Jonah Page 4

  Then she showed him a photo of Zion. “Thought you might be willing to listen to my proposition….”

  Zion was a looker, but the photo only showed her face. What if she were confined to a wheelchair? What a heel he'd be, declining to help a woman just because she was handicapped. But what if she was? Maybe Jo had overestimated him.

  “The reason she may need Uncle Jo someday is she really doesn't understand money,” Jo said. “The man she married is loaded, and she did make a living for herself before she married the jerk, but back then, I was around to advise her.

  “Believe me, it would be a vexation for her to have to deal with a property management company, or renters. I want the place kept up, but more, I want it occupied by someone who cares.” Jo set it up so that Zion could not sell the property without Jonah's signature. The instruction was not to let her sell as long as she's married to “Old Money Bags.” Jo wouldn't put it past Cromwell to persuade Zion into selling, just to make her more dependent on him.

  “She really doesn't get money, Jonah. People could take advantage of her. I want her to have a place to fall back on, because knowing Zion, when Money Bags is done with her—I'm surprised it's lasted this long—she'll be lucky to walk with her clothes, as happened to you. But she doesn't have your business mind. I know it sounds like she's one of those girls who never grew up and can't stand on her own two feet. In some ways that's true, but in other ways, she's way beyond you and me. She just has trouble with…Jonah…she's different.”

  Twenty-some-odd years ago, one of the Vanderbonds had found Zion wandering in the desert, south of town. The strange white costume she wore was caked with red dirt. She was exhausted, nearly dehydrated, and weak from hunger. A runaway from some cult, everyone figured. She couldn't, or wouldn't, tell them anything about herself, except her name…Fairchild.

  Jo said, “We searched everywhere, all of the missing kid bureaus. We figured she was abused, took a hike. When she asked us to take her to the sacred dome, we thought she might have escaped some booby hatch. Checked all those, too. But she didn't really act like an abused child, nor was she crazy. She acted like someone who either couldn't remember her past, or was determined to keep it secret.”

  The Vanderbonds decided it was probably half and half. It would take years and a lot of money to adopt her through the proper channels, so the family decided to be outlaws. One of Jo's brothers knew a guy in Vegas who, for a reasonable price, could supply them with all of the papers a person needs for proof of citizenship.

  “We explained the situation the best we could to our desert angel. That's when she announced she wanted to be called Zion.

  “'People will think you're Jewish,' Mama said. ‘What's Jewish?' Zion asked. ‘The wrong tribe,' I told her.”

  Jo explained that her mother wasn't anti-Semitic. The Mormons—and Jo's mother was determined to raise Zion Mormon—believed that Jews were the tribe of Judah in the house of Israel, and Mormons were descendants of Joseph, the eleventh son. “Zion told us, ‘I chose it for the sound.' Mama says, ‘Sound?' Zion looked at her, like…‘you don't understand? What's the matter with you people?’”

  Jo laughed. Coughed. Jonah stroked her back. She was bald, then, and refused to wear a wig.

  “Promise me you'll help her when she needs it, Jonah. She'll be home one of these days; I'm sure of it.”

  He had imagined several major complications this commitment could cause in his future. But it was one day at a time, now, wasn't it? Nothing drove that home more than seeing someone you love wither away and die.

  He wondered why he'd never met Zion, someone so important to Jo.

  “I didn't tell her I was dying, Jonah. She won't hold it against me. I told you, she's different. I don't like that man she's married to. I think he abuses her, and I think she's blind to it. I don't want to create a situation that might provoke the bastard. He's very controlling, very possessive. And anyway, I don't want her seeing me like this.”

  It bothered him a lot, Jo not telling this woman she cared about so much, but it was none of his business. He respected Jo, and didn't want to add to her stress by arguing against something so personal.

  When he told Frame about Jo's will, Frame patted him on the back. “Good luck…” He and Frame were just getting to know each other then. No doubt he would have more to say on the subject now.

  Jonah had been guilty of engaging in fantasies about the eventuality of living up to the promise he'd made Jo. It was more than a promise—it was a legal responsibility, spelled out in the will. But now that Zion is here, he is shaking inside. For no reason he can put his finger on, he feels a strong caution against getting too deeply involved with her. Maybe Jo literally meant “caretaker,” and no more. Maybe the knight-in-shining-armor bit was pure fantasy, born of his lust and loneliness.

  He cringes, recalling that stupid prayer yesterday. “Well, black eye or not, this one's already married,” he says out loud, just in case there is a God, and he's listening. He doesn't really need a wife. Coral Kay could just use more female attention, more than Frame's wife, Laurie, can give her.

  He gets up and peeks out the window. Like some ancient rite, Barbie has been offered, and accepted. He can't see Zion's eyes, but, though she is only five, he can see in his daughter's eyes that woman thing…that peculiar way all females look at each other…something like telepathy, a lightning-swift exchange of secret thoughts no man is privy to, or wants to be.

  He turns from the window. Time to clean Zion's house. Where to start? The dishes? Haul out the vacuum cleaner? Grab the toys and shoes and papers and clothes off the furniture and floors?

  He steps over to the window again. He strains, but cannot hear a word Zion is saying. The crows have chosen this moment to hold a convention in the trees.

  But he can see Coral Kay, and her eyes are pinwheels.

  Chapter C (3)

  Coral Kay? What a lovely name. Do you like stories, Coral Kay? Good. I have one I need to tell. It's about a woman named Zion…Rose.

  Events in this dimension have beginnings, middles, and ends. As the end of an event approaches, the death rattles can be very loud.

  “Who shakes the death rattles?”

  That's a good question. It's something I want to know, too. The event I'm talking about is a marriage. Was a marriage…mine.

  May I ask, Coral…what kind of man is your father?

  “The Leo kind. That's why he loves Thunderpaws. We can't have a real lion for a pet. Daddy says it costs too much to feed them, and not room for two lions in the house. Thunderpaws isn't a real lion. He'll never grow so big.”

  And what about your mother?

  “Jessica is stoned out of her mind. I can go meet her when I'm thirty. Maybe. We'll see.”

  You talk awfully mature for one so young.

  “Daddy says we're born talkers. But don't tell everything, or the angels won't whisper the secrets in our dreams.”

  Ahhh…I think some angels whispered to me earlier today.

  “Really, really, really?”

  Yes. I will tell you about that later. First I need to tell this story. I have to tell someone.

  “Me?”

  Yes.

  There were things I could do, and things I could not do…. I thought marriage was something I could do. I thought it would be a mystical journey, each of us discovering new depths of our souls, while exploring the spirit essence I believed our union would create. Ironically, the depth I discovered in my soul was a well so deep, Drake could not come there. This was not clear at the start. The trouble was, Drake thought he had married Alcyone, but it was Sister Glorianne who…It's complicated. The Writer was supposed to have freed us all.

  “Who's the writer?”

  Me. It's like I was four Zions. But not really. Are you ready to hear my story now?

  “I was waiting.”

  The Monday before, Zion had planned to drive to Denver to do some research at the University of Denver library. She could have picked up the
telephone and gotten the information she needed, but she was especially fond of this particular library. It was a lark for her go there; a rare journey away from Pueblo. Denver is 120 miles north, so it was to have been an all-day affair. But after her husband left for work, Zion had trouble starting her car, so she spent the morning at Mueller's Auto Repair. Her car was old because her husband said she was too mechanically challenged for a newer car. She had to rent a road-worthy car to drive to Jo's funeral…but that was before Lizbeth….

  Returning home around noon, she clicked the remote-control device and drove into the garage. Next to her husband's Seville. Drake is an executive of Entech Security Systems. His office is twenty-five miles away. He should have been at work.

  He thought Zion was in Denver.

  She moved from the garage to the house as quietly as a cat burglar, but no need for stealth, the music was so loud, she could have rammed the Ford through the garage door and no one inside this house would have heard it.

  The throaty music of Barry White swirled around her like star glitter. If there was hesitation at the musical announcement, there was none when she heard Drake and a woman. Laughing.

  Zion went berserk! She threw furniture down, she hurled a potted plant through the patio door, shattering the glass.

  Drake probably catapulted out of bed and dove into his pants the moment he heard the crash of the kitchen table, but his wife was a storm raging outside of time. He rushed into the room, arms straight out, as if to catch a falling wall.

  “Good God, Zion!” he yelled.

  She flew at him. Flew at a six-foot-two muscled monolith. He smashed her eye, flipped her on the floor.

  Going down, it was Alcyone's voice that roared, but once her mouth was smashed against the carpet, Shadow Girl began to whimper in sickening squeaks and sobs. Drake's knee was an anvil lodged at the small of her back. He wrenched her arm up toward her shoulder blades. She almost blacked out; she may have screamed. In a daze of white pain, she saw her painted toes before she heard the other woman say, “Oh, Drake…”

  “I told you she was crazy!”

  The anvil bore down. The arm at her back was twisted. Now the pain was a field of hot spikes, having no middle, sides, or ends.

  “I'm going to call for an ambulance,” the voice above the feet whined. A voice Zion recognized. Drake's secretary, Lizbeth.

  When he released Zion, she dared not move, waiting for him and his lover to leave. After they were gone, the pain came in waves that carried her into a colorless void near but not inside the tunnel of unconsciousness, where she would have curled, had there been a choice….

  Forgive me, Coral Kay, for telling you these things in third person.

  “Are you three persons?”

  Telling a story in third person means I'm pretending it happened to someone else. Some things are just too painful to tell in first person.

  “You're really Zion, huh?”

  Yes.

  “Did the other Zions die?”

  No…and yes.

  “Who's the shadow girl?”

  A girl who traveled so far from home she was only a shadow of who she was before.

  Chapter D (4)

  Jonah is pacing the house, the cordless phone pressed to his ear.

  “Frame? Sorry to bother you at work.” Frame owns the Whistler art gallery. The Coffee Talk sits in the middle of the triplex building with Hilde's Music Emporium on the south and the Whistler to the north. Thanks to Johanna Vanderbond, Jonah owns the building now. But he isn't getting rich. He discounts the rents in the winters and keeps it low during the tourist season because he likes the trio of music, talk, and art, and the energies of Frame on his left, Hilde on his right.

  “It is pretty tense around here, Jonah. Mrs. Schmaukee came in—shall I tell you what she was wearing? Another time? Okay. She asked if I bronzed baby shoes.”

  “You told her you tried that on your kids, but the little buggers still managed to walk.”

  “Do I lie? My kids never walked. They ran right out of their booties, straight to Bango's Pool Hall.”

  “Frame?”

  “I'm here, Jonah.”

  “If you weren't married, and a beautiful woman landed on your doorstep, and she was in trouble—you know, your quintessential damsel in distress, and you could have her—would you do the right thing?”

  “Good grief. We have got to get you a woman soon. What the hell's going on over there? Did you dine on Betsyboy's pizza again? Told you stay off that stuff.”

  “I can't, not now, tell you everything. But there is an unusually beautiful woman on my doorstep, as we speak. And you know what keeps running through my mind? Do the right thing…do the right thing…. Why would I be thinking that?”

  “She's your landlady?”

  “Frame, you are psychic.”

  “Ha! Jo's niece is back in town?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Jonah, I would listen to your mind's counsel.”

  Jonah creeps over to the window again. The woman is still talking, and his daughter looks enraptured. Something is tickling at the back of his brain. Something about a blue veil…something dark, something taboo…

  Chapter E (5)

  It is not my imagination, Coral Kay, that mundane calls announce in gentle trills. The rings that jarred me back to my senses were insistent and relentless, having the sound of emergency. I hauled myself over the carpet and pulled the screaming machine off the coffee table.

  “Please don't hang up—what happened this afternoon? You have my total sympathy.”

  “Lizbeth?”

  “Please don't hang up!”

  She couldn't talk now—could I meet her ?…

  My husband's lover wanted to meet me at a restaurant at precisely the time Drake normally came home from work. She had “important information” that would “help my case.”

  I hung up the phone. And my guts went electric. Be gone when Drake came home? Without his permission? “Yes!” hissed a voice. “Leave a note! Lie!” Commands that sent me flying for the bathroom.

  I dropped to my knees in front of the commode and dry heaved. Raised my head and the argument continued. You told her you would go—you should—damn right—! But what if he locks you out? Hits you (kills you). Clutching the basin, I rose and stared at the mirror. My left eye was swollen almost shut. My right eye accused: You are denial's whore.

  Inside Denny's, I spotted Lizbeth in the nonsmoking section. Her hair was a golden fountain around her shoulders. I nodded at her, indicating there would be a change in the seating venue.

  “Two in smoking,” I told the hostess as I watched Lizbeth gather her purse. She was dressed in a tweed jacket, black turtle-neck, and short, tight skirt.

  She slithered into the booth. I sat down, picked up the ashtray and set it center table. Do not cross this line.

  “I'm sorry. I didn't know you smoked.”

  I didn't smoke much, but I might tonight for spite. I studied her over the rim of the menu. A stretch to call her a woman. The kind of fresh forgettable face you see in shampoo commercials.

  The waiter, a boy attired in black and white, took our order, coffee for her, water for me. Not an occasion for the communal rite of breaking bread. Impossible to maintain a veneer of composure with my teeth coated with food. Better I keep them at the ready, clean and sharp, in case I needed to snarl or spit.

  My attention was snagged by the diners around us, some dressed for business, old ladies in old-lady clothes, leather-clad toughs, a baby crumbling crackers on a tray. Medical-office music crooned beneath clanks of metal and glass and the drone of human chatter. The odors of greasy fries and sizzling animal flesh made me feel queasy. A fine woman—she thought so—was observing me down her nose. I shot her a look over my dark glasses and frightened her eyes away.

  Not one word was exchanged while we waited for the boy to return with our drinks. Not to say there was no communication. Thoughts are things. Lizbeth's eyes were glazed with tears. My
thoughts were hatchets.

  Numbed by too many years underground, I had become an emotional amnesiac. I looked again. It was not so long ago that we were quick to stone, drown, shackle, or burn at the stake a woman for lesser sins. Punishments harking back to a maligned myth about a woman, an apple, and a snake.

  “Forgive me,” I said, a flick of my hand dismissing Lizbeth's puzzled look. It would have required a dissertation to explain the leap I had just made from seeing her as a temptress to remembering my soul's lessons.

  In a maudlin way, it all seemed funny now. Who was that woman who had furiously thrown down furniture? Not even Alcyone had that kind of fire. Was this the human woman who had baffled and eluded me for all these years? Was I more animal than soul, after all?

  I was tapping my fingers on the table, puzzling over my behavior when the boy came with our drinks. Then Lizbeth confessed the particulars of her relationship with my husband. Quiet and sad, I listened to the old, dreary tale of passion that promises everything, then slithers off into the gray dawn, stealing away the treasures of self dignity.

  She told me her big secret. Drake had won big on two dog races at the Pueblo Greyhound Park. Fifty thousand dollars. I wrote the number on a small pad in my purse. Money numbers sometimes get twisted around in my mind. This number, I needed to remember.

  To elude me and the IRS, Drake had bet under the name of a phony company created by his lawyer pal, Camden Wicks. A good bloodhound attorney could easily dissemble the scam.

  I felt gentle toward Lizbeth. How could she know that money did not hold for me the luster it did for her and Drake? It was the deceit that hurt the most…and the physical assault.