Brief Encounters With Che Guevara_ Stories - Ben Fountain [32]
“Rhee?”
In the den the fake-antique clock gave three iron ticks.
“Rhee, are you all right?”
Melissa walked down the hall and tapped at the door. “Rhee, is everything okay?” Melissa cracked open the door to find her cousin spreadeagled on the shag pile, eyes closed, mouth wide to the sky, a blissed-out stoner look on her face. Melissa was to her in a second, kneeling to check her pulse and set a palm to her forehead—her pulse was even, her breathing deep and steady as the tides. Whatever was happening, Melissa decided, was a psychic, as opposed to a medical, episode, and so she sat and eased Rhee’s head onto her lap, wiping the slug track of drool from her cousin’s chin. There followed a prolonged series of non-moments, an enforced though not unpleasant lull like waiting in traffic for a train to pass—Melissa sat there stroking her cousin’s hair and listening to the birds outside the window, the cicadas buzzing like tiny chain saws. A luxurious sense of calm stole over her, a suspension of anxieties both large and small; suddenly the strangeness of things didn’t matter so much. After a while she lost all feeling of the floor, as if she were floating, enwombed in her own sphere of weightlessness, and then she realized that she was thinking of Dirk, her rambling and not-very-focused thoughts suffused with an aura of tenderness. She did love her husband, she felt sure of that; a revelation seemed to be building from this basic point, but Rhee’s eyes were fluttering open, startled at first, then locking onto Melissa from upside-down.
“Ahhh,” she said, smiling through a long sigh. “Melissa.”
“Be still.”
“No, it’s okay, I’m fine. I saw her, Lissa, she’s beautiful, she’s a beautiful black sister.” Rhee was grunting, hoisting herself into a sitting position like a mechanic crawling out from under a car. “I saw the white one too but she was farther back, it was the sister front and center today. Whoa,” she ran a hand through her hair, “that was strong.”
“Are you all right?”
“Sure, just got to get my head back. I’d love some water by the way, and a couple of Motrin if you got it.” She was rolling to her knees, determined to stand; Melissa helped her out to the kitchen, where she accepted a chair at the table. “One gorgeous sister,” she was saying, “deep, deep black skin, and beautiful braided hair right down to her butt. A killer body, oh my goodness she was something.”
“Uh-huh,” Melissa said, moving from sink to cabinet.
“Techy,” Rhee went on, “sort of a diva, a real queen-bee type. And old, she’s been around from the beginning. One of the ancients.”
“Right.” Melissa was glad for this small task to do. “So did she, ah, talk?”
Rhee thought for a moment. “Actually, no! Not that I remember. We just stared at each other for a while. Sometimes it’s like that.”
“But sometimes they do. Speak, I mean.” Melissa placed the Motrin and water on the table and sat.
“Not really speak.” Rhee’s eyes widened as a pill went down. “It’s more like sending. Direct thoughts going back and forth.”
“Oh.” Melissa watched the second pill disappear. She gathered her nerve; there was really no smooth way to say this. “Is she evil, do you think?”
“Oh heavens, Melissa, how should I know? She’s a power that’s come into your life, a force, a source, a cause, whatever you want to call it. Nature and then some, that’s how I look at it.” Rhee blew out her lips with a rubbery sound. “Beyond that you’ve got to work it out on your own. I can help you up to a point, but whether it’s good or bad, that’s pretty much up to you. You’re the only person who can figure that out.”
For some reason Melissa was more or less expecting this, a variation on the once-familiar grow up theme;