by Jay Brandon
“Show me, Michael!”
So, agonizingly, Michael led the way through the front door, around the corner to the spot where the sheriff . . . but there was no Officer Cates.
“He’s gone!” Michael said. “He was right here, I swear.”
“Don’t ever lie to me, Michael,” she said. “Don’t ever lie to me again!”
Kathy didn’t ask where they were going. She stayed sunk listlessly in her seat. Michael drove back the way they’d come, up the twisting road past the marine research institute, through the little neighborhood behind the institute, and out onto the street that went straight to the ferry landing. He was still surprised they’d been able to make it to the car after all.
Kathy did stir herself then. “What’s over here?”
“Just driving.” He might have to grab her and hold her for a minute, but he could do that. If he got very lucky a ferry would be waiting, the attendant would wave Michael straight onto it. Once they were out on the water they’d be safe. Kathy would be angry, but he was prepared to live with the consequences. Because she would be alive. That was the only thing that mattered.
“Why aren’t you turning?” Kathy asked, sitting up. Instead of getting into the left turn lane to head back into town, Michael was in the lane that only went straight, and only to the ferry. There was nothing else ahead of them.
“I just thought I’d circle around,” he said, but he could see she didn’t believe him. They had definitely grown much closer during these few days on the island. Kathy could read his mind now.
And Michael could read hers. Even as she was reaching for the door handle Michael took his foot off the brake and hit the gas, grabbing Kathy’s wrist at the same time. She tried to shake him off; he leaned across her to lock the car door.
Headlights. Another car – an Oldsmobile – appeared, heading
toward them at a rapid rate of speed. Suddenly, the Subaru lurched to an
abrupt stop, as they felt more than heard the sickening crunch of metal.
Kathy jerked free and leaped out of the door that had sprung open. Her face was so red Michael was afraid she’d suffered a cut. But that wasn’t where the blood sprang from. She was furious.
“Liar!” Kathy yelled through the open car window. She walked quickly away.
“Kathy!”
Michael sprang out his own door and started after her, but a burly hand grabbed his arm. Michael turned toward the driver of the Oldsmobile and found a face like rusted corrugated iron thrust into his.
“Where d’ya think you’re goin’, jerkface?” Ironface spat. ”Nobody’s walkin’ away ‘til the cops come. You’d better have car insurance, kid, or you’re gonna need life insurance.”
Ironface had dark eyes set close together. A gray mustache like mange on a canine. Teeth past yellow on their way to green. Lips drawn up like they wanted to disappear. Michael hadn’t even thought about what had stopped his car, until he looked past the angry-faced driver and saw steam rising.
“Just a minute,” Michael said, trying to claw the man’s adamant fingers off his arm, but when he turned Kathy was already out of sight.
Ironface claimed his car’s injuries might mount into the thousands of dollars. He refused to let Michael go until he’d extracted from him his driver’s license number and home address, each item of information mollifying him further, as if they were cash payments. He’d liked the look of the credit cards in Michael’s wallet, too.
A police patrol car, lights flashing, drove up alongside the two wrecked vehicles. The patrolman emerged from the car, and Michael recognized Officer Cates! Again. Alive. Michael saw that his head was bandaged under his cowboy hat.
Cates brushed his mustache with his thumb, his eyes on Michael.
“I answered that prowler call at your house, and the next thing I
knew I got sucker punched from behind. I came to in my patrol car on the highway. Can you explain that?”
“No, officer. I . . . ”
“Just step away from the car, sir,” Cates said.
He opened the Subaru’s passenger door and popped open the glove compartment. He reached in and brought out a revolver. Jack’s revolver. How did it get in Michael’s car? The policeman smiled at Michael.
“It’s got blood on the handle. Mine, if I’m not mistaken. Mr. Shaw, I guess we’re going to be here awhile.” Cates pulled his head out of the passenger window, and in that moment, Michael jumped back in the driver’s seat, started the car, and drove off, doors open, tires squealing. The driver’s door and passenger door slammed shut as the Subaru sped out of sight.
At first Kathy ran, her stupid flip-flops flapping and trying to pull loose, and even when she turned a corner out of sight of Michael and slowed down, she kept striding quickly, arms swinging, muttering furiously. The fog was lifting. She walked through the little neighborhood they’d passed, where many of the houses were raised on beams. Pretty houses, some of them weather-beaten, all somehow rustic and seafaring. It was a homey little area. It calmed her.
Again anger had been her friend, lifting her out of the mire of her thoughts, but the anger faded. She couldn’t stay mad at Michael, he’d only been trying to save her. Did she need saving?
Kathy walked through the grounds of the research institute and found a shortcut to the beach.
There the waves rolled ceaselessly in, throwing themselves down on the beach and running up it, committing suicide in their attempts to reach her. Each wave gave up and fell back, leaving a residue of dirty foam. Kathy walked on, toward the water.
Jack was beside her. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been there. She
didn’t turn to him, but she could see him out of the corner of her eye. He wore a pale shirt, its sleeves rolled up and the shirt front only half- buttoned, so the wind made it billow around him. Kathy felt a shiver from his nearness, but the chill was quickly overwhelmed by the other emotion that came pouring up out of her.
“Where have you been?” she said. She kept her head down, shaking
it from side to side, as if talking to herself.
Jack laughed. “I’ve been dead, Kathy. I’ve been anywhere I want,” he said pleasantly. “Now I want to be with you.”
She stopped walking and turned to him. Fury built in her. She hated his smile most of all, his humoring her. Suddenly her arm jerked back of its own accord, and she punched him as hard as she could in the chest. It was very satisfying. Jack just took it. His smile fell off, but his hands stayed at his side. Kathy glared at him. Seeing him intensified the ache she felt, the ache that consumed her, so that her whole body felt like a bruise.
Jack replied calmly and clearly: cajolingly but with no apology.
“It happened like it had to happen,” he said. “I can’t leave the island, so you came to me. And now we’re together. Look: We are together.”
Kathy hugged herself against the chill. Jack had the easiest charm imaginable. Kathy was certain many women gravitated toward him. It wasn’t a lack of other choices that had drawn Jack to Kathy. He had chosen her. “Oh, Jack,” she said, resignedly. Tears stood in her eyes, ready to fall.
Jack spoke softly to her as she cried, murmuring comfort with words that didn’t matter, it was only the tone of his voice that soothed her, gentle and insistent as the waves that pulsed close to her.
Kathy turned and walked along the beach toward the cottage. She and Jack passed a few fishermen, hunkered down along the shore, dressed in T-shirts and caps, and tennis shoes without socks, lines flung hopefully out into the dirty water.
There was a brisk breeze off the Gulf. It blew her hair, and Jack’s. She could feel his arm close to her own.
“What’s it like?” she asked suddenly, and didn’t have to explain her question. Jack’s face lit up.
“It’s better than you can imagine. It makes you realize how pointless everything else was. People talk about wasting their lives, but once it’s gone you see that life is a waste no matter what. It’s so short, and
this – the freedom is what’s best, I think. You don’t have to be anywhere, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want, no alarm clock going off in your ear in the morning, no frivolous job to go to.”
“Do you sleep?” Kathy asked. She had stopped walking and turned toward him. She studied Jack’s face. His eyes were the same silvery holes in the world as always. His pale skin was clear.
He frowned slightly at her question. “Sometimes I’m not here,” he said slowly, “but I don’t think it’s sleep.”
Kathy nodded. “What’s the worst part?”
Jack studied, looking out past her. “It’s lonely,” he finally said. “But what about your wife?” Kathy said.
“Vivian and I were never married!” Jack said, his voice emphatic and almost angry. So Jack and she were alike in that way as well, Kathy thought. Walking wounded, he with his bandaged arm, she with her bandaged hand. World weary. Art lovers, music lovers, history lovers, book lovers – lovers.
Kathy wanted to reach for him. He didn’t seem to notice how she
stepped closer to him. He stood, shirt rippling and hair blowing, but eyes steadily open as though he couldn’t feel the wind.
Kathy looked at the Gulf again. For a moment the waves seemed to halt their march. The water looked unearthly, a foam-soft pathway. The gulf between this world and the next. She felt eternity beckon. It was the longest part of existence. It made this life seem inconsequential, Jack had said.
“Are you even real?” she asked suddenly. “Have I just slipped off ?” “I exist in your mind,” Jack said.
Kathy turned to him, startled to hear an illusion admit its imaginary nature. He looked so real. She could see his chest, the muscles of his abdomen. His lower lip looked moist but the upper one dry, a phenomenon Kathy remembered from their first meeting. She remembered so much as she looked at him, more than her mind could hold all at once.
“But I am really here,” Jack continued. “Everything happens inside your mind. That’s the only place everything exists. And the mind lives on, Kathy.”
He touched her. He reached out very slowly and ran his hands over her, first one hand, then both. She was naked. She was wearing the sundress, but where Jack’s hands touched her she was naked. “The mermaids are singing, Kathy.”
He came closer, putting his arms around her. She just stood, not pulling away, not leaning into him. His lips touched her temple, her eyelid. “Don’t cry,” he said. “We’ve done everything we were supposed to
do. We found each other.”
“Now we’re both lost,” she whispered.
She wanted to lean into him, to put her head on his shoulder, to fall.
Michael drove very slowly, looking in all directions. Kathy could be anywhere. He tried to reach out for her mentally, hoping he could envision her pathway.
He drove onto the grounds of the research institute and looked at the white buildings searchingly. He reasoned that Kathy might have gone inside, but he didn’t think she would have, he didn’t think she would have stopped. She wasn’t hiding, she was running. Not just from Michael, but toward another goal.
The car sputtered a little, but it was drivable.
Stupid. It had been one of the stupidest things Michael had ever done, trying to kidnap Kathy off the island. During the short drive trying to find her he’d convinced himself she was right. Dragging her away from
Port Aransas wasn’t a solution; she could always come back on her own, any time. No, they had to stay until they came to an ending.
But the possible endings made Michael shudder.
He wound around the low buildings and out the institute’s entrance. When he turned onto the winding road to the beach he was surrounded by dunes. At a glance they looked impenetrable. Michael had both car windows open and could smell the sea. He looked from side to side, but Kathy could have eluded him merely by striking out through the dunes rather than staying on the road.
He stopped. There was a sound from behind the wall of dunes. A car coming?
He drove on a little way. The sound kept pace with him. Once he shot his eyes quickly to the right.
He stepped on the gas. In his rearview mirror the road flickered as something blotted it out for a moment. He looked back. Nothing, just his own breathing and a creepy feeling in the back of his neck. But those were enough to make him drive faster.
The car shuddered as if there were dirt in its gas line. Michael leaned toward the steering wheel, coaxing it.
Something raced out from behind one of the institute buildings and slammed into the side of the Subaru. Michael’s head snapped sideways, hitting his forehead on the rear view mirror. He was stunned for a moment; in his daze the impact seemed more like a sonic boom than the buckling of his car door panel. The force seemed to have struck the whole world. He saw the faces of two policemen not more than a few feet from his own.
And then something smashed into the car again, like an enormous fist pounding the roof. The car’s ceiling sagged, close to Michael’s head, beginning to trap him. He dodged, throwing up an arm, threw the car into reverse and stepped down hard on the gas. The car shot backward. That was instinct, flight response.
It worked. He heard something falling, thudding down the hood of
the car, but he was looking backward to stay on the road, he couldn’t risk a look. Behind him everything looked normal. The road curved back into the marine research institute. On its other side would be the road that led to the ferry.
Michael whipped the car around in a semicircle and put it in drive. He saw the patrol car moving behind him.
Ahead all was clear, though. He roared through the private roads of the institute, almost tipping onto two wheels as he took sharp corners tire squealing. In moments he was in a residential neighborhood and in another moment he was on the road to the ferry, approaching the intersection where he’d had his wreck. Straight ahead was the way out.
Instead of taking it, Michael turned.
He turned and took another road, one he hardly knew, but it went the correct direction. All roads here eventually led to the beach. Michael stayed hunched like a turtle as he drove, but nothing blocked his way. It seemed he’d been forgotten.
The cottage. She must be at the cottage. It seemed reasonable. As reasonable as he or she or anyone could be. He sped through the streets. He raced down Sanders Street, pulling to a sudden stop, leaping from the car and neither shutting off the engine nor closing the open driver’s side
door.
He put one hand on the railing and leaped over it, landing on his feet in the loose sand. He reached the porch in what seemed like two long strides, calling, “Kathy! Kathy!”
He burst through the door into the living room and stopped dead. The cottage was silent. He raced room to room. Empty. There was no sign of Kathy.
She was not there. That was all he knew. What he did not know was
whether she had been to the cottage at all, or if she was still alone.
If Kathy was still on foot, he reasoned, she couldn’t have gone far. He took reassurance in that idea for a moment, until he realized that if she was
with Jack, She could be anywhere on the island.
Island Time. The phrase from his own thoughts struck him forcibly. He got back in his car, backing and turning from the cottage, making his way back to the road.
Once on the pavement, he drove faster, barely able to see through what was now a cracked and dust-caked windshield.
He pushed the Subaru, pushed it to its limits, careening around curves, gunning it down straight-aways. Pushing it. He had to find her. He had to. But suddenly the car reached its limits – hesitating, coughing, staggering, dying. It had given out, perhaps the result of the wreck, or perhaps natural causes. Whatever the reason, the car had stopped. Considering it with a sad smile, he abandoned the car. He ran. He had to run to the Lefflers.
He ran down the highway, down two side roads, and finally up the drive, but headlights came up behind him. He hur
ried off the road out of the lights, taking cover by a gorse bush as a F-120 pickup truck came down the road. He couldn’t make out the driver’s face in the dark.
After the truck passed, the dust billowed in white, dry powder. He covered his mouth and nose and staggered up the road behind the pickup, following it up to the house.
C hapter 8
he Leffler house rose dark and forbidding against the sky.
The F-120 stopped in front of the Leffler’s garage, and the driver jumped out. He was huge and as he stepped into the light coming from the open garage, Michael saw that it was the giant from the beach volleyball game. Michael had hardly a moment to process this image when Vivian came into the garage. She was in a simple dress and blouse and carrying a pocketbook. She opened the purse, and stood in the garage light while she rummaged though the purse pockets. Soon, she produced a bundle of bills which the giant took from her hand like a serf from the Lady of the Manor. He seemed to want to say something – to engage her in some way
– but she simply closed her pocketbook and made a slight gesture with her
hand, a gesture at once familiar and dismissive.
The giant hovered awkwardly, then backed away, as a footman from the throne, and picking up reverse speed as he got closer to the truck. As the garage door lowered itself like the door to Ali Baba’s cave, the giant leapt to the driver’s seat and with a roar of the high horsepower engine raced off down the road toward the highway.
After waiting a few moments, Michael approached the Lefflers’ front door. At first, he banged on the door, then pushed it open. Inside, his eyes encountered an unexpected sight. The house was empty. There were no photos, paintings, or carpets. Where there had been a bubbling fountain, there was only an empty space. Where there had been marble statuary,
