The Meq (28 page)

“Nicholas!” a woman’s voice shot back.

I sat up quickly with some discomfort, but no pain. My clothes were in the corner, stacked neatly on a chair. I was wearing someone’s nightshirt and sitting on the edge of Star’s bed. Everything came back to me at once—Solomon, Star, the Fleur-du-Mal—the sharp sting of the knife blade—everything, but it was all being drowned out in my head by a cacophony of sounds. The cicadas, dogs of all kinds, birds, street sounds, children playing, and the breeze barely blowing through the trees like a howling wind.

I stood, unsteadily at first, then walked to the chair holding my clothes and put them on. I checked my pockets for the Stone and found it. I walked out of the bedroom and around the corner to the small kitchen where I thought I would find them, the voices.

“I’m sorry, Carolina.” It was the man’s voice and he was moving again. “I just want her back. I don’t understand any of this.”

I heard him as clearly as if he were standing next to me, but he wasn’t. He was at least forty yards away, behind thick brick walls, inside the kitchen of the big house. I walked out of the door and started down the stairs, but had to stop and kneel on the steps, covering my ears with my hands. The cicadas hit me in a grinding wave of noise, louder than anything I’d ever heard. My hearing was a hundred times greater than normal. Then I realized what was happening, and just as suddenly as I gained awareness, it went away.

Sailor calls them our “abilities.” I would rather call them our “insanities.” Some of us are born with them and some of us, like me, develop extreme ones after severe trauma. Ray was the “Weatherman,” Geaxi had her amazing agility, and they both were faster than was natural. Now, I had discovered a kind of hyper-hearing, but I had no idea when it would arrive and depart, or how I would live with it if it stayed. It was madness to hear that much sound at once. I wasn’t sure if it was a new weapon or an old warning, but either way, I would need to learn it and learn to use it. As the cicadas died down in the darkness, and I sat on the steps staring across the driveway at the big house, I realized that I had awoken from my healing with something else. Something burning bright and cold without rage or panic. Something pure, honed, and yet involuntary as an eyeblink. It was natural to me now. Ingrained and immediate. It was an efficient, working obsession to find the Fleur-du-Mal. I would find him and kill him. There was no other choice.

I drew in a breath and glanced up at the sky. I found Orion and let my eyes drift to the southeast, to the constellation Canis Major and the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, the Dog Star. I reached in my pocket and felt the Stone. There was no other choice. I stood up and started for the big house. I was alone with it now, alone with my cold, new companion—hate.

The tricycle that was usually at the bottom of the stairs had been removed and put away somewhere. I walked to the back door leading to the kitchen and opened it silently, standing in the entrance, listening. What I thought before were loud voices were just emphatic whispers. He was pacing the kitchen and she was standing at the end of the long table.

“Why not?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “there will be no police, Nicholas. There is only one way. Believe me.”

He saw me at once, but she had turned toward the stove and had her back to me. His mouth dropped open beneath his mustache. His eyes were red and weary. He wore a wrinkled dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar. His sleeves were rolled up and his suspenders hung loose at his sides. He didn’t say a word, nor did I. She sensed something and turned sharply, finding my eyes and holding them, searching for what she needed to know. She looked haggard and drawn. They both were beaten down, exhausted. She was holding a pot of coffee with both hands. “Are you . . . all right?” she asked in a clear voice.

“Yes,” I said, “I feel like your Stanley Steamer ran over me, but yes, I’m fine.”

There was almost a smile on her face, but it never surfaced. She walked to the long table and set the coffeepot down, then sat down herself. Nicholas had not moved a muscle. She looked at me. She spoke again and her voice was suddenly sad and defeated. “It was him again, wasn’t it? He was the one who cut you.”

I waited a moment. “Yes,” I said. “But he will not harm Star, Carolina. He will not kill her and he will not torture her.” I glanced at Nicholas. His mouth had closed and he was listening from a different place. I went on. “That is not . . . that is not how he wants you to suffer.”

Suddenly Nicholas started walking the length of the table, never taking his eyes off me and finally standing behind Carolina with his hands on her shoulders, staring down and across the table. He was a foot and a half taller than I was.

“All right,” he started, “what I’ve got to say needs to be said and I need to say it.” His voice was hoarse from coffee and fatigue, and he was nervous and maybe frightened, but he didn’t waver and Carolina let him speak. “I know who you are because Carolina has told me about you, and I thought most of that was fairy tales, but I’ve watched you heal from wounds that probably would have killed or maimed for life any other . . . person. And Solomon told me once that I would never have met her if it hadn’t been for you. I owe you for that. But I don’t give a whisker about you or . . . your kind when it comes to my daughter. If you or one like you is responsible, I want her back. And I’ll do anything to get her back. And Carolina will not suffer one day because of it. I will not have it.” He paused and wiped his mouth and mustache. “I hope you don’t take too much offense at my manners, especially before we’ve even met, but I wanted to say what needed to be said.”

“I understand,” I said without hesitation. “And I agree. One of us is responsible and I am leaving for New Orleans tomorrow morning to take care of that.”

“Then I’m going with you.”

“You can’t.”

“I can and will.”

“You can’t, you don’t—”

“Sit down!” Carolina interrupted. “Both of you, please, sit down.”

We did as we were told and after he sat, Nicholas started to say something, but she put her hand over his mouth and he stayed silent. I watched her compose herself. She was remarkable. Practically her whole world had fallen apart, she was as physically drained as I’d ever seen her, and yet she seemed as if she had seen it coming and knew what to do.

She took a deep breath and said, “Nicholas, this is Zianno. Zianno, this is Nicholas.” We exchanged glances and a nod. I could tell he was a good man because he listened to her wholeheartedly and with faith. He had let her inside him to that place where deep and unquestioned trust is required. A place of no proof and no doubts. A place that is only held in place with love.

She gave us both a hard look. “Neither one of you is going anywhere.” She went on. “At least not in the morning.”

“Carolina, I—”

“Hush!” She cut me off. “You are not ready to travel, no matter what you say, and two days will not make a difference if and when Star is found, and she will be. I have more to say to you about that, but not now. I wired Owen Bramley four days ago about Solomon, saying nothing about Star and only mentioning that you were here. He wired back that he’d be here in five days with ‘extra cargo,’ whatever that means. I want you to stay until then. I am going to hold a gathering for Solomon, not a service, more of a ‘remembering.’ I owe it to him. We all do.”

“All right,” I said, “I’ll stay, but only until I’ve paid my respects to Solomon, then I’m gone.”

“And I with him,” Nicholas said.

Carolina turned and looked at him, almost breathing him in, she was so close. She reached up with her hand and traced his features with her fingers, then whispered to him, “You cannot help, not with this, my love.”

He took her hand away and held it carefully in his. “Christ, Carolina, what am I supposed to do? She’s my only daughter.”

Carolina glanced at me for the briefest moment, turned back and said, “Stay with me, Nicholas. Please.”

“But why?”

“Because I’m pregnant.”

There was a full ten seconds of stunned silence. Nicholas was trying to make sense of so many mixed feelings, he couldn’t begin to form a coherent thought or sentence. For some reason, I could only think of one thing to say, something I’d never said. I said, “Great Yahweh!”

“Yes,” she said and rose up out of her seat. She picked up the coffeepot and felt the sides for warmth. She looked to the counter for cups and went to get them. Nicholas and I watched. “Yes,” she said again. She came back with three cups, two hooked in one finger, and set them down. She reached into the pocket of her blouse, taking out a handkerchief and wiping her nose, which was as red as her eyes. She sat down again and gave her hand back to Nicholas. He still had not found a response. She looked over at me and said, “Another thing, Z. You cannot afford the luxury of what I see in your eyes if you intend to bring Star back whole and healthy.”

I waited a moment, almost afraid to ask, knowing she would get it right, but also knowing there was no stopping it. Not now.

“What do you see?” I finally asked.

“You must let it go, Z, for Star’s sake.”

“What? Tell me.”

“Hate. Hate and vengeance is what I see.”

I watched her and watching her was like staring into moving water. You surrender, and in surrendering, are revealed. “I’ll find Star,” I said. “That much I promise.”

She moved again, this time to the other end of the kitchen and a drawer in the sideboard. She withdrew something wrapped in a scarf and brought it back, laying it gently on the table. “You will need this, not just for your own peace of mind, but when you find Star, she will recognize this, no matter what she’s been through. The scarf is hers too.”

I unwrapped the scarf. It was silk and hand-painted with pictures of Chinamen caught in a storm at sea. Inside was Mama’s baseball glove.

Suddenly Nicholas found his voice. He almost shouted, “Carolina, how long have you known you were pregnant?”

I looked up and she was still looking at me. “Is this what Nicholas found earlier?” I asked. “When he was talking about someone vanishing?”

“Yes,” she said.

I turned slightly and looked at Nicholas. What I’d asked had made him curious. “How did you know that?” he asked.

“It’s not important, not now anyway, but tell me, was it Li you were talking about? Was it Li who vanished?”

He sat down in the chair next to Carolina and dragged it closer to her, putting his arm around her shoulders. They leaned their heads together.

“Yes,” he said. “It was Li, but I’m not surprised. He never said hello; why should he say good-bye?”

She started to pour the coffee and I stopped her. “No more coffee,” I said. “It’s your turn to heal.”

Rain fell all the next morning and most of the day. It was a September rain and the air was chilled by it. Carolina and Nicholas slept in. I wandered the grounds and the neighborhood, staying close by in case Owen Bramley arrived, but he never did. It felt good to walk in the rain. I stepped into the kitchen of the big house to dry off and ran into Ciela, who was going shopping for Solomon’s “remembering.” I asked her where the other girls and staff were and she said Carolina had closed the “house” and let everyone go, but Ciela said she would not leave while the child was still missing; she owed Carolina that much.

Listening to her, I walked to the far end of the kitchen and noticed an alcove with a door just beyond it. I asked her where the door led and she told me it was the inside entrance to Li’s room. I opened the door and walked into the tiny, empty space in which he had lived. I wondered about the odd man who had spent his life devoted to Solomon for a reason I never did understand. I wondered where he was and knew somehow that he was probably not on his way back to China. I looked out at the rain through the one narrow window and across to the “Honeycircle.” I thought I would have a violent jolt of memory, but I didn’t. I only thought of what I must do. I had to get to Unai and Usoa. Why had they told me the Fleur-du-Mal was in New Orleans when he was in St. Louis, most likely all along? I had to find some truths. I had to talk to Eder and find out if she might know what Baju had meant when he told me “this is not about theft.” I knew what my heart felt about Opari, but I had to clear it in my head. And I had to find Star. If I was going to kill the Fleur-du-Mal, I had to find Star first. Sailor, Geaxi, even Opari, would have to wait. I leaned my head against the window and watched the raindrops run down the glass. One drop ran into the next, then the next, and the next.

I stayed in Solomon’s room that night and, for the first time in years, slept with Mama’s glove as a pillow.

There was a reason deeper than mere recognition of Solomon’s passing in Carolina’s gathering, her “remembering.” She knew instinctively the emptiness that others felt could and should be filled, if only temporarily, by sharing memories of the old man’s presence, his ability to fill up space and give it color, movement, life. “That’s what people needed to remember,” she said. “They owed some of their best memories to Solomon’s presence.”

And they came by the dozens, some with tears, some with smiles. Every one of them was greeted with charm and no outward signs of stress relating to Star. Carolina had had an informal meeting earlier with Ciela, Nicholas, and me and let it be known that the standard reply would be, “Star is in the park with Li.”

They came on foot, in taxis, a few in automobiles, and one group composed entirely of musicians arrived in an elegant parade-dress, horse-drawn carriage, driven by none other than Mitchell Ithaca Coates, who was resplendent in an oversized tuxedo and top hat. He handled the horses well and brought the carriage to an even halt under the stone arch. I walked out with Carolina and Nicholas to greet them and felt a smile on my face for the first time since I’d healed. I glanced at Carolina and Nicholas and they were smiling too. It was as if Solomon were arriving for his own “remembering.”

I helped Mitch with the door and he introduced each of the passengers as they stepped down from the carriage. There was the big man, Tom Turpin, who gave his condolences to Carolina from himself and everyone else downtown who was “in the shuffle.” There was the stunning woman, Yancey, who I’d seen with Solomon at the roulette table. She was decked out from head to foot in black lace and chiffon, and even wore a black veil, which she held across her face. She simply nodded toward Carolina and Carolina did the same in return. There were two more pianists and two horn players, followed by a Creole man Mitch introduced as Bernie de Marigny, the grandson of “Johnny Craps,” the man who had brought the game that took his name to America. The man bent over and took Carolina’s hand, but stopped short of actually kissing it. Then, in a raspy whisper, he said, “Solomon liked to live life on the Yo,” which Mitch said meant the number eleven. “It’s a difficult roll,” de Marigny went on, “but it pays well.” He smiled and I could see the light catch the diamond embedded in his eyetooth. The last person to step down was a black man of about average height, wearing an inexpensive but neat and clean black suit and bowler hat, which he removed after stepping down. Mitch was beaming when he said, “This is my teacher and the king of ragtime, the eminent—”