The Waiting Room (10 page)

"Forgive me," Abner said again. "I can't predict these things."

I turned open-mouthed to him. I wanted to tell him,
We've got to get out of here, the house is burning down around us
, but I couldn't; it would have been like yelling, just before the truck rolls over,
My God, there's a truck rolling over on us; what are we going to do?

Because I was sure there was nothing we could do, sure that it was inevitable that the house was going to burn down with us in it. All of us. Abner and me. And the people who had been bled out of the walls. The house was going to burn down and destroy us all and there was nothing I could do about it.

Then Abner asked, "Are you worried?" very casually, as if he were asking if I'd had my dinner. "Don't be worried," he went on, "or frightened. Enjoy it. We are being
entertained
, Sam. These are actors here, showmen, enjoy it, they
want
you to enjoy it if you don't, they won't like it, and they'll hurt us." Over the frenzied roar of the flames pushing out of the great room and down the hallway, Abner's voice was calm and confident, like the voice of someone who feels it is his right and his duty to be a spiritual guide to others. He put both hands hard on my shoulders now, as if to hold me there, in that house, while it burned. He grinned broadly, as if he'd told me a joke.

"Let go of me, Abner," I said, my voice low and threatening.

"They're enter
taining
us, Sam. You've got to enjoy it."

Perhaps, I thought, he couldn't hear me above the rush of the flames. I yelled, "Goddammit, Abner, get your hands off me!"

He let go.

And I turned and ran past him to the door that led to the beach. I pushed on it; it wouldn't open. I pulled on it; it opened, and I ran from the house, toward the ocean. When the waves were licking at my feet, I stopped and looked back.

The ocean side of the house had a fresh coat of white paint on it and what looked like new black shutters at all the windows. There were half a dozen windows on the first floor, three on the second, and two, longer and narrower than the others, in the attic, where the roof peaked severely. I thought for a moment that I'd run farther than I'd supposed, and that I was looking at some other house. Then Abner appeared in the kitchen doorway and stood silently in it, his hands in his pockets, his body framed by the flames rising behind him.

I yelled, "Abner, get the hell out of there!" The flames danced brightly behind him. I yelled, "Don't do this, please don't do this!" The flames reached around from inside the house and embraced him. I fell to my knees. The ocean lapped at my feet. "Don't
do
this to me, Abner!" I pleaded. "You're my friend!"

He yelled back, hands cupped around his mouth to be heard over the noise of the flames, "Of course, I'm your friend. And you're my friend. We're two friends. Together. For life!"

"Sure we are," I called. "Friends for life, yes—Abner and Sam! Friends for life!"

"Thank you, Sam," he called, and walked back into the house and closed the door.

Within a minute, the flames visible through the windows were gone.

I got off my knees and sat on the sand facing the house, with my legs straight and my arms folded in front of me, my head down. The headache I had had earlier began to creep back.
Tricked me, didn't you, Abner?
I thought.
Abner and Sam, friends for life!
I thought. Maybe. The necessary elements were there—a common set of memories, a sort of gruff affection and concern. But whether we'd eventually turn out to be "friends for life" was something that only time could decide. He, I realized, was using whatever feeling existed between us as a sledge; he was using it to hammer me into place there at his tumbledown beach house. I sat on the sand and wondered when I'd get up and move away from the incoming tide. I couldn't blame him; I understood why he was doing it. Very simply, he was in trouble. He needed a friend. And I was willing to fill that role. But still, as my headache grew, so did my anger.

After a couple of minutes, I yelled, "Damn you, Abner!" and hunkered forward on my rear end, away from the tide. "Damn you!" I screamed again. He reappeared at the back door of the house and wandered out to me, hands thrust into his pockets, a stupid grin on his mouth.

He stood above me for a few moments. That stupid grin went away. Then he said secretively, as if
he were playing some game of cops and robbers, "The coast is clear, Sam."

He was standing to my right, level with my ankles, his hands still in his pockets, his legs together, one knee bent slightly. I knew he'd be easy to knock over, so that's what I did. I tripped him and he toppled over onto his side, then rolled to his stomach, so his face was in the sand.

It was an impulsive, useless thing to do, but I realized that anything he might say to me would be bullshit, that he couldn't explain what had happened in his house. He might as well have tried to explain how life began, or how to cure the common cold.

So I tripped him. It was the same as slapping him around. It was designed to give him a good, gritty taste of what I saw as reality. And, futile and stupid as my action was, it made me feel worlds better, for a moment anyway.

I jumped to my feet, pointed stiffly at him, though his face was still turned away from me, and screamed, "What the hell do you mean
The coast is clear?
This isn't some stupid game. You sound like you want us to go up on some building and piss off the roof together, for Christ's sake!"

He turned his head and looked up at me. Sand caked his cheek because the beach was wet. He spit out some of the sand, and that same stupid smirk appeared on his mouth again. He said, "Can't get your hand out of the box, can you, Sam? It's stuck in there, isn't it?" He started to push himself up. I put my foot on his back, kept him down.

"Abner," I said, "you're not getting up until you tell me what happened in that house."

He let himself fall to his belly again, turned his face up to me. His smirk was gone. In its place was a mixture of pleading, desperation, and resignation, like the expression of someone bleeding to death inside a squashed car. He said, "Reality happened, Sam. Reality happened!"

I took my foot off his back. He hesitated, pushed himself to his feet, and got that damned smirk on his face again.

I said, "I don't want to hear any more crap from you, Abner."

"You always were a lot more physical than I am, Sam."

"Sorry," I managed, my voice quivering with anger. "I wasn't trying to hurt you. I was just trying to get your attention."

His smirk altered slightly. "You couldn't hurt me." He brushed at the sand on his pants. "Maybe you could have once upon a time. Twenty years ago. Six months ago. But not now." He brushed the sand off his white sweater. He found a smear of dirt on the cuff. "Dammit, Sam, I just washed this sweater."

"Abner"—I pointed at the house, my arm shaking—"I don't give two flying fucks about your sweater! I want to know who those
people
are, I want to know what happened in there!"

He studied the smear of dirt. "I told you what happened." He looked at me. "Reality happened." That smirk appeared yet again. "It's awfully cold out here. Let's go back inside."

I was still pointing shakily at the house. I let my arm fall slowly, incredulous. I said, "I'm not going back into that house. Do you think I'm a moron? I'm not going back into that house."

He shook his head. "Sam, I've told you, they won't allow you to--"

I jabbed his chest suddenly with my finger. "And what I want from you, my
friend
, is for you to call them off. You got that? Call them off! Now!"

"Good Lord, Sam, they're not like dogs, they're people. I don't have any say over what they do or don't do—"

"I don't
believe
you, Abner." I jabbed his chest again. "I think they're your pets, they're your gruesome little pets, I think they'll beg for you, roll over, fetch, play dead"—he grinned at that—"and I think you can tell them when to rise up"—I lifted both hands palms down—"when to lie down, and when to hang around and look spooky."

"I don't think they're going to like this one tiny bit, Sam. I'd watch what I said, if I were you." It was hard to tell if he was joking.

"Is that a threat, Abner? A threat directly from the spooks themselves? I'm impressed. What are they
going to do? Are they going to have a garbage truck run me down? Are they going to send two little dead girls into my bedroom to embarrass me to death? Tell me, Abner, Mr. Abner Spook-keeper, just what are they going to do?"

He shook his head. "You're babbling, Sam. It's understandable. I babbled, too, in the beginning. It's a defense mechanism. You try to fight the impossible with nonsense, but then, after a while, you learn to accept, and to enjoy . . ."

"Listen to yourself, Abner. You sound like a damned religious fanatic."

"Sam, please—just come back to the house with me, I need you at the house."

"Call them off, Abner."

"I can't 'call them off.' I don't even know what that means. Even Madeline couldn't 'call them off.' That's really
stupid,
Sam—it's unkind, too—"

I hit him on the jaw. Hard. With My open hand. He fell backward, sat down hard on the sand. His hand went up, he cursed, he massaged his jaw while I stood above him shaking my head in disbelief at the violence that confusion and fear had coaxed from me.

Then, from behind the house came the kind of deep and resonant noise that I had heard only hours before—the low, ominous, monotone rumble of a truck engine.

What could I do? I sat down close to Abner on the beach, my back to that noise. I took his hand away from his jaw, studied the bruise that was starting there, and said, "Sorry, Abner. I didn't mean that."

I paused. "Well, yes, I did. But I don't anymore." He grinned sadly. Behind us, the roar of the truck engine grew louder. I glanced back quickly, then looked at Abner again. "Tell me what the hell is going on. Please, Abner. I need your help here."

"Yes," he said, "and I need yours."

"Okay, then we'll help each other. Like when we were kids. Remember? When one of us got into trouble, the other one was always there to help. Like when ... " The rumble of the engine stopped abruptly. I hurried on, "Like when you were writing all those dumb, unsigned love notes to Mrs. Singer in American history and I said I wrote them. Remember that?" I glanced nervously around at the beach house, then back at Abner. "Remember?" I coaxed.

"Yeah, I remember," he said; his brow furrowed. "Why'd you do that, anyway?"

I flashed him a quick, falsely magnanimous smile. "So you wouldn't get into trouble, of course." It wasn't really true. I had something of a crush on Mrs. Singer, myself, but my letters, which went unsent, were not nearly as poetic as Abner's. "So now you can return the favor, Abner. Just, please, call these ... these
people
off, okay?"

He shrugged, began, "I told you, Sam, I can't just `call them off.' You don't seem to understand—"

"Hello!" we heard.

Abner and I looked back at the house.

From around the side, a man dressed in brown appeared. He had a small package in his arms, and when he saw us sitting on the sand, he held the package up, yelled, "Hey, is one of you guys named"—he looked at the package—"named Cray?"

Abner yelled, "Yeah. That's me." He stood. "I'm Abner Cray."

The man in brown yelled back, "UPS."

Abner called, "I'll be right there," and loped back to the house.

I
watched him take the package, gaze briefly at me, look at the package, go into the house through the kitchen door, and close the door behind him.

I waited a long time for him to reappear at the door.

People passed me on the beach. There were a few joggers hooked up to Sony Walkmans; there was an old man in baggy pants, a threadbare shirt, and shiny red sports coat who was moving very slowly, metal detector poised inches above the sand. He stopped once, fifty yards from me, dug frantically in the sand, and appeared to come up with some coins, which he stuffed into his pants pocket. There was a boy of nine or ten who was trying mightily to get a huge, wedge-shaped kite into the air. The kite had the words "Star Wars" on it. Eventually, it plummeted nose-first into a sand dune and the boy tucked it under his arm and walked off with his head down and an air of defeat about him.

I guessed that it was close to eleven o'clock and that I'd been sitting alone on the sand for at least an hour, hunkering forward every few minutes to get away from the tide. I looked at Abner's house. Jets had laced the tight blue sky with contrails that seemed to erupt from the roof. At the house's foundation, a mangy gray tomcat sniffed about, paused in midstep, looked up with its mouth open, then ran off.

"Abner?" I called. No reply. I stood, brushed myself off, and called "Abner?" again. Still no reply. I took a couple of tentative steps toward the house. I called yet again, got no reply, and whispered to myself, "Good Lord, he's a big boy, he can take care of himself," though I wasn't at all sure I believed it.