"I'm not done yet," he said as I came downstairs. "I just did the people search. I wasn't terribly concerned about finding 'somebody' down here, but rather, finding the evidence of somebody. That takes longer."
"What do you look for?" I asked.
"Microcams. Bugs. I've got a bug-and-cam detector in my bag. Wait here."
I guessed he was dead serious about being unable to untie himself from USIC. A bug-and-cam detector in his bag. I wondered if I would be so compulsive about this someday. I listened and stared all around, trying to pick up energy. I believed in energy. Having been a medic, I could wander into somebody's house and follow the sick energy without the homeowner showing me which room the person was in half the time. I had never opened a wrong door. If Cora had seen a ShadowStrike member, she would have sensed bad energy. She would have transposed this in her mind into something she could understand, or in her case, something she could more easily tolerate.
But my instincts were cluttered, and I merely wandered into her darkroom, noting that the carnation-talcum-powder smell of her was still here.
Hodji came back and started in with a humming machine, going up and down the walls of the outer room and most especially around the computer. It crackled pretty steadily but never bleeped.
"What do you think?" I asked as we stood in the hallway. "Is there any way someone could have broken the security code and gotten down here with her?"
"No," he said, sounding weary. I wanted to get him back upstairs, back into the sun and out of this dank basement, which was no good for a depressed and sleep-deprived person. But he wanted to check up the goddamn chimney flue, and while he was doing it, I noticed something stuck to the wall down near the baseboard that looked like mud. I ended up peeling away some mucky weed about eight inches long that smelled like pond scum. It was still wet.
"Um..." I held it up, not knowing quite what to say. "Didn't she say she saw creatures from the pond?"
He came over, studying it without touching it, and backed away before finding my eyes and staring into them.
He didn't have a chance to respond. We heard a beep from the computer. Nothing to make you jump, but under the circumstances we both went in there.
An icon had popped up that said "HodjiMontu22@yahoo: You've Got Mail."
He pushed me aside harder than he obviously meant to and plopped down in the seat, clicking the mouse.
"It's probably from Roger, annoying me, nagging me not to resign," he said. "He's called my cell phone twenty-five times, and since I'm waiting to hear from Twain, I can't even turn it off."
The computer loaded Internet Explorer slowly, and the longer it took, the more annoyed he got. He finally cursed and banged the mouse down. Mike told me to prepare for his outbursts, and I flew into medic mode.
"Look, you need sun. There's probably mold down here. Go upstairs and I'll bring you a hard copy, okay?"
But he refused to move. Eventually the screen finished its nonsense, and he clicked open an e-mail.
"No sender," he said, and added acridly, "I just can't wait..."
Not from Roger, I took it. The message made no sense to me, though I watched him closely to see if it made sense to him. It said, "And I will send a fire on Magog, and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles. Ezekiel 39:6."
Somebody had sent him a foreboding ancient message with a blank space in the sender line. I didn't even know that was possible.
And my thoughts landed on Alan this morning saying, essentially, anyone who drank FireFall in Griffith's Landing, which is a barrier island, will burn from the inside out. I wanted to get to Cora and make sure she hadn't been stolen out the window while Marg lay on the floor with her throat cut. I wanted to make sure Rain wasn't outside trying to kick people.
"Scott, don't worry," Hodji said quickly, and his eyes looked human and reflective for the first time since he came here. "This is not as bad as it seems."
"Hodji, I gotta know. If they were in this house, you have to tell me. I ... we got kids upstairs."
He put a hand on my arm and looked me dead in the eye with all his purple flamboyance. "I said, don't worry. ShadowStrike has no desire to hurt you or the rest of the Trinity Four. This e-mail ... they're after me."
He rushed out and took the stairs. I was close on his heels.
"Why?" I asked. "I thought you weren't in USIC anymore."
But he wasn't listening. He was muttering under his breath and heading outside. The words he uttered scared me completely: "...let me catch sight of you, you morons..."
Alan called the ShadowStrike members hoods. Hodji called them morons. I guess all the curse words in the world lined up wouldn't do it, so the agents went for demeaning names. He did think ShadowStrike was coming here. Whether it was for him or for us, I couldn't relax. I wanted to put this house and him under some sort of lockdown. He seemed to want to search the grounds as he headed toward the outbuildings with stomps that rang of "Bring it on!"
I grabbed the house phone and wondered if it could be bugged, but I dialed Alan anyway. When he picked up, I said, "Forget what I told you earlier about stopping at the supermarket. Marg went. You can just come straight back."
He said he would, so I guessed that wasn't too bad a cryptic message.
FORTY-TWO
CORA HOLMAN
MONDAY, MAY 6, 2002
11:45 P.M.
HER BEDROOM
MY NIGHT PROVED NO LESS CONFUSING than my day. I had fallen asleep to Henry reading, and awakened to see Scott. He was sound asleep in my velvet chair, wearing a sweaty white polo shirt and jeans, one foot on the bed, the other on the floor. My arms had clutched The Big Green Book, so I knew I hadn't dreamed Henry, but I wondered if Scott was just one of my many dreams. I'd felt too tired to lift my head off the pillow, so rather than get up and risk waking Scott, I had fallen back asleep.
When I awoke again, it was dark, though the little light on my nightstand gave the room a warm, orange glow. My alarm read 11:45. I had vague memories of Marg coming in, taking vitals from me, and telling me I qualified as two-star, and she would bring me dinner when I was ready. But she was gone now. The house was very quiet, save for the sounds of Mr. Montu's rhythmic snoring from below.
When I rolled over, Scott was in the chair asleep again. Only this time he was in shorts, sweat socks, and his UPenn sweatshirt with the sleeves cut out. He was in the same exact posture as I had seen him in his polo shirt and jeans, with his head resting in the wing of the chair. So I was confused enough to reach out and touch his leg above his sock.
Definitely, he was flesh and not a mirage. His skin felt too warm, and there was a rush of red in his cheeks. He must have felt my cool hand, because his eyes opened, though his worn-out expression did not change.
"Why are you sleeping in the chair?" I asked.
His eyes shut again. "Don't ask."
I waited for more. His eyes were directed downward, but I saw him blink a few times, so I knew he hadn't fallen back asleep. During some of my headaches at St. Ann's, I'd come out of them to find him asleep on Rain's bed, which he said was due to my tossing and turning. Rain would not be able to tell if something had gone really wrong, and he could, so waking up to see him wasn't totally abnormal. But I felt little more than exhausted for no reason, so it couldn't have been that.
I tried again. "You're going to hurt your neck."
"Everything is fine," he mumbled, then added, "you're perfectly safe."
Perfectly safe? From whom? I laid the book on the pillow and was struck with a comical notion. I wondered if he had some thought that Henry had tried to rape me, or even make some sort of advances. Henry, who read me a beautiful book and took all the terror out of the morning. Scott's presence made no sense, and I was concerned, not only about whatever drama was playing out in his head, but with his flushed cheeks and warm skin. He ought to be in a bed.
I got up on the far side of the bed, stretching and moving toward the window. The full moon hung in the eastern sky, c
asting golden rays on the treetops and on the pond. All was still. The water was a mirror. Mr. Tiger's car sat parked in the grass, but Mr. Steckerman's was gone. If they went somewhere together, they often took one vehicle, and I supposed they were out taking care of business.
"Marg said she could only rifle three spoonfuls of egg salad into you," Scott said without moving. His voice sounded half dead. "You want your dinner?"
Marg forcing me to eat came back in minute flashes. I hadn't wanted to, but whatever I was taking required food. If I wanted dinner, I could call for her. Just moving took some of the cobwebs out of my head.
"Did you eat?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Can I bring you some iced tea? Or, Henry brought over some lemonade, I understand, though it never made its way up here—"
I realized my error when his eyes shot open. I was standing beside him, and he gazed at my left hip before slowly shutting them again.
He finally said, "The Kid and Tyler's funeral is going to be televised."
"Televised?"
"Yeah. USIC came clean to the media ... told America all the heroic stuff those two had done. Anyway, they're going down as heroes. I think USIC told the truth to pacify Hodji. He's still on edge, but ... NBC will be there with an exclusive. Dateline's running it."
"That's wonderful," I said, sinking down on my bed in some relief.
"It is ... wonderful," he said, and finally dragged his head off his arm and sat up straighter. "But I don't want us going."
"Why not?"
"TV crews and everything ... I just don't."
We had already said yes to a Dateline interview, though Dr. Godfrey was keeping the producers at bay for now, knowing it would be an all-day session. Since we had already been in People and other magazines, it didn't seem to me he could be worried about the exposure. Rain and Owen had been set on going. My shudders over helping USIC were almost phobic, but phobic and selfish are two different things.
"I want to go," I said, and tried to repeat my thoughts, but he cut me off.
"Cora. Can we just leave it with, 'Don't ask'?"
Bossy. I couldn't pinpoint exactly when his speaking for me and dishing out orders had started to bother me. At St. Ann's, it had been comforting. I had been confused, and certainly nobody else was going to both walk in my shoes and lead the way. I didn't have any responses for him yet, but I had to compare him with Henry, who had shown up with flowers and gifts and kindness and only wished to carry me off to Magic Land. Scott? So far today, I'd been guilted at breakfast, made to cry in the basement, manhandled (I would certainly never have chosen my first kiss since seventh grade to be through a mask in a dank basement while crying), and left alone to make photos of potential killers by myself.
And who had heard my screams and saved me?
I was annoyed, but something broke inside me. For once, my throat didn't tense up with the thought of a confrontation. I didn't want to yell at him, but I didn't want to see him wake up with neck pain, for whatever reason he felt it would be necessary.
"Let's talk about it tomorrow," I said, pulling him by the arm to get up.
"You're not going," he insisted.
"You're dishing out orders," I said softly. There. I did it without turning into Aleese.
He groaned and pulled his arm out of my grip but followed me to his room.
"Get some decent sleep and you can tell me what's bothering you in the morning," I said, pulling up the comforter for him to drop under. He did, but jerked the blanket out of my hand, throwing it back on the bed.
"Please don't tuck me the fuck in."
"I wouldn't dream of it." I backed away.
I returned to my room, biting the smile off my lip.
Scott and Marg had both predicted I would be wide awake when I would normally feel sleepy, and vice versa, and I went back to bed, picking up The Big Green Book. Perfect for now. Maybe I could relive some of the sleepy peacefulness I'd gotten the first time. There wasn't a photo of Maurice Sendak on the jacket, but I supposed books didn't include photos of authors in the 1960s. Oma and I had always looked at the photos of authors and wondered what their lives were like. I wonder what it would be like to do a photo book on Maurice Sendak's life, I thought suddenly. I had been editor of our high school's literary magazine my junior year, but I had been asked because of my love of art and photography even more than for my writing. I hadn't given much thought to a major in college, but I suddenly wondered about photography. I had never felt like I could be particularly good at anything except studying, and now I wondered if I were being released from that, along with every other low-self-esteem curse Aleese had brought onto our house.
Do a photo book on Shahzad and Tyler. The thought struck darkly but deep at my core, in my conscience, in the center of my gratitude. I felt Aleese breathing all over me, and I suddenly came tumbling to a crossroads I knew I had to face. Maybe the drugs were leaving me very quickly, but I had a clear head, clear for one of the first times since she died. If I don't forgive Aleese for her treatment of me, I will never inherit her conscience, which seemed to run so deeply for everybody else. I could have a closed-off and safe life with so many feelings stuck in neutral, or I could have a caring and adventurous life, however long or short it might be.
But I have to forgive her first.
I sat there stunned, clutching the children's book and closing my eyes, feeling her draw very close. The hateful glint in her gaze roasted the backs of my eyelids—she had so loved to torture me, mock me, call me "Brat." How could I ever forget? And yet she surrounded me now, waiting, it seemed, for me to address her without my usual stiffness.
I hadn't been a stiff person before she came home. I'd been alive and a giggler and had a lot of friends. I could have been Rain Steckerman. But then Aleese showed up. My embarrassment had been profound, a lot of which had to do not so much with her drug habit but with her. I suppose I could have told my friends about a morphine addiction and still kept them. I simply could not bring myself to tell them that my mother shook my hand when she met me, called me Brat when she was high, and treated me with all the common courtesy of a roommate one secretly despises. That's what changed me.
How do I forgive that? It wasn't like crossing a bridge. It was like climbing a skyscraper. I pulled out my laptop and shot an e-mail off to Jeremy.
"I'm struggling," I said. "How do I ever forgive her? Thoughts, please."
As my first e-mail to him had been pages long and had left me bedridden for a day and a half, I hit SEND before I could argue with myself about creating a dissertation again.
I hadn't thought I would hear back so quickly, but after studying the Sendak artwork for only twenty or so minutes, "You've got mail" came from the laptop. He must have been on his computer anyway.
Cora: I'm glad you wrote. As your mother never mentioned me to you, I highly doubt she mentioned my father. He sat on British parliament for many years, which sounds slightly important, and perhaps it is. But more important is that for the past seven years he has been dying, and after I split from your mum, I finally had the time and nearness to pursue the kind of relationship with him that I'd always wanted. He finally made it across the precipice Saturday night, and I got word of it about the time I hit SEND to you.
While your mum and I traveled together, I often promised her a portion of my inheritance, figuring she had done so much for the world for free. Unfortunately, she's not here to share it. Be advised I am putting seventy thousand pounds in an account for you. We can talk more about that in a month or so. It will take as long for the papers to be finalized.
It was so unlike what I'd been expecting to hear that my eyes bugged, and I read it twice. Seventy thousand pounds was a fortune, close to the same amount or more in dollars, though I was otherwise clueless about currency conversion. I was speechless, as I already had the amount to fulfill my dreams of college and a condo from what I'd been left by Oma and the sale of our property. The figure hung in the air like the echo from a gon
g, and I knew I would have to write him back and tell him I didn't need it. He might have made a promise to Aleese, but I remembered how she had begrudged me even her camera, and after she'd let it sit in the closet for years. I simply couldn't accept.
I would tell him that while I was grateful, certainly he should find some charity Aleese would have appreciated, like those that helped the starving children she photographed. But that would be for later. I was dizzy over the gesture and all it implied—and all it didn't even touch upon.
I actually scanned the e-mail for signs that he had answered my questions. He didn't mention the tape again, and maybe he regretted telling me to watch it, when he was obviously distracted by his father's death. And he didn't answer my question about forgiving Aleese. But maybe he had. Maybe his feelings for her so rang off the screen, rang in the very concept of leaving a huge inheritance to her child, that nothing else needed to be said.
I pushed the laptop away and lay back, dully staring at the ceiling, waiting for Aleese to swoop down on me, call to me from the pond, or find some way to imply how undeserving of Jeremy I was. I did feel something fill the room ... if something not dark, then anxious ... or maybe it was the echo of a voice outside, which made me sit straight up and forget everything for a moment. I hadn't heard a car. All voices entering this house, coming onto these grounds, were preceded by a car engine, and I listened through what now amounted to silence so deep outside that not even the crickets buzzed. The crickets could do that, whatever crickets were out here—be chirping madly and all of a sudden pause, in unison, as if some mystical force waved a magic wand over them.
I thought my head was playing tricks on me at first, but I couldn't resist standing slowly. I heard laughter—just one far-off echo that seemed to come from all directions at once. My gaze went to the corridor, to the closet, to the side of the bed, and rested on the moon outside. My last hallucination had started with a laugh, I suddenly recalled. And now it was back. If I called to Scott, I would wake everyone in the house.