The Blue Hour (44 page)

With Jesus' Love

Trudy and Jonathan
Powers

• • •

Helena went out for dinner
groceries around six, promising him a good meal. She came back with cube
steaks—the kind with the gristle like rubber bands, frozen peas, a coconut
custard pie with a clear plastic lid and two half gallons of generic vodka. He
watched her approach his apartment home on TV again, shopping bags in one hand
and the other held in front of her like a battering ram as the neighbors and
reporters converged.

Dinner was a tribulation he thought would never end,
and through it Colesceau could feel his shame turning into anger, his anger
into rage, his rage into calm, his calm into hatred.

• • •

"Moros, it hurts me
when a woman like that neighbor steps into your home. The home I pay for."

It was after dinner, time
for dessert but still before nine, so the chanting outside was going strong.
Some of the Parole Board demonstrators had joined the neighborhood demonstrators,
so it looked like twice as many of them. The increased numbers had brought more
media, too—there were three network vans outside, plus some local L.A.
stations, and some whose call letters Colesceau didn't even recognize. Where
was WJKN, anyway?

Helena drank deeply from
her tumbler. Colesceau heard her slurp. He took another long draw from his own
glass—the generic vodka smelled just like the swabs that Holtz's fat nurse used
to wipe his arm before she plunged the needle in.

"It was the first
time Trudy Powers has ever been in here," he said.

On screen he saw Lauren
Diamond and Sergeant Merci Rayborn, lead Sheriff's investigator in the Purse
Snatcher investigation. He'd forgotten about her in all of this;

But at the sound of his
own voice saying Trudy's name—or was it at the sight of Merci on his
TV—Colesceau felt his desire stir. Actually felt a nudge against the forearm
lying across his lap. He breathed deeply.

...
the Purse Snatcher
investigation is moving ahead on a number of fronts right now . . .

"She's an
impudent, self-righteous whore."

"She means
well."

We
were considering Veronica
Stevens
of Santa Ana to be the Purse Snatcher's third
victim until we discovered . . .

Helena sighed hugely. She
sat her bulk back into the couch and sighed again. She slurped down some more
vodka. "Do you miss Romania, Moros?"

"Not at
all."

"I love America, too.
But sometimes 1 remember the good things about home. I miss them."

"Name me one
good thing about home, Mother."

"Oh, I remember
the springtime in Tirgu Ocna. The sunrise over the Danube. The beach at
Constanta in August."

"They mean
nothing to me."

...
uie try not to make predictions tike that. . .

"More vodka,
Moros."

In the kitchen Colesceau
poured his mother fresh vodka. He'd heard her nostalgic blubbering before.
Another drink or two and she'd tell him about her beautiful lover from
Matamoros, Mexico, a slender Mexican idealist, poet and photographer who had
seduced her as a young woman. Colesceau's namesake. The whole story sickened
him.

After putting a handful of
ice into her glass, he popped the roll of paper towels off its holder and
tilted out the ice pick. Cold. He put it in his right front trouser pocket, tip
up.

Back in the living room he
gave Helena the glass, looking at her through the periphery of his vision
because it was too much to look directly at her. He felt the bile rise in his
guts. He sat down and saw Merci Rayborn still on the TV.

.
. .he's an animal and a coward, picking
on
unarmed, defenseless,
unsuspecting women . . .

She looks better on TV
than in person, thought Colesceau. Just a little heavier. Softer in the eyes
and face. His penis felt like it was crawling.

"I miss
Voronet," said Helena. "The outdoor frescoes. You know, Moros, the
ones they painted on the outside walls of the churches, because the poor people
were considered too unclean to enter the church. It was like TV for the poor,
although the pictures didn't move."

"I remember the
frescoes. They're one of the few things about Romania I liked."

"Moros, remember
'Soul Taking' at the Moldovita church? What an unforgettable thing, to see that
fresco, to actually feel what the artist felt. People were closer to God in those
days. There is no doubt about this."

He glanced at her. He'd
seen the fresco "Soul Taking" that she talked about. It was a bunch
of gray demons with claws, wings, and tails who tore the souls from both the
living and the dead. It was a grotesque carnival of pain and torment that had
always made Colesceau giggle, even as a child. He thought his mother was
psychologically misshapen, to get passion out of something that frightful and
comedic.

.
..the
rules
of common sense. Always lock your car. Always park in a well-lit place. Always
check your car before getting in— especially the backseat. . .

He looked at Merci
Rayborn's mouth as she spoke, then at Helena's. He liked to compare his
mother's features with the features of women he might possess someday. Merci
Rayborn had even white teeth. Helena had tusks. He pressed down with his
forearm just a little, but the resistance was gone. For the millionth time in
the last three years it simply evaporated, like a drop of spring rain on a warm
sidewalk. It was the single most infuriating feeling he had ever known.

.
. . why will we get him? Because creeps like this aren't
usu
ally too
bright, that's why we'll get him . . .

CNB went back to
"Rape Watch: Irvine" and Trudy appeared on the screen. Helena grabbed
the remote and turned down the sound.

"It is time to
put your mother to bed, Moros."

"Of
course."

• • •

He tucked his mother into
his own bed. It flattered her to get his bed—though she also seemed to feel
entitled to it— and he favored the arrangement for other reasons. He felt the
tip of the ice pick in the darkness to make sure it was there.

He took off her babushka
and stroked her hair, which was wispy white with brown on top, like meringue.
He listened to her ramble. He knew she'd be stubbornly unconscious in a
matter of minutes. He pulled up the covers so they were just covering her
breasts, tucking them in nice and snug around her, just as she liked it, just
as she'd taught him to do.

"You are the
good son, Moros."

"You are the
good mother."

Her mouth approximated a
smile and he bent to kiss her. He felt the tip of the pick against his hip and
he knew this was the time. His arms were trembling like he'd just lifted a car
off the ground.

He thought so often about
it. Not so much the beneficial results, but the pleasure the act would give
him. But he could never do it. He had had a thousand chances in two different
countries on two different continents over two decades, and he had still never
been able to do it. He hated himself for this failure. The hatred of himself
was his bedrock, the foundation on which everything else inside him was built.
There was no escaping it when she was near him.

And now she was
threatening to move in.

Helpless to stop her.
Helpless to end her. The hatred made thin, red outlines like halos around
everything he looked at.

.
. . because creeps like this aren't usually too bright, that's why we'll get
him . . .

Colesceau shut the door on
his already snoring mother, went downstairs and poured a giant cocktail of pure
vodka. Then he went back upstairs and into the spare bedroom, locking the door
behind him. He was weeping though he wasn't sad, and he could feel the cool
tears on his cheeks.

It had been like this for
three years. His body did one thing, and his mind did another. No connection.
No unity. It was strange to feel rage and anger, but to have no erection; to
feel furious and frustrated, but to have tears running down his face.

He stripped down to his
underwear and stood in front of the mirrored wall. He set the tumbler on the
floor beside him. He wanted to see himself now that the hormone treatments were
stopped. He unbuttoned the shirt, realizing with a sense of dread that this was
the worst he would look, that the effects were as bad now as they would get.

This is what they have
made of me. Manhood shot through with womanhood and the result is neither.

So he dropped the shirt, pulled off his underwear and
looked at himself in the glass. He saw that his general shape was suggestive of
the human female rather than the human male. He saw the deep pocks the dog
teeth had left, and the jagged suture scars guaranteed by disinterested
government doctors. Before the police dogs his skin had been pale and clear and
taut. He saw his flabby midsection, the valiant little breasts trying so hard
not to become what they were not intended to be. Before the hormone treatments
they had been flat, efficient ministers of strength. He saw the loose nest of
hair and skin between his legs. Before all of this they had been his precious
cock and balls, they had always been there for him, they had
been
him when he needed them to be—his
expression of hate, desire, rage. Now they were an image of pure defeat. And no
matter what he imagined, he couldn't get even the faintest stirring of desire
to register down there. For now, as it was so often in the last three years,
his organ was nothing more than a phantom.

He stooped and got his
vodka, draining it down to the last cold drop.

Then everything hit him.
The hatred and rage, the desire and impotence, the frustration and weakness. All
of it stewed in the vodka and progesterone, all of it mixed together into a
toxic blend.

Colesceau opened his mouth
and bared his teeth. He trapped the scream far down in his throat and didn't
let it out His head rang with pain. He could feel his own hot damp breath all
around his face and see the steam it formed in the air-conditioned room. Like
he was breathing smoke.

He looked at himself again
and saw the thing he had become. He drew another breath and choked down another
soundless scream. The glass broke in his hand and he felt the ice landing
around his toes.

And he had the
vision—while his head roared with a silent bellow of despair—of what he would
do next.

To establish himself
again. To better himself.

To show his mother and the
miserable world that he could rise above what they had made of him.

He thought it through and
he thought it through again. He watched his face, still a grimace of tears and
a frozen scream. So much to do now, and so little time.

Trudy's number was still
in the Bible in his living room, and he'd need to leave a little something for
his mother.

Work to do.

By sunset that evening Hess was driving with Merci
back out the Ortega, along the swales shadowed by oaks, up the grades of sunlit
stone, past the shimmering cottonwood and spring-fed grass. He looked out at
the stand of trees where purses and blood belonging to Janet Kane and Lael
Jillson had been found. Just darkness now, locked in by the shadows of
sycamores and oaks. He thought of how cold that blood had been in the ground
out there, already returning into elements by the time they'd found it. He
could feel his own blood again now, hot and somehow foreign, apparently
borderline anemic, but fortified by rads and noxious chemicals, antacids, antiemetics,
painkillers, vitamins and the lingering narcotic of desire. It felt to him like
the blood itself was polluted. But he was glad to have it. He noticed his eyes
were blurring just a little again now, not so much blurring as failing to focus
as well as they could. But that had come and gone, since the chemo.

"Kemp apologized to
me this morning. He actually seemed to mean it. More to the point, he said he'd
keep his mouth shut and his hands off me."

"Good.
That's how it should be."

"It's not a victory.
It's just basic human respect I'm after."

"Phil's a tough one
to get that from. You more than earned it."

"Tomorrow he's going
to make a statement to the press. He's going to apologize without admitting he
did anything wrong. A misunderstanding or some such thing. I talked to Brighton
afterward, and just between you and me, Kemp's headed for an Admin desk."

"Funny way to
get promoted."

"At least they'll be
able to watch him better. So, I'm thinking about the suit. I can drop it now
without feeling like I backed off. That'll probably get me more publicity than
bringing it. Now they'll say I'm abandoning the other women. But I don't care.
I've just got to get onto other things. Case closed, as far as I'm
concerned."