The Juliet (33 page)

“You have electricity up here,” said Budge.

“Thank you Charles Schooner. You know, the industrialist?” The old man hustled Budge into the chair. “Centenary was an experiment of the age. Schooner invented it out of nothing, laid the rails and the power lines. He conjured a white city in the desert, fully electrified. The main lines are buried and still functional. The above ground works have been scavenged over the years. Do you like brandy?”

Skinner shuffled to an antique sideboard, atop which the bottle and several short tumblers waited. He touched the bottle and breathed out a harsh breath meant to be a sigh. “I’ll bring the bottle to the table.”

“Here, let me help you.” Budge took over and urged his host onto the sofa as he collected the tumblers. He poured heavy for the old gent. It was a gesture of respect that did not go unnoticed. When Budge settled back with his own drink he asked, “Why the lanterns?”

“I was born in 1864. I spent all of my formative years in the dark, comparatively. My eyes never quite adjusted to the new light.”

Budge looked around. “You don’t have a television.”

The mayor shook his head. “Can’t go to the cinema, either. Brings on terrible aches.”

“Oh. I thought you recognized me. I’m an actor.”

“How wonderful for you. We have an Opera House.”

“So I’ve seen.” Budge wondered if the old man knew about the pending renovation. “I’ve never worked the stage.”

Skinner smiled. He had all his teeth, but they were short, blunted by the years. “Well, we’ll have to fix that.”

“Sir?”

“I know. Young men have no patience for destiny.” The mayor took a long swallow from his tumbler. He said, “You like the house? You like Centenary?”

“I do. Leaving first thing in the morning, though.”

Skinner kept smiling. “You’ll come back.”

“I certainly hope so.”

Budge drained his glass and Skinner watched admiringly. He said, “I’ve lived here since I was forty years old, and back then forty
was
old. You’re about forty?”

“Thirty-eight.”

Another smile from the Mayor. “You’re lying, but I suppose that’s a hazard of the profession. My point is, I don’t remember much about being young, but I had a young wife.” He gestured nonspecifically to the great beyond. “My Lily.”

Lily.
Budge had been playing in her grave. He was surprised to notice his tumbler was full again. He hadn’t seen the old man move.

“She died young. Terrible circumstances.” Skinner leaned forward to emphasize, “Violently.”

The Mayor seemed to dangle the word in front of Budge like a cat toy.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“She’s still with me, you know. A young bride is supposed to keep a man young as well, but she is different.” He reached for the worn handle of his wooden cane, just to worry it some more. “Lily keeps me old. She took the best of me and then
lost
it.”

Budge couldn’t taste the liquor, but the Mayor seemed delighted with his own drink.

The Mayor said, “Still, the lady keeps me company.”

Something was happening, but Budge didn’t know what. He felt odd, overwhelmed. “What’s going on,” he managed, although he sounded very distant, even to his own ears.

“That heaviness in your breast? You’ll grow accustomed to it.”

In dreams one often thinks,
hey, wait a minute, this is just a dream,
just before waking in damp sheets, alone, relieved but sad as well. Budge suspected that was the case now, but no matter how hard he tried to shake himself to consciousness, nothing changed. He couldn’t break the moment.

The old man was almost sympathetic. “Lily says you have something for me.”

The Juliet? Florian said there was an old man. He said his mother’s lover took the emeralds from an old man who lived in Centenary.

Budge still had his will. Perhaps it wasn’t a dream. “No,” he said firmly.

The Mayor opened his leathery palm and held it towards his guest. “But you do.”

“
No
.”

Budge put the drink down on the table. The bottle, which had started full, was now half drained. What the hell had happened? Had he blacked out? The old man leaned forward, the hollows of his face deepened by the lantern’s indirect illumination, transforming him into a desert warlock. The Mayor’s open, extended hand began to tremble; what was merely the muscular weakness of age appeared seismic, threatening.

Budge stood, but wooziness almost knocked him down again.

“No,” he said once more before tilting, careening through the front door. He bolted out of the little house and into the night. He could feel the tendrils of music at his back as he struggled to find the burro path again.

The Mayor stood in his doorway to watch as Budge made his way.

“Mr. Budge,” said the Mayor. “You are not being pursued.”

Budge stilled.

“However, you are too close to the bluff’s edge; it’s nearly invisible at night, and if you go over you will break your back on the rocks below. What is the old ribald joke? You know, the one about what’s in your pocket?”

How could the Mayor know? And then Budge realized that he was referring to the flashlight, as in
is that a flashlight in your pocket or…
When he flicked it on he saw that the old man was terrifyingly correct. He was only a step away from the edge. He let the beam play over the jagged, wrecked slope of boulders, slag, wire, and glass. There was always glass.

And then the white wooden cross of Lily Joy’s grave. From this vantage point she seemed so close. The trinkets shined back their unnatural colors. Budge turned his beam away, embarrassed as if he’d stumbled across a woman changing her clothes.

“Thank you,” he said to his host.

“You’ll return,” said the Mayor. “And with any luck, we won’t meet again.”

THE COUNTY MAN

Chapter 12

November, 1958: Del Ray, CA

Vacations, however brief, alter the spirit. Audrey couldn’t help but notice how peaceful Florian was after their little ghost town adventure, and in contrast, how dark and private Budge had become. She had no intention of asking her nephew what was troubling him, but she knew Budge was low on money and considered the possibility that he might live with her and Florian in their little apartment in Del Rey. Maybe just for a little while, and only if Florian remained docile.

From the moment they packed up to leave Centenary, Budge had not made a single wisecrack. He was gentle and solicitous of Florian, making sure his artificial sibling was comfortable and entertained on the long ride back. However, Budge was downright solemn with Audrey.

She tried not to think too deeply about it, preferring to enjoy Florian rather than fret about Budge. Her nephew was a grown man with all his faculties. He’d come out of his mood soon enough.

The Monday after they returned, Audrey took Florian with her to the grocery store. They went in the early morning when only the retirees in their neighborhood would be doing their shopping and there was a low chance of Florian being accosted by some twisted fan. While Audrey moved slowly through the aisles, checking off her list and filling the cart, Florian moved ahead. He had been to McCaughey’s store often enough, and he knew by heart how the goods were stocked and organized, but he behaved as if every aisle held some kind of surprise, and the thrill of turning corners was too powerful to stave off. During a typical trip, Florian might make three or four complete circuits through the store to Audrey’s one.

She heard a commotion several aisles ahead, so she left her cart stranded in front of a canned fruit cocktail display. It could only be Florian, making a nuisance of himself. She found him in the aisle of sweets, breakfast foods, and cheap toys. He seemed to be clinging to the top shelf, trying to keep himself upright. His face was white.

Two of Audrey’s matronly neighbors stood by, holding their handbags over their stomachs. Otherwise, there was no one else.

Audrey yelled, “Florian!”

He slumped towards the shelf, his shoes slipping backward across the waxed linoleum floor. “Hurt,” he said.

Florian let go, and for a moment it seemed as if he might regain his balance. Before Audrey could reach him his legs gave way and he fell to the floor slowly, like a bear doing a plié.

He made sure that not a single item from the shelves fell to the floor with him. He was careful, considerate in death.

* *
*

The doctors said he’d suffered an intracranial aneurysm. And suffer was the word for it. The pain in those last moments must have been excruciating. When Audrey told Budge, she used hard terms: “He just dropped dead.”

Audrey turned mean. Budge tried to comfort her, but he could tell she could hardly stand to be near him. Too many lights had gone out. There was no way she would invite him to live with her now; her house was big enough for three, but not for two. Not for her and Budge, anyway.

The service was private and small. Attending were Budge, Audrey, and Mr. Fitzgerald, the telegenic District Attorney who had helped Florian with his testimony at Officer Taylor’s trial. There was no viewing. Florian would be cremated. After the minister said his piece, Audrey and Fitzgerald chatted together in a quiet corner, and Budge excused himself, claiming he had a meeting with his agent.

He knew they were talking about The Juliet. No doubt she was soliciting advice for how she should “manage” her secret inheritance.

While they consulted, Budge rushed back to Audrey’s house. He imagined that when she returned, she’d drown her grief in a dram or three of Kirschwasser and then get on with her life, perhaps selling The Juliet through one of Fitzgerald’s contacts.

Only she no longer had The Juliet. Those stupid owl jars were full of bath beads and nothing else.

Budge realized how unfair that was.

He dragged a chair into the bathroom and stood on it to be eye to eye with those hideous owls. He opened one and jammed the smaller half of The Juliet inside. “For you, Aunt Aud.”

He then took the other jar down, gripping it like a baseball, with two fingers curled over the lid. He intended to smash it on the floor, so there’d be no confusion. Budge loved Audrey, and he was grateful that she’d raised him, but he was also very angry that she’d kept The Juliet a secret. He shifted the remaining owl to the center of the shelf, so she’d see it right away. He wanted to leave a clear message:
so long and keep quiet. It could have been worse.

As he stepped down from the chair, his heart slowed and his mind cleared. For the first time in his life Budge felt as if he had a future. He was no longer restless. Was this what being a grown-up felt like? He hefted the owl jar, tossing it lightly in his hand. He would never see Aunt Audrey again. For some reason, the novelty jar of green bath beads looked less awful, perhaps because it was no longer looking down on him.

He took the damned thing with him.

* *
*

Budge bought a gasping, sputtering Harley Hummer for fifty dollars from an addict friend who was honest about the bike’s condition: it had been in several spills and needed constant maintenance to keep running. Budge didn’t care. He jammed some clothes and The Juliet inside two road-beat, fringed saddlebags and was both depressed and relieved to see that his worldly effects added up to so little. He owed rent on his one room apartment, but the best he could do was leave behind twenty bucks, his record collection, and an autograph book full of B-list signatures. That would have to do. He dropped the key in his landlady’s mailbox and hit the road.

It had only been two weeks since he’d left Centenary. It seemed like a lifetime ago: poor Florian had died, and Budge was returning to the desert a new man, driven by new dreams. As an actor, he had ambitions that could be measured by the common standards of earnings and fame, but now his goals were more soulful, and he felt like he had a bigger role to play in the world.

He headed back to the ghost town, making a pass by the camp to get his bearings, but he didn’t stop there. He wanted to find the odd little house where the Mayor lived, set back on bluff overlooking the trash end of the basin. He wanted to tell the old man that he was right, that he had come back, and that Lily was right, too. Budge did indeed have something of hers.

He had no intention of returning The Juliet to the Mayor. What he wanted was for the old man to explain it to him. Everything. What the damned stone meant, and how Budge was supposed to reap her magic.

Just thinking about it made him feel light. This was probably how people felt when they found religion.

He drove instinctively, but nothing in the daylight matched up with his memory of that late-night hike. The bike rattled without mercy. He detoured down a couple of likely routes only to turn back each time. Finally, he started down a path that was only barely a road. He knew it wouldn’t take him where he wanted to go, but it was flat and long, and he needed to think. The end of it was in sight, but its nearness was an illusion. The road kept going and going, the same thing, forever. It was wonderful.