‘Oven.’
‘Doesn’t fit.’
‘Oast.’
‘Oast?’
‘O-A-S-T’
He gave me a skeptical look uncannily like one of Caroline’s. ‘Go back to sleep, Ben Truman.’
‘O-A-S-T Just fill it in, trust me.’
I lay back down in a sleepy fugue, and at once doubts began to swarm. Maybe I had dreamed the whole incident in the church, or at least mis-perceived it. Was Gittens really going to kill Braxton? What proof did I have of his intentions? That’s the core problem with history: Events can only be seen through a cracked prism, the faulty perceptions of witnesses. Historical truth, if it exists in the first place, is immediately lost in a fog of bad eyesight, bad memory, bad reporting. Great topic for a dissertation, if I ever do write one.
I shook the doubts away. I’d seen it alright. I knew what Gittens had planned, and I’d released Braxton rather than abandon him to Gittens. I’d saved Harold Braxton.
‘Can I tell you something, Mr Kelly? I thought Gittens was going to…’ But in that moment I reconsidered it. My head ached. I must have been wrong about Gittens. It was impossible. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Try to sleep, Ben. I’m going to sit here awhile.’
I wanted to thank Kelly for coming. He was the only one. I wanted to tell him how much I appreciated his being there. But the words stuck in my throat and I gaped at him stupidly, like a boated fish gasping for air.
‘It’s alright, Ben, I know. Just get some sleep.’
In the dream, I floated on Lake Mattaquisett. Above me was a cloudy sky. At the periphery of my view, the green hillsides around the lake, all mossed over with pines. At some point I could no longer feel the water under me. It must still be there, I assumed; I was still floating on something. But I couldn’t feel it. I rolled onto my stomach. The lake surface pillowed under me as it would under the feet of a water bug — a film of surface tension just strong enough to support my weight. But beneath me, the lake water had disappeared. I could see all the way down to the sunlit lake bed, where crabs and bottom fish scuttled about on dry stones. Fish fluttered past, their tiny fins flapping audibly in air. I knew if I moved, the soap-bubble surface that held me up would burst. So I concentrated on lying still. Hanging there, breathless. My arms and legs began to ache. Soon I would have to move. The floor of the lake became dark and weedy, a treacherous place of sea insects and eely, chomping creatures, and my ability to hold still was sifting away.
Now, let me say right off the top that I don’t much believe in reading Freudish significance into dreams. I write them off to biochemistry — enzymes react with brain meat; random images are unintended by-products. So interpreting dreams seems to me an act of faith, like seeing the face of Jesus in your meatloaf. The interpretation reveals more about the perceiver than the thing perceived. But the raw emotions triggered by dreams are no less real. Enzyme hits brain meat, sizzles — and dreamer feels fear or sadness or vertigo or any number of things.
When I woke up, the anxiety of the dream lingered. I felt threatened.
I leaned up on one elbow. My head throbbed. The room was dark.
There was a shape at the door. A man I did not recognize. Short, neither thin nor fat. He moved into the room with arms half extended, like a lobster’s claws.
‘Who are you?’ I said.
He stopped.
I groped for the light. ‘Who are you?’
It was a cop, in uniform. ‘My name’s Pete Odorico.’ The name rhymed with Oh for Rico.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘You screamed.’
He took another step toward me. The equipment on his belt rattled.
‘Just stay where you are.’
‘I’m a cop.’
‘Everyone’s a cop around here. Do me a favor, stay put. What are you doing in here?’
‘Watching you.’
‘Watching me? Who told you to watch me?’
John Kelly came into the room. ‘Ah, I see you’ve met Peter.’
‘Who the hell is he?’
‘He’s a friend.’
‘Of whose?’
‘Of mine.’
‘Well, I don’t know him.’
‘He’s alright, Ben. I worked with his dad. I’ve known Peter since the day he was born. I asked him to stand guard tonight.’
Pete Odorico shot me a sour look. ‘Hey, pal, I’ve been off duty since midnight. You don’t want me here, I’m happy to go home to bed.’
Kelly patted his shoulder. ‘You’ll stay till sunup,’ Kelly informed him.
The officer studied me for a moment, then said, ‘What was the dream?’
‘Never mind the dream.’
‘Maybe I can help.’
With that, Kelly snaked his long arm around the policeman’s shoulder and ushered him back to his post in the hall. When he’d shut the door, Kelly said of the forty-year-old cop, ‘He’s a good kid.’
‘You posted a guard? Why?’
Kelly considered it a moment. ‘Because something doesn’t feel right.’
29
Friday morning. At seven-thirty there was a polite, brushy knock at the door, and Caroline came in, carrying a shopping bag. ‘Good morning,’ she said. Surprised to see her father, she made a face. ‘Sorry to wake you.’
‘No, no,’ I said.
‘How’s the cabeza?’ She made a shampooing motion at the back of her head.
‘I’m okay.’
I scrunched the blanket in my lap to cover a daybreak hard-on, which threatened to poke its head out of the sheets like a squirrel. The tumescence was less a matter of sexual excitement than simple hydraulics, the usual wind-sock action of sleeping men. But it triggered memories of Caroline’s body, which only made things worse. I studied her outfit, tried to see through it. She was wearing another vaguely bohemian skirt suit, this one with a five-button jacket open at the throat. There was nothing provocative or revealing about it. The skirt was hemmed an inch below the knees. The jacket revealed just a narrow V of skin with tiny, lovely freckles.
Caroline started unpacking some new clothes from the shopping bag. There was a halting quality in her movements, as if she did not want to be here, as if the whole errand was distasteful to her.
‘I didn’t expect to see you here,’ I said.
‘I didn’t expect to be here.’
‘But you had a change of heart?’
‘No,’ she sniffed. ‘It seems you have a new friend.’
‘Oh?’
‘Harold Braxton is asking for you.’
‘What?’
‘We picked him up last night. He won’t talk. He says he wants you, and if you won’t come, he wants Max Beck.’
‘But Lowery told me I was off the case.’
‘You are off the case.’ She crossed her arms, tipped her head forward, and eyed me from beneath her brow, the stern-mother look. ‘Are you saying you don’t want to do it?’
