“Let’s go,” I say to her. “We’ll have some tea.”
Now how to go about shutting up Jackal?
“No. I can’t. I only wanted to find out about Red. I knew you guys would know . . .”
Lucky she can’t hear either the song or Black’s mutterings.
“Come on,” I say. “You can spend the night with us. Tabaqui is going to tell you all about it. He was there, you know.”
“But . . .”
“What is it?”
She takes a hesitant step back toward the door.
“Noble is going to take it the wrong way. We had a talk. Today. He came to see me. So if I came to your place now . . . That would look like an answer.”
“Do you want to answer him?”
Silence. Of a more confused than an angry shade. At least that’s what I read into it. Maybe I’m just fooling myself.
“Do you or don’t you?”
She is still silent.
“Gingie?”
“Let’s go.” She grabs my sleeve. “I have no idea what I want now. But I know I don’t want to go back.”
We go together. Our arrival in the room cuts the song short and causes a state of general confusion in the pack. They come to relatively quickly.
Tabaqui delivers a welcome oration. Lary waves his hands invitingly from the cups to the coffeemaker and back. Humpback runs out, balancing a stack of ashtrays. Alexander steps into the saucer of milk for the cats and spills it all over. I lead Ginger to the quadruple bed. She sits next to Noble, and Goldenhead’s eyes light up with a possessive flame. He bashfully extinguishes it with his lashes.
“Ginger is asking after Red,” I explain.
It sounds like a bad pun.
“Oh, Red! What about Red?” Tabaqui switches gears, instantly reviving all of the corpses he has inventively piled up. “Nothing much happened to him, really. Ralph came in just in the nick of time and saved him. Here’s how it all went down . . .”
BOOK THREE
THE ABANDONED NESTS
SPHINX
I am stretched out on the damp grass, feet up on the bench, face turned to the sky, which has just finished weeping. My feet in muddy sneakers are crossed up there on the seat of the bench, and the mud on them gradually lightens in color as it dries out, flaking off onto the rickety slats. Too fast. The summer sun is relentless. In another half hour there won’t be any trace left of the short rain, and an hour later anyone who’d want to lounge here would do well to bring sunglasses. But I still can look at the sky with impunity for a while. It’s bright blue behind the spiderweb of the oak branches. Below them is the gnarly trunk, a jumble of interwoven ropes turned to stone. The oak is the most beautiful tree in the whole yard. Also the oldest. My gaze slides down from its top, from the thinnest twigs all the way to the fat roots. I notice a thin, faded scrawl scratched into the rutted bark just above the back of the bench: “remember” something and also “lose.” I raise my head to see better. I’ve learned to decipher writings much less legible than that.
L. N. The Longest Night.
Apparently for some people it means hope.
