Dorothea Dreams (Heirloom Books) (25 page)

A woman spoke haltingly of her husband, the man who had died; her bewildered, reddened eyes stared out at the camera. Dorothea bit her lip. A person had already been killed in this madness, and on whose head lay that responsibility — Roberto’s? He had shot her dog. She’d watched him shoving that damned shotgun in people’s faces and carrying himself like a hard-bitten desperado. Youth doesn’t mean what it used to. A man is dead, a policeman seriously injured. Keep that in mind.

The program switched to a city spokesman who announced solemnly that an investigation into the Pinto Street situation had begun. Meanwhile, authorities were still looking for —

“That’s your house,” Bobbie said.

The camera lingered on a house with curtains drawn across the windows, a small adobe structure with patched cracks in the stucco and some potted geraniums outside the front door. A police car was parked at the curb. No one came in or out of the house. Fade-out. The smooth young announcer returned. He was as dark as Roberto but the subtle message of his dress and speech was, I am a different kind than those poor people in trouble on Pinto Street. To prove it, he engaged in banter with the sports announcer about a horse that had escaped its pasture and wandered into a bar in the South Valley.

“Leave it on,” Roberto said. “Let’s see what’s next.”

Bobbie muttered, “I’m sick of it,” and turned the knob.

“I said leave it. Turn it back, but put the sound down.”

When Bobbie turned the sound low, another sound became suddenly audible: a scratching and whining at the back door of the kitchen.

“It’s Brillo,” Dorothea said. “If you just wait, he’ll figure out that he’s not to sleep in the house tonight and wander off on his own.”

Bobbie got up. “I’ll go talk to him, sort of calm him down.”

Screw you, sonny, Dorothea thought bitterly. That’s not good enough.

Roberto hefted the shotgun in his hands and gave Dorothea a slit-eyed, tough-guy look, making up for the absence of one gun from the room. There was nothing amusing about his over-acting. He said truculently, “They should have showed our side of it more. They should have talked with our Mom, too.”

Their mother, who must be frantic about them. This thug has a mother.

“I want something to drink,” Roberto said, looking around the room. “I bet you got some good booze here someplace.”

Here we go, she thought, her whole body beginning to ache with tension. She said nothing, but he had seen her glance at the liquor cabinet, and he got up and went over to it. But when he flung the door open, no bottles winked within. The shelves were empty.

Dorothea stared, bewildered by a miracle. A small voice chimed in her heart: without drunkenness, maybe we have a chance.

“What are you, teetotal or something? Well, you got any dope, grass or like that? I heard where you artists use a lot of that stuff to help you see things in your head to paint.”

She sighed. “You can tear the place apart if you like, but there’s nothing to find. I’m not that kind of an artist.”

“How many kinds are there?” He poked half-heartedly at the sofa cushions, as if he were minded to take her suggestion. “So where’s all your friends calling up to see how you are?”

“Talking to somebody else, I guess.”

Trailing restlessly about the big room with the shotgun hung over his arm, he seemed very young and at a loss.

“Roberto,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“What’s it to you? Anyway, why should I tell you anything? You’d just pass it on to the cops, first chance you got.”

“You can’t stay here indefinitely. Somebody will put two and two together, and they’ll come here looking for you.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m only telling you what I think is going to happen,” she said reasonably. “I have to. You’re all here under my roof. I feel responsible. I worry about people getting hurt.”

“People already been hurt,” he said. “Didn’t you notice Quita’s arm in a cast? Or maybe that doesn’t count?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure, you mean you don’t want any mess in your nice house. You can’t wait to get me out of here, can you? Well, you’re going to wait anyhow. My sister’s with me, and she’s sick. You think I’m just going to run out on her?”

Oh Lord she was tired. She drooped in the chair, not answering.

“What kind of ghost is it?” he said. His eyes were defiant in the lamplight.

She shook her head, sorry she’d let that slip, about the ghost.

“Come on, what is it?”

“Somebody from a long time ago and another country,” she said. “It wouldn’t interest you.”

“That’s right,” he said nastily, “I wouldn’t know nothing about stuff like that, right? I don’t have to. I’ll tell you about your ghost. You’re crazy, that’s all. An old lady living out here in the middle of noplace with a guy that’s dying — you see ghosts because you’re crazy.”

“Maybe I am,” she flared, “for trying to talk rationally with you!” Caution gave way. “You’re a wrecker, aren’t you? You scrawl your stupid signs all over every blank surface like a dog pissing on a wall. Throw your damn garbage everywhere, treat the world like your private dumping ground, just for the fun of it!”

He stared at her. “Who the hell you think you’re talking to? Shut your face, you dried up old bitch, or I’ll blow it off you!”

“Sure,” she said, “that’s your credo, isn’t it? If it’s beautiful smash it; if it moves, stomp it, spoil it, crush it — you little bastard!”

He swung the shotgun so that she looked down its barrels. Here it comes, she thought, amazed at herself.

“I could bust you to pieces, I could blow you away,” he said. He kicked out suddenly, knocking a porcelain lamp to the floor where it shattered. With the butt of the shotgun he slammed through the glass panes of a book cabinet against the wall. She saw his angry eyes as he swung back toward her, standing with his legs braced, the gun hugged tightly under his arm again.

I know you, she thought. You’re what I’m hiding from.

“You’re trying to push me into it,” he said ferociously. “You want me to blast you, so you can be a hero and I can be a creepy kid who came and blew away this great old lady artist, some kind of special genius, right? Well, fuck you, lady. I’ll kill you if I feel like it, got that? If I feel like it, when I feel like it, because I feel like it. You old bitch!”

Someone breathed a word into her ear:
“Canaille!”

She snapped her head aside with a gasp and covered her ears.

“Hey,” Roberto said.

“Quiet,” she whispered. “He’s here, somewhere, he spoke to me!”

Roberto’s eyes widened. Then he laughed angrily. “You don’t quit, do you? You think I’m some dumb péon you can scare to death with a ghost story? Fine, you show me your ghost and I’ll be scared. If you can’t show it, then just shut up about it.”

“Get out of my house!” she screamed at him.

“When I’m ready. And when I go, I’ll take somebody with me, right? As a hostage. One of those precious people you don’t want hurt. Maybe you.”

Ellie sat on the closed lid of the toilet in the little bathroom and squeezed cold water from a sopping wad of paper onto her temples. All right, she thought, you didn’t do so badly, and nobody got killed. Even the dog would not have been hurt, if Ms. Howard had kept her head. After all her advice about staying calm! She was out there alone with them now, but she would be all right. They had kept the sick man, Maulders, out during the afternoon, and no one had hurt him. Were they going to take each of the adults aside this way? My turn next, then.

She shivered violently and squeezed more water into her hair, cooling her headache. Her brain throbbed with the memory of the shotgun blast.

What’s it like to sleep with a man who’s got cancer? Maybe I’ve already done it. People can have cancer and not know. Anyway, poor Mr. Maulders wasn’t going to be much use, that was obvious. It was up to Ellie and Ms. Howard to figure out how to outwit the desperadoes.

Sighing, she leaned her back against the cold water tank. The damn bathroom was beginning to stink. Too many people, all of them nervous, were using it too often. The little window wasn’t ventilating well.

You came out here to write a novel this summer. Well, here’s your chance. Write it on toilet paper, like Gandhi in prison. Or was that Hitler?

There came a timid knock at the bathroom door.

“Just coming out,” Ellie said, getting to her feet.

It was one of the Twinkies, Sarah and Cindy — Ellie couldn’t remember which name went with which girl — rabbit-pale with excitement.

“Mrs. Howard’s back,” the girl said.

So she was — apparently unhurt, wearily settling into a corner with her quilt, looking as much like a refugee as the rest of them. Ellie carried her blanket and her shoes over and sat down.

“How is Mr. Maulders?”

“I didn’t see him, but they tell me he’s all right. Whatever that means.”

“Did they say when they’d be leaving?”

“No.”

Ellie drew a deep breath. “I keep thinking about — what might happen. These kids, those thugs, that little monster Roberto —” She hitched herself closer to the older woman. “You can make them want to go. Tell them there’s a back way, a secret road that will take them right around all the road blocks and patrols and things. You could make something up, couldn’t you? This country is covered with dirt-tracks going all over the place, I saw them from the plane when I first came. You could promise them a quick, safe escape before the police ever catch on.”

She pushed her hair back from her face, excited now, seeing it happen in her mind. “The way they take would be one you chose to lead them right to the police. Well, no, I guess you can’t be sure where the police would be, but couldn’t you send these people into some kind of trap? Some place that their car couldn’t get through, so they’d be left on foot for the police to find?”

Ms. Howard shook Ellie’s hand off her arm with an abrupt movement. “What the hell do you think they’d do to me, if I led them into the kind of trap that you’re proposing?”

“You? But why would you be with —?”

“You don’t imagine Roberto would accept this kindly offer of help from me just like that, do you?” Ms. Howard whispered angrily. “He’d suspect the possibility of some kind of a trick; he’s not an idiot. If I were he, I’d say sure, lady, sounds like a wonderful idea; and we’ll take you with us to make sure this way out is as good as it sounds. If anything goes wrong, we’ll shoot you.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think,” Ellie mumbled.

“What a surprise,” the painter said acidly. Then she added in a tired tone, “For God’s sake, go and sleep a little if you can. I don’t know what we’ll be faced with in the morning, but trying to handle this situation in total exhaustion strikes me as a very poor idea.”

Ellie withdrew hastily to her own corner, where she lay curled in her blanket — the room had grown quite chilly — and her misery and fear.

9

Jammed up against the pipes beneath the utility sink in the corner of the studio, Alex woke in a rush of terror.

He lay there hugging himself, his hands jammed tight to his mouth to keep his breathing quiet. He had dreamed of having a dog’s head, seeing himself from the outside as some kind of a dog. Then somebody came along and blew the dog’s head off with a shotgun, like a killing from
The Godfather.

God, it was awful. Already the visual details were vanishing. He was grateful for that, but the sick, gulping feeling in his stomach stayed.

How could they all be sleeping, when there was this awful thing scratching and slavering after them? Not like on the screen at all, and not like what his mother had said to him last year when Grandpa died. Nothing as kindly and wishful as that: wafting off to Heaven in your sleep, what a laugh.

Death was what it was: big, mean, ugly death.

He didn’t dare close his eyes for fear of seeing more of it.

Joyce wished they would just do it and get it over with.

It’s not so bad, she told herself, staring up at the shadows on the beamed ceiling. I’ve been through it before, and it’s not so bad.

That time at Tony Chester’s when she had gotten so high on stuff that was stronger than she’d thought. Then Tony and the other two boys…she’d known what they were doing, sort of, and had tried to stop them. But stoned like that, what could you do?

It wasn’t so bad, not after the soreness healed up and her mother quit asking her all the time what was wrong.

The worst was that all the boys at school knew. Girls gossip, but boys are worse. They boast. She’d seen them sneering or watching her as if they could see some kind of mark on her. The worst ones grabbed at her in the halls and said she should come blow some dope with them, they’d show her a better time than Tony had.

The girls wouldn’t talk to her at all, as if it had been her fault.

Funny thing was, she didn’t care, sort of. She had quit talking to the other kids, at least about anything that mattered.

Another funny thing. When she’d realized she wasn’t pregnant, mixed in with the relief she’d been sort of sorry. She was sorry that it was all for nothing, nothing to show except the shame and the whispers and this nothing-feeling that had been with her ever since.

Just nothing. Just drift along like you were out of reach, and in a way, you were. It was a kind of magic. She knew kids who did this with music, or with pills.

She just did it, drifting, answering when she was spoken to, doing as little as she could while waiting for her life to get started again. Like being at a bus stop on some dull corner forever and ever, and the bus got later and later, and would it ever come?

Because if not, she might as well just dump the whole thing.

Well, something had come along all right. She liked to doodle with a pencil, so she’d ended up in this strange place shivering in terror from hour to hour, waiting for it to happen again. These Cantus were men, weren’t they? Well, two men; the sister didn’t count. She guessed she knew a little about men by now, men and boys both. She didn’t want to know any more.

This time there wouldn’t be any drugs to keep everything muffled.

The bad thing about drifting, you couldn’t decide what you would think about and what you wouldn’t think about. Your thoughts, like everything else, just happened to you.

Maybe they would do it to her right here in front of the others. Well, at least then everybody would know she hadn’t invited them (but she squirmed inside thinking about this, and hot tears seeped from the corners of her eyes and ran down, turning ice cold in the roots of her hair). People would be sorry for her and comfort her later and say what a terrible thing.

No they wouldn’t. Nobody would give a damn. And when the kids back at regular school heard, they’d remember about what happened at Tony’s house and they’d laugh and say Joyce sure had all the luck.

She had some pills put away. She had stolen them from her mother’s medicine cabinet, a few at a time, and hidden them in a dresser drawer just to have them around if she wanted. If she got tired waiting for the bus. Too bad she didn’t have them with her now. She would take them, right now, dry even.

Even if the Cantu boys got her pregnant she’d use the pills. After all, suppose it was a girl? Who’d want to bring another girl into the world — into this world, full of these people?

For that matter, suppose it was a boy? From her experience so far, the fewer boys in your life the less the upset and the pain; and a baby was in your life for
years.

The blanket under her head was getting soggy with tears. She got up and went into the bathroom at the end of the room and stood holding the edges of the sink, crying without a sound.

Ricky woke up coughing. Someone was standing next to him: a weird, shrouded figure, with an arm raised as if to strike him — in a cast, of course. She had a blanket wrapped like a cloak round her shoulders. Beyond her, the cold black sky and the stars. Yes, he had dragged himself out here onto the lounge chair in the patio to try to — to try —

“You’re keeping me awake,” Blanca complained.

“I beg your pardon?” he replied, when he could get his breath.

She pointed over the patio wall. “I’m in the next room. I can hear you coughing.”

“Sorry,” he murmured. “Can’t help it.”

“Then there’s no point in me trying to go back to sleep,” she said irritably. She backed a few steps and hiked herself up onto the lip of the dry fountain.

She might know — Ricky said, “Did you hear a shot earlier?”

“Hear it? I almost went deaf. I was right there.” She described, vividly, the death of Mars. “Beto was just trying out that old shotgun.”

Poor Mars, nice beast, what a rotten thing to have happened. But Dorothea was all right. Thank God. Ricky smiled, coughing again.

“Why are you smiling?” she said. “Doesn’t it hurt when you cough?”

“Sometimes,” he said. Just now the cough merely robbed him of his breath and made a tightness in his chest.

“Cancer’s supposed to hurt a lot.”

“If I can’t get more of my medicine soon,” he panted, “I’m afraid I’m going to find out.”

He heard the sharp intake of her breath. “You’re out of your medication?”

Medication, not medicine, saith the little expert, product of years of dosages and hospital visits. “I used it up after dinner. I’d meant to drive into town for more today, on my way up into the mountains.”

“What do you take?”

“They call it ‘hospice mix.’ Pain-killers in some combination or other.”

“I wonder if any of my stuff would help,” she said doubtfully.

“Small chance of that,” he answered, touched, “but thank you for the thought.”

“God,” she said. She hunched her blanket more securely about her shoulders, leaning nearer to him and speaking in an anxious, confidential tone. “Just finding out I don’t have my medication with me, that I forgot it, that’s enough sometimes to bring the asthma on. Are you thirsty? I’m going to go get some juice, if there is any. I’m supposed to keep my fluids up after an attack.”

“You had an attack tonight?” he said.

“I think it was just from being in a new place,” she said. “You never know what’s going to set it off — dust, dog-hair, something you eat. I didn’t know all the things they put in that supper, and I probably shouldn’t have had any, but it smelled so good. I’m okay now. You want some juice?”

“Please,” he said. Lately his mouth was often dry and stale-tasting, an effect of the disease.

So the child had had an attack this evening — after the death of the dog. He wanted to think about that — there was something arresting there — but he could only wonder when his own attack would come — the pain, slipped from its leash. At the first intimation he would have to send her away.

After a time that seemed endless, she brought him apple juice in a ceramic mug. The mug was heavy in his hands. The sweet juice was chilly.

“Delicious,” he said. “Thank you.”

She settled down again with her own cup. “What are you doing here anyway?” she said. “You should be in some famous hospital where they can do all the latest things to help you and keep you alive until somebody finds a cure.”

“Been in hospital,” he said. “Didn’t like it. Left.”

“Did you have to have an operation?” When he nodded, she went on knowingly, “I bet that hurt, didn’t it? Afterwards, when you woke up, I mean. I’ve been in the hospital a lot, but they can’t operate on me. There is no operation for asthma.”

“There’s none for this type of cancer either,” he said, “as they discovered.”

“Can I see the scar?”

Well, really. But why not? He gingerly pulled up his pajama-top.

“I can’t see,” she muttered, coming close.

He felt the touch of her fingers, light but definite, on the puckered line. He had to lean to the side to avoid getting clipped by her cast.

“That’s not much,” she said, clearly let down. “I’ve seen a lot worse from kids falling off their bikes.” She sat back, still staring as he covered up again. “I guess they didn’t get it all, huh?”

He shook his head, his eyes suddenly full of tears for himself, his spoiling entrails, his slowly self-destructing body. “Couldn’t,” he said, clearing his throat. “Had to leave me my lungs to breathe with, rotten as they are. You’d think they’d have invented plastic lungs by now, wouldn’t you? But it seems an artificial heart is child’s play compared to synthetic lungs, and anyhow it’s too late in my own case. The disease has already spread. So I don’t get to be made into a bionic Englishman. I get to be a dead Englishman, and that’s no distinction; millions of them are ahead of me already.”

“I’ve thought I was going to die a few times,” she said. “When the asthma got real bad. It was pretty scary, man.”

“Terrifying,” he agreed. “Sometimes I get tired of waiting, and I’d rather have it over.”

“That’s a sin,” she said quickly.

“I don’t mean suicide. Just —” He tried to snap his fingers, but they would not move crisply enough to make a sound. “Over. I’m told it often comes that way. The body is weakened, picks up some sort of flu, pneumonia sets in, and that’s the end. Not such a bad way to go.”

She rearranged herself in her blanket. “Maybe sitting out here in the cold isn’t such a good idea?”

“I wouldn’t be too concerned,” he said.

“Beto shouldn’t have locked you in your room,” she said. “I think he wanted to make sure you couldn’t get together with the others, you know, and organize an escape. Like those Englishmen who dug their way out of German prison camps in the war.”

“I’m not much good for digging.”

“Are you and her in love? You and the old lady, I mean.”

Ouch, poor Dorothea — but to this child, even thirty would seem old, and fifty totally ancient. Cautiously he said, “We’re good friends.”

“I saw how she looks out for you, and how you two sort of back each other up without having to talk about things first. I think you’re in love with her,” Blanca announced with relish.

“Really?” he said, amused but also wary. This was Roberto’s sister, after all. Information about himself and Dorothea might be used against them. Name, rank, and serial-number — we’re way past that, but some prudence is indicated all the same. “Spying on us, were you? Caught us kissing passionately over the cooking tonight?”