But Kathleen, from the back seat, shouted out, ‘Lloyd! Here!’ and passed over one of the car’s cigarette-lighters. The spiral tip was glowing red-hot.
Without hesitation, Lloyd pressed the cigarette-lighter on to the back of Otto’s hand. There was a sizzle of puckering skin, and Otto let out a deep, outraged roar. Just as they skidded past the entrance to the inn at Rancho Santa Fe, he released his hold on the steering-wheel, and Lloyd twisted around in his seat to see him flying and tumbling across the triangular green, arms and legs, over and over, a malevolent cartwheel, the long-legged scissorman from Struwwelpeter.
‘We did it!’ Franklin whooped. ‘We did it! We did it! Hot dog, hot dog!’
Lloyd kept his eyes on Otto as they sped around the next curve and headed toward the coast. A second before the green disappeared from view, Lloyd saw him climbing on to his feet. With a sense of dread and disappointment, he realized that Otto obviously hadn’t been badly hurt. Kathleen had seen him, too, because she turned to Lloyd and her expression was grim.
‘He’s not going to forgive us for that,’ she said.
‘Hot dog!’ Franklin kept repeating, with that odd deaf-school pronunciation. It came out more like ‘Hudduh, hudduh!’
‘You did good, Franklin,’ Lloyd praised him.
‘The question is, where do we go now?’ Kathleen wanted to know. ‘We may have got away, but Otto’s going to come after us, for sure.’
Lloyd said, ‘I just want to lie low till Wednesday, till they’ve completed their Transformation. Then at least we’ll have a chance of getting Celia and your husband back. I know they’ll have changed. I know we may not even be able to love them any more. Maybe they won’t be able to love us any more. But we have to give them that one chance. They can’t stay as Salamanders. You heard what Otto said, they’re really volatile. They’re as much of a danger to themselves as they are to other people.’
‘Maybe we should drive up the coast, and find ourselves a quiet hotel,’ Kathleen suggested.
‘Well, that sounds romantic, but I’ve got a better idea. Let’s drive out to that Indian place in the Anza Borrego. They had trailers to rent out there, and that’s just about the last place that Otto would think of looking for us. Then as soon as the Transformation’s over, we can take that young Indian boy to the police.’
‘What for?’
‘He’s our only witness that Otto was chanting when the bus was burning, that’s what for. What other witnesses do we have?’
Kathleen shrugged. ‘I guess you’re right.’
Franklin said, ‘I can’t believe it. We did it, we got away!’
‘It’s all thanks to you, buddy,’ Lloyd told him.
‘I never saw Otto so angry,’ Franklin grinned.
‘Oh good, that makes me feel a whole lot better. As if he isn’t frightening enough when he isn’t angry.’
Kathleen said, ‘We could call the police now, you know. They’d find the Salamanders, at least.’
Lloyd shook his head. ‘There’d be a massacre, no doubt about it. And you’d blow any chance of seeing Mike again.’
Kathleen stared at her own reflection in the black-tinted window. ‘I’m not too sure that I want to.’
‘Well,’ said Lloyd. He suddenly realized he was still holding the cigarette-lighter, and he handed it back to Kathleen with a wry grin. ‘It’s a damned hard life, so long as you don’t weaken.’
‘Weaken?’ she said, and he could see in the window that she was crying. ‘No, I’m not going to weaken. I’m just a little tired.’
‘Were things okay between you and Mike?’ Lloyd asked her.
She wiped her eyes with her fingers, ‘Not particularly, even before he went for his medical.’
‘Now you feel guilty because you don’t care for him as much as you think you should?’
She nodded. ‘The trouble is, how can I explain that to Tom? He worshipped Mike, really worshipped him. Half the time I don’t know whether I’m really feeling grief-stricken, or whether I’m acting it for Tom’s sake. That makes me feel so bad.’
Lloyd said, ‘I guess that everybody feels the same way, when they lose somebody close. I remember when my grandfather died. I was really upset, but at the same time I had this peculiar sense of relief that I didn’t have to worry about him any more. I was almost happy for him. We all get born, we all have to die. I guess there really isn’t any reason why we shouldn’t be happy at both events.’
Franklin said, ‘Helmwige will never die.’
‘That’s a creepy thought, isn’t it?’ said Lloyd. ‘That woman’s still going to be forty-something when we’re dead and gone.’
Kathleen asked, ‘Will she really never die? Never, ever? Can’t anybody kill her? What happens if she’s involved in an auto accident, or somebody shoots her, or something like that?’
They were driving down toward Solana Beach, under the interstate. Lloyd said, ‘Take a left here, on to the freeway. I want to take a flying look at my house, before we head out for the desert, and maybe check with Waldo, if I can.’
Franklin swerved on to the entry ramp with squealing tyres. Lloyd glanced behind them. ‘It’s okay, you can slow down now. I don’t want to get pulled over by the cops for a traffic violation, not now.’
‘Sorry,’ said Franklin, although it sounded more like ‘howwy’. But as they joined the almost-deserted I–5, he said, ‘They can be killed by Him.’
‘Who?’ asked Lloyd. ‘Who can be killed by whom?’
‘The ones who live for ever. Helmwige, any of them. They can be killed by Him.’
‘Him? Who’s He, when He’s at home? Did Otto say?’
Franklin shook his head. ‘But I heard him talking to Helmwige one night. That was when Celia first came. He said, “She doesn’t know about Him, does she? Even you can be killed by Him, and so can all of our master race.”’
Lloyd gave Kathleen a quick, excited look. ‘Did Otto come out with any clues about who He might be?’
‘No,’ said Franklin. ‘But the reason I remember what he said was because he kept talking about it, over and over, like he was really worried about it.’
Lloyd sat back. Otto had half suggested that Hitler might have been Transformed, burned and immortalized. Maybe ‘He’ was Hitler. Maybe Der Führer still held absolute sway over all of his followers, just as he had during World War Two.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ he asked Kathleen.
‘I don’t know. What are you thinking?’
He explained, but he could see that she found it difficult to believe. ‘I’m sure Hitler’s dead,’ she said. ‘Didn’t they identify his dental records?’
‘It doesn’t matter if they did. His original body’s dead, for certain. Just like Celia was dead and Mike was dead. But what happened to the smoke and the soul that rose right out of that body? It’s hard to believe that Hitler could have seen Helmwige turn into a Salamander, without wanting to try to do the same thing for himself’
‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ said Kathleen.
‘No, it doesn’t. But it could be true.’
It was still two hours before dawn when Franklin drove the Mercedes quietly through North Torrey, so that Lloyd could inspect his house. Lloyd climbed out of the car and walked up the sloping driveway, then circled the house to the back. The kitchen doors and windows had been boarded up, and plastic sheeting had been draped over the kitchen roof. There was a strong noxious reek of smoke, and when he peered in through one of the side windows, Lloyd could tell that, apart from rebuilding the kitchen, he was going to have to redecorate almost the entire house. Still, having once been an insurance salesman, he had made sure that his fire policy was comprehensive and up-to-date. For the money he was going to get, he could afford almost to tear down this house and build another one, from scratch. In a way, he found that a very tempting t
hought. This house reminded him so strongly of Celia, and the life they had been planning to live together. They had even thought of filling in the grave-like conversation-pit, in case baby fell into it.
Lloyd rattled the front door to make sure it was locked. The house seemed to be reasonably secure, and around here the neighbours were too nosey to make burglary much of a practical proposition. Jesus, the Kazowskis even noticed when he put out the trash in new pyjamas. ‘Noticed your new pyjamas, Lloyd. The Ascot shop?’
Lloyd left the house and walked back to the car. Kathleen said, ‘Is there any place we can get some coffee and something to eat? I think I’m just about to pass out. I keep tasting Helmwige’s sauerkraut.’
‘Sure, we can go to the restaurant,’ said Lloyd. ‘I can ask Waldo to meet us there.’
The sky was beginning to lighten as they drove toward La Jolla. Lloyd was feeling tired, but strangely changed. Stronger, somehow, as if he had at last accepted the burning of his house and the burning of the woman he loved, and was preparing to face what a new day was going to bring him. He looked around at Kathleen and she managed to summon a smile.
Waldo was delighted to see him, but horrified by his appearance.
‘You look like you won first prize in a Mickey Rourke look-alike contest,’ he said, bringing over a large white jug of espresso coffee and a stack of steaming baguettes. ‘Why don’t I call Louis, and have him come over and cook you a proper breakfast?’
‘We don’t have time for that,’ Lloyd told him. ‘Listen—we have to keep our heads down for a few days. We won’t be too far away, but I’m not going to tell you where we’re going to go, in case you get asked by somebody who won’t take no for an answer.’
‘Mr Denman, my lips are sealed,’ Waldo assured him.
‘How’s business?’ Lloyd asked him. He looked around at the restaurant, at the neatly laid tables, the neatly folded napkins and the shining wine-glasses, and for some reason he didn’t find it enchanting any more. Instead, it looked prissy and claustrophobic, the kind of place where people were more concerned about foie gras chaud poêlé aux blancs de poireaux than they were about life, and the struggle that most of the world went through daily, simply to stay free.
Waldo offered Franklin some more baguettes. ‘Business is fine. Do you want to see the books? Maybe levelling out a little, but nothing to worry about. People will always demand good fish, cooked good. Do you know what I read yesterday? The reason human beings got such big brains, they always ate fish. People who don’t eat fish, they’re going backward, like evolution in reverse. You don’t eat fish, you’re going to wind up like Barney Rubble.’
Kathleen gave a tired smile. ‘You’ve got yourself a wonderful maitre d’ here, Lloyd. I never knew any restaurauteur who worried about Darwin as well as Paul Bocuse.’
‘Where’d you read that stuff, Waldo?’ Lloyd demanded.
‘It’s true,’ Waldo insisted. ‘Same with birds. They used to be land creatures, but then they started eating shellfish that didn’t contain hardly no calcium. Their bones got lighter and lighter, and in the end they literally blew away into the air.’
‘This is true?’ asked Franklin, fascinated. Waldo glanced at Lloyd, alarmed by Franklin’s loudness. ‘Hithith hroo?’ Franklin had demanded, as far as Waldo could tell.
They talked for almost an hour. Outside, the sun had risen, and La Jolla cove shone golden and pale in the early-morning fog. Lloyd went to the men’s room for a wash and a shave, while Kathleen called Lucy and asked after Tom, and Franklin unashamedly devoured more baguettes.
‘Your friend has an appetite,’ smiled Waldo, taking hold of Lloyd’s hand.
Lloyd smiled, and nodded.
‘Listen,’ said Waldo, ‘I don’t know what you’ve got yourself into here. Maybe you want me to call the cops about it?’
‘Not yet,’ Lloyd told him. ‘I have to get my revenge first.’
‘Revenge?’ sniffed Waldo. ‘I don’t know. I used to think about revenge. I used to think about going back to Europe, and looking for the people who killed my family. I could have been like those Nazi-hunters, you know? I could have brought them all to trial. But what’s it worth, in the end, this wonderful revenge? It doesn’t achieve nothing. It doesn’t make you feel any better. It ends up making you worse than the people you’re trying to punish.’
‘Maybe,’ said Lloyd, and gave Waldo’s hand a last affectionate squeeze. This little fat guy, who took so much pride in his work, and had so much to give to the world that the world probably didn’t have room for it all. ‘Sometimes you have to think of the future, as well as the past.’
They left La Jolla a few minutes before nine o’clock, and headed eastward, with the sun in front of them. This time, Lloyd did the driving, wearing Otto’s tiny green-lensed sunglasses, which he had discovered in the Mercedes’ glove compartment. Kathleen said, ‘God, you look like Himmler.’ Franklin had made himself comfortable in the back seat, and by the time they started climbing toward Santa Ysabel, he was already snoring.
‘You want me to talk to you?’ asked Kathleen, suppressing a yawn.
‘Not if you want to sleep.’
‘I’ll just close my eyes for a moment, okay?’
And that’s how it was that Lloyd sped across the scrubby outskirts of the Anza Borrego State Park in a stolen Mercedes sedan with Kathleen lolling in the front seat, her forehead knocking softly against the passenger window with every bump in the road, and Franklin stretched out on the back seat, snoring in two distinct keys. Lloyd wryly wished that Celia were with them: she could have identified the exact key in which Franklin was snoring, and maybe sung along to it, too.
Celia had been brilliant, bright, and always funny. Lloyd tuned the Mercedes radio to KFSD on 94.1, and caught Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, played by Vladimir Ashkenazy. It was uncanny: the Kol Nidrei had always been one of Celia’s favourites, and Lloyd felt almost as if Celia were trying to get in touch with him.
Ahead of him, the desert burned bright, a land of hills and mirrors. Behind him, the dust blew high. But Lloyd felt neither lonely nor sad, nor particularly grief-stricken, not now. He had a job to do which nobody else in the world could do, and for which (in all probability) nobody would thank him. He hummed along with Bruch, and watched the miles ticking steadily upward on the Mercedes’ clock.
By early lunchtime, they drove past the place where the bus had burned. The wreck had been towed away now, and there was no reminder of what had happened except for a cross that somebody had fashioned out of two charred aluminium roof-supports, a cross that was hung with dried-out wreaths and withered flowers. Kathleen was still asleep as they drove by, and Lloyd didn’t wake her. Some places are worth remembering, other places are best forgotten.
But Kathleen woke as they drew up outside Tony Express’s store, and stared at Lloyd for a moment as if she couldn’t think who he was.
‘You know, I was having the weirdest dream? I dreamed I was swimming off Baja with Mike. The ocean kept rocking me up and down. I guess it must have been the car.’ But then she frowned, and said, ‘Mike looked so strange, in this dream. He looked like he didn’t have any eyes.’
‘Come on,’ said Lloyd, and opened the car door. ‘Let’s go see what accommodation we can find for ourselves.’
He found Tony Express sitting inside the shadowy darkness of the store, threading beads. Considering he was blind, Tony Express was working with extraordinary speed, his fingers sorting out beads of different colour and texture, and swiftly impaling them on his threading-needle, almost as if he were an insect-collector. Or an eater of flies, thought Lloyd, obliquely, and it was a thought which seemed to take a long time to go away, like a train disappearing across the flattest of horizons.
‘Tony? How’re you doing?’ he asked.
The blind Indian boy kept on picking out beads, picking out beads. ‘Doing fine, thanks. Doing what Red India
ns are best at. Walla-walla-walla, heap good necklace, all that stuff.’
‘Looks good to me,’ said Lloyd.
‘Ho-ho.’ Tony Express retaliated. ‘A heap of shit would look good to you, if I painted it red, white and blue.’
‘Do you remember me?’ Lloyd asked him. Because—God almighty—if he couldn’t remember Lloyd’s voice—then how could he clearly remember the voice of the man who had called out ‘Junius! Junius!’ to a busload of burning disciples?
‘Sure I know you, man,’ said Tony Express. ‘What you come back here for? I told you everything, there’s nothing else.’ I’ll tell you everything I can, there’s little to relate.
‘I was wondering if we could maybe hang out here for a while.’
‘You’re wearing Hugo Boss aftershave and you want to hang out here?’
‘I’m looking for a little peace, that’s all. A few days’ break from the hurly-burly of yuppiedom.’
‘You’re not hiding from the law?’
‘Of course not.’
Tony Express suddenly lifted his head. ‘Who’s the big guy, man? He wasn’t with you before.’
Lloyd was taken aback, and turned around to Franklin and shrugged. Maybe Tony Express was only kidding that he was blind.
But Tony Express immediately said, ‘It’s a knack, man. I can only do it in the afternoons, when the sun’s shining into the store. I can feel him blot out the warmth.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Franklin, stepping out of the sunshine.
‘Don’t worry about it, man,’ said Tony Express. He deftly knotted the necklace he was stringing, and closed the lid on the cigar-box full of beads. ‘There’s an empty trailer next to ours. It belongs to an Indian called Zuni Tone. He’s no damn Zuni and he sure doesn’t have no tone, but there you go. You can rent it for twenty a week.’
He led them around the back of the store, where instantly two brindled mongrels launched themselves furiously from their makeshift packing-case kennel, their eyes bulging, until they were brought to a throttling halt by the chains around their throats. ‘Don’t mind them,’ said Tony Express. ‘They only eat lawmen and truancy officers. They’ve got the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.’
Hymn Page 27
