‘I still have it,’ said his son, and in the soft dawn light filtering through the drapes he was altering in spirit and form, and he was both son and other. ‘And I know where I can find the rest of it.’
‘Kill them,’ said Eldritch, as he fell back on the bed. ‘Kill them all.’
He closed his eyes as his son’s transformation was completed, and it was the Collector who left the room.
Jeff and Rachel came to pick up Sam shortly after nine a.m. She had been with Angel and Louis in the kitchen since before eight, buttering toast and scrambling eggs, and as a result I had to make her change her sweater before her mother saw her and blew a gasket.
Jeff was driving a Jaguar now. From my office window, Angel and Louis watched him pull up outside, step from the car, and take in the view of the Scarborough marshes with the winter sun shining coldly upon them while Rachel walked to the front door.
‘He acts like he owns them,’ said Angel.
‘Or he made them himself,’ said Louis.
‘Transference,’ I said. ‘You know I don’t like him, so you don’t like him either.’
‘No, I just don’t like him,’ said Angel.
‘He got so much money, why’s he driving a Jaguar?’ asked Louis. ‘Jaguar depreciates faster than dollars from Zimbabwe.’
‘He drives it because he
‘Old,’ said Louis.
‘Very old,’ said I.
‘Ancient,’ said Angel. ‘It’s a wonder the man can stand without a stick.’
The front door opened, and Rachel stepped into the hall and called ‘Hello!’
‘We’re in here,’ I said.
She came into the office and raised an eyebrow at the sight of the three of us standing there.
‘The welcoming committee?’
‘Just taking in the view,’ said Louis.
She saw where we were looking, and at whom.
‘Ha-ha,’ she said.
‘He’s younger than I expected,’ said Angel.
‘Really?’
‘No. He’s real old.’
Rachel scowled at Angel.
‘You keep saying things like that and you won’t live to be his age.’
‘I don’t want to live to be his age,’ said Angel. ‘He’s, like, Methuselah in pastels. Who dresses like that anyway?’
Rachel, to her credit, seemed determined to fight Jeff’s corner.
‘He’s playing golf later,’ she said.
‘Golf?’ said Louis. It might have been possible to inject more contempt into four letters and one syllable, but I couldn’t see how.
‘Yeah, golf,’ said Rachel. ‘Regular people play it. It’s a sport.’
‘Golf’s a sport?’
He looked at Angel. Angel shrugged. ‘Maybe we didn’t get the memo.’
‘You guys are jerks, you know that?’ said Rachel. ‘Where’s my daughter? I need to get her away from here before she contracts jerkdom.’
‘Too late,’ said Louis. ‘She got her father’s genes.’
‘You guys
‘The cool kids are being mean to us,’ Louis said to Angel.
‘It’s homophobia,’ said Angel. ‘We ought to complain, or write a show tune about it.’
I left them to it.
‘Hey,’ called Angel to my back, ‘does that mean we can’t go to the prom?’
In the hallway, Rachel was helping Sam with her bag.
‘What happened to your nice new sweater?’ asked Rachel, noting that Sam was wearing the old one with holes that I kept in the house for her to use when we worked in the garden.
‘It got eggded,’ said Sam.
‘That figures,’ said Rachel. ‘Did mean Uncle Louis and Uncle Angel throw them at you and call you names?’ She glowered at me.
‘I didn’t put them up to it,’ I said. ‘They can be mean without my help.’
‘Uncle Angel said a bad word,’ said Sam. ‘The one beginning with “f”.’
There was a cry of shock from my office. ‘You promised she wouldn’t tell!’
‘That doesn’t surprise me in the least,’ said Rachel. She raised her voice and directed it to the office. ‘But I’m very disappointed in Uncle Angel.’
‘Sorry.’
Rachel checked that Sam had both socks on, that her underwear was the right way round, and she had her toothbrush and her dolls.
‘Okay, say goodbye to your daddy, and then go to the car,’ she told Sam.
Sam hugged me, and I held her tight. ‘Bye, Daddy.’
‘Bye, honey. I’ll see you soon, okay? I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
She pulled away, and I felt my heart break a little. ‘Bye, Uncle Angel who said a bad word,’ she called.
‘Bye,’ said an embarrassed voice.
‘Bye, Uncle Louis who promised to shoot that man.’
There was a long, awkward pause before Louis said ‘Bye,’ and Sam trotted out the door.
Rachel gave me the hard eye. ‘What?’
‘It was a misunderstanding,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t really have shot him.’
‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘Can I ask why they’re here?’
‘Just a thing,’ I said.
‘You’re not going to tell me?’
‘Like I said,’ and it was my turn to give her the hard eye, ‘it’s just a thing.’
Her temper was rising now: Angel and Louis’s ribbing of her, Sam’s sweater, Angel’s swearing, and whatever the hell she thought Louis had said, all of it combined to work on her like heat on a pressure cooker. Then again, she hadn’t looked too happy when she’d arrived. An evening spent listening to Jeff tell a crowd of wealthy folk that the banking collapse was all the fault of poor people for wanting a roof over their heads probably hadn’t helped. Her cheeks were flushed. She looked beautiful, but telling her that wouldn’t have helped the situation.
‘I hope you get shot in the fucking ass!’ she said. She opened the office door wide – ‘That goes for all of you!’ – then slammed the door shut behind her.
‘Come out and say hi to Jeff,’ she ordered. ‘Be polite and act like a normal guy.’
I followed her outside. Sam was already sitting in the child seat in the back of the car. She waved at me. I waved back.
‘Hey, big guy,’ said Jeff. He smiled whitely.
Big guy. What an asshole.
‘Hey . . . Jeff,’ I said.
We shook hands. He did that thing he always did where he held on to my right hand for too long with his right hand while gripping my upper arm with his left hand, and examined my face the way a surgeon will check out a patient who is seriously ill and doesn’t appear to be getting any better, and is thus an affront to his caregiver.
‘How you doing, fella?’ he asked.
Fella: it just got better and better. Rachel grinned maliciously. It was revenge for earlier.
‘I’m good, Jeff. And you?’
‘Fantastic,’ he replied. ‘Just fine.’
‘Speech went well last night?’
