Oliver Benjamin
on the other end was not nearly as cordial.
Roy and Leona were in the garden, she crying, he trying to
console her, both knowing that this would happen, just not that it
would happen so soon.
She understood, with the astute paranoia of a lover unloved, that
she had finally lost him. Roy had not come home that night, and
when she finally rose from the bed at four A.M. it was clear that the
other shoe had dropped. She padded into Yak’s room and laid down
shuddering on the bed beside him. He pacified her like an enormous
and disconsolate infant.
Now she demanded to hear what she already knew, and when
Roy told her, she wished she had never asked. She was broken and
there was nothing Roy would do to patch her up.
Yak came into the garden. “I’m sorry,” he said, “There’s a call.”
Roy looked over at him with desperation in his eyes, “Could you
pleasetake a message,” he begged.
“It’s Morris Bidden,” Yak said.
Roy stiffened and Leona stopped crying.
“You were to stay out of town,” Bidden’s voice growled over the line.
“You’ve seen the articles,” Roy guessed.
“Everywhere I look.”
“I’m not running any more. If you want to kill me, then do it.”
“I could just call the cops and send you to the slammer.”
“You know the truth. I do too. Don’t fuck around, Morris.”
“I know nothing of the sort. And you’re hardly qualified to
counsel anyone against fucking around.”
“You don’t want the case reopened.”
“You don’t know what I want.”
“Do what you will, then,” Roy said, foolhardy and he knew it.
“I will,” said Bidden, and hung up the phone.
Roy slumped down in his seat. Now, as then, as always, Bidden
held all the cards. Roy needed to tear them from his hands. Or to
somehow change the nature of the game.
He went back to his garden, peeled off his clothes and stepped
into the kungkum bath. Sympathetic despite her sorrow, Leona left
him alone and went back into the house.
His little garden, decorated in Javanese style provided a respite
from the whims of both nature and the gods. But nature was always
out to consume you. And the gods were always poised to destroy you.
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