Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [8]
“Doggone it,” The Queen grumbled. “’Nother one.”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Marcus said, barely overcoming his urge to bow at her feet.
“Fa sho,” she replied. “’S’what y’all say.”
She contemplated Marcus through the sliced-up screen door, apparently waiting for word from the Loa as to whether he passed muster. He stood in silence, watching hummingbirdlike moths hurling themselves into the irresistible lamplight, flinching whenever one met its end with a metallic ding!
“Yeah, you right,” agreed The Queen, though it wasn’t clear if she was speaking to Marcus or the all-knowing undead. She pointed to a long slit in the screen and said, “Give it here, dawlin’.”
Dutifully, Marcus pushed through five twenties, as he had been instructed before he came.
She counted the bills, then slipped them into the front pocket of her housecoat. The fabric was so faded that Marcus could still see the face of wild-haired Andrew Jackson on the outermost bill. Then The Queen gestured for Marcus to slip his hands through the same open space in the torn screen. She closed her eyes as she took his hands in hers, hands that felt not unlike Jessica’s grandmother’s hands, or those of any of the other elderly patients he used to take care of when he did community service at Silver Meadows Assisted Living Facility—fragile, like decaying paper or the wings of those suicidal moths. And it struck him as odd at the time that he should think of Gladdie, someone he hadn’t thought of in years. He remembered the last time he had visited Jessica’s grandmother before she died—she had beaten him at hearts, her favorite card game, by shooting the moon—and then, of course, he thought of Gladdie’s wake, when he had boldly followed a grieving Jessica into the bathroom, locked the door behind them, and kissed her—hungrily, sloppily—for the very first time—
The Queen suddenly let go. No more than ten seconds had passed.
“Y’all gone get run ovah,” she said.
“Run over?” asked Marcus, making sure he had heard her correctly. “By a car?”
“Noooooo.” She cackled. “Mo’ trouble den dat.”
“A bus?”
“Her,” she said with emphasis, the power of the pronoun in full effect.
Marcus’s mouth dropped open. The Queen’s front door slammed shut.
“Git off mah poach,” she shouted from inside. “I’m fixin’ to watch ’Merican Ah-dol.”
Natty taunted Marcus for the rest of the trip. “A hundred dollars wasted! That’s ten Hurricane Katrinas! Or one hay-yell of a lap dance!”
Now, back in the airport, Natty still spits with laughter. “Dude, seriously. You believe The Queen?”
“I didn’t,” Marcus says, angling his head to the side and down so he can look Natty in the eye. “Not until Jessica Darling ran over me while you were in there taking a piss.”
Natty still assumes this must be the setup for a practical joke, though he’s hard-pressed to come up with a reason why Marcus would joke about this, about her, of all subjects. “Oh, come on. You expect me to believe that? Try harder …”
“She was standing right there, where you are right now,” says Marcus, first pointing at the floor under Natty’s flip-flops before lifting his finger to gesture across the concourse. “She’s over there, in black.”
Natty looks to Gate C-88. There is a female who, from behind, at a distance of about a hundred yards, vaguely fits the physical description of the girl he met once over three years ago. “Are you sure it’s her?”
“I talked to her, Natty,” Marcus replies. “We talked.”
Just then the girl in question twitches a glance over her shoulder, and Natty must concede: Yes, it’s definitely her.
“Oh, fuck,” Natty groans.
“Indeed.”
“So,” Natty says. “What did she have to say for herself?”
An apprehensive smile brings relief to his afflicted face. Marcus removes his thin wire-rimmed glasses, cautiously rubs the lenses with an untucked shirttail, then puts them back on again. He surrenders a sad laugh. Then, finally, answers.
“Not enough.”
eight
“I made it!” Jessica repeats triumphantly,