Sunday, November 17 1963, 10:04 a.m.
It's with both relief and apprehension that I have watched the day break over Kitty's house. The first rays of sunlight glided across the white sheets, the marbled colonades, the railings and ceilings. It's going to be a beautiful day, and it's already incredibly warm for my November standards. I shudder at the thought of Klaus talking to David at the Katzes' hardware store this afternoon. But I'm - deep down - happy to see him determined.
All we found in the kitchen cupboards this morning was enough to make coffee, a bottle of lemonade that hadn't been opened yet, and a packet of more or less shredded crackers. Oh, and cigarettes, on which Klaus literally threw himself. He hadn't touched tobacco since 2019 and The City... but circumstances make it necessary this morning for him to cope. I was able to take a cold shower - the water having not yet been turned off - after forcing him to sweep the bathroom of his own cropped hair. Hell, without exaggeration, there was enough there to stuff a pillow.
While he floats in the large ornamental basin he uses as a swimming pool 'trying to think', I gather my things to leave for work. Deliveries from suppliers, the resumption of TV repairs, profits to be calculated for all this avalanche of incoming cash. In two weeks, Merelec will have made a year's turnover. I have been honest with Lloyd, telling him that Klaus was back and needed me at Kitty's house. I won't lie to him: I don't know how to do that anyway.
Lloyd knows Klaus well, in fact, having been one of the 'Destiny's Children'. One of the least wacky, for sure. And one of those who saw through this budding cult the earliest. He's well aware of my history with Klaus, of our connection, too. We were all hipipies together, remember. But Lloyd was also one of the first to set sail, and in our relationship - in a way - it suited him very well that Klaus was in San Francisco.
I grab my bag and give up trying to put on my perfecto. God, it's hot. I'm not even surprised to find Klaus in his swimsuit in the pool at 10 a.m. in November, even though it's full of leaves, having not been cleaned for a fortnight. I walk through the living room, out onto the terrace at the back of the house, intending to tell him I'm off to work... and at that moment - amidst the quiet silence of the gardens where the marigolds bloom - I hear a voice causing my footsteps to stop.
Indistinct at first, it becomes clearer amid the crunch of gravel under my feet, beneath the Dallas sun. A woman's voice, which I gradually recognize, in disbelief. My eyes open wide and my pace quickens along with my pulse. Over there, on the poolhouse terrace, Klaus is talking to Allison. Allison, whom we lost in the bend in space-time, almost three years ago. Allison who - deep down - I have missed.
"I couldn't speak for a year", I hear her say as I approach the terrace, and I feel my heart clench.
I'm incredibly relieved to hear her able to speak out loud again. Flashes of that day when we found her bloodied at the cabin by the lakes come back to me. Just like our last hours together, when she could only express herself through a notepad. I stop at the threshold of the poolhouse, behind her back, as she replies to an apologetic Klaus:
"No, it's okay", she tells him. "I actually like who I am 'without it'. Everything I have, I've earned, and it feels ~really~ good".
I stand motionless behind her, gazing at her back in her orange floral dress, cinched at the waist with a brown leather belt. Klaus has spotted me but says nothing, behind Kitty's red sunglasses, too small for him. Really, Allison has no idea how he must feel to hear that - she - can simply put her power aside by keeping quiet, and choose to live 'without it', as she's just said. He, can't do that, and it doesn't even seem to cross her mind, from the way she addresses him. I keep thinking that Allison is blind to what her brother has been going through, day after day for all these years. And as if painfully trying to confirm this, she adds, watching him float on his pink inflatable mat:
"You know?"
As he smiles vaguely at her, I clear my throat to let her know I'm there, and she suddenly turns around with a look of surprise that immediately fades.
"Oh, Rin, hi!"
"Hey, Allison."
I take a step towards the loungers covered in dry leaves between which she's sitting, by the pool, her feet in the water, the bottom of her dress soaked.
"I should have guessed that if he was here, you would be too..."
I laugh softly as she stands up, her joy at seeing me completely sincere as she approaches to give me a brief hug.
"Well, I had to make a pact with the afterlife to find him..."
A pact that earns this garden its current colors under the sunny sky, and which I'll soon be able to seal for good. She laughs, unsurprised.
"Have you been here for long?"
Klaus is thinking behind his glasses, but actually he has only the vaguest idea, so I answer:
"Early 1960 for him, and '61 for me."
Allison opens round eyes.
"I arrived in April '62."
The three of us stare at each other, before Klaus finally leaves his floating mat and comes over to the edge of the pool to grab his blue towel, while Allison looks at me from head to toe, because I'm wearing my Merelec logo shirt.
"You're not a guru, are you?" she whispers.
I laugh under my breath, because for two years I've been 'The White Lotus' in spite of myself, thanks to her brother, but never mind. I shake my head.
"I work in a small electronics shop on Glen Oaks."
"Glen Oaks? No kidding? Someone hired you there?"
This neighborhood isn't particularly open to people like her and me, and the look she gives me speaks volumes about all the resentment she's built up over the months. I thought I heard from afar that she was fighting for civil rights, which I admire prodigiously. I'm aware that the 'Destiny's Children' have protected me a lot, right up to Lloyd's store, so I nod quite humbly.
"Some people I've met have helped me a lot," I say. "By the way, with Kennedy coming, we've got a crazy job repairing radios and TV sets, and I have to go..."
"Me too," she nods, with a glance at Klaus who's busy drying himself off doing little samba moves. "There's a meeting of my group this morning, at the hair salon where I work. In preparation for this afternoon's sitting. Kennedy's coming is also decisive for us, but without Ray... I don't know what's going to happen, honestly."
"Ray?"
My expression is interrogative. Klaus sends his towel over to one of the two leaf-covered loungers, where Ben had been lazing for a while, clearly visible to me in the energy of the place. The terrycloth passes right through him, and he gives his brother a murderous glare before standing up and moving to the other sunbed.
"You know... 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown'... I told you at breakfast".
He's taken on a somewhat theatrical bass voice to say it.
"That guy with the beautiful deep voice who taught Shakespeare, poor chap. The one I chatted to in jail yesterday. Really, custody is an extremely underrated place to meet people, I'd recommend it to anyone. Well, see, he's Allison's HUSBAND."
As he gestures in his sister's direction, gloating under his own gossip, I open my eyes wide. I'm very wary of coincidences now, but this one seems happy. Allison nods, her eyes thin as a cat's, which I know to be an expression of rare, sincere happiness.
"Wow," I say, amazed.
And it seems to me that someone has even greater reasons to cherish the '60s than I do. Well, if one likes this kind of lives-binding contracts. But Klaus has just taken off his red glasses, and from the way he stands looking pensively at the ground, eyes wide open, I can tell he's got an idea even before he utters it.
"We should get him out," he suddenly says, laying eyes on me, then on Ben on his poolside lounger. "We did it once for that old bum, remember? The one who used to blow soap bubbles in Rainshade Square..."
"Santiago."
He hadn't done anything. The newspaper salesman had invented him a petty theft to clear him off the bench where he slept next to his press and knick-knack shack. Because his presence was affecting his sales.
"We can do it again. And now we're in a larger team".
Ben suddenly stands up from his lounger, as if he's about to jump on us with enthusiasm. I can't hear him speak at the moment, I can only see his spectral energy, but I can tell from his gestures that he's suddenly much less angry with Klaus and now drowning him in a flood of ideas. Allison, on the other hand, doesn't even understand that he's with us. And as Klaus seems suddenly overwhelmed by the strategic avalanche of his dead brother, she frowns as she watches him walk away, hands on the back of his neck looking as if he's monologuing with himself again.
"He's still doing drugs..." she states - not even asks - as if attributing his momentary absence to some substance other than tobacco, and I squint.
"No. He hasn't been on anything for three years."
She looks even sorrier for him. I would have thought that Klaus and Ben saving the day against the Icarus theater shooters three years ago would have made a difference to Allison's understanding of their bond, but it still doesn't look like it. She sighs, but Klaus manages to convince Ben to keep his brilliant ideas to himself for five minutes, and comes back to us.
"Rin, you still have your lunch break, right?"
I sigh but smile.
"Yeah, I'm still allowed to eat, thank goodness."
I have a feeling I won't be eating my sandwich on the balcony today. I'm not sure I'd have had the strength to see David at lunchtime anyway, knowing that Klaus will be visiting him this afternoon. Yes, it's probably for the best. And getting Allison's husband out - whom I presume to be in jail for standing up for rights that should be common sense to all mankind - seems to me to be an absolute priority. Including in comparison to fixing TVs. Ben is practically bursting at the seams in excitment, next to the forgotten glass of lemonade. I look at Allison, who's beginning to understand too, and then at Klaus.
"I left you the address of the hardware store in the kitchen, for this afternoon. There is my phone number underneath. Now I must go, really."
He gives me a little nod of understanding, the two fingers of his 'Goodbye' hand signing our agreement at his temple, stuck with wet curls. I smile at them both, aware that trouble is about to break out again. Two people tattooed with an umbrella - three, if you count the dead one - are already enough to seal the rebirth of chaos. I take a step towards the gate of the poolhouse, I wave goodbye... and hear Klaus, behind me, speaking to his sister a word that fills me with both excitement and dread:
"Don't worry about Jay, we'll get him out."
And she corrects him:
"Ray."
Notes:
It's a very bright scene, contrasting, to say the least, with the nocturnal darkness of the previous chapter.
Allison's return undoubtedly marks the diving into the action of this season 3: now everyone is about to come together, for better and certainly for worse.
Ben, in his eagerness to live, is bubbling over with ideas. The next chapter will, of course, detail Raymond Chestnut's hectic exfiltration from jail...
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