The Orchid Eater (8 page)

And you
asked for it, Mike told himself. You had to invite everybody in.

If they’d
caught him outside, it would have been quicker. At least the house would have
been untouched. He’d have received a proper burial then, and the pity of his
family.

As it is, he
thought, if they leave any part of me alive, Mom’ll finish the job they start.

He put his
back to the door, as if he could hold it shut alone if they decided to batter
it down. “Shit,” he said finally.

“You can’t
think that way,” Edgar said firmly. “We all have to start focusing on some
positive images.”

“Oh, get off
that bullshit,” Kurtis said.

“I’m
serious. We can do it. Seven minds, working together. We have so much untapped
power. All we have to do is concentrate.”

“You’re
worse than Hawk, man. At least the Bible really exists.”

“The rest of
you, then,” Edgar said. “If we all focus on one thought, visualize the thing we
want, it’ll work. We can influence them, I swear to God. You just have to hold
a clear picture of what you want, and that creates the space it needs to
happen.”

“What do you
mean?” Mike asked. “Like, ESP?”

“It’s mind
power, brain power.”

“But it only
works if you have shit for brains, like Edgar.”

“I’m just
ignoring you, Kurtis. I’m seeing your negativity locked up inside a safe where
it can’t hurt us. The rest of you, close your eyes and try. See them going
away, leaving us alone.”

“When I
close my eyes I see myself getting killed,” said Howard.

“Come on,
concentrate. Visualize them going away, leaving the house, going back to
Sal’s.”

Edgar’s
voice was deep and slow, but could not quite manage to be hypnotic.

“Going away
. . . going away . . . leaving us alone, like . . . leaving us alone . . . can
you see it?”

Mike didn’t
need to close his eyes. Desperation made it easy to picture their pursuers
slipping away like shadows under a strong light. It was his most fervent desire
at the moment. “Going away . . . going away . . .”

“Are you
doing it, Scott?” Mike asked.

“Worth a
try,” Scott said.

“Imbecile,”
said Kurtis, but no one else was arguing. They seemed to be following Edgar’s
instructions.

After a few
minutes, Mike didn’t hear any more whispering or scraping around the house. The
rocks had stopped clattering on the windows; no more threats crept in under the
door. “See?” Edgar said. “It’s working.”

As soon as
he spoke, a scream erupted less than a foot from Mike’s head. They began
hammering the door under his back. He flung himself away.

“That’s it,
Edgar,” Kurtis said. “You’re elected. Go get Hawk. Fucking call him by ESP if
you don’t want to run for a phone.”

Edgar stared
at Kurtis, his eyes gleaming in the dark as if he were crying. “All right,” he
said after a minute, defeat in his voice. “I’ll go.”

Mike felt
sorry for him, but not sorry enough to argue with Kurtis. Whoever Hawk was,
Mike would be glad for any help they could get.

“You can go
out the bottom door,” he suggested. “Someone should watch from up here on the
balcony, to make sure the coast is clear.”

Craig Frost
said, “Me and Howard’ll watch.”

So Edgar,
Scott and Mike groped their way to the dark spiral stairs. They discovered,
upon entering the lowest room, that they were clearly visible to anyone
outside, thanks to the streetlights glaring in through the sliding glass
doors. There were no curtains or blinds on the doors. Fortunately, there didn’t
seem to be anyone around. But Mike half expected savage faces to appear at the
glass at any moment, and then there would be no hiding.

“I thought
for a minute there that it was working,” Mike said as Edgar peered through the
glass. “Your visualization thing, I mean.”

“It would
have, but Kurtis is way too negative,” Edgar said. “I’ve been trying to get the
whole gang to use it, so we can work in total silence.”

“Edgar . . . 
”
Scott said
reproachfully.

“Yeah, so
anyway, I’m going to stick to the underbrush as long as I can, but I’ve got to
cross the street eventually. I hope they’re not over there. When I come back,
I’ll have Hawk with me. Then we’ll really take care of Sal.”

“I just want
to get out of here,” Mike confessed.

“Well, that
too.”

Scott called
up the spiral stairway, “All clear?”

They heard
Howard relaying Craig’s message:
“Go!”

Mike flipped
the latch and slid the door open. Edgar slipped out. He hauled the glass shut
as fast as he could and snapped the latch back down. Edgar was already
invisible, lost in the bushes. Mike felt vulnerable in the lowest room. He
signaled to Scott that they should go back up to the room above. There they sat
on a white linoleum floor, walls bright and shining. The mirrors gleamed even
in the dark.

“I can’t
believe this is happening,” Mike said. “How’d you meet these guys anyway?”

Scott
shrugged. He seemed calm, even comfortable, in the midst of the madness.

“Edgar took
me out to Hawk’s trailer. You know, it’s that place in the canyon, made up like
a church, quotes from Revelations written all over the side.”

“With the
crosses in the yard? Jeez, that’s Hawk? The guy who’s supposed to save us?”

“He’s like
an ex-con, ex-biker, ex-everything. Edgar says he’s rehabilitated, but I don’t
know. The people he hangs out with seem pretty wild. There’s one guy, Stoner?
Looks like a big blond caveman. I saw five guys ganging up on him, trying to
drag him to the ground, but they couldn’t do it till Hawk jumped in.”

“And you
really want to join this club?”

Scott
chuckled. “To me, they make an interesting study in anthropology. The
hierarchical structure, the messianic overtones . . .”

“Well . . .
Edgar seems okay,” Mike said doubtfully.

“He’s
intelligent enough, except for his obsession with ESP.” “You don’t think it
works?”

“The
visualization stuff, it’s meant to be psychological. It’s a form of therapy,
but I think he missed the point. It’s all turned into mumbo-jumbo, psychic
mush, in his head. I mean really,
ESP?”

“I remember when
you
used to do black magic.”

“That was an
experiment. And at least I was drawing on some existing tradition. This is all
old hippie bullshit people came up with after doing too many drugs. You
know—peace, love and transactional analysis.”

“Maybe
Edgar’s experimenting, too.”

“Edgar’s
bored and desperate. Having a shrink for a mom has got him all twisted up. Last
month he was into Transcendental Meditation and Eckankar. Next month, who
knows?”

Mike sighed
and banged his head back against the wall, feeling almost secure to be alone
for a minute with his friend, with whom he had shared numerous moments that
felt dangerous but turned out okay. Scott could keep him from going too far
into fear—most effectively by ridiculing him, as he now derided Edgar.

“I should
never have brought them all in here. I wish I never had . . . 
”
His breath
sucked back into his throat. He jumped to his feet. “The key!”

He dug stiff
fingers into his pocket—his empty pocket. The other one was full of change. He
turned it inside out and shook through a handful of coins, hoping one of the
silver shapes would turn out to be something more valuable than a quarter.

“I don’t
believe it,” he said. “Why is this happening to me?”

He headed
for the stairs, slipped and banged his shins, kept going till he reached the
top again, gasping for breath.

Up here, the
other guys were talking in normal voices now, completely relaxed. Mike grabbed
the doorknob, then hesitated, turning to Scott, who was just coming up the
stairs.

“Go out on
the balcony and look around, make sure no one’s at the door.”

Scott
hurried to comply. “All clear,” he called from the deck.

Mike was
praying, trying to remain positive, as Edgar had suggested. He remembered putting
the key in the lock, but he couldn’t remember taking it out. He’d been so
frightened and rushed during the chase that he had forgotten it completely
until now.

Please
let the key still be there. Let the key still be there, God. If
there is a God.

No, that’s
wrong—think positive:

The key is
there. The key is there. It’s still in the lock where I left it. There is a God
and the key is there. It has to be there. Visualize it. Use your fucking
imagination!

He eased the
door open half an inch, an inch. That was all the room he needed to see the
brass knob shining in starlight. Polished brass and nothing more.

No matter
how hard he tried to imagine it, he couldn’t make out the faintest sign of any
key.

7

Hawk could
hardly hear Edgar on the phone. “Hold off a minute, would you?” He was talking
to Edgar, but Maggie mistook him and left off chewing on his other ear. Saying
nothing—but so expressively—she jumped down from the bed and walked the length
of the trailer to where Stoner sat with his knees tucked up on the built-in
couch, pretending to read
The Cross
and the Switchblade,
an act he’d been faking ever
since Hawk first shoved the book at him half a year ago. Maggie dropped down
next to Stoner, took a swig of beer from his bottle, and let it dangle by the
neck. She wouldn’t even look at Hawk.

“Hey,
Maggie, what’s this word?” Stoner said, pushing the book under her nose.

“Fuckface,”
she said, and Hawk didn’t know who she was talking to.

“Say again,
Edgar,” Hawk said. “I’m getting a lot of interference here.”

Edgar was
out of breath, his words stumbling all over each other. Just when Hawk thought
he was getting the drift, the whole trailer began to roar. Hawk jumped up and
hammered on the wall, but he could hardly hear himself pounding.

“Stoner!
Tell Dusty to lay off a minute, would you?”

“Sure,
Hawk.” Stoner looked relieved at having an excuse to put down the book. He was
wearing his usual big dumb grin, which got bigger and dumber when Maggie said,
“I suppose you want me to move?”

“Naw.” He
picked her up as if she were a rag doll, got off the couch, and set her back
down in his place. Stoner went outside and shouted at Dusty, his voice louder
than the power tools. Everything turned quiet except the Saturday night traffic
on Old Creek Road.

“Back up,
Edgar. Where are you now?”

“My house.”

“Meet me out
front, then. Ten minutes.”

Hawk hung up
and got out of bed. Maggie stared at him.

“You ain’t
going nowhere,” she said. “Not again—not tonight.”

“Patience,
my sweet Magdalene.” He chucked her chin as he passed, and she made as if to
bite his finger. “My tiny flock’s in peril. Didn’t you hear them bleating on
the phone?”

“Are you
trying to be an asshole, or does it just come natural?”

He winced
and put his head out the door. “Stoner!”

The cars
whizzing past sent crucifix shadows sweeping over the cluttered yard. The smell
of motor oil was still strong after the hot day. Stoner was on his knees
halfway into Dusty’s van, the crack of his ass above his belt as dark as the
gates of Hell. He backed out with a puzzled yet hopeful expression, holding a
caged lightbulb on a clamp. Faithful as a dog, Hawk thought. There was a smudge
of grease on Stoner’s forehead, just below his curly blond locks.

“Hold it
steady, dude!” Dusty said from inside the van.

“Turn it
off,”
Hawk said. “We’re making a
cavalry run.”

Dusty backed
out of the driver’s side holding a wrench. He was short and wiry with snarled
black curly hair. In his ripped-up, oily jeans and tank top he looked like a
real mechanic. Only his friends knew otherwise. When Dusty had finished with
the engine, it might never work again. He had a tendency of working on things
when he was dusted, as he was right now. That was how he got himself
“motivated.” His eyes sat on shelves of bone above pits so deep and dark that
the flesh might have been scooped out with a grapefruit spoon; skin seemed to
have been applied sparingly to his bony head, laid onto the skull like gold
leaf. His shoulders and pectorals were covered with tattoos of hollow, tubular
waves—surfers’ wet-dream pipelines, with little Vaughn Bode guys crouched down
low at the tips of rakish boards, all ten toes gripping the tapered noses as
they shot the tubes on tropical-sunset fantasy beaches. Hawk had never known
Dusty to so much as wade barefoot in a tide pool.

“Whatta
those little fuckups get themselves into this time?” he said.

“The fag on
the hill has a posse out after them.”

“Man, I’m
sick of bailing those skinny-ass punks out of their messes. This is the last
time, man. The last time. I got my own troubles.”

Stoner said,
“I’m not going near that place. That motherfucker Sal tried to kiss me once.”

“Shut up and
get the shotgun.”

“Awlriiiiight!”
Dusty said. “That sounds more like it.”

Stoner
pounded up the makeshift wooden steps of the trailer; he’d destroyed the
original metal stairs by coming down hard on them on the same drunken night
Hawk invited him to stay until he found another place. Months ago, that had
been. Another source of friction with Maggie.

“Come on,
Dusty, we’ll take the jeep.”

Dusty
nodded. “That’s good, ’cause this mother won’t start.”

“Somehow I
had that impression.”

Stoner
clambered back down the steps, swinging the shotgun in one hand, clutching
something shiny in the other. Hawk took the gun and grabbed his other wrist.
Stoner flinched, twisting away, trying to hide what he had.

“Give it,
you oaf. You want to get us all killed?”

Stoner hid
his hand behind his back, looking sheepish at having been caught.

“Come on,
come on.”

Stoner put
out his hand. The grenade looked about the size of a grape on his broad palm.

Hawk jumped
back a step. “Jesus! Didn’t I fuckin’ tell you to put those somewhere safe?
Somewhere if they blew up, they wouldn’t take out half the town?”

“They’re
safe, Hawk. They’re all in their crate except a few loose ones I got padded in
socks.”

“In socks?”

“Hey,” Dusty
said, “them dirty ones are like cast iron. Safer than a lead trunk.”

“Just go put
it away, would you? And
not
back in the trailer! Jesus!”

Stoner took
a walk up the h
ill
side.

Maggie stood
at the door, staring down at Hawk. “I won’t be here when you get back.” She
withdrew and slammed the door.

“Wouldn’t be
the first time,” Dusty said, and turned away grinning.

Hawk stared
after her a minute, tracing the lines of the big black cross painted on the
door. Thank you, Edgar.

In the
splash of floodlights mounted near the edges of the lot, the lines from the
Book of Revelations looked wet, still dripping down the sides of the trailer.
He tried to find one to calm himself, to give him focus before his mission, but
they were all somewhat more intense than he felt he needed.

Have to put
some Psalms up there soon. This whole apocalyptic thing was a bit too much for
the day-to-day.

Dusty and
Stoner settled into the jeep. Hawk joined them and fired it up, thinking of
Maggie. The row of glowing plastic Saviors on the dashboard soothed him only
slightly. As a man of action, he hated leaving things unfinished. Maggie in her
moods was harder to interpret than Elijah’s rant. He finally achieved a
one-pointed clarity by focusing on the hood ornament, a polished chrome
crucifix that gleamed like liquid silver as they passed under a streetlight on
their way out of the lot. He screeched onto Old Creek Road, cutting through a
narrow gap in traffic. Stoner howled in delight at the near miss, yet another
brush with the oaf’s imminent death. It was for exactly this reason that Hawk
treasured the big clod’s company. Stoner knew instinctively how thin the line
was between Here and Hereafter. Most who walked that line so boldly had deluded
themselves into forgetting the fact that they were essentially disposable. But
Stoner knew it—reveled in the fact. Or else he was utterly ignorant of it. Hawk
could never be sure which.

Dusty was in
his own little world, his fishbowl full of dust, hunched over in the back of
the jeep.

Old Creek
was dangerous enough at midday; at night it was a constant string of dead man’s
curves. He loved to drive it fast, but traffic was too thick.

Crawling
along with the summer tourist cars, Hawk wondered if the boys had pushed Sal
too far this time. Edgar said he’d dispatched karate assassins, Sal’s personal
bodyguards. It seemed unlikely, but one never knew. Hawk believed that under
the right circumstances, anyone was capable of anything. You couldn’t always
read it in their eyes. What were eyes anyway but a couple of cameras? Forget
all that talk about the windows of the soul. Eyes were more like two-way
mirrors, and the soul hung out behind them, watching you like a department
store detective.

(Have to
remember this for next Saturday, he thought. Some good riffs building here.)

No, there
were no shortcuts to understanding people. You couldn’t judge from one
conversation, or even from a week’s worth of talk. The only way to understand a
man was through study over time. Some people had good years the way most people
had bad days, years when everything flowed right to them without the smallest
hitch; and in such times they appeared perfect saints, wise and compassionate
and easygoing. If you were stupid enough to judge them by those fat times, you
might be inclined to fit them with a halo. But the next year could start with a
flood, followed by famine and drought. . . and suddenly your saint would be
devouring women and children to keep his belly soft and fat.

As for Sal,
Hawk hadn’t yet made up his mind. There were so many unpredictable elements
involved. A lot of complications.

The guy was
a faggot, you had to take that for granted. If you let him, he’d tell you all
about it, making everything real clear. He didn’t care if anyone thought it was
a sin; he wasn’t apologetic or guilty or shameful, and he didn’t show remorse.
He was honest about it. Hawk respected that—no matter what other preachers
said.

The thing
Hawk didn’t really trust—and the reason he still waited to see how things
turned out, waited to judge—was the way Sal surrounded himself with boys. Hawk
had known some of Sal’s “students” over the years. Wild and mixed up, most of
them—though what boys weren’t? A few had hung out with Hawk at first, trying to
be part of the One-Way Gang; but they had never really fit in. There was
something in them he just couldn’t reach. After drifting away from Hawk, they
had hooked up with Sal and suddenly started to pull themselves together. He
hadn’t liked some of the changes they went through—the faggy accents, the
bangles and makeup and all that superficial shit—but at least they’d managed to
get their heads straightened out in some essential way. Sometimes this meant
they finally faced up to their parents and moved out on their own, which Hawk
had been telling them to do anyway. Randy was like that. A good kid from a
fucked-up home. Sometimes they bleached their hair, like Martin Schwann, who
called himself Marilyn now.

When Hawk
asked them how they were doing, they spoke of Sal in reverent tones: he was a
great teacher, a good friend, a wonderful this and that. What Hawk could never
figure out was if Sal was really doing all of this for them, or if he was doing
it for himself.

With the
older boys, it didn’t matter. They’d fuck a gopher hole if they got horny
enough. Fine. But the younger ones were a stew of hormones, more desperate than
the older kids. All their juices were flowing, but they’d had no time to learn
control or discrimination. They were nothing but jailbait with balls. And there
were a few like that hanging around Sal’s place, taking tai chi lessons,
selling his bad paintings, even slapping them out assembly-line fashion on the
floor of Sal’s garage. Hawk wasn’t sure how much more than lessons was
involved.

So the jury
was still out on the matter of Sal. It might never come in. But better that
than snap judgments. Better that than to make up his mind too quickly—and
incorrectly—one way or the other.

The jeep
lurched to a stop in front of Edgar’s house. Edgar was waiting on the curb. He
hopped in back and said breathlessly, “They’re over there!”

“What kind
of mess have you got me into, Edgar?”

“Sal did it,
not me.”

“All by
himself? He’s chasing you around for no reason, saying he’s gonna kick your ass
just because you showed up in one of his wet dreams?”

Stoner
chortled and poked Dusty in the shoulder.

“I swear to
God, Hawk, you know what kind of a dangerous faggot he is.”