Ghost Story

'Angie Messina.'

'Where do you live?'

'Here. In town.'

'Where?'

She pointed vaguely east-the direction of the Hollow.

'You live with your parents?'

'My parents are dead.'

'Then who do you live with?'

'Just people.'

'Have you ever heard of a woman named Florence de Peyser?'

She shook her head: and maybe it was true, maybe she had not.

He looked up toward the sun, sweating, unable to speak.

'What do you want?' the girl demanded to know.

'I want you to come with me.'

'Where?'

'For a ride.'

'Okay,' she said.

Trembling, he left the bench. As simple as that. As simple as that. No one saw them go.

What's the worst thing you've ever done? Did you kidnap a friendless girl and drive without sleeping, hardly eating, stealing money when your own melted away… did you point a knife toward her bony chest?

What was the worst thing? Not the act, but the ideas about the act: the garish film unreeling through your head.

Epilogue - Moth in a Killing Jar

'Put the knife away,' said his brother's voice. 'You hear me, don't you, Don? Put it away. It won't do you any good anymore.'

Don opened his eyes and saw the open-air restaurant about him, the gilt lettering across the street. David sat across the table, still handsome, still radiating concern, but dressed in a moldering sack which once had been a suit; the lapels were gray with fine dust, the seams sprouted white threads. Mold grew up the sleeves.

His steak and a half-full wineglass were before him; in his right hand he held a fork, in his left a bone-handled Bowie knife.

Don freed a button on his shirt and slid the knife between his shirt and his skin. 'I'm sick of these tricks,' he said. 'You're not my brother, and I'm not in New York. We're in a motel room in Florida.'

'And you haven't had nearly enough sleep,' his brother said. 'You really look like you're in terrible shape.' David propped one elbow on the table and lifted the smoky aviator glasses off his eyes. 'But maybe you're right. It doesn't unsettle you so much anymore, does it?'

Don shook his head. Even his brother's eyes were right; that seemed indecent, that she should have copied his eyes so exactly. 'It proves I was right,' he said.

'About the little girl in the park, you mean. Well, of course you were right about her. You were supposed to find her-haven't you worked that out yet?'

'Yes. I did.'

'But in a few hours little Angie, the poor orphan girl, will be back in the park. In ten or twelve years, she'll be just about the age for Peter Barnes, wouldn't you say? Of course, poor Ricky will have killed himself long before that.'

'Killed himself.'

'Very easy to arrange, dear brother.'

'Don't call me brother,' Don said.

'Oh, we're brothers all right,' David said, and smiled as he snapped his fingers.

In the motel room, a weary-looking black man settled back into the chair facing him and unclipped a tenor saxophone from the strap around his neck. 'Now me, of course, you know,' he said, putting the saxophone down on a bedside table.

'Dr. Rabbitfoot.'

'The celebrated.'

The musician had a heavy, authoritative face, but instead of the gaudy minstrel's getup Don had imagined him wearing, he dressed in a rumpled brown suit shot with iridescent threads of a paler, almost pinkish brown; and he too looked rumpled, tired from a life spent on the road. Dr. Rabbitfoot's eyes were as flat as the little girl's, but their whites had turned the yellow of old piano keys.

'I didn't imagine you very well.'

'No matter. I don't take offense easy. You can't think of everything. In fact, there's a lot you didn't think of.' The musician's breathy confidential voice had the timbre of his saxophone. 'A few easy victories don't mean you won the war. Seems like I be reminding folks of that a lot. I mean, you got me here, but where did you get yourself? That's an example of the kind of thing you gotta keep in mind, Don.'

'I got face to face with you,' Don said.

Dr. Rabbitfoot lifted his chin and laughed: and in the middle of the laugh, which was hard and explosive, as regular as a stone skipping over water, Don was in Alma Mobley's apartment, all of the luxurious objects in their old places around him, and Alma was seated on a cushion before him.

'Well, that's hardly new, is it?' she asked, still laughing. 'Face to face-that's a position we knew many times, as I remember it. Top to tail, too.'

'You're despicable,' he said. These transformations were starting to work: his stomach burned and his temples ached.

'I thought you got beyond that,' she said in her glancing, sunshiny voice. 'After all, you know more about us than nearly anyone on this planet. If you don't like our characters, at least you should respect our abilities.'

'No more than I respect the sleazy tricks of a nightclub magician.'

'Then I'll have to teach you to respect them,' she said and leaned forward and was David, half his skull flattened and his jaw broken and his skin broken and bleeding in a dozen places.

'Don? For God's sake, Don… can't you help me? Jesus, Don.' David pitched sideways on the Bokhara rug and groaned with pain. 'Do something-for God's sake…'

Don could not bear it. He ran around his brother's body, knowing if he bent over to help David they would kill him, and opened the door of Alma's apartment, shouted 'No!' and saw that he was in a crowded, sweaty room, a nightclub of some sort (It's only because I said nightclub, he thought, she picked up the word and yanked me into it) where black and white people sat together at small round tables facing a bandstand.

Dr. Rabbitfoot was sitting on the edge of the bandstand, nodding at him. The saxophone was back on its chain, and he fingered the keys as he spoke.

'You see, boy, you got to respect us. We can take your brain and turn it to cornmeal mush.' He pushed himself off the stand and came toward Don. 'Pretty soon'-and now, shockingly, Alma's voice came from his wide mouth-'you don't know where you are or what you're doing, everything inside you is all mixed up, you don't know what's a lie and what isn't.' He smiled. Then in the doctor's voice again, and lifting the saxophone toward Don, he said, 'You take this horn here. I can tell little girls I love them through this horn, and that's probably a lie. Or I can say I'm hungry, and that sure as hell ain't no lie. Or I can say something beautiful, and who knows if that's a lie or not? It's a complicated business, see?'

'It's too hot in here,' Don said. His legs were trembling and his head seemed to be spinning in wide arcs. The other musicians on the stand were tuning up, some of them hitting the A the piano player fed them, others running scales: he was afraid that when they started to play, the music would blow him to pieces. 'Can we leave?'

'You got it,' said Dr. Rabbitfoot. The yellow around his pupils shone.

The drummer splashed a cymbal, and a throbbing note from a bass vibrated through the humid air like a bird, taking his stomach with it, and all the musicians came in together, the sound hitting him like an enormous breaker.