“I’m not sure bringing the chickens was a great idea,” said Owen.
“Ya think?” said Lucy.
They both started to laugh.
“It was pretty fucking horrible,” said Owen.
“It was completely insane,” agreed Lucy.
“I’m not sure we can live in this town anymore,” said Owen.
“We definitely can never go back to that church.”
“Never, never.”
“Which is unfortunate, because they have a nice tag sale every spring.”
*
When Susan finally got home, she decided to do one last thing before she went inside. She pulled up the mats from the back of the car so she could hose them off. They snapped on and off, the mats in Rowan’s car, so you could do things like haul goats. I might as well do it now, Susan thought. She was covered in blood and shit and feathers and mud, but if she didn’t do it tonight, the car would never get cleaned. God knew Rowan would never do it. Tomorrow might be the last sunny day for a while. If I hose the mats off now, they can dry tomorrow in the sun, and he’ll have a nice clean car for the winter.
She found them in the wheel well, tucked under an emergency tool kit nobody ever used. Copies of letters, in Rowan’s handwriting, addressed to someone Susan had never heard of, some slut named Juliette.
Nineteen
We think we know who we are, particularly those of us who think we are committed to emotional and spiritual growth. But deep within us, just out of reach of our hard-won self-knowledge, is the cauldron of the dark unconscious. When it boils over—and it will—we find ourselves absolutely lost, groping for the familiar in an unfamiliar and terrifying universe.
—Constance Waverly The Eros Manifesto
Gordon was thinking he wanted a snack and headed toward the fridge, hoping Gherardo had made those samosas with dipping sauce he liked. If not those, maybe he’d settle for a leg or two of Oprah’s Unfried Chicken. Gordon had tasted it at a fund-raiser, and now Gherardo had standing orders to always have it waiting for him, any time of day or night. He licked his lips and had just opened the fridge when he heard the screams.
“Gordon! Gordon!”
It was Kelly, out on the back deck. Gordon sighed, let the fridge door close, and walked outside. Kelly was hopping from foot to foot and covering the right side of her face with her hand.
“It stung my eyeball! One of your fucking bees stung my eyeball!”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It did. I swear. It stung my actual eyeball!”
“That’s impossible. Maybe, maybe it stung your eyelid,” said Gordon. “Maybe it stung near your eye. That’s perfectly normal bee behavior.”
Kelly took her hand away and shrieked, “Does this look normal to you?”
Gordon looked at her face. He suddenly felt hot and dizzy. Kelly’s left eyeball was bulging out of its socket and the white was swimming in blood. It was like one of those special effects you see in a horror movie that make you think, Okay, now that’s taking things a little bit too far.
Dirk, who’d been at work camouflaging Gordon’s Hudson River golf-ball-driving hide—according to a friendly local cop, there had been complaints from some old-timers who had nothing better to do with their lives than hang out at the marina and stare out at the river all day—appeared on the deck just in time to take charge.
“Come on,” said Dirk. “I’ll drive.”
*
Dirk was at the wheel of Gordon’s Range Rover, roaring down Route 9 at speeds approaching a hundred miles an hour, steering perfectly into the turns and accelerating out of them like a NASCAR champion. For a guy who’s basically a step up from a dirt farmer, the bastard can drive, thought Gordon.
Gordon was in the backseat, holding an ice pack wrapped in a cream-colored Frette guest towel to Kelly’s face with one hand and his phone with the other. He was talking to a golf buddy of his, the dean of Weill Cornell, and having him arrange for a helicopter to medevac Kelly to the city and for a top eye surgeon to meet them there. Gordon figured the local hospital could handle a sprained ankle, maybe a broken bone. A rapidly expanding eyeball? Highly unlikely. Meanwhile Kelly was slumped against him, moaning, tears streaming from her one good eye.
Kelly howled as Dirk made a sharp turn into the hospital entrance and pulled the Range Rover straight in the ambulance bay, leaning on the horn. Two orderlies rushed out, wrested the doors open, grabbed Kelly, and frog-marched her inside. Dirk leaned back in the driver’s seat and exhaled. Gordon followed Kelly and the orderlies into the ER, where a doctor was calling out for a bed and an IV.
Just then Gordon’s voice rose over everyone’s like a crack of thunder. “Where is my fucking helicopter? Get her on a rolly thing, a whatchamacallit, and get her out, we’re not staying here. You two”—he pointed at the ER doctor and an orderly—“help her and follow me.”
“Sir, she needs treatment immediately,” said the doctor.
“Not here, she doesn’t, you idiot. She’ll end up blind and dead. Where is my fucking helicopter?”
A nurse—whose nonchalance indicated years spent in the ER—gave the doctor a look that said, Not worth the fight; let’s just get this jackass out of here.
As fast as Kelly was walked into the hospital, she was rolled back out. Gordon was blinking into the setting sun, scanning the sky, yelling at anyone in a hospital uniform, and barking into his phone. He heard a thwop-thwop-thwop sound and hung up his phone mid-tirade.
Once settled in the helicopter, with Kelly strapped in a gurney beside him and sedated with a shot of Ativan, Gordon felt back in his element. He’d summoned a helicopter with a phone call; they were on their way to one of the top hospitals in the world; they’d be met by the best eye guy in New York. His sense of well-being was confirmed when, after they’d landed on the helipad at Weill Cornell, the staff treated Kelly as Mrs. Gordon Allen. She was rushed into surgery and, afterward, given a room on the exclusive fourteenth floor, with its sweeping views and lobster dinners, the floor reserved for celebrities, Arab sheikhs, and shady foreign billionaires.
*
“Fat Black was attacked!”
Wyatt was lounging in the big red chair with his feet dangling over one of the arms, talking on Owen’s cell phone. He looked like a teenager.
“We were in church and a dog ate his entire head off! Fang,” Wyatt said into the phone. Then he started laughing and said, “Yeah, you shouldn’t name your dog Fang! Fang is a very bad name for a dog!”
“Is he talking on your phone?” Lucy asked Owen. They were sitting at the kitchen table, sorting through bills together, half listening to Wyatt’s side of the conversation.
“If it’s not yours, it’s mine.”
“Fat Black is dead as a doornail!” Wyatt said. “Yep, that is very dead! Dead as a doornail means totally, totally dead!”
“Who is he talking to?” Lucy asked.
“I have no idea,” said Owen. “Maybe my mother?”