Spiral

some maturity.” A grunted laugh this time. ”Think about that, will you? The most mature guy in the band is the youngest by a couple of decades.”
    ”Have you talked about these people with Ms. Dujong?”
    ”Yeah. Well, not all at once.”
    ”What do you mean, Jeanette?”
    ”I mean, I talk with her about whichever one’s giving me the hardest time at the moment.”
    ”And how often have you been seeing Ms. Dujong?”
    ”Before Very got...” Held cleared her throat. ”Before, Malinda was coming over once a week for an hour or so.” The binger sounded again, and Held finally seemed to remember her coffee, taking it from the microwave. ”After Very... died, every day.”
    Expensive, even with a health... ”Did your insurance cover that?”
    Held blew on her coffee, apparently too hot now. ”Spi’s father did.”
    I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. ”You said Ms. Dujong talks with you, and occasionally holds your hand or rubs your temples.”
    ”Right, right.”
    ”Anything else she does?”
    A shrug. ”Tells me stories sometimes.”
    ”Stories?”
    ”About growing up in this little village in the Philippines, way out in the Pacific.”
    I thought back to Dujong’s account of being paralyzed as a child. ”What kind of stories, Jeanette?”
    ”Well, I don’t know if they’re real or not. More like faiiy tales or—what does the Bible call them?”
    ”Parables?”
    ”Right, parables.” A tentative slurp from the mug. ”Those touchy-feely stories you’d hear in church about shepherds protecting their sheep or some girl’s father ananging a wedding. Those kinds of stories.”
    ”But Ms. Dujong’s are from the Philippines.”
    ”Yeah.”
    ”Do you remember any?”
    Another slurp. ”There’s a corker about her not being able to walk, but this witch doctor got the evil spirit to come out of her.”
    Having heard that one, I said, ”Any others, Jeanette?”
    ”About this crab-monster-thing lives in a big, dark cave place, doesn’t want anybody else to find out he’s there, so he makes sure people get lost in it.”
    Knew that one, too. ”Mrs.—”
    ”Or about these monks, and how the Spaniards tortured them.”
    ”Monks?”
    ”Not Catholic ones. One of those weird religions from China that the Spaniards didn’t like, although what people from Spain were doing all the way out in the Pacific Malinda’s never said.”
    I decided to forgo a history lesson. ”Anything else?” Held seemed to return to the present, and not happily. ”What difference does any of this shit make? Fairy tales didn’t kill my baby.”
    ”Did Ms. Dujong act strangely before she failed to show up yesterday?”
    ”Strangely?” Now Held slammed her mug down onto the butcher block. ”Ever since Veronica was killed, I’ve been lying in the living room like David the Zombie, losing the days. How am I supposed to judge strange?”

    ”Coffee. I gotta have some of that—”
    Jeanette Held looked up at her husband, standing in the doorway, palms braced against each side of it. ”There’s probably enough left for you.”
    Spi Held had lost the wig and—judging from the way he lurched across the kitchen—most of his sense of balance as well. When he got to the coffeepot, his fist came down on the counter. ”Mug.”
    ”Try the dishwasher,” said his wife.
    He opened it, the door banging down so hard it nearly torqued into the tile floor. Pulling out one of the wire drawers, he found a mug with Pluto on its side and poured from the pot into it. The coffee overflowed, and Held dropped both mug and pot, screaming and running to the sink with his hand out as everything shattered on the floor.
    Bowie bolted from the room, though more noise-frightened than coffee-scalded, I thought. Both Helds were cursing so hard, loud, and fast that you almost couldn’t understand them.
    Holding his hand under the water now running from the faucet, Spi Held finally overrode his wife. ”I don’t give a fuck about your fucking pot, your fucking mug, or the fucking floor. This is my fucking career, if I’m burned so bad I can’t play.”
    ”Your fucking career? What career? Last night—or pardon me, five fucking hours ago—you said your fucking career was over.”
    ”Get out!”
    Jeanette Held slid off the stool, walking stiffly on her bare heels around the puddles of coffee, the shards of porcelain and glass. ”Fuck you, and clean this up before Bowie comes back in and cuts himself.”
    ”He can fucking