But Faith got up fast, and I set myself because I thought he was gonna bull-rush me. Wrong. All he did was flex his shoulders, then let his meat hooks hang down loose at his sides.
“I won’t fight you, Marx.”
“What’s the matter? Afraid of it?”
“There’s no reason to fight. The only thing I did was give your daughter a ride home.”
“Says you.”
“What does she say?”
“Never mind that. Answer what I asked you before. What were you doing with her on the Bluffs?”
“I wasn’t with her. She was there with her boyfriend.”
“Yeah? What were you there for?”
“No reason. Driving around, taking in the sights.”
The mouthy guy in the bunch said, “Horseshit. Out hunting young girls—”
Faith glared his way and he shut up. Then he said to me, “She had an argument with the boyfriend and went and hid in the woods. He drove off and left her.”
“And you found her, huh?”
“If you want to put it like that. I heard him yelling for her, saw her wandering around after he left. She was pretty shaken up. I talked to her, calmed her down, gave her a ride home. That’s all.”
“If that’s all, why’d you stop down the street from my house? Why’d she jump out of your car and run away? You try to put your hands on her?”
“No. Who told you she ran away? Not Trisha.”
“Don’t matter who told me.”
“It matters,” he said, “because it’s a lie. She didn’t run, she walked fast. And I stopped where I did because that’s where she told me to stop.”
“She locked herself in her room, she was crying...”
“I told you, she had a blowup with her boyfriend. Ask her, why don’t you? She’ll tell you the same thing.”
Some of the crazy anger was starting to seep out of me. He was an ugly bugger and I wanted to keep on hating his guts, but I couldn’t seem to do it. Didn’t sound like he was lying. That damn Zenna, twisting things, making them seem worse than they were... I should’ve known you can’t believe half of what she says. And Anthony Munoz, no-good, smart-ass spic... driving off and leaving her was just the kind of thing he’d do. How many times had I warned her about him, that he’d get her in hot water someday if she didn’t watch out?
Yeah, Faith was telling the truth. He wasn’t any coward either. He could’ve taken me apart anytime he wanted to. I knew it then and everybody else that’d come out of the cafe knew it, too. They all kept their distance, and not even the mouthy guy had anything more to say.
I wasn’t yelling anymore when I said, “All right, man. But Trisha better not tell me you did anything but what you said — talked to her and took her straight home. She better not tell me you put so much as a finger on her.”
“She won’t,” Faith said, “because I didn’t.”
“All right, then. All right.”
And that was the end of it. I didn’t say I was sorry for popping him, and he didn’t ask me to. We didn’t say anything more to each other. He went to where Lori was and took a couple of bills out of his wallet and handed them to her. “For the coffee,” he said. Then he said, “See? Not in this lifetime,” and he walked away to his Porsche and fired it up to a roar and burned rubber all the way out into the street. Pissed. Holding it in check but mad as hell underneath. Yeah, he could’ve kicked the holy crap out of me if he’d wanted to.
So why hadn’t he?
The mouthy guy came up next to me and breathed onions in my face. “Maybe that bastard didn’t mess with your kid,” he said, “but he’s trouble anyway. Big trouble.”
“How do you know so much?” Lori said to him. She sounded pissed, too. “He never bothered anybody. All he wants is to be left alone.”
“Yeah? What you want to defend him for?”
“What you want to condemn him for?”
“You like his looks, Lori?”
“Better than yours,” she said. “His personality, too.” And she stormed back inside.
The guy said, “Women.” He laid a hand on my arm. “You read the paper tonight? Kent’s right. Stranger’s up to no good, else what’s he hanging around town for?”
I shrugged his hand off and didn’t answer. I was feeling crappy about the whole business, thinking that I shouldn’t’ve chased after Faith the way I did, should’ve talked to Trisha first. It all left a bad taste in my mouth. Right then it did, anyway.
But as I was driving home I got to thinking that it wasn’t all my fault. Faith had some blame coming, too. He shouldn’t’ve been hanging around up on the Bluffs at night, not for any reason. He shouldn’t be hanging around Pomo, either. Hell, he shouldn’t’ve come here in the first place. Maybe Kent and the mouthy guy were right after all. Maybe this Faith was up to no good. Nasty-looking type like him, with his linebacker eyes... yeah.
What else except up to no damn good?
Storm Carey
All evening I’ve had the strangest feeling. I can’t quite define it, except as a kind of... waiting. The kind you feel when you know someone is coming to see you, someone you’ve been expecting for a long time and the arrival is imminent. Anticipation. Not really intense, lacking eagerness, and yet... I don’t know, I can’t describe it. I can only feel it, sense the immediacy.
It isn’t John Faith I’m waiting for. At least I don’t believe it is. The feeling started after six, after the deadline for his call, and I’ve heard nothing from him since then. Not coming. Changed his mind. The Hunger and I were disappointed at first, but not as much as we would have been on another night. Now it seems not to matter at all.
Who is it we’re waiting for?
One of the other surrogates, incubuses? But none of them have called; there were no casual meetings today, not a word or a smile in the past few days that could be mistaken for invitation or encouragement. And I’m almost always the one to take the initiative, make the arrangements. The Hunger doesn’t permit unannounced drop-ins. Anticipation, enough time for the mouth and tongue to indulge their maddening foreplay, is an essential part of its need.
But the anticipation tonight is different. The mouth is closed, the tongue hidden, the lips still. Different and asexual, this waiting.
For what, then?
Soon. The word seems to sing in my mind. Soon.
I wander through the house, aimlessly. I haven’t eaten since noon, but I have no appetite. Or any interest in alcohol. The house is quiet, almost breathlessly so, as if it, too, is waiting, yet I also have no interest in music or radio or television noise. I prefer the silence. I turn on lights and turn them off again; I prefer the shadows.
Such a strange feeling...
In Neal’s study I gently run my fingers over the glass-smooth surface of his cherrywood desk, his leather “thinking” chair. I look at the Brueghel prints on the walls, the cabinets filled with his collection of antique snuffboxes and bottles. All just the same as it was when he was here. Carefully preserved: I could never bring myself to change or remove any of it. A kind of shrine — memories of his life. Memento mori — reminders of his death.
I go upstairs to the bedroom we shared, and standing in the darkness I look at the bed I’ve shared with so many others. Faceless, all of them; it’s Neal I see lying there, arms outstretched, beckoning to me. I want to cry, but there are no tears left. I turn away.
Outside in the night, there is the sound of a car. Light flashes across the window curtains as it comes uphill fast.
I hurry to the window, peer out. The car stops in that moment, in the shadow of the big cedar that towers above the garage. Its headlights wink out. No moon tonight, and restless clouds hiding the stars: I can’t tell whose car it is, or even if it’s one I’ve seen before. Nor can I quite make out the person who slips quickly through the driver’s door.