Devoted Read online

  “You’re a lucky sonofabitch, aren’t you?”

  The old man does not reply.

  “I said, you’re a lucky sonofabitch, aren’t you?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  “Not that you’ve noticed? Well, then, you’re as stupid as you are lucky. You’re a lucky sonofabitch. It’s your lucky day, gramps. I’m going to walk out of here and let you go on breathing. You call the sheriff about this, you know what’s going to happen?”

  “I’m not callin’ nobody.”

  “Some cop pulls me over, he better kill me quick. ’Cause if he doesn’t, I’ll kill him, then come back here and shove a pistol up your fat ass.”

  “I’m not callin’ nobody,” the old man repeats.

  Shacket walks out to the Dodge Demon. Under the driver’s seat, snugged in a belt holster, is a Heckler & Koch Compact .38. He needs all of his willpower not to retrieve it, return to the store, and empty the magazine into the old man.

  On the road again, past the jerkwater called Warm Springs, heading toward Tonopah on federal highway 6, Shacket accelerates to 120 miles per hour, then 130, the Dodge roaring, gobbling blacktop. He’s agitated, excited, electrified, and he needs the speed to work off his agitation, to calm himself.

  Ever since Springville, Utah, something has been happening to his mind. For his entire life, there’s been a Dorian Purcell to whom he has had to answer, a Purcell by one name or another, from whom he has taken shit when it is shoveled at him. Well, no longer. He is free at last. He’s in control of his life. No one is the boss of him anymore. Something is happening to his mind, and he loves it.

  Thirty-five miles from Warm Springs, about ten miles short of Tonopah, the buzzing in his head stops, and he is able to slow down.

  The state line is maybe ninety miles away. He will soon be in California. On his way to lovely Megan.

  He is hungry. Nothing had tasted good at dinner the previous evening. He had skipped breakfast. The candy bar really had tasted like shit. He is exceedingly hungry. Ravenous. He’ll stop to eat as soon as he’s in California. He doesn’t know what he wants to eat; nothing he can think of makes his mouth water; he’ll figure it out when he gets there.

  The highway rises into the White Mountains and Inyo National Forest, the wastelands falling away behind him, the past falling away with them, the past and all restraints.

  11

  When the mortician came to collect the body, Kipp at last got off Dorothy’s bed.

  While others were too busy to notice him, he made his way down through the house, through his special door, and into the backyard.

  The September morning had come. The day was warm and bright and like unto other mornings, as if nothing terrible had happened.

  He howled silently, mentally howled to others in the Mysterium, that they might know his grief and share it, wherever they were and on whatever task they might be engaged.

  There were only eighty-six, all golden retrievers or Labradors.

  Now and then a new, young member found his or her way to others of their kind, for they could speak to one another on the Wire, a mental communication medium unique to them.

  Their origin and history remained a deep mystery to them, but they sought to plumb it.

  They were dogs unlike all other dogs, changed as only humankind had the power to reshape other species.

  But who had done it? Where had it been done? Why?

  And how had they come to be roaming a few counties in north and central California, in search of their meaning?

  On the Wire, the peculiar murmur that wasn’t tinnitus increased slightly in volume.

  Kipp began to suspect that the insistent sound was not coming from some new member of the Mysterium, not from another canine.

  A human being. He thought it might be a young boy.

  This was a new thing. Kipp had never heard such a call from a human being before.

  Then again, it wasn’t really a call. The boy, if it was a boy, very likely didn’t know he was transmitting.

  Kipp stood for a while, looking at the house to which he’d been brought as a puppy.

  He expected to regret leaving it. But with Dorothy gone, it was just a house, no place special.

  She’d been seventy-three and in good health when she brought him home. She’d expected to outlive him. Then the cancer.

  He avoided leaving by the side of the house where the hearse was in the driveway. He didn’t want to see her being taken away.

  The murmuring boy, if it was a boy, lived somewhere west by northwest of Lake Tahoe.

  As if it were a radio, he could turn off the Wire. But then what would he do? He needed something to do.

  This might be a perilous journey for a stray dog, but Kipp felt compelled to undertake it.

  He wasn’t afraid of dogcatchers. He was quicker and smarter than they were.

  However, the world was full of worse things than dogcatchers.

  He set out at a trot, staying as best he could to backstreets and forest-service roads, to woods and meadows.

  From time to time he heard himself whimpering in grief. Love was the best thing when you had it, and the most terrible thing when it was taken from you.

  12

  Wednesday afternoon, Megan Bookman was in her ground-floor studio, listening to a Beethoven sonata, Pathétique, while working on a painting. The big windows provided good northern light. The room smelled of turpentine and stand oil and paint, a fragrance as lovely to her as was that of roses.

  She’d been painting most of her life and had been selling her work since the year she graduated college. The glorious decade with Jason and the special needs of Woody had slowed her production, but she never stopped refining her intentions and techniques.

  When she lost Jason and faced the prospect of raising Woody alone, painting became the slow but sure curative for grief, as well as the means by which she gained the confidence to face the future unafraid. After a year of widowhood and long exhilarating hours in her studio, she had landed representation by a major gallery with outlets in New York, Boston, Seattle, and Los Angeles.

  Her approach was a rejection of fashion art from Picasso to Kandinsky to Warhol, and an embrace of realism. Her subjects were from the world around her, rendered with meticulous fidelity, yet with a quirky sense of composition and a regard for the complexities of light that suggested something magical—even supernatural—about even the most mundane scenes.

  This wasn’t an approach likely to win her critical acclaim in the blinkered world of critics steeped in postmodernism and all that sprang from it. Yet during the past eighteen months, there had been positive—growing—buzz about her work in the right places.

  She didn’t care whether critical acclaim waxed or waned. She painted to satisfy herself. Her first life had ended with the death of Jason, and she was profoundly grateful to have discovered that there was life after life. Her art and her child were graces enough for her. Whatever else the future might bring would be a lagniappe.

  Because she closely guarded her smartphone number, she also had a landline for the house. The studio extension stood on a table near her easel. When it rang, the caller’s number meant nothing to her, but she put down her brush, swiveled on the stool, and answered it.

  “Hello?”

  “Megan? Megan Bookman?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Lee Shacket.”

  She didn’t know quite what to say, though her high spirits sank slightly. “Lee, how have you been?”

  “Terrific. I’ve been terrific.” He sounded a little manic. “No complaints. None at all. How’ve you been?”

  She’d dated him briefly, before she met Jason; but there was no chemistry between them
, no intimacy. He was cute, earnest. He was amusing at times, in the hyperbolic style of the late comedian Robin Williams. He was hardworking, with big dreams that were charmingly naive rather than pretentious. But essentially he’d been a young man on the make, too into himself to care much about anyone else. Eventually Jason recognized enough intelligence and self-discipline in Lee’s hustle to recommend him to Dorian Purcell, and indeed Lee climbed the corporate ladder faster and far higher than Jason.

  “I’ve been well,” she said. “I’ve been painting, being a mom, you know.”

  “How’s the kid? The boy. How’s the boy doing?”

  “Woody? He’s fine. He’s busy being Woody.”

  Megan hadn’t had occasion to speak with Lee Shacket since a corporate event eight or nine years earlier. He had not called with condolences when Jason died.

  “You moved back to Pinehaven. That’s where you were born, isn’t it? Weren’t you born in Pinehaven?”

  “Yes. It’s quiet here. It’s a good environment for Woody.”

  “Not much happening in Pinehaven. Not a lot of glamour.”

  “Just how I like it,” she said, wondering what motivated him to call, what he might want.

  “Are you financially okay, Megan?”

  The question struck her as bizarre. “Excuse me?”

  “I know Dorian didn’t treat you properly after Jason died.”

  Jason had stock options that would have made her and Woody rich if not wealthy. However, the employment contract had included an unusual vesting clause allowing more than one interpretation, and Dorian had not been inclined to be generous to a widow.

  “We’re okay,” she assured Shacket.

  “It wasn’t right. Dorian can be a hard-nosed sonofabitch. You should have sued him.”

  “He had way deeper pockets. It would’ve taken years and years, with no guarantee I’d win.”

  “It’s just so wrong. Jason would have wanted you to sue. He’d earned what Dorian took from you.”

  “I was grieving, and there was Woody to worry about. We had enough. I didn’t want to mess with the whole court thing.”

  “Dorian screwed me, too. He set me up, put me out on the ledge to take a fall for him, screwed me bad, but I still came out of it rich. I came out of it with a hundred million.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. Shacket’s voice had at first withered with acidic anger, but then had swelled with pride.

  Seemingly unaware of her moment of speechlessness, he hurried on. “If you need anything, anything at all, you can count on me. I have resources. Whatever you need. Anything.”

  She’d dated Lee Shacket maybe six times. She had seen in him a better boy than the man he’d become, one who adapted a cocky self-assurance to repress the humility and self-doubt of his youth. She might have liked him better if he’d let that boy become a different man. Lee had been out of her personal life for thirteen years, a business associate of Jason’s whom she’d seldom encountered. There was nothing substantive between them; there never had been. She couldn’t fathom the purpose of this weird conversation.

  “That’s kind of you, Lee. That’s very thoughtful,” she said, though in fact she found his offer not just inexplicable but also somewhat creepy. “However, Jason left us well set, with insurance and all, and my paintings have been selling. We’re fine, we really are.”

  “When you make a hundred million,” he said, “you start thinking about giving back. I’m all the time thinking about giving back. I just want you to know that you and the kid, the boy, I just want you to know that I’m here for you. I care. I’m here.”

  Again, he left her speechless.

  He remained so oblivious of the effect he was having that he rambled on before Megan’s uneasy silence became apparent to him. “Have you ever been to Costa Rica? It’s quite a place, a fabulous place. The blue Caribbean. Nothing like the sea along California. Tranquil, like a jewel. San José, the capital, is a sophisticated city. Friendly people, great nightlife. A hundred million in Costa Rica is like a billion here, hell, like two or three billion. I’m going down to Costa Rica, Megan. I’m getting out of the rat race. I’m going to lay back, enjoy life, really live while I’m young. But nothing is as good as it ought to be when you’re alone. What I need is someone to share it with. You and me, we had something special once. Really special. I was too callow, too frantic for success, too much of a jerk, to realize what we had. But I’ve always regretted that we drifted apart. If you’ll give me a second chance, you’ll never regret it. I’ll take good care of you, Megan, you and the boy, no one would ever take better care of you.”

  She wondered if he was drunk. Or high on something. He talked fast, but he didn’t slur his words. Whether intoxicated or not, this out-of-the-blue proposal was irrational and profoundly awkward.

  She might once have been less than polite in this circumstance, but sweet Woody had taught her patience. She carefully considered her response. “I’m flattered that you’ve thought so well of me all these years, Lee. Though I’m sure I don’t deserve it. Not only young men can be callow. Young women make a good job of it, too. But I’ve got Woody. He relies on me. Woody is all I want for now, all I need. I couldn’t possibly take him to Costa Rica. A trip to the barbershop emotionally exhausts him, and he needs days to recover from going to the dentist. I’m afraid you underestimate how a special-needs child changes your life.”

  His rapid speech gave way to a silence of his own, and then he said, “But it has to be Costa Rica. I’ve planned it all. The way is prepared. I can’t change that now. I could fold you into the plan, you and the boy, but I couldn’t come up with a new plan, not now, not after . . . Give me a chance. Just tell me you’ll think about it, Megan. Think about it overnight and call me tomorrow. Please call me tomorrow.”

  He gave her the number, and she wrote it down with no intention of calling him. “All right, but I’m afraid our time has passed, Lee. What’s best for me is what’s best for Woody, and that’s not Costa Rica. You’ve made a life for yourself that anyone would envy, and I’ve no doubt you’ll find someone to share it with. You deserve to be happy, happier than you’d be with me.”

  He began to importune her again, and she lied to bring an end to this excruciating conversation. She said that Woody was calling out to her, that he was having one of his tantrums—Woody never had tantrums—and that she had to go to the boy right away.

  After hanging up, Megan turned her attention to the canvas on which she had been working. Her own backyard served as the setting. The hour of the scene: perhaps four o’clock in the morning. Only the moon to illuminate the moment. This eerie luminosity was a metaphor for the light at the heart of the world, the unseen light in all things; therefore, though its effects were rendered realistically, they were subtly exaggerated, so that the softest reflections of moonglow seemed to emanate from within certain pale elements of the composition: from the slices of apple in the boy’s hand, from his face, from the soft coats of the three deer, from the white blossoms on the apple tree. The dark forest loomed over all.

  To the best of her knowledge, Woody had never ventured into the yard after dark, alone. He had lured the deer to the porch steps to feed from his hand. Sometimes an artist had to stage events as they might have been, slightly different from how they had been, to best convey the truth of them.

  And what had been the truth of Lee Shacket’s call?

  It eluded her.

  Unable to get back into the mood of the painting, she put her brush in a jar of turpentine.

  She went to the tall French doors and the flanking windows that provided her with ample north light. This was not the lawn in the painting, but the forest embraced this side yard as well, looming somewhat closer than at the back of the house.

  When a narcissist like S
hacket had a $100 million to fall back on, he didn’t fall into melancholy under any circumstance, didn’t become sentimental and brood about days gone by and all that might have been. He went out and bought what he wanted, whether it was a Ferrari or a piece of arm candy with long legs and canyonesque cleavage.

  The explanation had to be inebriation. Wherever he was calling from, perhaps it was much later in the day than half past three, and maybe he’d gotten an early start on the bottle.

  He hadn’t been the kind of man who’d spoken of his heart, only of his opinions, which were dogma to him, and of his high ambitions, which he had been certain would be fulfilled. He had never loved her, only wanted her. When the alcohol wore off, he would regret what he’d done. He wouldn’t phone her again. And if he did, Megan wouldn’t take the call.

  The quality of the light had changed, not just because the afternoon was waning, but also because the sky had begun to grow pale-gray scales, its fine blue skin molting away in favor of a serpent’s dress.

  As always, there was magic in the day, though not the kind to inspire in her the enchantment that she needed to do justice to the painting of Woody and the deer.

  Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Verna Brickit came to do light housekeeping, which concluded with preparation of a meal that Megan could reheat for dinner. By now, Verna would be at work in the kitchen; she welcomed an assistant cook, and Megan was good company.

  Megan cleaned her brushes, put away her paints, and washed her hands in the bathroom that adjoined her studio.

  When she looked at herself in the mirror above the sink, she was surprised to see such unmistakable anxiety in her face, in her eyes. Lee Shacket’s reentry into her life had disturbed her more than she wanted to admit.