Thomas Cook - Sacrificial Ground

Stan took a deep breath. “I may be the father,” he said.

“ May be?”

“I slept with her once. I don’t know if anyone else did.”

“You only slept with her once?” Frank asked.

“Yes.”

“So it wasn’t exactly a romance,” Caleb said.

“No, sir, not at all,” Stan said. “When I told you a minute ago that I didn’t know Angelica very well, that was the truth. I really didn’t. I had practically never said a word to her before that night.” He looked at Frank. “The night we did it, I mean.” He turned toward Caleb. “We’d just pass in the hallway at school. She might say ‘hi,’ she might not. It was like that. Until that one time.”

“When was that ‘one time’?” Caleb asked bluntly.

“It was the last night of rehearsals,” Stan said.

“When was that?”

“April first.”

Frank wrote it down.

“It was a Friday night,” Stan added. “The next Saturday was opening night.”

“So you had the rehearsal,” Frank said. “Then what?”

“We went for a ride.”

“In your car?”

“No, Angelica’s.”

“The red BMW.”

“Yeah, that one,” Stan said. “What a car. She’d only had it about a month.”

Frank looked up from his notebook. “Go on.”

“Well, the rehearsal was like always,” Stan went on. “Maybe a little more intense, since we were opening the next night.” He looked toward Caleb. “It was over around eleven, which was later than usual. Everybody was tired.” He leaned back farther into the back of the sofa and let out a long, slow breath. “Anyway, I was headed toward my car … my father’s car, actually, and that’s when Angelica pulled up.”

Frank could see her behind the wheel, her blonde hair streaming over her shoulders. “What did she say?” he asked.

“Well, she’d been a little nervous all night. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the opening night jitters.”

“What did she say, Stan?” Caleb asked insistently.

“She had this look in her eye. Like she was mad at me or something. I thought she was going to say something bad, but she didn’t. I mean, she’d been really sharp to people all night. Everybody was waiting for Mr. Jameson to chew her out, but he didn’t. He just stayed clear of her, like he was afraid of her or something.”

Frank could see her face, the hard blue eyes, the tight strained mouth, the cool, lean words that came from it when she spoke.

“‘Get in,’ she said,” Stan told him. “It was in this hard voice. She just said ‘Get in.’”

Frank wrote it down quickly.

“Is that all she said?” Caleb asked.

“That’s all she said.”

“So you got in, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Stan said. “I got in and I really didn’t know what was going on with her. So I just said, ‘What’s up, Angelica?’ or something like that. And she just laughed this little laugh and she said, ‘You’ll find out, if you keep your mouth shut.’ Then she pulled out of the lot. And I mean she really pulled out, squealing her tires, you know?”

Frank could hear the echoes of the tires as they resounded through the summer night, a high, thready wail.

“Where’d you go?” he asked.

“We headed downtown,” Stan said. “I remember it very well. It was a clear night, and the dogwoods were blooming, and I said something about how beautiful they were, and she said, ‘Yeah, beautiful.’”

“So you went downtown,” Caleb said. “Whereabouts?”

“We ended up on the Southside,” Stan said, “Grant Park, around in there.”

“Did you just end up there, or did she look as if she was headed there in particular?”

“Well, now that you mention it, she seemed to know where she was going from the first.”

“And she went directly to the Southside?”

“Yes, sir, directly,” Stan said. “She went right to Grant Park. Then we circled the park a couple of times, maybe more. She was always looking out the window. I got the feeling she was looking for somebody.”

“Did she mention drugs?” Caleb asked.

“No.”

“Because a lot of dealers hang around the park.”

“She didn’t say anything about drugs.”

“But she did circle the park?” Frank asked.

“Yes, sir. She circled it at least twice, maybe more.”

“Then what?”

“She drove into the park itself,” Stan said. “She went down to where they’re doing the restoration on that historical diorama thing, you know, the battle of Atlanta?”

“The Cyclorama?” Frank asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Frank wrote it down.

“And that’s where she parked,” Stan added.

Frank looked up from his notebook. “She parked at the Cyclorama?”

“That’s right. She pulled over to this storm fence they have there, and she parked.”

“How long did you stay there?”

Stan thought about it. “Maybe ten minutes. Maybe less, maybe more. I’m not really sure. To tell you the truth, I didn’t exactly know what I was doing at that point. I mean, she hadn’t said a word to me all the way downtown. I figured since we’d parked, maybe she’d start to talk. But she didn’t. She just sat where she was, smoked a cigarette and stared into the rearview mirror.”

“The rearview mirror?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not straight ahead?”

“Well, there was nothing but a fence in front of us,” Stan said, “and the Cyclorama sign.” He shrugged. “Once in a while she’d glance up at the sign, then back in the mirror.”

“Did you get the idea she was waiting for someone?” Frank asked.

“I don’t know,” Stan said. “I couldn’t figure out what was going on with her. She’d smoke one cigarette, then another one. I’d never seen her smoke before.”

“She didn’t say anything at all?” Caleb asked unbelievingly.

“Not until just before we left,” Stan told him. “Then she just looked over at me with this real hard look in her eye, and she said, ‘Well, this is your lucky night,’ and that’s when she started the car again, and we drove out of the park.”

Frank could hear the engine as he wrote in his notebook and could smell the smoke of her cigarette, see its white garlands in the air around him.

Caleb leaned forward slightly. “Did she drive through the park some more?”

“No, not through it,” Stan said. “We went around it once. I was getting sort of bored. She was so weird. She wasn’t talking or anything, and when she did say something, it was something you couldn’t understand.”

“Why couldn’t you understand it?”

“It was under her breath,” Stan explained. “She was sort of muttering under her breath.” He looked at Frank. “I just wanted to go home.”

“Then why didn’t you tell her to take you?” Frank asked.

Stan shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess because she was so beautiful. Just being near her, it was like a thrill, or something. It was like something was coming off her body. It just swept around you. You couldn’t pull away from it. At least, I couldn’t.”

As he listened, Frank tried to recall the intensity of such youthful desire. He remembered long nights when he’d been unable to sleep because of it. Everything became moist, swollen, infinitely sweet. He knew that that was how Stan must have felt as he sat beside Angelica Devereaux. Frank had felt that way for Sheila, and it struck him that the slow decline of such passion, the way time wore its sharpness down to a flat, featureless nub, was one of life’s great losses.

“I had had some experience before,” Stan said, quietly. “I mean, before that night. But nothing like Angelica.”

“Where did you go after you left the park?” Frank asked.