"Fuck's just a word, it's just a useful little word. Come on, Bosley, admit it. There are times when onlyfuck will do."
"I want you out of here."
"You see. I want you the fuck out of here would sound so much more forceful."
There were giggles from here and there, and a few nervous coughs. "What do you say to your wife on a Saturday night? You want to fornicate, honcy? No, you say I want a fuck." "Out!" Bosley yelled. There were others coming to his aid now, among them a cook from the kitchen who looked like he might have seen the light in San Quentin. Tesla got to her feet.
"Okay, I'm going," she said. She gave the cook a dazzling grin. "Great fish," she said, and sauntered to the door. "Of course we shouldn't forget the most important use of fuck," she said as she went. "The exclamation. As in oh fuck, or what a fuck up." She'd reached the door, and halted there to look back at Bosley. "Or the ever-useful fuck you," she said, and, offering him a little smile, took her leave.
She was standing on the corner, wondering where she might next go in search of Fletcher, when Raul whispered, Did you hear what I said in there?
"I was just defending my constitutional rights," Tesla replied.
Before that, Raul murmured.
"What?" she said.
I don't know what, he replied. I just felt some presence or other "You sound nervous," Tesia replied, glancing around. The intersection was busier than ever. It was an unlikely place to he haunted, she thought, at least right now. At midnight, perhaps, it'd be a different story.
"Didn't they bury suicides at crossroads?" she said to Raul. There was no reply. "Raul?"
Listen.
"What am I-?"
Just listen, will you?
There was plenty to hear. horns honking, tires squealing, folks laughing and chattering, music from an open window, shouting through an open door.
Not that, Raul said.
"What then?"
Somebody's whispering.
She listened again, trying to filter out the din of people d vehicles. Close your eyes, Rau I said, it's easier in the dark.
She did so. The din continued, but she felt a little more remote from it.
There, Raul murmured.
He was right. Somewhere between the traffic and the chatter, a tiny voice was trying to be heard. No, it seemed to be saying. And something about ketchup. Tesla concentrated, trying to tune her mind's ear into the voice, the way she'd tuned in to the conversations in the Diner. No, it said again, no about, no about "Know about," Tesla murmured. "It knows about something."
"Ketch... ketch... " the voice said.
Ketch?
"Ketch a-" No, not ketch a: Fletcher.
"You hear that?" she said to Raul. "It knows about Fletcher. That's what it's saying. It knows about Fletcher." She listened again, tuning into the frequency where the voice had been. The sound was still there, but barely. She held her breath, focusing every jot of her attention upon interpreting the signal. It wasn't words she was hearing now, it was a number. Two. Two. Six.
She said it aloud, so that the whisperer knew she'd understood.
"Two-two-six. Right?"
And now came further syllables. Itch or witch. Then hell, or something like it.
"Try again," she said softly. But either her powers of concentration or the whisperer's strength was giving out. Itch, she thought it said again. Then it was gone. She kept listening, hoping it would make further contact, but there was nothing. "Shit," she muttered.
What we need's a map, Raul said.
"What for?"
It was an address, Tesla. He was telling you where to find Fletcher. She looked back towards the diner. Her waitress caught sight of her as she opened the door.
"Please@'the woman began. "It's okay," Tesla said. "I just want one of these." She picked up a Festival brochure from the rack just inside the door. "Have a nice day."
When did you get to be so rabid about Jesus, by the way? Raul asked her as she sat astride the bike studying the map on the back of the brochure.
"I'm not," she said. "I love all that shit. I just think words are-" She stopped. Peered more closely at the map. "Mitchell Street," she said. "That's got to be it. Mitchell."
She pocketed the map and started the bike. "Are you ready for this?" she said.
Precious, he replied.
"What?"
You were going to say words are precious.
"was I?"
And no: I'm not ready.
Erwin had journeyed down to 10tty's Diner in search of the familiar; some face or voice he knew and liked, to settle the panic in him. Instead he'd heard a woman he'd never seen in his life before asking about his murderer, and he had almost gone crazy with frustration, haranguing her at a volume that would have torn his throat if he'd had a throat to tear, while she paraded her command of gutter-talk for Bosley.
She was neither as stupid or insensitive as that display might have suggested, however. Once she was outside she'd stopped to listen, and he'd pressed so close to her it would have been deemed molestation if he'd been flesh and blood, telling her over and over where Fletcher was. His tenacity had paid off. She'd gone back for the city map, and while she'd studied it, he had tried to warn her that Fletcher was dangerous.
This time, however, she hadn't heard. He wasn't quite sure why. Perhaps people couldn't map-read and hear the dead talk at the same time.
Perhaps the fault Jay with him, and he'd lost the knack of communication with the living moments after finding it. Whichever, what he had hoped would blossom into a fruitful exchange had been cut short, and the woman had been off on her motorcycle before he could tell her about Fletcher's murderous tendencies. He was not overly concerned for her well-being.
If she was in search of Fletcher, he reasoned, then she surely knew what he was capable of, and to judge by her performance in the diner she was no Milquetoast.
He watched her carving her way through the traffic on Main Street and envied her access to the combustion engine. Though he'd always been contemptuous of ghost stories (they'd belonged to the negligible realm of fable and fantasy), he knew phantoms had a reputation for defying gravity. they hovered, they flew; they perched in trees and steeples. Why then did he feel so earthbound, his body-. which he knew damn well was notional; the real thing was lying in his living room still behaving as though gravity had a claim on it?
Sighing, he started back towards his house. If the return journey took as long as the outward, then by the time he reached home the encounter he'd initiated would be over. But what was a lost soul to do? He would have to make his way as best he could, and hope that with time he'd better understand the state he'd died into.
Phoebe went to Erwin's office unannounced and found it closed. On any other day but today she would have left the matter there. Gone home. Waited till Monday. But these were very special circumstances. She couldn't wait; not another hour. She would go by his house, she decided, and beg for just half an hour of his time. That wasn't much to ask, now was it? Especially since she'd inconvenienced herself for him the day before.
She popped into the drugstore two blocks down from the offices, and asked Maureen Scfimm, who had her hair tinted for the celebrations and looked like the local tart, if she could borrow the phone book. Maureen wanted to gossip, but the store was crowded. Armed with Erwin's home address, Phoebe left Maureen to make eyes at every able-bodied man under sixty-five, and headed for Mitchell Street.
It was a quiet little thoroughfare lined with attractive, wellkept houses, the lawns and hedges trimmed, the fences and indow frames painted. The kind of haven Tesla had fantazed about many times on her journey across the Americas; a ace where people were good to each other, and lived, physically and spiritually, within their modest means. It didn't take much guesswork to figure out why Fletcher had chosen to lodge here. He had staged his own immolation back in the Grove in order to imagine from the dreams of its healthy, loving citizens, a legion of champions. Hallucigenia, he'd dubbed them, and left them to wage war in the streets of the Grove after his demise. If another battle was now in the offing, as Kate Farrell had predicted, then where better to seek out minds from which he could create new soldiers than in a haven like this, where people still had faith in a civilized life, and might conjure heroes to defend it? Listen to you, Raul said as Tesla wandered along the street looking for Fletcher's hideaway. "was I thinking aloud or were you just eavesdropping?" Eavesdropping, Raul replied. And I'm amazed. "By what?" By the way you're drooling over thiv place. You hated Palomo Grove. "It was phoney." This isn't? "No. It looks... comfortable." You've been on the road too long. "That may have something to do with it," Tesla conceded. "I am a little saddle-weary. But this looks like a good place to settle down-" Maybe raise some kids? You and Lucien? Wouldn't that be nice. "Don't be snide." All right, it wouldn't be nice. It'd be a living hell they had come, at last, to the whisperer's house, and very smart it was too. Tesla"What?" Fletcher was always a little crazy, remember that. "How could I forget?" Soforgive him his trespasses"You're excited. I can feel you trembling." I used to call him father all the time. He used to tell me not to, but that's what he was. That's what he is. I want to see him again "So do I," she said. It was the first time she'd actually admitted the fact in so many words. Yes, Fletcher was crazy, and yes, unpredictable. But he was also the man who'd created the Nuncio, the man who'd turned to light in front of her eyes, the man who'd had her half-believing in saints. If anyone deserved to have outwitted oblivion, it was him.