City of Masks

24

Hey. it's me. " A quarter to four in the morning. Poor Ed.

"Mmph. Hi. Yeah. I figured."

Cree had been lying for hours in the dark room, listening to waves of rain wrap around the hotel and thrum at the windows. At intervals the wind sighed vastly, a weather god from the gulf coming inland to die. Mike's face came and went: Mike from days in Concord, nights in Philly, road trips they'd taken, mundane moments, making love.

Between visits from Mike's memory, she replayed the scene with Paul. They had fled the roof as the rain began to pelt down in earnest. Back in his kitchen, there didn't seem to be anything more to say. Her hands could still almost feel the topography of his back, the man shape of his bones and muscles, and they wanted to go there again and explore further. But that would be betrayal, and anyway the moment had gone. Whatever Paul thought of their embrace or her narrative, he didn't voice it. After a few strained moments, Cree had said tentatively, "Well, I should probably be going." And Paul hadn't argued, only offered to walk her to her car. She had declined. No point in both of them getting any wetter.

"Sorry to call so late, Ed, you must be – "

"No, no. Actually, I w's gonna call you, but I… mm, got in pretty late myself… " She heard the sandpapery sound of Ed massaging his cheeks, trying to get his mouth working.

"I'm all fucked up, Ed."

Rearranging noises: Ed was sitting up in his bed in Massachusetts, hunching over the phone. He'd scratch his head with his free hand and leave his hair sticking out the way it did when he napped on his office couch.

"I disagree about that, but I'll gladly listen to why you think so."

Cree hadn't thought it through this far when she'd reached for the phone. She couldn't tell him about Paul, and that wasn't where it came from, anyway. "Oh, Mike stuff. You know."

"Yeah."

"I mean, I'm going around talking to him."

"Why's it happening now, Cree? What's bringing it on?"

She stumbled over the question. "I don't know. Nothing. I don't know." Paul Fitzpatrick. Who reminds me that I want to live life and don't know how.

They were quiet for a long moment. Ed probably heard her evasion. At the very least, he'd know Cree Black was never without complex explanations – if she wanted to reveal them.

"And my mind is doing some pretty strange things," she confessed. Partly a way to change the subject.

"Like?"

Where to even start? "Oh, I don't know. Like yesterday, middle of the day, I was over at the house. And I had this daydream. I had clear picture of what it was like during the Civil War."

"I do that sometimes. Everybody does, don't they?"

"No, this was… a particular day, a specific moment. I was looking out the window, across the lawns at the next house. The Union troops were taking the neighbors away, and… " Cree stopped. Telling Ed about it now, she suddenly remembered something she hadn't realized had been there when she'd been jolted out of the vision. Names: The neighbor woman was Mrs. Millard. The two girls were Lizzie and Jane and the little boy was William John. The Millards.

"Jesus," she said.

"What?"

"I remember their names now. And I wasn't me, I was a young woman, a teenager… and I was sitting in the slave quarters because they were making me wait there."

Ed didn't say anything for a moment. No doubt he was processing it the same way she was: Either Cree was getting very screwed up indeed, her mind running amok, or she had really visited the past through the mind of someone who had once lived at the house. And if that were true, poor Ed would have another huge theoretical problem to try to fit in with all the other crazy, freakish things Cree threw at him.

"Did the general have a teenage daughter then?" he asked.

"I don't know."

Ed was chuckling. "Oh, Cree," he said softly. "The marvelous Cree."

"What."

"The amazing and ever-astonishing Cree. Hey, I just remembered something I wanted to tell you last time we talked."

"What was that?"

"Sunday… it's a little different today, but Sunday? The ocean was exactly the color of your eyes. I'd glance out the window and it was like you were looking at me. Keeping me company."

His affection touched her and she had to flee from it. "Thank you, Edgar."

"Okay, so let's see if we can dig up the names of the neighbors. See if General Beauforte had a daughter. We can work on it when I get there. In the meantime, you gotta think of yourself differently. Not a problem, an opportunity, right? You gotta celebrate yourself, Cree. You're not screwed up, you're miraculous. However it works out, Millards or no Millards. Okay?"

She could hear the smile in his voice. His attitude helped. He was right, that was a good way to process it: You have to welcome your own strangeness. Good advice.

"I'll try," Cree said. Yes, talking to Ed always helped. The hard part was that you could love someone like this and still not feel the pull, the magnetism, that you knew had to be there. Which meant that as good as this friendship was, there were places it couldn't go, confidences it couldn't accommodate.

As if he'd heard her despondency, Ed didn't say anything for a long time. She began to feel very sleepy. The rain noise increased outside, bearing down hard now. Four A.M.

"You still there?" he asked at last. He sounded as if he had more to say.

"Barely," she mumbled. "I feel better. Thanks, Ed. You're miraculous, too. I should probably get some sleep now. Both of us."

"Yeah." He sounded disappointed. She was always letting him down.

They said good-bye. Cree lay in the dark and drifted away to the sound of the tropical rain from across a thousand miles of water, exploring and caressing the building in the dark like a blind lover.