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.”“Damn right it was me.We’ve had some times, you and me, haven’t we?”“Technically it’s probably not plural, since really it’s more like one big, long time we’re having this week.but yes, we’ve had one, all right.”“We have.And I found out you’re a good kid.Through it all.Even if you’re a little soft—that’ll pass—and a little goofy sometimes, you are a good, good kid.I found out my brother’s boy is a good, good kid.And you found out I was a good man, am I right? That your dad’s brother is a good man, ya?”It was in the way he had to ask.It was in the fragile high note he hit when he asked that ya?“It’s all true, Alex.You’re a good man.”He went quiet, a steely quiet rather than a mopey one, which was good.He looked back out the window.“Good, then.Very good.If you can like me, and I can be a good man with a good kid like you.then there’s something to me.There is something to me, and that will show.Thank you.Thank you very much, Elvin.”I always thought having some power, any kind of power, would be an unquestionably good thing.I never had any that I was aware of, always wanted some, even a little taste.This tasted like it was it.It was not an unquestionably good taste.“You’re welcome, Uncle Alex.”“Press the buzzer, Elvin.”“You press the buzzer.At least they know you.”“That’s my problem.Press the buzzer and I’ll wait around the side of the house.”“How ’bout I press the buzzer and we both wait around the side of the house?”“You know what’s incredible?”“I can think of a number of things.You mean incredible in the whole world sense of things or incredible as in right here right now in front of this door? Either way, I can think of a number—”“What is incredible is that I came around in the first place to show you how to behave more like me, and here you’ve got me acting just like you.You are like some kind of powerful force for God knows what, Elvin Bishop.”“You’re welcome,” I said.“That was not a thank-you; it was a confession.”“Oh right.Then as long as we are here, skulking and cowering, etcetera, are there any other timely confessions you should make regarding this buzzer and why it isn’t being rung?”The door by then had run out of patience and threw itself open.Perhaps with some assistance.“What are you doing on my doorstep, you awful, awful man?”Ah, a turn for the better.“Hiya, Mags,” Alex said, truly excited to see a person who appeared to want to spit on him.“Hiya nothing.What are you after?”“I’m not after anything.I just thought.I just came.just thought it was time and all.this is your nephew, Elvin.”He said that part, after the stumbling mumbling part, as if it were a momentous, big, warm deal to all parties.He may have misfigured.“Elvin,” he continued, “this is your aunt, Mags the Lady.”She paused, just long enough to build up some more steamy bile and to let out a threatening sigh.“Hello, Elvis.But sorry, you are not related to me.You were sort of related at one time, by marriage, because I was married to this rat here, who was brothers with the other rat—sorry, kid—who was related to you.But since I am no longer related in any way to this rat here—thank God—and the other rat is no longer with us—sorry, and thank God—you and me, Elvis, pal, are released from those particular chains of bondage.Do say hi to your mother for me, though.”I just kept blinking.My eyeballs were all dried out from the blast of her hostility, and I felt as if my lashes had been melted off, finally completing the morbid transforming of Alex and me into the same atrocity.“Okay,” I said meekly, “I’ll tell her.”I turned and started walking away, back toward the train station, away from here and from this and from Alex and toward home, toward my mother and my life and a long sleep to wipe it all away.“What is that?” came a new voice at my back.“That, I’m afraid, is your cousin, Elvis.”I stopped.Curiosity grabbed and turned me, and I returned to the gathering.There, along with Alex and his ex, was a kid.About my height, my age, my coloring.He was a bit thinner than me, but bulky anyway, athletic in a footbally way.I stopped at my usual spot, on the doorstep, and I stared at him.He stared at me.“I heard about you,” he said with a hard, flat grin.“I hadn’t heard about you,” I said.“What happened to your head?”“See,” Alex cut in, “look how the boys are getting along already.Peas in a pod.”Then, behind the boy, a girl appeared.She was probably a year older.She looked nothing like any of us.She was tall and thin, had long, tea-colored hair and melon-colored eyes and cheeks that clearly had bones in them.“Oh God,” she said, looking back and forth between me and Alex, “would you get them in off the step before somebody sees them.”“Yes,” Alex piped, “get us off your step before somebody sees us.”The two kids backed into the house.Mags the Lady didn’t budge.Alex, assuming the best, had started on in, then froze at her resistance.“Look like crap,” she said to him.“Feel like crap,” he said brightly.“Are crap,” the two voices chimed from inside.Slowly Mags the Lady relented, backing away through the front door, letting us follow along just so, like a lion tamer with a whip and a chair.It got a lot more comfortable once we got inside.We were not invited to sit down; rather the whole crowd of us stood in the borderland that lay between the kitchen and the living/dining area, the only thing differentiating the two being the different tartan patterns of the carpet tiling.“Hey,” I said, breaking the tension, “my dog got beat up by a dog wearing a little rain jacket that was almost the exact pattern as your floor.Huh.Small world.”“Isn’t it, though,” the girl cousin drawled in such a way that I didn’t think she was considering my dog story at all.“And stop staring at me, you.”I was not staring at her.I mean, if you were going to stare at anybody in this room, it would be her without question, but I wasn’t.“Ma, the fat guy is staring at me.”“Swan, don’t be unkind.His name is Elvis.”Swan.Wow.That was a name.What a name that was.Swan.And it fit, too, because this girl was a Swan if ever there was one.Amazing how people’s names fit who they are.“Hey, ah, Elvis,” Alex said, “are you going to correct people as to your real name, or are you just going to change it officially so as not to bother anybody?”“Sorry.”“Stop apologizing.It’s your name, for pete’s sake.”“It’s Elvin, actually.Though it’s a common mistake, the Elvis thing.”“Not the young Elvis, that’s for sure,” Swan said.“Maybe the old, crazy, fat, dead one.Though even he wasn’t all bald and scabby.”“That is some mouth on that girl of yours, Mags.Nobody ever taught you any manners, Swan?” Alex said.Swan was no more intimidated by him than she was by me.“Why are you here, anyway? Why don’t you go haunt one of your other families, you old spook? You old skin-headed zombie.”Even before she said the zombie thing, I felt as if I were in The Mummy or something.Like I had stumbled into some old cave full of secrets and stories and spooky stuff I didn’t want to know about and wasn’t supposed to know about and would probably pay some awful price for knowing about.His other families? There were too many families popping up already, thanks.I didn’t want there to be any more.“Elvis, you want to go see my stuff?” the boy said.“We can leave all them to have it out.”“Hawk, I want you to stay,” Alex said, almost like pleading.Hawk.There’s another one.How cool was that? What a cool family they must have been back when.Maybe we were cool families back then [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]