Peter Abrahams - Lights Out

“Why do you say that?”

She reached into her bag, removed a charred red scrap. He recognized it: the remains of the Monarch he had thrown in the fire at the Palazzo. He didn’t reply.

Karen glanced around the walls. “Nothing here from your Mariner. I guess he doesn’t fit the theme of the room.”

“ ‘A spring of love gushed from my heart,’ ” Eddie said, the words coming of their own accord. “ ‘And I blessed them unaware.’ ”

Karen smiled. “You’re something, you know that? But whoever wrote all this didn’t have that kind of love in mind.” She looked out the window. The sun was low in the sky now, flabby and red. The long white cruiser lay at anchor, outside the reef.

She gazed at it for a few moments, then said: “No Jack.”

“That’s right.”

Behind Karen, the sun kept sinking, reddening, fattening. She ran her finger through the dust on the sill. “What is this place?” she said, turning to him.

“They call it the hippie house.”

“Hippies with a Ph.D. in literature.”

“Or dropouts with a Bartlett’s.”

Karen laughed. “Does it matter?” She looked around. “They were besotted, that’s what counts.” He stared at her.

“That surprises you, doesn’t it, coming from me?” she said. She waved her hand at the room. “Can’t you just picture it? The candles, the dope, the long-haired boy and girl, the moon shining through on all this poetry?” She swallowed.

He could picture it. The image brought to mind another: the tennis shed, damp and dark, with the warped racquets on the wall and the mound of red clay. Perhaps the hippies had been on the island at the same time, just miles down the Cotton Town road.

Karen moved away from the window, took a step toward him. “I was wrong, Eddie.”

“About what?”

“The world. It’s not small. It’s a big, big place, and right now we’re far away.”

“From where?”

She came nearer. “From anywhere.” She was close enough to touch him. She did, resting her fingertips on the side of his face. Behind her, the sun sank into the sea, filling the room with garish light. There was even a flash of green.

Eddie thought: What does she want? Jack? The money? Evidence to tie him to Messer, El Rojo?

Those were important questions, but Karen’s breasts pressed against him, and her tongue was searching out his, and his mind refused to deal with questions, refused to acknowledge them, threatened to forget them entirely. He let the backpack slip off his shoulders. It fell on the floor and he put his arms around her. She moaned.

Soon they were on the four-poster bed, inside the mosquito-net cocoon. Outside the netting bloomed the last rays of the sun, lighting all the words of love in pulses of wild color. Inside Karen moaned and didn’t stop. Eddie lost himself in her sounds, her rhythms, her smells. Pressure built inside him, built and built, passed the point of explosion, kept building, demanding his all, forcing him to abandon self-consciousness, self-control, self-defense. She called his name. Not Nails, his prison name, his animal name, but Eddie; him. At that moment he would have done anything she wanted, but all she wanted was to call his name.

Darkness fell.

Some time later a breeze sprang up, blew through the hippie house, stirred the mosquito net. “Jack’s dead,” Eddie said.

There was no answer. Karen was asleep. He felt her beside him, still hot, damp with sweat.

Her body cooled. The sweat dried. Eddie got up, went to the window, saw the lights of the cruiser, yellow and white, glowing in the air, sparkling on the water. Two other lights, much duller, one red, one green, separated themselves from the cruiser, grew bigger and brighter.

Eddie returned to the bed, lay down. Karen rolled over, her arm falling heavily across his chest. He liked the feel of it. The night made soothing sounds-insect sounds, bird sounds, wave sounds. Soon he was sleeping too.

Something crashed. Eddie sat up, not sure if he had heard a noise or dreamed it. Karen’s arm slipped off his chest. She made a sighing sound and lay still. Eddie listened, heard nothing. His mind, still half asleep, offered a dreamy explanation from the two known elements, toad and wine bottle. He almost accepted it.

Eddie drew back the mosquito netting and rose quietly, without disturbing Karen. There was moonlight, enough to differentiate the shadows. Eddie entered the square shadow that marked the top of the stairs, went down. The last footboard creaked beneath him. The moon shone through the window on his face.

There were more shadows in the living room. One was bigger than the rest. The big shadow moved, eclipsing the moon. A man spoke.

“Surprise.”

Jack.

Asurprise? Not really.

Eddie had buried deep in his subconscious the idea that Jack might have survived, too deep for his thoughts to reach, but not deep enough to keep it from giving off a faint miasma of anxiety, anxiety that had stayed with him all the way to Saint Amour. Now unfettered it ballooned inside him. He had abandoned not a dead body but his brother, bleeding on the chicken-farm road.

“Say something, bro.”

A horrible betrayal. But since that night on the chicken-farm road, he had learned what Jack had done to him. That was the first complicating factor. The second was that Jack couldn’t have survived alone, couldn’t have gotten away by himself: who had helped him? The third complicating factor was Karen, sleeping upstairs.

“Eddie? You awake?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said in a low voice. “I’m awake.”

“Got a babe upstairs? The jitney boy said something about that.”

“She’s gone,” Eddie said, moving toward the screened porch. He saw the overgrown lawn, trees, more shadows. They could have been the normal shadows of night. Out on the water, the lights of the cruiser still shone. El Liberador. His real name is Simon, after the Liberator .

Eddie went into the kitchen, looked out the door. There was a shadow in the front seat of Karen’s car.

“Gave me up for dead, didn’t you?” Jack said, following him. “But I’m a tough old nut. They fixed me up real good.”

“Who is they?”

A geometry problem, as on the chicken-farm road: Jack down here, Karen upstairs, something else outside. This one he couldn’t solve.

“The doc, of course,” Jack said.

“What doc?”

“It was just superficial. Lots of blood, but once they stopped it I was fine.” Jack’s voice broke, as though he was about to sob.

Eddie went past him, to the foot of the stairs.

“Where’re you going?”

“Getting my stuff,” Eddie said.

“Why?”

Without replying, Eddie climbed the stairs, opened the netting, leaned in. His lips touched Karen’s ear. “Karen,” he said, barely mouthing the words: “Don’t speak. Don’t move until you hear noise. Then climb out the window and run.”

Karen lay still, but he sensed the sudden tension in her body, knew she was awake.

Eddie picked up the backpack, started down. Jack was waiting at the bottom. He wore something white around his neck.

“Wouldn’t have a gun in there?” he said. Eddie brushed past him. “You don’t seem happy to see me,” Jack said. “I’m happy you’re alive. But it gives you the chance to do it to me again, doesn’t it, Jack?”

“Do what?”

“Your seven-and-a-half-percent trick.” Pause. “You lost me.”

“You can stop lying to me now,” Eddie said. “I’ve talked to a few people-JFK and the detective, Brice. I know everything. I just don’t know how you could have done it.”

Eddie stepped onto the screened-in porch. A massive, silver-edged cloud slid over the moon, darkening the night. The wind was rising. He picked up the rusted kettle barbecue. There wasn’t going to be a better moment.