Читать книгу Minos - Burt Weissbourd - Страница 11

CHAPTER FOUR

On Tuesday morning, Sara saw Abe at 10:00. This was her second Tuesday, and as far as she was concerned, they were stuck. He wasn’t mean or anything; he just got in the way, took up valuable time. And now—time was running out, so every minute counted. She only had time at all, she was painfully aware, because she’d been suspended. Which wasn’t about to end, even when people started dying.

And that got her going again, about her school. At Olympic, when you were suspended, you were toast. They didn’t want to see you. Period.

And home schooling was like some cruel joke. Sara had given up on the freeze-dried lady whose sphincter tightened right up—she was sure on this—every time Sara tugged at her nose ring. She raised her black sweater to her elbow, checking her bandage. One of her cuts had been deeper than she’d realized, and it wasn’t healing. Mostly, she didn’t want it to start bleeding again. Sara was checking out the waiting room, wondering what to tell her dad if he noticed her bandages—and he probably would, he was almost as observant as she was—when Dr. Stein, the bear-shrink, opened his office door.

It didn’t matter how many times he changed his sport coat, he always looked rumply. His salt and pepper hair was perpetually like totally tousled. His beard, even when he trimmed it, was uneven. His office always had this messy, smoker feel—she could smell his Butternut Burley pipe tobacco from the waiting room—even when it was clean and aired out. And this guy wanted to help her. How could he fight the Beast if he couldn’t even comb his own hair? Huh? It made her mad, like he didn’t take her seriously or something. She was getting tired of this. Yeah, she was awfully tired and so out of time.

Inside, they started out as usual. She just sat there, and he waited. She figured this waiting business burned up maybe three, four minutes every fifty-minute hour.

This time, he didn’t wait; he didn’t even bother to fire up the blackened bowl of his stinky pipe. “Sara, there’s no point in working together if I can’t help you. So far, I don’t think I’m helping.”

“Right.” Sara nodded agreement. “So far, you’re not helping. You’re hurting.” She watched him take this in.

Abe leaned in. Sara liked how all the wrinkly lines in his face turned down when he was really trying. “How am I hurting?” he asked.

“I already explained this. You don’t hear me, or, if you do, you don’t believe what I say.”

“I do believe you, Sara, always, even when I don’t understand. You can count on that. Please, let’s try again.”

Sara thought about this. She wished she knew a different way to talk about it. She didn’t. It came out the way it was; she could only say what she knew. She’d try her best, too, but she didn’t think it would work. He didn’t have a way to think about what she said. “Do you understand Moira?”

“A little…but I’d like to know more.”

“It’s your fate. It’s stronger even than the gods. If you scorn Moira, you absolutely bring Nemesis.” Sara saw she was going too fast. “That’s righteous anger. Very bad news.” She nodded, sure on this. “When you recognize it—Moira, that is—you just know what to do.”

He considered this. “And do you know your Moira?”

“Yeah. Definitely. Fight the Beast. I have to stop him. It’s time. He’s rising. He’s going to kill soon, if he hasn’t killed already. Like Phaea, the monstrous wild white sow, he knows no mercy. Like Cerberus, the three-headed, dragon-tailed dog who guards the gates of Hell, who permits all spirits to enter but none to leave; he isn’t what he seems. The Horseman is coming. I have to find him…warn him. The Beast is rising—”

“Who’s the Horseman?” Abe asked.

“Theseus’ charioteer.” Sara took a breath, continuing. “The Beast is rising. And no one hears me. No one is even listening.”

“I’m listening.”

She shook her head, no. “The sow killed so may Crommyonians that they dared not plough their fields. Theseus hunted down that wild beast and killed it. He didn’t talk about it. It wasn’t a game. When he sailed to Crete, to face the Minotaur, it wasn’t a game. He knew he had to slay a vicious child-eating monster. Whenever the great earth-shaker, Poseidon, gave Theseus a sign, he listened. I need his help. But he doesn’t hear me. I can’t reach him, no matter how hard I try. Has some god struck Theseus deaf? Why are they angry? What has happened? Poseidon isn’t listening. Apollo isn’t listening. Zeus, the all-knowing, he isn’t even listening.”

“I’m listening,” Abe repeated.

“You’re not hearing.”

“Go on.”

“I need the Gods, I need Poseidon, and Apollo. I need Theseus to fight the Beast. It’s not a trick. It’s not a game. I’m not crazy. When I told them at school, they made me see you. They thought I was mental, you know, troubled. When Cassandra failed to pay Apollo for the gift of prophecy, he spit in her mouth, and thereafter, no one believed her. Has Apollo, the truth sayer, spit in my mouth as well? No one even listens to me. The Beast is rising, and he’s going to kill. He’s going to kill my friends. Can you hear that? He may have killed already.”

“How do you know?”

She stood, pressing the toe of her black boot into the carpet. “You don’t have to watch Poseidon’s wild, white bull mount Daedalus’ wooden cow with Pasiphae hidden inside—lusting for this bestial act—to know that he sired the Minotaur.” Sara looked up at him, defiant. “Can you imagine that? Can you understand it?” she eventually asked. He was studying her, she could tell, even when she stared back down at the floor. Maybe that was how he thought about things. Maybe he thought if he studied her long enough, he could get inside her mind or something.

“No, I don’t really understand,” he finally admitted. And then, after a moment, “Sara, could we try another way? Could we talk about your friends…or your family?… If I could learn more about those things, I might have an easier time understanding how to help you find Theseus…”

Sara closed her eyes and started chanting. What was he thinking? What was he doing? She felt a stirring. Shit. She had to do something. It was bad enough when it happened at school. Why was this happening here? Not today. Unh-un. Without another word, Sara turned and left.

Abe rose, then sat down again, watching her go.

***

Whenever she walked Broadway, Corey felt old. She knew every shop and every stoop. Still, Broadway was as mysterious to her as the mountains on the moon.

At the near corner, there was a Diamond parking lot, bordered by a low wall. On some days, the wall was a place to hang for some of the street kids she knew. Today, she stopped to ask Cash—a fifteen-year-old girl who worked the streets, “spanging” for lose change—about Snapper. Cash was high on something, but willing to talk. Sure, she’d known him. No, he wasn’t back. California, maybe. Yeah, that was it. No one else on the wall knew anything or wanted to know anything. It made her a little antsy, a feeling she hadn’t been able to shake since Snapper didn’t show at Starbucks. And she was anxious, though she didn’t know why.

Further south, Corey stopped at the little round window of a hole-in-the-wall Greek restaurant. Inside, she could see Johnny Boy, a skinny, fair, confident young man with short brown hair. When she’d first met him, he was hustling older men on the street. She’d helped his “street sister” get away from her pimp, and they became friends. With a little encouragement, he started selling Real Change, a paper largely written and sold by the homeless. Later, he became a dishwasher at a Thai restaurant. Now, he was a waiter, almost a headwaiter to hear him tell it, at this tiny Greek deli. He was twenty and Johnny Boy was getting married in July. JB waved when he saw her. Before she even sat down, he had placed a bowl of the spicy black olives she liked in front of her.

“Taking a break,” he called out as he sat opposite her at one of the four small tables. Most of the long narrow room was given over to a large display case. Carefully presented inside the case were salads, cold cuts, and Greek specialties like grape leaves, gyros, or baklava. She took a moment to admire the display. Corey knew this was Johnny Boy’s responsibility, and he was rightly proud of it.

Corey ordered a cup of the strong Greek coffee. “Nervous?” she asked.

“Whenever I think about it.”

“How’s Tiffany?”

“Better than me. Her mom came all the way from Georgia to help her pick out her wedding dress. She hasn’t seen her mom in six years.”

“Nice.”

“I dunno. You have to picture this. Her mom, Martha, she cleans people’s houses; she goes to church twice every day; every Sunday, she helps with the Baptisms. Now Tiff takes her shopping on Broadway, to the Ave. I mean everywhere. At Retro Viva, this sales girl has the Dark Prince tattooed on her arm, and she’s fully loaded—studs everywhere, rings in her nose, her navel, this chain is hooked from her ear to her lip. So Martha blesses her, then she makes the sign of the cross with her fingers, and backs out of the store.”

Corey smiled. “I need some help.”

“Shoot.”

“Remember Snapper?”

“A little more than a year back?” JB bit his thumbnail as he put it together. “The smart-ass kid I hid in my squat? His old man wanted to bust him up.”

“Yeah. What do you know about him?”

“He hooked up with another guy. I think it was pretty serious. Snapper had some money, and I heard they split to California somewhere. I haven’t seen him in—I dunno—a year.”

“You know the boyfriend?”

“Un-unh. Once you cooled out the dad, Snapper left the rat hole I had him living in. I saw him around, after, but I never met his guy.”

“He’s back. Snapper called me. Set a meeting then didn’t show up. I need to find him. Can you ask around?”

“Sure. I remember one of his friends. I’ll talk with him.”

“See what you can find out about the boyfriend, too.”

“You got it,” Johnny Boy said. “Uh-huh.”

“How about I take out dinner?”

“I’ll put it together. Lemme see.” He looked over the display, tapping the window, mumbling to himself. JB turned to her, serious. “Can I ask you for something, a really big favor?”

“Sure.”

“Please say no if you don’t want to do it.”

“Of course.”

Corey watched him, taking a breath, screwing up his courage. “OK…here goes…” Another breath. “Would you be in my wedding, walk me down the aisle?”

Corey smiled wide as tears came to her eyes. “I’d love to do that.”

“You’re the only one I could think of that I really wanted to do it. So…so thank you.”

Corey stood, taking his hands.

***

Abe hadn’t moved much since Sara left. He was confused, floundering, and he wasn’t sure what to do. Much of his early work had been with felons. At one time, almost half of his practice came through post-prison programs. And often, he hadn’t known what to believe, what was real. He’d learned little things to listen for, what to ask, and he’d come to trust his impressions and his judgment. Once he ferreted out what was real, finding common ground and setting goals, even unconventional goals, became possible.

Sometimes, and Corey was the best example of this, everything his client was saying was true. At those times, his work was simply to get that. It always took too long. In Corey’s case, before he understood what was at stake, she and Billy were gone, running for their lives. He’d found her, worked it out. It changed his life forever, especially the way he thought, the way he saw things.

Since meeting Corey, Abe’s practice had changed, too. Though he kept his office in the dusty brick building under the viaduct with the fragrant Chinese restaurant on the first floor, he now spent most of his time working with troubled kids and their families, offering a practical combination of medication and therapy. Sorting out a child’s reality could be even more complicated than working with felons. Often, a troubled child believed something to be true in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Usually, it was part of some larger belief system, perceived to be held by a trusted or an intimidating authority. For example he’d known a child to insist that their euthanized pet was on a farm, because the parents had told that lie.

In Sara’s case, he was certain she wasn’t lying. She believed what she said. He also thought that she’d created this entire complex universe—even developed her own language—by herself. No one—not her father, her teachers, nor her friends—was encouraging her to look to the Greek gods for a mortal hero, protection and guidance. And, he was sure, she’d fashioned that magical world in response to something. Yes, he sensed that she was trying, desperately, to communicate some terrible, otherwise inaccessible knowledge. It wasn’t something she could tell him—or she wouldn’t have created her world in the first place. No, he’d have to learn her language.

His size thirteen feet, in ancient Italian brown leather shoes, were propped on his desk, and he faced the cherry leather chair that she’d been sitting in. It was close, kitty-corner from his own chair, a straight shot across the corner of his table-sized desk. He could still see her sitting there, taking in every nuance, as she carefully explained how the Beast would kill soon. A simple fact, plain as the nose on his face.

He was taking a risk; he knew that. The conventional thing would be to medicate her, then, if necessary, have her hospitalized. But Abe knew he’d never be able to help her if he did that. Someone had to hang in with her, learn to speak her magical, made-up language. And figure out with her what she actually meant by it. Who was Theseus? Why did she need him? Who was the Beast? Why was he so dangerous? She was getting at something that was, he thought, too frightening for consciousness. And in spite of that, she was trying to warn him. Why did he believe her? He didn’t know. Hell, he admired her. That was the truth.

And he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t think that she’d hurt herself—though the gods in her carefully crafted, universe could be dangerously punitive. She certainly wasn’t a threat to anyone else. And so far as he knew, no one had been hurt yet. He thought about her warning. He couldn’t see who, if anyone, was about to die. That was still vague. Harsh punishments, often death, were real consequences in her mythological universe. And her worry about someone dying could easily come from some past injustice, too frightful to bear. He shook his head—no—a gesture, he realized, he’d picked up from Sara. He was rationalizing, and he knew it. He didn’t know what she was getting at, and he didn’t know what to do about that, or even where to turn. She had no interest in talking about anything in the present—school, family, friends. No time for it. In fact, it made her mad. She rolled her eyes and started chanting whenever he asked a question about those things. Or she’d ignore his question and race back into the past.

And she was right—he was hurting, not helping, that is to say slowing her down, wasting her valuable energy. She was explaining things to him, over and over, and even after her explanations, he plainly didn’t understand. Okay, this was a problem he had to engage, even if he couldn’t solve it. He stared at his cherry leather chair, confounded.

He’d see her again tomorrow. Maybe there was a way to talk about Theseus. Abe wanted to pick up a book on Greek mythology, see what he could learn about Theseus, the king. At least he’d see if he could listen to her in a way that was helpful. He stood, frowning, still perplexed, as he gathered his things, putting them in his worn, brown-leather briefcase. He was off to talk with Owen Sentor, Olympic’s high school counselor and acting dean, to see what he wasn’t listening to.

***

After any given school day, the table against the far wall at the Blue City Café was the first stop for Billy and his friends. Today, Randy, Alex, and Amy were hanging out, waiting for Billy to come from an after school spring soccer meeting. Randy was showing off the pictures he’d taken, then printed from his computer. When he saw that his friends were only interested in how they looked, he stashed them in his backpack.

Randy saw her first and waved her over. Sara was dressed in black, walking very slowly, talking to herself. She carried her bulging canvas shoulder bag. Sara fingered a spike on her collar as she made her way to their table.

“Hey, Sara,” Randy greeted her as she sat down. “What’s up?”