The tears spilled down her cheeks. She started to wipe them away and then stopped herself. Didn't she have a right to cry for her man? As much right as any other woman?
She waited for a response, knowing she could make one if she wanted to and resisting the urge. This wasn't a situation where talking to herself in Eddie's voice would do any good.
Suddenly her vision doubled in front of her eyes. She saw the Dogan for the unreal shade that it was. Beyond its walls were not the deserty wastelands on the east side of the Whye but Second Avenue with its rushing traffic.
Mia had opened her eyes. She was feeling fine again - thanks to me, honeybunch, thanks to me - and was ready to move on.
Susannah went back.
Four
A black woman (who still thought of herself as a Negro woman) was sitting on a bench in New York City in the spring of '99. A black woman with her traveling bags - her gunna - spread around her. One of them was a faded red. N OTHING BUT STRIKES AT MIDTOWN LANES was printed on it. It had been pink on the other side. The color of the rose.
Mia stood up. Susannah promptlycame forward and made her sit down again.
What did you do that for?Mia asked, surprised.
I don't know, I don't have a clue. But let's us palaver a little. Why don't you start by telling me where you want to go?
I need a telefung. Someone will call.
Telephone, Susannah said.And by the way, there's blood on our shirt, sugar, Margaret Eisenhart's blood, and sooner or later someone's gonna recognize it for what it is. Then where will you be?
The response to this was wordless, a swell of smiling contempt. It made Susannah angry. Five minutes ago - or maybe fifteen, it was hard to keep track of time when you were having fun - this hijacking bitch had been screaming for help. And now that she'd gotten it, what her rescuer got was an internal contemptuous smile. What made it worse was that the bitch was right: she could probably stroll around Midtown all day without anyone asking her if that was dried blood on her shirt, or had she maybe just spilled her chocolate egg-cream.
All right,she said,but even if nobody bothers you about the blood, where are you going to store your goods? Then another question occurred to her, one that probably should have come to her right away.
Mia, how do you even know what a telephone is? And don't tell me they have em where you came from, either.
No response. Only a kind of watchful silence. But she had wiped the smile off the bitch's face; she'd done that much.
You have friends, don't you? Or at least you think they're friends. Folks you've been talking to behind my back. Folks that'll help you. Or so you think.
Areyougoing to help me or not? Back to that. And angry. But beneath the anger, what? Fright? Probably that was too strong, at least for now. But worry, certainly.How long have I - have we - got before the labor starts up again?
Susannah guessed somewhere between six and ten hours - certainly before midnight saw in June second - but tried to keep this to herself.
I don't know. Not all that long.
Then we have to get started. I have to find a telefung.Phone.In a private place.
Susannah thought there was a hotel at the First Avenue end of Forty-sixth Street, and tried to keep this to herself. Her eyes went back to the bag, once pink, now red, and suddenly she understood. Not everything, but enough to dismay and anger her.
I'll leave it here,Mia had said, speaking of the ring Eddie had made her,I'll leave it here, where he'll find it. Later, if ka wills, you may wear it again.
Not a promise, exactly, at least not a direct one, but Mia had certainlyimplied -
Dull anger surged through Susannah's mind. No, she'd not promised. She had simply led Susannah in a certain direction, and Susannah had done the rest.
She didn't cozen me; she let me cozen myself.
Mia stood up again, and once again Susannahcame forward and made her sit down. Hard, this time.
What? Susannah, you promised! The chap -
I'll help you with the chap,Susannah replied grimly. She bent forward and picked up the red bag. The bag with the box inside it. And inside the box? The ghostwood box with UNFOUND written upon it in runes? She could feel a baleful pulse even through the layer of magical wood and cloth which hid it. Black Thirteen was in the bag. Mia had taken it through the door. And if it was the ball that opened the door, how could Eddie get to her now?
I did what I had to,Mia said nervously.It's my baby, my chap, and every hand is against me now. Every hand but yours, and you only help me because you have to. Remember what I said...if ka wills, I said -
It was Detta Walker's voice that replied. It was harsh and crude and brooked no argument. "I don't give a shit bout ka," she said, "and you bes be rememberin dat. You got problems, girl. Got a rug-monkey comin you don't know what it is. Got folks say they'll he'p you and you don't know whatdey are. Shit, you doan even know what a telephone is or where to find one. Now we goan sit here, and you're goan tell me what happens next. We goan palaver, girl, and if you don't play straight, we still be sittin here with these bags come nightfall and you can have your precious chap on this bench and wash him off in the f**kin fountain."
The woman on the bench bared her teeth in a gruesome smile that was all Detta Walker.
"Youcare bout dat chap...and Susannah, she care alittle bout dat chap...but I been mos'ly turned out of this body, and I...don't...givea shit."
A woman pushing a stroller (it looked as divinely lightweight as Susannah's abandoned wheelchair) gave the woman on the bench a nervous glance and then pushed her own baby onward, so fast she was nearly running.
"So!" Detta said brightly. "It's be purty out here, don't you think? Good weather for talkin. You hear me, mamma?"
No reply from Mia, daughter of none and mother of one. Detta wasn't put out of countenance; her grin widened.