'Who are you?' she asked. 'What do you want? Do you know who you are?'
There was no change in his affect, no doubt or remorse. More than anything else she'd experienced near him, this terrified her. He had to be a memory spun away from a dying man, but Cree couldn't sense a perimortem dimension to him, none of the range of emotions she'd come to associate with the act of dying. Where was the link, the bridge?
Whatever he was, she was not ready to reach him. If he came at them now
Lila stirred slightly, and Cree looked down at her. She had closed her eyes and now looked like she was asleep. When Cree looked up again, the shoes had retreated out of view. The sense of his presence dissipated.
Weak with relief, Cree leaned to stroke Lila's forehead. 'You're all right now. Everything's going to be okay. You're not alone. You're not alone in this.' It was all she could think of to say. It didn't sound convincing, didn't sound at all sufficient. Lila just seemed to drowse, a plump middle-aged housewife lying incongruously on the rich Oriental runner, ravaged and abandoned.
17
By the time Cree returned to her hotel room, it was fivethirty. She dropped her purse, kicked off her shoes, and fell over onto the bed. Only after she'd lain there palming her eyes for a few minutes did she remember that she'd missed her four o'clock appointment with Dr. Fitzpatrick. The message light blinking on the phone was probably him, wondering where she was.
Too bad. Tomorrow maybe. She had a lot to discuss with him, but she was too drained to deal with it now.
She had sat with Lila in the hall for as long as she could bear to, fearing that the boar-headed ghost would return. Eventually Lila had stirred and opened her red eyes to look at Cree. The eyes were neither hopeful nor grateful nor even fearful. They were just desolately empty: This is how it is. This is what I am. It was a state of hopeless stasis Cree knew too well. She saw that same hollow resignation in the mirror, in her own eyes, after something had awakened her grief for Mike and the knowledge of how little she could do about his absence. How little the wound had healed despite the passage of years.
When Lila finally sat up, Cree retrieved her shoes, helped Lila get them on, and made her stand.
Downstairs, they picked up Lila's purse. Cree urged her out the door and down the gallery steps, and they went to sit in Cree's car, two utterly emptied women side by side in the heat. Cree's ankle throbbed, and she discovered that her elbows and thighs were bruised from the tussle in the hall. It was still bright daylight, the repair crew down the block was still at work. A few more tourists strolled the sidewalks, gazing around appreciatively and pausing to snap photos. Gradually, reality had reassembled around these ordinary things, and Lila had begun to talk.
The hotel phone wheedled, and Cree's hand reflexively snatched the receiver.
'Cree? Paul Fitzpatrick. What's going on? I missed you at four, called your room, couldn't find you. Now I just got through to Jack Warren, who said – '
'She went over to the house. Alone. I came by while she was there. She was… it was bad.'
'Oh, Christ! Why'd she go there?'
'To fight back. Confront it all. Show she was tough. Didn't quite work out that way.'
'So she talked to you?'
'Yeah.'
Fitzpatrick chewed on that for a moment. 'Are you up for meeting with me tonight?'
'I don't think… I mean, we do need to talk, as soon as possible. But frankly, I'm… it was… grueling. I'm really tired.'
'You sound like someone who could use a good dinner and a glass of wine. We could kind of combine our psychiatric conference with some R and R. I know the restaurants around here pretty well – I could introduce you to some regional cuisine.'
Somehow, it didn't seem like a come-on. Fitzpatrick sounded straightforward, as always, concerned and reasonable. It had been an overwhelming day, and part of Cree felt that the last thing she needed was one more intense interaction. But it really was urgent that they compare notes on Lila. And Cree did need to eat something.
And, yes, Fitzpatrick was okay to be around.
'All right. As long as you know I'm more than a little out of it. I really am' – Cree groped for the right word – 'kaput. Seriously.'
'Kaput is just fine. Kaput is eminently doable. I'll pick you up in an hour.'
The silver BMW swooped up to the hotel canopy only a moment after Cree made it downstairs. Paul Fitzpatrick waved, but to Cree's relief he didn't jump out and open the door for her or otherwise conduct any ceremonies that might make this seem more like a date. Determined to conceal her newly acquired hobble, she walked to the car, opened her own door, and slid into the leather interior.
Fitzpatrick gave her a small grin. 'You look like hell,' he said. 'You look kaput.'
Cree returned the smile. She had showered and changed, but she still felt like crap, and somehow it was just the right thing to say. 'Thanks.'
'Seafood okay?'
'Perfect.'
'You want fancy, folksy, um – '
'Right now I want normal. I want simple.'
He looked at her appraisingly for a moment, stroking his chin, then nodded and put the car into gear. 'There are a lot of choices, but I think I know the right place for tonight.'
Cree was grateful to have someone else decide things. She leaned back, accepting the easy pressure of the BMW's acceleration. Fitzpatrick swung the car north on Canal Street, away from the French Quarter. The sky was dark, leaving the boulevard lit only by street lamps, signs, windows, headlights. She laid her head against the headrest and looked out at the big, strange city she was just coming to know, and Fitzpatrick had the good sense not to say anything at all.
Deanie's Seafood turned out to be a casual place half a block from the lake, not too far from the park where she and Fitzpatrick had walked. Aside from the brightly lit fast-food place across the street, the neighborhood was composed of seafood distributors and light industrial buildings.
'Antoine's this is not,' Fitzpatrick told her as they crossed the parking lot. 'It's where you go when you're hungry and want very fresh fish and clams and crabs and lots of 'em. I like it because it doesn't go for the overdone Cajun or old-timey New Orleans themes you see too much of, and it's cheap. I thought you probably wouldn't be in the mood for anything too elaborate.' He stopped, suddenly uncertain. 'But if you are, we could – '
'This is just right.'
The restaurant was an unpretentious place, just the kind of grounded, homey environment she needed: middle-class, mom and pop, guaranteed to keep existential anxiety at bay. The air outside was full of the smell of deep frying, reminding Cree how hollow her stomach felt. When they went inside and she saw people being served mountainous platters of golden-brown, battered sea things, her knees went weak.
They took a table at the far end of the back room, near the lobster tank. Cree dropped into her seat and watched the green-black creatures bumbling around the perimeter of their glass cage, claws held shut by rubber bands.
'I need you to tell me what you know about Lila,' Cree said immediately.
'Don't you want to relax a bit? I thought you wanted to – '
'It's probably best just to get to it. I can't think about anything else right now. Dr. Fitzpatrick, if she were my patient, I'd be considering immediate intervention.'
That brought his eyebrows up. 'Not to digress, but could I ask you to call me something other than Dr. Fitzpatrick?'
'I'm not going to call anyone Fitz, I'll tell you that. How about Paul?'
