Steal the Lightning Page 14

  “Yeah,” she said. “That’s good, that’s good. Hey, English!” she called to me. “Be my chauffeur! Take me somewhere—anywhere. Ain’t gonna tell you nothin’ here, no way.”

  So I turned the car around, and drove.

  “This place. This! Stop! Stop right here!”

  There was nothing about. Nobody.

  The privacy of outdoors.

  We stepped into the sun. She lit a cigarette. You couldn’t even see the lighter’s flame, the air was so bright.

  “We’ll get more cigarettes,” said Silverman. “We’ll get you anything you want.”

  “Can’t get me what I want, Paulie. You know that.”

  “Yeah, I know. Just saying . . .”

  “So.” She stretched her legs. She posed, a raconteur about to greet her fans. And then she stuck.

  He prompted her.

  “Just start it any way you can, Stell. Any little detail. Just start it and we’ll go from there.”

  She scrunched her face up. She turned towards the clear blue sky.

  “You were trying to find him,” Silverman said.

  “Yeah. That was me. Trying to get another hit . . .”

  “The house—it took me like an hour to reach it. But soon as I set eyes on it, I knew—yeah. This is the place. I didn’t even count the street numbers. I knew. Everything else was so fucked up, but this was plain as day. It was like I’d been there, like everything’s already happened, and now I’m just, like, followin’ myself around. Like time is all mixed up . . .

  “House is old. Nothin’ in there. No pictures on the walls, no carpets. Bare boards, wooden furniture. It’s kinda creepy. Guy there lets me in. It’s like he owns the place, or maybe rents it, and his wife or girlfriend, she’s there, too, only she’s pissed, she’s in and out and she is so mad, I guess at what is going on, an’ at me, too, but she don’t come out an’ say it, so I think, hell, I’m gonna brass this out, an’—

  “An’ there’s my guy. Johnny fuckin’ Appleseed, sat at table with this big case open up in front of him, an’ inside, there’s like, rows of plastic tubes, full of rocks an’ powders, some just shades of gray but some are yellow, brown or kinda reddish, an’ I realize, everyone he gives it to, we all get something different. It’s like trials, like in the hospital, y’know? Clinical trials. An’ I said so, too, ’cause he says to me, ‘This,’ he says, ‘is science. It’s science and religion an’ it’s everything,’ an’ he checks his papers an’ he looks along the row of tubes an’ tells me, ‘This one’s yours.’”

  “‘This one’s yours,’” said Silverman.

  “I’m in the place I said I’d never get. He dusts me. And I have, like, one clear moment, just as I take it—like there’s something, somewhere down inside me, an’ it’s laughin’, ’cause it’s won. Some bad part of me, maybe. Or the devil, you know? An’ I don’t feel high. I think I will but instead, it’s like I’m shrunk up, like I’m this big, an’ my whole life’s just fallen in on me. I’m shit, I am human waste—I wanted to get high, but I get this! An’ I just break down. I fall onto the floor, and wail . . .”

  “And Appleseed. What did he do?”

  “That’s the thing. He watched. He sat there, he’s got his shades on, though there’s hardly any light. An’ he just watched.

  “You know how guys get off from watching sex? He’s like that. He is leaning forward, I can’t see his eyes, but even so, they’re burning fucking holes in me. An’ he’s watching and it’s like he’s making notes inside his head. Like I’m a fuckin’ rat, you know, a rat in an experiment. An’, shit. ’Cause that’s right. Yeah. That’s all I fuckin’ am.

  “He never tries the stuff. He never touches it. He’s got like, latex gloves. An’ he’s leanin’ forward on the chair, an’ he’s talkin’ to me. Real quiet now, real gentle. ‘Tell me what you see,’ he says. ‘A room,’ I say. ‘Describe it,’ he says. ‘It’s just a room!’ but then I start, an’ as I’m tellin’ it the details seem to stand out more and more. I see the grain in the wood an’ the way the shadows fall across it, an’ all these things that you don’t usually notice. An’ he says, ‘What do you hear?’ an’ I say, ‘nothin’,’ an’ again, he gets me to describe it, an’ I gotta say somethin’, so I say about the traffic on the highway. ‘What else?’ he says. I say, ‘The wind,’ but I can’t hear the wind, except that, once I’ve said it, yeah, maybe I can, though there was no wind earlier, nothin’ at all . . . ‘Tell me what you see.’ We’re back to that. An’ I look around the room again, only it’s changed, an’ I describe . . . I dunno. Like when I look into a corner, an’ I look hard, now I see things. Like the house is bigger than I ever thought, and the walls go further back, like I’m seeing round a corner that I never knew was there. An’ it’s dark out there. It’s dark an’ empty, an’ he tells me, ‘The god is gonna talk through you now, Stella,’ an’ I say, no, I say, I don’t want that. I tell him, take it out of me, take it out! An’ he just smiles. Smiles, says, ‘Too late.’ An’ I’m cryin’. I can’t explain it. But I am so scared of what I’m gonna see, ’cause I know it’s there, I know there’s somethin’ an’ I do not want to see it, not now or ever. An’ I look down, an’ I see this—this thing—

  “An’ it’s my life. I see it there, windin’ away from me, it’s like this little vein, just wrigglin’ in the dark, this one bright line, an’ it’s like, this long, you know?” She stretched her hand. “An’ the dark is huge an’ it goes on and on an’ my life is like—it’s nothin’, yeah? It’s fuckin’ nothin’, my whole life, it’s barely—it’s like, I could hold it in my hand, it’s just so small. An’ he’s there, nodding, an’ he’s real polite, he tells me, ‘Thank you, Stella. Thank you.’ He says, ‘Here and gone.’

  “An’ I don’t know what to do. I am lyin’ on the floor, I don’t know what to do, how I am gonna get back, get back to that life, I am just floatin’ in the dark, an’ my life, it’s down there an’ it’s so, so small, an’ . . .”

  She was crying. The tears were rolling down her face, and I wanted to just step in and say stop, we’re done, we’ve heard enough.

  But I needed to hear more. I needed to hear all of it.

  Silverman said, “But you did get back, didn’t you, Stella?”

  The cars blew by along the highway, and she paced, her legs stiff, arms moving in jerky tremors.

  “You got back. You’re here now.”

  “Am I? Sometimes I wonder, Paulie. I saw my life there, saw it from end to end. An’ it was so damn small. But all around it, there was this, this bigness, an’ I thought, if I could just get to that, an’ . . . Ah, shit.” She turned to him. “See, now? I nearly forgot, an’ then you make me think about it all again. Ah, Paulie—” and she was laughing, suddenly, sobs of laughter breaking out of her, and she ground her fists against her face, and I said, “OK, that’s it,” and she dropped her cigarettes and we all bent down to help her pick them up.

  “I wish she’d gone to a hotel,” I said.

  “She wants to be with friends,” said Angel. “You can’t blame her.”

  I looked round at our own hotel room. Blinds, the huge bed, a dresser that might have come straight from Transylvania, huge and gothic and ornate.

  I wondered what the hell we were doing there. What we were getting into.

  “Think she’ll be all right?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Don’t know any of us are all right. Not anymore.”

  “You feeling OK?”

  “I feel—yeah. I think so.”

  I reached out to her, put my arm around her.

  I said, “It’s got to be Registry, though, hasn’t it? All these—powders. Unless it’s foreign import, Eastern Europe, maybe, or . . . Jesus. I wish we could just sort this out and get it over with.”

  “Chris . . .”

  “And the Ballingtons, they’ve got a god? We’ve no records of that. So where’s that from, eh?”

  “I think they’re lying. Ballington Senior, he’s full of it. Likes hi
s name in the news. He told Fox News he’d flown around the world, single-handed. Not true, it turns out. And a stack of other stuff like that. Folks believe it, though. He wants people to think he’s got a god.”

  “In that case, nothing to worry about.”

  “What are you not telling me?”

  She could read me. It was eerie, sometimes. And a bit unsettling, too. I wasn’t used to having to be open with someone this way. It was habit, always to keep something back.

  I said, “I put in a report on Eddie-boy. Registry says, go and take a look. You wanna come?”

  “Shit, I dunno . . .”

  She pursed her lips.

  “Don’t have to,” I said.

  “I think . . .” She moved away from me, slipping out of my embrace. “I think I’d like some downtime, you know? On my own. Just for a few hours. Yeah?”

  “Of course.”

  But I didn’t mean of course. I meant, why? and, what’s wrong? and more than anything, is it me?

  And because I didn’t want the answer to that last one, I said nothing, and pretended to be busy, channel-hopping on the TV.

  “You get some rest,” I told her. “Then we’ll go out, big meal, just relax, yeah? Sound good?”

  I couldn’t keep my secrets. But I thought, just for the moment, I’d let her keep her own.

  Chapter 40

  Gate Keepers

  I dialed the number on Eddie’s card. I got straight through. We set up a meeting. Easy as that. Whatever he was after, he was keen. I drove south, but I stopped to call Angel. She told me she was looking for a keyboard.

  “What kind of keyboard?”

  “Piano would be good. I thought a church hall, maybe. I just want to play a while. I had this . . . I dunno. Kind of a tune or something. Running through my head. More . . . more like a tone, you know, like a specific sound? Saxes and flute, maybe. In fourths, or maybe fourths and seconds, and . . .” She paused. “This isn’t making sense to you, is it?”

  “I don’t know. If I understood I’d tell you whether it made sense.”

  “Ha ha. I told Paul I’d see him tonight. He’s off, filming with Stella today. She’s taking him to meet her friends.”

  “The next unfinished masterpiece.”

  “Yeah, well. He needs organizing. He needs a woman’s touch.”

  “Hey! Don’t even think about it.”

  “Is that a hint of jealousy there, Mr. Copeland? Really?”

  “Course not.”

  “No. Much too English for all that, I suppose.”

  “Hey,” I said. “I love you.”

  “And I love you. And I want you to be jealous, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Obvious,” she said.

  “I do love you, you know.”

  “Oh, I know. I know . . .”

  The Ballington Estate was not exactly shy. I followed big signs on the highway, and once I hit the minor roads my route ran parallel to a concrete wall, topped by razor wire and an occasional security camera. After a while I spotted an entrance and pulled over. The gates were big, solid, dark wood bossed with knobs of iron, like something from a medieval dungeon. There was no buzzer and no intercom. I waved at the security camera and pointed to the door. Nothing happened, so I got my phone and I called Eddie.

  “Chris,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re doing out there, but you just follow the signs, OK, and we’ll meet up by the south door of the House. Got that?” I said I had, and he said, “I’ll be waiting, buddy.”

  So I followed the signs. They took me to an entry road guarded by a barrier and a ticket booth.

  This was not what I’d expected. I might have called Eddie again, but I already looked enough of an idiot, so I drove up to the ticket booth.

  Entry was $37.

  “I have an appointment.”

  Entry was $37.

  Plus tax.

  “I’m here to see Eddie Ballington. Eddie-boy,” I added, like we were old friends.

  The man in the booth reached out and tapped the sign beside the window.

  $37.

  “I see how these guys make their money,” I said, and paid it. Or at least, the Registry did.

  I left the car in the car park. I could feel the heat, just radiating off the other vehicles. I showed my ticket at a turnstile where a woman in what seemed to be an air stewardess uniform reminded me, “No personal food or drink, including water. Food and drink can be purchased from the vendors in the grounds. Photographs are permissible within the gardens and those parts of the House open to the public unless otherwise advised. Photographs must be for personal use only. The Ballington Estate will take legal action if advised of unauthorized commercial use.” She managed an astonishingly sweet smile throughout this list of threats and prohibitions. It was very captivating. “Damage to artifacts, including plants and statuary, will result in legal action and highest penalties will be sought. Should you require medical assistance, the on-site doctor will be contacted at your expense. Children should be supervised at all times, and—”

  “Do I look like I’ve got children here?”

  “These are the regulations, sir. It’s my job to keep you informed.”

  “I’m here to see Eddie Ballington. Main door, south wing?”

  She frowned at that, but handed me a tourist map and pointed out the south wing. It was a little off the beaten trail, and labeled “no public entry.”

  The map cost three dollars.

  I was allowed to pass. And I walked on.

  Into Oz. Into El Dorado.

  Into Paradise . . .

  Chapter 41

  The Great House

  I had seen pictures on the website.

  None of them compared.

  Even the air was different, within the walls—richer and more complex, thick with the scent of wild herbs, and the tang of new-mown grass. Huge red sequoias towered over me, and birds would race among their branches with the suddenness of gunshots. Butterflies went dancing in a pool of sunlight. It was magical. Yet even this was just the antechamber, as it were—the prelude to the main event.

  Soon, I came out on a vast lawn, flat as a chessboard. Visitors strolled by in little groups, or sat on blankets with their special vendor-bought provisions. The vendors, anyway, were easy to pick out. They wore uniforms in red and yellow and towed coolers built like moon buggies, with tires massively inflated to protect the grass.

  Over all this, the house appeared to float upon the summer haze, floor after floor of tall, slim windows, flashing in the sun, to steep-pitched roofs and pillared chimneys, rising to a pure blue sky. The look was European, but the scale was magnificent: the Old World reimagined, rebuilt as a dream.

  I checked my map. The south wing was easy enough to find. There were private signs before I got there, and a low fence, and a chain slung waist-high across the path, so I ducked under that.

  People were working near the house. A man was trimming hedges with a nasty-sounding chain saw. A truck drove by, stinking of fertilizer.

  A moment later, and I spotted Eddie.

  Nice, I thought. Appropriate.

  He had a cowboy hat tipped back upon his head, his stubble razored carefully to emphasize his cheekbones.

  “Chris.” His handshake, just a bit too firm. Grin, a bit too wide. “Welcome to the farm.”

  “Like no farm I’ve seen.”

  “Say that again.” He raised his arm, swept it back and forth: the trees, the park, the level upon level of the house itself. “This French guy started it, oh, ’way back. Wanted it bigger than Versailles. So we got extra floors, maybe twenty, thirty extra rooms. This guy—well, he put everything in there. Finest marble—everything. Then he went bust. Debts up to here, y’know?”

  “Lovely.”

  “Well. In walks Dad-o’s grampaw. He’s got cash in hand, buys the place for, oh, like, fifty bucks or something, just to keep the old guy out of jail. Been in the family ever since.”

  “Nice.”


  “See, Chris—this is what we do. We take the best from everywhere. England, Europe, anywhere you like. We take the best and let it . . . flourish. We build it up. That’s why we’re strong.”

  “That, and the forty bucks it cost me to get in here.”

  He looked hurt at that.

  “Don’t think it’s worth it?”

  “Oh, I’m sure. Just seems a funny way of doing business, that’s all. Invite me over, charge me to get in.”

  “Chris, Chris!” He slapped me on the back; old pals. “You’re on expenses, man! Relax, enjoy!”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “There’s one way in, one way out. For everyone. OK? We are totally egalitarian here. Egalité, fraternité, whatever! Got that?”

  We had now come to a door, pointed like a church door, large but not especially ostentatious. Here, I was introduced to Captain Max Ghirelli, Head of Security.

  He didn’t shake my hand.

  “If you would like to step inside, we have a brief procedure we’re required to follow. I’m sure that you appreciate the need.”

  It wasn’t the usual Tennessee twang. I asked him, “Boston?”

  “This way, please, sir.”

  The entrance hall was cool and shady, and the sweat that had been oozing from me this last half hour immediately congealed and started rolling down my back in beads.

  Captain Ghirelli donned a pair of blue surgical gloves.

  “How, um, thorough is this going to be?”

  “Just a pat-down. And it’s Baltimore. Not really very close at all, sir.”

  I let him pat me down. He looked to Eddie-boy.

  “Two cell phones, sir.”

  He held them up. Eddie was smart. He looked them over.

  “One of them’s a reader.” He circled his finger, pointed. “That one,” he said.

  Fifty per cent chance, I thought.

  He got it right, though.

  There was no point in protesting. I’d wanted the phone to stay in touch with Angel; I’d wanted the reader for some sneaky measurements of any hot-spots in the place, preferably when no one else was looking.