"I was, too," Henry says. "Go on, please."
But for that brief flicker of an old NO TRESPASSING sign completely unaware of the black house he one day will have to enter, Jack concentrates again on the page and continues reading Bleak House. The windows darken as the lamps grow warmer. The case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds through the courts, aided or impeded by attorneys Chizzle, Mizzle, and Drizzle; Lady Dedlock leaves Sir Leicester Dedlock alone at their great estate with its moldy chapel, stagnant river, and "Ghost's Walk"; Esther Summerson begins to chirp away in the first person. Our friends decide that the appearance of Esther demands a small libation, if they are to get through much more chirping. Henry unfolds from the sofa, sails into the kitchen, and returns with two short, fat glasses one-third filled with Balvenie Doublewood single-malt whiskey, as well as a glass of plain water for the reader. A couple of sips, a few murmurs of appreciation, and Jack resumes. Esther, Esther, Esther, but beneath the water torture of her relentless sunniness the story gathers steam and carries both reader and listener along in its train.
Having come to a convenient stopping point, Jack closes the book and yawns. Henry stands up and stretches. They move to the door, and Henry follows Jack outside beneath a vast night sky brilliantly scattered with stars. "Tell me one thing," Henry says.
"Shoot."
"When you were in the station house, did you really feel like a cop? Or did you feel like you were pretending to be one?"
"Actually, it was kind of surprising," Jack says. "In no time at all, I felt like a cop again."
"Good."
"Why is that good?"
"Because it means you were running toward that mysterious secret, not away from it."
Shaking his head and smiling, deliberately not giving Henry the satisfaction of a reply, Jack steps up into his vehicle and says good-bye from the slight but distinct elevation of the driver's seat. The engine coughs and churns, his headlights snap into being, and Jack is on his way home.
9
NOT MANY HOURS later, Jack finds himself walking down the midway of a deserted amusement park under a gray autumn sky. On either side of him are boarded-over concessions: the Fenway Franks hot dog stand, the Annie Oakley Shooting Gallery, the Pitch-Til-U-Win. Rain has fallen and more is coming; the air is sharp with moisture. Not far away, he can hear the lonely thunder of waves hurling themselves against a deserted shingle of beach. From closer by comes the snappy sound of guitar picking. It should be cheerful, but to Jack it is dread set to music. He shouldn't be here. This is an old place, a dangerous place. He passes a boarded-up ride. A sign out front reads: THE SPEEDY OPOPANAX WILL RE-
OPEN MEMORIAL DAY 1982 — SEE YA THEN!
Opopanax, Jack thinks, only he is no longer Jack; now he's Jacky. He's Jacky-boy, and he and his mother are on the run. From whom? From Sloat, of course. From hustlin', bustlin' Uncle Morgan.
Speedy, Jack thinks, and as if he has given a telepathic cue, a warm, slightly slurry voice begins to sing. "When the red red robin comes bob bob bobbin' along, / There'll be no more sobbin' when he starts throbbin' his old sweet song . . ."
No, Jack thinks. I don't want to see you. I don't want to hear your old sweet song. You can't be here anyway, you're dead. Dead on the Santa Monica Pier. Old bald black man dead in the shadow of a frozen merry-go-round horse.
Oh, but no. When the old cop logic comes back it takes hold like a tumor, even in dreams, and it doesn't take much of it to realize that this isn't Santa Monica — it's too cold and too old. This is the land of ago, when Jacky and the Queen of the B's fled out of California like the fugitives they had become. And didn't stop running until they got to the other coast, the place where Lily Cavanaugh Sawyer —
No, I don't think of this, I never think of this
— had come to die.
"Wake up, wake up you sleepyhead!"
The voice of his old friend.
Friend, my ass. He's the one who put me on the road of trials, the one who came between me and Richard, my real friend. He's the one who almost got me killed, almost drove me crazy.
"Wake up, wake up, get out of bed!"
Way-gup, way-gup, way-gup. Time to face the fearsome opopanax. Time to get back to your not-so-sweet used-to-be.
"No," Jacky whispers, and then the midway ends. Ahead is the carousel, sort of like the one on the Santa Monica Pier and sort of like the one he remembers from . . . well, from ago. It is a hybrid, in other words, a dream specialty, neither here nor there. But there's no mistaking the man who sits beneath one of the frozen rearing horses with his guitar on his knee. Jacky-boy would know that face anywhere, and all the old love rises in his heart. He fights it, but that is a fight few people win, especially not those who have been turned back to the age of twelve.
"Speedy!" he cries.