"A little. But Richard was mainly an… emotional ghost. He was as affectively powerful as he was physically insubstantial. Remember, he didn't know who had poisoned him. And he never really thought about it as he was dying, he just wanted his kids to be all right. I was less worried that he'd reveal something than that her memories would spontaneously awaken from being around him. But it didn't happen. No, if Ron or Charmian don't tell her, I'm pretty sure she'll never know. And her psychiatrist is in on the deception, so I doubt he'll dig it up if she keeps working with him."
Ed's brow remained wrinkled.
"What else?" she prodded.
He shook his head, looking depressed and worn. "We go out on these expeditions wanting to figure out how the world works. We're trying to map this hidden terrain. We make terrific progress every time. And yet every time we come back, we have more questions than we have answers. We have new phenomena we can't integrate. Logic fails us. Our categories and taxonomies and theories all fall apart. When are going to know something, Cree?"
"Dunno," she admitted. She squeezed his hand.
"Speaking of which, what ever happened with that 'episode' of yours? The Civil War daydream?"
"Joyce and I checked it out. The house I saw across the gardens was definitely there, as I saw it, in 1862 – it's on all the plot maps of the period, and we even found a portrait of it the owners'd had painted. The original house burned down in 1954, but the family rebuilt and still lives there. Another old New Orleans family, the Millards. I even found their family crypt, not far from the Lamberts'. The names of the kids of that generation are all on it. Elizabeth – I thought of her as Lizzie – and Jane. The youngest was a boy named William John, who would have been six in 1862. Just as I saw him."
"Oh, man," Ed groaned.
"We checked the old Beauforte House site plans, too. They show the old cistern, right behind the kitchen garden. Just where I saw the soldiers drinking."
Ed was making such hyperbolic expressions of overwhelmedness that she had to laugh: His knees went wobbly and he staggered all over the sidewalk, clutching his chest as if having a heart attack.
"I think we even figured out whose mind I was seeing it through, Ed! General Beauforte had one daughter still living at home in May of 1862. Her name was Claudette, and she was fifteen when the Union Army took over the house. I was seeing it through her eyes as she waited in the slave quarters for them to take her and her mother away. It would have been a powerful moment. The experience lived on and I… I found it. I relived it."
Ed was looking around with theatrical paranoia. "Don't tell anyone!" he whispered. "We'll lose all our credibility. Or the CIA or somebody will kidnap you and make you do remote past viewing or something. Goddamn you, Cree! So help me, I'm going to catch up to you. I'm going to give you something that throws your theories into a tailspin. So help me."
She came to his side, put her arm around his waist; he did the same, and they walked on with matched strides, hip to hip. "You know, it's not too early to get a Bloody Mary with lunch," she told him. "Take the edge off these outrageous slings and arrows. Celebrate us both getting home. God, it's nice to see you!"
"Cree." His tone killed the exuberance dead.
"Yeah?"
"Tell me about the psychiatrist. How he fits in."
Cree saw it all in his eyes. "Joyce," she managed, feeling betrayed."Joyce told you. That's why you didn't come to New Orleans."
Ed just blinked once.
She was at a loss. "He was… he and I worked on Lila together. Compared notes. He doesn't 'fit in.' He and I, we – "
"What's this? What're we doing?" He gestured at the two of them, the street, the sky. He meant the good feeling that came so easily with them."This is nice, isn't it?"
"Of course! It's lovely! It's – " But Ed was walking on, and she had to jog to keep up with his long strides. She took his arm to slow him down, but he didn't look at her.
"So what's wrong with this?" he insisted. This time he sort of meant me.
Nothing! she almost said. This is as good as it gets! But her heart seemed to cleave inside her as she knew it wasn't quite so. "I don't know, Ed," she said.
They walked on for another minute, silent, not looking at each other, side by side but utterly distant.
"You should probably try to figure it out, Cree," he said at last. "Do what you have to. You know? We all gotta do what we gotta do. Let me know how it comes out."
He was offering some sort of permission, and she loved him fiercely for it. But when she tried to figure out what it was she had to do, no answer came. She clung to his arm, almost panicking, afraid he'd get away."Okay," she told him. "I'll try. Thanks."
They kept walking. They reached Waterfront Park, looked out at the water for a time. The Highway 99 overpass roared behind them as the Bainbridge Island ferry came in from the Sound, its hull banded in white froth. Excursion boats took off from the piers immediately to the south, and beyond them a couple of freighters hove slowly to the forest of gantries of the lower port. After a time they climbed the steps to Pike Place Market, got sandwiches, sat in one of the public seating stalls. They talked about other things. No Bloody Marys; the giddy sense of celebration was gone. Their conversation felt stiff, obstructed, but they forged along with determination. Ed said he'd heard about several other interesting cases in the Gloucester area: Various friends of the Wainwrights had heard about his prelim in their house and cautiously approached him with accounts of their own hauntings. It seemed everybody had some brush with the mysterious.
He said it reminded him again that, for all its weirdness, the world beyond vision was awfully close and immediate. Life – you really never knew what to expect, he said. What would come at you next.
Cree's heart felt as if it would break. Life was indeed strange, she agreed. She shook her head, feeling it: an ache.
Ed bit his lips and nodded his agreement.
47
Bourbon Street hadn't changed.
It was still a circus, a perpetual mini-Mardi Gras packed with tourists seeking abandon from purveyors offering a thousand varieties of it. Lights bounced in the bars, shadows of dancers played on the windows, blaring rhythms battled as Cree walked past doorways. She'd had the airport shuttle drop her on Canal Street right at the end of Bourbon. Her flight hadn't gotten in until five o'clock, and now it was well past dinnertime. She was hungry and thirsty and still a little stiff from sitting in jets and shuttle buses so long.
Tuesday. She'd been away only twelve days, but New Orleans seemed to welcome her back like a long-lost friend, the kind you've formed a deep attachment to not because you've known each other for a long time but because the times you shared were so hard and so revealing. You know each other well. You greet each other with a certain gritty, guilty, wry intimacy. Cree liked the feeling.
She went into a cheap restaurant and ordered a sausage po'boy, which she washed down with a beer from a plastic cup.
Better, she decided.
Back on the sidewalk, her hunger stilled, she let the flow of the street pull her. She window-shopped, stopped to listen to street musicians, tossed quarters into the cardboard box set out by two little boys tap dancing. For a couple of blocks, curious about where such a person would be going, she followed a towering, muscular black man, glorious in tight pink skirt, feathered boa, and sequined platform shoes. He disappeared into an anonymous doorway between strip clubs, leaving her wondering at the mystery of his life.
Continuing up the street, taking her time, she bought a Jell-O shot, just to see what they were like: They were said to be lethal, but though it didn't taste too bad in a cloyingly sweet sort of way, it didn't affect her as much as she'd been led to expect. She bought a dozen strings of beads and a mask made of sequins and brilliant scarlet feathers that covered just her eyes and forehead. She stuffed the mask into the outer pocket of her shoulder bag, but she put the beads around her neck immediately. They sparkled and spangled with every step she took and made her feel good; men gave her appreciative once-overs and even a couple of double-takes. She stopped at a sidewalk concession and bought one of the infamous Hurricanes in a to-go cup. It was about a quart of icy liquid and it froze her palate; she made it only halfway through before she got too full and too chilled and had to drop the remainder in a trash basket. She was feeling a little looped anyway, as much from the whirl of the street as from the booze.