Free The Dead Have A Thousand Dreams by Richard Sanders Page A

be a good move.
    We found Wooly in his Bugs
Bunny PJs, finishing off his stack of a dozen pancakes while
Genevieve made coffee. He was open to the notion. What happened to
Monte, he said, had left him in a contrite mood. Maybe it was time to make
nice.
    I called Georgiana’s
assistant, Marco Sung, told him what was on our minds. He conferred
with his boss. Yes, she was certainly willing to talk. She was more
than willing to put their differences behind them. We set a
meeting.
    The ugly undercurrents of
the past few days seemed to be running dry. Things, as the weather
people say, were milding up.
    “I been thinking,” said
Wooly, “maybe it’s time to recalibrate the attitude, you know?
Maybe it’s high time to cultivate more positive thoughts.” He got
up from the table. “Though if she pulls out a pair of ballcutters
on me, I’ll blow her fucking head off.”
    He toddled off to get
dressed.
    Et cum spiritu
tuo . And may the spirit be with
you.
    “Don’t mind him,” said
Genevieve. “He’s just him.”
    “There’s probably some
kind of medal,” said Nickie, “for living with him.”
    “I knew what I was getting
into,” Genevieve sighed, “knew it from the start.” She sat down.
“Knew it from our wedding day. He’d paid for the whole thing—my
family didn’t have a dime. We’d ordered a vanilla cake with
chocolate mousse inside. Suppose to signify interracial love, all
that. We cut the cake, it’s all vanilla. Vanilla cake, vanilla
mousse. He starts hacking at it with the knife—where’s the
chocolate, where’s the fucking chocolate? The caterer runs up and
says there must’ve been a mistake. Wooly picks up the whole three
tiers and throws the cake at the caterer. I start yelling you’re
ruining my fucking wedding, he yells it’s my fucking wedding too and it all
went berserk from there on in. He fought with the waiters, he
fought with the guests, he fought with the cops when they came.
Finally I had enough. I walked out, got in our car and started
driving away. He comes running out—you can’t leave without me!—and
throws himself on the hood of the car. That’s how we left for our
honeymoon. Me driving in my wedding dress, him straddled on the
hood of the car.”
     
    >>>>>>
     
    SUNDAY JUNE 17,
noon
    THE COLOR PURPLE
    “Jesus,” said Wooly, “do
you ever put the
lights on in here?” Fair question, I guess. Georgiana’s study, as
before, was lit only by that single stained glass lamp, bathing
everything in a frail underwater light. We were looking at a limbo
aura, in which our hostess—hunched at her desk in her overalls and
the unstrung bale of cotton she called hair—sat half
dematerializing.
    “No,” she said after some
hesitation, “I allow very little light in here. Please,
sit.”
    Wooly, Nickie and I took
the chairs around the desk.
    “You don’t look so good,”
said Wooly. “You should get out more.”
    Again, fair point.
Georgiana seemed more worn down today, more frayed around the
edges.
    “I’m fine,” she
said.
    “Good, good, excellent,”
said Wooly. “Well, I appreciate you inviting us here, you know? The
house, the, the gallery out there? It’s a wonderful place you got
here. I always liked coming here.”
    “Thank you.”
    “It’s always been a treat.
And, uh, and your assistant out there? Marco? He’s always been very
helpful. I like him. His breath’s always been very
fresh.”
    Georgiana blinked twice.
“Is that important
    to you?”
    “No, I’m just saying, I
know other Asian people. I know this guy Jay Chan? He does work for
me sometimes? It was a big discovery to me that he had bad breath.
I never imagined it before, Asian people’re always so
clean.”
    “So,” I said, “we’re here
to talk.”
    “Right, talk,” said Wooly.
“We’re here to talk, talk things out, right? We’re here to patch
things up. I mean, why let the circle go broken, right?”
    “I agree,” said
Georgiana.
    “Okay, so, me, I may have
been acting like