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“I picked up all the CDs from where you dropped them yesterday,” she said, “and sorted them by price.”
DEXTER IN THE DARK
185
“I’ll listen to them tonight,” I said, and although Rita still seemed peeved, eventually the evening routine took over and calmed her down, and she settled into cooking and cleaning while I listened to a series of rock bands playing “Chicken Dance” and
“Electric Slide.” I’m sure that ordinarily it would have been as much fun as a toothache, but since I couldn’t think of anything else in the world worth doing, I labored through the whole stack of CDs and soon it was time for bed again.
At 1 a.m. the music came back to me, and I don’t mean “Chicken Dance.” It was the drums and trumpets, and a chorus of voices came with them and rolled through my sleep, lifting me up into the heavens, and I woke up on the floor with the memory of it still echoing in my head.
I lay on the floor for a long time, unable to form any truly coherent thought about what it meant, but afraid to go to sleep in case it should come back again. Eventually I did get into bed, and I suppose I even slept, since I opened my eyes to sunlight and sound coming from the kitchen.
It was a Saturday morning, and Rita made blueberry pancakes, a very welcome nudge back to everyday life. Cody and Astor piled into the flapjacks with enthusiasm, and on any normal morning I would not have held back either. But today was not a normal morning.
It is difficult to understate how large the shock must be to put Dexter off his feed. I have a very fast metabolism, and require constant fuel in order to maintain the wonderful device that is me, and Rita’s pancakes fully qualify as high-test unleaded. And yet, time and again I found myself staring at the fork as it wavered halfway between the plate and my mouth, and I was unable to muster the necessary enthusiasm for completing the motion and putting in food.
Soon enough, everyone else was finished with the meal, and I was still staring at half a plate of food. Even Rita noticed that all was not well in Dexter’s Domain.
“You’ve hardly touched your food,” she said. “Is something wrong?”
186
JEFF LINDSAY
“It’s this case I’m working on,” I said, at least half truthfully. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Oh,” she said. “You’re sure that . . . I mean, is it very violent?”
“It’s not that,” I said, wondering what she wanted to hear. “It’s just . . . very puzzling.”
Rita nodded. “Sometimes if you stop thinking about something for a while, the answer comes to you,” she said.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, which was probably stretching the truth.
“Are you going to finish your breakfast?” she said.
I stared down at my plate with its pile of half-eaten pancakes and congealed syrup. Scientifically speaking, I knew they were still delicious, but at the moment they seemed about as appealing as old wet newspaper. “No,” I said.
Rita looked at me with alarm. When Dexter does not finish his breakfast, we are in uncharted territory. “Why don’t you take your boat out?” she said. “That always helps you relax.” She came over and put a hand on me with aggressive concern, and Cody and Astor looked up with the hope of a boat ride written on their faces, and it was suddenly like being in quicksand.
I stood up. It was all too much. I could not even meet my own expectations, and to be asked to deal with all theirs too was suffocating. Whether it was my failure with Starzak, the pursuing music, or being sucked down into family life, I could not say. Maybe it was the combination of all of them, pulling me apart with wildly opposite gravities and sucking the pieces into a whirlpool of clinging norma-ley that made me want to scream, and at the same time left me unable even to whimper. Whatever it was, I had to get out of here.
“I have an errand I have to run,” I said, and they all looked at me with wounded surprise.
“Oh,” Rita said. “What kind of errand?”
“Wedding business,” I blurted out, without any idea what I was going to say next, but trusting the impulse blindly. And happily for me, at least one thing went right, because I remembered my conversation with the blushing, groveling Vince Masuoka. “I have to talk to the caterer.”
DEXTER IN THE DARK
187
Rita lit up. “You’re going to see Manny Borque? Oh,” she said.
“That’s really—”
“Yes, it is,” I assured her. “I’ll be back later.” And so at the reasonable Saturday-morning time of fifteen minutes before ten o’clock, I bid a fond farewell to dirty dishes and domesticity, and climbed into my car. It was an unusually calm morning on the roads, and I saw no violence or crime of any kind as I drove to South Beach, which was almost like seeing snow at the Fontaine-bleau. Things being what they were for me lately, I kept an eye on the rearview mirror. For just a minute I thought that a little red Jeep-style car was following me, but when I slowed down it went right past me. The traffic stayed light, and it was still only ten fifteen when I had parked my car, rode up in the elevator, and knocked on Manny Borque’s door.
