vending machine
group.

Just as she was about to give up on the
southbound train, it pulled into Fairhaven Station. Hefting her
pack and purse, she joined the flow of travelers toward the
boarding gate. It was going to be a very long, uncomfortable
morning.

Her assigned car was half way down the train
and she was soaked to the skin by the time she found the right
number. To her relief, the Coke machine crowd had peeled off at an
earlier car. Suzan lodged her soppy pack and jacket in the overhead
and took a place by the window, glad no one seemed to have booked
the adjacent seat. She couldn’t bear to make idle chitchat with
anybody this morning.

The train lurched into motion. Pulling out
of Fairhaven the train was a submarine diving into unfathomed
depths, the rain a horizontal sheet of black water, turning the
windows to mirrors fast fogging over. So much for enjoying the
scenery. All she could see was her own hazy face. Maybe on the way
back from Seattle she could sightsee. It wasn’t going to happen
today.

She hadn’t thought to bring anything to
read, being a little afraid she would get motion sick. Perhaps, she
considered, it would help to have something in eat. The elderly
couple across the aisle were sharing sandwiches they had had the
forethought to bring, probably remembering with regret the days
when train travel was genteel and sophisticated transportation.
Before jet liners, before Amtrak was the last resort for the broke
and abandoned.

Their peanut butter smelled wonderful. She
decided to find the snack car for a sandwich. Breakfast, such as it
was, seemed like a lifetime ago. She made her way up the aisle
toward the front of the train, tossed and jostled with every
sideways lurch, almost landing in the lap of one of the vending
machine students as she passed through their car who, lucky for
Suzan, was sound asleep.

She returned to her seat without incident
juggling an egg salad sandwich and a cup of coffee. The snack bar
offered no peanut butter and jelly. The only other choices were
soggy tuna salad, and ham with what looked like some kind of
rubbery cheese.

Swirling swatches of red and yellow beyond
the windows suggested the train was passing through the Skagit
Valley bulb farms. There were going to be some very unhappy flower
farmers once the late spring storm blew over leaving all their
daffodils and tulips smashed flat in the muddy fields. The rain was
relentless, ice crystals scratching the glass. Suzan closed her
eyes but the train seemed to be stumbling over every tie, a rhythm
of thumps and bumps that any minute threatened to derail the
train.

The train plunged into a tunnel. She tried
to think why that struck her as odd. Were there mountains between
Bellingham and Seattle? She felt the train sliding out from under
her, peeling itself away, leaving her standing on a forest trail
surrounded by towering black fir trees.

The rain has stopped but it
is so dark under the thick branches she could only see a few feet
of the path until it disappears into shadowy mist. She had to catch
up with Sean
. He’s run on ahead down the
trail. Why did he do that? I can’t hear him
anymore. My footsteps are silent on the thick mat of fallen
needles. Overhead the sepia trees tangle into one another, blotting
out the clouded sky. I have to hurry but I’m afraid I’ll stumble
over the roots that snake over the trail. Where did he say he was
going? I walk faster, worried when night falls I will be lost in
the forest. I must catch up to Sean. Why didn’t he wait for me? The
trail is narrowing, waist high sword ferns closing over the path
until I can’t see how I can push my way through. There is no sign
of Sean. Did he come this way? Should I turn around and go back? I
fight through a thicket and I am in a clearing.

A whisper draws my attention to the center
of the clearing. A whisper, but I can’t hear any words. Perhaps it
was a breeze in the far away treetops, or the wings of unseen
birds. I walk toward the center of the clearing, seeing for the
first time a deep green pool of water, its surface mirroring the
looming firs. Drifts of moss carpet the pool edge. Something stirs
a ripple in the water. I kneel on the edge, searching the depths
for the cause. Something is in the water, drifting. It shimmers,
like the side of a fish. Like a knife. I lean closer to the placid
surface. There it is. Larger than I first thought. A glimpse of
something white, rolling over. A face, the pale hair fanning out
around the head, the green eyes open, unseeing, in the water, the
mouth wide in surprise, and I am screaming, screaming as his body
floats toward me.

Chapter 7

The side of her head hit the window as the
train bucked to a halt. Can’t be Seattle already, thought Suzan.
But it was. The other passengers were getting to their feet,
grabbing coats and bags from the overheads. She pulled her pack
down and wedged herself into the flow toward the car’s exit, her
head still muzzy.

Seattle’s King Street Station was a cave
pungent with sweat, rancid popcorn and burnt coffee. Half of the
waiting room was a web of scaffolding and torn-out plasterwork
where workers were ripping out what looked like a fifties remodel
of the original nineteenth century building. Suzan was glad to see
the demolition of one example of the twentieth century’s ugliest
periods. Still, it was disheartening, a thick film of white dust
everywhere. It felt like falling into a bombed-out basement.

She was at a loss where to go from the
terminal lobby. Her fellow travelers milled around piles of baggage
like Jerseys at an alfalfa bail. She flung her simple pack over her
shoulder and picked her way through the throng toward tall swinging
doors at the far side of the cavernous room.

Outside, at the curb a rank of orange and
white taxicabs lay wait for passengers bound for their hotels.
Suzan approached the first one. The driver rolled down his
window.

“Excuse me, could you take me to the Sea
Turtle Hostel?”

“S’pose I could,” said the cabbie. “But it’d
be a waste of my time and your buck. Walk two blocks toward the
water, you’re there.”

“Thanks,” she said, feeling like a total
fool.

First thing I do is get myself a city map,
she vowed. She looked around for signs of the waterfront. Between
two old brick buildings she made out a glint that had to be water.
That was the direction. When she reached First Avenue she paused to
get her bearings.

First Avenue followed the curve of Elliott
Bay. It was a narrow street lined with Victorian era brick
buildings, two to six stories high, the ground floors of which were
occupied by small art galleries, bars, a pawnshop, and a bookstore.
Which would be the logical first stop, Suzan decided. Surely they’d
have a city map.

They had better than a map. They had
Michelle at the cashier’s desk who knew right were Sea Turtle
Hostel was and where to get cheap, good food. She told Suzan this
area was called Pioneer Square, and they were on Seattle’s first
real street (thus the name), that the street used to be called
Front Street. Seems Michelle was a wealth of information Suzan
didn’t feel she needed but it was nice to run into someone friendly
right off the bat. She let Michelle talk until a customer snapped
her back to her commercial duties.