Bathing the Lion (26 page)

Jane smiled and tipped her head from side to side. “Do those three letters or signs or whatever they are together mean anything in that specific order?”

Marley took off her glasses. “You mean in between the mishmash of all the other stuff on the page? Not necessarily. But looking at them with modern eyes I
might
construe it as some kind of manic, three-thousand-year-old suicide note or last will and testament.

“Oh, there’s Dru and Ryder. I’ve got to go over and say hello to them. See you later, honey.” Marley bustled off across the room to her next meet-and-greet.

Jane sipped whisky and continued studying the two papers, her eyes constantly moving back and forth between them. Where had they come from? Had one of the other dreamers put them in her pocket? If so, for what reason?

The bar grew louder and more raucous until it finally overwhelmed her. She decided to go outside for fresh air and silence. Maybe it would be easier to think and make connections out there. On her way an idea slid into her head. Jane said a loud “Yes!” and pumped her fist. Veering left she went into the office. Beneath the desk in there were her Rollerblades and they were exactly what she sought.

If it was September outside and not winter with its snow-covered streets, she would go rollerblading through town and maybe a ways into the countryside. It was the best method she knew to clear her brain and let it take long deep breaths of clean air, which was exactly the tonic it needed right now.

Toting the blades, she exited via the back door, which opened onto a small parking lot. Next to the door out there was a lovely old maple wood bench Felice bought at a church yard sale, had refinished and weatherproofed, then given Jane on the first anniversary of her bar. Jane had workmen set bolts deep into the ground to anchor it and keep the bench from being stolen. Surprisingly little graffiti had been written or carved on it since she had it installed there for bar employees to use when they took a break. Felice said it was because the bench was a gift of love, thus it held special magical powers to keep vandals and evildoers away.

The night was the kind of not-quite-chilly that lives during mid-September. A tricky cold, you can’t decide whether to go out in just a sweater or throw on a coat just in case. It was perfect skating weather because you’d start out cold but soon the physical exertion warmed every bit of you to a perfectly toasty temperature.

Jane lay her jacket down on Felice’s bench after making sure the drawings were zipped safely inside one of the pockets. She needed both hands free to put on the Rollerblades. They were a professional model with a complicated system of lacings and clips, which required both dexterity and concentration to do up. Sometimes it took her two or three tries to get it right. She was always so eager to start zooming down the street on her blades that she often left patience and caution in her street shoes after slipping them off.

While changing now she kept thinking about the comment Marley had made about the figures on one of the papers possibly being a last will or suicide note. Jane wondered if there were other things on the papers that, if she were able to translate them, would shed further light on what it all meant.

And what was the significance of the ink bottles on the second sheet? Nothing about them seemed mysterious or ambiguous—just beautifully rendered drawings of many bottles. Did the different color labels have special meaning—or the order in which they were placed in the drawing?

With her brain sizzling with so many thoughts and her fingers busy with the proper lacing, it took Jane a while to notice someone was sitting on the other end of the bench. And she didn’t realize
that
until her eyes slid to one side and saw a pair of Rollerblades exactly like her own—make, model, and color—on another’s feet. The same skates, only much smaller, worn on a pair of little feet down there on the corner of
her
bench.

Jane’s eyes moved up from the skates to the person wearing them: the girl she’d seen before moving across town roofs at night who had also showed up in the dream. She recognized the child immediately but for some reason wasn’t surprised to see her sitting so close by, wearing exactly the same Italian Rollerblades. Jane had to wait seven weeks for those skates to arrive after ordering them because the brand and model were so hard to find in America.

“Do you mind if I join you?” The girl spoke in a surprisingly deep voice, which sounded almost adult, a voice both comical and disturbing coming out of such a small child. Jane looked at her again to make sure she wasn’t a midget or dwarf, then went back to lacing her skates. “What if I said no?”

“I guess I’d join you anyway.”

“I thought so. Why did you even ask?”

“I was being polite.”

Jane finished and stood up. “Polite is for nice people; I already have a feeling you don’t fall into that category. Are you a mechanic? Is that why you’re here?”

Josephine nodded and stood up too.

“Can you skate? Because I’m not waiting for you.”

“It’s not a problem.” The child wiped her hands on her jeans.

Jane sped off across the parking lot, Josephine right behind her.

From the first instant it felt magnificent to be skating again, moving fast, flying along, her body deliciously pushing against the slight night breeze instead of standing around talking to people about things in a world and a life completely out of her control. Jane even found herself smiling at this odd time but she didn’t care. Everything was so confused and chaotic now; what difference did it make if she was able to have a brief few minutes of happiness? She was sure the appearance of this girl was only going to add to her confusion one way or another.

“Do you want to know answers? Because I can tell you if you want.” The girl was nearby but the only trace of her until she spoke was the sound of her skate wheels on the asphalt.

Jane said angrily, “Could you shut up for a while? Can we just skate and not say anything for now?”

“Sure—not another word.”

Past the bakery, past the diner where Bill Edmonds and Kaspar Benn ate breakfast,
shoosh shoosh
, the thrilling dip and long curve in the road right before you rocketed into the radiantly bright lights of the only gas station in town that stayed open until midnight. Sometimes when night skating, Jane stopped in there to buy a couple of energy bars to eat along the way. The owner of the station, Roberta Zaino, stood in the office door now and waved as Jane swept past. Roberta called out, “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you in ages.”

Jane shouted, “Crazy busy,” waved with both hands, and kept going. The girl stayed right at her heels.

They skated in and out of the darkness, across crinkly dead leaves, through different shades of shadow, in and out and in and out of the orange glare of overhead streetlights, back into the dark again, more scratchy leaves beneath their feet, more shifting shadows. The air smelled of smoke from burning leaves, wet trees, earth, and a sudden stiff chemical reek of exhaust fumes when cars passed in both directions going fast or slow. The skaters’ moving bodies caught for a moment in the headlights. Jane was breathing heavily by the time they started up Villard Hill.

As they chugged up the steep hill together, too many nagging questions and worries zoomed around inside Jane’s head, distracting her from enjoying the moment. Would she see the others again? Would her life ever return to any kind of normal?

Jane stopped and put both hands out to the sides to keep her balance. She looked straight at the girl and said in a voice filled with both wonder and fear, “Your name is Josephine.”

The girl’s face lit up. “Yes, that’s right.”

“You came here as Bill Edmonds’s child, or the child he was supposed to have.”

“Yes.”

An instant ago she knew only the life of Jane Claudius. Now she also knew explicit details of the life of William Edmonds, grieving widower, former tree surgeon, cheapskate who gave his beloved wife lousy presents. Jane knew what Edmonds believed about God, what he dreamed when he was asleep and when he was awake. She knew the words he used when he prayed and what he’d said when he caressed his wife. She even knew some of his most secret fears, the ones he never told Lola when she was alive. In an instant, an infinitesimal fraction of no time at all, Jane knew almost as much about the life of William Edmonds as he did.

Josephine smiled; she beamed. It was plain by her smile she knew precisely what was happening to Jane and it made the girl very happy.

“You know what’s happening inside me, don’t you? I can see by the look on your face.”

Josephine nodded. “Yes, I know.”

A very loud sports car came roaring down the street. They waited in silence until it had passed.

Jane saw something a few feet away resting against the curb beneath a street lamp. She rolled over for a closer look. It was a baseball, but completely black and shiny; it looked like it was made of patent leather. As the sound of the car faded, she picked up the ball and turned it over a few times in her hand. The contrast of something as familiar as a baseball but colored so “wrong” made it look like two separate objects existing in the same space.

“What do you think, Jane—is it still a baseball?”

“Huh? What?”

The girl rolled over and put out her hand, gesturing for the glossy black ball.

Jane gave it to her. “Sure; it’s a baseball that’s just black.”

Josephine said, “Maybe not … baseballs have to be white so you can see them. You can’t play with a
black
ball; it’d be too hard to see. Imagine a high pop fly to deep centerfield with a black ball? Or using one in a night game—it’d be almost invisible.” She gave it back.

Jane tossed it up and down in her hand. “Did you put this there?”

The girl ignored the question. “Maybe with a
black
ball, you have to create a whole different set of rules, or even a new game. Maybe you need a whole different pair of eyes to keep track of it.”

“Look, Josephine, I’m not a fan of gnomic sayings or double meanings. I flunked metaphor in college. So just tell me what you’re getting at and skip the analogies.” To emphasize her point, Jane let the ball drop onto the street. It bounced and rolled slowly into a small puddle by the curb.

“That’s not a good idea. You’d better keep it because you might need it later.”

“Why?”

“What color is it?”

“Black.”

“Not really black, Jane, there’s something more to it, something else just as important.”

“It’s shiny?”

“Right. What else has the same kind of shiny blackness?”

Perplexed, Jane went over and picked the ball up again. It was wet from being in the puddle. She dried it with a small handkerchief she kept in her coat pocket. While drying the ball, she looked at it and felt the texture. The name flashed into her mind: “Obsidian.”

Josephine said, “One of the ink bottles on your drawing is labeled ‘obsidian.’”

Jane pushed the ball and handkerchief into a pocket and pulled Kaspar’s drawings from the other. Scanning the bottles under the overhead streetlight, she saw nothing at first glance. Forcing herself to slow down, she looked again more carefully. In time she noticed it—in the lower left corner of the picture, a bottle labeled
OBSIDIAN
. Without looking up, she said to the girl, “Okay, I found it, but what does it mean?”

“Why don’t you ask Bill?”

Jane shook her head, confused. “What do you mean?”

“
Ask
Bill. It’s simple.”

“I can’t—he’s not here.”

Josephine pointed to Jane’s chest. “He’s there. How do you think you recognized
me
before? How did you know my name and all those other things about Bill? He’s
in there
—he’s part of you now, for at least a little while. Take advantage of him, use what he knows.” She pointed again at Jane’s chest. “You’re becoming a mechanic again, so use the powers!”

Jane nodded. She already knew those things from discussions with the others.

Josephine continued. “All retirees are being recalled because you have two things now—your past lives as mechanics and
this
one you’ve lived in a completely different environment. It’s happening to retired mechanics everywhere in the universe; you’ve not been singled out.”

Jane had questions about this but wanted answers to other things first. “Why do I know so much now about Bill Edmonds?”

“You were the only one of the group to eat the
udesh
when you saw it. When you swallowed and it entered your system, naturally the process of you regaining your powers sped up.”

“The powers of a mechanic?”

Josephine nodded. “Yes.”

The girl started to speak again but Jane cut her off. “Wait a minute—Bill
killed
himself, didn’t he? He got the white key and walked into the Aurora Cobb.”

Josephine smiled. “See? You’re beginning to remember things too. The transition is happening quicker than I thought with you.”

“So the only reason why we saw him alive just now is because we were flipped back to the part of our dream where we were standing on the road together?”

“Correct.”

Jane expected the girl to say more, to explain why Edmonds was permitted to kill himself if they needed him back as a mechanic.

As if reading her mind, Josephine said, “They need to know about
that
human experience too, grim as it is. They need to know precisely what one of you feels and what you’re thinking when you commit suicide. It’s very significant information.

“Humans treasure life; they cherish it like few other beings do. What happens inside a human psyche for someone to willingly give up the thing they value most?”

Jane wasn’t having it. “The white key caused his death. It showed him parts of his life that broke his heart. The effect of the key made him give up; if he hadn’t found it in the cloud those memories would never have come back all at once and he would have gone on.”