“You’re the lady who called?” he said.
“Yes.” Amy had called in advance to explain who she was. The students who lived there had no qualms with her visit. They actually thought it was pretty cool. “This is my grandmother,” said Amy.
“Cool. I’m Evan. Come on in.”
Amy stepped inside. Gram followed. Amy stood in the foyer, nearly breathless. It looked almost as bad as Amy’s apartment after the break-in. The fireplace had been boarded up to keep out the weather or worse. In traffic areas, the vintage seventies shag carpet had worn through to the floorboards. Wires dangled from the ceiling where there used be a chandelier. A collage of posters covered the cracked and dirty walls. A mattress lay on the dining room floor.
“You sleep in the dining room?” she asked.
“No, there’s three of us. We made that into Ben’s room. Jake gets the back bedroom downstairs. I get the small bedroom upstairs.”
“Who gets the master?”
He made a face. “Nobody. No offense, but nobody even goes in there.”
“None taken,” she said, seeming to understand.
“Is there anybody upstairs now?”
“No. My roomies are out sucking down margaritas at Muldoon’s.”
“You mind if I have a look around?”
“That’s what you came for, isn’t it? Be my guest.”
“Thanks.”
Gram asked, “You want me to come with you?”
“Oh, by the way,” said Evan. “Don’t mind the pet tarantula at the top of the stairs. He looks mean, but he’s okay with strangers. Well, most strangers.”
“On second thought,” said Gram, “I’ll wait here.”
Amy said, “I think it’s best I do this alone anyway.”
Gram gave her a hug. Amy turned and started up the stairs.
She climbed slowly, deliberately. With each step, she felt a rush of adrenaline. Her pulse quickened. Her hands began to tingle. The feelings were coming back to her. She remembered having lived there. Flying down the stairs on Christmas mornings. Racing up the stairs to her room each day after school. She stopped on the landing at the top of the stairway. Down the hall to her right was her old room. To the left was her mother’s. She tried to pinpoint her memory and focus on that night. Her mind wouldn’t take her there. Too much distraction. A strange mountain bike in the hallway. The pet tarantula in the tank. The lights had to go. There had been no lights on that night.
She flipped the switch. The present disappeared. She stood alone in darkness.
Fear filled her heart. Not the fear of tarantulas or other things that were there. She was feeling the fear of an eight-year-old girl. She stood frozen in the darkness, waiting for it to subside. It wouldn’t. As her eyes adjusted, the fear only grew. She could see all the way down the hall, through the darkness, right up to the door that led to her mother’s room. The fear was much worse than it had been twenty years ago. This time she knew what lay on the other side.
Her foot slid forward and she took the first step.
She felt the carpet between her toes, even though she wore shoes. She was eight again and barefoot, creeping down the hall toward her mother’s room. Her knees felt scratched from the crawl through the attic — the escape from her room. Another step forward and she could hear the oscillating fan. The door was now open. She saw the clump of blankets atop the bed. Finally, she saw the hand again, hanging limply off the mattress. Words stuck in her throat, but her mind heard them anyway. Mom?
A chill went down her spine as she was sucked from the room. She was spiraling down the hall, screaming helplessly, caught in some kind of cosmic explosion that lifted her from the hallway, the house, the planet. Dust and debris clouded her vision as she raced though the night at such incredible speed that the stars converged into an endless beam of light that seemed to bend with her movement and wrap around her fears. It wrapped tighter and tighter, until the fear subsided and she could make herself think. Thinking slowed the pace. Thinking dimmed the intensity. She was no longer going anywhere. She was back on the planet, a distant and dispassionate observer, a scientist logging what she’d seen on that horrible night.
The Ring Nebula. M 57. The fifty-seventh object in Charles Messier’s eighteenth-century catalog of fuzzy objects in the sky.
“Amy?”
She turned. Gram was right behind her on the steps. She had never left the landing.
“You okay?” asked Gram.
Amy’s hands were shaking. She was sweating beneath her jacket. She wanted to lie and say yes, but she was too overwhelmed.
Gram asked, “Are you going to go in?”
Amy looked at her grandmother, her eyes filled with emotion. “I already did. Come on,” she said, taking Gram by the arm. “Let’s go home.”
59
Trumpets blared. Violins wept. Joe Kozelka was seated in a leather wing chair, allowing a glass of Chivas Regal to help him through Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Music helped him sort out his thoughts. Whenever life seemed without order, he would put it to music. The Ninth Symphony was his favorite, particularly the fourth movement. Experts thought it contained some of the master’s ugliest music. Kozelka had only the highest admiration for a man who could successfully incorporate his most controversial moments into his greatest overall achievement.
The music was suddenly soft. His thoughts turned toward Marilyn. In the nearly fifty years they’d known each other, they’d shared many memories. Strangely, the most memorable night for him was one of which Marilyn had no memory. It was the night Frank Duffy had driven them to Cheesman Dam. The night they’d all gotten drunk and parked on the canyon ridge.
His eyes drifted toward a Russian cut-crystal vase on the mantel. It sparkled beneath the track lighting, like the blanket of stars reflecting off the Cheesman reservoir. He sipped his Chivas, but it suddenly tasted like Southern Comfort. He remembered everything about that night, every little detail. He could smell the sweet bourbon, feel the warmth of his own erratic breath. He could see Marilyn passed out in the backseat of Frank’s car, watch himself get out and walk up the path toward his unsuspecting friend…
“Frank, hey,” said Joe.
Frank Duffy and his girlfriend were sitting on a fallen log, facing the moonlit canyon beyond the ridge. Joe was out of breath as he caught up with them.
Frank rose. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Marilyn. She passed out. And-”
“And what?”
Joe made a face. “She tossed her cookies all over your backseat.”
“Aww, man.”
“Hey, it’s not her fault. She never drank before.”
“How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad. Look for yourself.”
The boys ran toward the car. Linda followed behind. Frank opened the car door and immediately recoiled. The pungent odor was unmistakable. “Oh, gawd!”
Joe looked inside. Marilyn was lying on her back across the seat. A pool of vomit lay on the floor behind the driver’s seat. “At least she didn’t get any on her.”
“What about my car?” said Frank. “I’ll never get that smell out.”
Linda stuck her head in, sniffed, and stepped back. “Yuck. You’re on your own, Frankie boy. I’m not riding all
