The Great And Secret Show Part 11

"Christ, was I dumb," Tommy-Ray went on.

She tried a smile as she turned back to him. "Tommy," she said, "I want you to meet Howie."

She'd never seen a look on Tommy-Ray's face like the look she was witnessing now; hadn't known those idolized features capable of such malice.

"Howie?" he said. "As in Howard?"

She nodded, glancing back at Howie. "I'd like you to meet my brother," she said. "My twin brother. Howie, this is Tommy-Ray."

Both men stepped forward to shake hands, bringing them into her vision at the same time. The sun shone with equal strength on both, but it didn't flatter Tommy-Ray, despite his tan. He looked sickly beneath the veneer of health he wore; his eyes sunk without a gleam, his skin too tightly drawn over his cheeks and temples. He looks dead, she found herself thinking. Tommy-Ray looks dead.

Though Howie extended his hand to be shaken Tommy-Ray ignored it, suddenly turning to his sister.

"Later," he said, so softly.

His murmur was almost drowned out by the din of complaints from behind him but she caught its menace clearly enough. Having spoken he turned his back and returned to the car. She couldn't see the mollifying smile he was putting on, but she could imagine it. Mr. Golden, raising his arms in mock-surrender, knowing his captors didn't have a hope.

"What was that about?" Howie said.

"I don't exactly know. He's been odd since-"

She was going to say since yesterday, but she'd seen a canker in his beauty moments ago that must have been there always, except that she-like the rest of the world-had been too dazzled to recognize it.

"Does he need help?" Howie asked.

"I think it's better we let him go."

"Jo-Beth!" somebody called. A middle-aged woman was striding towards them, both dress and features plain to the point of severity.

"Was that Tommy-Ray?" she said as she approached.

"Yes it was."

"He never stops by any longer." She had come to a halt a yard from Howie, staring at him with a look of mild puzzlement on her face. "Are you coming to the store, Jo-Beth?" she said, not looking away from Howie. "We're already late opening."

"I'm coming."

"Is your friend coming too?" the woman asked pointedly.

"Oh yes...I'm sorry...Howie...this is Lois Knapp."

"Mrs., " the woman put in, as though her marital status were a talisman against strange young men.

"Lois...this is Howie Katz."

"Katz?" Mrs. Knapp replied. "Katz?" She removed her gaze from Howie, and studied her watch. "Five minutes late," she said.

"It's no problem," Jo-Beth said. "We never get anyone in before noon."

Mrs. Knapp looked shocked at this indiscretion.

"The Lord's work is not to be taken lightly," she remarked. "Please be quick." Then she stalked off. "Fun lady," Howie commented.

"She's not as bad as she looks."

"That'd be difficult."

"I'd better go."

"Why?" Howie said. "It's a beautiful day. We could go someplace. Make the most of the weather."

"It'll be a beautiful day tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. This is California, Howie."

"Come with me anyway."

"Let me try to make my peace with Lois first. I don't want to be on everyone's s.h.i.+t list. It'll upset Momma."

"So when?"

"When what?"

"When will you be free?"

"You don't give up, do you?"

"Nope."

"I'll tell Lois I'm going back home to look after Tommy-Ray this afternoon. Tell her he's sick. It's only half a lie. Then I'll come by the motel. How's that?"

"Promise?"

"Promise." She began to move away, then said: "What's wrong?"

"Don't want to...kiss...kiss me in public, huh?"

"Certainly not."

"How about in private?"

She half-heartedly shushed him as she backed away.

"Just say yes."

"Howie."

"Just say yes."

"Yes."

"See? It's real easy."

In the late morning, as she and Lois sat sipping ice water in the otherwise deserted store, the older woman said: "Howard Katz."

"What about him?" Jo-Beth said, preparing herself for a lecture on behavior with the opposite s.e.x.

"I couldn't think where I knew the name from."

"And now you remember?"

"A woman who lived in the Grove. 'Way back," she said, then turned her attention to wiping a ring of water from the counter with her napkin. Her silence, and the effort she gave to this minor mopping, suggested she was happy to let the subject drop if Jo-Beth chose not to pursue it. Yet she'd felt obliged to raise the issue. Why?

"Was she a friend of yours?" Jo-Beth asked.

"Not of mine."

"Of Momma's?"

"Yes," Lois said, still mopping, though the counter was dry.

"Yes. She was one of your momma's friends."

Suddenly, it came clear.

"One of the four," Jo-Beth said. "She was one of the four."

"I believe she was."

"And she had children?"

"You know, I don't remember."

This was the closest a woman of Lois's scrupulousness came to lying. Jo-Beth called her on it.

"You remember," she said. "Please tell me."

"Yes. I guess I do remember. She had a boy."

"Howard."

Lois nodded.

"You're sure?" Jo-Beth said.

"Yes. I'm sure."

Now it was Jo-Beth who kept her silence, while in her head she'd tried to re-evaluate the events of recent days in the light of this discovery. What did her dreams, and Howie's appearance, and Tommy-Ray's sickness have to do with each other, and with the story she'd heard in ten different versions of the bathing party that had ended in death, insanity and children?

Perhaps Momma knew.

III.

Buddy Vance's driver Jose Luis waited at their agreed rendezvous for fifty minutes before deciding that his boss must have made his way up the Hill under his own power. He called Coney on the car phone. Ellen was at the house but the boss wasn't. They debated what was best to do, and agreed he'd wait with the car the full hour then drive back via the route the boss would be likeliest to take.

He was nowhere along that route. Nor had he got home ahead of his ride. Again they debated the options, Jose Luis tactfully avoiding mention of the likeliest: that somewhere along the way he'd encountered female company. After sixteen years in Mr. Vance's employ he knew his boss's skill with the ladies verged on the supernatural. He would come home when he'd performed his magic.

For Buddy, there was no pain. He was thankful for the fact, but not so self-deceiving as to ignore its significance. His body was surely so messed up his brain had simply overloaded on agony, and pulled the plugs.

The darkness that enclosed him was without qualification; expert only in blinding him. Or perhaps his eyes were out; dashed from his head on the way down. Whatever the reason, detached from sight and feeling, he floated, and while he floated he calculated. First, the time it would take for Jose Luis to realize his boss wasn't coming home: two hours at the outside. His route through the woods would not be difficult to follow; and once they reached the fissure his peril would be self-evident. They'd be down after him by noon. On the surface and having his bones mended by the middle of the afternoon.

Perhaps it was almost midday already.

The only means he had of calculating time's pa.s.sing was his heartbeat, which he could hear in his head. He began to count. If he could get some sense of how long a minute lasted he'd be able to hold on to that span of time, and after sixty, know he'd lived an hour. But no sooner had he started counting than his head started a different calculation altogether...

How long have I lived, he thought. Not breathed, not existed, but actually lived? Fifty-four years since birth: how many weeks was that? How many hours? Better think of it year by year; it was easier. One year was three hundred and sixty days, give or take a few. Say he slept a third of that. One hundred and twenty days in slumberland. Oh Lord, already the moments dwindled. Half an hour a day on the John, or emptying his bladder. That was another seven and a half days a year, just doing the dirt. And shaving and showering, another ten days; and eating another thirty or forty; and all of this multiplied by fifty-four years...

He began to sob. Get me out of here, he murmured, please G.o.d get me out of here, and I'll live like I never lived, I'll make every hour, every minute (even sleeping, even s.h.i.+tting) a minute spent trying to understand, so that when the next darkness comes along I won't be so lost.

At eleven Jose Luis got in the car and drove back down the Hill to see if he could spot the boss somewhere on the street. Drawing a blank there he called in at the Food Stop in the Mall, where they'd named a sandwich in honor of Mr. Vance's patronage (flatteringly, it was mostly meat), then at the record store, where the boss would frequently purchase a thousand dollars' worth of stock. While quizzing Ryder, who owned the place, a customer came and announced to any who were interested that there was some serious s.h.i.+t going down in the East Grove, and did somebody get shot?

The road down to the woods was closed by the time Jose Luis arrived, a solitary cop directing traffic to turn around.

"No way through," he told Jose Luis. "The road's closed."

"What happened? Who got shot?"

"n.o.body got shot. It's just a crack in the road."

Jose Luis was out of the car now, staring past the cop to the woods.

"My boss," he said, knowing he needn't name the owner of the limo, "he was running down here this morning."

"So?"

"He hasn't come back yet."

"Oh s.h.i.+t. You'd better follow me."

They made their way through the trees in a silence broken only by barely coherent messages coming through on the cop's radio, all of which he ignored, until the thicket opened into a clearing. Several uniformed police were setting up barriers at its fringes to prevent anyone straying where Jose Luis was now led. The ground beneath his feet was cracked, and the cracks widened as the cop led him to where his Chief was standing, staring at the earth. Long before he came near the spot Jose Luis knew what lay ahead. The crack in the street and those he'd stepped over to reach this place were the consequence of a larger disturbance: a crevice fully ten feet across, opening into a devouring darkness.

"What's he want?" the Chief demanded, jabbing his finger in Jose Luis's direction. "We're keeping this under wraps."

"Buddy Vance," the cop said.

"What about him?"