Death and resurrection, p.26
Death and Resurrection, page 26
Occasionally Susan still erupted in brays of laughter. “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Susan,” said Ewen. He was resting his face against the window, gazing at the lights dejectedly.
She went silent, but only for a few moments. “If I thought you couldn’t fix this right up, sweetie, I wouldn’t be laughing.” Another few seconds went by with no sound but the roar of the engine. “You can fix this right up? Can’t you?”
He sighed. “Just let me get my hands on him,” Ewen said in a dire voice. In truth, he had no idea how to repair the situation, but the women didn’t have to know that.
“Well—remember, when you do catch up, you’ll be getting your hands on you!” She began to chuckle again. Lynn Young-Thurmond stared at her, wide-eyed.
Rez was staring at Ewen, her nose working nervously. Their meeting had not gone smoothly, and Ewen had had a chance to see how the big dog reacted to most men. He had worked to open his mind to her, happy to find he had that ability even as Jacob, and that had made a great difference, but she had let him know she was looking for the proper moment to tear that disfiguring body off her dear friend Ewen. He hoped they could find the boy before Rez found the moment.
“What does Theo say about this whole thing, Lynn?” asked Susan.
Lynn shrugged. “He says it’s not Tibetan.”
“Not Nez Perce, either. Have you tried getting in touch with Uncle Sid, Ewen?”
Ewen lifted his head off the window. “Once. He thought it was funny.”
“It is funny. But call him again. He might know something.”
“Maybe. But he’s too much like you, Sue. He’d just die laughing. That is, if he weren’t . . . ”
“Already dead. I know.”
Ewen scratched a pimple. “Besides. I hope we have this . . . fixed up tomorrow. Or is it today already?”
Lynn looked around the seat at her red-eyed brother. “You’re tired. I’m so sorry.”
“Please don’t say that again.” Ewen let his head bang against the window again. More moments passed, filled with engine noise. “You know what’s really weird?” he asked.
“Everything, right now,” answered Lynn.
Susan spoke. “What’s weird is the fact that if I touched you right now I could be convicted of aiding and abetting the delinquency of a minor. Or whatever it’s called.” She giggled again.
“It’s called child molestation,” said Lynn tartly. She dealt with molested children too often to make jokes of this nature.
Ewen spoke louder than either woman. “That was a rhetorical question. I’m going to tell you what’s weird. I keep having taste hallucinations of alcohol. Nose hallucinations, too.”
They both turned and stared at him. “That’s amazing,” said Lynn. “You always despised the taste of alcohol.”
“Still do. But boy do I want some! And even weirder, I don’t know what kind of liquor I’m hallucinating. When it’s not beer, or wine, that is. It’s sharp and herbal and . . . something like mouthwash.”
“Maybe you’re hallucinating Listerine,” said Lynn.
“Are you hallucinating smoke?” Susan asked. “Or cough syrup?”
“No. Neither one. What would those be?”
“Well, smoke could be Irish whisky or Scotch. Bourbon is a bit like cough syrup. Rye is like . . . mmmm. Let me see . . . ”
“Rye bread?” suggested Lynn.
Susan showed her teeth in a grin. “Boy. You two are both babes in the woods. Nothing like that. I can’t think of a good analogy. It’s kind of a spoiled sugary taste.”
Ewen leaned forward. “I didn’t know you knew so much about the stuff either. I’ve never seen you drink it.”
“I hope you never do,” said Susan Sundown. They flew on through the dark with engine noise punctuating the silence. She didn’t laugh again for a long while.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Jacob must have been asleep for a while, because he was now wrapped in a woolen blanket and huddled against a wall. But no, this wasn’t a blanket. It was a pea coat. The grizzled old man was squatting next to him, patiently watching.
“How’d I get . . . ” He looked around and saw he was in an alley, not too dirty an alley, under moonlight.
“You got here by yourself, boyo, and then you sat down. Sleepin’ and shiverin’, sleepin’ and shiverin’.”
Memories flooded back and few of them were pleasant. “I got in a fight.” He put his hand to the top of his head and pulled it back very quickly, wincing.
“Yeah, but you should see the other guys,” said the old man, grinning. “Which I did. You cut a swath through that old workingman’s club back there. What were you fighting about, anyway?”
“I kept hitting people,” said Jacob, in pure wonderment.
“Got that part. But why?”
“No. I mean we were fighting because I kept hitting people. I got scared about something and it just went off.”
“It?”
“The body,” said Jacob in tones of grievance. He looked at Ewen’s tan hands. They looked perfectly ordinary.
The old guy leaned back. “Friend,” he said. “It’s just advice from a stranger, but you should lay off the hooch.”
This irritated Jacob for a moment, but only for a moment. “That’s what I’ve been hearing,” he admitted. “From all sides.”
He stood up, propping himself against the fake adobe wall. Only his head seemed to be hurt. But he was tired, and he was cold, even though he was wearing another man’s coat (among many other things.) “I’ve got to get in touch with some people,” he said. “I need to call home.”
As he said these words, a new sort of peace settled over Jacob. He needed to call home. Washington. His father. But most of all, he needed to find Dr. Young. To tell her about her brother.
“I need to start doing things right,” he said to the old guy without the coat. And, though he had to be without a clue what Jacob was talking about, he nodded wisely.
“Can you tell me where to find a phone?” he asked, and fished into the back pocket of his chinos. The wallet was gone and so was the new peace he had found.
“Oh, shit!” said Jacob.
Four people and a dog found themselves at the cemetery and it was locked.
“I expected that,” said Susan. “They wouldn’t be able to keep a cemetery open all night. It would be a mess in the morning.”
“It’s not like kids could kick over the flat tombstones,” said Ewen, wearily. “But I suppose they could spray graffiti over them.”
“What they’d do is shoot up on them,” said Lynn. “And what better place to spread HIV than a cemetery.” Both her companions looked at her in surprise. She was almost a perfect stranger to cynicism.
“It won’t matter,” Susan said, and she bent down to the dog. “Rez. Find Ewen. Ewen.”
Ewen himself snorted as the dog looked uncertainly from her handler to him. Susan put her hand to the concrete in front of the wrought-iron gates. “Here. Find Ewen.”
Rez put her long nose to the spot and began to sniff. She paused only for a second, thrust her muzzle between the railings and drew it out again. She turned to her left along the sidewalk, not even lowering her head to the scent. She pulled against her tracking harness. “Good going!” said Susan, leaning back for balance. They trotted down the street in Resurrection’s wake.
“About thirty years ago,” the old man was saying, “I was in Arizona. Me and a friend knew a guy who was gonna die of booze and dope. This wasn’t something that was gonna happen eventually, you understand. He was gonna die maybe that day or the next day. My buddy and I were really good at spotting where a guy was, on that path. But we weren’t his family or anything, so we didn’t have what you’d call authority to do anything about it. Especially not thirty years ago. Especially not in Arizona.”
The old man was striding along under the streetlamps, with Jacob walking behind him. Jacob’s head was hurting like a very bitch. “So, what we did was, we waited for him to shoot up and while he’s nodding we tie him up.”
“Tie him up?”
“Yeah. Tied his arms behind his back and put a gag in his mouth, and put him in the back seat of the car. Now, at that time the nearest treatment center was about a hundred twenty-five miles away, and so we start driving. But it was April, and already hot down there, and of course we ain’t got air-conditioning, so we’re drivin’ with the windows open and hot air blastin’ over us and the guy comes to and starts makin’ noise. Tries to butt me with his head, too. We’ve had about enough of him already when we come to a river that runs under the highway, so . . . ”
“You didn’t!” said Jacob, aghast. The old man turned and glanced at him in surprise. “Sure we did. We just got out and took a swim in the river, leaving him there.”
“Oh,” said Jacob. “I thought . . . ”
“Hell! We left the windows open. Like for a dog. He wasn’t gonna die of heatstroke. And the second part of that trip was much more pleasant, what with our clothes soaked and our mood improved. And we’d planned it just right. By the time we got to the treatment center—where was that? Tempe, maybe?—he was so strung out and out of control they felt it necessary to certify him.”
They walked on, and Jacob didn’t ask where they were going. He had never asked. “Last I heard about the guy, he was nine years clean and sober. But I heard he still wanted to bust my chops.
“There’s no pleasin’ some people.”
The old man suddenly grinned. “You know, while we were swimming and the guy pokin’ his head out the window, gag and all, there were a number of people drivin’ the other way—passed us right by. They waved. We waved. Only in Arizona!”
They were on a residential street and the old man walked up the driveway that belonged to a very small, concrete brick house. He knocked on the door, waited a few minutes in the dark and then knocked again. Jacob was very much aware that he was wearing the old man’s coat, and he wished he had the courage to take it off and give it back. But he was cold and tired, and he didn’t have that much courage.
“Used to be they wouldn’t take in alcoholics at most hospitals. This was before my time, and I’m not sure why. Maybe they thought they weren’t really sick. Maybe they thought we deserved to die.” Jacob caught the change to the word “we” and looked up at the guy more intently. “Anyhow, this old guy told me he once took a friend in, having seizures and all, and the people said they wouldn’t admit him because it was alcohol withdrawal. So my friend hauls off and punches his friend. Fractures his jaw. ‘Now he’s got something else wrong with him,’ he says. ‘Now you can admit him.’ ”
“And did that guy want to fracture his jaw when he got out?” Jacob asked, interested despite himself.
“Not that I heard.”
The door was opened by a young woman with stubbly pink hair. She was about five feet tall and drop-dead gorgeous. From what they could see she was wearing only a long men’s T-shirt. “Wha—?” she asked the old man, squinting and blinking, and then she focused on Jacob behind him. She said nothing else.
“We got a guy here on vacation, Em. Thought you might want to get your feet wet in Step Twelve.”
She glanced from one man to the other. She practiced keeping her eyes open. “Sure thing,” she said. “C’m in.”
She was so short and so cute she reminded Jacob of Frodo the hobbit. A girl Frodo. With pink hair. Under the ceiling light the living room was dusty and overflowing with books. She had the habit of putting the books down open, which Jacob’s father had never permitted him to do, on account of the spines. The indoor air was warm, and smelled dusty. Bookish. She did not, however, look bookish. Her hair stood up in sleep-flattened spikes. She wore a nose ring.
“May I present Jacob the Vacationer,” said the old man. “He got in a bit of a rumble in that bucket of blood downtown.”
Jacob didn’t remember that the place had been called The Bucket of Blood. He vaguely remembered it was something like The Pier House, or Private Dock, or something marine. Bucket of Blood seemed to fit it better, though.
The pink-haired girl was looking at him carefully. Jacob avoided her stare and thought he might be blushing. Could she tell, through Ewen’s coloring?
“You don’t look too bad,” she said, thoughtfully.
“Got hit with a chair, that’s all,” said Jacob, and immediately felt himself a fool. He added, “My name is Jacob—but then he told you that. Jacob Fischbein.”
She stared at him. “Not really! Jacob Fischbein? You’re kidding me!”
He responded, “No. Really. Why . . . ?” Then he remembered appearances. “It’s a long story,” he added lamely.
“I’ll have to hear it sometime,” she said, and then put out one of her fragile-seeming hands. “I’m Em. Short for Emma.”
“Or maybe its ‘M’ for membrane. Or magic,” added the man. “Em is our local expert in the eleventh dimension. She’s our ‘brane’ trust.” He stretched out the word for emphasis.
Pink Em shot him a chiding glance. “This man’s already got enough on his mind right now without your impossible puns,” she said.
Jacob was very happy to be able to say, “Oh, but I get it. Superstrings. Rippling membranes colliding. Pre-Big-Bang stuff.”
Em held on to his hand for a few moments. “You’re a physicist, Mr. Fischbein?”
He wished he could say he was. He wished she hadn’t called him “Mr. Fischbein.” He wished she hadn’t let go of his hand. “No. Not yet, anyway. I watch the Science Channel, though. You should quiz me on the Indonesian hobbit fossil.”
She stared at him.
“The Hobbit,” he repeated, staring at her.
“I was thinkin’,” said the old guy, “ . . . that maybe you could put us in your Kia and drive us somewhere. Like to the Lady Rose’s place.”
“I would,” said Em, “but it’s in the shop. Brakes and rotor worn through.”
The old man shrugged and scuffed his feet on her old carpet. “Bummer for you. And sorry we woke you up.”
“I don’t mind. I’m ready for some ‘twelfth dimension’ study anyway. We can walk.” She looked at Jacob closely and added “It’ll clear your head.”
He asked if he could use her phone. After some trouble they found the thing under an old Richard Feynman book. Em went off to change.
As Jacob picked up the cell phone, his friend spoke a word into his ear. The word was, “Almost sixteen. Almost.” Jacob turned. “Almost sixteen what?”
“That lovely little thing is fifteen years young. She drives on a learner’s permit. You want to remember that.”
“Fifteen’s a great . . . ” Jacob had a revelation. “Oh. I see.” As he tapped the number for the Thurmond residence in Redmond, Washington, Jacob felt a sudden increase in his drive to recover his own fifteen-year-old body.
There was no one at home at the Thurmond house. The office was closed, of course. He couldn’t remember his doctor’s cell phone number. He sat on a dusty pile of books and looked at the streetlight shining through the window shade, very dim and yellow.
“By the way, I’m Raymond,” said the old guy, who was poking a cotton hankie down the length of his little flute.
“Oh.” Jacob was embarrassed, because he certainly should have asked by now. He felt all sorts of awkward, sitting there, and his head was beginning to throb in the warmth of the house. He unbuttoned the pea coat and shrugged it off. “Sorry. I forgot I still had your coat.”
“Keep it for now, Jacob. I’m good against the cold. You get what I was saying about Em?” Raymond looked almost fierce.
“Sure. She’s a kid.”
“She’s a precious kid, and smarter than any two people together would have the right to be. She’s also one of us.”
Jacob lowered his head. He had caught on to what “one of us” meant. The “twelfth dimension” had made it certain, for him. But he had trouble connecting little Em with anything as low as a detox center. Anything as low as Jacob.
Chapter Thirty
Alex Bell had a broken nose, and the doctor in the ER had said he could either have it reset (later) or spend the rest of life with his face pointing in a direction fifteen degrees off from where his feet were heading. He was in a bad mood because of this. He had also had an interaction with the Santa Barbara Police, which he had instigated in an attempt to obtain justice, but had later regretted. A man who had been in a bar fight, and who was undeniably—well, tipsy—had a hard time convincing the boys in blue that he was a wronged party. Even though he wasn’t driving drunk, or causing a public ruckus or anything, they seemed reluctant to take his complaint about the whacked-out Chinese guy who had damaged his whole crew as well as himself. He was in a bad mood because of this, too. He was also quite seriously feeling the Vicodin they had given him, and still a little bit drunk. Just a little bit. All this put him in a bad mood.
Fernando, who had taken a shot to the groin, was moving a bit stiffly. He had accompanied Alex to the hospital, but had not asked to see a doctor. It was a bit too personal an injury for Fernando to share with a stranger. Jack walked beside the two, holding his head in his hand. They had said there was nothing they could do about the loose tooth, or the bruise on his face beside it. He, like Fernando, had mooched one of Alex’s pills.
Fernando was driving, which the police would not have appreciated. It would have been just like the police to pull Nando in for a DUI while refusing to take action against the Chinese guy, who really was dangerous. But the three had things to do and Fernando wasn’t feeling sober enough to walk right now.
He cruised down the boulevard with a drunk’s cautious driving, five miles under the speed limit. He made the right turn toward The Private Dock successfully, except for cutting it a little close and hopping the curb. The bar was now closed, but none of the crew were sure they would have gone in there anyway. Ed, the owner, kept a baseball bat under the counter and no one could remember whether his chair had broken when they used it on the Chinese guy’s head. Besides, they weren’t looking for another drink. They were looking for the guy.
