Ginny felt a wave of faintness rush through her head, seeming to lift her and make her light. She fought it off. When she looked back at Twitch, he was just closing his cell phone. 'No answer from Rusty,' he said.'I left a voice mail. Anyone else? What about Rennie?'
'No!' She almost shuddered. 'Not him.'
'My sister? Andi, I mean?'
Ginny only looked at him.
Twitch looked back for a moment, then dropped his eyes.'Maybe not,' he mumbled.
Ginny touched him above the wrist. His skin was cold with shock. She supposed her own was, too. 'If it's any comfort,' she said, 'I think she's trying to get clean. She came to see Rusty, and I'm pretty sure that was what it was about.'
Twitch ran his hands down the sides of his face, turning it for a moment into an opera bouffe mask of sorrow. 'This is a nightmare.'
'Yes,' Ginny said simply. Then she took out her cell phone again.
'Who you gonna call?' Twitch managed a little smile. 'Ghost-busters?'
'No. If Andi and Big Jim are out, who does that leave?'
'Sanders, but he's dogshit-useless and you know it. Why don't we just clean up the mess? Thurston's right, what happened here is obvious.'
Thurston came out of the bathroom. He was wiping his mouth with a paper towel. 'Because there are rules, young man. And under the circumstances, it's more important than ever that we follow them. Or at least give it the good old college try.'
Twitch looked up and saw Sammy Bushey's brains drying high on one wall. What she had used to think with now looked like a clot of oatmeal. He burst into tears.
10
Andy Sanders was sitting in Dale Barbara's apartment, on the side of Dale Barbara's bed. The window was filled with orange fireglare from the burning Democrat building next door From above him he heard footsteps and muffled voices - men on the roof, he assumed.
He had brought a brown bag with him when he climbed the inside staircase from the pharmacy below. Now he took out the contents: a glass, a bottle of Dasani water, and a bottle of pills. The pills were OxyContin tablets.The label read HOLD FOR A. GRINNELL. They were pink, the twenties. He shook some out, counted, then shook out more. Twenty. Four hundred milligrams. It might not be enough to kill Andrea, who'd had time to build up a tolerance, but he was sure it would do quite well for him.
The heat from the fire next door came baking through the wall. His skin was wet with sweat. It had to be at least a hundred in here, maybe more. He wiped his face with the coverlet.
Won't feel it much longer. There'll be cool breezes in heaven, and we'll all sit] down to dinner together at the Lord's table.
He used the bottom of the glass to grind the pink pills into powder, making sure the dope would hit him all at once. Like a hammer on a steer's head. Just lie down on the bed, close his eyes, and then good night, sweet pharmacist, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Me... and Claudie... and Dodee. Together for eternity.
Don't think so, brother.
That was Coggins's voice, Coggins at his most dour and declamatory. Andy paused in the act of crushing the pills.
Suicides don't eat supper with their loved ones, my friend; they go to hell and dine on hot coals that burn forever in the belly. Can you give me hallelujah on that? Can you say amen?
'Bullspit,' Andy whispered, and went back to grinding the pills. 'You were snout-first in the trough with the rest of us. Why should I believe you?'
Because I speak the truth. Your wife and daughter are looking down on you right now, pleading with you not to do it. Can't you hear them?
'Nope,' Andy said. 'And that's not you, either. It's just the part of my mind that's cowardly. It's run me my whole life. It's how Big Jim got hold of me. It's how I got into this meth mess. I didn't need the money, I don't even understand that much money, I just didn't know how to say no. But I can say it this time. Nosir. I've got nothing left to live for, and I'm leaving. Got anything to say to that?'
It seemed that Lester Coggins did not. Andy finished reducing the pills to powder, then filled the glass with water. He brushed the pink dust into the glass using the side of his hand, then stirred with his finger. The only sounds were the fire and the dim shouts of the men fighting it and from above, the thump-thud-thump of other men walking around on his roof.
'Down the hatch,' he said... but didn't drink. His hand was on the glass, but that cowardly part of him - that part that didn't want to die even though any meaningful life was over - held it where it was.
'No, you don't win this time,' he said, but he let go of the glass so he could wipe his streaming face with the coverlet again. 'Not every time and not this time.'
He raised the glass to his lips. Sweet pink oblivion swam inside. But again he put it down on the bed table.
The cowardly part, still ruling him. God damn that cowardly part.
'Lord, send me a sign,' he whispered. 'Send me a sign that it's all right to drink this. If for no other reason than because it's the only way I can get out of this town.'
Next door, the roof of the Democrat went down in a stew of sparks. Above him, someone - it sounded like Romeo Burpee - shouted: 'Be ready, boys, be on the goddam ready!'
Be ready. That was the sign, surely. Andy Sanders lifted the glassful of death again, and this time the cowardly part didn't hold his arm down. The cowardly part seemed to have given up.
In his pocket, his cell phone played the opening phrases of 'You're Beautiful,' a sentimental piece of crap that had been Claudie's choice. For a moment he almost drank, anyway, but then a voice whispered that this could be a sign, too. He couldn't tell if that was the voice of the cowardly part, or of Coggins, or of his own true heart. And because he couldn't, he answered the phone.
'Mr Sanders?' A woman's voice, tired and unhappy and frightened. Andy could relate.'This isVirginiaTomlinson,up at the hospital?'