Straub, Peter - Black House by Straub Peter

Author:Straub, Peter [Straub, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2001-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

17

GEORGE POTTER is sitting on the bunk in the third holding cell down a short corridor that smells of piss and disinfectant. He’s looking out the window at the parking lot, which has lately been the scene of so much excitement and which is still full of milling people. He doesn’t turn at the sound of Jack’s approaching footfalls.

As he walks, Jack passes two signs. ONE CALL MEANS ONE CALL, reads the first. A.A. MEETINGS MON. AT 7 P.M., N.A. MEETINGS THURS. AT 8 P.M., reads the second. There’s a dusty drinking fountain and an ancient fire extinguisher, which some wit has labeled LAUGHING GAS.

Jack reaches the bars of the cell and raps on one with his house key. Potter at last turns away from the window. Jack, still in that state of hyperawareness that he now recognizes as a kind of Territorial residue, knows the essential truth of the man at a single look. It’s in the sunken eyes and the dark hollows beneath them; it’s in the sallow cheeks and the slightly hollowed temples with their delicate nestles of veins; it’s in the too sharp prominence of the nose.

“Hello, Mr. Potter,” he says. “I want to talk to you, and we have to make it fast.”

“They wanted me,” Potter remarks.

“Yes.”

“Maybe you should have let ’em take me. Another three-four months, I’m out of the race anyway.”

In his breast pocket is the Mag-card Dale has given him, and Jack uses it to unlock the cell door. There’s a harsh buzzing as it trundles back on its short track. When Jack removes the key, the buzzing stops. Downstairs in the ready room, an amber light marked H.C. 3 will now be glowing.

Jack comes in and sits down on the end of the bunk. He has put his key ring away, not wanting the metallic smell to corrupt the scent of lilies. “Where have you got it?”

Without asking how Jack knows, Potter raises one large gnarled hand—a carpenter’s hand—and touches his midsection. Then he lets it drop. “Started in the gut. That was five years ago. I took the pills and the shots like a good boy. La Riviere, that was. That stuff . . . man, I was throwing up ever’where. Corners and just about ever’where. Once I threw up in my own bed and didn’t even know it. Woke up the next morning with puke drying on my chest. You know anything about that, son?”

“My mother had cancer,” Jack says quietly. “When I was twelve. Then it went away.”

“She get five years?”

“More.”

“Lucky,” Potter says. “Got her in the end, though, didn’t it?”

Jack nods.

Potter nods back. They’re not quite friends yet, but it’s edging that way. It’s how Jack works, always has been.

“That shit gets in and waits,” Potter tells him. “My theory is that it never goes away, not really. Anyway, shots is done. Pills is done, too. Except for the ones that kill the pain. I come here for the finish.”

“Why?” This is not a thing Jack needs

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