Crescent City Connection

could calling her hurt?
    Lovelace said to the bartender, “How about that change?”
    But of course, the cop wasn’t working at that hour. What was Lovelace supposed to do—leave her name and number?
    Well, why not?
she thought. They can beep her. If any of this is true, she’ll probably call back in two minutes.
    But something was wrong with that. They’d look up the number in the reverse directory and come get her.
    Well?
she thought.
Wouldn’t that be okay?
    She was just sober enough to decide it wasn’t. She’d talk to the cop first, decide for herself what was going to happen. Besides, she had to let Isaac in on it.
    In the end, she ended up saying she’d call back in half an hour; if Langdon was there, she’d talk to her.
    She went back to the bar and waited, sucking down another Abita. But when she went to make the call, she didn’t feel buzzed at all. She was scared shitless.
    Langdon picked up on the first ring.
    “This is Lovelace Jacomine. I hear you’re looking for me.”
    “You hear right. We need to talk.”
    “About my grandfather?”
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t know where he is. Or my father either.”
    “We think they’re looking for you—to kidnap you again.”
    “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
    “Listen, I’m really sorry about what happened to you. Tell me about it.”
    Lovelace thought:
I don’t feel like it, standing up here in this damn dank corridor.
Her scalp prickled again. It was too long a story for the phone. She said, “Wait a minute. Michelle said you were simpatico. But you’re trying to trace the call, aren’t you?”
    “Lovelace, you’re in danger—I’m trying to help you.”
    “Well, forget this method. Meet me at seven tomorrow morning…” Her mind searched for a place. “The Camellia Grill.”
    It was near the juice bar.
    But maybe it wasn’t a good idea. Maybe the cop would follow her to her job—did she want to be followed? How did they plan to protect her anyway? House arrest of some kind?
    Isaac was home when she got there. He indicated a note he’d already written. “What gives? I called Anthony and he said you left hours ago.”
    She didn’t answer. Instead, she wrote him a note: “Are you my uncle or my mom?” and went into the kitchen.
    Pasta, she thought. Some nice, comforting noodles. She was just pulling things out of the refrigerator when her uncle came in and joined her. He wanted to talk, if you could call it that.
    * * *
    She had forgotten and said the name. If he could just keep his ears from hearing the name, or his eyes from reading it, or his mind from thinking it, he could get through most days okay. But this was the big one, he didn’t know why.
    Things had to equal out. Lovelace had said it, and so she had to offset it. She had said “Errol Jacomine” and now she had to say “Jesus Christ.” The Monk couldn’t; that was clear. It had to be Lovelace.
    He could ask her to say it, but was that really fair? Would it work? He wasn’t sure. It might be good enough, it might not.
    And what a hell of a thing to come now, when she was talking about calling the police. It was too much. What was this about her grandmother being some floozy who’d lost her husband to some younger floozy? And she had a harebrained story about his father being a vigilante killer, not that The Monk wouldn’t believe it of him.
    Jesus preserve us,
he thought, so as to offset the thought of his father. Now he needed to get Lovelace to say it. Did he have to provoke it, or would it be good enough if she simply said it on her own?
    He wrote, “I can’t do this, Lovelace. I’ve been running from this all my life. I can’t have it in my life, don’t you understand?”
    She said, “Jesus, Isaac, did I ask for this?”
    Oh, thank the gods, she said it. But it probably wasn’t enough. She had said “Errol Jacomine”; that meant she now had to say both names, “Jesus” and “Christ.” He couldn’t leave her until she had. And he had to leave. He absolutely had to get out of here, because if he didn’t, there’d be cops all over, and they’d be saying the name and bringing in contamination, and it would be a contamination of the spirit as well as of his house and his body.
    He wrote, “I thought I left all that behind.”
    She touched him, and then withdrew her hand, knowing that he couldn’t be touched, which made him so ashamed he wanted to go in the bedroom and lie there till he died.
    Oh, no! He couldn’t think about death. That one