I apologize for enslaving you in order to chain myself to the illusion of control and the cheap seduction of power. No slaveowner could have done it better.
Booker put away his notebook. Dusk enveloped him and he let the warm air calm him while he looked forward to the dawn.
—
Bride woke in sunshine from a dreamless sleep — deeper than drunkenness, deeper than any she had known. Now having slept so many hours she felt more than rested and free of tension; she felt strong. She didn’t get up right away; instead she remained in Booker’s bed, eyes closed, enjoying a fresh vitality and blazing clarity. Having confessed Lula Ann’s sins she felt newly born. No longer forced to relive, no, outlive the disdain of her mother and the abandonment of her father. Pulling herself away from reverie she sat up and saw Booker drinking coffee at the pull-down table. He looked pensive rather than hostile. So she joined him, picked a strip of bacon from his plate and ate it. Then she bit into his toast.
“Want more?” Booker asked.
“No. No thanks.”
“Coffee? Juice?”
“Well, coffee, maybe.”
“Sure.”
Bride rubbed her eyelids trying to replay the moments before she fell asleep. The swelling over Booker’s left temple helped. “You got me over to your bed with one working arm?”
“I had help,” said Booker.
“Who from?”
“Queen.”
“God. She must think I’m crazy.”
“Doubt it.” Booker placed a cup of coffee in front of her. “She’s an original. Doesn’t recognize crazy.”
Bride blew away the coffee’s steam. “She showed me the things you mailed her. Pages of your writing. Why did you send them to her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I liked them too much to trash but not enough to carry around. I suppose I wanted them to be in a safe place. Queen keeps everything.”
“When I read them I knew they were all about me — right?”
“Oh, yeah.” Booker rolled his eyes and heaved a theatrical sigh. “Everything is about you except the whole world and the universe it floats in.”
“Would you stop making fun of me? You know what I mean. You wrote them when we were together, right?”
“They’re just thoughts, Bride. Thoughts about what I was feeling or feared or, most often, what I truly believed — at the time.”
“You still believe heartbreak should burn like a star?”
“I do. But stars can explode, disappear. Besides, what we see when we look at them may no longer be there. Some could have died thousands of years ago and we’re just now getting their light. Old information looking like news. Speaking of information, how did you find out where I was?”
“A letter came for you. An overdue bill, I mean, from a music repair shop. The Pawn Palace. So I went there.”
“Why?”
“To pay them, idiot. They told me where you might be. This dump of a place, and they had a forwarding address to a Q. Olive.”
“You paid my bill then drove all this way to slap my face?”
“Maybe. I didn’t plan it, but I have to say it did feel good. Anyway I brought you your horn. Is there more coffee?”
“You got it? My trumpet?”
“Of course. It’s fixed too.”
“Where is it? At Queen’s?”
“In the trunk of my car.”
Booker’s smile traveled from his lips to his eyes. The joy in his face was infantile. “I love you! Love you!” he shouted and ran out the door down the road toward the Jaguar.
—
It began slowly, gently, as it often does: shy, unsure of how to proceed, fingering its way, slithering tentatively at first because who knows how it might turn out, then gaining confidence in the ecstasy of air, of sunlight, for there was neither in the weeds where it had curled.
It had been lurking in the yard where Queen Olive had burned bedsprings to destroy the annual nest of bedbugs. Now it traveled quickly, flashing now and then a thin red lick of flame, then dying down for seconds before springing up again stronger, thicker, now that the way and the goal were clear: a tasty length of pine rotting at the trailer’s pair of back steps. Then the door, more pine, sweet, soft. Finally there was the joy of sucking delicious embroidered fabric of lace, of silk, of velvet.
By the time Bride and Booker got there, a small cluster of people were standing in front of Queen’s house — the jobless, several children and the elderly. Smoke was sneaking from the sills and the door saddle when they broke in. First Booker, then Bride right behind him. They dropped to the floor where smoke was thinnest and crawled to the couch where Queen lay still, seduced into unconsciousness by the smiles of smoke without heat. With his one good arm and Bride’s two, their eyes watering and throats coughing, they managed to pull the unconscious woman to the floor and drag her out to the tiny front lawn.
“Further! Come on, further!” shouted one of the men standing there. “The whole place could blow!”
Booker was too intent on forcing air into Queen’s mouth to hear him. At last in the distance the sirens of fire truck and ambulance excited the children almost as much as the cartoon beauty of a roaring fire. Suddenly, a spark hiding in Queen’s hair burst into flame, devouring the mass of red hair in a blink — just enough time for Bride to pull off her T-shirt and use it to smother the hair fire. When, with stinging, singed palms, she tore away the now sooty, smoking shirt, she grimaced at the sight of a few tufts of hair hard to distinguish from the fast-blistering scalp. All the while, Booker was whispering, “Yeah, yeah. Come on, love, come on, come on, lady.” Queen was breathing — at least coughing and spitting, major signs of life. As the ambulance parked, the crowd became bigger and some of the onlookers seemed transfixed — but not at the moaning patient being trundled into the ambulance. They were focused, wide-eyed, on Bride’s lovely, plump breasts. However pleased the onlookers were, it was zero compared to Bride’s delight. So much so she delayed accepting the blanket the medical technician held toward her — until she saw the look on Booker’s face. But it was hard to suppress her glee, even though she was slightly ashamed at dividing her attention between the sad sight of Queen’s slide into the back of the ambulance and the magical return of her flawless breasts.
Bride and Booker ran to the Jaguar and followed the ambulance.
Once Queen was admitted, Bride spent the days with her, Booker the nights, three of which passed before Queen opened her eyes. Head bandaged, its contents drugged, she recognized neither of her rescuers. All they were able to do was watch the tubes attached to the patient, one clear as glass turning like a rainforest vine, others thin as telephone wire, all secondary to the white clematis bloom covering the soft gurgle from her lips.
Lines of primary colors bled across the screen above the hospital bed. Transparent bags of what looked like flat Champagne dripped into a vine feeding Queen’s flaccid arm. Unable to rise to a bedpan, she had to be scoured, oiled and rewrapped — all of which Bride, not trusting the indifferent hands of the nurse, did herself as tenderly as possible. And she bathed her one section at a time, making sure the lady’s body was covered in certain areas before and after cleansing. She left Queen’s feet untouched because in the evening when Booker relieved her he insisted, like a daily communicant at Easter, on the duty of assuming that act of devotion. He maintained the pedicure, soaped then rinsed Queen’s feet, finally massaging them slowly, rhythmically, with a lotion that smelled like heather. He did the same for Queen’s hands, all the time cursing himself for the animosity he had felt during their last conversation.
Neither one spoke during those ablutions and, except for Bride’s occasional humming, the quiet served as the balm they both needed. They worked together like a true couple, thinking not of themselves, but of helping somebody else. Sitting among other people in a hospital waiting room with nothing to do but worry was an ordeal. But so was staring helplessly at the patient noting every stir, breath or shift of the prone body. After three days of waiting broken by what acts of comfort they could provide, Queen spoke, her voice a rough, unintelligible croak through the oxygen mask. Then late one evening the oxygen mask was removed and Queen whispered, “Am I going to be all right?”