Christ may not, but the memory of Sophie might. Jack tries to fix her eyes in his memory, that lovely, level, clear blue gaze.
“Listen,” Mouse says.
“I’m listening.”
Mouse seems to gather himself. Beneath the blanket, his body shivers in a loose, uncoordinated way that Jack guesses is next door to a seizure. Somewhere a clock is ticking. Somewhere a dog is barking. A boat hoots on the Mississippi. Other than these sounds, all is silence. Jack can remember only one other such suspension of the world’s business in his entire life, and that was when he was in a Beverly Hills hospital, waiting for his mother to finish the long business of dying. Somewhere Ty Marshall is waiting to be rescued. Hoping to be rescued, at least. Somewhere there are Breakers hard at work, trying to destroy the axle upon which all existence spins. Here is only this eternal room with its feeble fans and noxious vapors.
Mouse’s eyes close, then open again. They fix upon the newcomer, and Jack is suddenly sure some great truth is going to be confided. The ice cube is gone from his mouth; Jack supposes he crunched it up and swallowed it without even realizing, but he doesn’t dare take another.
“Go on, buddy,” Doc says. “You get it out and then I’ll load you up with another hypo of dope. The good stuff. Maybe you’ll sleep.”
Mouse pays no heed. His mutating eyes hold Jack’s. His hand holds Jack’s, tightening still more. Jack can almost feel the bones of his fingers grinding together.
“Don’t . . . go out and buy top-of-the-line equipment,” Mouse says, and sighs out another excruciatingly foul breath from his rotting lungs.
“Don’t . . . ?”
“Most people give up brewing after . . . a year or two. Even dedicated . . . dedicated hobbyists. Making beer is not . . . is not for pussies.”
Jack looks around at Beezer, who looks back impassively. “He’s in and out. Be patient. Wait on him.”
Mouse’s grip tightens yet more, then loosens just as Jack is deciding he can take it no longer.
“Get a big pot,” Mouse advises him. His eyes bulge. The reddish shadows come and go, come and go, fleeting across the curved landscape of his corneas, and Jack thinks, That’s its shadow. The shadow of the Crimson King. Mouse has already got one foot in its court. “Five gallons . . . at least. You find the best ones are in . . . seafood supply stores. And for a fermentation vessel . . . plastic water-cooler jugs are good . . . they’re lighter than glass, and . . . I’m burning up. Christ, Beez, I’m burning up!”
“Fuck this, I’m going to shoot it to him,” Doc says, and snaps open his bag.
Beezer grabs his arm. “Not yet.”
Bloody tears begin to slip out of Mouse’s eyes. The black goo seems to be forming into tiny tendrils. These reach greedily downward, as if trying to catch the moisture and drink it.
“Fermentation lock and stopper,” Mouse whispers. “Thomas Merton is shit, never let anyone tell you different. No real thought there. You have to let the gases escape while keeping dust out. Jerry Garcia wasn’t God. Kurt Cobain wasn’t God. The perfume he smells is not that of his dead wife. He’s caught the eye of the King. Gorg-ten-abbalah, ee-lee-lee. The opopanax is dead, long live the opopanax.”
Jack leans more deeply into Mouse’s smell. “Who’s smelling perfume? Who’s caught the eye of the King?”
“The mad King, the bad King, the sad King. Ring-a-ding-ding, all hail the King.”
“Mouse, who’s caught the eye of the King?”
Doc says, “I thought you wanted to know about—”
“Who?” Jack has no idea why this seems important to him, but it does. Is it something someone has said to him recently? Was it Dale? Tansy? Was it, God save us, Wendell Green?
“Racking cane and hose,” Mouse says confidentially. “That’s what you need when the fermentation’s done! And you can’t put beer in screw-top bottles! You—”
Mouse turns his head away from Jack, nestles it cozily in the hollow of his shoulder, opens his mouth, and vomits. Bear Girl screams. The vomit is pus-yellow and speckled with moving black bits like the crud in the corners of Mouse’s eyes. It is alive.
Beezer leaves the room in a hurry, not quite running, and Jack shades Mouse from the brief glare of kitchen sunlight as best he can. The hand clamped on Jack’s loosens a little more.
Jack turns to Doc. “Do you think he’s going?”
Doc shakes his head. “Passed out again. Poor old Mousie ain’t getting off that easy.” He gives Jack a grim, haunted look. “This better be worth it, Mr. Policeman. ’Cause if it ain’t, I’m gonna replumb your sink.”
Beezer comes back with a huge bundle of rags, and he’s put on a pair of green kitchen gloves. Not speaking, he mops up the pool of vomit between Mouse’s shoulder and the backrest of the couch. The black specks have ceased moving, and that’s good. To have not seen them moving in the first place would have been even better. The vomit, Jack notices with dismay, has eaten into the couch’s worn fabric like acid.
“I’m going to pull the blanket down for a second or two,” Doc says, and Bear Girl gets up at once, still holding the bowl with the melting ice. She goes to one of the bookshelves and stands there with her back turned, trembling.
“Doc, is this something I really need to see?”
“I think maybe it is. I don’t think you know what you’re dealing with, even now.” Doc takes hold of the blanket and eases it out from beneath Mouse’s limp hand. Jack sees that more of the black stuff has begun to ooze from beneath the dying man’s fingernails. “Remember that this happened only a couple of hours ago, Mr. Policeman.”
He pulls the blanket down. Standing with her back to them, Susan “Bear Girl” Osgood faces the great works of Western philosophy and begins to cry silently. Jack tries to hold back his scream and cannot.
Henry pays off the taxi, goes into his house, takes a deep and soothing breath of the air-conditioned cool. There is a faint aroma—sweet—and he tells himself it’s just fresh-cut flowers, one of Mrs. Morton’s specialties. He knows better, but wants no more to do with ghosts just now. He is actually feeling better, and he supposes he knows why: it was telling the ESPN guy to take his job and shove it. Nothing more apt to make a fellow’s day, especially when the fellow in question is gainfully employed, possessed of two credit cards that are nowhere near the max-out point, and has a pitcher of cold iced tea in the fridge.
Henry heads kitchenward now, making his way down the hall with one hand held out before him, testing the air for obstacles and displacements. There’s no sound but the whisper of the air conditioner, the hum of the fridge, the clack of his heels on the hardwood . . .
. . . and a sigh.
An amorous sigh.
Henry stands where he is for a moment, then turns cautiously. Is the sweet aroma a little stronger now, especially facing back in this direction, toward the living room and the front door? He thinks yes. And it’s not flowers; no sense fooling himself about that. As always, the nose knows. That’s the aroma of My Sin.
“Rhoda?” he says, and then, lower: “Lark?”
No answer. Of course not. He’s just having the heebie-jeebies, that’s all; those world-famous shaky-shivers, and why not?
“Because I’m the sheik, baby,” Henry says. “The Sheik, the Shake, the Shook.”
No smells. No sexy sighs. And yet he’s haunted by the idea of his wife back in the living room, standing there in perfumed cerements of the grave, watching him silently as he came in and passed blindly before her. His Lark, come back from Noggin Mound Cemetery for a little visit. Maybe to listen to the latest Slobberbone CD.
“Quit it,” he says softly. “Quit it, you dope.”
He goes into his big, well-organized kitchen. On his way through the door he slaps a button on the panel there without even thinking about it. Mrs. Morton’s voice comes from the overhead speaker, which is so high-tech she might almost be in the room.
“Jack Sawyer was by, and he dropped off another tape he wants you to listen to. He said it was . . . you know, that man. That bad man.”
“Bad man, right,” Henry murmurs, opening the refrigerator and enjoying the blast of cold air. His hand goes unerringly to one of three cans of Kingsland Lager stored inside the door. Never mind the iced tea.
“Both of the tapes are in your studio, by the soundboard. Also, Jack wanted you to call him on his cell phone.” Mrs. Morton’s voice takes on a faintly lecturing tone. “If you do speak to him, I hope you tell him to be careful. And be careful yourself.” A pause. “Also, don’t forget to eat supper. It’s all ready to go. Second shelf of the fridge, on your left.”