to me.”
Not a hint of irony, not a trace of humor informed Lomar’s voice.
It was clear that he actually believed Oslett ate eel heads, alligator
embryos, and calves’ brains for breakfast.
Reluctantly, Oslett had to face the fact that there were worse potential
partners than the one he already had. Karl Clocker only looked stupid.
In Laguna Beach, December was the off season, and the streets were
nearly deserted at a quarter to one on a Tuesday morning. At the
three-way intersection in the heart of town, with the public beach on
the right, they stopped for the red traffic signal, even though no other
moving car was in sight.
Oslett thought the town was as unnervingly dead as any place in
Oklahoma, and he longed for the bustle of Manhattan, the all-night rush
of police vehicles and ambulances, the noir music of sirens, the endless
honking of horns. Laughter, drunken voices, arguments, and the mad
gibbering of the drug-blasted schizophrenic street dwellers that echoed
up to his apartment even in the deepest hours of the night were sorely
lacking in this somnolent burg on the edge of the winter sea.
As they continued out of Laguna, Clocker passed the Mission Viejo Police
report forward from the back seat.
Oslett waited for a comment from the Trekker. When none was
forthcoming, and when he could no longer tolerate the silence that
filled the car and seemed to blanket the world outside, he half-turned
to Clocker and said, “Well?”
“Well what?”
“What do you think?”
“Not good,” Clocker pronounced from his nest of shadows in the back
seat.
“Not good? That’s all you can say? Looks like one colossal mess to
me.”
“Well,” Clocker said philosophically, “into every crypto-fascist
organization, a little rain must fall.
Oslett laughed. He turned forward, glanced at the solemn Lomar, and
laughed harder. “Karl, sometimes I actually think maybe you’re not a
bad guy.”
“Good or bad,” Clocker said, “everything resonates with the same
movement of subatomic particles.”
“Now don’t go ruining a beautiful moment,” Oslett warned him.
In the deepest swale of the night, he rises from vivid dreams of slashed
throats, bullet-shattered heads, pale wrists carved by razor blades, and
strangled prostitutes, but he does not sit up or gasp or cry out like a
man waking from a nightmare, for he is always soothed by his dreams. He
lies in the fetal position upon the back seat of the car, half in and
half out of convalescent sleep.
One side of his face is wet with a thick, sticky substance. He raises
one hand to his cheek and cautiously, sleepily works the viscous
material between his fingers, trying to understand what it is.
Discovering prickly bits of glass in the congealing slime, he realizes
that his healing eye has rejected the splinters of the car window along
with the damaged ocular matter, which has been replaced by healthy
tissue.
He blinks, opens his eyes, and can again see as well through the left as
through the right. Even in the shadow-filled Buick, he clearly
perceives shapes, variations of texture, and the lesser darkness of the
night that presses at the windows.
Hours hence, by the time the palm trees are casting the long
west-falling shadows of dawn and tree rats have squirmed into their
secret refuges among the lush fronds to wait out the day, he will be
completely healed. He will be ready once more to claim his destiny.
He whispers, “Charlotte . ..”
Outside, a haunting light gradually arises. The clouds trailing the
storm are thin and torn. Between some of the ragged streamers, the cold
face of the moon peers down.
‘. . . Emily. ..”
Beyond the car windows, the night glimmers softly like slightly
tarnished silver in the glow of a single candle flame.
. . . Daddy is going to be all right . . . all right . . . don’t worry
… Daddy is going to be all right…. ” He now understands that he was
drawn to his double by a magneti.sen which arose because of their
essential oneness and which he perceived through a sixth sense.
He’d had no awareness that another self existed, but he’d been pulled