The Glass House (28 page)

Seth saw him about to say yes then decide against it.

“I don't know.”

“What don't you know?”

“Whether I'm just here.”

“With your cello.”

“And you.”

“Yes, in the desert with a dying boy and your cello. How does that make you feel?”

WJ looked away and swept back his long grey hair.

“Don't do that.”

“What?”

“Turn away. Don't turn away. And leave your hair alone.”

“It's in my face. I don't have a hair band.”

“Leave it. Maybe with it across your eyes you'll be able to see better. Don't give me that look. You've spent years looking with your hair out of your eyes and you clearly haven't seen a damned thing, so now let the hair go in front of your eyes and maybe
you'll see this place. See how beautiful it is, how otherworldly it is, how of all of us it is. Do you see the library?”

“The what?”

“Look up. Do you see Scorpio? Do you see the third star in its thorax? The red one?”

“No, I don't see any of that.”

“You will.”

“When?”

“Take out your cello.”

“Why?”

“To jerk off with! What do you think you take out your cello for? To play.”

“You want me to play?”

“Yeah. I want you to play what you see all around you.”

“The sand will—”

“Hurt your cello? Maybe, but it just might improve your music.”

“What does this have to do with dreaming?”

“No real musician would ever ask that question.”

He began to unwrap the cello from its casing. “But this an Andrea Amati. It was made in Cremona, Italy, in the middle of the sixteenth century. It was gilded to play in the French court of King Charles the Ninth. His mother was Catherine de Médicis. During the French Revolution the instrument was separated from the only other thirty-eight cellos of its kind. It is only one of three that survived. See the letters on the base side?”

Seth looked.
PIETATE
was engraved there—piety.

“The neck was replaced in 1801, but these are still the original scroll and pegbox. You can see that originally it only had three strings. It has
IVSTICIA
carved on the treble side.”

“Justice,” Seth said. “Latin for ‘justice.' ”

“This cello was exhibited in London in 1872 and 1904 and then in New York City in 1968.”

“Is that where you bought it?”

“No. In 1982, after it was featured in an exhibition in Cremona celebrating its three hundredth year.”

“Must have cost a pretty penny.”

“A fortune. A dragon's haul.”

Seth leaned against the Joshua tree—it felt cool, like metal. He felt its strength, its will to endure despite the realities of desert drought and freezing nights. He looked up and knew what he would see—a boy hanging from the lamp post, his fingernails painted black, trying to pull the rope from his neck.

Seth looked down at his hands—his nails were darkening.
It's just the drugs
, he told himself. But he knew it wasn't.

He looked at WJ—the man was still talking. Finally his lips stopped moving. Seth took a breath, then said, “You finished?”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you finished with the lecture about that damned piece of wood?”

After a moment of shock, WJ said, “Yes, I guess I am.”

“Does any of that history really mean anything to you? Or is it just the expense and exclusivity of it that you care about? Do you play better music on that cello than you do on any other?”

“Yes.”

“Liar. You can't really play music on any cello, can you?”

“Yes I can!”

“Liar! You want me to teach you—stop lying.”

“But—”

“So I ask you again, can you really make music?”

After a long pause, WJ whispered, “No.”

“Say it out loud,” Seth demanded.

“No—never have.”

“Fine. Then it's no loss to you if we burn it?”

“Burn it?”

“Are you deaf as well as stupid?”

A stunned silence. The desert wind picked up. The Southern
Cross shone bright over their heads. Scorpio seemed to be changing, the red star now so bright it seemed to pierce the sky.

“Leave the cello here on the ground and go collect some brush. There's lots of dead things here, and they'll all burn.”

WJ let the cello fall from his hands and it rocked forward onto the sand. Then he turned and entered the darkness of the gully behind the Joshua tree.

Seth slumped to the ground, his strength almost gone. He touched the wood of the cello and sensed the magic deep within. All the artists who had produced music, great music, on this instrument. He allowed his fingers to trace the engraved woman on the back who was missing an arm and had no waist but whose beauty made him for the first time in years think of his mother. He heard his tears hit the cello before he realized that he was crying. “Forgive me, please. If there was any other way—forgive me,” he whispered as he got back up to his feet. He reached down and picked up Andrea Amati's work of genius and moved it several yards west of the Joshua tree and stood it up against a large boulder.

WJ emerged with armfuls of brush and twigs. All suitably dead and desiccated by the dry desert air.

“Good,” Seth said. “Now”—indicating the tinder—“put it around the base of your pet cello.”

As if in a trance, WJ did as he was told.

“Good. Now open the can of gas.”

That seemed to awaken WJ to what was going on here.

“Fine,” Seth said. “I'll open it.”

Seth quickly opened the can and emptied its contents on the cello and the brush at its base. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the other thing they had bought at the desert store—a Zippo lighter.

He tossed it to WJ. The thin moon's rays glinted off its buffed metallic finish, and WJ caught it in his left hand.

“You aren't here to dream, William Jennings Connelly, are you.”

WJ slowly shook his head.

“It's to feel that you want—and to get to the glass house!”

Even more slowly, WJ nodded—and flicked the Zippo into flame.

“Toss it on the cello. Kill the thing you think you love to find your way to something you really love.”

• • •

From where Decker, Yslan and Emerson stood at the bottom of the huge dune, it looked like an ancient petroglyph—two figures and a tiny flame, a slip of a moon overhead, all blessed by the Joshua tree. And the gas lamp post that somehow was alight in the midst of the desert night.

• • •

They all saw it—but Hendrick H. Mallory, who had set so much of this in motion, stood even closer than the three at the base of the dune—but saw nothing. And he knew beyond knowing that he would never really see what these others saw, that what had been just beyond the bend in the road all his life would always be just beyond the bend in the road, that he'd only see shadows, as if he were looking through a glass, darkly.

MARINA WAS CRYING.

Eddie leapt out of his chair and ran to her bedroom. She wasn't there.

Where are you, Marina?
he screamed in his head.

She cried louder.

He raced through the rest of the house and she wasn't there.
Where are you, Marina?
he screamed in his head again.

He'd been communicating fluently with her for more than two weeks without a word spoken between them. But now he couldn't get her to respond.

Finally Marina shouted through her tears,
By the church!

Eddie made himself slow his breath and be calm.
Which church, sweetie, which church?

The awful one!

They're all awful. But which one, Marina? Tell me which one.

The one right beside the other one.

Eddie forced himself to think.
On Annette Street?

I don't know streets!
It was a scream. The girl was getting more and more desperate.

Near the library where we take out picture books?

Yes.

Stay there.

Can't!

Why?

Because the boy is screaming.

What boy?

He's screaming, Daddy. He's hanging from the lamppost and screaming.

IN THE LIGHT FROM THE
Burning cello, Seth loosened the noose and stepped down from the Joshua tree. “You're here.”

“I told you I'd always be here, waiting for you, always.”

Yslan clamped handcuffs on WJ.

Seth laughed.

“What?” she demanded.

“That's so unnecessary now,” Seth said. He looked down at his hands—his nails were black. He held up his hands and wiggled his fingers—all five. A crack of lightning and it began to rain, thick heavy drops.
Rain in the desert,
he thought.
Of course there'd be rain in the desert—and the Junction.

• • •

Trish stumbled out of the church. The cold rain greeted her. She put up the collar of her coat but the rain quickly soaked her to the bone. She strode forcefully into the storm.

She almost knocked over Marina, who was standing beneath the lamp post across from the library—sobbing.

“Marina?”

The girl turned and cowered back, slipping on the wet sidewalk and falling to the ground.

“Don't be frightened. Remember me? I'm Trish, one of your dad's friends.”

No flicker of recognition from the girl.

“Does your dad know you're out here by yourself at night?”

The girl shook her head, oblivious to the rain. She began to cry again.

“What's frightening you, Marina?”

The girl pointed at the lamp post and shouted, “Don't you hear him? Don't you hear him screaming?”

“I hear him—and I see him,” a southern-accented woman's voice said.

Marina and Trish turned to see Yslan standing beside a very handsome man. Both were looking up at the lamp post, which was almost invisible—seemingly lost in the rain.

The thick rain opened something deep in Yslan, and she found herself falling. When she reached out to stop her fall, her hand landed on polished granite and in the slash of lightning she saw her father's name and his dates on the memorial wall. Then she heard gunfire and saw him, crouched in the deep undergrowth of the Mekong Delta, ten years younger than she was now and frightened—so terribly frightened.

Another flash of lightning brought to terrifying light other men in dark pajamas, moving through the tall grass, coming closer and closer.

She tried to move, but her foot was stuck in something. She looked down and saw she was wearing army boots, and her left one was stuck in the sucking mud. She turned and felt the weight of the M16 in her hand—and knew—beyond knowing—that she was going to witness the death of her father.

She felt herself yank her foot free and then she heard herself whisper a prayer—to her, his unborn daughter—for a long life, for joy, for meaning. Then she felt the bullet enter her chest just to the right of her arm—then another and another and another.

Then she felt strong hands pulling on her shoulder. She opened her eyes, and Emerson was there in the rain, and his lips were
moving but she couldn't hear his words. Then she did—but his lips had stopped moving. She heard his words in her head.

Eddie rushed to his daughter, but she pushed him aside and moved towards the handsome man.

“You see him, don't you?”

Emerson nodded.

“And you?” she asked Yslan.

“I do, Marina. Yes, I see him.”

The rain began to pelt down in sheets.

“His screaming is stopping,” Marina said.

“The portal is closing,” Emerson said, “We don't have much time now. I can't follow you, Yslan. I'm in the forest but not in the clearing.”

Yslan looked around, and she was standing in a beautiful clearing in the midst of a seemingly impenetrable forest. And silence—unearthly silence.

Then out of the undergrowth stepped Martin Armistaad and Viola Tripping. The man had a sneering smile on his lips. The girl/woman's face was stained with tears.

“Good,” Martin said, grabbing Viola by the soft part of her upper arm. She winced.

“Let her go,” Yslan demanded.

He shook his head and said, “You have no idea where you are.”

“Let her go,” Yslan repeated.

Viola said simply, “He needs to be here—we all need to be here.”

“But he's—”

“A nightmare,” Viola said. Her voice was steady. “Without nightmares there are no dreams.”

“Sure,” Martin said and smiled. “Let's go.”

“We're not all here,” Viola said.

“They'll be waiting for us, won't they, Ms. Tripping. They'll be waiting for us in the glass house.”

Viola nodded and turned to her left. A path through the forest that had not been there before was now . . . there.

She smiled and led the way. As they moved along the path, the forest closed in behind them. They followed the turn in the path and saw the great glass house in the distance. Someone was in the doorway and waving them on.

“Come on,” Martin said and started to run.

“What's he going to find, Viola?”

“Nothing unless you're there.”

“What?”

“Aren't you that which allows this all to happen?”

The catalyst
, Yslan thought. She looked at the figure in the doorway, waving them on, and she knew it was her—had always been her.

Then without taking a step they were at the door, and Yslan was indicating that they should enter.