Jared started the car. “She’s gone. A lot of other people got there first. You’re out of luck. Mrs. Ransom, too.”
He left the Shopwell parking lot fast, wheeling effortlessly around the cars that tried to get in his way. He was too upset to worry about his driving, and thus did it better than ever before.
“Are we going to Gram’s now? I want to go to Gram’s.”
“Right after I drop Mary,” Jared said. “She needs to call her bestie Eric, see if he’s holding.” It felt good for a second to strike at her, to unload the fear that was running through him. Only for a second, though. It was childish crap. He hated it and yet he couldn’t seem to help it.
“What do you mean ‘holding’?” Molly asked, but no one answered her.
It was twilight when they got to the Pak house. Jared pulled into the driveway and put Mrs. Ransom’s Datsun in park.
Mary peered at him in the gathering gloom of Aurora’s first night. “Jere. I wasn’t going with him to see Arcade Fire. I was going to break the date.”
He said nothing. Maybe she was telling the truth, maybe she wasn’t. All he knew was that she and Eric were chummy enough for Eric to have given her the name of a local dope dealer.
“You’re being a baby,” Mary said.
Jared stared straight ahead.
“Okay, then,” Mary said. “Okay, baby. Baby wants his bottle. The hell with it. And you.”
“You two are fighting like my mother and father,” Molly said, and began to cry again. “I wish you’d stop. I wish you’d be boyfriend and girlfriend again.”
Mary got out, slammed the door, and started up the driveway.
She had almost reached the back stoop when Jared realized that there was an actual possibility that the next time he saw her, she might be buried in a white shroud of unknown origin. He looked at Molly and said, “Keep your eyes open. If you fall asleep, I’ll knock your block off.”
Jared climbed out of the car and ran after Mary. He caught her just as she was opening the back door. She turned to him, startled. A cloud of moths circled the overhead light, and her face was dappled with their weaving shadows.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Mary, I’m really sorry. It’s just so crazy. For all I know my mother’s asleep in her car somewhere, and I’m scared, and I couldn’t get what you needed and I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Don’t go to sleep tonight. Please don’t.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Wonder of wonders—she kissed him back, mouth open, her breath mingling with his.
“I’m officially awake,” she said, pulling back to look into his face. “Now take Little Red Blabbing Hood back to her gram.”
He started down the steps, rethought that, went back, and kissed her again.
“Wowee,” Molly said when he returned to the car. He could hear in her voice that her mood had dramatically improved. “You guys were really sucking face.”
“We were, weren’t we?” Jared said. He felt dazed, a stranger in his own body. He could still feel her lips and taste her breath. “Let’s get you home.”
The last leg of that long, strange trip was only nine blocks, and Jared drove it without incident, finally rolling along Tremaine Street, past the empty houses. He pulled into Mrs. Ransom’s driveway. The headlights swept across the figure seated in a lawn chair, a body without face. Jared slammed on the brakes. Mrs. Ransom sat in the glare, a mummy.
Molly began to scream and Jared doused the headlights. He threw the Datsun into reverse and banged across the street to his own driveway.
When he unfastened Molly’s seatbelt, Jared drew the kid from the car and into his arms. She clung to him, and that was all right. It felt good.
“No worries,” he said, stroking her hair. It was in clumps, matted with sweat. “You’re staying with me. We’re going to put on some movies and pull an all-nighter.”
CHAPTER 14
1
Maura Dunbarton—once the subject of newspaper headlines, now largely forgotten—sat on the lower bunk of B-11, the cell she had shared with Kayleigh Rawlings for the last four years. The cell door was open. On B Wing, all the cell doors were open, and Maura did not believe they would roll closed and be locked from the Booth tonight. No, not tonight. The tiny TV set in the wall was on and tuned to NewsAmerica, but Maura had muted the sound. She knew what was going on; by now even the dimmest inmate in Dooling knew. RIOTING AT HOME AND ABROAD, read the super running across the bottom of the screen. This was followed by a list of cities. Most were American, because you cared about your own before you cared about those in more distant places, but Maura had also seen Calcutta, Sydney, Moscow, Cape Town, Mexico City, Bombay, and London before she stopped looking.
It was funny, when you thought about it; what were all those men rioting about? What did they think they could accomplish? Maura wondered if there would have been riots if it had been the other half of the human race who were falling asleep. She thought it unlikely.
Kayleigh’s head, swaddled in a white helmet that pulsed in and out with her breathing, lay in Maura’s lap. Maura held one of Kayleigh’s white-gloved hands, but she didn’t attempt to tamper with the material. There had been an announcement over the prison intercom system that it could be dangerous to do so, and the same warning had been thoroughly conveyed on the news broadcasts. Though the filament was slightly sticky, and very dense, Maura could still feel Kayleigh’s fingers buried inside, like pencils encased in thick plastic. She and Kayleigh had been lovers almost from the time Kayleigh, years younger, took up residence in B-11, doing time for assault with a deadly weapon. Age difference aside, they matched. Kayleigh’s slightly cockeyed sense of humor fit Maura’s cynicism. Kay was good-natured, filling the dark pits that had been eaten into Maura’s character by the things she had seen and the things she had done. She was a slick dancer, she was a wonderful kisser, and although they didn’t make love often these days, when they did, it was still good. As they lay together with their legs entwined, there was no prison for a little while, and no confusing outside world, either. It was just them.
Kayleigh was also a fine singer; she had won the prison talent show three years running. Last October there hadn’t been a dry eye in the house when she finished singing—a capella—“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Maura supposed all that was over now. People talked in their sleep; few if any sang in their sleep. Even if Kayleigh should be moved to sing, it would come out all muffled. And what if that crap was all down her throat, as well? And in her lungs? It probably was, although if that were the case, how she could go on breathing was a mystery.