Unspeakable

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Holly waited for a while, but Matthew kept on tossing paper and Tyrone kept on talking, and nodding, and saying 'Uh-huh, uh-huh,' so in the end she stood up and walked along the gallery looking at the paintings. Most of them were strong, simplistic images in primary colors: nudes, abstracts, landscapes. But at the very end of the gallery there was a large painting propped up against the wall that appeared to be nothing but solid black.

When she approached it, however, she realized that the paint had varying textures, some of them glossy and some of them matte. In the very center, too, almost invisible from a distance, were two dark red circles, like totally bloodshot eyes. Viewing the painting from an angle, so that the lights shone across it, Holly was sure that she could distinguish the ragged outline of black feathers.

She suddenly felt as if somebody had come very close up behind her and was breathing against her neck. Her first instinct was to turn around, but then she thought of what the woman in the Bellman Bookstore had warned:There's something following you? Something behind you? Don't you go looking behind you, whatever you do.

This is completely irrational,she thought.There can't be anybody there.But she felt ridiculously reluctant to look around, and she was sure that somebody was breathing very close to her ear.

She was still standing in front of the black painting when Tyrone came up to her and put his arm around her shoulders. 'What do you think of it?' he asked.

'I don't know. Who painted it?'

'Some guy who came in this morning. He asked if I'd consider selling it for him.'

'Does it have a title?'

'It's calledIll Fortune VII.Don't ask me why. I haven't seenIll Fortune IthroughVI.'

'You're kidding me. That's what it's called?'

'Why should I kid you?'

'I don't know. I think I'm being, what, hypersensitive. Superstitious, maybe. It's just that somebody wished bad luck on me this morning and ever since then I keep on seeing things. I don't exactly know what you'd call them? omens, Iguess.'

'Omens? What? You mean like black cats and funeral processions and haloes around the sun?'

'No, I just mean things that make me feel uneasy.' She told him how Elliot Joseph had put a curse on her in the courtroom, and about the Porsche parked on Salmon Street and what the woman in the Bellman Bookstore had said. 'And now this painting,Ill Fortune VII.And itcouldbe a raven, couldn't it?'

Matthew had joined them. He tilted his head on one side and said, 'It could be a raven, yes. But then it could equally be the inside of Mike Tyson's shorts at midnight.'

'For Christ's sake, Matthew,' said Tyrone. Then to Holly: 'Why don't you join us for lunch? We were only going across to the Quarter Deck for a sandwich.'

Memories of Bad Luck

'Ever since you were a kid, you always seemed to know when bad things were going to happen, didn't you?' said Tyrone. He had put his half- glasses on and he was picking stray alfalfa sprouts off his plate and nibbling them. 'Don't you remember that Fourth of July when that girl from next door got burned? What was her name?'

'Margaret Pickard,' said Holly. 'How could I ever forget?'

'What was that all about?' asked Matthew, his mouth obscenely full of sandwich.

Tyrone tidily patted his lips with his napkin. 'I guess it was Holly's deafness: It gave her kind of a psychic awareness. You know, things that most people don't usually pick up on. She could always tell you if it was going to rain, for instance.'

'In Portland? You don't need a psychic awareness for that. It happens once every fifteen minutes, without fail.'

'No, there were other things too. Like, she could tell when the phone was going to ring about ten seconds before it did. And once we were walking through Waterfront Park and an old guy was mowing the grass on a ride-on mower and Holly said, 'You have to stop him, he's going to hurt himself.' Well, our dad went over and talked to the old guy, but of course the old guy just laughed. The next thing we knew, he was trying to clear a piece of broken branch out of the mower blades, and somehow it started up and chopped most of his fingers off. I'll never forget that. He was standing there with his hand held up and only his thumb and half of his index finger left, and blood running off his elbow, and he was staring at Holly with thislook,like she had actually made it happen.'

'Excuse me. I'm trying to eat a very rare steak sandwich here.'

'Well, come on, Matthew, you wanted to know. What happened on the Fourth of July was different, though. This girl next door, Margaret, she was only about eleven, and she was real quiet and never said a word to anyone. The neighbors had a big Fourth of July barbecue with a bonfire and professional fireworks. But Margaret's parents kept teasing her to mingle with the boys, and in the end she went off up to her room because she was so shy.'

Holly said, 'I was sitting in the garden, on a bench under the trees, and I had a premonition. I mean an actualvision,almost, of a girl falling, her arms spread out wide, and she was burning. It was, like, I don't know: like an angel falling out of heaven. You know those medieval paintings. The trouble was, I didn't know who it could be. I just kept on seeing it again and again.'

'Holly came and told me,' Tyrone put in. 'I told my mom but my mom didn't really know what to do. It's a bit of a downer if you go up to your hosts at a Fourth of July party and say, 'Excuse me, my daughter's had this premonition that somebody's going to burn to death.' So mom told dad and between them they agreed to keep a careful eye on all of the kids around the bonfire.'

'Right near the end of the party they had this incredible rocket display,' said Holly. 'There were dozens and dozens of rockets, and I saw Margaret come out onto the balcony in front of her parents' bedroom to watch it. I'll never forget it. She was wearing this white flouncy frock with a big pink bow, and a bow in her hair.'

Tyrone said, 'Something went wrong. One of the rockets misfired and flew toward the house. It hit Margaret and it exploded, and there was this terrible crackling noise-you know, like rockets make when they explode in the sky.'

Holly shook her head, because of course she hadn't heard it herself. 'Margaret caught fire. I could see that she was screaming. She spread her arms wide and she jumped off the balcony, and she fell onto the steps at the back of the house. They threw buckets of water over her and tried to roll her in a tablecloth, but the rocket was all magnesium and she kept on burning and burning and they couldn't put her out.'

'Holy shit,' said Matthew, putting down his sandwich and wiping his hands on his pants. 'And you reallyknewthat was going to happen?'

'I don't know. Maybe it was more of an intuition than a genuine vision. After all, childrendoget burned at fireworks parties, don't they? Just like gardeners accidentally chop their fingers off in mowing machines.'

Tyrone took hold of Holly's hand. 'You're not feeling any bad vibes like that now, are you? Don't let this Joseph asshole get to you. He was the one who beat up on his kid, wasn't he? So you shouldn't lethimmakeyoufeel guilty.'

'I still feel-I don't know-maybe that woman in the bookstore was right. Maybe she could sense bad luck coming, the way I used to.'

'Holly, there's no such creature as Raven. There's nothing after you. And if that painting really gives you the heebie-jeebies, I'll tell that guy to come and take it away.'

'No, that's okay. It's only a painting, and like Matthew said, it's probably not a raven at all.'

'You should take Katie and Doug up on their offer. Go off to the lake for the weekend, take a break. You deserve it.'

'Maybe you're right.'

'Hey, listen, Holly,' said Matthew, 'before you go, you don't see any bad luck comingmyway, do you? I mean, if I'm going to catch fire or chop all my fingers off, I'd really like to know about it.'

Tyrone rolled up his eyes in exasperation, but Holly said, 'Okay, then, give me your hand.' Matthew wiped it on his pants again and held it out. Holly held it for a while and closed her eyes.

'Yes?.' She nodded. 'You're finally going to decide that bugging Tyroneisn'tenough of a challenge.'

'And?'

'Like you said, you're going to climb the east face of Mount Hood in midwinter, totally naked.'

'Hey, I don't call that bad luck. That'll be cool!'

'Cool? You think so? You're going to run out of rations on the way up, and by the time you get to the top you're going to have nothing left but a frozen Twinkie.'

Matthew tugged his hand away and gave her a playful slap. 'Your sister, Tyrone! What a saucy mare!'

Blood in the Street

Holly and Tyrone left the Quarter Deck hand in hand while Matthew trucked along the sidewalk a few paces in front of them, snapping his fingers.

'Whatdoyou see in him?' asked Holly.

Tyrone smiled. 'He keeps my feet on the ground. Stops me from being too queeny.'

'You were neverqueeny. Just artistic.'

'Holly, I know my weaknesses.'

Holly said, 'Katie and Doug are trying to pair me off with Katie's cousin. Some guy called Ned.'

'You don't sound very enthusiastic about it.'

'I don't know. I just don't like blind dates, that's all.'

'It won't be a blind date; it'll be a deaf date.'

She gave him two sharp nudges with her elbow,