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Her phone rings. It’s Jerome. He asks her for an update. She tells him about the calls she made and the one she hasn’t made, to Izzy Jaynes. He tells her she was probably right to skip that one. He says he’s making good time, already in New Jersey, but he doesn’t want to exceed the speed limit by more than five miles an hour. Barbara doesn’t have to ask him why; he’s driving while Black. He doesn’t even want to risk talking on his cell while on the road. He pulled into a rest area to call her, and he wants to get going again.
Before he can end the call, Barbara blurts out her worst fear. “What if she’s dead, J?”
There’s a pause. She can hear turnpike traffic. Then he says, “She’s not. I’d feel it if she was. Gotta go, Ba. I’ll be home by eleven.”
“I’m going to lie down,” Barbara says. “Maybe something will come to me. I feel like I know more than I think I know. Did you ever have that feeling?”
“Quite often.”
Barbara goes into her room and stretches out on her bed. She doesn’t expect to sleep, but maybe she can clear her mind. She closes her eyes. She thinks about Olivia and Olivia’s many stories. She remembers asking the old poet about the famous picture of her and Bogart in front of the Trevi Fountain. In particular about her wide-eyed, almost startled smile. Olivia saying, If I looked startled it’s because he had his hand on my ass.
Barbara falls asleep.
23
Holly is in the sunroom of Rolling Hills Elder Care. It’s empty except for her mother and her uncle. They are sitting at one of the tables, watching a bowling match on the big-screen television and drinking tall glasses of iced tea.
“Can I have some?” Holly croaks. “I’m thirsty.”
They look around. They salute her with those tall glasses and drink. There are lemon wedges stuck in the rims of the glasses, which are beaded with condensation. Holly thinks of how much she would like to stick out her tongue to lick those little drops of condensate from the sides of their glasses. She’d lick them all the way to the top, suck the lemon wedges, then drain them both.
“You couldn’t handle that much money,” Uncle Henry says, and sips. “We did it for your own good.”
“You’re fragile,” Charlotte says, and takes her own sip. So delicate! How can she not just guzzle? Holly would guzzle both glasses, if only they would give them to her.
Charlotte holds hers out to Holly. “You can have it.”
Uncle Henry holds his out. “You can have this one, too.”
And together, chanting like children: “As soon as you agree to stop all this dangerous foolishness and come home.”
Holly claws her way out of this dream. Reality is the cage in the Harris basement. Her ribs still hurt and the wound in her arm feels like somebody drenched it with lighter fluid and set it on fire, but those pains are subservient to her thirst, which is unrelenting. At least the gash from the bullet seems to have stopped bleeding; what’s on her makeshift bandage is brown instead of red. She thinks pulling the shirt off the wound is going to hurt a great deal, but that’s nothing she has to worry about now.
She gets to her feet and goes to the bars. The body of Rodney Harris lies near the stairs. Emily has fallen out of her final slumped-over crouch and lies on her side. She must have left the door to the kitchen open because flies have gathered, sampling Roddy’s spilled blood. There’s plenty to sample.
Holly thinks, I would sell my soul for a glass of beer… and I don’t even like beer.
She thinks of how her dream ended, that childlike chant: As soon as you agree to stop all this dangerous foolishness and come home.
She assures herself that someone will come. Someone has to come. The question is what kind of shape she’ll be in when that happens. Or if she’ll be alive at all. Yet even now, hurting all over, with two bodies outside the cage in which she is locked, raging with thirst…
“I regret nothing,” she croaks. “Nothing.”
Well, one thing. Hiding behind the chainsaws was a big mistake.
Holly thinks, I need to learn to trust myself more. Will have to work on that.
24
Barbara is also dreaming. She bursts into the living room of Olivia Kingsbury’s house on Ridge Road to find Olivia in her accustomed chair, reading a book—it’s Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck—and eating a small sandwich. There’s a cup of steaming tea on the table beside her.
“I thought you were dead!” Barbara cries. “They told me you were dead!”
“Nonsense,” Olivia says, putting her book down. “I fully intend to celebrate my hundredth. Did I tell you about the time Jorge Castro spoke up at the meeting to decide the fate of the Poetry Workshop? Emily never lost that smile of hers, but her eyes—”
Barbara’s cell phone trills and the dream falls apart. It was wonderful while it lasted because in it Olivia was alive, but a dream was all it was. She grabs her phone and sees her mother’s smiling photo on the screen. She also sees the time: 4:03 PM. Jerome must be in Pennsylvania by now.
“Hey…” She has to clear her throat. “Hey, Mom.”
