Kingfisher(18)

He heard footsteps. But they were outside, he realized, on the sidewalk. He looked around, wanting a drink now. His eyes fell on the paper lying on the marble bar. It wasn’t so much a menu, he saw as he scanned it, as a manifesto. Something that seemed utterly pretentious, absurd, amid the prosaic diners, car lots, chain motels of Chimera Bay.

Eat, it pretty much commanded, what I give you. I’ll tell you what it will cost you when I decide the meal is over.

His cell phone rang.

He jumped wildly. “Mom,” he breathed, hunched over the phone as though he were in church. “I can’t talk now.”

“What in the world were you thinking?”

“What?”

“When you stole that knife?”

Her voice sounded strange, amazed and completely bewildered. But he was the stranger, he realized, unrecognizable, unpredictable. “I wasn’t,” he said tightly. “Thinking. I just wanted. I’ll let you know why when I know.”

“But, Pierce, you don’t— You’ve never done— This is so unlike you. Where are you? You promised to let me know. I can’t find you anywhere, and I’ve been so worried, especially after Lilith told me. She said that things of such ancient power find their own paths; they take what they need. That is hardly comforting. Sweetheart, be careful.”

“Mom—”

“Better yet, just come home. Return the knife and come home.”

He opened his mouth to answer, found no argument, no answer, nothing at all that either one of them would understand, except that he could undo nothing.

He gave up, turned the phone off, and dropped it into his pocket. Sage pushed aside the dark, heavy curtains, came toward him carrying something. Again he was drawn into the timeless vortex that seemed to flow around her, a spell she cast without awareness, with every movement, every shift of expression. As she drew closer, he sensed the disturbance behind the calm, saw the faint flush of red in her eyelids. He swallowed, stunned at himself, at what he felt and saw, at her for making him see.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice seemed unchanged, but her smile was less luminous, more controlled. “Todd says he won’t cook tonight. We are now closed.”

“Oh.”

“It happens, sometimes.”

“Was it—” He stopped, cleared his throat. “Something I did? Or didn’t? Do?”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head but without letting him see her eyes. “No. Maybe he just knows that no one else will come in tonight. Sometimes he knows things like that. Sometimes they matter, sometimes not. He made this for you.”

She put a small, covered plate down on the bar, and let him see her eyes now, direct, unsmiling.

“A consolation?” he asked, gazing back at her. “Or to make me regret what he won’t give me?”

“Maybe,” she answered simply, “so that you will come back.”

His hand hovered over the black cloth covering the little plate. Then he dropped his hand, stood up, still holding her eyes. “Then I’ll come back,” he said, and turned away from her. As he closed the door behind him, he looked back at her, saw her staring down at the plate, still covered on the bar.

He wandered the streets a while, aimlessly, while the sky over Chimera Bay grew black. Traffic thinned, shops closed, a couple of restaurants turned out their lights before he finally bought some take-out sushi and a six-pack to carry back to the motel. When he was nearly there, something furry and four-legged darted in front of him and hissed furiously, every hair on its body standing on end.

He blinked down at it, then rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I’m sorry. Just let me get in out of the dark.”

The cat wailed at him, stalked away, hair still erect. After a few feet, it shook itself, then sat down in the middle of the sidewalk and looked around a moment. It gave up trying to figure out what it was doing there, and began to lick a paw.

I know just how you feel, Pierce told it as he passed.

He ate sushi and drank beer on his bed in the quiet motel, staring mindlessly at the news. Sometime in the middle of the night, he remembered his mother and the phone he had never turned back on. He pulled the pillow over his head and went back to sleep, dreamed of cooking strange and wonderful dishes, none of which seemed to be made of anything he would have recognized as food.

The Metro was fixed by noon the next day, but Pierce couldn’t persuade himself to get into it and go. That day passed. Another. A third. He watched TV; he wandered out for food when he had to, trying to look inconspicuous and dodging growling dogs, spitting cats, a crow that fluttered into his face and yelled at him. He picked up his drained phone at one point, hunted around for the charger, then stood looking blankly at it, unable to find the energy or the interest in connecting one to the other. At noon and again at twilight, he wove a labyrinthine path through the streets that led him surreptitiously closer and closer to the heart of the matter: Stillwater’s.

No matter what time he reached it, no matter how elaborately he stalked it, winding his way through side streets and alleyways, trying deliberately not to think about it until he finally permitted himself to pass it, the restaurant was always closed. He would wait, skulking across the street. It would stay closed. Finally, he would walk down to the waterfront to gaze at the quiet bay, where a neatly painted tugboat or a sailboat or a barge full of logs might be following the shipping channel out to sea. If he was lucky, and wasn’t accosted by his mother’s familiar of the day, he would turn finally and walk the complex labyrinth again.