Atmos clock datingTheon and I had spent an inordinate amount of time and money at Threadley’s. People died in our business with frightening regularity. STDs and cancers, some murders and a nauseating number of suicides, drug overdoses, and the odd death that even the county coroner couldn’t explain — people who died in their rented houses, apartments, and trailers simply by exhaling and leaving this world behind. “Watch the woman on the left,” Tanaqua said. Duncan followed his gaze to a middle-aged woman who stood apart from the others. “At the end of each of her racks she lays down half a fish, for the river spirits. Only her racks.” Duncan glanced at the others and saw his companion was right. TheMohawk turned to him with an expectant look and when Duncan did not react he raised his brows. “She is Lenni Lenape. The only one I have seen today,” he said, then pushed off with his hands, gracefully dropping from the low ledge onto the flat where the woman worked. “But you were always nice to me,” Jude said. “And I’d go home feeling so guilty because you never treated me bad. “Who will you want as pallbearers?” From the patio, Linda Karinger called into the house for help. She’d need the outdoor furniture set up before noon, and would someone please get on that while she started the coals going in the grill? She wore a camouflaged apron with white block letters across the front: FREEDOM ISN’T FREE. JS: No, it’s dumb. It doesn’t make any sense. [Laughter.] Let me think of something better. What about birds of a feather and so on? “Planted by our Care! No! Your oppressions planted ’em in America. They fled from your Tyranny to their uncultivated and unhospitable Country-where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which Human Nature is liable . . . and Yet, actuated by Principles of true English Lyberty they met all these hardships with pleasure, compared with those they suffered in their own Country, from the hands of those who should have been their Friends. The blood could be washed off, though one would have to explain away the damage. How though? Surely he’d find a way, provided the dead man and his luggage were disposed of, provided they simply weren’t there any more. As if they’d never existed, neither the man nor his cases. “A Mr So-and-so?”—“No record of him here.”—“He travelled to Vienna?”—“Definitely not.”—“And he didn’t check in?”—“He didn’t check in anywhere.”—“Did he check out at the other end?”—“Yes, but didn’t arrive here.”—“When did he leave?”—“Tuesday.”—“Really? Time of arrival?”—“Eighteen thirty-five… at the Westbahnhof.”—“Yes, he should have been on that train, but the fact is he wasn’t…”—“What?”—“The drivers?”—“Yes, one of them… Yes, the porter said that… Yes, to the Bristol.”—“But that must’ve been someone else. Nobody by that name had checked in at the hotel…”—“What do you mean, nobody had checked in?…”—“He must’ve though, but…”—“What was the driver’s name?”—“Ferdinand Sponer.”—“I beg your pardon?”—“Yes, of course.”—“Yes, sir, certainly. We’ll bring him in for questioning.” She doesn’t even read her own letters. She has imposed herself on all the great artists of her time, but she has lost them, for they are creators, and she deprives them of oxygen (she only sees them again so as to make sure I don’t see them); she would like them to be without soul, without talent, for her alone, just as her Chinese trees are without leaves. These plain truths soothed me. I shifted onto my side and lost consciousness while breathing in the sweet scent of Lana’s troubled sleep. No need for us to be ashamed of them. He might have been lying for about a quarter of an hour or even longer and perhaps been dozing off, when he again became aware of a noise. The waiter had opened the door and was now pushing a small food trolley into the room. Sponer sat up. The waiter, however, motioned to him that he should remain where he was, and that he would wheel the trolley up to the sofa. I stared at him in his suit. He never looked right in a suit, same as I never looked right in jeans. A tuft of black bristles protruded from his ear, the match of the black bristles sprouting from his nose, as if something were growing inside him, forcing its way out. He was a few rungs behind on the evolutionary ladder, or perhaps a few rungs ahead on the evolutionary ladder, or on some as yet undocumented stretch of the ladder which had taken off on a tangent, so he was not a man but something hybrid, something wolfish, something that wore its pelt on the inside, because they were a new breed, weren’t they, these developers. And their development was escalating. Soon they would take over. They’d enslave us. Too late: they already had. A commotion had broken out in the sales queue. An agent had placed a sign in the window: “I only ask,” Jude said, “because I gave a bag just like that to Deb only an hour ago. We’re very good friends, you know. Very close.” I went into Edda’s room. She was sitting in the lotus position on the crappy bed that her mother, the assistant nurse, hadn’t been allowed to make, despite considerable pressure. Along with the blanket and pillow, the bed was cluttered with a sweater, an orange-juice carton, a plastic bag from the Hagkaup supermarket, a hairbrush, cassette tapes, and slippers. Edda was staring at the heap, looking terribly pitiable, her face damaged, her arm in a cast, wearing too-small pajamas and holding a brightly smiling teddy bear. a nine-year-old principal of cows Suddenly Sarah skipped forward, pulling him toward the stile that traversed the pasture fence as if she too recognized the need to shake off their dark spell. She led him along the edge of the field, staying in the deepest shadows, and finally halted when they heard a thin but joyful bleat. Because of that“substantial pay increase” Karinger kept referring to about the marines, he and Jackie finalized arrangements for a small wedding to be held at the Connolly farm in April of senior year. Kush and Watts shared the title of best men.. |