Condor wondered where he went at night. He asked some of the help, but they thought he was nuts. Gardener? Even the nurse, the homely Guatemalan lady that was by Grandmother Ruthie’s side every day didn’t seem to know what he was talking about. Like she had fucking amnesia.
Didn’t matter. Why would Condor give a fuck? He shook the kid’s hand when he met him that first day he pulled up in the car and it was the strangest feeling. It was firm and normal, but cold, like shockwaves driving through his arm and Condor felt something quiver at the back of his head and suddenly there was a howling emptiness inside. He couldn’t let go fast enough. Let the crazy asshole sleep in the trees, he couldn’t care less.
Condor’s back ached while he waited for Grandmother Ruthie to say something, anything. I’m waiting here, old lady!
He glanced at the nurse and she was staring back. Condor quickly looked away. A little too quickly. Carrie called a few days back, asked if he could access her food again. Condor hung up on her. She was batshit, saying that out loud and on a phone! Why not just put it on a billboard? I POISONED MY GRANDMOTHER.
Dumb bitch called back but Condor didn’t answer. She called again and he turned his phone off. He’d pay for that tomorrow when she got home, but it was worth it. She made all the trouble, she could clean it up. When he told her about the driver/gardener kid, she didn’t speak for a whole minute. Condor let the phone lay silent in his hand. She was thinking. He stumped her, for once. She didn’t know what to do.
Good. That’s how Condor’s whole life felt. He just went from one cigarette to the next. One party to another. Sometimes he felt like a child just waiting for the next Christmas. If the unexamined life was a waste, Condor knew he was more useless than a dog tick. But at least he wasn’t thinking up the shit Carrie was. She was going to burn in fires a lot hotter than Condor when this was all over with.
“Prepare my bed,” Grandmother Ruthie whispered. “Now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She never looked at him. Just dropped her hand like she was done with him.
Condor closed the door behind him and leaned against it, relieved to feel the air-conditioning. The cold rushed over him and into his knees, then he realized that wasn’t relief. Fear.
He stepped quickly. He’d prepare Grandmother’s bed, then smoke half a dozen cigarettes.
VIII
“Just who the fuck are you?”
She had been secretly watching Drayton from the house since she’d arrived earlier that morning. He had pulled weeds in the concrete planters that ran the length of the pool. Crabgrass had overrun the flowers, drooping down to the paver deck with nodding seedheads. The longer the weeds become, the more seeds they produce. The planters were a network of scratchy stems.
He was nearly finished with weeding by mid-afternoon when Carrie finally appeared at poolside to ask him just who he was. Until then, no one even noticed. If Drayton willed it, Carrie wouldn’t have noticed him, either. But she was one of the reasons he had come into their lives.
She anchored her hands on her hips. Her sculpted arms tense. Ample breasts bulging in the bikini top. Her glare was as hot as the summer heat. Drayton looked back and smiled briefly, long enough to acknowledge her. As if to say hello and thank you. Then he went back to sweeping soil into a pile.
The tension in Carrie’s arms radiated through her neck and across her cheeks, tugging at the corners of her mouth. She bit back on the next string of curse words that threatened to spew out. Instead, she squatted next to the pool and cupped water onto her bare arms to cool them. She looked at her reflection. When calm returned, she stood.
Drayton had moved to the ground below the pool that sloped away from the house toward the dunes. Carrie remained on the pool deck, looking down.
“You don’t exist,” she said. “I ran your picture through a global face-recognition database and you’re not there. Now, that might just mean you’re a nobody, so I ran your fingerprints, too. So far, you don’t exist, my gardening friend. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to know what you’re doing here.”
He paused, looked up. “Drayton. My name is Drayton.”
The sun was behind Carrie’s head, casting a shadow over him. But he didn’t squint in the sunlight. Just a slight smile. His eyes were engorged with blackness. The pupils enlarged. Deep. She had the sudden sensation of falling into them, like water swirling into a drainhole. Her insides swirled, then opened. She felt a chasm beneath. A hole. A mine shaft that bore deep down into her beingness that was bottomless. She felt like clawing her way back to hard ground. She felt like crying.
And then he looked away, back to the bag of weeds.
There were tears on rims of her eyes. Emptiness still quivered at the bottom of her gut. She refused to wipe her eyes. Instead, she set her jaw. Her stomach hardened. Her body taut. And like she’d done many times when the situation needed her to be an arrow, she launched herself at her target.
“Don’t fuck with me, boy. You get your belongings together and be on the bricks in the next ten minutes. If I look out the window and see you planting pansies when your time is up, I will have your arms twisted off your shoulders and rammed up your black ass.”
Drayton placed the last of the pulled weeds into the bag. He looked away from Carrie, out toward the dunes. A breeze washed through the sea oats and over him. He closed his eyes, let the ocean air pass through him.
“Play stupid. See what that gets you,” she said.
When a smile touched his lips, again, she felt her emotions pulling her down the steps. She was helpless to indulge the guttural hunger that growled in her chest. She stepped in front of him but he refused to open his eyes. She hoped he would open them again, a part of her hungry for the fall she experienced only moments before, even though it was frightening, it was terrifying. She wanted it. There was something real inside the hole.
But Drayton did not open his eyes. He only drew air through his nostrils. His skin was precious. Smooth. Only when she felt the coolness of his cheeks did she realize that she had clamped her hand over his jaw. The impossible cold radiated through her palm, tingled in her groin. Her nipples suddenly hardened.
“You fuck.” Her lips moistened. She fought the urge to bite his face. Her nails dug into the softness of his cheeks. She wanted to crush him. Tear him. Kiss him. Put him inside her.
She trembled. She was drowning in desire; she couldn’t understand it. She needed him to be gone. He was beautiful. And he threatened everything she fought to gain. If he stayed, she would disappear.
“Get…” There was a grinding noise in her ears. “Out.”
She pulled his face closer. She could smell her own perspiration. It was animal rage. It was primal lust. It was consuming her.
And when he opened his eyes, her desire turned to a raging fire. There was blankness. There was whiteness. There was nothing but emptiness. There was nothing.
She was nothing.
She was nothing.
You’re nothing. She heard her father say. You’re nothing, he said. He was buckling his belt, looking down at her. She was on the floor. He was looking down at her, buckling his belt. Looking down because she was nothing.
She meant nothing.
She didn’t matter.
And she was falling. She was falling.
Falling.
Into nothingness.
And its ache had no end.
“That will be enough, Carrie Suzanne.”
Carrie was staring at Drayton’s closed eyes, both hands locked onto his face. Her fingernails dented his skin.
“Carrie Suzanne?”
Carrie looked over her shoulder. Grandmother Ruthie was poolside, sitting in her wheelchair. The Guatemalan chambermaid was behind her. Carrie’s lips fluttered. An unintelligible sound escaped. Grandmother Ruthie excused her with a nod.
Carrie’s legs were weak, but she stepped slowly up the steps toward the house.
Grandmother Ruthie followed.
IX
She dropped the towel only when she had control, again. The weakness was still there, but she was in control.
She walked down the hall. Her pace was slow and sure, not betraying her agitation. She found Connie in the kitchen. She slammed the refrigerator door on him. He looked up angry, but quickly softened.
“You’re nothing without me, Connie,” she said. She jabbed her finger at his face. “Nothing.”
She left him standing there. And she felt strong again. She was back. Because you don’t fuck with Carrie.
She promptly went to her bedroom and buried a vibrator between her legs.
X
A week passed.
Drayton was escorted to the third floor. He followed the chambermaid down a long hallway that ended with double doors. He waited while she went inside and announced his arrival. Only when she returned to swing the doors open wide did he advance.
“Madam would like to know if you’d prefer something to drink?”
“Tea would be nice,” Drayton answered. “Thank you.”
“Sweetened?”
“That won’t be necessary. Earl Grey, if you have it. Steeped three and a half minutes.”
The maid nodded. Drayton thanked her, again.
The room was circular with a pitched ceiling that met at a point in the center, just above a round table. The walls were glass, giving an observer a nearly 360-degree view of the ocean and the beach in both directions.
Ms. Ruth was on the far side. She was parked with her back to Drayton, facing the sharp line of the horizon. There was a small window in front of her that looked custom made, large enough to allow the breeze to rustle her hair and the room to smell wide open.
Drayton waited patiently until the chambermaid arrived with a cup of tea. She pulled the chair from the table and gestured for him to sit. Drayton did so and crossed his legs. He lifted the cup and inhaled the astringent aroma of Earl Grey.
“When I was a child,” Ms. Ruth said, “I would dream of flying. I would simply raise my arms and I would float off the ground, over the ocean. It was such a blissful experience of freedom, unfettered by our human condition, this heavy body cursed to plod the ground from beginning to end. But I stopped having that dream when I was still very young. I have rarely dreamed since, until recently.
“I dreamed again that I was flying. I was nowhere in particular, but I was experiencing freedom again, soaring through a grayness towards home, I believe. I was unfettered, once again. Until I felt you.”
She turned the wheelchair around.
“I suddenly felt too heavy to fly anymore, young man. And I awoke in the hospital, in this fettered body. And you were there.”
Ms. Ruth eased up to the table and crossed her hands on her lap. She gestured to Drayton and he sipped from the cup. She smiled. “What is your name?”
“Drayton, ma’am.”
“I see,” she said, nodding.
The stillness was broken by the staff opening the doors and wheeling in a cart. While they arranged their plates with pasta salad, pickled shrimp and crackers, Ms. Ruth only watched Drayton. He sipped again.
When they left, she took a bite and wiped her mouth, chewing slowly.
“Why are you here, Mr. Drayton?”
Drayton simply nodded, as if she already knew the answer.
“I see,” she said, mildly. “Are you an angel? A demon? A dream thief?”
“I am none of those. Simply here.”
She watched him with her lips slightly agape. Her studied gaze took in his expression; her mind piecing together his posture. His energy. Ms. Ruth was a good people reader. She felt like she simply absorbed subtleties of the whole package, but she was missing entirely on the young man seated properly at her table, holding a saucer in one hand while waving the cup beneath his nose with the other.
“I was raised Catholic, you see.” She took another bite and sat back. “We Catholics don’t like mysteries. We like to know why we’re here and where we’re going. Heaven, hell, or whatever is beyond, we like to plan for that journey, you see. Tell me, Drayton, what is beyond our reach? Where do we go after this life?”
An imperceptible shake of his head. “I don’t know.”
“You’re just living in the here and now, is that what you’re telling me? How very Zen of you. It doesn’t answer the question.”
“Perhaps it cannot be answered.”
“Perhaps.”
Ms. Ruth took a few more bites. Drayton’s food remained untouched. Only the clinking sounds of silverware and the rhythmic rush of the ocean were in the room.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked.
Drayton nodded. He knew everything about her. While Ms. Ruth felt like she could learn about a person by absorbing their actions, Drayton actually absorbed a person’s mind: their thoughts and emotions, their memories. He knew more about Ms. Ruth then she would ever remember about herself, and he knew it the instant he sensed her in the hospital.
Ms. Ruth suddenly seemed to understand this by observing his expression. She was a good people reader. “I see.”
She dropped her napkin on her plate and wheeled back over to her window.
“You know I’m not a good person, Mr. Drayton. I know this, and I know that if there is a hell then I am surely going there. Perhaps you’re the devil and I’m already there.”
She didn’t look at Drayton when she said this.
“I hope you understand that change — real change — is difficult. Our lives are like undercurrents that we cannot change, we can only drift along if we are to survive. I am no different than every other human being having lived the tainted hand I’ve been dealt. And it’s clear I’ve condemned my grandchildren to the same miserable fate. And cursed the world with them, as well.”
“Free will, then,” Drayton said, “does not exist?”
“Free will?” She chuckled, whimsically plucking at the window. “It’s a dream, Mr. Drayton. We’re victims of our thoughts, our genes, DNA, the malfunctions given to us by our parents and environment. Free will, Mr. Drayton, is a concept. It does not exist.”
“And who is saying that?”
“I am.”
“And who are you? Your thoughts?”
She looked over at him. A moment of clarity lightened the tension in her forehead. Perhaps she was something other than her thoughts. Something more substantial. More present. They watched each other for a long time.
“Do you know what a sport is, Mr. Drayton?” Ms. Ruth closed the window. “Come now, if you’re going to play the gardener, you must know what a sport is.”
“It is a branch on a tree that is genetically different than all the rest.”
“Quite correct. If it exhibits good qualities, such as color or texture, it is propagated. But if the sport has exceptionally poor qualities, it will threaten to overcome the rest of the tree. Am I correct?”
Drayton nodded.
“And how to remedy such a situation as a vicious sport?”
Drayton set his cup and saucer on the table, placed his hands on his lap. Thoughtfully, he said, “The sport is pruned from the tree.”
Ms. Ruth smiled. “I see.”
The room was suddenly stagnant.
“You may continue to act as my gardener as long as you like, Mr. Drayton. On one condition.”
The doors opened. The chambermaid was waiting. Ms. Ruth wheeled her chair over to her and turned around to face Drayton.
“Promise you will not save me again.”
Drayton nodded. The doors closed.
He enjoyed the remainder of his tea.
XI
Condor had been smoking a lot more than usual. In the month since Grandmother Ruthie came home, he’d gone
through three cartons.
That wouldn’t be so unusual, but he’d put those cigarettes away without going outside. When Grandmother Ruthie wasn’t napping, she was sitting on veranda watching Drayton do his thing in the garden. Occasionally, she’d take a meeting with the lawyers in his father’s office, the one with the giant oak desk and the fake oil painting of Robert Current watching over it. But other than that it was sleep and watch, sleep and watch. She was obsessed to the point she didn’t notice Condor wasn’t there anymore.
He couldn’t stand the sight of Drayton without shaking. He saw him clear out on the dunes, carrying the dead flowers out to the ocean, and Condor spilled his drink like a goddamn epileptic.
He didn’t like the way that felt, so he spent most days in his room. To be more exact, in his closet.
He had stopped going to parties. Stopped returning calls and ignored texts. He kept the phone off in case his sister called. Carrie had been gone for weeks, ever since she went out to confront Drayton. She got a little taste of what Condor got and she didn’t like it, either. Maybe she got the shakes, too, so she left, the bitch. All Condor could do was hide in his closet, the safest place on earth.
There, in his closet, he’d wrap himself in a sheet and settle into the darkest corner. He had a little table for an ashtray and smokes. The clothes smelled like burning leaves so he punched a hole in the door and set up a little fan to get some ventilation. When he got bored, he’d surf porn on his iPad. Sometimes he’d find a good scene, prop it on his bed and peek at it through the hole in the closet door. Then promptly fall asleep.
At night, he’d creep to the kitchen when the staff was away. He’d wander through the house, pretending Grandmother was dead and it was all his. Until he looked out and, by the light of the moon, saw a shadow moving in the garden. He couldn’t make out the details, but when the shakes hit him, he knew who it was.
He took all the food he could carry to his closet, vowed not to prowl again.
The Drayton Chronicles Page 11
