She pushed her hair back from her face, excited now, seeing it happen in her mind. “The way they take would be one you chose to lead them right to the police. Well, no, I guess you can’t be sure where the police would be, but couldn’t you send these people into some kind of trap? Some place that their car couldn’t get through, so they’d be left on foot for the police to find?”
Ms. Howard shook Ellie’s hand off her arm with an abrupt movement. “What the hell do you think they’d do to me, if I led them into the kind of trap that you’re proposing?”
“You? But why would you be with —?”
“You don’t imagine Roberto would accept this kindly offer of help from me just like that, do you?” Ms. Howard whispered angrily. “He’d suspect the possibility of some kind of a trick; he’s not an idiot. If I were he, I’d say sure, lady, sounds like a wonderful idea; and we’ll take you with us to make sure this way out is as good as it sounds. If anything goes wrong, we’ll shoot you.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think,” Ellie mumbled.
“What a surprise,” the painter said acidly. Then she added in a tired tone, “For God’s sake, go and sleep a little if you can. I don’t know what we’ll be faced with in the morning, but trying to handle this situation in total exhaustion strikes me as a very poor idea.”
Ellie withdrew hastily to her own corner, where she lay curled in her blanket — the room had grown quite chilly — and her misery and fear.
9
Jammed up against the pipes beneath the utility sink in the corner of the studio, Alex woke in a rush of terror.
He lay there hugging himself, his hands jammed tight to his mouth to keep his breathing quiet. He had dreamed of having a dog’s head, seeing himself from the outside as some kind of a dog. Then somebody came along and blew the dog’s head off with a shotgun, like a killing from The Godfather.
God, it was awful. Already the visual details were vanishing. He was grateful for that, but the sick, gulping feeling in his stomach stayed.
How could they all be sleeping, when there was this awful thing scratching and slavering after them? Not like on the screen at all, and not like what his mother had said to him last year when Grandpa died. Nothing as kindly and wishful as that: wafting off to Heaven in your sleep, what a laugh.
Death was what it was: big, mean, ugly death.
He didn’t dare close his eyes for fear of seeing more of it.
Joyce wished they would just do it and get it over with.
It’s not so bad, she told herself, staring up at the shadows on the beamed ceiling. I’ve been through it before, and it’s not so bad.
That time at Tony Chester’s when she had gotten so high on stuff that was stronger than she’d thought. Then Tony and the other two boys…she’d known what they were doing, sort of, and had tried to stop them. But stoned like that, what could you do?
It wasn’t so bad, not after the soreness healed up and her mother quit asking her all the time what was wrong.
The worst was that all the boys at school knew. Girls gossip, but boys are worse. They boast. She’d seen them sneering or watching her as if they could see some kind of mark on her. The worst ones grabbed at her in the halls and said she should come blow some dope with them, they’d show her a better time than Tony had.
The girls wouldn’t talk to her at all, as if it had been her fault.
Funny thing was, she didn’t care, sort of. She had quit talking to the other kids, at least about anything that mattered.
Another funny thing. When she’d realized she wasn’t pregnant, mixed in with the relief she’d been sort of sorry. She was sorry that it was all for nothing, nothing to show except the shame and the whispers and this nothing-feeling that had been with her ever since.
Just nothing. Just drift along like you were out of reach, and in a way, you were. It was a kind of magic. She knew kids who did this with music, or with pills.
She just did it, drifting, answering when she was spoken to, doing as little as she could while waiting for her life to get started again. Like being at a bus stop on some dull corner forever and ever, and the bus got later and later, and would it ever come?
Because if not, she might as well just dump the whole thing.
Well, something had come along all right. She liked to doodle with a pencil, so she’d ended up in this strange place shivering in terror from hour to hour, waiting for it to happen again. These Cantus were men, weren’t they? Well, two men; the sister didn’t count. She guessed she knew a little about men by now, men and boys both. She didn’t want to know any more.
This time there wouldn’t be any drugs to keep everything muffled.
The bad thing about drifting, you couldn’t decide what you would think about and what you wouldn’t think about. Your thoughts, like everything else, just happened to you.
Maybe they would do it to her right here in front of the others. Well, at least then everybody would know she hadn’t invited them (but she squirmed inside thinking about this, and hot tears seeped from the corners of her eyes and ran down, turning ice cold in the roots of her hair). People would be sorry for her and comfort her later and say what a terrible thing.
No they wouldn’t. Nobody would give a damn. And when the kids back at regular school heard, they’d remember about what happened at Tony’s house and they’d laugh and say Joyce sure had all the luck.
She had some pills put away. She had stolen them from her mother’s medicine cabinet, a few at a time, and hidden them in a dresser drawer just to have them around if she wanted. If she got tired waiting for the bus. Too bad she didn’t have them with her now. She would take them, right now, dry even.
Even if the Cantu boys got her pregnant she’d use the pills. After all, suppose it was a girl? Who’d want to bring another girl into the world — into this world, full of these people?
For that matter, suppose it was a boy? From her experience so far, the fewer boys in your life the less the upset and the pain; and a baby was in your life for years.
The blanket under her head was getting soggy with tears. She got up and went into the bathroom at the end of the room and stood holding the edges of the sink, crying without a sound.
Ricky woke up coughing. Someone was standing next to him: a weird, shrouded figure, with an arm raised as if to strike him — in a cast, of course. She had a blanket wrapped like a cloak round her shoulders. Beyond her, the cold black sky and the stars. Yes, he had dragged himself out here onto the lounge chair in the patio to try to — to try —
“You’re keeping me awake,” Blanca complained.
“I beg your pardon?” he replied, when he could get his breath.
She pointed over the patio wall. “I’m in the next room. I can hear you coughing.”
“Sorry,” he murmured. “Can’t help it.”
“Then there’s no point in me trying to go back to sleep,” she said irritably. She backed a few steps and hiked herself up onto the lip of the dry fountain.
She might know — Ricky said, “Did you hear a shot earlier?”
“Hear it? I almost went deaf. I was right there.” She described, vividly, the death of Mars. “Beto was just trying out that old shotgun.”
Poor Mars, nice beast, what a rotten thing to have happened. But Dorothea was all right. Thank God. Ricky smiled, coughing again.
“Why are you smiling?” she said. “Doesn’t it hurt when you cough?”
“Sometimes,” he said. Just now the cough merely robbed him of his breath and made a tightness in his chest.
“Cancer’s supposed to hurt a lot.”
“If I can’t get more of my medicine soon,” he panted, “I’m afraid I’m going to find out.”
He heard the sharp intake of her breath. “You’re out of your medication?”
Medication, not medicine, saith the little expert, product of years of dosages and hospital visits. “I used it up after dinner. I’d meant to drive into town for more today, on my way up into the mountain
s.”
“What do you take?”
“They call it ‘hospice mix.’ Pain-killers in some combination or other.”
“I wonder if any of my stuff would help,” she said doubtfully.
“Small chance of that,” he answered, touched, “but thank you for the thought.”
“God,” she said. She hunched her blanket more securely about her shoulders, leaning nearer to him and speaking in an anxious, confidential tone. “Just finding out I don’t have my medication with me, that I forgot it, that’s enough sometimes to bring the asthma on. Are you thirsty? I’m going to go get some juice, if there is any. I’m supposed to keep my fluids up after an attack.”
“You had an attack tonight?” he said.
“I think it was just from being in a new place,” she said. “You never know what’s going to set it off — dust, dog-hair, something you eat. I didn’t know all the things they put in that supper, and I probably shouldn’t have had any, but it smelled so good. I’m okay now. You want some juice?”
“Please,” he said. Lately his mouth was often dry and stale-tasting, an effect of the disease.
So the child had had an attack this evening — after the death of the dog. He wanted to think about that — there was something arresting there — but he could only wonder when his own attack would come — the pain, slipped from its leash. At the first intimation he would have to send her away.
After a time that seemed endless, she brought him apple juice in a ceramic mug. The mug was heavy in his hands. The sweet juice was chilly.
“Delicious,” he said. “Thank you.”
She settled down again with her own cup. “What are you doing here anyway?” she said. “You should be in some famous hospital where they can do all the latest things to help you and keep you alive until somebody finds a cure.”
“Been in hospital,” he said. “Didn’t like it. Left.”
“Did you have to have an operation?” When he nodded, she went on knowingly, “I bet that hurt, didn’t it? Afterwards, when you woke up, I mean. I’ve been in the hospital a lot, but they can’t operate on me. There is no operation for asthma.”
“There’s none for this type of cancer either,” he said, “as they discovered.”
“Can I see the scar?”
Well, really. But why not? He gingerly pulled up his pajama-top.
“I can’t see,” she muttered, coming close.
He felt the touch of her fingers, light but definite, on the puckered line. He had to lean to the side to avoid getting clipped by her cast.
“That’s not much,” she said, clearly let down. “I’ve seen a lot worse from kids falling off their bikes.” She sat back, still staring as he covered up again. “I guess they didn’t get it all, huh?”
He shook his head, his eyes suddenly full of tears for himself, his spoiling entrails, his slowly self-destructing body. “Couldn’t,” he said, clearing his throat. “Had to leave me my lungs to breathe with, rotten as they are. You’d think they’d have invented plastic lungs by now, wouldn’t you? But it seems an artificial heart is child’s play compared to synthetic lungs, and anyhow it’s too late in my own case. The disease has already spread. So I don’t get to be made into a bionic Englishman. I get to be a dead Englishman, and that’s no distinction; millions of them are ahead of me already.”
“I’ve thought I was going to die a few times,” she said. “When the asthma got real bad. It was pretty scary, man.”
“Terrifying,” he agreed. “Sometimes I get tired of waiting, and I’d rather have it over.”
“That’s a sin,” she said quickly.
“I don’t mean suicide. Just —” He tried to snap his fingers, but they would not move crisply enough to make a sound. “Over. I’m told it often comes that way. The body is weakened, picks up some sort of flu, pneumonia sets in, and that’s the end. Not such a bad way to go.”
She rearranged herself in her blanket. “Maybe sitting out here in the cold isn’t such a good idea?”
“I wouldn’t be too concerned,” he said.
“Beto shouldn’t have locked you in your room,” she said. “I think he wanted to make sure you couldn’t get together with the others, you know, and organize an escape. Like those Englishmen who dug their way out of German prison camps in the war.”
“I’m not much good for digging.”
“Are you and her in love? You and the old lady, I mean.”
Ouch, poor Dorothea — but to this child, even thirty would seem old, and fifty totally ancient. Cautiously he said, “We’re good friends.”
“I saw how she looks out for you, and how you two sort of back each other up without having to talk about things first. I think you’re in love with her,” Blanca announced with relish.
“Really?” he said, amused but also wary. This was Roberto’s sister, after all. Information about himself and Dorothea might be used against them. Name, rank, and serial-number — we’re way past that, but some prudence is indicated all the same. “Spying on us, were you? Caught us kissing passionately over the cooking tonight?”
“Well,” she said judiciously, “love’s not the same for old people, is it?”
“Yes it is,” he said, stung despite himself. “Just the same, bar a few minor details. We’re neither of us senile, you know, gray hairs to the contrary.”
“Then there’s you being sick,” she went on. “Though I bet you don’t let that stop you.”
“Blanca, I don’t wish to discuss my personal life or Dorothea’s. We’re both entitled to our privacy.”
“‘Privacy,’” she mimicked the short “i.” “Does everyone in England sound like you?”
“Does everyone in America sound like you?”
She giggled. Then she said, “What I think is, she’s not woman enough for you. All she does is sit here in her nice house and feed her nice dogs. She doesn’t even watch the tv or she’d have known all about us. She’s one of these arty people with no guts, a chicken, man. Otherwise she’d have eloped with you when you were still okay.”
“I never asked her to.”
“Not even when you were both young? I bet you did ask her. I bet her parents were mad because you were a foreigner, and they gave her a real hard time about you. So you went traveling, but she was afraid to run away with you and came out here to sort of bury her sorrows.”
What a romance! He had to smile.
Blanca said seriously, “Why do you smile like she couldn’t be in love with you? You’re not so bad looking, and I like how you talk.”
To divert her, he said, “I did ask a woman once to come traveling with me. But she died.”
“How?”
“She was burnt up in a fire.”
Blanca emitted a horrified, satisfied groan. “Ugh, God, that’s awful. Was she pretty?”
“Glorious.” Had she been beautiful? Scarcely mattered now, did it?
“What did you do after that?”
“Got drunk, sulked and brooded, traveled.”
“Dorothea should have gone with you and consoled you,” she said firmly.
He almost laughed. “We’d not met then, Dorothea and I. And now…” He stopped uncertainly. And now, what? He thought suddenly of his own Aunt Nell and her long-time friend, Captain Carpenter. They had slept together for all those years before the captain died and widowed a dull woman who was far less devastated by his passing than poor intense Nell. One way or another all love stories ended in parting. Not a subject fit for discussion with a child.
She said confidently, “I’m going traveling with Beto, to help him and keep him company. It’s all arranged.”
“Surely not!” he exclaimed. He regretted this involuntary response as soon as it was out of his mouth. “That is — Blanca, you’re far too intelligent to want to live on the run.”
“What do you care?”
“How old are you?”
“Don’t start that,” she warned. “Just because I’m small, people always think I’m a
baby.”
“You’re certainly not a baby,” he said, irritated at his own tactlessness. “But you are young, and you do have a health condition, not to mention that cast on your arm. You’d be a serious liability to your brother, surely you must see that. He can’t intend to drag you further into danger with him.”
“So what am I supposed to do, then?” she challenged him. “Sit around and rot with my damn asthma? End up taking care of my mother while everybody else takes off and has a great life? That’s what the whole world expects, man, but I’m not going to do it.”
“Why not?” he countered sharply. “You’d probably do it very well, and there are worse fates, for Heaven’s sake. I doubt very much that your natural bent is for being a fugitive from the law.”
“Oh no?” she said with a surprising and unlovely gleam of cunning. “How do you think Beto got this far? He was so mad and scared after the riot, he could hardly think of a thing for himself. If I hadn’t figured out how to escape, he’d still be hiding down by the river in Albuquerque. He needs me to help him stop the right cars for a hitch north and to get people to help him.”
Christ, he thought, this is no time for lies and fantasy. As well say if I find the right doctor my cancer will miraculously vanish.
“Nonsense, Blanca! This is nonsense, and you know it as well as I. You must see that what you’ve said is nothing but a story. Your brother knows, if you don’t. You gave him a clear signal tonight — your attack after supper. No, let me finish. You saw the dog killed and you realized then how serious all this is, and how foolish and unfair it would be to encumber your brother with an invalid companion. So you underlined your condition with an attack.”
She glowered at him. “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”
“What’s happened to Roberto would have happened, more or less, without your part in it,” he went on. “You are not his guardian angel, nor is he yours. He needs to be free to find the people who are essential to him, and you must find yours as well. Not merely whoever is familiar and close at hand — I mean the people you discover a spiritual affinity with.” Excellent, he thought caustically, do you think you’re back at Winchester debating your fellow upper-formers? He tried a different level.