Pearson was already fidgeting, experiencing the one sensation he would not have expected tonight: boredom. For the day’s strange passage to have ended as it was ending, with a bunch of people sitting in a bookstore basement and listening to a freckled housepainter give what sounded like a bad Rotary Club speech . . .
Yet the others seemed utterly enrapt; Pearson glanced around again to confirm this to himself.
Duke’s eyes shone with that look of total fascination — a look similar to the look Pearson’s childhood dog, Buddy, had worn when Pearson got its food-dish out of the cupboard under the sink. Cameron Stevens and Moira Richardson sat with their arms around each other and gazed at Robbie Delray with starry absorption. Ditto Janet Brightwood. Ditto the rest of the little group around the Bunn-O-Matic.
Ditto everyone, he thought, except Brand Pearson. Come on, sweetheart; try to get with the program.
Except he couldn’t, and in a weird way it was almost as if Robbie Delray couldn’t, either.
Pearson looked back from his scan of the audience just in time to see Delray snatch another quick glance at his watch. It was a gesture Pearson had grown very familiar with since he’d joined the Ten O’Clock People. He guessed that the man was counting down the time to his next cigarette.
As Delray rambled on, some of his other listeners also began to fall out a little — Pearson heard muffled coughs and a few shuffling feet. Delray sailed on regardless, seemingly unaware that, loved resistance leader or no, he was now in danger of overstaying his welcome.
‘ . . . so we’ve managed the best we can,’ he was saying, ‘and we’ve taken our losses as best we can, too, hiding our tears the way I guess those who fight in the secret wars have always had to, all the time holding onto our belief that a day will come when the secret is out, and we’ll — ‘
— Boink, another quick peek at the old Casio —
‘ — be able to share our knowledge with all the men and women out there who look but do not see.’
Savior of His Race? Pearson thought. Jesus please us. This guy sounds more like Jesse Helms during a filibuster.
He glanced at Duke and was encouraged to see that, while Duke was still listening, he was shifting in his seat and showing signs of coming out of his trance.
Pearson touched his face again and found it was still hot. He lowered the tips of his fingers to his carotid artery and felt his pulse — still racing. It wasn’t the embarrassment at having to stand up and be looked over like a Miss America finalist now; the others had forgotten his existence, at least temporarily. No, it was something else. Not a good something else, either. ‘ . . . we’ve stuck with it and stuck to it, we’ve done the footwork even when the music wasn’t to our taste . . . ‘
Delray was droning.
It’s what you felt before, Brand Pearson told himself. It’s the fear that you’ve stumbled into a group of people sharing the same lethal hallucination.
‘No, it’s not,’ he muttered. Duke turned toward him, eyebrows raised, and Pearson shook his head. Duke turned his attention back to the front of the room.
He was scared, all right, but not of having fallen in with some weird thrill-kill cult. Maybe the people in this room — some of them, at least — had killed, maybe that interlude in the Newburyport barn had happened, but the energy necessary for such desperate endeavors was not evident here tonight, in this roomful of yuppies being watched over by Dashiell Hammett. All he felt here was sleepy half-headedness, the sort of partial attention that enabled people to get through dull speeches like this without falling asleep or walking out.
‘Robbie, get to the point!’ some kindred spirit shouted from the back of the room, and there was nervous laughter.
Robbie Delray shot an irritated glance in the direction the voice had come from, then smiled and checked his watch again. ‘Yeah, okay,’ he said. ‘I got rambling, I admit it. Lester, will you help me a sec?’
Lester got up. The two men went behind a stack of book cartons and came back carrying a large leather trunk by the straps. They set it down to the right of the easel.
‘Thanks, Les,’ Robbie said.
Lester nodded and sat back down.
‘What’s in the case?’ Pearson murmured into Duke’s ear.
Duke shook his head. He looked puzzled and suddenly a little uncomfortable . . . but maybe not as uncomfortable as Pearson felt.
‘Okay, Mac’s got a point,’ Delray said. ‘I guess I got carried away, but it feels like a historic occasion to me. On with the show.’
He paused for effect, and then whipped aside the blue cloth on the easel. His audience sat forward on their folding chairs, prepared to be amazed, then sat back with a small collective whoosh of disappointment. It was a black-and-white photograph of what looked to be an abandoned warehouse. It had been enlarged enough so that the eye could easily sort through the litter of papers, condoms, and empty wine-bottles in the loading bays, and read the tangle of spray-painted wit and wisdom on the wall. The biggest of these said RIOT GRRRLS RULE.
A whispered babble of murmurs went through the room.
‘Five weeks ago,’ Delray said impressively, ‘Lester, Kendra, and I trailed two batmen to this abandoned warehouse in the Clark Bay section of Revere.’
The dark-haired woman in the round rimless glasses sitting next to Lester Olson looked around self-importantly . . . and then Pearson was damned if she didn’t glance down at her watch.
‘They were met at this point’ — Delray tapped one of the trash-littered loading bays — ‘by three more batmen and two batwomen. They went inside. Since then, six or seven of us have set up a rotating watch on this place. We have established — ‘
Pearson glanced around at Duke’s hurt, incredulous face. He might as well have had WHY
WASN’T I PICKED? tattooed on his forehead.
‘ — that this is some sort of meeting ground for the bats in the Boston metro area — ‘
The Boston Bats, Pearson thought, great name for a baseball team. And then it came back again, the doubt: Is this me, sitting here and listening to this craziness? Is it really?
In the wake of this thought, as if the memory had somehow been triggered by his momentary doubt, he again heard Delray telling the assembled Fearless Bat Hunters that their newest recruit was Brandon Pearson, from deepest, darkest Medford.
He turned back to Duke and spoke quietly into his ear.
‘When you spoke to Janet on the phone — back in Gallagher’s — you told her you were bringing me, right?’
Duke gave him an impatient I’m-trying-to-listen look in which there was still a trace of hurt.
‘Sure,’ he said.
‘Did you tell her I was from Medford?’
‘No,’ Duke said. ‘How would I know where you’re from? Let me listen, Brand!’ And he turned back.
‘We have logged over thirty-five vehicles — luxury cars and limos, for the most part —
visiting this abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere,’ Delray said. He paused to let this sink in, snatched another quick peek at his watch, and hurried on. ‘Many of these have visited the site ten or a dozen times. The bats have undoubtedly congratulated themselves on having picked such an out-of-the-way spot for their meeting-hall or social club or whatever it is, but I think they’re going to find they’ve painted themselves into a corner instead. Because . . . pardon me just a sec, guys . . . ‘
He turned and began a quiet conversation with Lester Olson. The woman named Kendra joined them, her head going back and forth like someone watching a Ping-Pong match. The seated audience watched the whispered conference with expressions of bewilderment and perplexity.
Pearson knew how they felt. Something big, Duke had promised, and from the feel of the place when they’d come in, everyone else had been promised the same. ‘Something big’ had turned out to be a single black-and-white photo showing nothing but an abandoned warehouse wallowing in a sea of trash, discarded underwear, and used rubbers. What the fuck is wrong with this picture?
The big deal’s got to be in the trunk, Pearson thought. And by the way, Freckles, how did you know I came from Medford? That’s one I’m saving for the Q-and-A after the speech, believe me.
That feeling — flushed face, pounding heart, above all else the desire for another cigarette —
was stronger than ever. Like the anxiety attacks he’d sometimes had back in college. What was it? If it wasn’t fear, what was it?