Box Nine (24 page)

“High school, I guess,” she says. “Sleeping over friends' houses.”

“It's a system like any other. For me, it's not a question of whether I give credence to its occult history, whether or not I believe in prophecy through the cards. It's just a system to me, and fascinating within that realm. I don't have to be as affronted as my colleagues in the hard sciences. I can confront the cards on different terms.”

“So you're going to tell my fortune?”

“Let's have a look.”

He hands Lenore the cards and she starts to shuffle. They stare at each other as her hands move, then he nods and she hands the cards back. Woo pulls the top card up and lays it down.

“This is Lenore,” he says. “Interesting. The High Priestess. Learned and practical. A challenge to many men. But she has difficulty forming lasting relationships.”

“Real deep. You couldn't get hired by a carnival.”

He smiles and turns over several cards, laying them down in a definite pattern. He seems to be concentrating. On the turn of the fifth card, he stops.

“The Moon,” he says in a hushed voice.

“What's wrong with that?” Lenore asks.

“The Moon is a card of warning. It falls here to show what has occurred in your recent past. It shows danger. The chance of having made an error is great.”

He goes on spreading cards without looking up at her. She wants to laugh, but can't force it, and instead stares down at Woo's hands. They hesitate and he looks up at her and says, “I think we should stop with this next one.”

“Which is?”

He flips it over. There's a picture of an angel blowing a horn, possibly Gabriel, and a naked person emerging from an open coffin.

“It's the card of Judgment,” Woo says. “This is the future. The future shows a time of judgment will come. A great deal of sorrow. And a calling to atonement for a wrong committed. Something hideous and uncalled-for.”

Lenore's upper lip begins to quiver and the motion shocks her. It's a tugging, nervous twitch that she once felt while trying to move a refrigerator, a signal, located randomly in the lip, that the weight of the appliance was much more than her body should be handling. It's as if a dentist had given her a weird, double injection of both novocaine and some untested muscle stimulant. The tiny nerves in her upper lip first seem to go dead-numb and then tear away, out of control, spastic, and shoot north toward her right ear. She starts to tell herself that she's having a stroke, a seizure of some kind, but she knows this is a lie. What's happening to her lip is the result of an overstimulated nervous system, a psyche bullied into a cold, fear-ignoring willfulness, a diet of coffee and screeching music, a year without a normal night's sleep, and, most of all, the issuance from her gun of two aluminum and lead bullets that tore down a Canal Zone alley at four hundred feet per second and entered the hysterical heart of a redheaded teenage hooker named Vicky.

Woo just stares at her. It's clear he can see what's happening to the lip, but he makes no comment, offers no assistance.

Her right hand comes up to her face. She attempts to push the lip physically into place and hold it there, but it's a useless effort. The lip is locked into its numb then spastic routine and no amount of force from the hand can stop it.

She feels that ceaseless burning pressure behind the eyes, and tears start to come. Immediately, she descends into the breathing pattern of a child half woken from a horrifying nightmare, that choking, irregular, suck-and-heave pattern. Within seconds she's hysterical. She's sobbing, choking, keening, moaning, her head slightly flailing around her neck in a jagged circle, a fist pounding into her thigh, her dull fingernails managing to break the skin around her ankle through her socks.

Woo grabs her by the wrists, pulls her hands away from herself. He's even-voiced, moving moderately, deliberate.

“Lenore,” he says, then he repeats her name, over and over until it takes on the ring and rhythm of a chant.

After a minute he pulls her forward so that her body awkwardly falls, then leans into his. She lets her face, her eyes and the bridge of her nose, find a mount at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and she collects herself up into a more regular, consistent sobbing.

He moves his fingers slowly through her hair, strokes the back of her neck, whispers into her ear, “Lenore, there are people upstairs now. They'll hear us, Lenore. They'll know we're down here.”

She's surprised at how much this quiets her. They stay in a rigid and uncomfortable position for several minutes. Lenore thinks of an old movie version of
The Diary of Anne Frank
that she saw as a child. She and Ike watched it together. She thinks of herself now as Anne Frank, holding herself motionless, waiting, perpetually breathless, for Nazis to kick in the attic door.

Finally, she pulls away from Woo, positions herself back on the floor, cross-legged. She begins to rub at her eyes and says, “I'm sorry.”

Woo simply reaches forward, touches then lightly squeezes her leg.

“Vicky,” she says, as if the name were a word without any assigned meaning, as if she'd read it off the wall of a cave.

Woo nods.

A small red light begins to flash on the receiver on the table. Woo stays silent but starts to point rapidly at the table. Lenore stares at him for a second, then jumps up and moves to the table, grabs the headphones, and brings them to her ear. She hears the traditional phone-ringing sound, reaches out, and turns on the reel-to-reel recorder. The two large wheels of tape begin to turn and the needle in the sound meter box jumps up into view, shocked alive. The phone rings a few times, then there's a click of a pickup and she hears:

VOICE: Yeah, I'm here.

VOICE: Very good. I hope I didn't wake you.

Lenore's heart bucks. She'd bet all her memories of her parents that the second voice, with its accent and confidence, belongs to Cortez.

VOICE: I don't live here. I've got a life besides this shit, okay?

CORTEZ: Relax, Mr. Rourke. There's no reason we can't be civil with one another.

ROURKE: I'm not so sure about that.

CORTEZ: Were you offended by my package, Mr. Rourke?

ROURKE: What package? What?

CORTEZ: You'll find, in this business, Mr. Rourke, there's a line of demarcation, a pivot of sorts—

ROURKE: I hate it when people talk like this. Too many fucking words—

CORTEZ: There's a certain savvy needed in these endeavors, a definite, innate self-discipline, belief in standards. There's an instinct that's needed, Mr. Rourke, and I'm not entirely sure it's the type of thing that can be learned. In this, it's like a very useful form of grace.

ROURKE: Jesus. Just talk to me like a human for once.

CORTEZ: For instance, regarding my little package—

ROURKE: I said—didn't you hear me?—I said, what package?

CORTEZ: —you have to know how serious to take such a thing. You have to innately know from the very moment that you smell the stink, that you see the dismembered remains, the tiny parasites moving in and out of the host, you must be hit with understanding in that instant. You must know that this is very simply a symbol, a literal suggestion, a method of effective and concise communication, that it delivers a very important message in the most dramatic and instantaneous and lasting of ways. It's a work of art, Mr. Rourke. A thousand words, as the saying goes.
[
Whistling noise from Rourke
]

CORTEZ: And your reaction must be astute. You must know how to gauge your response. To take the message seriously enough to correct any aberrant behavior, but not so seriously that you rupture the whole relationship.

ROURKE: You can be an infuriating guy. Has this ever been said to you? Has anyone, maybe in passing, made this remark? You get a person's juices going, you know? You bring me to the edge of saying shit, I don't want to … like “talk normal, you fucking beaner.” You see, there you go. I said it. It's out. Can't suck the words back in. They're out there and you heard them.

CORTEZ: Racial slurs have very little meaning to me, Mr. Rourke. Meaningless. No meaning. In this instance, it doesn't even apply. My understanding is that “beaner” refers to a Mexican, or more likely, a Mexican-American. I'm an Argentine. Born in Brussels, to be honest.

ROURKE: Oh, for Christ sake …

CORTEZ: You say you didn't receive my package. I'm left with a choice as to whether to believe you or not.

ROURKE: What was in the package?

CORTEZ: It's no longer pertinent. You weren't sorting yesterday?

ROURKE: Bitch put me on a route. I'm telling you, luck is not with us.

There's a pause and Lenore starts to wonder if the tap's been discovered.

CORTEZ: My assistant said you were a bit uncooperative during his visit.

ROURKE: Guy's a freaking comedian.

CORTEZ: You continue to dispute our claim?

ROURKE: Look, mister, the sample I gave to your man had three units—

CORTEZ: Unfortunately, only two units arrived in the Park. I paid for three sample units.

ROURKE: I sent three. There were three. Think about this, why would I screw you before the main buy? Think about this. I got my neck so far out now. Think about my position for just one freaking second, okay? I'm in midair here. No one wants to be visible. I've got a producer whose name I don't know, won't show his face. I've got a purchaser who wants me to do all my talking to his goddamn funny-guy driver, for Christ sake.

CORTEZ: This is pointless. We've all got problems, Mr. Rourke.

ROURKE: I've fronted money. I've taken some risks here. You know, my own people don't have some banker friend in the Caribbean they can tap with a WATS line, okay? These people sold their cars, mortgaged houses—

CORTEZ: You saying I should be sympathetic because the broker in this transaction is an ill-equipped amateur. This is what you're saying. I should show mercy and patience and ignore my instinct because you're still trying to learn a new trade. I think you've made a huge mistake, Mr. Rourke—

ROURKE: All right, listen, forget it, we'll kick back on the missing unit, even though for all I know your driver Bozo—

CORTEZ: Bouza.

ROURKE: Bouza, Bouza, for all we know he lifted a Q. Okay, forget it. Everything's still on. Everything's perfect. It's all set to go.

CORTEZ: My confidence is shaken, Mr. Rourke …

ROURKE: You've got to be kidding me here. You're pulling my chain here, right? I talked to the Paraclete this morning. This
A.M.
He's ready. Everything is packaged. The whole wad. Your final offer is still A-OK. We just need a time and a place.

CORTEZ: You spoke to him?

ROURKE: I swear to you he called this morning. At my place. Like four
A.M.

CORTEZ: The Paraclete? Himself?

ROURKE: Yeah … Well, his people. You got people. I've got people. Of course, he's got people. His main guy called. Guy with authority. Speaks for the Paraclete. You got Bozo—

CORTEZ: Bouza.

ROURKE: Right, right.

CORTEZ: He's agreed that I name the spot?

ROURKE: He could be happier. But he'll live with it.

CORTEZ: Fine. We'll go with his original location.

ROURKE: Okay. I know right where you mean.

CORTEZ: Is two
A.M.
agreeable?

ROURKE: Couldn't be better. Could not be any better.

CORTEZ: I'll be deducting the cost of the third sample from the payout. There won't be a problem with this?

ROURKE: I'll cover it. It'll come out of my commission. Off the top. Everyone'll be happy.

CORTEZ: Then I'll see you, Mr. Rourke.

ROURKE: Done.

There's one hang-up click, a pause, then a second click. Lenore waits a beat, then shuts off the recorder and removes the head-phones.

Woo stares at her and she holds the headphones out to him, indicating that he can listen to a replay if he wants. He shrugs, but takes the headphones, puts them on, and spends several seconds adjusting their placement on his head. Lenore rewinds the tape for him and when the counter numbers fall back to zero, she hits the Play button.

Then she steps back and leans up against one of the brick walls and watches Woo's face closely as he listens. She's not sure what she's looking for, but she knows it's important that she watch. Possibly, some look will kick in at the eyes, or the whole head will shake upon hearing something significant. She knows she's being ridiculously greedy. She's gotten every piece of information she needs in one call. She's gotten Cortez as a buyer. She's gotten someone named Mr. Rourke as a broker. She's gotten someone named the Paraclete as the producer. She's gotten the time of the transaction. But she wants more. This doesn't surprise her. She knows, no matter what she came away with from the tap, no matter how wise and prepared she emerged from the cellar, she would want more.

Woo's face gives her nothing. He sits in a rigid schoolboy position, eyes straight ahead, focused on brick and mortar, lips primly together. He's even got his hands folded on the table in front of him. He's a blank sheet.

There's nothing to read.

Chapter Twenty

I
ke feels as if he's in a high school play, maybe a drama club production of
Twelve Angry Men
, done in the gym, a hundred parents trying to get comfortable on the wooden bleachers. He feels like he's missed every rehearsal since the play was cast, but they've kept him in the role anyway. Now it's opening night and he doesn't know a line. He can't even seem to find a script.

Eva knows her role. She's a born actress. She walked into the locker room like it was any other day. She read routes and names off her clipboard. She told Rourke if he had a problem to spit it out. She stared Wilson down in seconds and walked back to her office like her mind was already on requisition forms for a new bulletin board in the rental box area.