Adrift in the Sound (15 page)

SEVENTEEN

A SHARP WIND WHIPPED THE TREES
and scattered leaves around Lizette as she sketched on a rough-planed log, gripping the edges of her pad to keep the pages from ruffling. The wobbly bench overlooked the cove and she could see her cabin below, smoke puffing lazily from the stovepipe. The little meadow in the cove fanned toward the water and the overcast sky melded with the horizon in a continuous gray tone.

Startled by the crack of a broken branch, she turned to see Rocket coming up the trail, his jacket collar pulled up to protect his ears in the wind. Tucker darted from under the bench and nudged at his knees until Rocket gave him a pat then the dog dived back under the bench. Lizette smoothed the paper, smudged the charcoal lines she’d just drawn with the side of her hand and tightened the muscles of her face into a half smile to mask her feelings. Only a small twitching beside her right eye gave away any anxiety.

“What’re you doing?”

“Thinking.”

“Doesn’t look like thinking,” he said, plopping down beside her, rocking the bench. “Let me see.”

He reached around her and she pulled the sketch pad away and held it against her chest, rubbing black on her yellow sweater. Lizette lowered her pad and scanned her drawing, thought,
Why not? So what if he sees?
She let him have it, the pages fluttering in the breeze.

He studied the drawing, then reached up and felt the shape of his nose with his hand, traced his brow ridges, fingered his lips and earlobes, feeling the sketch’s likeness. Looking squarely at Lizette, he captured her wandering eyes. She looked away. “Hate to say it, but it kinda looks like me. I mean a better me. Who is it, really? Talk.”

Lizette started to say something, but instead picked up a twig from the bench and broke it into tiny sections, measuring, cracking, measuring, afraid, but wanting him to know that his face haunted her, the lines and contours, the dusty yellow shadows under his jaw when he needed a shave, his blue eyes, square body, crooked smile.
He almost makes it
, she thought.
Maybe, with time, he’ll change and we can make it work together.
She threw the twig pieces over her shoulder, scattered her hope and crossed her leg, agitating her foot. He held the pad out at arms length, squinted at it with one eye, set the pad down between them.

He reached for her hand as she stood, but she pulled her arms behind her back. A seagull wheeled above the cove. She put her arms out and mimicked its graceful flight. From a tight place in her throat she called to it in a high pitch, “Skaw! Skaw!” Catching her breath, laughing, she glanced at him sideways to tease his hidden prude, but Rocket was gone. She saw a shaft of amber light dance around the crown of his head before he disappeared down the path. The clouds hunched over, covering up the light burst. She waited, then followed down the path to the cabin.

A dark figure on the porch surprised her and she stopped, half hidden in the green understory. His black cape meshed with the weathered, mossy color of the cabin’s exterior, faded in and out in the afternoon shadows. A hawk’s piercing cry startled her and she looked up, returned to the black apparition, sensed the man was leaving, that in the cape hanging loosely from his shoulders he was spiriting something away, but she could see nothing in the folds of the fabric, dismissed the thought, besides Rocket was there. He wouldn’t let anybody take her things, if there was anything worth taking.

“I’ll be up in a minute, man,” she heard Rocket say from inside. Then the dark visitor turned and closed the cabin door. He looked up and saw her standing on the sloped trail like a startled doe, maybe twenty yards away, leaves clinging to her hair. He waved his hand and said, “Hey, Lizette,” but she did not know him. Tucker lunged down the trail, barking a warning. The man held the top of his funny hat as he scurried off.

“Who was that?” Lizette said as she came into the cabin, dropping her canvas bag at the foot of her cot and going to the stove to warm her hands, turning to heat her backside.

“Toulouse.”

She pushed Tucker away from her knees, nudged him toward his box beside her bed.

“The poet?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve heard of him, maybe from Fisher. What’s he doing here? Somebody, maybe Greg, said he was in New York or something. Isn’t he famous?”

“He just wanted to talk.” Rocket sat on the wobbly stool and turned toward the window, avoiding her eyes. “I showed him a couple of your paintings. He has been hangin’ around the Dog House lately. Mostly with Greg. They go out and get loaded sometimes. He must’ve said something about you’re paintings.”

“I told you to leave my stuff alone. That’s the rule. Even the Dogs follow that one at your place.” She stamped her foot, picked up a thin black paint brush from the table and threw it at the wall. “That guy has
way
bad chi! I can see it. Foul energy.”

“Chi? What the hell’s that?” He stood and studied her face, trying to find an opening in the maze of her mind, but gave up, knew he’d never get through to her. “Relax. It’s no big thing. He liked them. He’s an OK guy, weird, but OK.” Rocket went to the door and spoke with his back to her. “I’m going up to the party. Are you coming?”

“In a while. Close the door.”

“You don’t have to pout,” Rocket said.

“Close the door!”

The afternoon sun scattered silver sequins across the water. Lizette went to the big window and scanned the surface looking for the hunters, searching far out in the channel. Maybe, she thought, maybe it’s them moving closer, she squinted, maybe it’s an illusion, a refraction, a mind trick. But no. There they
were
, zigzagging closer, still a long way out. Turning back to the room, she saw her pill bottle on the table, lying on its side. She shook it and heard a weak rattle. Pulling the lid she saw there were only a few pills left and tried to think how long she’d stretched a one-month supply—five weeks? No. More. She needed a refill and had to check in with Dr. Finch. On her hands and knees, she leaned into the closet and scratched the tinfoil from under the closet’s framing.

She put the acid tabs in her pocket and took her pill, followed it with a drink from the water jug on the table. Images of Dr. Finch and the hospital, her father, the streets, the rain and the moldy smell of the black raincoat, the arm crushing her larynx, pulling her pants down, kaleidoscoped through her mind. She sat on the stool, shaking. In a while, when her breathing slowed and her hands steadied, she got up and headed for the house. Music heaved through the air in gushes, Motown from the phonograph in the front yard mixed with honky-tonk piano inside, harmonica, tambourine, a slowing tempo, then silence.

A beat picked up, heavy bass, lots of piano. In the front yard people laughed and hung on each other, shaking asses. Someone called her name, but she did not respond, just looked at the scene.
Troll’s banquet
, she thought.

“Lizette?” Toulouse sidled up to her in his musty drapery. “I want to talk to you. I had the opportunity to look at some of your paintings. Quite nice, astonishing, really.”

“You nasty prick,” she hissed. “Stay out of my cabin or I’ll astonish you.”

“You’re right about my prick,” he said, laughing. He pulled his cape around him like he was trying to keep germs from escaping. “Had kind of a green drip going for a while.”

“What?” Lizette put her hands on her hips and saw him like a turd on the grass. She looked at the angle of his arrogant jaw and his burnt sienna eyes.
Hades in drag
, she thought.
Liar.
“Are you nuts?” she said. “You’re telling me you’ve got the clap or what? I don’t even know you.”

“Sorry,” he said, fingering the brim of his ridiculous hat, looking away, acting all innocent, annoying her further. “It just popped out. Sorry again. Pardon me, really. I mean I’m taking pills. Everything’s OK. Kind of a nasty strain going around, though, that’s what the doctor said. But, hey, listen.” He reached out and grabbed her by the bicep. “That’s not what I want to rap about. It’s your canvases. They’re wonderful. Can we talk?”

She pulled her arm back, let out an anxious chirp. All at once she knew who Greg had been sleeping with. She charged into the house, looking for Marian. The living room was thick with music. Marian sat withdrawn, as if shielded by a translucent curtain, brooding in her mother’s old chair by the window, the place where her mother used to knit wool from the ranch’s sheep and listen to the radio, tell them stories when they were girls. Marian sat immobile now in the party’s swirl, Mrs. Cutler come to life, thinner and prettier, but a shocking likeness just the same.

She saw Greg, nodding out in the wing chair across the room from Marian, and tried to figure out what to do. She needed to talk to Marian, but realized Greg was not asleep. He was watching her with wary eyes, knees spread, arms akimbo, malevolence distilled. Sandy beat the tambourine against her baby belly and swayed on the leather footstool pulled into the middle of the room. Rocket blew the harmonica, tapped his foot, syncopated with his head. Sandy got up, offered a bump and grind from her strip tease act, gathered her milk-heavy breasts and thrust them toward Rocket, shimmied, spread her round ass.

It was Fisher she’d heard above the party noise, pouring out sounds like rain coming down, gutter down, funky low-down. Lizette folded onto the floor beneath the front windows, leaned against the wall, opened to the music
light rain, light rain, baby, pouring down
, and kept time with swishing knees. Fisher hunched vulture-like over the keyboard and threw Lizette a wink, a kid doing tricks on a bicycle, playing
“Six Days Upon the Road”
and singing like Taj Mahal in a gravelly roll
“I got ten forward gears and a sweet Georgia overdrive. I’m takin’ little white pills and my eyes are open wide … Baby, Baby watch the way I shift my gears … I’m six days upon the road and I got to see my baby tonight.”
Lizette watched him and offered an encouraging smile, felt lifted by the beat. She noticed Greg had roused and was studying her.

“Hey, Lizard.” Greg said and flopped his arm. “Get me a beer.” She ignored him and scooched away.

“Come on, Lizzy. Please.”

“Pig,” Lizette said under her breath.

He pouted his girlish lips, fluttered his long lashes. “Please.”

“Get it yourself,” Marian growled, leaving no room for argument.

Greg got up, steadied himself on the arm of the chair. “Gotta piss,” he said, lurching forward and heading down the hall toward the bathroom. Fisher played some kind of honky-tonk version of “Candy Man.” Sandy pulled the tambourine over her head and kept time with the heel of her hand, her belly swelling and extending. Rocket used the top of the old upright piano as a drum. From the bathroom, Lucky shrieked razor sharp from the tub and the music stopped. Rocket dashed down the hall.

“What’s up man? Why’re you hitting him?” Greg wailed on Lucky and Rocket grabbed him around the waist from behind, held his right fist above his head while Lucky cowered in the bathtub, hands in front of his face to defend against punches. “Lay off, Greg. Are you crazy?”

“Fucker stole my stash. He’s the only one who could’ve.”

“He’s been passed out in the bathtub the whole time he’s been here, dumb shit. Calm down.” Marian and Sandy blocked the bathroom door, but Lizette could easily see over their heads. Greg sniffled, on the verge of tears. Rocket bent him over, pulled his arm behind his back, growled something into his ear.

Lizette went to the kitchen and got a beer, popped the top with an opener, set it on the counter and peeled open the tinfoil from her pocket, dropped a translucent acid hit into the brew. Back in the living room, she set the bottle on the small table beside the chair where Greg had been sitting.

When Greg calmed down, they brought him to the living room and pushed him into the chair where he’d been sitting, everyone settled back into their spots before the outburst. Fisher began playing again, Hayden. A riff from Variations in F Minor, Lizette thought, and smirked at Fisher’s wise-assed incongruity, the shift from rock-a-billy to classical, she recognized the conceit in his virtuosity, shared his artistic frustration, and forgave him.

Greg wiped his nose and took a slug of beer from the bottle. Outside shadows lengthened and the wind kicked up. People began leaving, cars revving, doors slamming, loud good-byes. A horn honked at the end of the driveway and the driver turned on the car’s headlights. Somebody backed into the fence, snapped a post before tearing off, leaving the pickets tilted. Fisher played “Happy Trails.” Greg drained his beer bottle.