The driver got out and stood up, and Rachael gasped. She’d seen him once before. He had been outside the store the first time she’d met Scarface. He was incredibly tall, with dark skin and an impressive afro. He ignored the honking and yelling—his bus was blocking traffic in both directions—and held out his hand. “Hey there,” he said, “I’m Rayfield.”
Rachael shook his hand, feeling like a little girl next to him. “R-Rachael,” she stammered.
“If you don’t mind getting in the car,” Rayfield said, “this ain’t a good spot to stay too long.”
The madwoman stirred and pulled herself up off of the pavement, preparing to strike at Rayfield from behind. “Uhhh!” Rachael cried, pointing at her. Things were happening so fast that she couldn’t form the words to warn him. But Rayfield got the gist of what she meant to say. He spun around and placed his hand on the top of Maggie’s head, holding her at a distance so she couldn’t reach him. His arms were very long. Maggie swung the knife back and forth, missing him with every swing, and didn’t think to try cutting the arm that held her.
“Rachael, sweetie, please get in the car,” he said calmly as the woman was struggling to slice him. Rachael went around to the passenger’s side and hopped in. Rayfield gave Maggie one mighty shove, sending her backward to fall on her ass again, then got in and gunned the engine. “I need to go pick up my fiancée,” he said, “so we’ll be making a little stop-off. That okay with you?”
“That’s fine,” Rachael said shakily.
“Good. Okay, then.” He turned the wheel to the left and screeched through a tight U-turn into the eastbound lanes. The vehicle swayed sickeningly, but it didn’t flip over.
Rachael looked in the rearview mirror and saw the woman folding up her pocketknife and dusting herself off. Soon she was out of sight. Rachael sat back in her seat and rubbed her eyes, sighing with relief at having been whisked away from danger. Then she stopped sighing and opened her eyes. Her situation seemed much better than it had been a few minutes before, but she was now stuck in a vehicle driven by a big black man she didn’t know at all. She looked over at him. He looked back at her and flashed a huge smile. His teeth were a brilliant white. He was too tall to sit comfortably, and his afro brushed the ceiling even though he had his shoulders hunched down.
“I saw you were in trouble,” he said by way of explanation. “So I went to get my car. Hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”
“Oh no,” Rachael said, feigning nonchalance. She smoothed her hair and wondered whether she looked completely awful after her ordeal. Then again, if this man was a rapist or a professional murderer, it might be better for her if she looked completely awful. “You showed up at just the right time.”
He smiled at her again. “Ed told me to keep an eye on that lady with the scar. Maggie. In case she decided to do something crazy. I guess she did. Ed knows what he’s talking about.” Rayfield seemed like an easygoing person, not like a rapist at all. His manner made Rachael relax just a little bit.
“So you know Scarface?”
“Oh, I’ve seen her before. But I don’t know her. Why’s she so mad at you?”
Rachael was at a loss. “I thought maybe she knew my sister.”
He shrugged his big shoulders. “Maybe Ed knows what’s up.”
“Who’s Ed?”
“Hmm?” Rayfield was momentarily distracted by something in his mirror. “Ed. He’s a friend of mine. Talks to gnomes. I can take you to meet him later on, if you want. Maybe he can tell you why Maggie hates you.” He was pressing his foot on the gas as he said this, accelerating gradually until he was going quite a bit faster than Rachael considered prudent, given the amount of traffic.
“That’s all right,” she said, watching nervously as they passed several cars. “I’ve met enough new people for one day. Would you mind slowing down?”
The big man looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he really did seem to be sorry. “It’s just that your friend Scarface, she’s right behind us.”
Rachael gasped and turned to look back. A sporty little red convertible was speeding to catch up with them. The driver was a very angry-looking woman with big sunglasses and a bright red gash across her forehead.
“What’s she doing?” Rachael asked. “Can you go any faster?”
“Put on your safety belt,” Rayfield replied. She barely had time to click her seatbelt on before he swerved left into oncoming traffic, turning onto a side street on squealing tires. Rachael saw the Pontiac convertible turning to follow them, but Maggie had to stop abruptly to avoid hitting a truck that was approaching in one of the oncoming lanes. That bought them a little time. Rayfield turned down another narrow street, then another, and soon Rachael was quite lost.
“I think I’m lost,” Rayfield told her a few minutes later. “You know where we are?”
She shook her head, fighting down nausea from the constant motion. Some of the streets met at oblique angles, and it was hard to tell which way they were going.
“Whoops,” said Rayfield as he rounded a corner and nearly collided head-on with Maggie in her convertible. He drove up on the sidewalk to get around her, and Rachael could hear the woman screaming at them as they passed.
Around another corner, and another, and they were on a street Rachael had never seen before. Rayfield ran two stop signs at high speed, then took a sharp left and came to a stop. “I think she’s still back there,” he said. He watched his mirror for a moment. “Yep. There she is. Hold on, now.” He shifted into first gear. There was a busy street up ahead, and it seemed that he was about to drive right into the traffic.
“I’d like to get out now, sir,” Rachael said. “Please.” She looked over at him, but he was focused on the road ahead.
“Left there,” he said to himself. Then he nodded and stepped on the gas.
Rachael heard herself screaming as the microbus shot out of the side street into traffic. Rayfield swerved to the left, and they were heading east again.
“I would very much like to get out of the car right now,” Rachael said, more firmly this time.
“Shucks,” said the big man. “There she is again. I thought that would do it.”
“Sir,” she tried again. “Rayfield! Let me out of the car! I’m going to throw up!” She wasn’t going to throw up, but she didn’t know how else to make him stop.
“It’s the stickers,” he was saying to himself. “Hard to lose somebody with all these stickers to give you away.” He glanced at Rachael. “You can roll down the window if you need to be sick. But I don’t think you should get out. That lady would run you right down. We don’t want that. Look, here we are.”
He honked at a car in the right lane, then changed lanes suddenly and cut them off. But he didn’t stay in that lane; he continued moving to the right until he was up on the sidewalk. Slamming on the brakes, he stopped in front of a restaurant and beeped the horn.
“Come on quick, Honeykins,” he said under his breath, waving to someone inside. “We got to go.”
* * *
Things became even more confusing for Rachael when Rayfield’s honeykins got into the back of the van. “I just met the most interesting person,” she said as she climbed in. “I don’t think you’re supposed to park here, Shnookie.”
“Crazy lady chasing us,” Rayfield explained. “Didn’t have time to look for a spot. Hold tight back there.” He hit the accelerator again and they surged forward amid the smell of burnt tires.
“Hi,” the fiancée said to Rachael.
“Joy, this is Rachael,” Rayfield said.
“Hello, Rachael,” Joy said absently. “Did you take Buns out to pee before we left?” she asked Rayfield.
“I sure did. No more puddles on my watch.”
Joy leaned forward so her head was right up between Rayfield and Rachael. She was looking at Rachael with wide, unblinking eyes. “Rayfield!” she said. “What’s going on?”
“Well,” the man said, screwing up his face as h
e thought about where to start. “Ed wanted me to watch that Maggie chick with the funny nose. Maggie was upset with Rachael here, so she tried to cut her with a knife. Then I picked her up—Rachael, that is—and Maggie tried to kill us both with her car. There she is now.”
The scary woman in the red Pontiac was bearing down on them. Rayfield jerked the wheel to the right to turn down La Cienega. Maggie tried to follow, but missed the turn and collided with a pickup truck at the corner.
“That should take care of her for a while,” Rayfield said. “Well, how about that? She’s still coming!”
* * *
The impact shook the car and jiggled Maggie’s brains inside her head, but she was determined to catch up with them. The driver of the pickup was trying to open his door, but her car had dented it and it wouldn’t open. Snarling with fury, she down-shifted and took off again. There was an unpleasant noise as a piece of her car came loose and dragged along the pavement, but it soon broke off and she was moving again. She wasn’t concerned about the car. That bozo Kajdas had transferred enough money into her savings account to buy a new one every year for two lifetimes. She wouldn’t buy a Pontiac next time, though; maybe a Trans Am. Red, of course.
And then… flashing lights. Maggie was quite adept at swearing, but even she was surprised at the new words that spilled forth from her mouth when she saw the police car closing in from behind. She watched the sticker-covered van speeding away and, just for a moment, considered chasing it. She might be able to outrun a police car. But she thought better of it and reluctantly pulled over to the curb.
She felt a palpable pain in her gut as the microbus faded into the shimmering distance. Actually, when she thought about it, the pain seemed to be coming from where her belly had hit the steering wheel when she’d hit the pickup. Another reason to hate that awful Jewish girl. All of this was her fault.
The cop took his sweet time getting out of his car. He strolled on up as if Maggie had all the time in the world to wait for him. Thinking fast, she undid the top two buttons of her blouse and checked herself in the rearview mirror. Then she saw her scar and the big cut on her forehead and remembered, for the thousandth time, that it wouldn’t be her chest that drew his attention. Her looks had been all she had, and that woman had taken them from her.
“Officer,” she said as he came up, “did you see that van that just took off?” She shifted her shoulders to expose some cleavage, but as she had feared, the cop didn’t take the bait. He watched her face with a stony expression.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied. “I saw it all.” He took out his ticket book.
“Officer―” She checked the name on his uniform. “Officer Sprague, you have to listen to me. The woman in that car up there… she attacked me! With a knife!”
The cop glanced at the passenger seat of her car, where she had thrown the folded pocketknife. “Like that one?” he asked.
“I took it away from her! And then… then I tried to catch up with her, but that stupid pickup truck for in the way, and you came along and I…” She could see that this was going nowhere, so she burst into tears.
“Ahhh, crap,” said the policeman.
“Aren’t you going to try to catch her?” Maggie asked tearfully. “She attacked me!”
He looked down La Cienega in the direction the others had gone. She could see him weighing his options. “Attacked you, you said?”
She nodded vigorously. “She almost cut me!” She broke down into big, dramatic sobs.
“But she didn’t actually cut you, right?”
Maggie paused in her sobbing. “No.”
“Then I think you need to calm down and drive a little better.”
“Okay,” she said meekly. “Does that mean I can go now?”
The cop shook his head and started writing her a ticket. Maggie pounded the steering wheel and shrieked in fury.
* * *
Joy was staring at Rachael from an uncomfortably close distance. “Don’t you see it, Rayfield?”
They were inching along, stuck in a monstrous traffic jam on the freeway. Rayfield tapped the steering wheel nervously, not quite in time with a Joe Cocker song that was playing on the radio. “See what?” he said.
“Don’t you think she looks like somebody we know?”
He looked over at Rachael, squinting his eyes. “She looks a little like Doris, maybe.”
Joy snorted loudly, making Rachael jump. “A little! She looks exactly like her.”
“You think she’s related to Doris?”
Rachael was contemplating jumping out of the car. They were moving slowly enough that she could get out without hurting herself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told them. “I don’t know anybody named Doris.”
“Her name’s not Doris,” said Joy.
“I still think of her as Doris,” Rayfield said. “Can’t get used to calling her Sarah.”
Rachael paused with her finger on the door lock. Hearing that name sent a jolt through her entire body like an electric shock. In her mind, she was back at the dinner table at Thanksgiving, watching helplessly as her sister murdered their father with her unnatural power. It was such a rotten thing to do, killing your father on Thanksgiving. “You know Sarah?” she asked quietly. She had watched that scene again and again in slow motion every night while trying to sleep. Her father had had his faults—he had been a dirtbag in some ways, she had to admit. The things he had done to Sarah, and had then started doing to Rachael after Sarah had left… But he was their father. That hadn’t meant a thing to Sarah; she’d killed him without a second thought. And then she’d run off, leaving Rachael to pick up the pieces and take care of their mother.
“Yes!” Joy exclaimed. Then she started talking very rapidly. “It all started when I was living in Denver, and I had these dreams about Ed, but I had never met Ed. Then Perla and I came to Los Angeles and found him, and he went off to kill Jim Morrison, but he want to do that, and in the end he didn’t do it! Sarah was with him. Like, with him, you know? You know!” She was practically bubbling over with excitement.
“Where is she now?” Rachael asked, struggling mightily to keep her face from showing her emotions.
“New York,” said Rayfield.
“San Francisco,” Joy corrected him. She turned her wide-eyed gaze back on Rachael. “Are you related to her?”
“She’s my sister,” said Rachael. The strain became too much, and tears filled her eyes in spite of her best efforts. But they weren’t tears of love. They were just the opposite. “I want to see her.”
“Oh!” Joy said as a piece of the puzzle fell into place inside her brain. “That’s why Maggie was after you! Something happened between the two of them, Sarah and Maggie. Something bad. She must think you’re Sarah!”
Rachael was no longer listening. Her horrible day had just become very slightly less horrible. “Can you take me to see her?” she asked Joy.
“We’re having a meeting tonight,” Joy replied. “But―”
“I want to go.”
“—but we can’t take you.”
“Why not? You have to. I want to see my sister.” She did want to see her sister, more than anything.
“I can’t take you,” said Joy, “because it’s not in a place you can go to. It’s… our meetings happen someplace that you have to learn how to get to.”
This was making no sense, and Rachael was losing patience. “Show me, then!”
Joy and Rayfield exchanged a look. “I think Ed has to teach you,” Rayfield said. “The meetings happen inside his head.”
“Inside his…?”
“His head,” said Joy. “Ed taught us how to go there. You have to meditate, and then you fly away, and then you find where Ed is. We meet by the big tree. I don’t know how to explain it.”
Rachael looked out the window at the traffic. It wasn’t too late to jump out. Her mother would soon be wondering where she was. These people were out of their minds. But something had caused her to c
ross paths with them. Barbara would have called it “kismet.” Rachael didn’t believe in kismet. But these weird people had shown up in her life at just the right moment, and it would be stupid to run away now. They could lead her to Sarah.
“We can tell her that we found you,” Joy said. “She’ll want to see you. We can figure out a way.”
“That would be wonderful of you,” said Rachael, smiling gratefully. And she was grateful for this, truly grateful. Her new friends would reunite her with Sarah.
And then Rachael would finally get to kill her sister.
14
Better Wet than Dead
Danny stayed in the village for more than a month, waiting for the rain to stop long enough for him to do what he needed to do. He was still coughing badly. The fever was long gone, but thick congestion remained in his lungs. He worked with the old men every day, helped the women clean up after meals, played with the children. All the while he was devising a plan and dreading the day he would have to carry it out.
The man with the gimpy hand was dying. He appeared visibly weaker than just a few weeks before. The others helped him get around, and sometimes he slept when the others were working. The kind old man was always at his side. Danny thought they might be brothers.
One night, Danny gave up trying to sleep and went out of his hut for some air. The clouds had thinned out after sunset, and a gibbous moon was peeking through. He forced himself not to cough as he made his way out of the village to the tunnel in the ground.
In the moonlight, the opening of the tunnel was no more than a dark spot on the side of the hill. Danny looked into that darkness and knew he was not going inside. With all the rain they’d had, it might collapse on him. The children would find his corpse in a day or two. No, no tunnel for him. The man with the gimpy hand had led the soldiers to the supply depot without using the tunnel. There had to be another way to get there.
The Music of the Machine (The Book of Terwilliger 2) Page 21
