a gift from her parents, drug-users’ legacy.
A car pulled up behind them, waiting to get out onto the main street.
The way she walked, determined to the limp. The way she never cn her
deformed hand, neither ashamed nor proud of it, just accepting. Going
to be a writer. Intelligent pigs from outer space.
The driver waiting behind them blew his horn.
“Hatch?”
Regina, so small under the weight of the world, yet always standing
straight, her head never bowed. Made a deal with God. In return for
something precious to her, a promise to eat beans. And Hatch knew what
the precious thing was, though she had never said it, knew it was a
family, a chance to escape the orphanage.
The other driver blew his horn again.
Lindsey was shaking. She started to cry.
A chance. Just a chance. All the girl wanted. Not to be alone any
more.
A chance to sleep in a painted bed with flowers. a chance to love, be
loved, grow up. The small curled hand. The small sweet smile. Good
night. .
. Dad The driver behind them blew his horn insistently.
“Right,” Hatch said abruptly. “Go right.”
With a sob of relief, Lindsey turned right onto the parkway. She drove
faster than she usually did, changing lanes as traffic required,
crossing the southern flatlands toward the distant food and the
night-shrouded mountains in the east.
At first Hatch was not sure that he had done more than guess at what
direction to take. But soon conviction came to him. The boulevard led
east between endless tracts of houses that speckled the hills with
lights as if they were thousands of memorial flames on the tiers of
immense votivedle racks, and with each mile he sensed more strongly that
he and Lindsey were following in the wake of the beast.
Because he had agreed there would be no more secrets between them,
because he thought she should know-and could handle-a full understanding
of the extremity of Regina’s circumstances, Hatch said, “What he wants
to do is hold her beating heart in his bare hand for its last few beats,
feel the life go out of it.”
“Oh, God.”
“She’s still alive. She has a chance. There’s hope.”
He believed what he said was true, had to believe it or go mad. But he
was troubled by the memory of having said those same things so often in
the weeks before cancer had finally finished with Jimmy.
Death is no fearsome mystery.
He is willing to thee andme.
He hath no secrets he can choose to trouble any good man’s sleep.
Turn not thy face from Death away.
Care not he takes our breath away.
Fear him not, he is not thy master, rushing at thee faster, faster.
Not thy master but servant to the Maker of thee, what or Who created
Death, created thee is the only mystery.
THE BOOK Of COUNTED SORROWS Jonas Nyebern and Kari Dovell sat in
armchairs before the big windows in the darkened living room of his
house on Spyglass Hill, looking at the millions of lights that glimmered
across Orange and Los Angeles counties.
The night was relatively clear, and they could see as far as Long Hatch
Harbor to the north. Civilization sprawled like a luminescent fungus,
devouring all.
A bottle of Robert Mondavi chenin blanc was in an ice bucket on the
floor between their chairs. It was their second bottle. They had not
eaten dinner yet. He was talking too much.
They had been seeing each other socially once or twice a week for more
than a month. They had not gone to bed together, and he didn’t think
they ever would. She was still desirable, with that odd combination of
grace and awkwardness that sometimes reminded him of an exotic
long-legged crane, even if the side of her that was a serious and
dedicated physician could never quite let the woman in her have full
rein. However, he doubted she even expected physical intimacy. In any
case, he didn’t believe he was capable of it. He was a haunted man; too
many ghosts waited to bedevil him if happiness came within his reach.