Shadow Season (17 page)

Finn thinks about Lea Grant and Caitlin Jones, and realizes that they do spit a little like angry kittens.

Harley makes a similar sound, a young girl’s sound full of indignant energy. “Just as good a chance they’re gonna be crying soon. The whole lot left.”

This girl likes making threats, and she certainly thinks she has a righteous reason for them, but she refuses to share an explanation. She blames him for something, but what the hell could it be?

“Why are they going to cry?” he asks.

“Never you mind about that. So long as you know it’s true.”

“You’d better start answering my questions, Harley.”

“Yeah, that right? Or what, now? Hey?” He’s got no follow-up to that. “Who thumped your head?”

“It’ll be a concern of yours quick enough if you don’t put things in order.”

“What things?”

“Your people. You’re still just hoping for the best, aren’t you?”

Finn lets out a long even breath.

He pictures Harley in his class, her hand hesitantly raised, answering worn-out, boring questions in new and intriguing ways. He almost doesn’t want to find out
what she’s talking about because he doesn’t want her to stop speaking. Her voice carries him.

That Tennessee belle, that Apple Cider Queen he sees when he sees Harley, turns her blue eyes on him, staring with some dismay as if he was a stupid child. Her wild dirty blond hair is finger-brushed to frame her face in a riot of corkscrew curls.

“You aren’t listening to me, man. You’re turning a deaf ear now too. We aren’t going to get out of it that way.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You can’t lie your way free of this.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Harley, just tell me whatever it is you’re here to tell me. If you’re here to tell me anything at all, that is.”

“You’re a curious one. You’re a crafty one, you are, man.”

He imagines her crinkling her freckled nose. The beauty spot at the corner of her eye draws his attention.

“Why’d you ask if I wanted to die?”

“’Cause you called down the grief on yourself, don’t you know that? What’d you think was gonna happen? You that blind you can’t see how this is all your fault? Isn’t it so, by your own reckoning? I tried to help. I offered to give you a chance to make things right. That’s more than most would. But you wouldn’t take it. Your disarray is gonna cost you, and maybe me, and surely some of these plush girlies.”

The way she talks to him, about him, it’s like she’s known him for years. “Listen, why don’t you—”

“I told you they’d be coming sooner or later.”

“But you never said who.”

“I shouldn’t have to. Why should I have to?”

“Harley, if you came here to help, then just tell me what this is about. Because I promise you, I don’t know.”

“And what’s your promise worth?”

What the hell else is he supposed to say? “Everything.”

“That isn’t ever the case.”

It’s as if she can’t respond plainly to him. It somehow goes against the grain of her understanding of life. He likens it to the neighborhood folks in Brooklyn never speaking out against anybody remotely connected to the mob. It’s not so much fear as it is conditioning. Being tight-lipped becomes a part of their very nature. He understands that Harley Moon’s making a tremendous effort, fighting against her instinct just by being here.

She takes a step away and he does what he can to keep her from vanishing. His hand snaps out and he grabs ahold of some fabric. “Wait. You can’t leave. The blizzard is getting worse.”

“I live in snow.”

Then she’s gone again.

Leaving him holding only a scarf. His stomach tumbles with a panic he can’t name. Where’s Roz? His heart slams, wanting out. Where’s Violet? Who’s coming here?

AS HARLEY’S FOOTSTEPS ECHO FAINTLY, A
sharp pull of paranoia hooks Finn deep under the heart. It’s as if he’s becoming less defined the farther she gets from him. She’s got a barb inside him. It tugs and makes him wince. The feeling propels him forward. He holds on to the banister and in a rush sort of skips sideways down the steps like Astaire did it in fifty films.

Lea and Caitlin are still on the landing, continuing with their whispered discussion. If it’s a discussion.

He hears “Yukon,” “swindle,” “erratic pulse.” The phrases “fierce proponent for justice,” and “the auspices of erections.” He wonders if they heard him and decided to string together a series of disparate words to confuse him.

He moves toward them and says, “That girl who just went by—”

Lea looks at him with Carlyle’s mistress’s sleepy eyes, her smiling pink lips. “Nobody came this way, Mr. Finn.”

“I thought she came this way.”

“It’s only us. You’ve been running. There’s a flush to your cheeks, Mr. Finn. It’s like a fetching afterglow.”

With her pale features forming an expression that
says she wants to get back to Oklahoma, the stink of the Port Authority still on her, chickenhawk at her door, Caitlin tells him, “A girl on the stairs who was never here. Is this an undertaking toward parable? A blind man searching for a girl who’s not there.”

“A deaf man listening to the radio…”

“… with the plug out. Perhaps there are others trailing about that we’re not aware of,” Lea says. “Blind men, I mean, and not necessarily in the allegorical sense.”

“Hordes in the attic. They breed like mad.”

“We should set traps.”

“With what lure, do you suppose?”

Lea pauses. “Fresh meat.”

Finn thinks, It might be time to leave this place. The noose is already tightening.

Lea really does need a good smack in the teeth. It’s feeling more and more true. He flexes his fist around the cane. It takes a moment for the rage to ease through and calm him.

“Are you still digressing, Mr. Finn?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” he says.

“Note the shoulders constricting,” Caitlin says.

“Noted.” Lea nods forcefully enough that it stirs a slight breeze.

“He had no fun at the fake
fete
either.”

“We told him as much.”

“My guess is that Violet wasn’t in attendance.”

“Ladies,” he says, “I want you to go stay with the others.”

“What’s this, Mr. Finn?”

“Why is this, Mr. Finn?”

He’s not sure how to answer. He already appears
foolish enough to these two, and maybe to the other girls as well. His authority has never been fully asserted. His voice wavers. His stance wavers. His character wavers.

Carlyle’s mistress, grinning in court, sitting in front of Carlyle’s sons and connecting with Carlyle across the room while witness after witness is brought in to point the finger and say what a piece of shit Carlyle is. The sister of a murdered vice cop weeps to the left. Carlyle’s sons are well moussed and smell of talcum. The older is already in the syndicate and the younger looks like he should be playing video games. The mistress opens a compact and powders her chin. On one occasion she catches Finn’s eyes and her chubby cheeks quiver as she smiles. Lea says, “He looks ready to strike someone.”

“Who are you going to strike, Mr. Finn? Are you going to slap us?”

“We deserve a good slapping.”

“Well, you do,” Caitlin says.

“You too. It’s not his fault, not really, that his life has taken on the edifice of a male fantasy.”

“With so much slappable nubile flesh about.”

“All of us virgins waiting to be deflowered by an older man.”

“One we look up to and trust?”

“And force him to bear witness to our blossoming sexuality. Our lesbian fumblings. Sort of bearing witness.”

“Well, you fumbled.”

“A bit at first.”

Jesus Christ. They both laugh almost savagely. Finn’s heard that sort of malice many times before. Even
Murph picked up on it.
They live off in another room
. Perhaps they’re just too damn smart.

“Go to the lounge and stay with the others.”

“Why, Mr. Finn?”

“Just do what I tell you, Lea.”

“You sound scared.”

Finn moves forward and finds them both hunched against the wall, beneath the windows. The ice pelts the glass like angry insects. He imagines the bugs smashing through like an Old Testament plague.

One of the girls, he thinks it’s Caitlin, brushes his fingers with her lips. He sees the jailbait honey down at the station thanking him for sending her back to Muskogee.

He grips each girl by the elbow, forces them to their feet, and prods them toward the stairs. “Go.”

“Why are you scared?”

“You’ve been drinking too much, ladies. Go on.”

“That’s not it,” Lea says.

“What’s going to happen?” Caitlin asks. “You’re upset. You wouldn’t hurt us, now would you, Mr. Finn?”

“No, of course not. Listen to me—”

“The Lord requires celebration,” Caitlin says. “All that dancing, the wine, the wafers, the candles, and like that—”

“Sacrificing foreskins, slaughter of lambs, Isaac on the altar—”

Wind buffets the glass. The roof creaks and moans. The storm is hammering even harder. The vibrations working through the walls are causing the piano down in the lobby to strike another violent chord.

He slips loose from the girls and urges them toward
the party. The music is turned way up again. Lea and Caitlin mention “buyer remorse,” “field hands,” “necrotic,” and “the extremity to which I have come.”

They wander away hesitantly. Finn turns. The windows clatter, calling to him as if they have some secret to spill.

It’s normal, perfectly natural, in this situation, under these circumstances, to personify things.

Good, because he feels like talking.

He says, “I’m here, I’m here. Relax. We’ll settle this now.”

FINN SPENDS FIVE MINUTES MOVING AMONG
the corridors of the Gate House calling for Harley. He’s not satisfied she’s not here, but what the hell else is he supposed to do? He heads out the front doors, the piano barking angrily as he leaves. The battering wind is like a punch in the face.

It’s freezing. His breath catches in his throat. The valley is swollen with snow. The ice helps to clear his mind. He knows with a perfect understanding that there’s someone at the school who shouldn’t be here.

He heads back toward his office. He tries to feel if he’s stepping into someone else’s footsteps, but there’s no way to tell. The walk is completely covered over again but he’s still got his bearings, hears the knotted chimes clanging, knows exactly where he is. That’s something anyway.

Despite the fact that his voice won’t carry far he feels the need to shout her name out here too. “Harley! Harley!” It’s still so foreign to his tongue that it’s like screaming gibberish. Then, as if there’s a better chance she might respond, he calls, “Moon! Moon!” He sounds like a fucking idiot. He yells, “Roz! Roz?”

He’s got to move. The temperature is still dropping.
The blizzard’s worse than he’d expected. And he doesn’t even have one of his stupid hats on.

Three years upstate and he’s still not used to how things work around here. Everybody burrows for days. The county takes its sweet-ass time digging them out. In Manhattan, you slow down for a breath and you’ll get mowed down by the five hundred guys on your heels. If three feet of snow drops in three hours, the cabs will still smash it to slush. Pedestrian traffic never stops.

Up here, every spring thaw dredges bodies that have been frozen for three or four months, sometimes twenty yards from their own houses. Some holler folk says, Oh yah, that there’s my brother Augie’s boy Boomer, wondered where he’d got hisself to, we was waiting on the deer meat he promised.

Finn arrives at the Main House but has trouble getting the door open. Feels locked at first but he strains and the latch finally turns. Weather like this is when everyone bitches about the historical society preserving the original construction and design of St. Val’s. There’s more than a century’s worth of wear nestled beneath the cosmetic renovations and necessary upgrades.

You can feel the hotel reasserting itself. You step inside and can almost feel Rutherford B. Hayes standing shoulder to shoulder with you.