Multiplex Fandango (34 page)

The Long Cool Woman settled and turned towards him.
She opened her eyes and cast an emerald-eyed gaze upon him, her words fast and low.

"¿Por qué has venido?”
she asked.

Why have you come?
Gibb translated to himself.

The man wiped his eyes with his free hand, and tilted his head as if he were speaking to his long lost.
"Por qué te extrano."

Because I miss you.

"¿Por qué usted me molesta?"
she snapped, her voice anything but loving.

Why do you bother me?

Undeterred by the anger, the man answered slowly, his heart and soul merging with every syllable.
"Quisiera que usted estuviera
 
aquí.”

I wish you were here,
he said and Gibb felt every word.

The Long Cool Woman stared into the man's eyes as each of the assembled mourners held their breath, Gibb included.
When she finally spoke, her voice slow and filled with passion, they exhaled and their breaths became an audible wind.

"Estoy aquí,"
came the words as if they belonged to the desert wind.

I am here,
she said, as her hand went from gripping the man's hand to caressing his cheek.

The man sobbed once more, and then gulped as he swallowed heavy emotion.
He cast his eyes to Hell for a moment, before he raised them and gazed into the eyes of the Long Cool Woman.
"No. Me refiero a
 
que desearia que estuviera viva,"
he sighed, a lifetime of need encompassed in those seven words.

No.
I mean I wish you were alive.

The Long Cool Woman stared into the man's eyes, st
r
oked his cheek one time, and then answered softly.
"Desee la lluvia, desee la felicidad, pero no desee que Dios le devuelva lo que se ha llevado.”

Wish for rain, wish for happiness, but do not wish for God to return what he's already taken.

Roles reversed as her earlier anger became his.
He frowned as he spat the words,
"Entonces no quiero a Dios."

Then I don't want God.

"No digas eso! No sabes lo que dices,"
she hissed.

Don't say that.
You can't mean that.

"Pero yo se, es a ti a quien amo,"
he said kissing the hand of the Long Cool Woman's as if it were his wife's.
"Es a ti a quien siempre
 
he amado.
”

But I do.
It's you I love.
It's you that I've always loved.

"Entonces amame dejandome ir,"
she smiled sadly.

Then love me by letting me go.

"¿Qué?"

What?

"Dejame ir,"
she said, her voice little more than a sigh.
"Estoy muerta,
 
asi que dejame estar con Dios."

Let me go.
I am dead, so let me be with God.

"No puedo."
His own sigh merged seamlessly on the end of hers.

I can't.

She stared at him, then removed her hand from his embrace.
She placed it on her lap and spoke through pursed lips.
"Entonces eres un egoista."

Then you are selfish.

"Deseo solamente amarte,"
he pleaded, reaching out, but afraid to actually touch the Long Cool Woman, but desperate.

I only want to love you.

"Entonces amame y dejame ir,"
she said shaking her head.

Then love me and let me go.

"Te amo,"
he said, staring into her eyes.

I love you.

She turned and stared towards Heaven.
She continued to shake her head slightly, until finally she was still.

"Te amo,"
he said once more, this time softer.

The Long Cool Woman smiled once, a ghost of love escaping, then closed her eyes.
She returned to her coma, no longer a part of the living, nor longer a part of the dead, rather caught in the middle somewhere in the static of a neverland fugue.

The man stood slowly, his right hand holding the side of his face that she'd caressed.
"Adiós, mi amor,"
he said, then he turned and pushed his way through the crowd.
As he passed, his gaze momentarily met Gibb's and there was a cast about them that he recognized.

Acceptance.

Gibb watched the man stagger to the Cadillac.
One of the bikers held open a door so the man could climb inside.
Before the door shut, the man glanced one last time towards the Long Cool Woman and the cross.
When the door closed it marked the end of the service.
Some of the mourners left quietly, heads down in contemplation as they made their way to the bus.
Others talked amongst one another, some happy, some sad.

Gibb didn't know quite what to do.
He stared at the Long Cool Woman, whose countenance was as immutable as the Venus de Milo's.
The rumors, the cable news shows, the late night wonderings had all been true.
Everything he'd heard about this woman had proven itself before his eyes.

"Time to go, officer," Rev Bosco
e
said, his cold, scarred hand resting on Gibbs shoulder.

Two of the bikers approached and busied themselves securing the woman to the cot.
They scooped her dress from the earth and tucked the edges beside her.
From beneath, they brought out three sets of straps that they snapped in place across her body.
Rev Bosco
e
tested the straps to make sure they were secure, then nodded to the one nearest the woman's head.
Gibb stood silently as they lifted and carried the woman to the back of the black van where the third biker waited with the doors open.

The third biker approached the cross, wrapped two meaty hands around it, and snapped it at its base.
He laid it against his shoulder, walked to the back of the bus, opened the door and slid it behind the back row of seats.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Gibb said, suddenly realizing what was going on.
“You can’t do that?”

“It’s no longer needed,” Rev Bosco
e
said.

Gibb turned to look at the inscrutable face.

“The purpose of the cross no longer exists.”

Gibb nodded absently, but didn’t quite understand.

"Was it what you expected?" Rev Bosco
e
asked.

"I didn't know what to expect," Gibb said, not knowing why he lied.

"No?
You hadn't heard of her before?"

"No, I
—
" Gibb shook his head.
Although grown men weren't supposed to believe in ghosts, they also weren't supposed to lie.
He smiled weakly.
"Let me start over," he said.
He swallowed, evaluating his thoughts carefully.
"To tell you the truth, I thought she was a fake," he said.

Rev Bosco
e
nodded his head as if he'd heard it before.
"Are you disappointed?"

"No."

"Then what is it?
I see something in you that I almost recognize."

Gibb stared into the terrible face, his brain attempting to soften the harsh ridges and scars that scoured the man's face.
"You don't know me," he finally said.

"No," agreed Rev Bosco
e
, "I don't know you.
But you are of a type and I know that type."

"What type is that?" asked Gibb, feeling more and more like a child caught trying to do something.

"You've led an incomplete life, Mr. Gibb.
Moreover, you've led someone else's life."

"What are you
—
"

"You long for something that cannot be.
You live for someone that cannot care.
You exist as something that you cannot become."

"Bullshit."
Gibb felt the blood rush to his head.
He frowned, trying to think of something to say that wasn't the truth.

Rev Bosco
e
waited a moment longer, and then nodded.
"Fine, Mr. Gibb."

The tall man strode to the Cadillac and slid into the driver's seat.
Everyone else in the Long Cool Woman's entourage seemed ready to go.
Rev Bosco
e
waited for a break in traffic, and then the Bikers pulled out leading the way.
Rev Bosco
e
pulled out next, with the van and then the bus following closely behind.

Gibb watched the taillights disappear past the eastern horizon as the convoy headed toward
Phoenix
and places unknown.
By now the sun had set and had turned the desert dark.
With the departure of the Long Cool Woman and her followers, he was reminded how dark the desert could actually be.
He glanced once at where the cross had been, then to the space that the Long Cool Woman had occupied.
There was a certain amount of fear enveloping his acceptance of the woman and her powers.

It was true that he'd sought her out.
It was true that he felt that she could be provide him a sense of release... a sense that he'd done it right these last seventeen years.

But then there was the part of him that had never felt the need to ask anyone for help.
There was that part of him who felt that anything wor
th doing, he could do himself
—
except of course speaking with the dead.
Try as he might, he'd never been able to accomplish that task.
So then why won't you ask them for help
? the voice in his head shouted, putting to words the emotions that had been battering around.
Because I'm scared
, whispered the answer, and that answer pissed him off.

Gibb stalked to his police cruiser, checked the computer for messages, then pulled into traffic.
In no time at all, he had the engine pushing 5000 rpm as he surged through the night at 110 mph.

Because I'm scared had been the wrong answer.

Gibb despised fear and all the knee trembling, heart palpitating and wringing of the hands that went with it.
He was a cop and cops weren't afraid.
He'd been to a hundred seminars where the first message out of the speaker's mouth was
Fear can kill!

Fear wasn't something that he was supposed to feel.
If he was truly afraid, then he needed to deal with it.
Here was a chance for Gibb to deal with something that he'd set in motion seventeen years ago.
All that was standing between him and closure were the words of the Long Cool Woman.

He was determined to get answers.
He caught up to the convoy at mile marker 92.
But before he could pull them over, the radio blasted a call for all cars.
There
w
as a huge accident in
Plomosa
Pass
, which was just east of Quartzite and north of Black Mesa.
He glared accusingly at the radio for a moment, then sighed.
He checked the westbound traffic, waited for a break, then slowed enough to tear across the median and head the other way.

There were deaths at the scene and he needed to get there.
His problems could wait.
Twenty minutes of screaming down the highway later, he reached the accident site.
Traffic was backed up and the last eight miles he had to crawl along the emergency lane, careful of pedestrians and motorcycles.

When he got there it was as bad as he’d anticipated.
A U
–
Haul carrying illegals had been crunched by a semitrailer.
Another car, an older Oldsmobile station wagon, lay twisted and on its side down an embankment.

He was the fifth patrolman on the scene.
They needed him to control traffic.
He tossed on his yellow emergency vest, grabbed his flashlights and set to work.
Cars crawled by at five miles an hour.
Faces of children, wide-eyed and fearful, pressed against the windows.
Mothers sat in passenger seats aghast at the scene, but
with
a hint of mad glee that it hadn’t happened to them and theirs.
Fathers, more often than not, refused to look, their own guilt at driving fast, past events of shameful road rage, and their own feelings of vehicular-propped masculinity all mixing to create a chain of guilt that they refused to acknowledge by refusing to look.
No better than children, if they didn’t see it, it didn’t happen, their ignorance mollifying their egos.