American Elsewhere (31 page)

But there Parson stops. He looks around as if he’s just heard something disconcerting outside and is listening to see if he can hear it again.

“What is it?” Mona asks.

Parson opens his mouth, but he never answers. All the features of his face, which is usually so blank and reserved, suddenly snap open: his eyes shoot wide, his lips stretch back into a horrible grimace, and his eyebrows leap inches up his forehead. He shoves himself back in his chair, veins bulging, and a wet gagging sound comes from somewhere in his throat.

“Mr. Parson?” says Mona.

He begins shaking, his cheeks quivering and his hands clutched around the armrests of his chair. He sticks his legs out so hard and so straight that he shoves off the desk and knocks himself out of his seat.

Mona jumps up and begins to rush around the desk. “Mr. Parson!”

Parson lies on his back on the floor behind his desk, knees and wrists strangely bent. He rubs the knuckle of one hand against his breast; the fingers of the other mindlessly search the inside of his thigh, next to his crotch. His back and neck are almost completely bowed up: he is balancing on the very top of his head (his wide, oddly purplish mouth open to the ceiling) and the base of his buttocks. He coughs, and a dark cloud of urine blossoms across his khaki slacks.

“Oh, Christ,” says Mona. She recognizes this as a seizure, and for a
moment she considers sticking a pen in his mouth or something before recalling a snippet of a first aid class that said the whole swallowing-your-tongue thing was horseshit and the best thing to do is make sure people seizing can’t hurt themselves. So she grabs his chair and pushes it away, a well-timed move, as Parson soon starts thrashing from side to side.

Finally he goes limp and falls to the floor, his eyes shut and his head on one side, facing the wall. Mona can see he’s breathing—just barely—and she stoops and feels his pulse. It’s regular, or at least regular enough.

Mona gently takes him by the chin and moves his head so she can see his face. He appears uninjured, for the most part. “What the hell was that?” she murmurs. She wonders what to do. There’s no hospital for miles, and she isn’t aware of any doctor in Wink.

She’s about to check his fingers to see if any are broken when, with absolutely no warning, an immense pain stabs through her shoulder. Then gravity stops working for her, and she starts flying over the desk.

It’s true that, in moments of extreme stress, things appear to slow down, like putting your finger on a revolving record or running a roll of film at the wrong speed. As Mona flies over Parson’s desk, everything slows down just enough for the cold, quiet cop part of her brain to contemplate what’s happening to her and dissect all her sensations one by one. Because as crazy as this night has been for her, it’s still not the sort of crazy where people suddenly start flying, especially not with such great speed and alarmingly terrible coordination.

The first thing Mona thinks is:
My shoulder sure does hurt. Why is that?

The second thing she thinks is:
Where’s my gun?
After a moment of mental searching, she identifies the cold lump against her pelvic bone as the Glock. It doesn’t seem to be budging yet, which is surprising as right now Mona appears to be upside down.

Which, naturally, makes her think a third thing:
How the fuck did I get upside down?

And as the world tumbles over and over again for Mona, she realizes that, among all the dusky honey colors and darkness of Parson’s office, there is a large splotch of purple fabric with white polka dots at his desk, something Mona definitely didn’t notice before. The pattern is familiar to her, she thinks…

But she forgets all this when she collides with Parson’s sofa at such a high speed that the frame completely cracks underneath her. Mona’s world fills with dust and unwashed pillow covers and the smell of old coffee. She feels her arms and legs flailing around as she tries to get her bearings, which is extremely difficult as the blood in her head is still swirling around like a whirlpool. When things slowly begin to resolve themselves around her, she blinks hard and starts to make out the form of someone standing over Parson, shoulders heaving with deep, angry breaths…

“What did you do to him?” demands Mrs. Benjamin. Her fists are clenched and her face is white with rage.

Mona doesn’t bother to answer. She remembers the Glock was digging into her pelvis, realizes it’s now lodged up under her back, and without a second’s thought she’s already reaching for it. Her fingers find the mouth of the Glock, and she whips the gun around while twirling it up in the air like a baton until its handle neatly falls into her waiting palm. She doesn’t think she could do that trick again even if she practiced.

Mona brings her other arm up to support the butt of the gun, but this is shockingly hard: not only is her head spinning and her neck aching with whiplash, her left shoulder is in incredible pain, and when she glances to see the cause of this she finds four red welts appearing on her upper arm.

They sort of look like finger marks, but small ones.

As Mona draws a bead on Mrs. Benjamin’s face, she tries to ignore the madly amused part of her mind that wonders if this quaint elderly woman just hurled her across the room with the speed and force of a driver being ejected from a rally car mid-lap.

“Stop right there,” says Mona. Her words are slurred.

“What have you done to him?” demands Mrs. Benjamin again.

“Stay where you are, goddamn it,” says Mona.

Mrs. Benjamin kneels to look at Parson.

“And don’t you fucking touch him!” Mona yells.

Mrs. Benjamin reaches out to touch Parson’s face. So Mona decides that now is a diplomatic moment to fire a warning shot.

Every ounce of her training screams against this. Popping off a round is a last resort, for a pistol firing live ammunition is not exactly a surgical, precise tool: bullets have a nasty tendency to ricochet, burst, or punch through walls. But Mona’s done a lot of things for the first time tonight—commit armed robbery, shoot a guy, etc.—so she decides, shit, why not add to the list.

She points the Glock at the handheld radio above both Mrs. Benjamin and Parson, takes a breath, and pulls the trigger.

The gesture achieves its intended effect: the gunfire cracks through the office, and immediately the radio shatters and slams against the office wall. Little pieces of plastic go flying, and Mrs. Benjamin’s hand stops in midair. She slowly turns to look at Mona, face fixed in an expression of utter outrage, as if Mona has just spilled coffee all over her carpet or shown up in casual clothes to a formal-only affair.

“What do you think you are doing?” she demands in a quiet voice.

“Stand up,” Mona says. She puts the sights back on Mrs. Benjamin. “And get away from him.”

Mrs. Benjamin glowers at her. The radio is still trying to work: one speaker dangles from it by a rainbow of wires, and the Sons of the Pioneers are just finishing up their song in a sputtering, stuttering chorus.

“Lady,” says Mona, “I don’t miss twice.”

Mrs. Benjamin slowly stands and steps away from Parson. She glares at Mona before asking, “What are you doing here?”

“I’d ask the same of you.”

She sniffs. “I merely came to discuss a personal matter.”

“So did I.”

“And
your
discussion resulted in
this
?” scoffs Mrs. Benjamin. “I doubt it.”

“I don’t have the damnedest idea what did that,” says Mona.

Mrs. Benjamin appears a little troubled to hear this. “What did he say to you?”

“If you think I’m going to tell you, you’re out of your damn mind.”

“Why?” asks Mrs. Benjamin, affronted.

“Well, for starters, you just”—she pauses, not wanting to give voice to the ridiculous idea that she was
thrown
—“attacked me.”

“I did not
attack
you, my dear,” says Mrs. Benjamin, who appears very calm for someone who has a gun in their face. “I merely removed your person to a safer distance.”

“Yeah,” says Mona. “At about forty miles an hour. How the hell
you
did that, I don’t know. But worse…”

“Worse what?”

“You did something to me,” Mona says quietly. “You did something to my head.”

“Your head?” Then Mrs. Benjamin appears to realize, and she laughs, delighted. “Oh, do you mean the
mirrors
, my dear?”

“Yeah,” says Mona. “And I don’t find it that goddamn funny.”

“But the mirrors aren’t anything!” she says. “Or at least
those
ones aren’t. Are you really so troubled by them? The mirrors were, well… just sort of a test. And you passed. Doesn’t that make you feel good, my dear?”

“It does not,” says Mona. “That
did
something to me. I’m sure of it. I keep… I keep seeing things I
don’t want to see
.”

The humor drains out of Mrs. Benjamin’s face. The yellow light of Parson’s lamp catches every wrinkle in her face, and her eyes appear to glint from very far back in her head. Mona wonders, not for the first time, exactly how old this woman is supposed to be. “Then you are seeing things that are there,” she says. “
Really
there. And the mirrors couldn’t make you do that, Mona Bright. Whatever change allows you to see what you’re seeing happened long, long ago, I’d imagine.”

Mona lowers the gun, but only slightly. “What the fuck are you people,” she asks softly.

Mrs. Benjamin smiles and laughs a little. Her mouth is filled with mounds of pink gums topped with tiny dots of dirty brown teeth. She stops laughing, but does not stop smiling. “What happened to him?” she asks. “Tell me. Now.”

“We were just talking.”

“Talking about what?”

“Crazy shit. I don’t know. Some story.”

“A story? His or yours?”

“His. He told me some story about a bird carrying its babies.”

“What?” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Babies?” Mona is a little pleased to see she looks just about as confused as Mona felt.

“He told me a story about a bird carrying its babies to safety,” she says, feeling ridiculous. “Then he just… wigged out.”

Mrs. Benjamin turns this over. She gasps a little, and says, “Oh.” Then she sighs sadly, looks at Parson on the ground, and shakes her head. “Oh. Oh, I see now. You wanted to tell her,” she says to him. “But that isn’t meant to be told, old thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are some things we are not allowed to discuss, dear,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

“He told me that. Like, a million goddamn times.”

“Well. He tried to bend the rules. But those rules aren’t the kind you bend. So he paid the price.”

Now Mona lowers the gun all the way. “That happened to him… because of the
story
he told me?” It seems inconceivable—it’s like she’s saying he did the mental equivalent of crossing an invisible electric fence.

Mrs. Benjamin stoops down, picks up Parson in both arms, and begins walking toward the couch. “Get off,” she snaps at Mona, and Mona is already moving before she realizes the weight of a grown man doesn’t appear to strain Mrs. Benjamin at all.

She watches as Mrs. Benjamin lays him out on the couch cushions. “What’s going to happen to him?”

“I don’t know,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “I have never witnessed anyone attempt to tell someone something
not
meant to be discussed. There are
rules
, you see.”

“I don’t. Will he die?”

Mrs. Benjamin laughs. “Oh,” she says. “Aren’t you so sweet.” Then she peers at Mona, and all her good humor is gone again. “What I wonder is, why would he tell you such a thing? It’s not for you to know, dear. It’s very bad for us. We’re sensitive about such things, you see.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Mona says. “I don’t know what the hell he meant by anything he said, either. None of it made sense to me.”

Mrs. Benjamin surveys Mona for a long time. “He meant for you to do something, didn’t he. He trusted you. I can’t imagine why, but he did. He had—he
has
—intentions. It’s likely he even knew this would happen to him, I suppose.” She looks back at Parson, who lies unconscious on the couch with his mouth open. “You do know, my dear,” she says absentmindedly, “that I could kill you, if I wished? I could tear your head from your neck, or gut you with my bare fingers. It’s allowed, you see. You’re not from here.”

“I’d drop you before you moved,” says Mona, who begins backing away slowly.

“Hm,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “No. I doubt it. I very much doubt it.” She frowns. “But I won’t. He was doing something. He knew something. Maybe something I don’t. Parson’s always been quite damnably good at knowing things. So I’ll let you be. For now.” She picks Parson back up. Once more he seems to weigh no more than a feather to her. Without a word, she begins walking toward the open door.

“Where are you taking him?” asks Mona.

“To my home, where it’s safer,” says Mrs. Benjamin over her shoulder.

“Why’s it safe there but not here?”

“Because
I’ll
be there, silly,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “But maybe nowhere’s safe anymore. If I were you, dear—and I’m not, but if I
were—I would stay inside for the rest of the night. I know you probably have something important to do, but I assure you, it can wait until morning. Who knows what’s out here with us? Even I can’t say.” And she totters across the parking lot with the limp body in her arms until she passes out of the light of the neon sign, and disappears.

A bump for David Dord isn’t a bump for your average cocaine user, if such a thing could even be said to exist. He does not sniff at a tiny dot of coke balanced on the rim of a novelty spoon, or haltingly insufflate a fragile line running along the edge of a bowie knife. No, Dord prefers his cocaine to be administered in heaps, hillocks, veritable mountains, tumbling, tumbling piles and pyramids and pylons of cocaine. He wants each bump to be so significant that he has trouble actually getting it into his nostril, like a man wrestling a big sandwich into his mouth. He wants it to inadvertently coat his upper lip and maybe his chin and cheeks; he wants there to be
accidents
, damn it, needless, wasteful accidents, immense avalanches of cocaine lost en route between the bag and his sinus lining. For David Dord does not use or abuse cocaine (and the difference between the two when they refer to an illegal, highly addictive drug is mystifying to Dord); no, he applies it
liberally
and
generously
, not only to his mucous membranes and from there the tangle of tissues that form his nervous system, but also to his face, neck, shoulders, arms, fingers, and, if he’s entertaining someone, maybe even his junk.