The clerk’s question brought Lovecraft slowly back to the mundane world. He shook his head to snap himself out of the trancelike state he had lapsed into. “Fine,” he said. “I’m absolutely, perfectly fine.” He flung the offending nickel onto the counter and rushed from the office. He could hear the clerk cursing behind him.
HOWARD WAS IMPATIENTLY DRUMMING his fingers on the tabletop, hungry and anticipating the arrival of his dinner. Lovecraft didn’t even bother to sit down. “Bob, we must find Glory immediately!”
“What is it, HP?”
“Now!” cried Lovecraft, his voice breaking.
“Calm down, HP. We got time to eat, ain’t we?”
“There is not a moment to lose!” Lovecraft grabbed Howard’s arm., and with surprising strength, yanked him out of the booth.
11
ENSHROUDED IN TWILIGHT, dust devils swirled and twisted about the hastily constructed homes that dotted the periphery of the unpaved road like the white negatives of shadows. The wind had picked up again-from all quarters, it seemed-and where they conjoined here and there the miniature twisters coiled, briefly, like living things, and vanished in a scattering of debris.
The houses had spouted up here like those puffy, substanceless mushrooms one often finds after a rain; but in this case, the rain was a shower of cash from nearby Vegas. In time the homes would become more solid, to be sure, but now even in their flimsiness, they served their purpose well enough. At the tip of the cul-de-sac at the end of a row of such houses lurked a dead black sedan, clearly out of place though there were black sedans in several driveways farther up the street. This car was parked askew, as if the driver were drunk, but its windshield was pointed directly at the living-room window of the house across the street-the house of Glory’s sister, Beatrice.
THE LIVING ROOM was lit by one large imitation Tiffany lamp on an Art Deco end table at the end of a plush, poorly reupholstered sofa. Nothing in the house quite matched, and Glory wondered how and where her sister had gathered the odd assortment of furniture. It certainly couldn’t have been a matter of taste.
Beatrice was on her seventh cigarette of the evening, sitting just out of reach of the overflowing ashtray so that she constantly had to scoot over to flick off her ashes and then scoot back into her easy chair. She was still prattling on about her no-good husband, who had run out on her that February and forced her to get the job at the club. Glory was playing Snakes and Ladders with her seven-year-old nephew, Archie, who sat on the floor next to her, rolling the die with a clatter onto the game board. “Six,” he announced. He clomped his playing piece over the squares and landed on a ladder. “Aw,” he said.
“What’s the matter?”
“Now I gotta go back.”
“No, Archie, you go up a ladder. Remember, the ladder is up and the snake is down.” She had had to explain this several times throughout the evening. Archie would remember for a while, and then, for no apparent reason, he would want to go down a ladder or go up a snake. Glory figured it was the same sort of confusion children had when they learned left from right, but it still puzzled her. Snakes and ladders were so entirely different, after all.
Across the room, the illuminated dial of the radio flickered. Beatrice paused in her monologue for a moment and bent her head to listen to the ominous weather report-the impending dust storm was going to be more severe than originally anticipated.
“Damn it,” said Beatrice. “The last big one about took half the shingles off the roof, and I still haven’t had those replaced.”
“Well,” Glory said, “we’ll take care of that as soon as I can find a job.” Archie impatiently tugged at the hem of her dress. “Auntie Glory, it’s your turn.”
Glory dutifully rolled the die and moved her game piece three spaces. Ladder. A long one. She rolled her eyes and slid her piece four levels down the board.
“Auntie!”
“What?”
“Ladder is UP! SNAKE is down!”
Glory laughed at her mistake. “See,” she said, “you did it so many times now you’ve got me doing it, too.” She mussed Archie’s hair and put her piece back. It didn’t make sense-the ladder was clearly at the bottom of her space. She should have known not to take it down, especially after explaining to Archie. She frowned.
Beatrice gazed at her sister’s features for a long moment and smiled at the familiarity. “Glory, you don’t know how good it is to see you again. After Daddy ran you out of the house, I cried for a month of Sundays. You know Auntie and me begged him to let you come home.”
“I couldn’t have-even if he apologized,” said Glory. “You can’t take back words like that. Not when you say them to your own daughter.”
“He was angry. He was afraid of what the neighbors-the church would say. He hated himself for what he said up until the day he died.”
“Who told you that? Auntie?”
“Yes.”
“She’s a bigger goddamned liar than he was,” Glory said bitterly.
“At least Daddy wasn’t afraid to say what he thought—” She noticed Beatrice looking at Archie at her feet, probably checking to see if he had caught the harsh tones. She reddened a bit, embarrassed that she allowed her anger to overcome her better judgment.
Beatrice glowered. “Kindly watch your language around my son,” she said in a low voice. “He heard plenty enough gutter talk from his no-account father.”
“I’m sorry, Beatrice.”
Beatrice put out her cigarette and took a drink from her glass of lemonade. “So, did you ever go back and finish at Vassar?”
Glory gave a deliberately curt response. “No.”
Beatrice knew from her sister’s tone that there was no point in pressing for more. “That’s too bad. You would have been the first girl in the family to—”
“I know, I know.”
An awkward moment of silence lingered over them until Archie broke the spell again. “Aunt Glory?”
Glory moved her game piece, thumping it down space by space on the board. “Sorry, Archie. Your mother keeps pestering me.”
“Yeah, Daddy use to say so all the time.”
“You watch that tongue, boy, or you’ll be out picking a switch off the weeping willow!” Beatrice’s tone made it clear that she was only half-kidding. Archie feigned a wide-eyed expression of mock fear and opened his mouth into a big O. It forced a smile out of Beatrice. Glory laughed.
“And now that song you’ve been waiting to hear yet again,” said the voice on the radio. “Be nice to your shoe salesman. It’s The Inkblots! ‘Christmas in June’!”
Archie jumped up from the floor, nearly knocking over the game board. “Momma, my song’s on! My song’s on!” He ran over to the radio and turned up the volume.
Glory looked a question at her sister.
“Yeah, he loves to sing along with it,” said Beatrice. “Must have giggled for a week the first time he heard it.”
Outside the wind howled with increasing intensity. They could hear the clatter of shingles on the roof, and Glory was reminded of the night before, the sounds of the dazed desert animals on the roof of Howard’s car assaulting her senses.
Archie listened intently to the chorus on the radio, and when it came again he clumsily sang along:
Christmas in June, What a happy pause. Sing a Yuletide tune, Hello, Santa Claus.
Oh, its Christmas in June,
And its just because!
Glory smiled at Archie’s determination. She was about to offer him some encouragement and praise when she was distracted by a loud flapping noise, an odd sound, that rose steadily in volume, as if some giant canvas sail were approaching.
Glory looked up, concerned. “Beatrice, do you hear that?”