The Summer Man

Chapter TWENTY-TWO





Tuesday night, John left the house at around seven, deciding to walk to the community theater rather than drive. Summer parking was always bad, and though it was still hot, there was a steady breeze. A lot of other people had the same idea; he passed any number of families and groups of people walking down the hill, mostly summer folk dressed in light, casual clothes, all headed for Miranda Greene-Moreland’s poetry reading. He found himself studying their faces as he walked, wondering what secrets lay behind their closed expressions, behind their expensive sunglasses.

Maybe none at all, he told himself. Perhaps the assumption that everyone was being emotionally influenced was erroneous; John certainly felt the effects himself and had noticed behavioral and philosophical changes in most, if not all, of his clients…but if the influence was a kind of pollen or some other natural occurrence—as he still believed, regardless of the lab results he’d received only yesterday—it stood to reason that there might be a nucleus from which the effects radiated, a zero point. Not necessarily, but worth looking into. We could print out a map, try to chart the more intense changes by residence, maybe…

He put the idea on his mental list, which was slightly more coherent since Sarah had slowed the course of their affair—Tommy had apparently overheard their lovemaking and was understandably upset. Not that they’d stopped seeing one another, that wouldn’t have been possible for either of them, but they’d limited their private time together to barely an hour in the very early morning and had worked to keep their pleasures silent. He was getting more sleep, at least, and told himself that his clients deserved as much…although waiting to see her each night left him teetering between anticipation and agony.

He reached Water Street and turned toward the theater, joining a growing throng of walkers. There was a slow, steady crawl of cars going in both directions and apparently no place to park. The theater only seated a few hundred, but there seemed to be a thousand people out on the street, all headed the same way. How many of them were in love, and how many harbored darker thoughts? How many, like him, were struggling to find their way amid feelings of confusion and uncertainty? He supposed they’d find out soon enough; the paper would come out tomorrow, and Bob’s story would run on the front page. Bob had called on Friday night to tell him the idea, drunk and excited, sure that going “straight to the people” was the best course. John had liked the proposal a lot; it was so much more immediate than waiting for someone in a uniform to pay attention. He’d gone over the article with Bob on Saturday, made a couple of suggestions about how to format the questions the reporter had come up with, and had felt quite optimistic, which he hadn’t thought was possible so soon after their ugly meeting with Stan Vincent; being called delusional by the police chief had hit a little close to home. John had called Amanda, who’d seemed as relieved and hopeful as John had felt, after reading the article. They were still going to meet him at the reading, see if anything important came up through Amanda’s abilities, but John was certain that tomorrow would bring the real resolution; when the Press went out, the mayor, the council, the police—all would surely be inundated by calls, forcing them to take action.

Although the reading wasn’t scheduled to start for nearly an hour, there were easily a hundred people already at the theater, milling about on the expansive front lawn, holding plastic cups from one of the concession booths out front. There were three stands, two that served food and one that only did drinks—beer and wine—and John noticed that the line for alcohol was thrice as long as at the other booths. He saw a woman in the line with Sarah’s light hair and felt his stomach knot, his heart beat faster—but she turned, and it was only some woman.

“Doc!”

John turned and saw Bob waving, a few people away. The lawn was getting crowded. John ducked around the talkers and saw that Amanda and her boyfriend were behind the reporter. Amanda looked stressed. Her eyes were hidden by her shades, but the way her shoulders were hunched, her arms folded in front of her stomach—maybe putting her in this kind of situation wasn’t such a good idea. Eric’s expression was totally bland.

“Hey, glad we all came early,” Bob said, stopping in front of John. His breath smelled like mints and alcohol, and he had to raise his voice slightly to be heard. “I ran into the kids on the way down.”

“You doing OK?” John asked Amanda.

“Need a smoke,” she said. “Come with me.”

She walked toward the door of the theater, Eric in tow. Bob shrugged at John and they both followed, Bob nearly running into a middle-aged couple holding pints. Amanda veered left just before the entrance, cutting to a narrow path that ran behind a leafy hedge fronting the building. They had to lean their bodies to edge through, all the way down the front wall of the theater—and just around the corner a small space opened up, tucked between the continuing hedge and an angle of the building. The ground was littered with cigarette butts and empty cups and bottles, but it was quieter and there was enough room for them to stand facing each other. Amanda and Eric lit up, Amanda leaning against the dusty wall, exhaling with a sigh.

“That’s better,” she said.

“What’s it like?” John asked.

“Smoking?” Amanda smiled her wry twist of a smile.

“Being around all these people,” John asked.

“Weird,” she said. “Tense. I don’t know.”

“Are you picking up specific thoughts?”

“I don’t know,” she said again. “I haven’t tried. I mean, I think I have to try to, like, do it one person at a time. Like focus on someone.”

She took another drag, shook her head. “Right now, it’s like, this feeling of…of tension. Like anxiety, coming from everywhere. It got worse the closer we got, coming down the hill. It’s—” She laughed, an unsteady sound. “It’s pretty bad.”

“You still want to try this?”

“Yeah, totally, I just wanted to smoke first, is all.”

Bob had fished an old leather-bound notebook out of his back pocket, the kind where you could replace the pad of paper inside. “I thought we could sit in the back,” he said. “I’ll write down anything you see. Ah, sense. Unless you think it might be better to stay out here…”

“No, inside’s good,” she said. “I think it’ll be better when everyone sits down, calms down, you know?”

“It doesn’t matter anyway, right?” Eric asked suddenly, looking at Amanda. “After the story comes out tomorrow, you won’t have to do any of this shit anymore.”

“I don’t have to do it now,” Amanda snapped back. “I want to, remember?”

“Yeah, right,” Eric mumbled, and went back to smoking. Both teens looked irritated. From the dark looks Eric kept tossing toward the two older men, John suspected jealousy over Amanda’s time and attention. Eric’s intense, controlling focus was always on her, and Amanda didn’t seem to care for it much. Considering what he knew of her background and personality—not to mention her gift for reading people—John couldn’t imagine that she’d put up with his antics for much longer.

Behind them was the sound of the front doors being chocked open, and at the window over their heads, they heard a rumble of footsteps and chatter, people going in.

“We’re not even going to get a seat in the back if we don’t hurry,” John said.

“OK,” Amanda said, and took a final drag before stomping what was left of her cigarette into the dry dirt. Eric reluctantly did the same, and they started back the way they’d come, bunching together briefly where the hedge ended and the stream of bodies poured past.





It had been a super shitty day already. She’d woken up with her period, which had bled through the top sheet of Devon’s bed into his mattress pad, and she didn’t think the stain was going to come out. Also, cramps, and that meant no sex—not the kind she liked, anyway. Then Devon’s uncle had driven her to Grace’s apartment to pack up her shit, which had filled three garbage bags and a half dozen boxes, and Peter’s truck had been out front. Which sucked, for obvious reasons. Amanda had gone early, figuring her mother’s sleep habits hadn’t changed, and they hadn’t—she’d heard snores and occasional grunts from her mother’s bedroom while she’d been stuffing her clothes and books and the cat doll her grandmother had given her into cardboard boxes and plastic bags, but no one had come out. That was good, that part didn’t blow, but then on the way back to Devon’s, she’d picked up some of what Sid was thinking, about what kind of commitment he was looking at, taking in his gay nephew’s gal pal. He was thinking that he was going to have to have a serious talk with Devon about other options for her when Devon came home…and Amanda had totally started crying, and Sid had been way nice about it. He’d assumed she was upset about her mother, and that had also sucked because she didn’t know what was more real, the nice Sid, telling her that people did the best they could and sometimes it wasn’t enough, or the Sid hoping she’d be out of his home soon.

So after that, she’d tried to call Devon when they’d gotten back to the house and he hadn’t been in. So she’d called Eric, and met him at his house, and he’d been cool for exactly three minutes before he’d started groping her. Which wasn’t going to go anywhere anyway because of her period, and he’d been a moody bitch ever since, and he knew she was stressed out, so why was he being so difficult? She’d even given him a blow job to make up for not being as wet, willing, and ready as usual, which made her feel stupid; since when had she become such a whore? She’d actually tried to read him a couple of times, to look into his mind even though she knew it’d piss him off, once when they ate lunch and once in his basement, listening to music. Both times she’d felt his irritation with her, and with himself, and beyond that she’d felt that he was also far away in his mind, thinking of something else, something she couldn’t get. She wished she hadn’t invited him to the reading, but now they were here, and he still had a bug up his butt over whatever it was, exactly, that he’d had a bug up his butt about since before noon, for f*ck’s sake.

Since about the time they’d run into Bob, she’d been having an amazing attack of nerves, of feeling like the world was going to disappear under her feet while she was walking. She had been doing what she could to keep herself focused on her body, on the dropping sun, on the feel of Eric’s sweaty hand in hers, but by the time they’d hit Water Street, she’d felt inside the way the air felt, high and tight and almost breaking. She couldn’t believe that nobody else was even noticing, and she sincerely wished she was old enough to buy a beer at the concession stand; she needed to calm the f*ck down.

A press of bodies and warm air hit them as they joined the flow of people, most of them chatting excitedly as they crowded through the front doors. Amanda looked back the way they’d come, her attention caught for just a second by a lone figure across the street, watching the theater—a thin, pale-looking man, strangely familiar. She didn’t have time to place him before he was out of sight, blocked by the moving mob.

John had stepped into the lead and was heading for one of the two sets of doors opening from the lobby into the theater space, finding a row in the back. Which was good, because being able to leave a poetry reading easily was always good, but also because she didn’t know how long she’d be able to sit still, feeling so f*cking anxious. She concentrated on her breathing, on putting one foot in front of another, on who was sitting where. She ended up in between Bob and Eric. John sat on Bob’s other side, on the aisle, and for the moment, the seat next to Eric’s was empty.

It was too loud to talk; people kept pouring in, filling the descending rows in front of the raised stage. Amanda took deep, even breaths. Bob asked her if she wanted to use his notebook, but she had brought her own, a small one because she was carrying her “evening” purse, a black sequined clutch with a safety pin holding the top closed. She’d worn her nice clothes, too, a dark-green linen skirt and her best cut black tank, not that anyone had noticed. She took out her own notebook and wrote Impressions, Poetry Reading at the top of the page and underlined it. She hesitated a moment, then closed her eyes, still breathing deeply. Sure, great, impressions. If she could get past how stuffy the room was, how loud, how insanely, obnoxiously hyped up. She’d seen enough movies and television to know that psychics had to put up, like, a mental shield, and she thought that all her concentrating on physical stuff—walking, the heat, smoking—was her version of that shield. She had to let it down, to open up to strong feelings in the crowd. She had to look for the people she’d dreamed about.

Another deep breath, and another. She felt touches of thoughts, and let them come.

know she doesn’t want to but if she drinks any more of that wine, maybe she’ll

missing the f*cking game jesus I hope she’s happy, dragging me

chicken marsala, that was a thousand calories at least and the bread was empty calories should’ve gotten the salad

She opened her eyes and looked around. The voices, for lack of a better term, were all from different people—and she couldn’t tell by looking. She knew that the first two snippets of thought had been from men, the third from a woman, but there were dozens of each still moving all around, edging past each other, finding seats. Someone had to pee, someone was feeling sick, someone else was cheating on her husband with a man named Ray—

There, the woman in a black dress, sitting three rows up next to a guy in a polo shirt. Amanda could only see a sliver of her profile as she turned to talk to her husband. If he finds out he’ll kill him, kill us both—

“So what are you going to do, exactly?” Eric asked, interrupting her, the woman’s thoughts disappearing like smoke.

“Are you f*cking kidding me?” Amanda snapped, turning in her seat to glare at him. “I’m trying to figure out if anyone else is going to die, is that OK with you?”

“You told me this afternoon, once the paper comes out tomorrow, everything’s fixed,” he said, and worse than his moody standoffish tone, a whine had crept into his voice. “I understand this is like, a big deal for you, I know that, I just missed you today, you know?”

He leaned closer into her. “I kind of feel like we missed each other.”

So, he wasn’t a total idiot. She sighed. “Just…I’m going to try to concentrate, OK? So if you could just sit there and look pretty and be quiet for a couple of minutes, I’d really—that would be, like, supportive.”

He smiled at her, his very nicest smile. “You think I’m pretty?”

She smiled back at him. “Shut up, please.”

He pulled out an ancient iPod, tucking a bud into his ear, and she felt better about him than she had all day. She jotted down random thoughts, can’t place and blonde in black dress having affair on husband w/Ray, and she wondered what possible good they could do here. The small, motley group trying to save their town from some terrible fill-in-the-blank; it was a standard premise in thrillers she’d read growing up—but in books the psychic one or the computer geek (the one with special skills, anyway) was always pulling out the exact right answer at the right time, and there weren’t long, boring days when nothing really happened, and there was a villain, there was someone or something to actually fight. Everything about what was occurring in Port Isley was so vague and intangible—feelings, impulses, control—except she knew that there was violence to come; there was blood in her dreams, and fear, and that meant she had, like, a personal responsibility. It had to mean something that her own “special skill” had arrived just when everything started to go to hell…

For me, the night of the party.

“Hey, did you get a chance to look at that journal thing?” she asked Bob.

“Oh, right,” he said. When he leaned in to speak, she could smell the sour heaviness of his breath, even his sweat—she’d grown up knowing that smell. He’d been drinking today. “Yeah, but it was all stuff we went over before, wasn’t it?”

“Except for the thing about the influence maybe coming from a person,” she said.

“A person?” Bob’s gaze seemed to sharpen. “What do you mean?”

She explained about he’s here and how she’d kind of forgotten about it because she never had figured out what it meant. Bob asked some of the same questions Devon had—who was here, where—and she repeated her answers: she didn’t know. Bob turned to fill John in on the probably useless piece of information, and Amanda realized that all the seats were full, and there were a lot of people still standing, or leaning against the walls, and she started searching the faces she could see for anyone familiar, searching the electric air for anything frightening, and then people started applauding, their attention all turning to the stage.

Miranda Greene-Moreland walked out on the platform wearing a terrible green dress made out of layers of gauze. She smiled her beaming smile, stopping in front of a pair of mike stands. She tapped at one of them, the loud thump-thump-thump cutting through the applause—

—and Amanda saw them, suddenly, three men between the front row and the stage, armed with what looked like automatic rifles. The men were rough looking, denim and work boots, their clothes dirty, and she could only see their backs, but she immediately thought of Cole Jessup and his f*cked-up sons, one of whom liked getting blow jobs from Devon. They were aiming their big machine-gun weapons at Miranda and people in the front row; people all around her were screaming, falling over their seats to get out, and Amanda felt a concentrated glee coming from the three men, one of them laughing aloud at Miranda’s obvious terror, and two of the men had erections—

“Good evening, and welcome,” Miranda said, and the clapping was dying down and the three men were gone, vanished, like they’d never been there. It was going to happen, though. It was going to happen tonight; now.

“Oh, shit,” Amanda said weakly, and turned to Bob, to John, the words spilling out in fright, her voice gaining strength. “Guns, they have guns, they’re going to shoot her!”

“Who? When?”

Amanda had half risen from her seat. The people in front of them had turned, were staring. Miranda said, “As always, we’ll have our scheduled readings first—we have some wonderful talents this year—and then the stage opens, inviting any and all to participate—”

The first of the trio of gun-wielders strode into the theater, less than two feet from John, his weapon carried in both hands, his comrades right behind.

“Now, here! Gun! Gun!” Amanda shouted, and there was a second of silence, and then there were people screaming, shouting, those closest to the aisle shrinking away from the hurrying men, some people standing, craning for a better look, more ducking low. Bob grabbed Amanda around the waist, trying to pull her down, but she fought him. She had to know.

The men staggered themselves in front of Miranda Greene-Moreland, the harmless, aging poetess frozen in front of the mike stand, her gaze fixed on the dark, evil-looking weapons. Amanda was watching the exact same movie she’d just seen, down to the expression on Miranda’s face.

“Here’s for the tires, cunt!” one of the men shouted, the cry just audible over the screams of the crowd, and all three opened fire—

—but there was no thunder of weapons-fire, or maybe the howls of fear covered it up, because darkness was spreading across the front of Miranda’s stupid dress, wet stains dripping from her chest and stomach, water running down her face.

Water?

Bob was still trying to pull her down, but she was figuring it out, she almost had it even before the smell swept through the room a second or two later. It was awful, she could smell it from the back row as people continued to shout and shove and stumble by, a nasty, musky stench. On the stage, Miranda was coughing, dry heaving, wiping at her face, and Amanda remembered Devon telling her once that there was a huge market for deer and fox urine, of all things, that hunters used it to attract targets or to cover their own scent. They’d laughed about it, and she’d made a joke about whether it smelled like Santa’s workshop, but the smell filling the theater wasn’t funny, it was an assault, and it had to be some kind of animal piss; there was no other smell it could be. Along with the screams and chaos of falling bodies, Amanda could hear people closer to the stage throwing up, saw some guy in front spewing chunks all down his shirt.

The terror was as sharp as knives, coming at her from all direction as the trio of men started back up the aisle. There were still people who thought the guns were real, who believed they were going to die here. The feelings were intense, coming from everywhere. Space cleared in front of the gunmen as men and women scurried out of their way, though John and Bob were both standing now, watching, figuring it out as she had.

She looked at Eric and saw that he was still in his seat and laughing—he was actually laughing—and then she saw him outside Devon’s at night, leaning against the maple tree in Uncle Sid’s backyard beneath an umbrella of soft, moving shadow, watching her window. And he was thinking about being with her, and he was thinking about eternity. He was thinking about death.

She shrank back from him, practically pushing herself against Bob as Eric looked up at her, his grin disappearing when he saw her face. She turned to Bob, keeping her voice low and fast. There was still enough noise to cover what she wanted to say.

“I need to go home alone, do you understand?” She rolled her eyes toward Eric. She didn’t want him to know what she knew, what she’d seen. She needed to think. “Back to Devon’s alone, OK? Can you walk me?”

Even half in the bag, Bob was no fool. He nodded, glancing at Eric, then back at her. On the stage, Miranda Greene-Moreland was weeping, the amplified sound filling the air as fully as the cloying reek of piss. Others were crying, those that weren’t following the bulk of the crowd through the doors, and there were moans of pain coming from people who’d been injured in the mad dash for safety. The terror was fading, there was that, at least, but a new dreadful feeling was taking its place, a sense of isolation, of loneliness so vast that it would kill the world.

There’s nobody else, she thought, and Eric was standing, worried, slipping his arm around her, and it was all she could do not to flinch away from him.

The poetry reading was canceled.