Part 14 (2/2)
He let his next cla.s.s out early. Before descending the steps to the parking lot, he glanced over the balcony wall. The man wasn't down there. Only kids cluttered the courtyard. Some were studying quietly on the gra.s.s, sitting Indian-style, hunched over thick books. A girl lay belly-down, kicking her legs, scanning a text with her index finger. A group of artists sat around a large pine tree. Its shadow stretched over them.
Robert didn't remember much of his own college career. Two years into it, he'd made the decision to teach; at the time, he'd thought he wanted to because campus life was so exhilarating with fresh ideas and new minds. Now, watching the bright courtyard house the next generation of dreamers and burnouts, a nameless feeling returned. During college, he'd gravitated toward artists and intellectuals. Future bureaucrats galled him, and now he understood why. He admired those who possessed true courage, envied their drive and ambition, needed to be around their pa.s.sion. In turn, he loathed and spurned those flawed like him. Looking over the courtyard, he longed to yell out, to tell them not to be afraid.
Later, he pulled behind Dan's Chevy. Dan took his cigarette from his lips. His eyes widened. ”You look like c.r.a.p.”
”Got in a fight with G.o.d.”
”Pity, seeing how you don't believe in Him.”
He sat beside Dan, lifted the pack of Camel's from Dan's thigh, plucked out a cigarette, positioning it between his lips. Twenty years ago, he'd taken a single puff from a Lucky Strike.
Dan surveyed him, then slapped a match across the book's scratch, lighting the cigarette; then he waved the match into smoke. ”When the h.e.l.l did you get a life?”
”Dying tends to focus a guy.”
Instead of the surprise Robert had antic.i.p.ated, Dan's face registered nothing.
He took a drag, exhaling without so much as a cough. ”Cancer.”
Dan leaned over. ”Christ.”
”He's got zero to do with it. Dumb luck is the only G.o.d I know, and she's a real c.u.n.t.”
”You're wrong.”
”I hope so,” Robert said.
”I don't know if we can understand the Divine, but it works mysteriously.”
”I don't read you.”
”You didn't get hit with the cancer stick, Robert. It's not dumb luck. You're just not seeing the pattern.”
A minute smile spread over Dan's face at this, and Robert stared at him, nearly through him. The bookseller spread over his chair like an explosion, his face carpeted in stubble, his eyes darting over his thoughts, a cigarette slanting from his drawn lips. All this, and yet there was an air about this man, vague as the smoke disintegrating around him, of sorcery. ”It's not for a lack of looking, I'll tell you.”
”Anything out of the ordinary going on? I mean besides being ill.”
Robert thought of the scales, his regained sight, the Charles Manson look-alike. ”Plenty.”
”Well, I don't believe that G.o.d, or the Divine, or whatever it is that comprises the universe has a plan for humanity, but I do subscribe to the order of the strange. Sooner or later, things will add up.”
”No, they won't,” said Robert, pausing. He thought a moment, then slowly said, ”The Divine is, as it always has been, only what we cannot explain, or cannot accept.”
”Exactly,” grinned Dan, puffing out smoke. ”Can you accept it?”
4.
Mary awoke early the next morning. She went to the kitchen, found her father up, making coffee. ”Morning,” he said. ”Sleep okay?”
She nodded, and he watched her cross the kitchen. She couldn't read his eyes, but when she neared him he, much to her relief, opened her arms and took her in. She nestled her head under his chin, asking herself why she had been embarra.s.sed of him all those years. Her father was, and quite suddenly, not skinny, but fit from his daily walks; not geeky, but studious; his face not bony, but austere. ”I love you so much, Daddy. You know that?”
”Sure, honey. Me, too,” he said, rubbing her shoulder. ”Your mother will come around. You're all she's got.”
Mary's brow knotted; she'd wondered often, and knew she'd guessed right. ”It wasn't that you didn't want another, was it? You couldn't.”
Her father drew away, eyed her cautiously a moment. ”Not after you came out so awkwardly. They tied her tubes out of caution.”
Mary thought of her mother, wondering if she'd ever hated her little girl. Women, especially beautiful women such as her mother had been, were aged by the G.o.dlike gift. Women who reveled in their fecundity became haggard quickly; by fifty they looked shriveled and puffy all at once. Progeny was vampiric, parasitic, stealing from their hosts those quiet nine months in the abyss. It was worth it, she supposed, only if the gift remained-even if it was, in the woman's mind, only the illusory promise of option. ”Sorry, Dad,” she said, all the while hoping that she would never lose it. She'd always dreamed of a big family.
”You kidding? We're crazy about you.”
They embraced, then her dad poured himself a cup of coffee. ”Want one?” he asked with a smile, knowing her answer.
She smiled. ”I still hate coffee.”
”You're older now.”
”I'll never be that old.”
”We'll see,” he said, opened the refrigerator. ”Would you like some breakfast? You know, for the little one.”
Mary looked away, hiding her smile. Would he be upset if he knew she was happy about it? ”Yeah, why not?”
George fixed her a bowl of cereal, himself oatmeal, and they sat beside each other, ate silently for a few minutes. Then he asked what sort of girl Grady was, and why she'd brought her to Florida.
”What do you mean?” As a child, she'd often adopted stray cats. This was different, but she found herself wondering if her dad saw it that way.
”Sorry,” he said, smiling timidly. ”We'll get to know each other. Tell me this, though-why did she want to come?”
Mary stared at her father. ”Rough life,” she answered.
Chapter Nineteen: The Edge of a Dark Wood.
1.
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