Ravens (20 page)

But he noticed, as he approached, that his rage was quickly fading. Was, in fact, gone. Now he didn’t know what he felt. There
was the pain of Shaw’s betrayal, but this was indistinct against his general background pain. What he was mostly aware of
was loneliness. And the thought occurred to him that at least Shaw was happy now.

Shaw’s
fingers roamed from Clio’s breast to her thigh, then made a shrewd horseshoe turn and came gliding back up toward her pussy.
She made a halfhearted attempt to stop him, clamping her thighs together, but didn’t stop kissing him. And he retreated for
only a moment and then was back right away — his fingers circling their quarry closer and closer, and he knew she wouldn’t
hold out long.

“Jesus,” she breathed. “You just swoop down, don’t you?”

She was here to be taken, wasn’t she?

Soon he was pressing into her through her panties which were already soaked; his fingers pleading, insisting, till she sighed
and relaxed a little and then he moved quickly, slipping under the elastic and into her, one finger, another, cupping her
pubic bone against his palm. Her breath coming ragged, her musk, the smell of the sea, a mockingbird overhead. And the other
girl in the bar, the one with the brightly burnished midriff — she’d be available for him later, wouldn’t she? And finally:
Tara. Tara would be sleeping in the next room tonight, and every hour would bring her closer to him. He grinned. He had three
fingers inside this one, and when her breath seized up he thought she was coming and he increased the pressure. Then she screamed.

She was pushing him away and staring at something.

He wrenched himself around to see. Someone was there. A figure, a man. Retreating. Carrying some kind of a long knife that
glinted in the thin moonlight. Shaw was scrabbling at the car door, searching for the handle, and he found it and got the
door open and barrel-rolled out, propelling himself into the dark.

But the man was getting into a car. Headlights, and the car backing away violently, vanishing.

Shaw turned back to Clio.

She was sobbing. “He had a fucking knife! He was watching us! Who was it? Who the fuck!
Was it?”

Shaw didn’t say a word.

Romeo
parked where he had a clear view up Mallery Street to Murphy’s Bar. He waited, and soon enough Clio’s car appeared — stopping
near the back of the bar — and Shaw got out, and the car drove off.

Shaw snapped open his cell phone and jabbed at it with his finger. The phone in Romeo’s hand trembled like a frightened animal.
He lifted it to his ear. “Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“Turn around,” said Romeo, and when Shaw did he flashed his lights.

“Come here,” said Shaw. “Now.”

Romeo pulled up and Shaw got in and shut the door hard. “Drive.”

Romeo eased past the crowd in front of Murphy’s.

“
Drive!
Before someone sees me. Get the fuck out of here.”

A T-shirt store, then a souvenir shop, then a frilly ice-cream parlor. Shaw said, “You know, I really thought we’d done this
thing. I thought we’d made these amazing lives for ourselves. You stupid shit.”

Trying to keep a lid on his anger. But his mouth didn’t work right. An electrical hiss at the edge of his words. Finally he
said, “So what is the
matter
with you!”

“I don’t know,” said Romeo.

Shaw demanded: “Tell me! Why the fuck were you standing there?”

Romeo sniffed. “I don’t know.”

Again Shaw said, “
Why were you standing there?
”

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? Supposed to be the watcher, right?”

Now Shaw blew up.

“From a distance! You dumb fuck! You’re supposed to be invisible! You’re not supposed to be standing there when I’ve got my
hand down some bitch’s pants!”

Romeo said, “Is she just some bitch?”

“WHO PUT YOU IN CHARGE OF FUCKING UP OUR LIVES?”

Romeo bore down on the gas at the very moment that a platoon of frat boys, in flattops and green golfing pants, came strolling
across the street. They were disinclined to yield till they realized their lives were on the line — then they hotfooted it,
shouting obscenities after the car. Romeo hardly saw them.

He drove to the village pier, parked, and walked off. Leaving Shaw with the car. Who needs the fucking car? He walked along
the sea wall, past the miniature golf course and its rinkydink music, past families ambling along in the heat. Everyone was
eating — ice cream, chili dogs, cotton candy — and everyone was dull and fat and waxen. He came to a sandbox with two big
gray blobs that looked like the swollen corpses of fat kids. When he got closer he realized it was supposed to be a sculpture.
A sculpture of swimming whales. God. Everything was so ugly and wrong here. What was he
doing
here? He needed to keep moving, find an ATM, get a taxi to the bus station and a bus back to Piqua, Ohio. Start right now.

He sat on a low wall beside the whales.

In a minute Shaw came up and sat next to him.

“OK.” Shaw’s voice was full of remorse. “I think I just got it. You
liked
Clio. Didn’t you?”

Romeo didn’t answer.

“Oh Jesus. I’m sorry. I should have seen that. Why didn’t I see that? That was your backyard. You must hate me.”

They stared out at the black swells of the Atlantic Ocean.

Shaw said, “I’m just, I mean I’ve just been so keyed up, I’m not thinking straight. My God, if you’d
seen
them tonight. The Boatwrights, back at that bar? They’re all trying to submit. Even Mitch. He
wants
to submit. He wants it so much. And the wife wants me to fuck her. And, God, you went by the house — you see that? See all
the people there? The whole
world
wants to submit. You know why, Romeo? Because of you. Because of you being out there in the darkness.”

A horn buoy moaned offshore, just as Shaw was saying
out there in the darkness.
The harmony of it took Romeo’s breath away.

Shaw said, “You know what I’ve been thinking about? About the history of the world, about how this is always the way. Anything
good, or original, it’s never just someone with a plan. There has to be an enforcer too. Caesar had to have legionnaires.
Thomas Jefferson had to have the Continental soldiers freezing their fucking feet off. Joseph Smith had that great story about
the Golden Tablets, but he also had to have the Danites, to skulk around and murder his enemies. That’s how the good comes
into the world — with a dark escort. Always the light is guarded by darkness. Always. Every great idea has a Romeo patrolling
just outside. Every great idea is enforced by great terror. All right? I mean, if you want something else besides the shit
they hand you? You want to make room for love or beauty or anything? You’ve got to be fearless and you’ve got to be merciless.
You’ve got to make them kneel before the divine right of ravens. It’s a hard thing to accept, but it’s the way the world works.
And what we’re doing, you and me, this adventure of ours? This is the best idea anyone’s had in a thousand years. But it all
comes down to you. To you suffering in that darkness. To my knowing that you won’t let me down. You see what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Romeo.

Really he didn’t see it very well, but it didn’t matter — what mattered to him was Shaw’s passion. The fact that sometimes
in his presence Romeo felt OK about the strange meshwork-trap of his life.

When I’m with Shaw, he thought, the rest of the world can go fuck itself. Fuck itself or not fuck itself, it’s not important
because the world doesn’t
exist
. It only seems to. The so-called ‘world’ is here for our amusement only.

Two young pigtailed sisters in cutoffs were coming off the pier, lugging a big ice chest between them. Their T-shirts were
streaked with shark blood. And Romeo felt bold enough to say: “Hey, check out the meat puppets. They fuck each other, right?”

“Only every night,” said Shaw.

Romeo put a little leering growl into his laugh. “But what’s that on their shirts? Could that be menstrual blood?”

“Oh yes,” said Shaw. “They’re pigs for it.”

“They have no idea how disgusting that is?”

“Kids today.”

Then they both were laughing. They walked back to the car and took a drive. They cruised aimlessly. They went down some street
with a lot of real estate offices and brokerages and big touristy restaurants: Crabdaddies, the Crabshack, My Crabby Aunt
Sally. They found another road that ran parallel to the ocean. A lighthouse flashed away in the dark. Rowdy boys were setting
off roman candles. Romeo was almost smiling. It was as though he and Shaw were finally on the vacation they’d intended. Now
there would be girls and margaritas and softshell crabs, and the whole Southern night spreading out before them.

But in fact they drove for less than ten minutes before Shaw said he had to get back. “I’m worried about the Boatwrights.”

So Romeo took him back to Murphy’s, and left him there.

He was alone for the trip back across the causeway. He looked out at the vast black marshes, which made him think of death,
which made him think of Claude. Jesus. He still had to do something for poor Claude.

Patsy
had fallen into a nostalgic mood. It was after midnight, and she and Shaw and Tara and Mitch were in the Liberty on their
way home from the party. Shaw wouldn’t let them put the a.c. on. He said he wanted the ocean air, so they kept the windows
down which reminded Patsy of high school days, of riding around in Danny Duggan’s El Camino. Danny hadn’t liked a.c. either.
Or maybe the a.c. just hadn’t worked in his crazy old pickup-car? Anyway, in those days you could still drive on the beach
late at night, and if your windows were open the ocean air would come rippling in at you just the way it was doing now.

“Mitch,” she said, “you remember Danny Duggan?”

Mitch grunted. “What about him?”

“Remember that thing he drove?”

“I never hung out with Danny Duggan.”

“Oh, right,” she said. “Danny Duggan wasn’t in Bible Club. He was
e
-vil.”

She was aware of the sharpness in her tone but she didn’t care. She was drunk and she didn’t care about that either. She proclaimed
to the whole car: “Danny Duggan taught me how to dance. He might have been
e
-vil but he sure knew how to dance.”

Nobody answered her.

She added, “Though he never danced like you, Shaw.”

Does that come across as provocative? she wondered. And do I give a rat’s ass? “Shaw. Don’t you want me to tell you how you
dance?”

“OK.”

“Like a
lun
-atic.”

She laughed. He didn’t laugh with her, though. Nobody did.

Tara was doing the driving and staring at the road as cold as stone.

Well, probably she was jealous.

Though there was no way to know for sure. Patsy couldn’t see her face, and anyway, Tara always buried her feelings; she never
shared with her mother. Which was sad. My own daughter is at war with me, she thought. She knows me not. She thinks I’m as
churchy as her father. If she knew the wildness in my soul it would blow her mind. If she knew for example the mischief I
got into on that trip to Spain when I was her age; oh my Lord in heaven.

And who
did
understand that part of Patsy?

Well. This was nuts but she thought Shaw. A little. Was she sick to think that? About her captor? Was that quite inappropriate?

Maybe Shaw was attracted to Tara — but Patsy was sure he was closer in spirit to her. Because he was in love with adventure.
True, he was a criminal, a son of a bitch, and hanging would have been too good for him.
Castration
would have been too good for him! But it also had to be admitted that he had blood in his veins. He had the heart of a swashbuckler,
which Patsy’s daughter couldn’t possibly appreciate and which her poor sad husband with his soul full of ashes couldn’t
stand.
Patsy wasn’t excusing him or forgiving him in any way, ever — she was just saying Shaw McBride had blood in his veins.