“Usually,” St. Kawasaki said, “I feel like a drink.”
41
Molly looked down on the water from a great height. The surface was perfectly blue and so still it looked like a cloudless sky. Lake Tahoe? she wondered. Tahoe was like that. Blue. Still. Cold. Freezing cold. So cold when she swam in it sometimes she hurt all over as if she were being squeezed by a great blue hand.
Like now, she thought suddenly. And she realized she was not above the water, but in it.
She shivered in the grip of that perfectly still water, in the terrible grip of the blue water cold as ice.
The sun burned her eyes. She should look away, she knew. If she looked at the sun too long, she would turn into a sunflower. She’d heard that when she was small from a lady at her father’s cabin. The lady was fat and laughed a lot and gave her Baby Ruth and Oh Henry candy bars and smelled like flowers. Gardenias.
The fat lady pointed a plump finger at her and warned her laughing, you’ll turn into a sunflower. Her father told her different, told her she’d go blind. Her father was probably right. Maybe that’s why her head hurt so much. She was going blind from staring at the sun. He’d told her the truth. About that and many things. Told her she came from bad blood. Told her her mother was a tramp. Told her she would end up one, too. Told her men would be after her like devils, and if she let them have her, she would burn. Was that it? Was that the burning in her head? Was she burning like he said she would? Then why was the rest of her so cold?
She tried to lift her hand, to shield her eyes and block the fire that burned them. But she could not feel her hand, could not tell where it was, if it moved at all.
Am I dying? she wondered. Then why am I not afraid?
Cork’s hands were full of flowers. Brilliant yellow petals around a black center. Sunflowers. He held them gently, held them out as if offering them. He stood on the still blue water with fire at his back, all alone with the sunflowers in his hands. She tried to call to him, but she had no voice. He let the flowers drop one by one onto the water. They landed without a ripple and floated toward her, formed a circle, and the circle was warm. That made her happy. To be warm again. She lay in the warm circle of sunflowers thinking how tired she was and how good it would feel to sleep. To sleep and sleep while she waited for Cork to lie down, too.
She was afraid.
… Did I tell him?…
The fire burned in the blue water around her, in the blue that was all that was left of her vision. The blue and the fire. And then the cloud, black as smoke, moved above her. In the shadow of the black cloud she could see no more.
… Did I tell him…
Yes.
The voice came from the cloud.
Yes, you told me.
… No… not you… did I tell Cork…
Tell him what?
But her eyes were too heavy, and she was too tired to talk. Molly fell back, fell into the dark, into the vast warm dark with one last question trailing her like a broken rope.
… Did I tell Cork… Did I tell him… did I tell him I love him…
42
In the fading blue of the late afternoon light, Cork drove toward Aurora. He felt satisfied in a grim way. Things had fallen into place. Most things anyway. The judge. Lytton. Joe John LeBeau’s incomprehensible abandonment of his family. All these things made sense and, in some way, had been reckoned with. There was, however, still one open loop to the maze of tragic events that had befallen Aurora, and down that last convoluted passage hid Sandy Parrant. Did he know he was being pursued? Cork wondered. If not, he soon would. The canvas bag was his undoing. With the evidence Cork was sure the bloody bag had held, he would nail Parrant’s coffin shut. Bam!
It was going on four o’clock when Cork pulled into the parking lot of Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler. He thought he’d surprise Molly with a lift home, but she wasn’t there.
Johnny was hunched at the register, doing some figures with a pencil on the back of a menu. He looked slightly amused when Cork asked about Molly.
“She left two, three hours ago, big hurry. Said she had to go home to clear a space for a Christmas tree. Christmas tree.” Johnny hooted. “No woman hustles that hard for a Christmas tree. It was a guy, I’ll lay you odds.” Johnny paused a moment, set his pencil down, and looked Cork over keenly. A broad grin spread across his face. “Well, knock me over with a feather.”
Cork thanked him and headed toward the door.
“Christmas tree!” Johnny laughed at his back. “O, Tannenbaum,” he called.
As Cork started back to his Bronco, a car braked hard on the street, hard enough to skid, and when he looked up, he saw Jo’s blue Toyota back up, whip into the lot, and slide to a stop a few feet from where he stood. Jo leaped out, drilling him with an angry glare as she came. She glanced at the Pinewood, tugged off her gloves, and seemed for a moment on the verge of giving Cork a hard slap across the face.
“You know, you really had me fooled,” she said bitterly.
“What do you mean?”
“I really believed you were serious about wanting to put things back together.”
“I was.”
“My ass,” she snapped.
“Look, what’s this all about, Jo?”
“Guilt, shame, remorse, you name it, I was feeding on it. What kind of horrible woman was I to have done that kind of thing to such a nice guy like you. Good father. Faithful husband. Oh, you were good.”
Cork leaned against the hood of the Bronco. Jo’s voice was carrying, and people on the sidewalk looked at them in passing.
“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” he said.
“I’m talking about you and that slut Molly Nurmi.” She jabbed a finger toward the Pinewood Broiler.
“What?”
“Don’t look surprised. How long’s it been going on, Cork? Hmmm? How long has she been giving you more than coffee at the Broiler?”
Cork took a step away from the Bronco and nearer Jo. The cloud of his breathing broke over her face. “Who told you about Molly?”
“What difference does it make?”
Cork grasped her shoulders. “Who told you?”
“Let go of me or I swear I’ll have you arrested for assault. Don’t think I won’t.” Cork let go and she smoothed her coat where his hands had gripped. “I’m not the only one who was caught with my pants down.”
Cork studied the satisfaction on her face a moment, then understood. “Someone showed you the photographs.”
“Good close shots, Cork. No mistake. A little sauna, a little skinny dip, a little-”
“Who showed you those pictures?”
Jo smiled enigmatically and didn’t reply.
“Was it Sandy Parrant? It was Parrant, wasn’t it?”
“I went to tell him it would be best not to see one another for a while. I was thinking maybe you and I ought to try to work through things, maybe with counseling this time. Foolish me.”
“And he showed you the pictures?”
“Yes!” she threw at him, then shook her head with mock amazement. “You really had me going. You almost had me convinced.”
Cork walked quickly past her toward the Broiler.
“Where are you going? I haven’t finished,” Jo called after him.
Cork pushed through the door of the Pinewood and went to the pay phone on the wall. He dug in his pocket for a quarter, but couldn’t find one.
“Johnny,” he called, “loan me a quarter for a phone call.”
Johnny, who was still at the register, popped the cash drawer, slipped out a quarter, and tossed it to Cork. “There’ll be interest.” He laughed.
Jo stepped through the door and stood watching Cork. Johnny took a look at Jo, then at Cork, and said quietly, “Uh-oh.”
Cork dialed Molly’s number. All he got was a busy signal. He slammed the receiver down and hurried out the door.
“My quarter!” Johnny called.
But Cork was outside already, with Jo right behind him.