by Poppy Brite
“Listen, thanks for sending me ‘Incident in Birdland.’ I think it’s a really twisted story and I like your artwork a lot.”
“Thank you,” Trevor said dazedly. He had never drawn a story called “Incident in Birdland,” and to the best of his memory had never yet sent anything to Taboo. He’d thought of calling the Bird story “Incident in Jackson,” but had discarded that name as too boring, and hadn’t titled it at all before it got shredded.
“I really love the ending, where the zombie musicians crucify the sheriffs and burn ’em. I have to admit I didn’t see that coming.”
“Thanks,” Trevor said again. He glanced over at the booth. Calvin had come back and was leaning against the table peeling the cellophane off his Marlboros with elaborate casualness, but Zach was looking at Trevor. He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“Anyway,” said Bissette, “I’d like to buy the story. I just wanted to make sure I should still send your contract and check to this address.”
“Could you read it back to me?”
He heard papers rustling. “Rural Box 17, Violin Road …”
“No. Send it care of the Sacred Yew.” Trevor read the address off a past-due water bill on the bartop.
“Great. And listen, I’d like to see more of your work. But don’t send your originals by surface mail next time, okay? It’s not reliable. Send me copies or FedEx. Or fax ’em if you want. I can give you the number.”
“That’s okay. I’ll send copies.”
They said good-bye, and Trevor hung up feeling as if he’d just smoked two or three of Zach’s joints all by himself: dizzy, slightly elated, and disoriented as hell.
He went back to the table and leaned over to speak in Zach’s ear. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
They walked out through the silent gloom of the club, past the softly gleaming graffiti that said WE ARE NOT AFRAID. Trevor wished it were true. The sun was high in the sky overhead, but the sidewalk shimmered with the heat of the day. The sky was the color of bleached denim, heavy with unshed rain.
Trevor recounted the surreal conversation. Zach’s eyes grew larger behind his glasses, and he leaned against the building shaking his head. “This just gets more and more fucked up.”
“Did you see the pieces of the story after that morning?”
“I thought you picked them up and threw them away.”
“I thought you did.”
They stared at each other, confusion and fear writ large on their faces. At last Zach said, “Are you sure you want to stay there?”
“No. But I have to.”
Zach nodded. Trevor watched him for a moment, then asked quietly, “Are you sure you want to?”
“No.”
“Are you going to leave?”
“No. Not now.” Zach took Trevor’s hands between his own. “But, Trevor, you know I might have to leave. And if I do, I won’t get much warning.”
“I know. But I’ve got to stay, at least until I find out …”
“What?”
“The reason why I’m alive.”
“Trev …” Zach slid his hands up to Trevor’s shoulders, put his arms around Trevor’s neck. “What if there is no reason? What if he was just crazy?”
“Then I have to know that.”
They stood on the sidewalk embracing in the hot afternoon. Zach’s body felt like a comforting old friend in Trevor’s arms by now. His tension ebbed a little. “So are you going to sing with the band?” he asked.
“Yeah. Terry’s writing out some lyrics for me. You mind hanging out while I practice with them?”
“I guess not. What do you think of Calvin?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t said ten words to him. He’s okay, I suppose.”
“I hate him.”
Zach looked up, surprised, and saw that Trevor meant it. “How come?”
“Because of how he looked at you.”
Zach laughed, then stopped when he saw Trevor’s face. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “I’m with you. Understand? I’m crazy about you, Trevor. You have zero competition.”
“And because of how you looked at him.”
“Goddammit!” Zach grabbed handfuls of Trevor’s T-shirt, pushed his face up close to Trevor’s. “Your house attacked me last night. It locked me in the bathroom and made me watch myself dying in the mirror. I don’t know what else it would have done if you hadn’t come in. Now, if you were just a meaningless fuck to me, do you really think Yd still be here?”
“I don’t know! How should I know what you’re going to do?” Trevor seized Zach’s wrists, pulled Zach’s hands off his shirt. “I’ve never been in love with anyone before! Remember?”
“Neither have I!”
Their eyes locked and held. They stood gripping one another’s arms, breathing hard, neither giving an inch.
This isn’t just about having someone to wake up next to, Trevor realized. It’s about trusting someone else not to hurt you, even if you’re sure they will. It’s about being trustworthy, and not leaving when it gets weird. Zach’s eyes were very wide, intensely green, his face paler than ever. Even his lips had gone pale, but for the vivid streak of his healing scar. He looked mad as hell. He was so beautiful.
Trevor realized that he was no longer staring Zach down, but studying him, working to commit his face to memory. At the same time Zach’s anger seemed to dissolve as quickly as it had come. A wide, goofy grin replaced it. “Hey!”
“What?”
“You sold a story to Taboo! That’s great!”
“Yeah,” said Trevor. “But I wonder what name I sold it under.”
Eddy woke up ravenous on Wednesday, went to the Café du Monde for coffee and beignets, read the Times-Picayune without finding any new clues, and returned to find that a grimy slip of paper had been tacked to the door of her apartment.
EDDIE: it read, MY PARENTS’ HOUSE WAS RAIDED AND MY SYSTEM SEIZED. I AM COOPERATING FULLY WITH THE GOVT. ON THE CASE OF ZACHARY BOSCH, DOB 5-25-73, SS# 283-54-6781. I KNOW HIS CAR. AND I READ THE PAPERS TOO. It was signed SD, along with a local phone number.
She swore and ripped the filthy thing off her door. The paper felt slimy in her hand, eldritch, unspeakably loathsome. Eddy crumpled it in her hand. She wondered how he had gotten past the street gate, then realized that its “security” consisted of an electronic keypad. Presumably such a gadget couldn’t thwart a Phoetus of DagØn.
I read the papers too.
Had Stefan the fish-lipped, frog-eyed fanboy seen the same item she’d found yesterday, the one about the Cajun shooting himself with five different guns? Had he wondered about it, and maybe—just as a matter of course—pointed it out to his friendly neighborhood feds? I don’t know if there really is a town called Missing Mile, she could hear him whining, but if there is, I think you’d better check it out.
Well, if he had, at least he’d made a half-assed attempt to warn her about it. Maybe somewhere in his narky little heart he wanted Zach to have a chance.
But, of course, it was up to Eddy to actually give him one.
Her brain felt as if it had been dropped into a centrifuge. The cells were whirling dizzily, the synapses separating, short-circuiting. She sat on the bed and tried to steady herself. She couldn’t help Zach by getting hysterical.
What could she do? First, she needed a way to find Zach and alert him to the danger. She hoped there was a way to do that by phone, but if there wasn’t, she guessed she would just have to hie her butt to Missing Mile, North Carolina.
Second, she needed a way to help Zach get away for good. Probably he would have to leave the country. She might even go with him. He could hardly refuse her company this time, not after she had saved his ass.
And before she could do any of this, she needed a safe phone.
Okay. It wasn’t quite a plan, but it was a place to start.
Eddy grabbed a notebook and a pen to write down numbers. Then she set off to catch the streetcar that wound away from the French Quarter,
down St. Charles Avenue and into the city.
First she called the Pink Diamond. She had missed two shifts already, so they probably assumed she wasn’t coming back. Still, she hadn’t been able to call since the Secret Service took her phone out, and she wanted to wrap up her loose ends; that was just the way she’d been raised, She dialed the office, and the manager’s slimy voice answered.
“Hey, Loup, this is Eddy.”
“Who?”
“Miss Lee,”
“Oh yeah, we figured you ran off back to China.” She heard the wet sinus-damaged snort that passed for Loup’s laugh. “Hey, you got a message here.”
“Really?” Her heart quickened a little. “What is it?”
“Well, it’s kinda weird. I think it must be from some crazy customer. Valerye wrote it down”—Valerye was the daytime bartender—“and she said the guy spelled it out real careful and swore it was important.”
“What is it?” she repeated. The phone booth she had found in the parking lot of a seafood shack near the river-bend was private, but hot and claustrophobic. Eddy felt the beginnings of a headache.
“Well, it says ‘Wax Jism.’ ”
“What?”
Loup spelled out the two words, and Eddy wrote them down in her notebook. Her head was pounding now. She thanked Loup, told him almost as an afterthought that she wasn’t coming back to work, then hung up and stood staring at the ridiculous message. Wax jism. It had to be from Zach. But what in hell did it mean?
She looked out at the parking lot. Over the green hump of the levee she could see a sliver of the Mississippi, a tugboat and barge riding on the mighty polluted current. Her eyes slid back to the keypad of the phone, and something clicked in her mind. There were letters on the keys as well as numbers. Eddy looked back at the message. Two words: three letters, then four. The same configuration as a phone number.
Eddy grabbed the unwieldy metal-covered phone book that hung from a coiled cord in the booth. It was battered but miraculously intact. She riffled through the opening pages, found the listing of area codes for all states. Missing Mile had been fairly near Raleigh and Chapel Hill on the map, and the area code was the same for both places. She dropped in a handful of change, punched in the area code, and with shaking fingers picked out the number.
It rang twice. Three times. Then the receiver was lifted, and a slightly hoarse male voice said, “Howdy, this is the Sacred Yew.”
“Hi, you don’t know me, but I’m looking for—”
“No one’s within earshot right now, but we have lots of great shows coming up this week. Wednesday night it’s vintage swamp rock with GUMBO!!! Thursday—”
Eddy leaned her forehead against the hot glass, felt hot tears of frustration trickling from the corners of her eyes. It was a recording.
“If you’d like to leave a message for me or anyone who works here,” the voice was saying, “start talking at the beep. And remember, please come out and support your local bands at THE SACRED YEW!” The guy sounded nervous and slightly desperate. At last the accursed machine beeped.
“This is a message for a boy named Zach,” Eddy said without much hope. She didn’t know if he’d be using his real first name, but she was sure he wouldn’t be using his last, and she didn’t want to give it away. “He’s nineteen, about five-eight, skinny, black hair, green eyes, very pale, very striking. If you know him, will you please tell him he’s in terrible danger? My name is Eddy. I have to get in touch with him, I’ll try to call back.” She checked her watch. “I don’t know when. Tell him …” She realized tears were spilling from her eyes, pouring down her face. “Tell him I’m coming to get him.”
Eddy hung up, swiped at her eyes, composed herself. She had one more call to make, to a local number she knew by heart. She dialed it, listened to the phone ring and ring, then closed her eyes in relief as it was picked up, A rhythmic swath of reggae pulsed in the background, and for a moment she thought it was another recording. Then a deep musical voice said “Hello?”
“Dougal,” she said. “This is Eddy. Have you heard what happened to Zach?”
“Ya mon. Busted. Terrible t’ing.” She imagined him shaking his head, long bright-threaded dreadlocks swaying gently around his face.
Eddy closed her eyes and counted to five. “No,” she forced herself to say calmly, “he wasn’t busted. He got away, but they’re still after him, and I think they’re closing in. Do you want to help?”
“Oh, ya mon. I would help Zachary any way I can. ’Specially ’gainst de damn government.” She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard him spit. She took a deep breath, felt relief spreading through her. At last she wasn’t alone in this anymore.
“Could you start by picking me up outside Liberty’s Fish Camp? I need to tell you all about it. And I need your help too.”
“Sweetheart, don’ you worry ‘bout a t’ing, hear? You jus’ wait right there outside Liberty’s. I know de very place.”
“Are you sure?”
“Irie,” Dougal St. Clair’s beautiful voice soothed her. “No problem.”
At the Sacred Yew, the rehearsal was still blasting away onstage. Kinsey had gone down the street to get pretzels for the bar. As he came back in, he saw that the message light on the answering machine was blinking. But when he tried to play back the message, the machine just emitted a long series of beeps, then made a sound like a car going up a hill stuck in first gear. Kinsey peered inside and saw that it had eaten the tape. The machine had been on its last legs for weeks, erasing as many messages as it took. Now it was finally dead.
He picked up the phone to call tonight’s doorman and realized with much greater consternation that it was dead too, though he knew it had been on earlier because Trevor had gotten that mysterious call.
Kinsey looked at the clock, saw that it was just after five: cutoff time. He’d let the bill go too long. Now there was no way to get the phone turned back on until tomorrow, and Kinsey would have to drive the cash all the way to Raleigh. That was if the bar took in enough tonight to pay for it and the other bills too. The phone was important, but water was more so. And in a club, electricity took the highest priority of all; it was what kept the band loud and the beer cold. He had to get that damn power bill paid.
Kinsey had always loved summer in Missing Mile. But just lately it was a cruel season.
Dougal St. Clair lived in a tree in a secluded corner of City Park. His little wooden house was nestled high among the big oak’s spreading canopy of branches, accessible by a long, twisty, terrifying rope ladder that was barely visible against the tree trunk. He parked his car at the nearby fairgrounds, made use of public rest rooms and afternoon rainstorms, ate at the city’s many fine restaurants with the money he saved on rent, and often relied on the kindness of friends. Dougal had so much slack that it was considered something of a privilege among French Quarter bohos to buy him lunch once in a while.
The outside of his treehouse was painted in a drab brown camouflage pattern. The inside compensated with a riot of color. The walls were red, yellow, green, and purple, covered with snapshots of Dougal’s American and Jamaican friends, the former a motley cross-section of New Orleans freak society, the latter invariably dreadlocked and grinning.
The striped ceiling was not quite high enough for Dougal to stand up straight, though Eddy could do so comfortably. The floor was covered with a woven straw mat. There was a nest of blankets in one corner, a crate of books and a boom box with some tapes stacked around it in another. He kept a lot of stuff in his car in case the treehouse was ever discovered, but somehow it never was.
“How do you get phone service up here?” Eddy asked as she settled herself on a gorgeously embroidered cushion. She had told him the whole story on the ride over from the lake.
Dougal held up a sleek black cellular phone. “Present from Zachary.”
“I should’ve known. Can I use that?”
He gave it to her, then pulled a fat straw pouch and a package of rolling papers f
rom his pocket, shook out a generous quantity of fragrant green pot, and started rolling a joint. Eddy dialed the Sacred Yew’s number again. It only rang once; then a piercing electronic tone wailed in her ear and a recorded voice said, “The number you have reached has been temporarily disconnected. No further information is available at this time. The number you have reached—”
“DAMMIT!” Eddy nearly hurled the phone across the treehouse. Only the fear that it would fly out the window and go crashing to the ground fifty feet below stopped her hand. Her treacherous eyes filled with tears again, though she was sick of crying. “Our only link to Zach has just been severed. Now what do we do?”
“Relax, sweetheart.” Dougal handed her the joint, an enormous, tightly rolled bomber. “First we smoke a spleef. Then we fink better, an’ we plan.”
“Speak for yourself. You must have been smoking this stuff since you were born.”
“I was smokin’ it in my momma’s womb,” Dougal assured her. “But don’ worry. This is smart ganja. Relaxes you an’ clears your head.”
Eddy regarded the huge bomber glumly. Dougal struck a match, offered her the flame cupped between his pink-brown palms. Oh, what the hell, she decided, and let him light it for her.
The taste was sticky and sweet, almost cloying. But as it swirled through her lungs and out into her bloodstream, she thought she could feel some of the shadows lifting. By the time she’d had two hits, she actually believed she might see Zach again, might even be able to save him. Another drag and she’d probably be imagining them as an old married couple. She handed the joint back to Dougal. “What is this stuff?”
“Fresh Jamaican.” Dougal wrapped his hand around the joint, brought it to his lips, and produced an enormous cloud of smoke. She noticed that he didn’t automatically pass the joint back as Americans did, but let it dangle casually between his first two fingers until he was ready to hit it again. When you grew up in Jamaica, Eddy guessed, you always knew where your next joint was coming from.
