Chapter 10
“Whatever you think you want to know, you don’t,” Gwen said. “So drink your tea and go.”
“I been twenty years in AA. Whatever it is, I can hear it,” Tana said. “I sponsored a girl who had a seizure from bad coke
while she was suckin’ a cock, bit it right off, and almost choked on it.”
“Oh, I know her!” Gwen said, passing around steaming mugs of tea. “I was in the ambulance that responded to that call. She
still sober?”
“Just got her five-year chip last month.”
“Good for her. You still don’t want to hear this.”
“Is it about what you did to my sister and Ronnie Volpe?” Tana asked. “The six of you?”
They had gathered in her living room, Tana, Allie, and Robin squeezed together on the sagging tweed couch under the swordfish
Gwen’s father had caught on vacation in Cabo. He only ever took three vacations his whole life: Cabo, Jamaica, and Disneyland.
He should’ve had more. There should’ve been more frozen drinks by the pool, more tropical sunlight, more of his goddamn life.
He had dropped dead shoveling snow at Rackham, only a few yards from what was now Colin Wren’s computer center. He was gone
in minutes. If Gwen had been parked right there with her ambulance and all her gear, she could not have saved him.
“What happened to your sister was terrible,” Gwen told her.
“Nothing happened to Jayne Nighswander she didn’t have coming,” Tana said.
“Allie here isn’t the only one with a suicidal streak.
I tried it. More’n once. Tried to hang myself.
Tried to drink myself to death. Jayne made me hate my life and hate the world, and if not for Jett and you, Gwen, I wouldn’t be here.
And I wouldn’t of helped anyone else. And I think maybe I have helped a few people here and there .
. . in AA and at Market Basket, where we sometimes throw folks a line when the SNAP
benefits come up short. My older sister prostituted me to pay her debts. She threw me to Ronnie for fun. She made me a drug
dealer and a drug user. I thank God every morning she never got a chance to hurt my baby. But in my heart I knew it was wrong
to thank God. I should’ve been thanking you. You, Arthur, and the others.”
“Jayne died in California,” Gwen said. “I was right here, finishing my senior year of high school. It’s a pretty good alibi,
Tana.”
“So you hired someone. Or, you know. Not you. But your rich friend. There was a story Colin’s granddaddy was with the CIA. I figured he knew bad people. Come on, Gwen.
I know you had a hand in it. I’ve always known. Did Colin or one of you others know some bad people? People worse’n Jayne?”
“It wasn’t bad people,” Gwen said, after a long and careful silence.
Robin said, “It wasn’t people at all. It was a dragon.”
Tana glanced at her and back at Gwen and laughed.
Robin didn’t crack a smile. “I saw it. It was in the sky, outside the plane. I thought I was going to die.” And she reached across Tana to take Allie’s hand.
“And was glad I was going to die in the company of a sweet couple like you and Van.”
Tana narrowed her eyes. “I know Allie’s wasted, but this one don’t look drunk a’tall. Am I supposed to take this serious?”
“Every word is true. Allison, Van, and I were on a plane that was almost torn in two by a dragon. We all saw it, and by the
time we landed I had a pretty good idea Van and Allie knew more about it than they were willing to admit.”
“You saw something that looked like a dragon. But it wasn’t. Not really. I’n believe Jayne was burned up by a psychopath with a can of gas and a lighter.
Tellin’ me she got et by Godzilla is a little tougher to swallow.”
Allie looked down at her chest, undid one button of her blouse, then another, and opened her top to show the upper part of her chest. “Tana, he looked a little like this.”
She brought her fingers close to her left breast, and as she did, ink rose to the surface of her very white skin to paint
the twisting, serpentine figure of a dragon. Tana recoiled, fell back into Robin, crying out. Allie dropped her hand, and
the tattoo faded as quickly as it had appeared.
“The fuck is that?”
“That’s one of the ways we can call him,” Gwen said.
“Him?” Tana asked.
“Does he have a name?” Robin asked.
At that, Gwen and Allie traded a look.
“You bet he does,” Gwen said.