Mr. Rydell? May I call you Berry? Justine Coopers jaw was so narrow that it looked like she wouldnt have room for the ordinary complement of teeth in there. Her hair was cut short, a polished brown helmet. She wore a couple of dark, flowing things that Rydell supposed were meant to conceal the fact that she was built more or less like a stick-insect. She didnt sound like she was from anywhere south of anywhere, much, and there was a visible tension strung through her, like wires.
Rydell saw the fat man walk out, pausing on the sidewalk to deactivate the Range Rovers defenses.
Sure.
Youre from Knoxville? He noticed she was breathing deliberately, like she was trying not to hyperventilate.
Thats right.
You dont have much of an accent.
Well, I wish everybody felt that way. He smiled, but she didnt smile back.
Is your family from Knoxville, Mr. Rydell?
Shit, he thought, go ahead, call me Berry. My father was, I guess. My mothers people are from up around Bristol, mostly.
Justine Coopers dark eyes, not showing much white, were looking right at him, but they didnt seem to be registering anything. He guessed she was somewhere in her forties.
Ms. Cooper?
She gave a violent start, as though hed goosed her.
Ms. Cooper, what are those wreath-sort-of-things in those old frames there? Pointing at them.
Memorial wreaths. Southwestern Virginia, late nineteenth, early twentieth century.
Good, Rydell thought, get her talking about the stock. He walked over to the framed wreaths for a closer look. Looks like hair he said.
It is she said. What else would it be?
Human hair?
Of course.
You mean like dead peoples hair? He saw now the minute braiding, the hair twisted up into tiny flowerlike knots. It was lusterless and no particular color.
Mr. Rydell, Im afraid that I may have wasted your time. She moved tentatively in his direction. When I spoke with you on the phone, I was under the impression that you might be, well, much more of the South
How do you mean, Ms. Cooper?
What we offer people here is a certain vision, Mr. Rydell. A certain darkness as well. A Gothic quality.
Damn. That talking head in the agency display had been playing this shit back word for word.
I dont suppose youve read Faulkner? She raised one hand to brush at something invisible, something hanging in front of her face.
There it was again. Nope.
No, I didnt think so. Im hoping to find someone who can help to convey that very darkness, Mr. Rydell. The mind of the South. A fever dream of sensuality.
Rydell blinked.
But you dont convey that to me. Im sorry. It looked like the invisible cobweb had come hack.
Rydell looked at the rentacop, but he didnt seem to be listening to any of this. Hell, he seemed to he asleep.
Lady Rydell said carefully, I think youre crazier than a sack full of assholes.
Her eyebrows shot up. There she said.
There what?
Color, Mr. Rydell. Fire. The brooding verbal polychromes of an almost unthinkably advanced decay.
Rydell had to think about that. He found himself looking at the jockey-boy bed. Dont you ever get any black people in here, complaining about stuff like this?
On the contrary she said, a new edge in her tone, we do quite a good business with the more affluent residents of South Central. They, at least, have a sense of irony. I suppose they have to.
Now hed have to walk to whatever the nearest station was, take the subway home, and tell Kevin Tarkovsky he hadnt been Southern enough.
The rentacop was letting him out.
Where exactly you from, Ms. Cooper? he asked her.
New Hampshire she said.
He was on the sidewalk, the door closing behind him.
Fucking Yankees he said to the Porsche roadster. It was what his father would have said, but he had a hard time now connecting it to anything.
One of those big articulated German cargo-rigs went by, the kind that burned canola oil. Rydell hated those things. The exhaust smelled like fried chicken.
The couriers dreams are made of hot metal, shadows that scream and run, mountains the color of concrete. They are burying the orphans on a hillside. Plastic coffins, pale blue. Clouds in the sky. The priests tall hat. They do not see the first shell coming in from the concrete mountains. It punches a hole in everything: the hillside, the sky, a blue coffin, the womans face.
A sound too vast to be any sound at all, but through it, somehow, they hear, arriving only now, the distant festive pop-popping of the mortars, tidy little clouds of smoke rising on the gray mountainside.
He comes upright, alone in the wide bed, trying to scream, and the words are in a language he no longer allows himself to speak.
His head throbs. He drinks flat water from the stainless carafe on the nightstand. The room sways, blurs, comes back into focus. He forces himself from the bed, pads naked to the tall, old-fashioned windows. Fumbles the heavy drapes aside. San Francisco. Dawn like tarnished silver. It is Tuesday. Not Mexico.
In the white bathroom, wincing in the sudden light, scrubbing cold water into his numb face. The dream recedes, but leaves a residue. He shivers, cold tile unpleasant beneath his bare feet. The whores at the party. This Harwood. Decadent. The courier disapproves of decadence. His work brings him into contact with real wealth, genuine power. He meets people of substance. Harwood is wealth without substance. He puts out the bathroom light and gingerly returns to his bed, favoring the ache in his head.
5. Hay problemas
With the striped duvet drawn up to his chin, he begins to sort through the previous evening. There are gaps. Overindulgence. He disapproves of overindulgence. Harwoods party. The voice on the phone, instructing him to attend. Hed already had several drinks. He sees a young girls face. Anger, contempt. Her short dark hair twisted up in spikes.
His eyes feel as if they are too large for their sockets. When he rubs them, bright sick flashes of light surround him. The cold weight of the water moves in his stomach.
He remembers sitting at the broad mahogany desk, drinking. Before the call, before the party. He remembers the two cases open, in front of him, identical. He keeps her in one. The other is for that with which he has been entrusted. Expensive, but then he has no doubt that the information it contains is very valuable. He folds the things graphite earpieces and snaps the case shut. Then he touches the case that holds all her mystery, the white house on the hillside, the release she offers. He puts the cases in the pockets of his jacket But now he tenses, beneath the duvet, his stomach twisted with a surge of anxiety.
He wore the jacket to that party, much of which he cannot remember.
Ignoring the pounding of his head, he claws his way out of the bed and finds the jacket crumpled on the floor beside a chair.
His heart is pounding.
Here. That which he must deliver. Zipped into the inner pocket. But the outer pockets are empty.
She is gone. he roots through his other clothing. On his hands and knees, a pulsing agony behind his eyes, he peers under the chair. Gone.
But she, at least, can be replaced, he reminds himself, still on his knees, the jacket in his hands. He will find a dealer in that sort of software. Recently, he now admits, he had started to suspect that she was losing resolution.
Thinking this, he is watching his hands unzip the inner pocket, drawing out the case that contains his charge, their property, that which must be delivered. He opens it.
The scuffed black plastic frames, the label on the cassette worn and unreadable, the yellowed translucence of the audio-beads.
He hears a thin high sound emerge from the back of his throat. Very much as he must have done, years ago, when the first shell arrived.