Trader
Page 50
“I guess I am,” I say. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression— you know, feel pressured or anything.”
“About what?”
“Well, I was going to say, I’ve been thinking that you don’t have to get your own apartment. I’ve got plenty of room. We could move all that stuff I’ve got in the spare room and you could have it. That way you’ll be able to work on your music without having to worry about rent and stuff like that.”
“What, like a kept woman?”
I don’t realize she’s teasing until I start to protest and she laughs.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and I realize she’s carrying around her own nervousness about how all this is going to work out. Her, me. Us. “It’s really sweet of you to offer,” she adds.
“Just think about it.”
She nods and takes my hand.
“I think I’ll still stay at Tanya’s when she’s gone,” she says. “It’ll give me some time to myself to work things out.”
I get a warm glow. All I can think is, she didn’t say no.
The first night she’s at Tanya’s I get a call around midnight.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi, yourself.”
“Whatcha doing?”
“Nothing much,” I tell her. “Buddy and I are hanging around. He’s sleeping and I’m reading a bit—trying to get sleepy.”
“Miss me?”
It’s been so quiet in the apartment that I’ve had the radio on all evening. Hasn’t helped.
“I don’t know if miss is a strong enough word,” I say, playing with the way she’s always redefining words.
She laughs. “I know just what you mean.” Pause. “So why don’t you come over?”
I realize later that she wanted our first time to be on her own homeground— or as close as she can get to it with most of her stuff still in storage and no place she can call her own. We’re lying in Tanya’s bed after and she’s running a finger along my cheek. Buddy’s finally forgiven us for calling him a voyeur and making him get off the bed earlier. He’s sprawled out at the foot again, snoring softly.
“I had to think about it,” she says. “This whole business with you being you, but looking so much like Johnny.”
“I understand. I’m not exactly comfortable with it myself.”
“But I think I’m okay with it.” She smiles and lays her head on my shoulder. “You’re so you that I don’t really see him anymore when I look at you.”
“I wish you’d teach me the trick.”
“It’ll come,” she says. She turns a bit so that she’s lying with her head on the pillow beside mine, looking up at the ceiling. “What do you suppose really happened to him?”
“I don’t think we’ll ever know,” I say. “I just know I’m not going to make the mistakes I made before he came into my life. I’m going to do like that saying of the spirits that Joe told us and live large.”
Zeffy smiles and puts a hand down between my legs.
“Mmm,” she says. “This is a good start.”
Buddy stirs, looks up. He gives a sigh and gets off the bed without being asked this time.
Zeffy and I manage to put Johnny out of our minds and not think about him for the rest of the night. I think it’s a very good start.
5 JOSEPH CRAZY DOG
Belying the cowboy boots he was wearing, Bones moved silently between the trees, ghosting through the underbrush like one of his otherworld cousins. Ahead of him, the undergrowth gave way and he entered a stand of hemlocks, the tall trees rearing cathedrally above him, their needles turning the forest floor into a soft carpet. He paused a few yards into their churchlike quiet and turned his head, dark gaze alighting on a black bird sitting in the lower branches of a nearby tree.
Sinking slowly into a cross-legged position, he rolled himself a cigarette and lit it. He and the bird regarded each other as he smoked. He’d told Zeffy he had unfinished business here, but that hadn’t been entirely true. Mostly it was that curiosity of his that had kept him looking, needing to know the end of the story. That was maybe his greatest weakness—he always wanted to know how everything worked out after “The End” scrolled up on the screen or the cast had taken their bows. Long after the curtain had closed and the stagehands were sweeping the boards, he’d still be slouched there in a seat, wondering, And what happened then?
“So,” Bones said after a while. “How’d you end up in the bird?”
Who the hell are you?
Bones took another drag, exhaled. “Nobody. Just got curious about what happened to you.”
The bird cocked his head, regarding him with a gaze as dark as Bones’ own. I feel like I should know you.
“Naw. We never met.”
The bird perched silent, considering, while Bones smoked.
“So are you going to finish the story for me?” he finally asked.
I don't know how it happened, the bird said. It hopped down to a lower branch. It just did. Look, you've got to help me.
“Help you what?”
Cross back over.
“Not much use for talking birds there. You’ll probably end up in a lab, getting cut up to see how the trick works.”
I mean help me to get my body back.
Bones finished his cigarette. He put it out against the side of his boot, then stowed the butt in his pocket. Stood up.
“You only get so many chances,” he told the bird. “Seems to me, yours are all used up, this turn of the wheel.”
I didn't know what I was doing.
Bones raised an eyebrow. “Like that’s an excuse?”
This isn't fair.
“But that’s just it,” Bones said. “It is fair. Everything comes down to courtesy and respect, you know? Seems to me, someone finally refused to take on the shit you were laying out and just spiraled it back to you. Thing you’ve got to deal with now is all that baggage you’re going to be dragging with you onto the next spoke of the wheel.”
Look, I'll give you whatever you want, the bird told him. Name your price.
“What’ve you got that I might want? A real bird, that’d be different. I could learn something. Birds are interesting. Shit, anything’s interesting if you pay attention. But what am I supposed to learn from you?”
I don’t get it.
“And that’s the whole problem,” Bones said. “You don’t get it and maybe you never will. But until you work it out, nothing’s going to change. You’ll be here, and I’ll be gone.”
But you could—
“Listen carefully,” Bones said. “I’m not responsible for what happened to you, Max isn’t responsible, nobody else is. Only you. Now you’ve got to live with it.”
You know Trader? Listen, just tell him that—
“This got old real fast,” Bones said, cutting him off.
They regarded each other for a long moment, then Bones turned away from the bird on its perch in the hemlock and stepped back across the worlds. He felt swollen with story and thought he’d be able to stay longer than usual this time, all things considered. Maybe he and Cassie could even head out on a road trip somewhere, just the two of them, take in a few sights.
Lord knows he’d been missing that bighearted, patient woman of his.
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SHIFT
1 MAX TRADER
2 ZEFFY LACERDA
3 MAX
4 TANYA BURNS
5 MAX
6 ZEFFY
7 MAX
8 ZEFFY
9 MAX
10 LISA FISHER
11 MAX
12 TANYA
13 MAX
14 ZEFFY
15 MAX
16 NIA FISHER
17 MAX
18 ZEFFY
19 NIA
20 MAX
THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD
1 LISA
2 MAX
3 TANYA
4 MAX
5 NIA
6
ZEFFY
7 LISA
8 NIA
9 MAX
10 ZEFFY
11 LISA
12 NIA
13 ZEFFY
14 LISA
15 MAX
16 TANYA
17 NIA
18 LISA
19 TANYA
20 LISA
21 MAX
22 ZEFFY
23 MAX
24 TANYA
25 JOHNNY DEVLIN
26 NIA
27 MAX
28 TANYA
29 ZEFFY
30 LISA
31 MAX
OWNING YOUR OWN SHADOW
1 NIA
2 MAX
3 LISA
4 ZEFFY
5 MAX
6 TANYA
7 LISA
8 JILLY COPPERCORN
9 ZEFFY
10 NIA
11 MAX
12 TANYA
13 LISA
14 ZEFFY
15 MAX
l6 ZEFFY
17 MAX
WALKING LARGE AS TREES
1 ZEFFY
2 LISA
3 TANYA
4 NIA
5 MAX
5 JOSEPH CRAZY DOG