“Thanks.”
“What were you dreaming about?”
“I don’t…” it was fading, fading into white. She had no idea what she had been dreaming about, but now, as usually happened, she was thinking again of the white truck, and of Noreen going end-over-end by the road. “Noreen.”
“Oh, Frannie. You do remember.” Her mother brought her hand to her mouth. “Right?”
“I… No, I do.” Frannie said, all of reality washing back in her mind.
She had even seen Noreen’s mother, briefly. The woman had come in and sat by her bed and hadn’t said a word. That had actually happened, hadn’t it? Frannie felt tears come to her eyes.
“Hey. They’re going to release you.” Mom sat on the edge of the bed, filling the space in Frannie’s mind where Noreen’s mom had sat a few days earlier. Her mother couldn’t stop touching her, her eyes searching, inspecting the land that was Frannie. “Hey, it’s okay.”
Frannie sniffed. “I saw her mom. Noreen’s mom was here.”
“Don’t think about that.” Her mother nodded, squeezing Frannie’s hand. “Did you hear what I told you? They’re gonna let you out. Tomorrow. Do you feel good?”
Frannie drank some water, fighting away the thought of Noreen’s blood. “I feel fine.”
She did feel ready. She was wasting time here. She needed to get out. To stop reading and staring out the window and get some strength back. She wanted to get out and hit the road, get some distance. Maybe not get on a bike. She searched her thoughts and that one waved back at her defiantly. Yeah. Maybe not a bike. But she had to get out.
“How’s your vision, still bleary?”
“I see fine.” For the first few days she had had blurred vision, but the doctor had said that was the least of her worries. That she had survived without breaking her neck was a miracle. She had bounced off the hood of the truck and come this close to getting crushed under the wheels as it screeched to a halt. She ran her hand down her side, feeling along an agonizing roadmap on her hip, knees, elbows, where she’d skinned herself so fiercely that they were warning her about persistent scars. Contusions. sprains and a hairline fracture to her thigh where she’d gone under the bike. And for all that she was the lucky one.
Her mom kissed her forehead. “I have to get to the University,” Mom said. “summer physics; I don’t know why I bother getting dressed. The students are all asleep. But your pop will be in later. Then tomorrow you can come home, okay?”
Frannie nodded. Hell yes that would be okay.
“Your uncle’s here,” Mom said as she moved off, touching Frannie again. “The old fantayzor brought you some books.”
“Oy,” Frannie said, looking towards the door to see a short, powerfully built bald man come into view. Mom patted Uncle Saul’s shoulder as she passed him on the way out. Frannie called to her uncle, “You’re killing me here.”
“What, you don’t have time to read? What else ya gonna do in here?” Uncle Saul wore a pair of gray slacks and a black t-shirt that showed off his biceps. He took the chair next to the bed and reached into a leather bag he carried. “You look good.”
“A man should watch his lies when he reaches a certain age.”
“Ah. Here.” Saul produced a small stack of books and lay them on the bed next to her, then snapped up the stack on her nightstand. “You done with these others?”
“I finished the Connie Blair mysteries. I could use more,” Frannie said, indicating the mystery novels in the stack. “And the Bullfinch Mythology, that was kind of fun.”
“Not the Norman Mailer?”
“You’re kidding.”
“Eh, we try,” Saul said. Uncle Saul had opened a new place, a coffee shop sort of like the old Café he used to run farther up the coast. Frannie hadn’t seen that one because it was closed by the time her family moved here. “You gotta see the new place, Frannie. It’s a great spot. You can throw a baseball and hit the beach if you don’t bean one of the jokers in the hotel across the way. And we got books.”
“People read books on the beach, huh?” Frannie was looking at the new stack. She saw a couple more Connie Blairs—so Saul did know her poison now—and some science fiction.
She grimaced. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”
“Science fiction not your thing?”
“Not last I checked.”
“I mean, your pop would like it; he’d say it’s actually about communism.”
“He thinks everything is about communism.” Frannie came to a black book without a title. “What’s this?”
Saul was flipping through the Norman Mailer book and looked up. “Huh?”
She held it up. “No title.”
Saul froze for a second, his brow knitting under his tan cue ball head. “Uh… here, lemme see that.”
“Sure,” she said, and Saul took it—snatched it, really. She sat up a little more as her uncle’s demeanor shifted, getting stiffer, and he turned slightly away, flipping the book open just a crack. He mumbled under his breath. “How the hell?”
“Uncle Saul, what is it?”
“It’s nothin’.” He forced a smile. “I don’t know how this got in there. Somebody ordered this.” The book was already back in his bag.
“You sellin’ illegal books in that place?” Frannie asked. “That something you’re supposed to keep in a plain brown wrapper?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Saul said. He brought the leather strap of the book bag over his shoulder and rose, going to the window. He stared out of it for a while, his hand on one of the strands of the blinds.
“Thanks for the mysteries,” she said. “I’m getting out tomorrow.”
“Good,” Saul said quietly. Now he looked like he was searching the outside, squinting into the sun. He clapped his hands and turned back to her. “Good—come to the café when you’re out. I’ll fix you up with something nice.”
“You got a deal.”
She got out of bed and watched at her window as Uncle Saul got to his car in the parking lot. Watched him look in every direction, even up at the roof. Watched him quickly make the sign of the kina hora and drive away.
Kina hora: the evil eye.
Chapter 4
At 9:30 in the evening, the North Texas air swam with humidity and heat. Sunlight had soaked into the concrete and the metal of cars all day, and hours after sundown, Verna Brody's cotton blouse stuck fast to her back and shoulders and perspiration beaded at her temples and brow. God, if it was like this in the building, what would it be like outside?
She locked up the Nu-2-U consignment shop at the Lancaster Town Square Market with a jangle of keys and an unconscious humming she’d picked up from the shop radio.
Verna liked to stay after hours doing the books and puttering around rearranging blouses. The shop was her life’s dream and at sixty-seven years old, it was a lover she hated to leave. Now the last song of the evening stayed with her as she left by the front entrance of the two-story, red-brick building. Verna’s baby-blue sedan was the only car in the lot.