“Okay,” she said.
“Don’t go to sleep tonight. Please don’t.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Wonder of wonders—she kissed him back, mouth open, her breath mingling with his.
“I’m officially awake,” she said, pulling back to look into his face. “Now take Little Red Blabbing Hood back to her gram.”
He started down the steps, rethought that, went back, and kissed her again.
“Wowee,” Molly said when he returned to the car. He could hear in her voice that her mood had dramatically improved. “You guys were really sucking face.”
“We were, weren’t we?” Jared said. He felt dazed, a stranger in his own body. He could still feel her lips and taste her breath. “Let’s get you home.”
The last leg of that long, strange trip was only nine blocks, and Jared drove it without incident, finally rolling along Tremaine Street, past the empty houses. He pulled into Mrs. Ransom’s driveway. The headlights swept across the figure seated in a lawn chair, a body without face. Jared slammed on the brakes. Mrs. Ransom sat in the glare, a mummy.
Molly began to scream and Jared doused the headlights. He threw the Datsun into reverse and banged across the street to his own driveway.
When he unfastened Molly’s seatbelt, Jared drew the kid from the car and into his arms. She clung to him, and that was all right. It felt good.
“No worries,” he said, stroking her hair. It was in clumps, matted with sweat. “You’re staying with me. We’re going to put on some movies and pull an all-nighter.”
CHAPTER 14
Maura Dunbarton—once the subject of newspaper headlines, now largely forgotten—sat on the lower bunk of B-11, the cell she had shared with Kayleigh Rawlings for the last four years. The cell door was open. On B Wing, all the cell doors were open, and Maura did not believe they would roll closed and be locked from the Booth tonight. No, not tonight. The tiny TV set in the wall was on and tuned to NewsAmerica, but Maura had muted the sound. She knew what was going on; by now even the dimmest inmate in Dooling knew. RIOTING AT HOME AND ABROAD, read the super running across the bottom of the screen. This was followed by a list of cities. Most were American, because you cared about your own before you cared about those in more distant places, but Maura had also seen Calcutta, Sydney, Moscow, Cape Town, Mexico City, Bombay, and London before she stopped looking.
It was funny, when you thought about it; what were all those men rioting about? What did they think they could accomplish? Maura wondered if there would have been riots if it had been the other half of the human race who were falling asleep. She thought it unlikely.
Kayleigh’s head, swaddled in a white helmet that pulsed in and out with her breathing, lay in Maura’s lap. Maura held one of Kayleigh’s white-gloved hands, but she didn’t attempt to tamper with the material. There had been an announcement over the prison intercom system that it could be dangerous to do so, and the same warning had been thoroughly conveyed on the news broadcasts. Though the filament was slightly sticky, and very dense, Maura could still feel Kayleigh’s fingers buried inside, like pencils encased in thick plastic. She and Kayleigh had been lovers almost from the time Kayleigh, years younger, took up residence in B-11, doing time for assault with a deadly weapon. Age difference aside, they matched. Kayleigh’s slightly cockeyed sense of humor fit Maura’s cynicism. Kay was good-natured, filling the dark pits that had been eaten into Maura’s character by the things she had seen and the things she had done. She was a slick dancer, she was a wonderful kisser, and although they didn’t make love often these days, when they did, it was still good. As they lay together with their legs entwined, there was no prison for a little while, and no confusing outside world, either. It was just them.
Kayleigh was also a fine singer; she had won the prison talent show three years running. Last October there hadn’t been a dry eye in the house when she finished singing—a capella—“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Maura supposed all that was over now. People talked in their sleep; few if any sang in their sleep. Even if Kayleigh should be moved to sing, it would come out all muffled. And what if that crap was all down her throat, as well? And in her lungs? It probably was, although if that were the case, how she could go on breathing was a mystery.
Maura raised one knee, then the other, back and forth, up and down, rocking her lover gently. “Why did you have to go to sleep, honey? Why couldn’t you wait?”
Jeanette and Angel came by then, pushing a cart with two large coffee urns and two large plastic pitchers of juice on it. Maura could smell their approach before she saw them because man, that brew smelled bitter. Officer Rand Quigley was shepherding them along. Maura wondered how many of the female guards were left. She guessed not many. And few would show up for the next shift. Maybe none.
“Coffee, Maura?” Angel asked. “It’ll pep you right the fuck up.”
“No,” Maura said. Up and down went her knees. Up and down. Rock-a-bye Kayleigh, in the treetop.
“Sure? It’ll keep you goin. If I’m lyin, I’m dyin.”
“No,” Maura repeated. “Get on.”
Quigley didn’t like Maura’s tone. “Watch your mouth, inmate.”
“Or what? You’ll tonk me on the head with your stick and put me to sleep? Go ahead. That might be the only way I manage it.”
Quigley didn’t reply. He looked frazzled. Maura didn’t see why he should be. None of this would touch him; no man would bear this cross.
“You get that insomnia, don’t you?” Angel asked.
“Yeah. Takes one to know one.”
“Lucky us,” Angel said.
Wrong, Maura thought. Unlucky us.
“Is that Kayleigh?” Jeanette asked.
“No,” Maura said. “It’s Whoopi fucking Goldberg under that mess.”
“I’m sorry,” Jeanette said, and she looked sorry, and that hurt Maura’s heart in a way she had been guarding against. She would not cry in front of Officer Quigley or these young ones, though. She would not.
“Get on, I said.”
When they were gone with their fucked-up coffee wagon, Maura bent over her sleeping cellie—if you could call it sleep. To Maura it looked more like a magic spell from a fairy tale.
Love had come late for her and it was a miracle that it had come at all, she knew that. Like a rose blooming in a bomb crater. She should be grateful for the time the two of them had had, all the greeting cards and pop songs said so. But when she looked at the grotesque membrane covering Kayleigh’s sweet face, she found that her well of gratitude, always shallow, was now dry.
Not her eyes, though. With the coffee crew and Officer Quigley gone (nothing left but the trailing stink of that strange brew), she let the tears come. They fell on the white stuff enclosing Kayleigh’s head and the white stuff sucked the moisture up greedily.
If she’s somewhere close, and if I could just go to sleep, maybe I could catch up. Then we could go together.
But no. Because of the insomnia. She had lived with it since the night she had methodically slaughtered her entire family, finishing with Slugger, their elderly German shepherd. Petting him, soothing him, letting him lick her hand, then cutting his throat. If she got two hours of unconsciousness at night, she considered herself lucky. On many nights she got none at all… and nights in Dooling could be long. But Dooling was just a place. Insomnia had been her real prison across these years. Insomnia was boundless, and it never put her on Good Report.
I’ll be awake after most of them are asleep, she thought. Guards and inmates both. I’ll have the run of the place. Always assuming I want to stay, that is. And why would I want to go anywhere else? She might wake up, my Kayleigh. With a thing like this, anything is possible. Isn’t it?