We Leave Together, стр. 11
Under that hand she could have been laughing. Jona had a vision in his mind of a drama mask, and Mishaela laughing under the hidden hand because this was all an act. A single tear flickered like a burning flame in the lamplight down the side of her face.
Jona watched Mishaela crying. Salvatore stood up, and the girl’s hand reached out to his black shirt that turned away and away and then was lost into the night shadows. Then, Mishaela was alone, and crying.
In the street, outside the tavern, Salvatore shoved his hands in his pockets. He slouched with his hat low against his head.
Jona strolled up behind him. “Only a matter of time before you tossed her off, anyway.”
“That wasn’t about you,” said Salvatore, “It never is. You don’t know anything about me.”
Jona snarled. He spit at Salvatore’s feet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Jona.
Salvatore spit back at Jona’s feet.
“I’ve been told to leave you alone” said Jona, “I just thought you should know that I’m done with you.”
“Toss off, then. I hope I never see you again.”
Salvatore turned his back to Jona. Salvatore strutted away like he was untouchable.
And Jona couldn’t touch him.
Jona walked behind Salvatore a while. They crossed the same bridge to the same lonely street. The same drizzle misted their shoulders from the same cloud.
Salvatore turned a corner to his own home.
Jona stayed on the street until he found Rachel’s apartment over the butcher shop. He looked up through the streetlamp glow. He saw her pulling her brother’s clothes in from the line at her window. She was home right then. He waved up at her. He called out her name. She waved back. She looked inside, and shook her head. My brother’s here, she mouthed silently. She held her hands up and mimicked sleeping.
Jona shrugged. He blew her a kiss. He walked on, to the station house.
***
Are you drunk? Have another drink and then you will be.
I want to believe we’re good, you know.
We are good. Jona, I’m tired, and I want to go home and sleep. You have to go back to work. You should stop coming to see me. We need to stop before we fall in love.
Don’t say that. We’re it for each other, so don’t tell me not to love you. Listen, I want to know it in my heart that all of us—all the people like us—that we’re really good. That if we do something bad, it isn’t because we are something bad.
What did you do?
Nothing. I broke this girl’s heart.
It wasn’t mine.
It was over this fellow I know.
This fellow you know. Name?
Salvatore Fidelio. You remember him, right? That burned girl? I threw him in the lake.
Did you break his heart, too?
If he has one, I did. He had another girl, already, and she loved him. I don’t know what happened, but I think I had something to do with it.
You didn’t do anything.
I set a fire in her house. I might have scared her.
Is she pretty?
She wasn’t as pretty as little Aggie from the Anchorites that got burned dead for Salvatore’s sake.
If Salvatore is as bad as you say he is, the best thing is to back away, and walk away, and let him find his own death.
Right. I wish I could talk to you all night.
I couldn’t stay awake that long. I have to go. I have to work tomorrow night.
Can I come?
Don’t be foolish. Give me a kiss good-bye.
When can I see you again?
Not this week.
Want me to help you with your brother?
No, Jona.
I can help, you know.
I said no.
CHAPTER 4
We do not know the fact of Djoss, for he was not held in any demon’s skull. I can only piece together what the rats tell us about the pinkers, and what their nature tells us, and what Calipari’s flock of birds tell us and what the stories of the street tell us.
Is this Djoss? Is it a lost vision of a dream of another man?
I do not know.
Still, the story fits into the puzzle that I piece together from the demon skulls. I shall include it here, so all will know who to seek when they seek out Rachel Nolander.
***
Djoss paid a fellow all he had to acquire this little wooden tile with a number on it. Djoss took the slab to the bartender. The bartender tied the tile around Djoss’ neck with a string. He led Djoss behind the bar, into the back rooms. Bottles of alcohol in crates were stacked between giant casks of piss whiskey and ale. The door was built into the side of a cask. The back half of the cask swung inward. A fat stairwell led down past an old woman, and into a room smothered in pillows.
The old woman’s clothes were too fine for this place. Her red and blue silk dress matched the fan she used to blow the pink away from her face.
She waved Djoss down to the basement with her fan.
Djoss slipped a coin into her hand. “Let me stay a bit, eh?”
She took the money and waved Djoss inside. Four men lingered on dirty pillows, their mouths plugged into the hookah’s long stems. The four men didn’t look up.
The hookah was an upside down glass squid, as tall as a man, with many lithe tentacles. The pipe bubbled gently with a low flame. Four curled limbs reached up from the ground, out from the hooks at the top and out into the mouths of the fallen figures lingering the flickering haze. Djoss couldn’t see through the dark where he could find a place.
The old woman touched Djoss’ arm with her fan.
“In or out,” she said, softly. “Hurry up, now.”
Djoss stepped inside. He grabbed one of the open limbs coiled at the top of the hookah. He sat down on an empty mound of pillows. He bit down gently onto the hookah’s tip like