“Sony might design next year’s model to kick back.”
She looked up and saw Thomas leaning against the door-jamb, his arms folded. She wondered how long he had been watching her. “Well, I’ll be ready for it.”
“I thought I’d probably missed dinner.”
“Your cell phone wasn't working? A call would have been appreciated.”
“I’m sorry.”
She was in no mood for an apology. “Is that all you’re going to say? You’re sorry? That’s not enough, even for someone as unimportant as a roommate, Thomas. Why were you late? Embroider a little. Give me a sentence or two about your day. Pretend I matter.”
He stared at her; then he turned and left the kitchen.
She followed him, tired of backing down. If no other kind of interaction was available, she would take a fight. “What’s wrong? Is pretending against your moral code? Too much like lying? What is it, the eleventh commandment or something? Thou shalt not pretend your wife matters if she doesn’t?”
“I guess I don’t have to ask what kind of day you had.”
“Yes, you do have to ask. If we’re going to live together, you have to ask!” She listened to the reverberations of her voice. She was coldly furious, or at least, that was the impression she was giving. Furious, and she hadn’t even realized it.
She hadn’t known he mattered so much.
“I am sorry I’m late, Garnet.” He faced her. For the first time she noticed how bleak his eyes were. “And I should have called. I just didn’t realize how late it had gotten.”
“Where were you?” She tried to temper her tone. She didn’t quite succeed.
“At the hospital... and the funeral home.”
And obviously he had been doing his job, a job sometimes as grim as her own. Her desire for answers faded. Silently she cursed her bad temper.
Thomas saw the anger fade from her eyes. He saw her glance away and noticed the beginnings of regret.
He recognized the last with ease. He knew all about regret. He had wallowed in it for the past week. Regret that he couldn’t make her his wife. Regret that he had tried. Regret that he had ever believed this phony marriage would benefit her. He had married Garnet on a wave of sentiment so intense it had wiped away whatever logic he possessed. He had wanted so desperately to protect her, the way he hadn’t protected Patricia. Nothing else had mattered.
Now everything did.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me. You didn’t sign an agreement saying you’d call if you were going to be late. I’ve never even asked you to call.”
“You’ve never had to.”
She met his gaze. Still bleak. Still looking as if something inside him had died. She asked the question she really didn’t want answered. “Did someone in your congregation...?”
“Dorothy Brown died this evening.”
“No.” She looked away again and swallowed. She had seen death a hundred times. Dorothy was an old woman who had lived a good life. Hers was not a death to mourn. The death of children, the death of young mothers, the death of warring teenagers, those were deaths to weep for. But not the death of an old woman whose time had come, who had probably met death with her arms wide open.
“No.” She blinked back tears, but they would not disappear.
Thomas stepped forward and enfolded her in his arms. It was as natural, as perfect an answer to their mutual sorrow as existed. “I was with her. She’d had a heart attack. She had the hospital call me.”
“Why you, Thomas? There were a hundred people she could have called.”
He held her tighter. “She wants.. .wanted me to do her funeral service. She was organizing right up to the end. She wanted me to go to the Knights and the Coroners and demand that they come to honor her. She thought it would help unite the community if they would both come peacefully to her service.”
Garnet moved far enough away to see his eyes. She could feel the tears gliding down her cheeks at the same time she felt something different bubbling in her chest. “She was planning her funeral service?”
“She was.”
“While she was dying?”
“No, she was just polishing the details. She’s had it planned for years. She just hadn’t decided on a preacher until today. She said I’d find instructions at the funeral home. She already has a casket. Everything’s paid for.”
Garnet tried not to smile.
He saw the glint of humor behind her tears, and something eased inside him. He framed her face with his hands. Her smile broke through.
“Garnet.” He shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Thomas,” she whispered. “But don’t you see how ‘Dorothy’ she was right up until the end? I can just see her with St. Peter right now, demanding a house on the one heavenly street that’s not paved with gold. Before you know it she’ll be organizing angel committees, circulating petitions...”
He kissed her. It was the only thing he could do, although he could feel the shock register in her body. The sorrow that had plagued him at Dorothy’s death began to drain away. He held life in his arms. Dorothy’s essential spirit was still alive in others, most notably the woman he had married. Since he’d been called to the hospital, he had forgotten that the world still contained hope and joy.
And love.
He tasted hope against his lips, tasted the potential for joy. Garnet was so warm, so quintessentially female. But she was more than just a pleasing feminine form, a pliant, willing lover. She was strength and courage. Her commitment to what was right resonated in every movement, every decision she made. She was the real slayer of dragons, not he. And the dragon she was slaying right now was his despair.
He gave himself up to her ministry. For that moment he forgot that he couldn’t take what she offered, that his capacity to take solace and joy from a woman had vanished. He let himself drink in her comfort, bathe in her life-giving femininity.
“Thomas.” She broke away, bewildered.
He pulled her to his chest. His shirt was already wet from her tears, but he didn’t care. “She made me pray with her,” he said. “She didn’t care that—” He broke off abruptly.
“Care about what?”
He shook his head.
“That your religions were different?”
He was silent for a long time.
“But she wouldn’t care, Thomas. I doubt she even belonged to a particular church. The last time I saw her, she said that she visited all the churches in the Corners to keep them on the straight and narrow.” She slipped her arms around his waist. Standing against him felt better than her most forbidden dreams. Seeking comfort, giving comfort, were experiences too new to test. She just stood there, her body melting against his, and let warmth flow over her.
“She left money in her will to the church. I’m supposed to use some of it to pay Ferdinand to paint a mural.”
“He’ll do it. If you approach him again and tell him it was Dorothy’s request, I think he’ll do it.”
“He’ll be at the funeral, along with the other Knights. I’ll ask him then.”
She stood in his arms, absorbing the heat from his body, the satisfaction of his comfort. Then his words penetrated. “The Knights?”
“And the Coroners.”
“No.” She put her hands on his chest and stepped back. “Wait a minute....”
“That was Dorothy’s request. I told you. That’s why she wanted me to do the service. She wants them both to come. She wants her funeral to be a step toward uniting the community.”
“Thomas...” She realized that he had already told her as much. But she had been so shocked by the fact of Dorothy’s death, she had somehow blocked out the rest. “My God, what could she have been thinking?”
“She was thinking of this community. She gave her life to it. Now she wants to give her death.”
“Look, no cute little twist of words can change reality. You ask both of those gangs to show up, they’ll tear this place down, and you with it. You know
what they’re capable of. Look what they did to me!”
“I know. And that’s why you won’t be at the funeral.”
“What do you mean, I won’t be there?” She put her hands on her hips.
“My head’s not in the sand, Garnet. I know this is a potentially volatile—”
“Potentially volatile? Try explosive, why don’t you? Try cataclysmic, for God’s sake!”
“A potentially volatile situation. Dorothy knew it, too. She asked me whether I could handle it. I told her I could. And one of the ways I’ll handle it is to ask you not to be there.”
She stared at him.
“I couldn’t function at all if I thought you were in any danger,” he said. “I would only be worrying about you. I wouldn’t be able to do what needs to be done.”
“You’ve really lost it, Thomas.” She shook her head. “First you tell a dying woman you’ll let a mob of bloodthirsty kids gang bang at the church in place of a dignified funeral service. Then you tell me that I’m not free to attend and keep score? Where do you get off playing God? You think you can really control the situation so that everything comes off with a happy ending? You think the Coroners and the MidKnights are going to walk out of that church saying prayers and making plans for a picnic in the park?”
“I’m not a fool.” He grasped her shoulders. “Listen to me for once, okay?”
“For once? What’s that supposed to mean? When do you ever talk to me?”
“Now!” His fingers dug into her shoulders. “Tomorrow I’m going to Andre, and I’m going to Francis’s brothers. I’m going to tell them when and where the funeral is being held, and I’m going to request their presence. I’m going to remind them of every good thing Dorothy Brown ever did for them. I’m going to remind them that they’re human beings and that as such they have duties. And one of those duties is to hold their violence in check during that funeral service. Then, when they arrive, I’m going to have people stationed at the doors to take their weapons.”
“People? Don’t you mean cops?”
“No. Members of this congregation. No cops. Because everyone at the funeral is going to show respect and dignity.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Well, be thankful you aren’t going to be there to witness the worst of it.”
His jaw was clenched, and his eyes were bleak again. Silently she mourned the comfort they had given each other. It had been so short-lived.
“I will be there,” she said. “If you think I’m going to let you stand up there alone, you don’t know anything about me.”
“If you come, I’ll be--”
“Shut up.” She put her fingers over his lips. “Just shut up, Thomas. This marriage may be a joke, but as long as it’s still legal, I’m your wife. A wife doesn’t let her husband face hungry lions by himself. Even if we did it for the wrong reasons, you and I vowed before God that this marriage was for better or worse. Well, I can’t imagine anything worse than this funeral, can you?”
He turned away, his shoulders hunched forward defiantly. She shut her eyes, knowing she hadn’t reached him.
“Then you’ll sit in the front,” he said at last. “Where I can get to you quickly.”
“I’ll sit in the front to honor Dorothy and support you.”
“You’re making this harder for me.”
“That’s not possible. It couldn’t be harder.” She hesitated; then she put her hand on his arm. Tentatively. When he didn’t jerk his arm away, she moved closer. “You’ve been married before, Thomas. You should understand that I have to do what I think is right, just like you do.”
“Patricia would have done exactly what I asked.”
She supposed it had never been clearer to him that she wasn’t Patricia. She dropped her hand.
She was sorry those were the last words he spoke, because they seemed to resound through the silent apartment for the remainder of the evening.
Thomas stood in one side of the doorway. Kimmy and Frankie’s father, Jack, stood in the other. Thomas had turned down Finn’s offer of assistance, because even in plain clothes, Finn looked like a cop. He was in attendance, but only as a guest—a guest who would keep one eye on Garnet at all times.
When Jack had heard about the circumstances surrounding Dorothy’s funeral he had volunteered to help with security. Jack had just found a new job, the breath of hope for his small family, but he had taken off the afternoon without pay to stand beside Thomas.
There were uncanonized saints walking every city street, angels without halos, prophets and priests who would never be asked to preach a sermon. Thomas gazed across the space separating him from the thin-framed, stoop-shouldered father of two and felt humbled.
“Here they come,” Jack said. “The first to arrive.”
Thomas looked outside. The day was relentlessly gray. A drizzle one step removed from sleet darkened the sidewalks and made the November chill more bitter. He had awakened that morning sure that Dorothy’s funeral would not be well attended.
For better or worse, he had been wrong.
The three young men approaching the door were dressed in Army surplus jackets. One wore a red baseball cap turned backwards. One wore a pound of gold chains around his neck.
Thomas blocked the entry way. “Welcome,” he said.
“If we’re welcome,” the spokesman for this small group of Coroners said, “why are you standing in our way?”
“Because we’re taking weapons at the door. This is God’s house. There will be no violence here, out of respect for Dorothy Brown.”
“You think we’re going in there without being strapped, like itty-bitty lambs to the slaughter?”
“I’m asking you to respect a woman who had nothing but respect and concern for you. Everyone else who walks through this door will be asked the same. Those who can’t comply will not walk through.”
“Yeah? You and him gonna keep ‘em out? You got that much heart?”
“We have all the heart we’ll need.” Thomas held out his hand, as if he expected the young man to cooperate. “You’re the ones who can make or break this,” he said. “You’re the first here. If others see that you had enough courage to leave your weapons at the door, they’ll do the same.”
The spokesman’s expression was insolent. He was a handsome teenager with a teardrop tattooed under each of his heavily lashed green eyes, symbolizing the loss of two fellow gang members to violence and flames tattooed down the side of his neck. With the right haircut and without the tattoos, he could have passed for an Ivy League fullback.
“You couldn’t stop me from coming in if I wanted,” he said with a sneer.
“Knowing won’t stop me from trying. But I don’t want to try. I just want you to do what’s right for this occasion.”
Thomas waited, hand still extended. Then, just as he was sure he’d lost this first encounter, the young man shrugged. He reached inside his trench coat and pulled out a handgun. As if on cue, the others divested themselves of knives. Thomas nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “You’ll get them back on your way out.”
“Yeah?” The young man snorted. “You’d better mean what you say.”
Thomas nodded solemnly. “I always do.”
The next half hour passed swiftly. There were more confrontations, more near losses. The church filled up with the Coroners, along with a growing number of members of the Corners community. There were also people who were obviously from outside the neighborhood, people who looked distinctly uncomfortable with the almost primitive simplicity of their surroundings and the caliber of the others attending.
During a lull between arrivals, Thomas felt a hand on his shoulder. He knew without looking who stood behind him.
“It’s after four,” Garnet said.
He didn’t turn. He was afraid he couldn’t afford even that weakness. “There are more coming.”
“How do you know?”
He didn’t. He had gone to Andre, just as he had gone to Francis’s
brothers, and pleaded his case. Andre had stared at him, his dark eyes suspicious, but he had not made any promises. Nothing had passed between them to give Thomas hope. But still he waited.
“Is it fair to make the people who did come sit there and stare at the coffin?” she asked. She dropped her hand, wondering if her touch had made him more stubborn. There was no evidence it had any positive effect on him. In the days since he had told her about his plans for Dorothy’s service, there had been no evidence that anything she did or said had any effect on him at all.
“We’ll wait five minutes,” he said, still not turning. “Then we’ll begin.”
She knew better than to argue. “Shall I go up and ask Greg to start the prelude?”
He was forced to face her. She was dressed somberly in black. It only served to make her more exotic, more alluring. “Go sit with Finn and Tex. It’s bad enough you came,” he said in a low voice. “Don’t put yourself on display.”
She searched his face. There was no rebuke there, only something akin to concern. “I’m fine,” she reassured him. “I’ll stay fine.”
“Please. Go sit down.”
She looked past him, and suddenly the doorway was filled with young men in dark hoodies, do-rags and watch caps pulled low. Andre stood at the head of the line. “Jesus,” she said softly. It was as much a prayer as any words she had ever uttered.
Thomas turned, stepping in front of her for protection. “I’m glad you came,” he said.
“You think we be coming ‘cause you asked?” Andre said. “We’re here for Dorothy. That’s all.”
“She would be pleased.”
Andre stepped forward, but Thomas blocked his way. “No guns,” he said. “No weapons of any kind. This is God’s house.”
“And you think you be speaking for God?”
“No. That’s one thing I don’t claim.”
Andre folded his arms. He was the picture of insolence. “So who makes the rules, Padre? If it’s not your God?”
“I made them, at Dorothy’s request. Nothing good can come if you walk through this doorway with weapons.”
“And you’re going to stop me?”
Garnet heard laughter in the ranks on the sidewalk. From her limited vantage point she looked for Demon, but couldn’t find him. She hoped he'd been left behind.
Dragonslayer Page 13
