Т Паркер - Where Serpents Lie

“I notice every single thing about you. And I like it when you let your guard down and ramble.”

“The alcohol, though. It’s not about excitement. It’s about... well, I’m not sure what it’s about, really.”

“Maybe what it’s about is about wanting to feel different than you feel. Getting around what’s happened to you. Getting around yourself, seeing around the corner of you. When I was a kid, my Uncle Pollard out in War, he’d drink in the tool shed because my aunt wouldn’t let the liquor in the house. When he’d gotten enough, he started calling himself Jonah. That’s who he was when he was liquored up — Jonah. Even walked and talked different. Wasn’t crazy or mean or sloppy or anything — just... a different guy. ”

“Sounds great. But, what’s War? ”

“Ah, just another little town in another little holler. West Virginia’s full of them. War, Left Hand, Big Isaac, Tad, Pinch, Ida May. They all got reasons behind the names. Like, Left Hand is on the left side of Left Hand Creek. Stuff like that. Anyway, real drinkers, be they in War or Orange County, are trying to drink themselves into being somebody different. Some of you get good results. I think Pollard did.”

I thought about that.

“You think I do?”

“No. I don’t think you’re much different when you drink. You just talk more and hurt less, I guess. Maybe you’re not drinking enough.”

We laughed at that.

I continued to stare out at the house. Nothing moved in the breezeless night. I waited for the feeling from Hopkin to come to me, but it didn’t. I realized there were still more houses listed for sale by women that I hadn’t even looked into yet. It’s a terrible feeling to realize you’ve been wrong.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked. “How come you never told me much about your boy?”

Oh, no, I thought. But I’d had enough tequila to feel honest.

“I didn’t want you to be a part of him.”

“I understand mat, but why?”

“Sometimes separation is good.”

“Understand that, too. But do you think that I’m somehow not good enough to be connected up with him?”

I felt a little lump way down below my Adam’s apple. Donna Mason’s deep and genuine humility never failed to surprise me. “No, it’s because I didn’t want you to be... ah... part of what happened to him. He ended in death and I want you to... not be affected by that.”

“Protecting me? Or just protecting your vision of me?”

“My vision of you.”

She was quiet for a long while.

“How come you ordered me not to look into his death when I was putting together our interview?”

“I didn’t order you not to look into it. I asked you not to pry into the particulars of his dying, is all. In front of thousands of viewers. Can you blame me for that?”

It was a very slick and very cool evasion of the truth. A lie of omission. But Donna caught it.

“I don’t think it had to do with viewers at all. I think it had to do with me.”

“No.”

She looked at me in the darkness for a beat. “I wouldn’t have done that anyway.”

I almost believed her, which meant I doubted her. I felt bad for not trusting her, but my sins against men, women and children have been far greater than that. “I know,” I lied. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Lies are walls; you hit them and hit them and nothing breaks but you.

“Maybe now you can explain that court date to me.

I didn’t lie about that. I just told her about the photogrammetry and what it might prove, if Donna was willing to tell the world what she was doing that January afternoon in the Marriott. She listened intently, and was quiet for a long time.

“Want to just quit?” I asked her. “You can walk, Donna, and you won’t have to explain a thing to me — or to any court in the land. There are decent odds that you’d be better off.”

More silence.

“Terry, why do I have to fight so hard to tell what’s generous in you from what’s insulting?”

“I don’t mean to insult you.”

“I love you.”

“I want you to. I’m just trying to find a way to make you.”

“That isn’t up to you. That’s the whole point. Don’t you understand? Just the basic things about me?”

She shook her head and sighed. “Well, then you let me know when you find that way. Meantime, I’ll consider myself on the edge of something about to crumble.”

“I don’t crumble.”

“Maybe you just should. Terry, love isn’t something you have to force. It isn’t that hard. It’s not.. something you strain to keep up, like a dumbbell with a ton of weight on it.”

I thought about that one.

“How come you put up with me?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I just can’t seem to scrape you off my shoe.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“Terry, I don’t feel like I’ve got much choice in it.”

“Let’s drink to that.”

We did.

I watched an owl float through the yellow light and land in a sycamore. Moths buzzed the streetlamp, the light a busy halo in the thick, damp air.

“I thought he’d be moving tonight. Hunting.”

“Maybe this isn’t his house.”

“He’s out there tonight, Donna — I’m sure of it.”

“Then he left earlier. Or he hasn’t left yet.”

“I smelled exhaust when we first drove up. Hang in here with me for another hour, will you?”

“You know I will.”

“I’m glad you made this popcorn. I’d forgotten, but I always used to get hungry on stakeouts. Starved.”

Donna looked out the window to the house. “Strange, isn’t it? Pictures of what isn’t true, but they look true. Pictures of you taken by your ex-wife, gone missing. Pictures of The Horridus, hanging over the freeways. Moving pictures of you in my interview. Pictures the press snaps. Then, there’s all the other kind of picturing going on — you’ve got a present-day picture of me you don’t want altered by your son’s past. A man out there is hunting children because he’s pictured himself with them. A man with a gun right beside me, hunting him, because he’s pictured this as the only thing that can save his sweet, tormented soul. This is one crazy world we’re in here, Terry.”

I watched her as she stared out the window at the walled house. I wanted to put her body inside my heart. “Donna, this is as corny as it gets, but I’m glad you’re in it with me and I love you more than anything on earth.”

She smiled. “I love corn. Pass it, will you?”

Hypok climbed into his van and leaned over to check himself in the rearview mirror. Even in the pale interior light he was pleased by the transformation: jet black hair brushed down over his head (boyish and dramatic), black mustaches and Vandyke tapering to a neat point (hip and musketeerish), the earring hoop in his left lobe and the long, bottom-flaring black sideburns (piratical and Presleyan). What more could you want? He’d started the shed three days ago, just after the Item #3 flop. It had taken that long for the whiskers to grow out enough to dye the same midnight black as his hair.

He took a giant swig off the generic tequila and set the bottle back in the center console. He checked his directions on the street map again, like a vacationer making sure he didn’t get lost: Leeward Place in Yorba Linda, a bit of a jaunt out the 91 freeway, birthplace of Richard Nixon and home to Item #4.

He hit the garage door control, waited the usual eternity for the thing to rise, then backed out carefully so as not to scrape the Saturn. Easy. Then into the driveway and a quick push on the shut button. He made a nifty little highway patrol — style turn, where you back up, crank hard, then crank the other way to reverse direction without a time-and-space-consuming three-point maneuver. He used another control to open the front gate and rolled confidently onto Wytton Street in the heart of old-town Tustin as the gate slid shut behind him.