The Third Bear (12 page)

Bolger took the envelope Crake sent him down to Curly Sue's, the corner dive, took a stool next to the jukebox because it shed enough light to read by, and asked the bartender for a shot of Irish Highlands whiskey.

He sat there for a while, nursing the whiskey, the envelope on the counter in front of him. Crake's handwriting on the front was as spidery and lucid as Crake.

Part of Bolger wanted to rip the envelope open. Part of him just didn't, not ever. By now, Bolger felt like he had one foot in the Murat and one foot in Sonoria. He could handle that. There was a kind of balance, a kind of balancing act, to it that he could maintain. That he didn't mind maintaining.

But, finally, Bolger ordered another shot and tore open the envelope, began to skim the pages. After a while, Bolger began to get a sense of it. Crake's observations tended to be precise but dry, things like "22 feet from the river, approximately 50 yards from the base of the first rise of hills preceding the mountains, you will find a village of about 70 people, mostly fishermen." Or, "There was a battle three years later. The lancers of the plains won, leaving 20 foot soldiers dead or dying." A History of Sonoria read like something bloody rendered bloodless. It read like the biography of a country written by a surveyor.

Bolger kept muttering "That's bullshit. That's bullshit" under his breath, once so loud the bartender came over to ask if he wanted another shot.

It all sounded so right, and yet Crake had gotten it all wrong. The images in Bolger's head, the raw, vibrant hues, the movement - none of it was as tepid, as careful as Crake made it out to be. Everything Crake had come up with was crap, and now it was in Bolger's head.

But when Bolger turned to the final page, in full color, he gasped, almost choked on his whiskey. Crake's map of Sonoria was a thing of beauty. Crake had used a medley of blues, greens, and sepia browns, with burgundy for the dots of cities. Rachel had helped him pick the colors because Crake was color blind. She'd helped him shade it in, too. It showed topographical changes, roads, rivers, mountains. All names had been written with brackets around them, which Bolger thought meant Crake was guessing.

But, of course, he was guessing about the whole thing. There was no Sonoria. Bolger knew that.

Ahmed, the manager of the Murat, slid into the stool next to Bolger at some point. He was a young, ambitious man who always looked more put together than anything in the Murat.

"Hey, Bolger - " Ahmed started to say, but Bolger cut him off, still staring at the map.

"Ahmed, you ever heard of a place called Sonoria?"

"No," Ahmed said. "You ever heard of a place that kicks you out when you owe more than two months' rent?"

Crake kept working on the book. As long as he worked on the book, he didn't notice the tiny house around him. He forgot that he was alone. Day after day, Crake filled more pages in the book, and when he was done, he pulled out another and began to write and draw in that one. He'd developed a sympathy not just for the farmers and tradespeople on Sonoria, but also its rulers, who had to navigate a treacherous diplomatic landscape to survive in the midst of much greater powers.

Rachel continued to help him. When Mrs. Sanderson dropped her off, Crake would sit her up next to him at the kitchen table with a glass of water, some sardines, and cookies he'd finally remembered to buy.

Then Crake would read Rachel his work from the previous day and night and Rachel would give Crake her opinions.

Rachel had a serious, conscientious streak, and never let him off lightly for a mistake.

"You said that bit already. Days ago."

"I like the story about the sisters who have to climb the mountain to save their father."

"I didn't understand that bit at all. You have to explain it."

Crake noticed that during these sessions time no longer had a static quality, and that when he wasn't writing, he didn't think about Sonoria much at all. Instead, he thought about things like what he wanted for dinner or what was on TV or a book he wanted to read. Or, about Bolger and the investigation. Crake wanted to call off the investigation, but the way Bolger ignored what other people said made it hard to stop Bolger.

Crake's payments stopped coming. At first, Bolger didn't care. He sat in bed staring at the map of Sonoria. Around him on the sheets he'd spread the pages of the history, which he'd heavily marked up. Every once in a while he'd think of some new lead, and he'd take out the phone book and call someone or get into his battered car and take a trip. Soon he stopped doing even that. Some days Bolger didn't even make it down to Curly Sue's. Some days he'd just watch bad TV with Sonoria bleeding through and drink until he slept. Those dreams were odd ones, his face all distorted and Sonoria full of demons that flew and swam and crawled. He'd wake up from them with a jolt, like he'd fallen into his bed from a great height, his breathing shallow, hard, and fast.

One day the jolt was a banging on the door.

Ahmed. Again. Even with Crake's money, money never went far enough. Not with Bolger's debt.

"Get the fuck away from my door!" Bolger shouted. "You don't want to fuck with me!"

Ahmed's voice, tinny through the door: "Get out. Get out by tonight or I'll call the cops. Or pay me. Your choice."

Bolger took the bottle of cheap whiskey on the night stand and threw it against the door. It only bounced, but at least it made a loud sound. His dad used to do that in the middle of the night with a glass bottle, if the dogs started barking outside the bedroom door.

"I'll leave when I want to leave," Bolger said, largely to himself.

Bolger had never done anything but drink and play detective. He looked around the motel room, at the faded, discolored lamp shades, at the chairs with the uneven legs, at the old, dusty TV, and wondered why he bothered.

The next day, a Saturday, Bolger showed up on Crake's doorstep. It was around noon and the sun glistened on the crackling snow. Bolger had a five o'clock shadow, bloodshot eyes, and a stain on his white shirt. His jacket showed a slight bulge from Crake's envelope about Sonoria. The gun was shoved into his jeans, in the back, and the photo of his mother was in his front shirt pocket. All of his belongings were out in his 199o Corolla hatchback.

Bolger had only rung the doorbell after a pattern of indecision that had him pacing up and down Crake's walkway, until a few kids passing by on bikes made him self-conscious.

Crake looked at Bolger and almost closed the door.

Almost.

"Here're some notes on your book," Bolger said, taking out the wad of dirty, marked up pages, shoving them into Crake's chest, and pushing past him into the house.

So here they were now, in Crake's living room, again, two months later. Crake had put the pages away, not even insulted but more puzzled. He'd thought of Sonoria in his book as a kind of truth, transcribed from reality. How did you change that?

Bolger got right down to it: "Crake, I think I've found Sonoria."

The stare Bolger gave Crake tried to tell Crake that fifty a day wasn't enough to fund this kind of inventive bullshit. Crake's stare back tried to indicate polite interest, but nothing could hide his shock.

"You've found it?"

"Fuck yes I have."

The unspoken information lay between them - half-curse, half-blessing.

"In a stuffy old literary magazine. I was just about to throw it across the reading room because this essay on how tough the Serbs have it was putting me to sleep. And then I found it - in a footnote. It said something like `Sonoria, a hidden valley in the mountains between Bulgaria and the Czech Republic."'

Bolger pulled out a map of Europe he'd ripped from a library book.

"Right here," he said, slapping a fat finger down. "Right there."

Bolger almost believed it, in that moment. But the visions in his head said it wasn't true. Sonoria didn't exist in this world, and maybe the sadness over that led to the anger.

Crake looked over at Bolger and then down at the blank spot on the map. The mountains, the valley, the river. A chill, a shiver, that started in his brain and traveled down to his feet.

"Could it really exist?" Crake said, looking at all those jagged boundary lines. He hadn't considered it for weeks. Sonoria kept receding in one way and coming into focus in another.

Bolger tried to read Crake's face, couldn't tell what he saw there.

"So now you pay me what you owe me for the past weeks and we go there."

Crake frowned, and Bolger thought: Shit, but now I've said it.

"Go there?" For a second, Crake really didn't know what Bolger meant.

"Are you retarded, Crake? Didn't you hear me? We need to go find this place."

Did he? Crake looked around at the faded clutter, dim lighting, the dust, and stamp on the coffee table. Thought about his book and the sessions with Rachel.

Bolger followed his gaze, said, "It's kind of a shithole if you ask me." He was acutely aware of the cold metal of his revolver shoved into his pants. The muzzle kept cutting into his waist.

Crake said, "It was my parents' place. It's not a shithole."

Bolger laughed. "Okay, so it's not a shithole. It's a fucking mansion. Still no reason why you can't pay what you owe me and let me book us a flight to Prague, to start." Bolger's mother had been born in Prague, managed to visit once or twice. It wasn't Sonoria, but it was a lot closer than Minnesota.

Crake felt a flare of anger. Sonoria was his vision. Bolger was just a born-again.

"You've done your job. I'll pay you what I owe you. And then we're done."

Bolger sat up straight across from Crake, stared at him. "No," he said, "no. It's not just about the money anymore." Bolger saw the place every time he shut his eyes, but that couldn't pay the rent or get him more work.

"So go," Crake said. "You can do that yourself."

Bolger rose. "Is that your final word, asshole?"

Crake stared up at Bolger, acutely aware of all the unspent, buried money he still had, waiting for him.

"I'm supposed to babysit the Sanderson kid in a little while. I think you should take your money and leave."

Crake took out a wad of bills and put them on the table.