Symphony - [Millennium Quartet 01] Read online

  Besides, it was kind of fun. The Balanovs had a large pool behind their mock Tudor, they let her have the run of the house, and the kids weren’t much of a hassle at all. Sonya spent most of her time in the huge sandbox, building elaborate castles for her dolls, while Dimitri, when he wasn’t trying to talk to the birds, played ball in the little schoolyard across the street.

  Every so often, though, she felt a bit lonely, but it seldom lasted. Sonya would decide it was time to play in the water, or Dimitri would shriek into the one-acre yard and try to tackle her out of her chair, and before she knew it, the Balanovs would be on the redwood deck, watching with some amusement, and bewilderment, as the seventeen-year-old girl gang-wrestled with their children.

  Today had been better than most.

  The heat wave had bent, the temperature dropping out of the high nineties for the first time in two weeks. The radio still talked about weather-blamed riots in Boston and New York the night before, about the explosion of drive-by shootings in suburban New Jersey and Philadelphia, but it was all too far away.

  Everything was too far away.

  “Oh, Christ,” she muttered, and sat up.

  “Bad word,” Sonya scolded, scowling as she tried to fix a tiny flag to a not quite perfect tower. Skinny like her brother, and like her brother, topped with curly black hair that made her large black eyes seem enormous. “I’m telling Momma.”

  Cora rolled up to her knees. “Oh no,” she begged in a high-pitched voice. “Please don’t tell, Sonya. I’ll do anything.” She started crawling toward the sandbox. “Anything.”

  Sonya ignored her.

  “Pleasepleaseplease?’’

  She heard a giggle.

  “I’ll never say a bad word again as long as I live, okay?”

  The girl’s hand shook as she tried to reset the flag.

  “I swear.”

  Cora’s palm came down on a sharp pebble. “Damn!”

  Sonya shrieked a laugh, rocked back on her heels and shrieked again when she lost her balance and toppled off the sandbox ledge onto the grass.

  Cora pounced. “Now,” she said, face close to Sonya’s, “I will be forced to torture you, girl.” She lifted one eyebrow. “You know of the infamous Bowes Water Torture?”

  Sonya tried to wriggle free, but she couldn’t free her arms, couldn’t stop laughing.

  “Ah, I see that you do.” She stood, lifting the nine-year-old with her. “Too bad.” She turned toward the pool. “Because I have not yet fed the sharks!”

  As Sonya cried to her dolls for help, Cora leapt into the water. Cannonball. Releasing the girl when her feet touched bottom, pushing her up, following her to the surface and staying right behind while she dog-paddled to the edge.

  Laughing; still laughing.

  Cora deepened her voice and hummed the theme from Jaws.

  Sonya shrieked again and tried to haul herself up to the rose-tile lip. Cora pawed at her waist, causing Sonya to slip back, whirl, and catch her on the jaw with a tiny fist. A punch, not a slap, and much harder than it should have been.

  Laughing; still laughing.

  Surprise dropped Cora under for a moment. Her temper flared, and before she realized it, she had reached out again, this time to drag the child under with her, teach her a damn lesson. But as soon as her fingers closed around an ankle, she released it and floated up.

  Sonya scrambled out and sat with her legs dangling. “Stupid shark,” she said.

  Cora spat, treading water, rubbing and poking at her jaw gingerly to be sure she had all her teeth. Exaggerating, but not by much. Man, that kid was strong. She tasted blood and watched droplets fade in the water. The little creep had cut the inside of her lip.

  Sonya’s eyes widened. “Did you get hurt?”

  “I’ll live.” Tasting blood.

  A lower lip curled under and trembled. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” Cora said flatly. “It was a mistake.”

  Sonya lifted her chin. “You can hit me if you want to.”

  Cora tightened her jaw to keep from smiling. “It’s tempting, you little twerp. Never tempt the shark.”

  Sonya kicked one leg halfheartedly, the splash not going very far. “I’m sorry.”

  A lazy breaststroke took her to the girl’s side, a kick and pull brought her out of the pool. They watched a breeze cast a ripple across the surface. She spat on the grass, not stopping until the blood did, the sun warm and cool on her shoulders. At the back of the yard a stand of trees mostly birch and oak hissed at them for a moment, dancing shadows on the grass.

  Then Sonya said wistfully, “I wish you were my sister.”

  “Me too,” she answered without thinking, giving Sonya a hug.

  “ ‘Me too’ what?” a voice asked.

  Dimitri crossed the lawn. T-shirt and shorts, and a baseball cap turned backward. He was a year older than his sister and two inches taller, but with those eyes and that hair he was too pretty to be a boy. It had gotten him in trouble, and she hoped he’d bulk up before he reached high school, or they’d eat him alive.

  “Cora’s gonna be my sister,” Sonya said.

  “Oh, yuck.”

  He walked past them, and Cora sighed when he didn’t try to knock down the sand castle or push her in the water. Something had happened. It wasn’t his expression, but the only time he went near the trees on his own was to talk to the birds; he only talked to the birds when something had upset him. She hustled Sonya to the sandbox, and followed, not pretending to do anything else.

  There were sparrows up there, no more than a handful, and he cocked his head as if they were talking just to him.

  “So?” she said quietly.

  He shrugged. “Nothing.”

  She rapped his skull with a knuckle. “Talk.”

  One shoulder lifted this time; she rapped him again, a little harder, and knelt beside him, keeping her face turned to the birds, glancing over and startled to see tears in his eyes.

  She touched his back lightly. “What do they say?”

  Dimitri sniffed, and wiped an arm across his nose and mouth.

  “Are they telling you when it’s going to rain? I hope so. We could sure use it.”

  A tear slipped, but she didn’t stop it.

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Die.”

  She wasn’t sure she heard him. “What?”

  “We’re all gonna die.”

  Oh man, this was the part she really hated. This was when the kid needed his mother, not her. This kind of stuff she didn’t know anything about.

  “Oh.” She stood, putting an arm around his shoulders and forcing him to turn with her. “I suppose we are, in a way. In a couple hundred years.” She nudged him toward the house. “Of course, I don’t know about Batman. I mean, he seems pretty good to hang on for, I don’t know, a couple of weeks.”

  He didn’t smile.

  He twisted away and ran, climbing the deck steps two at a time, yanking open the kitchen door and vanishing inside.

  The only thing she could think of was that someone had said something to him, either in the schoolyard or on the street. It made her mad. Kids don’t need to think of things like that. God, it was bad enough as it was just trying to grow up in a noplace town like this. She shoved her feet into her flip-flops, ordered Sonya to stay where she was, and marched around the house to the front. Across the road to her left, the single-story square brick school was silent. No one in any yard she could see. So where had he gotten such a crazy idea?

  A car drove by, heading west, and a hand reached over the roof to give her a wave.

  Her arm was up before she realized who it was, and she froze.

  Son of a bitch. Reverend Chisholm. That son of a bitch hick bastard. Looking at her like that, making her feel strange.

  Making her feel.

  He waved again, and her hand closed into a fist, and when he checked the rearview mirror she had already turned her back, making him wonder if it wasn’t time for them
to have a little talk. But not so little, he knew; not so little at all.

  He remembered Sunday night, her attitude, her face. He had known her too long to believe she had grown into that; she had been forced there, and he had a sickening idea who had done it.

  His breathing grew shallow as his anger surged, and it took several whacks of his fist against the seat beside him before he beat the anger back, ashamed for not feeling compassion first.

  Two blocks later, he parked in front of a brick ranch house nearly buried by flanking pines. Across Black Oak was a deli, the Video Pavilion, and a coin laundry, all housed in a flat-roofed, hideous yellow clapboard building that wanted repainting. He trotted over into the video store and headed for the counter on the right. No one was there, and he rapped the bell beside the register, shave-and-a-haircut.

  A glance at the window blocked with movie posters, half expecting to see Cora stomping by. Half hoping, even though now wasn’t the time. On days like this, weariness had never refused a ride home.

  He shook his head and unbuttoned his suit jacket. He had been at the hospital, and he was, as always, equally depressed and elated. Elated because Georgia Williams had survived her third back operation in eighteen months, no mean feat for a woman in her eighties; depressed because he could do nothing about the others. Weak and wizened, staring blindly at a wall-mounted television, or simply staring at the ceiling, mumbling to themselves.

  Waiting.

  Just waiting.

  When they looked at him, recognized him, saw the plain gold cross on the plain gold chain hanging against his chest, they always had the same question even though they didn’t always ask it: what did God say, Reverend? Am I going to go home?

  He had dozens of answers stock and glib, and had used them all at one time or another. None of them, however, was it’s His will, whatever happens. He didn’t believe that one for a minute.

  Sometimes he wished he did; it would make his job so much more simple.

  “Why,” a woman’s voice asked crossly, “do you always come in here when you’ve hit the hospital and shut-in trail? Is it my karma or something?”

  “I need a good laugh, Kay,” he answered honestly, leaning a heavy hip against the counter.

  “Yeah, maybe, but you always make the rest of us so damn depressed.” Kay Pollard wandered out of the back room and over to the comedy section on the back wall. “Besides, you’ve already seen most of these.” A glance over her shoulder. “Twice.”

  He didn’t move. He would rather watch her move, and grinned when she read the faint smile on his face.

  “You’re a preacher,” she scolded, coming toward him. A head shorter, too much weight without being fat, baggy slacks and blouse hiding her true figure. Deep brown hair and feathery bangs, a pleasantly round face he suspected would never get old. “You’re not supposed to be thinking stuff like that.”

  “Like what?” he asked innocently.

  She passed him, thumped his stomach with a loose fist, and pointed toward the new releases on the opposite wall. “It’s Wednesday. Two-for-one. Go find something there before you make me want to cut my throat.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” he protested, and obeyed anyway.

  She sidestepped behind the counter. “You don’t have to. The collar is still on, the jacket is still on, that ugly face is still on. You could wear a sign, but it would be redundant.”

  He turned his back to her and scanned the titles.

  “How are you feeling?”

  He waggled his right hand. “So-so. I’ll live.”

  “You should rest, eat.”

  “I’ll eat in a few minutes, rest later.”

  She mumbled something he didn’t catch, then said, “So, you hear about that stuff down in Arkansas? That town?”

  He nodded; it had been all over the hospital. A tiny roadside community leveled by fire and gunfire. Its own people killing each other, burning each other out, the survivors claiming they were cleansing the spot for the Lord, for the end of the world.

  It wasn’t alone; there had been others.

  “So what do you think?”

  He coughed, not badly. “I think I’m a little tired of reading about things like that, I guess.” A shrug. “I’m not surprised, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “You’re not?” Her voice said she was.

  A glance over his shoulder. “Not really. Too many people, too much pressure, too much heat, too much of just about everything. Something’s bound to give.”

  “Yeah, well, how about saying it’s just the end of the world?”

  “Okay. It’s the end of the world.”

  He braced himself for something—a thrown box, pencil, pen, wadded-up paper.

  It was paper.

  He grinned, and leaned over to read the titles near the bottom, thinking only midgets would ever know what was down here.

  “So how is Georgia?”

  “Fine.” He kept reading. “She ought to be home sometime after the Fourth.” Nothing there, and he straightened, lightly rubbing his chest. “What do you suggest?”

  “Violence.”

  That made him look. “What?”

  She smiled sweetly, sinking dimples into her cheeks. “Nothing you take ever makes you laugh anyway, right? So get some old-fashioned, extreme, gratuitous violence. Something where people are blowing other people away. Buildings blowing up.” She spread her arms. “Entire cities leveled. Countries destroyed.” A tap to her temple. “Trust me, it works. Vicarious death and destruction, guaranteed to make you feel a whole lot better.”

  “About what?”

  “About not being a stunt man.”

  He laughed silently,, slipped his hands into his pockets and wandered around the store, reading posters and boxes, checking the rack, of candy and microwave popcorn, and finally staring pointedly at the unmarked red notebook she kept beside the register.

  “No,” she said hastily, snatching it away to tuck under the counter. “No way.”

  “Why not?” All wide-eyed and hurt.

  “I don’t rent porn to preachers. It’s a rule. And it’s probably a law.”

  “Maybe,” he said quietly, “you shouldn’t be renting it at all.”

  “Oh no.” She shook a finger at his chest. “Don’t start with me, Casey Chisholm. It’s bad enough Enid comes in two, three times a week, preaching about ruining the lives of our children, destroying their precious morals. I don’t need you, too.”

  He nodded knowingly. “Ah. Came in before she left for work today, did she?”

  Kay sneered. “I swear, one of these days I’m gonna deck her, the pious bitch.” She didn’t apologize for the language.

  He understood. Enid Balanov was a member of his church, and a preeminent member of the Ladies’ Guild. They furnished flowers for the altar, polished the silver, decorated for the holidays, planned picnics and suppers, ran rummage sales, and tried, in the bargain, to run the church as well. She and her friends knew everything about everybody, and they made sure he knew it too.

  Even Job, he suspected, would have cracked under the pressure.

  “I’ll have a talk with her,” he promised, knowing it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good.

  Kay knew it too by the skeptical, and grateful, look she gave him. She winked as she reached under the counter. “Here.”

  Puzzlement sketched a frown as she tore off the plastic shrink-wrap, trying and failing to read the title upside down. “What is it?”

  “Chinese movie. You’ll love it. Ghosts, demons, chop-socky in slow motion, stupid subtitles,” she lowered her voice, “a little sex,” and handed the box over, “and something called a hopping vampire.”

  He stared at the cover, a woman in flowing white, floating above the ground in a skeletal forest. “A what?”

  “You heard me.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” He reached for his wallet, but she stayed him with a touch to his arm. The finger lingered, stroking the black cloth to his wrist b
efore sliding away. He smiled and tried to think of something to say. It was easy to be quick with a bunch of kids, or the guys at the Moonglow; it was something else to find wit or substance in a woman’s presence. For all his size, they made him feel like a teenager still trying to figure out what hormones meant, and what he was supposed to do with them once he found out.