Jack Womack by Heathern (epub)

Author:Heathern (epub)
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

• • • • •

“I hate to be in the same world with him,” I said. Lester and I gazed out the living room window, through a lacing of dead branches toward the far-off river and the Palisades farther still. I’d never made money enough in my life to have paid for the drapes in Thatcher’s house. “Not long after we started working for him I asked Bernard if he thought Thatcher was evil,” I said. “He said it was like asking what jazz is.”

“The mysteries come soon enough, Joanna,” said Lester, an unexplainable cheerfulness hanging over him. Thatcher’s own holiday glee so infused his spirit that the day before he’d unexpectedly invited us to this year’s Thanksgiving celebration. We were driven up; in those days the Dryden estate consisted of a couple of hundred acres running east from the Hudson River. A high granite wall girdled every inch. The main house dated from the turn of the last century, and had twenty rooms; for so long as I’d known him he’d planned to raze it and replace it with something cozier. While spying Thatcher’s bounty I eavesdropped on the comments of others who believed themselves to be speaking freely, as I knew few better paths to enlightenment in this world.

“Bernard told me not to worry about Tokyo,” a man whispered. “Everything’s under control.”

“You see the face on that new bodyguard?” a woman asked. “The little faggot?”

“Psycho,” said her companion. “Best kind to have, he tells me.”

A waiter glided past us, proffering a salver heavy with stunted olives and Velveeta-filled chicken livers; we declined. “You heard the official explanation yet?” Lester asked.

“It’s still in the oven, I suspect,” I said. “Bernard must have taken the news better than I thought he would. I don’t know what happened after they took me home Tuesday. Yesterday they were shut up in their offices all day. What tests were the doctors giving you?”

“I don’t know if I passed,” he said. “They gave me a Bible to read. Maybe to get the story straight.”

“Probably want you to see what to avoid,” I said.

“Why’d Bernard look so gloomy?”

“He and Martha usually spend Thanksgiving at home, watching the parade and having dinner afterward.” Macy’s—not part of Dryco—had announced that morning that they would no longer sponsor the parade, after that day’s events; too many victims intended to sue. “Bernard once told me he’d come up here on Thanksgiving only if they served up Thatcher with an apple in his mouth.”

“Thatcher needed him up here?”

“For punishment, perhaps. Doubtless we’ll find out soon enough what’s going on. He has something he wants us to do, I can tell—”

“Wants me to do,” said Lester. “Why didn’t Bernard’s wife come along?”

“Martha refuses to have anything to do with Thatcher anymore.”

“What’d he do to her?”

I shook my head. “Some people reach their limit sooner than others.”

“Then these must know no boundaries,” he said, regarding the crowd engulfing us. The house’s rooms were not large enough to dwarf multitudes; the twenty-five present made the space feel as cramped as a subway car.

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