Aerie squeezed through the double doors of the single bay garage. It looked like it had once been a barebones, working class carriage house, or maybe even a small barn with a hay loft. Its frame was twisted; its roof sagged. It looked like Ron’s kind of place, maybe even an upgrade over his last shanty, despite its lack of heat.
Aerie maneuvered around the remains of a wrecked and burned out Porsche, and started up the creaky ladder.
Ron hovered atop the hatch. The glare of an LED lamp etched his face in stark shadows.
“Well, well. Aerie Walker. International recording—”
“Cut the crap, Ron,” she said, hauling herself into the dusty loft. “I don’t have the patience tonight.”
She cringed at the conditions in his abode. Reams of spider webs draped the walls. Bottles and trash cluttered the corners. Ron’s mattress was covered in a heap of dirty laundry. Gap-riddled floorboards were covered in threadbare, faux Persian rugs. His battered Martin leaned against the window sill.
“So what brings you here?” said Ron, his eyes jittery and spacey. He reached over and shut the window.
Aerie feigned a scowl. “I’m selling Girl Scout cookies.”
“Coconut and caramel,” he said with a smirk.
“Yeah? You like those? I go for the mints myself.”
“No way. Samoas rule, with that chocolate fudge on the bottom. Put me down for a box. Dang, I’m getting hungry.” His eyes wandered everywhere but her gaze. “So how’ve you been?”
“I’ve been worse,” she said. “How’s Aaron and the gang?”
“Huh?”
“Sounds like you were practicing. Got a production gig coming up?”
“Huh? What the fuck you talking about?”
“You know … the collective. Who’s playing bass for you now?”
Ron looked at her like she was speaking Swahili. “You were there that night. Aaron completely disowned us.”
“But John says you guys got back together. Without me.”
“Who the fuck is John?”
“Aaron’s neighbor. That guy who came to our gig.”
“Listen. I ain’t played with nobody since that night. I ain’t touched my guitar for over a week. I only just started to play again.”
“But you’re playing … production stuff.”
“What can I say? It’s catchy. It sticks with you.”
“So who’s Aaron playing with? Is it Mal and the others?”
“Not Mal, that’s for damn sure. Mal’s gone wild. Turned nature boy. Living out in the woods.”
“What? How did that happen?”
“He’s trying to catch that thing that got away. That birdie.”
“How does he intend to do that?”
“No clue. He went a little nutso ever since that night. Wants to make good with Aaron.”
Aerie rubbed her chin. “John says there’s more of those things roaming around Connecticut Hill. They attacked his kids.”
“No shit?”
“Weird, huh?” Aerie brushed some dust off her pants, only to notice that she was sitting in a pile of sweepings. She sighed. “What about Sari or Eleni? You heard from either?”
“You’re asking the wrong person. I don’t get out much,” said Ron. “I’ve been laying low.”
“You’re still on the run?”
He shrugged “What can I say? I still owe Julius, but I don’t exactly have an income stream anymore. Grams gives me twenty once a week. I do odd jobs around here for food. I got a disability check waiting, but I don’t dare go pick it up.”
“You’re disabled? I never would have known.”
“It’s no biggie. I only do it because I can qualify with the state. I’m not … really. I mean my feet … I was born …” He blushed. “It ain’t bad. I get around just fine. If they want to give me a check, who am I to turn it down?”
Aerie just smiled back. It was clear he wanted to change the subject.
“So what’ve you been up to? Still working at the restaurant?”
“Nah. Got fired.”
“Dang,” said Ron. “I guess I won’t be hitting you up for cash.”
Aerie looked up sharply, remembering Ron’s arrangement with that van. “I got something to ask you Ron. Remember that night, when I drove out to Aaron’s?”
“I try not to.”
“I got pulled over coming back into town. Cops said I was driving a stolen vehicle.”
“It wasn’t—”
“I know. That part got straightened out okay. Problem was, I had my Juzek in that van. Any idea what might have happened to it?”
“What the fuck’s a Juzek?”
“My bass. It was in your uncle’s van when I got stopped.”
“My uncle Ray don’t talk to me. I mean … I can ask my cousins. You let me borrow your phone tomorrow, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Any chance this Julius got a hold of it?”
Ron’s face tightened. “You’re saying I fenced it through Julius?”
“I didn’t say that. It’s just that if he knew that was your uncle’s van and he found stuff … valuable stuff in it … he might—”
“No way. Julius doesn’t pull shit like that. He and his brothers run a straight sports book. They like to be paid on time, but they don’t pull any funny shit.”
Aerie sighed. “I miss that bass.”
“So you got nothin’ to play on?”
She nodded.
“Oh Aerie, that’s a crime. We gotta get you an instrument.”
His expression softened. He gave her an odd, lingering look. Aerie reached up and wiped her chin, thinking she had left a smudge of gravy.
Ron sidled closer. He reached out and touched her hand, his eyes wide and probing.
“Ron? What the heck are you doing?”
His hand retracted. His gaze flickered down at the floor.
“Are you coming on to me?”
“Nah, I just … it was ….”
Aerie chuckled. “You were putting the make on me, weren’t you?”
“I don’t know … I just … I mean, you came here.”
“That’s just pathetic, Ron. A female shows up in your loft for once and you automatically assume she wants you to jump her bones?”
“Alright. Let’s drop the subject.” He was blushing.
“Listen. I’m tired. I’m glad I found you, but I think I’d better get home, get some sleep. It’s been a weird night.”
“You’ll come by again sometime, will you? I mean, we should keep in touch.”
“You know where I live.” Aerie lowered her legs into the hatch. “Drop by for tea sometime. And when I say tea, I mean tea.”
“Gotcha.”
“You’re not gonna go disappear again, are you?”
Ron frowned. “I might have to, if Julius tracks me down, or if it gets any colder.” A spark lit Ron’s eyes. “That car of yours still run?”
“Um, yeah. I can’t do long trips, but … why?”
“How’d you like to go see Mal?”
“You know where to find him?”
“Come by around noon. Don’t beep or anything. I’ll keep an eye out for your car. And don’t tell anybody you saw me. Okay?”
“Don’t worry.”
Ron looked a little sheepish.
“Can I ask you a favor?”
“Shoot.”
“Would you mind bringing some groceries? For Mal. Nothing fancy. Just some bread. Peanut butter, maybe.”
“You hungry?”
He shrugged.
“Here, take these.” She handed him the doggie bag with the leftover gravy fries.
***
The sun was already high when Aerie awoke fully clothed, pillows askew and tangled in her quilt. She remembered her appointment with Ron with a start, and threw off her bedding, rushing to get ready. She slowed down when she saw the clock. Ten-thirty. Plenty of time for a long, luxurious shower.
She brushed her hair in the mirror and imagined how she wante
d it cut. No more cutting it herself; this time she would splurge and get rid of this rat’s nest.
Another pair of holey jeans beckoned from a drawer, but instead she grabbed her seldom-worn khakis and a nice, low-cut sweater blouse. Time to start dressing like a big girl again.
She fried two eggs and ate them with salsa on toast. She took her pills, though they seemed redundant atop the natural effervescence fueling her this morning.
Out the door she burst, finding a Fall sky at its best: the clouds all billowy, not the threatening anvils of summer, nor the sheets of hammered steel that socked in Ithaca’s sky from November to March, just pure and gilded puffs of Heaven.
When she reached the supermarket, for once she felt in cahoots with the stay-at-home moms and pre-schoolers that ruled these spaces. She was a mom herself now, with two hungry boys to feed.
She went up and down the aisles tossing into the cart anything that looked nutritious but not too perishable: peanut butter, fruit leather, mesh bags of bite-sized wax-covered cheese, tuna, bagels and bread.
When she got to the checkout, she realized that she had gotten a bit carried away. She jettisoned the pudding cups, olives and Vienna sausages. On second thought, she snatched a couple bars of Cadbury chocolate for her overgrown tykes.
She put it all on her card. Mom had promised to help with food until she got a job.
Back in the car, driving to Ron’s lair, she sang along to the radio, not the words but the bass line to some old Tom Petty song. It helped that her cheap speakers rendered the lower registers inaudible. She was free to improvise any line she wanted to any genre of music.
Aerie pulled up to the fence surrounding the junk lot, which looked even more decrepit in the daylight. She wasn’t stopped two seconds before Ron burst out of the gates and climbed into her front seat. He had a Yankees cap pulled down over his face with a billowy hood pulled up over it. He un-slung his guitar and stuck it in the back seat with the groceries.
“All that’s … for me … I mean us?”
“Yup.”
“Holy cow. You went all out, girl.” He ransacked the bags and pulled out a loaf of bread.
“So which way do we go?” Aerie asked.
“Make like you’re going to Treman Park, except you turn left at the junction.”
“Left? I don’t remember there being a left turn there.”
“Trust me, there’s a left,” he said, munching on a slice of twelve grain Pepperidge Farm.
“You’re eating plain bread?”
“What can I say? I’m hungry.”
“It’s just that there’s some muffins in one of those waxy bags. Blueberry. Cherry almond.”
“No shit?” Ron leaned back over the seat and searched through the bags until he found the muffins. “Want one?”
“No thanks. I already had my breakfast.”
“Jeez Aerie, you really went over the top.”
“Not a problem. I’m happy to feed my boys.”
Ron devoured his Blueberry muffin as if it were his last meal. They passed down Ithaca’s miracle mile, past Buttermilk Falls State Park. When they reached Enfield Road, the turn-off to Treman Park, Aerie pulled onto the shoulder and stopped.
“What are you doing?”
“Um … there’s no road.”
“Yeah there is, look over there.”
“That little dirt path? You want me to go that way?”
“Don’t worry. It’s in decent shape. Your car can take it. We’ll stop at the creek and walk from there.”
Aerie sighed and waited for some traffic to clear before surging across the main road to a one lane track fringing the parking lot of a farm stand. It was bumpy and rutted, but passable.
The road came to a streambed. It continued for a ways on the other side, but Aerie didn’t chance getting stuck. She pulled into a clearing studded with stumps and parked. The ground was all torn up by dirt bikes and ATVs.
Ron pointed to a dimple in the pines, a shadowy crease where a narrow ravine sliced through the side of the ridge.
“See that? That’s where we gotta go.”
“Whatever is this place?” said Aerie.
“Some no-name gorge. I think it’s private land. But no one ever goes there.”
“How’d you ever find such a place?”
“Wasn’t our doing. This is where we tracked the birdie. Two nights, we slept under the stars, looking for the thing. I couldn’t stand the bugs, so I went back to town.”
“But he stayed?”
“Unless he’s dead,” said Ron. “He hasn’t been back into town.”
“Don’t say that!”
“My guess is, he’s still camping out. Washes in the creek. Hikes out to raid dumpsters.”
“It’s getting colder. He’s not gonna be able to do that much longer.”
“He said he’s staying as long as it takes. He ain’t coming down till he gets that birdie.”
“That’s just insane,” said Aerie. “How does he expect to catch such a thing?”
“Traps … made of glass,” said Ron. “Don’t ask me how, but Mal says they can’t do nothing against glass. That’s why Aaron kept it in a jar.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” said Aerie. “Seemed like that one had no problem busting out.”
“Yeah, but it had help,” said Ron.
She redistributed the groceries into two small sacks. Ron took a sack in one hand, his guitar in the other. They walked across a rutted waste to the edge of the main creek.
“How do we get across?”
“Just wade,” said Ron, marching right in and sloshing across the gravelly bed in his sneakers. Aerie popped off her shoes and followed after him.
They followed a small tributary brook to a dark glen where cascades trickled over a jumble of tilted slabs. Hemlocks huddled in the shadows like gangs of miscreants. Ron started climbing a bed of exposed shale that heaved up along the left shoulder of the ravine. Blue jays squabbled among the willows. As they pressed upward through cordons of pines, a warble bubbled down from the heights, warm and woody, trills spinning out from a central drone.
“That’s Mal,” said Aerie, her voice rising with excitement.
“No shit,” said Ron.
The bamboo sax sounded distant, but how far away was difficult to judge. It almost seemed to drop out of the sky.
They climbed along the flanks of a tight little gorge, its walls fluted, its floor stepped in tier after tier of cascades.
“Don’t get too close to that edge,” said Ron. “It’s pretty crumbly.” The instant he spoke, he slipped and smacked his guitar against a tree.
“Ooh, that didn’t sound good.”
“Ah, it’s fine. Dings add character.”
They trudged up the hillside, fighting through tangles of branches. A can of soup slipped out of Aerie’s sack and rolled down the hill. She trapped another with her foot and stuck it back in the bag.
After a time, the brutal slope began to ease. Trees increased in girth. The sky opened up under hardwoods whose leaves had mostly fallen. Exposed rock disappeared beneath soil and duff.
Mal’s horn droned louder as came over the top of the ridge. They homed in on a clearing with a saggy blue nylon tent. Wisps of smoke rose from embers in a circle of flat stones. Mat sat cross-legged on the ground like a snake charmer, beside a ten gallon aquarium piled with flagstone and rocks. Broad sheets of bark and heaps of leaf litter disguised the glass.
Mal nearly swallowed his horn when he saw them approach. He laid the horn down and ran over to greet them, slapping Ron’s back, taking Aerie in his arms and wheeling her around in a wild polka.
“Aerie! Oh my God! It’s so great to see you!”
Mal’s hair frizzed and clumped like vertical dreadlocks out the top of a bandanna headband. His patchy facial hair had filled out, forming a gauzy mass that blended with the soot on his cheeks. His clothes were filthy—a flannel shirt torn at the elbows, jeans frayed at the cuffs.
“I cam
e to feed you. Ron says you guys have been raiding dumpsters.”
“Not just any dumpsters,” said Mal. “Wegman’s trashes their day-old bread and perfectly fine produce. Papa Gino’s sometimes chucks out whole pizzas, still in their boxes.”
“Well, I guess you won’t be needing all this, then.”
Mal peeked into one of the bags. “Bagels? Cream cheese? Aerie, I love you.” He grabbed her and kissed her between the eyes.
“You stink, Mal. Shoulda brought you some wipes or something.”
He broke a bagel open and used a chunk to scoop some cream cheese out of a plastic container.
“Look at him,” said Ron. “One week in the woods and he acts like he was raised by wolves.”
“Where the hell did you go, Ron? You said you were gonna come right back.”
“Kinda … got stuck.” Ron stared at his feet.
“How?”
Ron shrugged. “I doubled down on the Jets-Dolphins game. Jets were giving three under the spread. They didn’t cover.”
“Fucking hell, Ron. I thought you were done with that crap,” said Mal. “I don’t get why Julius is even taking bets from you.”
“This wasn’t Julius. It was some guy in Public Works.”
“You need help,” said Aerie. “Gambling’s a disease, Ron. It’s a real addiction.”
“So now he’s got two bookies after him,” said Mal. “Real swift.”
“If the Jets had come through like they were supposed to, I would have been in the clear.”
Mal’s eyes flitted to Aerie. He reached into a bag. “Here, have a bagel. You shoulda stuck around out here. There’s no gambling to tempt you. And no one would ever find you.”
“Speaking of which,” said Aerie. “Thanks a lot for leaving me in the lurch, guys. I had no idea what happened to you all. It’s like you just … vanished.”
“Things got nuts real quick after that night,” said Mal. “I’m sorry.”
“Mal’s the one who went nuts,” said Ron. “He’s obsessed with the damned birdie.”
“For good reason. You have no idea what—”
“Aerie thought we were still playing with Aaron … without her.”
“What? That makes no sense.”
“John said you guys were playing again. I just assumed.”
“Maybe Sari’s back,” said Ron. “I never could see him letting her go. She always was his fucking pet.”
“Anyone heard from Eleni?” said Mal. “She was gonna come out and help us, but never did.”
“Not a clue,” said Ron. “I’ve stashed in the attic ever since I left the woods. Julius’ got the skaters out looking for me. Word is he’s worried I skipped town. I’m hoping he skips town himself.”