Reluctantly, Ellie had to agree. She supposed the most depressing thing about all of this was that she wasn’t particularly surprised by what Hunter had told them. There had always been something about Donal that had made her keep a certain distance between them. It was why she hadn’t been able to reciprocate his love, why even as a friend, his moroseness could sometimes be wearying. It was one thing to tell yourself it was only a mannerism—which is what it had always seemed to her, part of the angsty, Irish-expatriate artist image he liked to project—but when it went on as relentlessly as it did… She hadn’t been able to live with it. And now this.
The mask had been pulled away and who would have guessed what had really been lying there under the facade?
“We’re getting off the topic here,” she said. “Let’s concentrate on getting out to the rez to see Tommy’s aunts.”
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Tommy asked. “If we get stranded halfway there, slide off the road in some godforsaken part of the mountains…” He shook his head. “The cops have probably already closed off the highway.”
“You think?”
He shrugged. “If not yet, then soon.”
“So let’s get out on the road before they do.”
13
After dinner, Miki pulled one of the dining-room chairs over to the window that overlooked the street below Fiona’s apartment and sat there for the rest of the evening. She watched the sleet come down outside, cradling her old Hohner on her lap. Occasionally she fingered a tune on its keyboard, but since she didn’t work the bellows, the only sound she made was that of the buttons being pressed and released, a series of soft, almost inaudible, hollow clicks. Mostly she smoked her cigarettes and stared out the window. Fiona tried striking up a conversation from time to time, but Miki simply couldn’t muster the energy. The events of last night and this morning, and then having worked to put on a good face about it through the day, had left her too drained.
“It’s not you,” she told Fiona. “Honestly. You’ve been great. But I’ve run out of steam, you know?”
“If you want to go to bed… ?”
Miki shook her head. “No, I’ll just sit here for a while.”
And try not to feel so bloody depressed. But it was hard, and Fiona’s apartment didn’t help.
Fiona had carried the Goth obsession of her wardrobe over into her interior decorating scheme. Between the promo posters of Morrissey, The Cure, Dead Can Dance, Rhea’s Obsession, and the like, and the somber minimalism of the furnishings—really, who put up solid black curtains?—it would be hard to feel cheerful in this room in the best of circumstances. All the furnishings were black, what little of them there were. Entertainment unit holding the stereo and TV. Wooden IKEA couch and chairs that Fiona had repainted, recovering the cushions with black fabric. Coffee table, lamp, and a small bookcase. The chairs and dining-room table in the part of the room where Miki was sitting. Only the mantel was cluttered, draped with black and red lace and holding a fake human skull, an obviously beloved collection of Anne Rice novels, and what looked like two hundred candles. It was enough to make Miki want to slit her wrists.
She didn’t blame Fiona. Her co-worker was actually a very sweet woman for all her fixation with the dark and gloomy. She’d cooked a great stir-fry for dinner, kept up a cheerful conversation from when they’d first left the store through when they sat down to dinner, and even put on an Enya CD after the meal, making some comment about how it bridged the gap between Celtic and Goth. Miki didn’t have the heart to tell her that the cloying harmonies and sameness of the disc put her nerves on edge. She’d have preferred some early Trane or Lester Young. A remastered Bird reissue or Wayne Shorter’s new CD. Anything with an edge. She’d even have settled for one of Fiona’s Goth bands, if there actually existed any recordings among them where the tempo changed from one cut to another.
She half-listened to Fiona making some phone calls. One to her friend Andrea, commiserating on the closing of the club where she was supposed to start working that night. Another to Jessica, tracking down a telephone num-her for the Creek sisters. Passing that information on to Hunter’s answering machine since it seemed he was still out. God, what could he be finding to do on a night as miserable as this?
“What are you looking at?” Fiona asked as she pushed the “End” button on her phone and laid it on the floor by her feet.
Miki turned from the window and shrugged. “Nothing.”
Though that wasn’t true, she realized as she turned back to her vigil. The real reason she was keeping watch was that at any moment she expected to see the Gentry come ambling down the street. The slippery footing wouldn’t bother them and the rain would simply run off their trench coats, if they even bothered to wear them. They’d come stomping up the stairs to Fiona’s place and trash it just as they had hers. But first they’d vent their anger on Fiona and her.
“Whoever wrecked your place isn’t going to find you here,” Fiona said.
Miki turned to look at her again, a little embarrassed that she was being so transparent.
“Is what’s going on inside my head that obvious?” she asked.
Fiona shook her head. “You wouldn’t be normal if you weren’t worried about that. How would they even know to look for you here?”
“These aren’t your run-of-the-mill, intolerant assholes,” Miki said. “Finding someone who’s trying to hide anywhere in this city is the least of their abilities.”
“This have anything to do with why Hunter wants to contact a Native elder?”
“Pretty much.”
Fiona pulled her feet up onto her chair and wrapped her arms around them, looking at Miki over the tops of her knees.
“No offense,” she said, “but neither you nor Hunter seem much inclined to the spiritual.”
Miki wanted to laugh. Spiritual was the last word she would have used to describe the Gentry. They were so wired into base, earthly concerns that the only thing spiritual about them was their love for Guinness and whiskey. Not quite the spirits Fiona had in mind.
“I guess,” she said. “I can’t really speak for Hunter, but the only experiences I’ve ever had with things not quite of this world have been shite.”
Fiona regarded her for a long moment.
“You mean your place got trashed by bad spirits?” she finally asked. “Like some kind of, what? Poltergeists?”
“Oh, no,” Miki told her. “The Gentry have physical presence. Too bloody much of it, as far as I’m concerned.”
“The Gentry?”
Miki sighed. “It’s a long story,” she said. “But to give you the short version, I had a big fight with Donal last night because he was acting like a stupid little self-centered shite—”
“Or, in other words, he was being himself.”
Miki raised an eyebrow.
“Well, really,” Fiona said. “I mean, I’m sorry, he being your brother and all, but he’s never exactly made himself easy to like, has he? At least not for us. What does he call everyone who doesn’t quite match up to his obviously high standards?”
“Punters?”
“Exactly. Sometimes all he has to do is walk into the store and it’s all I can do to not give him a good smack across the head.”
Miki was so used to the way Donal could be that she never really thought all that much about how negatively other people might view him. She supposed it was because she’d always gotten to see the other side of him, the protective older brother capable of great generosity. Gone now. Lost to her in a welter of Gentry lies and promises.
“He’s not all bad,” she said, surprised that she could still defend him after the past twenty-four hours.