The Shibboleth (19 page)

“Growing up, my parents always served the older children wine at dinner. It was a symbol of our increasing maturity.”

The glass stands before me. I pick it up. Smell it. It holds spices and the fragrance of smoke. And it smells like Moms. I put it down.

“I thought you wanted a ‘real' drink?”

“Now that I think about it, no. There'll be time enough for that, I guess, later.”

Jerry takes his glass, tilts it back, and pours half of it down his throat. “I do not have your mental abilities.” He pauses, thinking. He drinks some more wine, sipping this time. “However, I knew you would decline. Which is why I offered it.”

Some people know things just by intelligence and wisdom. Not by mind reading and psychic whizbangery. They kind of suck, the smart ones. My cheeks burn with embarrassment of it all—the titty-baby behavior, the predictability of my not drinking the wine. My damned situation.

“The way I see this is—” He counts his points off on his fingers. “One, you have to learn the nature of this thing in Maryland and stop whatever it's doing. The insomnia. The craziness that's taking over the world.”

I say, “The Riders.”

He nods. “Ahh. Yes. The Riders. I can't help but think their role in this will be revealed soon.” He raises another finger. “Two, you must confront this Quincrux, or you'll never be able to have a life for yourself.”

He drinks more wine and thinks for a long while without saying anything. His eyebrows make interesting shapes.

“Three, you must use this ability of yours to help people as you can. If not, you'll become less and less human, Shreve. This is important. We will all become pawns to you.”

“That won't happen. The shibboleth—” I don't know how to say it. “It's like I'm more connected to everyone and everything. Not distant.”

“Be that as it may, you must do this thing that you did to the people of the Tulaville Hospital. You must do this thing wherever you go.”

“It's my job to save the world?”

“No, it's your job to save yourself. Doing this will help with your grooming.”

“What?”

“You'll be able to look at yourself in a mirror.”

“Ha. So funny. You import that stuff?”

He waves his hand, shooing my comeback away like a fly. “And finally, you must free your friend. Jack. You and he are bound up in this business. Quincrux too. But Jack is the thread that strings the pearls. He will be your partner in this great work.” He sighs, pulls out the photo from his pocket, and tosses it on the island counter. “It is yours, Shreve. In the morning, I will have some money for you.”

“For what?”

“So you do not have to steal.”

“Nah. You don't have to do that.”

Jerry sighs and then finishes his wine. He looks at me gravely. “Stealing is the most callous of crimes. It assumes that you are above the needs and rights of your victim. It
dehumanizes you. And we need you to stay human, Shreve.”

“Why do this?”

“I like you, you stubborn fool. And I do not have your gift. Or the will and youth to use it. I am old.”

“Yeah, but all this …”

“My wife. My son and daughters. My grandchildren. None of them can sleep. You must help them.” As he said it, the sound of glass shattering somewhere on a floor above us comes, bright and cacophonous. Bellows and thumps through the floor, as if men are fighting. Jerry stared at me like it was some sign.

“I hear you, Jer-bear.”

“You will accept the money?”

“Yes.”

“And commit no more thefts?”

“I can't swear to never steal again. Necessity, you know, is a real bitch.”

“No, necessity is the mother of invention.”

He looks tired now. And I feel it as well. The long-ass day grinding to its end. The weight of the conversation. The rawness of my throat from the crying jag. Being a titty-baby can take a lot out of a boy.

The responsibility of what he laid on me.

“I have a sofa for you, Shreve. We used to have another bedroom, but Miriam converted it to her office once our boy left home. You will stay here tonight?”

I'm yawning as he says it. I can sleep in the car. I'd rather sleep in the car, really; I've already made a nest in the backseat of new, scratchy clothing stinking of the factory they came from and dangling price tags that I bought with money I stole.

But that's too much like some animal. Like the shadows that move beyond the firelight illuminating the wild New York night.

So I say, “Okay. You got an alarm clock?”

Jerry tries to grin, but it sort of dies on his face.

“You are a wary young man. I wish you could relent.”

“Just love the early morning sunshine, Jer-bear.”

His face clouds. “Please explain this name to me. ‘Jer-bear'?”

“Well, there's this cartoon and there are these bears, right?”

“Okay. That explains part of it.”

“And they
care
. They're
care bears
.”

“What do they care about?”

“Hell if I know. Kids, I guess.”

He nods. Puts his hands on his waist, arms akimbo. “Then this is okay. You may continue to call me this.”

Well, that takes the fun out of it
, I think, but he's already heading to the hall to get blankets and a pillow.

Before sleep my mind unspools into nighttime air and I send my awareness out, through the building, lighting fires in the minds of everyone in it, flames jumping from match head to match head. Then farther out, to the next building, and the next.

So many people. Thousands and thousands within a few feet, a few yards, from me. Pacing, cursing, screwing. Hating and hurting their loved ones. Crying and moaning and gibbering into the sleepless night.

I touch their minds. I set their heads on fire, and they burn down the matchstick and fade into slumber, sigh into
sleep. Into death maybe, when someone wants to die. To sleep. To dream.

Turning on lights and turning them out.

Farther and farther afield I fly, dashing like a forest fire from treetop to treetop, leaping from mind to mind until I can touch no more. For a moment, hovering and intractable above the city's multitudes, I have an instant of vertigo, a yawing, teetering sensation, as if I'm going to have all the memories come crashing back in and begin babbling in French once more. But the memory of sun and the rooftop and the taste of tar on my tongue and the flapping and clatter of raven wings comes to me and I steady. Become myself again. Or less of myself.

It takes a while to find my poor lost body, lying in Jerry's posh apartment on Twentieth and Irving, New York City, New York State.

Thousands will sleep tonight.

But I don't know if I will.

I hear his phone start buzzing and rattling on the granite counter before I realize Jerry's been puttering around in the kitchen for a while now. I haven't slept, but I did enter a trancelike state where images and memories flickered across the dark cinema of my eyelids, fleeting. Not asleep enough to dream, but asleep enough to have strange catfish from the murky depths of my subconscious come up and slap at the surface of my awareness.

Jerry says, quietly into his phone, “Ahuvi! I've missed you. Yes, I'm fine. I have a guest here now—yes, this early. I understand that it is strange. Yes, dear.” He pauses and remains quiet for a long while. “It would be best if I explain it to you when you get home and have an opportunity to meet him.”

Another silence, longer.

“Yes. Mir, we have been married a long time now and you can trust me, no? I have not brought home some mongrel stray—” He catches himself. “Or maybe I have, at that. But mongrels are always the best dogs, are they not? We can talk about this when you get home.”

After a bout of protestations of love he hangs up. I stay where I am, lying on his couch, listening to the building. It's quiet except for some creaking, the normal expansion and contraction of wood and stone and steel. The chuff of the air-conditioning and the ticking of a thousand clocks.

Finally, I rise, creaky in places, just like the building.

“Ah, you are up!” Jerry grins at me from the kitchen. “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat.” I could eat a whole loaf of bread and a package of bacon. But I imagine there'll be no bacon here.

“Wonderful! Come! I will make you my specialty.”

I slip on my shoes and make sure the photo is in my left pocket, the Accord's keys in my right.

Turns out Jerry's specialty is toast and eggs. He fries them up nice while I slurp at a glass of orange juice.

“There is an envelope for you, there.”

I pick up the envelope and peek inside.

Cashola. Green. Lots of it.

“Jerry…”

“No, no more discussion on this matter. You have a hard path to hold to.”

I take it, stuff it in my pocket. It doesn't feel right, this massive gift, but nothing feels right. And where did he get all that money this early in the morning?

“And you earned it, I think,” Jerry says, smiling.

“What're you talking about?”

“I walk every morning with Al Rosen—” He points to the ceiling. “On the tenth floor.”

“So?”

“He texted me this morning, telling me he was going to go back to sleep.”

Ah.

“And judging by the lack of explosions or ambulance sirens, the whole neighborhood slept.”

I go to the bay windows. It's early, but everything seems
calm. No trash fires. No crazy preachers around Gramercy. Some cars move through the streets, but not a lot, especially for a city with so many people jammed together so tightly.

Jerry, who's standing behind me, says, “You did a good thing, I think.”

“Well, I didn't want the building to catch fire while we slept.”

“Strange, but you don't look as if you have.”

I don't say anything but go back to my plate and eat the eggs and toast, finish my juice.

“You will set out today?”

“I guess so.”

Jerry places a set of keys on the counter. The BMW logo is very conspicuous on the large black key.

“You've got to be crazy.”

“At some point, whatever car you've stolen will be reported, if it hasn't already.”

“It's not that. I just can't …”

“I, however, will not report my car missing. So you'll be safe.”

I remain quiet. The money? Okay, because I need it and Jerry obviously has quite a bit of green fluttering around his private stash. But the car? It's too much. He'll never get it back.

“I can't. I can switch out cars easy. But taking this one …”

There comes a jangle of keys and the sound of the front door opening, not visible from the kitchen. A woman's voice rings as clear as a bell, “Dearest, I'm home early!” Another jangle as keys are plopped down in the bowl on the table by the front door. “I couldn't sleep, and your mysterious guest made me want to get home …”

She walks into the doorway, smiling, looking from Jerry and then to me. She's a looker, decked out in tight, hip-hugging capris with cute little tennis shoes and a white button-down shirt. Expensive sunglasses perched on top of her head. Nice leather purse in her hand. Silver jewelry at her wrists, throat, ears. She's tanned and exuding the look and scent of money.

“Ah, ahuvi, let me introduce you to Shreve Cannon. I told you about him. We met when I had the gallstone attack in North Carolina …”

Her face goes blank. The purse falls to the floor. She turns, not quickly, toward the small desk nook where the calendar hangs over a pile of paperwork and a telephone. Turns like a robot, picking up the receiver and beginning to dial.

“Ahuvi…”

I snatch the envelope and jump from the stool. “Jerry, she's been—”

But Jerry's moving toward her, looking worried.

I slam into him, knocking him sideways. He claws at the counter and drawers to slow himself as he begins to fall, an expression of surprise and outrage crossing his features.

“She's been touched by Quincrux!” I'm yelling, but I can't help it. “You have to get away from her or she'll—”

Into the phone, she says, “He is here. Visual confirmation.”

She turns to us, phone still to her ear. Jerry's saying, “Ahuvi! Miri! What is going on?”

I grab Jerry's hand, pulling him up and away from her. Keeping the island between us.

She judders. She shakes. And then she smiles.

“Mr. Cannon. So good to see you again.”

“Ahuvi.” Jerry's voice sounds terrible. Forlorn and broken. I
grab his arm and turn him to me.

“Jerry, it's Quincrux. I've got to run. Once I'm gone they'll let her go.”

“No, you must stay—”

In the corner of my eye, I can see her moving. She opens a drawer and sticks a hand inside.

Throwing myself over the island, I slam my foot against the drawer, pinning her hand inside. Her eyes go wild and she begins to judder once more, howling and crying in pain, crying for Jerry.