She could certainly empathize. Even now, going on seven, simply walking up the street made her feel lethargic. By the time she reached the shop, she was gasping, sweating, and made a face at Nate, who looked up from the counter and said, “Ugh.”
She slumped toward the back. “You’re fired, little boy.”
He laughed. “You fire me all the time.”
She slapped the air with one weary hand while she held her hair away from her neck with the other. She wondered if skinny women like Helen or Tessa ever sweated like an elephant, or how chubbos like Farber managed to live through the day without their hearts exploding.
The air-conditioning raised gooseflesh on her arms, but she was still too hot. The back room was cool—it had to be, because of the tapes—but the tiny bathroom was a sauna because she insisted the door be kept closed.
Her reflection told her Nate was right. Ugh. No question about it. All that hair gone to string and frizz, flushed cheeks making her look like a chipmunk. No wonder Casey didn’t do anything but talk. A woman like that didn’t deserve anything more.
Oh, Christ, let’s not start, okay? the reflection scolded; it’s too damn hot.
She unbuttoned her short-sleeve blouse, grabbed a washcloth, and soaked it under the cold-water tap.
Hot. That’s what she was, all right, and not only because of the weather.
She wrung the cloth out and passed it over her forehead, her cheeks, her neck. Slowly, to the flat of her chest. Shuddering at the coolness, feeling the heat. Soaking it again and wringing it out and daubing at her breasts, shivering and smiling at a trickle of cold that slipped into her bra.
If you had a slave, she thought.
Her left hand gripped the sink’s rim.
“Hey, Kay?”
How young would he be?
“Kay?”
Big mistake, letting him call you by your first name. Not good business. If he gets too familiar, how are you going to let him go? If you let him go.
Slowly, over her chest, across her stomach.
The cool was lukewarm.
She didn’t care.
She might well have to let him go. Without that extra rental money, this place barely allowed her to eat, much less turn a decent profit. Thank God for the savings account; some judicious withdrawals were the only things that had kept her going this season. And the fact that Nate, when he worked here, worked for free rentals.
Soak the cloth, wring it out, start again at the top.
Slowly. Very slowly.
How young?
“Kay? Look, I—Oh.”
She didn’t jump, didn’t turn. She looked square in the mirror and saw him in the doorway, doing his damnedest not to look, and failing so miserably it was almost comical.
“What?” she said gently.
Washcloth still moving; slowly, very slowly.
“Um ...” He glanced away. “Mr. Balanov’s coming.”
“Okay.”
The washcloth moved, pushing across the tops of her breasts; slowly, very slowly.
What can he really see? she wondered; what does he want to see?
“Nate,” she said evenly, maybe a scolding, shifting her gaze to her chest, then back to his eyes.
He got the message. A hasty nod and he was gone, and she watched the beads of water shimmering on her neck, on the push and rise of her breasts, on the back of her hand.
You’ve been watching too many of those movies, she thought; young studs, older women, who the hell died and made you sexy?
A smile for the mirror.
A deep breath, and she wondered.
When the bell rang, she folded the cloth and draped it over the sink, fussed with her buttons but didn’t tuck the blouse in, and fluffed her hair, grimacing when it didn’t do anything but hang there. A step back revealed water spots on the blouse, darkly translucent. She didn’t care, and even if she did, there was nothing she could do about it now anyway.
She reached the front the moment Petyr Balanov walked in, and she bristled automatically. Enid may be a royal pain in the ass with all her moralizing and preaching, but he was far worse. He never preached, never lectured, but his disapproval was abundantly clear. His manner didn’t help either—tall, always impeccably dressed whether in a suit or, as now, in casual and expensive clothes, and always with a deliberate air of condescension.
He was lord of the manor; she was little more than a peasant and he never let her forget it.
“Hi, Mr. Balanov,” Nate greeted from the register. “How’s Dimmy and Sonya?”
The man ignored him. He stood just inside the threshold and waited, hands at his sides, head slightly back, eyes reminding her of a hawk who had spotted its prey and was taking its time.
“Can I help you, Pete?’’ she said, knowing he hated that.
He said nothing. His gaze glanced off Nate.
Games I have no time for, she thought, and used a jerk of her head to send Nate into the back, making sure her expression let him know she didn’t want to. When he was gone, she leaned against the counter, arms folded carefully under her breasts.
He still didn’t move, the outside glare darkening his face, making him seem taller, fleshed out with shadow. “I am asking you, Miss Pollard, to remove those films from your store.”
She didn’t need to ask. “Sorry.”
“I do not think it an unreasonable request.”
She shifted slightly, not having to look to realize she hadn’t buttoned the blouse all the way up. His eyes didn’t move, but she knew that he saw. “Are you a spokesman, Pete? I mean, for a group or something?”
He shook his head.
“Then I can’t help you.”
“Can’t?”
“Look,” she told him, “if I do what you ask—”
“Demand, Miss Pollard. Demand.”
“—then I’ll have to do the same for everyone else who has a gripe against one kind of movie or another. And that would leave me with nothing but Disney in here.” She smiled sweetly. “I wouldn’t be in business very long, now would I.”
“I do not care. You have disturbed my wife, and I cannot allow it.”
“Too bad.”
He smiled, a toothsome, wicked smile that lasted only a second, just long enough for him to take three long steps toward her, long enough for her to see the nothing in his eyes.
A glance toward the tape room before he said, “I am giving you fair warning. If you do not remove that filth, you will regret it most sincerely.”
His breath smelled of mint.
He was too close, but she had a feeling that if she pushed him away, he would break her arm, or worse, without exerting himself at all.
“Is that a threat?”
“Oh, absolutely, Miss Pollard. Absolutely.”
The smile again before he turned away and walked to the door, opened it, and looked back.
“The worst kind of threat, Miss Pollard. The worst kind you can think of. Ask Mr. Wishum. If you can find him.”
She would have yelled, but he was already gone, one hand in his pocket, the other waving politely to someone she couldn’t see. So calm, so ordinary. The urge to scream was replaced by a spasm that rocked her against the counter. She gripped the edge until it passed, then made her way shakily to the back. A sour taste filled her throat as she pushed by Nate and flung open the bathroom door, lurched in and sagged against the sink, willing herself not to throw up.
It was possible she had overreacted. Surely he couldn’t have actually meant...
“Are you gonna call the cops?”
Startled, she looked into the mirror.
Nate was furious. “He threatened to hurt you. Do you want me to call the cops? I could be a witness or something.”
Her eyes closed, and her knees gave way. A small involuntary cry as she scrambled to grab the basin, but his arm took her waist and she leaned gratefully against him as he brought her out to the chair. As soon as she was seated, he reached for the telephone.
&
nbsp; She grabbed his wrist. “Not yet,” she said.
He didn’t say a word.
Oh Lord, Kay, what are you doing?
“Not yet.”
* * * *
8
Dimitri sat on the edge of the pool, feet dangling in the water, Sonya beside him, silently mimicking every move he made. Supper was over, his mother on the lounge on the other side, and his father gone. Dimitri didn’t know where, and didn’t ask. That was a house rule—you never asked where Papa went. Sometimes, when he came back, he brought candy or ice cream; sometimes, when he came back, he played with them in the water; sometimes, when he came back, he stood on the deck and said nothing, hands clasped behind his back, watching his family until Momma realized he was there. Then she would grab her towel and say, be good, children, and go inside.
Sometimes he heard noises after that.
Sometimes he heard nothing.
“Dimmy?” Sonya had tired of the game and kicked at her own, slow, speed.
He grunted.
“Do the birds really talk to you?”
He kept his voice low. “Sometimes.”
“That’s neat.”
No, it’s not, he thought; no, it’s really scary.
She looked at him sideways. “You know what I’d say if they talked to me?”
“What?”
“I’d say, stop scaring my brother, it isn’t nice. I’d say, I’ll let you play in my castle if you stop it. People shouldn’t do things like that, so you can play in my castle if you don’t do it anymore.” She nodded sharply. “That’s what I’d say.”
He rocked against her.
She rocked back.
He said, “Father Chisholm knows it too.”
She frowned. “Knows what?”
“That we’re all gonna die.”
* * * *
3
A
voice in the dark:
Wake up, children, wake up, it’s time to go.
* * * *
A sleepy mumbled question while stumbling in the dark:
Oh, he’ll know, Stan, he’ll know. But by then, it won’t matter.
And quiet laughter.
* * * *
A groan and protest against the shadow in the dark:
Don’t be silly, time to go. And Lupé, dear... don’t leave the gun.
And quiet laughter.
* * * *
A whimpering, and a giggling at the smile in the dark:
Wake up, darling, time to go. You‘ll like it there, I promise.
* * * *
And quiet laughter.
* * * *
4
1
S
unset, no clouds, the stars and moon arrogantly cold.
A car, squat and ordinary, parked on the shoulder, on the far side of the bend just before Maple Landing began. Diño Escobar wiped his face hard with his left hand, his right gripping the steering wheel so tightly it trembled. Beside him, a tree stump of a man sat placidly, gaze taking in the woodland that surrounded them.
Escobar didn’t like the dark outside the car, but he didn’t like more the lump of gauze and surgical tape on the side of his head. As soon as he could walk without feeling nauseated, he had checked himself out of the hospital. No one had protested, especially when Miguel Astante arrived to pick him up. They took a room in a motel by a nearby lake, and he had slept through the afternoon, Miguel waking him in time for a late supper he could barely eat. Not because he sometimes saw double, but because of his anger. He had let an old man, a smelly old man, best him. He didn’t care what his employers thought; this had become a matter of honor. Young men wouldn’t obey him if old men laughed and beat him.
By the time he got back into the car, his anger had flared to rage.
“Just there,” he said, nodding toward the bend.
A glow beyond, outlining the trees, but even with the windows down, they couldn’t hear a thing save the rumble of the engine. Not even a cricket.
“You sure?”
“It’s done anyway, most of it. They won’t need him. We just finish a little early, that’s all. A lesson.”
Miguel shrugged. “If you say so.”
The voice suggested doubt, and a warning. If Escobar was wrong, they’d both better head for the nearest border.
Escobar touched the bandage, winced, hissed.
“I say so.”
* * * *
2
He lay prostrate before the altar.
Black cassock, bare feet, arms outstretched to either side, forehead on the carpet.
The sun was down at last, two candles on brass burning on either side of the cross. No other light, no other sound but the sound of his breathing.
He had no idea if this would do any good, but he could think of nothing else to do. Once sure he wouldn’t be waylaid by well-wishers and the curious, he had left Farber’s clinic and walked home, shivering, hugging himself, finally unable to stand the walls and the fireplace and the furniture anymore. For a while he had thought to visit the meadow, then changed his mind and returned to the church. He had met no one on the way. And once in his office, he had taken out his Bible and started to read. The words were there, but the comfort wasn’t. The next thing he knew, he had stripped off his boots and socks, put on the floor-length black cassock, and knelt before the altar.
A minute later he was prostrate.
It seemed the natural thing to do.
What he wanted was an explanation. Everyone else had one; the only one who didn’t was him.
He was, at the same time, disgusted and afraid.
Disgusted, because he had actually dared, for one horrifying second, to believe that he had somehow performed, not a miracle, but an exercise in the kind of power he had always believed a true holy man could wield. Without an ounce of humility, he knew he was not holy. He was, as Helen had said, a man, not a god. He had vices, he had sins, he had, Lord help him, pride. And that pride was what had nearly collapsed him after the swarm had left the van, because that was the second when he had thought, I did it.
Not afterward, when Farber blamed the heat and Micah the van and Odam the fact that the bees had already begun to lift.
Not then, when he knew that one of them, or all of them, were right.
Not afterward, when common sense and his own sense of the natural had regained control.
It was the moment, it was his voice, it was the deadening of the air and the heat and the floating.
I did it.
He had believed it.
He was afraid because he hadn’t been able to stop himself— I did it—or stop himself from wondering if maybe his friends were wrong.
I did it.
So he prayed while the light died, not expecting a heavenly voice to chastise him for his vanity or absolve him for his pride or strike him down for his hubris; what he expected, what he prayed for, was the return of the peace that had taken him so long to nurture.
please don’t
please don’t hurt me
He wouldn’t have.
That’s what neither the police nor the judge would believe in the nightmare-frantic days following his arrest. He couldn’t have hurt that terrified child any more than he could have hurt a helpless animal.
He was a coward.
He used his size and his appearance, but he seldom used his fists. And then, only when he had been attacked first.
He was a coward.
The girl had known it. She had visited him in prison, just that one time, and when he couldn’t find anything to say other than to stutter an apology for making her cry, her expression told him all he needed to know.
Disgust; disgust and pity.
Even now, after all these years, he didn’t know her name.
But she had known, and if there hadn’t been forgiveness, at least there had been understanding.
Symphony - [Millennium Quartet 01] Page 14
