Threshold by Caitlin R Kiernan

Author:Caitlin R Kiernan [Kiernan, Caitlin R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART II

The Dragon

“Chaos and muck and filth—the indeterminable and the unrecordable and the unknowable—and all men are liars—and yet—”

—CHARLES FORT (1919)

CHAPTER NINE

The Other Word for Catchfly

SADIE at the window, the fluorescent-bright inside of the laundromat window, and she’s watching the street, the sidewalk streetlight pools and the less certain spaces in between, the big pine trees and oaks at the edge of Rushton Park all blending together in the dark. Deacon’s still on the phone, still trying to find someone willing to drop whatever they’re doing and come in on a Saturday night, someone with nothing better to do, nothing worse, but no luck so far. His reflection is superimposed over her view of Highland Avenue, so Sadie can see him watching her from his stool behind the counter without taking her eyes off the street or the park or the trees. Looking ahead of herself and behind at the same time, and Deacon frowns and shakes his head, because he knows she can see him, eyes in the back of her head, and she nods.

“Look, man, yeah, I know it’s Saturday night, all right?” he says, and he’s starting to sound the way her stomach feels. “So why don’t you just say no and get it the hell over with so I can call somebody else?”

A pickup truck full of teenagers cruises slowly past the laundromat, and Sadie can feel the whump whump whump of its stereo through the plate glass; shitty rap and a truck-load of drunken white boys all looking for a cop to pull them over, a couple of nights in the Birmingham jail, and maybe that would rub a little bit of the suburbia off their dumb asses. She closes her eyes and doesn’t open them again until she can’t hear the pounding music anymore, until there’s nothing but the night outside, and That’s right, she thinks. Nothing at all but the night.

“Jesus, didn’t I say to just forget about it, Soda,” Deacon growls and hangs up the phone, rubs hard at his eyes, and Sadie turns around, sits down in one of the hard plastic chairs lined up in front of the window.

“Why don’t you call Peggy? Maybe if you tell her it’s an emergency,” but Deacon coughs up a dry scrap of a laugh and squints at the wall clock hanging above the vending machine that sells little boxes of soap powder and fabric softener.

“You know she’s already looking for an excuse to tell me to hit the road. Making her come all the way down here on a Saturday night would probably be the last straw.”

“But if you told her it’s an emergency,” Sadie says again. “Deke, she couldn’t fire you if it was an emergency,” trying hard not to sound impatient, but she’s looking at the clock, too, and it’s almost an hour now since she left the apartment, longer than that since she realized that Dancy was gone.

“Is that what this is? An emergency?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” And the

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