The Cormorant (36 page)

Miriam feels caged. White walls. The pharmaceutical
stink
. And the hospital has a hum to it. Even at night, a low, deep vibration. She figures it’s all those machines keeping people alive, but a little part of her thinks it’s something else: the chanting of souls so close to death–
same frequency, we’re all connected
, Not-Louis had said.

She hates that sound.

She loathes this place.

She has to go.

SIXTY-SIX

MOTHER MAY I?

She goes to her mother and sits with her for a while and tells her that she’s going to go. Mother says no real words – she just babbles. A burbling brook that
sounds
like words the way a toddler mimics the inflections and cadences of human speech. But it’s nothing you can understand.

Miriam strokes her mother’s cheek.

“You know, it’s pretty fucked up,” Miriam says. “On the one hand, I’m still so,
so
mad at you. All my life I felt like I was under your thumb. Your mean, jabby little thumb. All the things you said to me. The way you treated me. Everything was my fault even when it wasn’t. And now here we are. I’m hurt. You’re… lost. And it
is
my fault. That’s where I get tripped up, because once, I think I was a good person. Maybe. But you treated me like I wasn’t and I wonder, were you trying to make me a better person but by doing so made me a worse one? Or were you just foretelling the future? That one day we’d be sitting here like this. That we’d intersect again and I’d rob you of your faith and your mind and your life and…”

A gasping sob sneaks out and Miriam clamps it down: she squeezes her eyes so hard she thinks she might never be able to open them again, she bites her teeth and draws a deep, shuddering breath.

Don’t do this,
she thinks.

She sits for a little while. “It used to be that I would try to stop people from dying, and instead I’d only make it happen again.”
That little boy and the red balloon…
“Maybe that’s how it was with you. You wanted to do right so badly that you did wrong instead. It happens. I’m proof.”

She stoops and kisses her mother’s temple.

She represses another sob.

Evelyn Black smiles. Babbles. Laughs at some joke nobody told.

Then Miriam gets up to leave.

As she turns to exit–

“It is what it is.”

She turns back.

Her mother faces toward the ceiling. Staring.

Did she say it? Was it in her voice?

Miriam isn’t sure.

SIXTY-SEVEN

THAT’S SOME BUDDHIST SHIT, RIGHT THERE

She’s back at the motel after a day of hitchhiking.

As she’s heading up to the office, she sees Dave the Florida Man out there picking little bougainvillea flowers from the half-collapsed hedge.

“Hey,” she says.

“All of life is suffering,” he says.

“Oh yeah?”

“I once got high and shot a shitbucket of heroin into my body and I stood there smoking a cigarette and it fell off onto the floor and caught fire to my bungalow. Smoke and fire woke me up. Big black smoke like a, a, monster or something. I busted open the window and crawled out and it was only later I remembered that I left my retarded brother in there. Bud. Bud burned up in the house along with all his cats. I said I’d never get high again. I said it even as I got high later that night. People are stupid. Life is suffering. But once in a while someone finds a way out of it. A way that ain’t heroin. A way of light instead of a big dark hungry monster.” He sniffs. “I don’t get high anymore. I’m pretty happy.”

“Thanks, Dave.”

“Sure thing, Mary.”

And he goes back to picking little purple-pink flowers.

She shrugs, goes up into the office where she finds Jerry Wu.

Jerry’s face is that of a man looking at a ghost. Or maybe about to be fondled by a particularly randy Bigfoot. Fear and awe in equal measure.

“I saw the news,” is all he has to say.

“It’s pretty fucked,” she says.

He nods.

“I need your help. You and Corie.”

“I… yeah. Sure. Of course.”

SIXTY-EIGHT

GONE FISHIN’

Water dark and shadow – bubbles and kelp and little fish shining like knives turning in sunlight – the bird thumps its head against something half-buried in sand and broken coral
, thud thud thud
– then the world shifts, upside down, up, up, up – surface, air, light–

Corie hops back onto the boat.

Miriam gasps.

“You all right?” Jerry asks.

“Not really,” Miriam says.
But it is what it is.

Then she holds her nose and feels her heart try to climb out her butthole as she dives into the water–

The shock of panic is like two hands clapping over her. She immediately thinks,
I’m drowning, I’m dying, Eleanor Caldecott is down here with her corpse hands ready to pull me into the sand…

But then a dark shape cuts the water next to her.

Corie swims next to her.

It gives her strange comfort.

Troubling comfort, in a way – is it uncomfortable comfort? Or comfortable discomfort? Fuck it, it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that she closes her eyes and sinks to the bottom. And there, her fingers search the sand and find the box that Sugar told her about. She swims to the surface. Corie breaks through with her, gulping down a fish. And they both come back into the boat.

Later, with the box under her arm, Miriam bids adieu to Jerry.

“You’re a nice guy,” she tells him. “Not many of you around here. You and your rare bird are real rare birds.”

“I’m going to lose the motel,” he says suddenly.

“What?”

“Nice guy doesn’t mean having money. They’re gonna foreclose on this place. Don’t know what I’ll do next.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I owe ten grand. Whaddya gonna do?”

“Will two grand hold ’em off?” She fishes through her bag – fetched from the room where it sat on the bed – and hands him a wad of cash.

“Uh. Holy crap. Maybe.”

“If it does, it does. I’ll see you, Jerry.”

“See you, Miriam. You ever need a room again, come by.”

She salutes him, and that’s that.

SIXTY-NINE

THUMB OUT

She walks and hitchhikes at the same time. Most cars pass. People know not to pick up hitchhikers anymore. Especially when they watch the news and hear about crazy motherfuckers who kill people and steal their boats and shoot up tiki bars.

She wishes she had a cigarette.

Then a car pulls up.

Gray sedan.

Back window busted out.

“Shit,” she says.

INTERLUDE

NOW

“And now we’re all caught up,” Grosky says.

“To my credit, I didn’t run,” Miriam says. “So I consider these handcuffs a bit of an insult. Why handcuffs instead of the zips?”

Vills grins. “Can’t saw through these.”

“Ah.” She sniffs. “So why
didn’t
you pick me up? At the hospital, I mean. I was a flower fresh for the plucking. Why did you wait?”

Grosky
hmph
s. “All this is a little… what’s the line from that movie? Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush? We didn’t want to make a splash. We knew we could find you again.”

“Congrats. You did. So now what?”

“I just gotta know. You’re saying what happened to Ashley Gaynes is… you’re telling us you…
became
the birds–”

Miriam shrugs.

“And they – you – ate him.”

“Everything but the leg.”

Her stomach lurches just thinking about it.

A sea wind comes in through the broken shack windows.

Vills says, “This is all wifty. She’s pulling your cock, Richie. Mine, too. Let’s get out of here. Leave her here. Call the police to come pick her up. Or just let her go. I don’t care, but I’m done.”

“No,” Grosky says, “we ain’t done yet. We have yet to make our offer–”

Just then, Vills’ phone vibrates and makes a chirp.

She takes it, tilts it toward herself like a poker player looking at his cards. Then she turns the phone face-down again.

Grosky gives her a look.

“It’s nothing,” Vills says.

“It’s something,” Miriam insists.

“Who was it?” Grosky asks.

“It’s
nothing
,” Vills says.

“It’s Tap-Tap,” Miriam says.

Vills’ eyes go wide.

Grosky laughs. “The Haitian? What? You fuckin’ kiddin’ me?”

“Forgot about him, did you? Your partner here is going to serve me up to him on a silver platter. Isn’t that right, Vills? She’s trying to hurry you out so Tap-Tap can roll in here and chop my legs off. Maybe my head. Because I owe him a body and I did not deliver. And
she’s
on his payroll. Watch. Necklace.” She tries to affect the Haitian sound: “
Tap-Tap love dat gold
.”

Vills starts to protest but Miriam continues. “You guys leave and maybe she’ll sneak back in here and put a bullet in my head. Right, Vills? Hey, lemme ask – what time is it?”

But neither of them budges. Neither of the agents speaks. Vills stares at Miriam. And Grosky stares at Vills.

Then Miriam says, “Hey, Richie. Wanna know how you die?”

That’s all it takes.

Vills moves fast. She’s got the gun in her hand, leveled at Grosky’s completely surprised, bug-eyed face.

But Miriam moves fast, too.

She knees the table forward. Vills
oof
s like a pillow with the air punched out of it and suddenly she’s leaning forward–

Just enough for Miriam to get the handcuffs and chain around Vills’ scrawny chicken-bone neck. Vills kicks and grunts. The gun goes up and fires two shots in the air, punching holes through the thatch and causing dust and sand to stream down right in her eye.

The gun hand flails.

Miriam ducks it.

And she brings her whole weight down, hunkering like a gargoyle, shoulder next to the table, both wrists pulling, pulling, pulling.

The gun goes off again, and Grosky staggers, a spray of blood kicked up from the meat of his shoulder.

Vills makes a sound like
grrk!

And then her body stops moving.

The gun thumps to the floor.

Vills is just meat, now.

Miriam reaches out with a boot and pulls the gun toward her. She snatches it up and points it at Grosky.

“The cuffs. Undo them.”

Grosky stands, shell-shocked.

Miriam barks the order again. “Big boy! Cuffs! Undo them!”

He looks at his own bloody shoulder and then hurries over and fumbles around before fishing out the keys and slapping them down.

“She shot me,” Grosky says.

“She was going to kill you.”

“She was my partner.”

“Life’s hard. Wear a dick protector.”

“How’d you–”

“How’d I know? Because I saw the way you died. Because that’s how the visions work.”

“Oh. Ri… right. But how’d you know about… about Tap-Tap?”

“It was a guess but a pretty educated one. The vision of your death started with a text message. But don’t forget, I saw how
she
dies, too. After killing you and presumably me, she ends up back at the car. Which is what, about a quarter-mile from here?”

He nods.

“Tap-Tap is there. With Goldie and Jay-Jay. He shoots her in the head as soon as she walks up. The other two distract her, pulling up in a white Caddy. He’s hiding behind the back end of the car. Big as he is, he can still hunker down pretty small.”

“That… that means he’s there now.”

“It does.”

“Shit.”

“Mm-hmm. You want your gun back?”

He narrows his eyes. “Why would you give it to me?”

“Because I just saved your life.”