“And it says she died in 1904. You were—here today, Kootie?”
Kootie was half sitting up in the back seat, staring out through the open back door.
“Her old house was still standing when I was here,” called Kootie, “an hour ago, by my clock. There were more trees then, and they weren’t so big and shaggy.”
“I should have had more respect for her ghost,” said Angelica. “She sounds like she was a fine woman.”
“She had her faults,” said Kootie shakily. “Like us all, I—” he let the sentence hang unfinished. “Do any of the trees…look funny?”
“Funny,” echoed Angelica out on the sidewalk. “Well, they’ve all got strips of bark hanging off ’em…and got bright green moss around their feet.”
“Around their roots,” Pete corrected her, standing by the truck bumper. “Their feet are way up in the air.” He was standing by the second one from the corner, looking up at its thick, bifurcated trunk. “This one looks like somebody buried head-down up to the waist, with their legs sticking up. Wasn’t there a place in Dante’s Inferno, where the damned souls were stuck head-downward?”
“In the Eighth Circle,” called Mavranos from the driver’s seat. He was looking down, fumbling with both hands among the papers on the front seat, and Kootie heard a faint metallic rattle. “The Simoniacs, who sold ecclesiastical offices and indulgences and forgivenesses. Sold is the key word there. But in the book they were stuck head-down in baptismal fonts.” Kootie heard the cylinder of the revolver click closed. “Hurry up,” Mavranos said loudly. “I haven’t reloaded since this morning.” He sat back, not looking at Kootie. “I’ve been…distracted,” he said quietly.
Though she gave a deprecating laugh, Angelica had taken a step back from the gnarled old tree with its two bulky, skyward-stretching limbs. “For what god is a hole in the ground a baptismal font?”
“The god of woods,” said Kootie, though probably only Mavranos could have heard him. He was remembering Mammy Pleasant’s confession of having sold a fabulous cache of the pagadebiti Zinfandel for money, way back in her youth on Nantucket Island. More loudly, he called, “Gather up some of those acorns or chestnuts or whatever they are, from around that tree. And peel off some strips of the bark; she can’t go barefoot.”
A minute later Pete and Angelica climbed back into the truck, Angelica with two pockets full of the seeds and Pete with an armload of musty-smelling damp bark strips.
Mavranos clanked the engine into gear and steered out away from the curb. “Out of town, now?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Angelica, “but not by the 101.” She smiled. “Take the 280 south.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
TROILUS: O, let my lady apprehend no fear; in all Cupid’s pageant there is presented no monster.
CRESSIDA: Nor nothing monstrous neither?
—William Shakespeare,
Troilus and Cressida
AFTER he got out of the hot shower Cochran wiped the steam off the medicine-cabinet mirror and thoroughly brushed his teeth, and as he stared at the reflection of his haunted face he kept thinking about Nina’s green toothbrush hanging in its slot only inches behind the hinged mirror; and he decided not to open the medicine-cabinet door again to get out his razor. When he had fumbled out his own toothbrush he hadn’t thought to note how dry Nina’s must be, and he didn’t want to now.
Plumtree had been asleep under the sheet when he had got out of bed to come in here. The shower, and now the shock of a mouthful of Doctor Tichenor’s mouthwash, had sobered him up, and he was profoundly disoriented to realize that a naked blond woman whom he had met one week ago was at this moment inertly compressing the springs of the bed he and Nina slept in.
He was remotely glad that the cassette from the phone-answering machine was in the pocket of his shirt on the back of the dressing-table chair—he didn’t want to know what his response would be if someone were to call now, and Nina’s recorded voice were to speak from the machine.
Plumtree would certainly sleep for at least a couple of hours. Cochran hadn’t been watching the bottle of Southern Comfort, but she must have refilled her glass half a dozen times, before, between, and after. His thoughts just slid away from memories of the details of their lovemaking; all he could really bring himself to remember right now—and even that shakily—was Plumtree’s hot, panting breath, flavored with More cigarette smoke and the peach-liqueur-and-bourbon taste of Southern Comfort.
He spat in the sink, and rinsed out his mouth with cold tap water scooped up in his hand because the bathroom glass was in the other room, sticky with liqueur. He had closed the bathroom door when he had come in here, and now he paused before opening it again; and after a moment of indecision he picked up his jeans and pulled them on and zipped the fly before he turned the damp doorknob and stepped out onto the bedroom carpet.
And he blinked in surprise—Plumtree was sitting up in bed, anxiously holding the sheet up to her chin.
Her shoulders slumped when she saw him. “Oh, you, Scant?” she wailed. “Oh, why? I told you I’d go to bed with you, if you’d wait! I was sure it was going to be a stranger that would walk out of that bathroom! I was just waiting to see what sort of—creep!—it would be, so I’d know who to give this flop to! Oh, Sid—Tiffany?” She buried her face in the sheet, and her muffled voice went on, “I loved you! And I thought you loved me.”
Cochran could feel his face get instantly hot, and at the same time chilly with evaporating sweat, for he suddenly had to fully admit to himself that what he was about to say was a lie. “Janis,” he said, too shrilly, “I thought it was you! Are you saying that it wasn’t you? Good God, I’m sorry, how was I—”
“You stole—me! It’s as if you had sex with me while I was knocked out, unconscious, like when I nearly got raped in the van behind that bar in Oakland. At least that guy didn’t…have me.” She shook her head furiously. “How could I ever give myself to you now?”
“Janis, it was a, a horrible mistake, I swear I really thought we—you were conscious, for God’s sake—we were both drunk—”
“I said ‘as if.’ You knew. Oh, God, I’ve lost you.” She lifted her tear-streaked face and stared at him; then she looked down at the sheet over her body, and flexed her We Finally she smacked her lips. “Oh, you horny son-of-a-bitch. Do you have any idea how badly you’ve hurt her? She was in love with you, you asshole!”
“Oh, I know, Cody,” he said miserably. “But goddammit, we were both drunk, and you do all look exactly alike!”
Cody was scowling at him with evident disgust. “You’re saying you didn’t know it was Tiffany? Didn’t even suspect it might be? Are you honestly telling me that?”
“I—” He sighed. “No.” He lifted his shirt from the chair and slid his numb, leaden arms through the sleeves. “No, I guess not—not the didn’t even suspect part, anyway, I guess. You’re right—she’s right—I wasn’t thinking about who it was, I was just…what you said.” He could feel the fabric of the shirt clinging to his chest already. “Jesus, Cody, I’m not being flippant, and I am sorry. You all deserved way more…respect? consideration?…from me. God, what can I—”