Back to Wando Passo, David Payne [little red riding hood ebook .TXT] 📗

“And though we know he’s mad, we don’t desert him.

For in a way, he’s better than the rest.

For he held fast in his unhappiness

To the injustice we forgave so we could rest.”

However it may be, from whatever source it comes, it comes. And after all the madness of these last days, it’s strange how relaxed Ran is right now, how calm, how settled in his stance. Like a marlin that’s thrashed on deck and been released, he whisks his tail and vanishes into the deep. And each of them—Shanté, Cell, and Claire, especially Claire—listens with bittersweet emotion, weighing the gift that Ransom has in him against the troubled man he is.

When he’s done, he lifts his head. Having done this many, many times over many, many years, Ransom isn’t unaware of what their silence means. The expression on his face is that of someone who believes he’s finally loved, when he’s long since given up the hope of it.

“Best song you ever wrote,” said Marcel Jones, the first to speak. “I have one small criticism, though….”

Ransom blinked. “Lay it on me.”

“‘Osculate’?”

Ran weighed it for a moment, then laughed out loud and slapped both knees. “I knew you were going to say that! Eighteen years, and I damn well knew you’d give me shit for ‘osculate’!”

“I mean, how much would you really lose with ‘kiss’?”

“You’re right! You’re absolutely right!” Ran laid the Gibson tenderly back in its case. “It’s that poor-boy part of me, Marcel, the one who never finished high school. He still has to show the world he has a passable vocabulary.”

“You proved it long ago,” said Claire.

“That proving thing, though, Claire…,” Ran said, and the softness in his face was gone. “Is it ever really finished?” When she didn’t answer, he flipped the lid closed with his toe. “You don’t like it.”

“I think it’s strange and strong,” she said. “There’s a wildness in it I haven’t heard from you in years.”

His heart, that quick, was in his throat. “But—”

She shook her head. “No but. I was just thinking…For someone who has so much self-awareness, you can be so fucking blind, so blinded by yourself.”

“And that makes me different from anybody in this room?”

“Yes, it does,” she answered, clear. “And there’s a side of that that’s good, and another side that’s very hard to live with.”

And now, around them in the room, the silence falls like rain.

“I’ve caused some damage, Claire,” he said, “I know I have, but, sitting here—me here, you there, face-to-face—I have to wonder if the person you see in the mirror can tell herself that she’s caused any less. I don’t see much difference.”

“That would be my point.”

Claire looked at him with the expression Ran remembered from his first night back, gazing in the lighted window from the yard, when he could tell she couldn’t see him through her own reflection in the glass. Her solemnity was that of someone who has no sense of humor left, who’s lost the ability or will to smile at pleasantries, to engage in small talk, to gladly suffer fools, someone who no longer cares to save for rainy days or mind her p’s and q’s, someone for whom the world has become a profoundly serious place. She was as beautiful as Ran had ever seen her, but like a solemn angel God had sent in wrath. This was the secret Claire, the one Ran feared the most and had wooed hardest, tried the hardest to appease. Her judgment, falling in his favor once, had saved him, he believed. Were it to fall against him now, Ran didn’t know who, on the other side of judgment, he would be, what piece of him, if any, would be left.

“Listen, I’ve been thinking…” He flicked the case-lock shut. “It’s a little late in the day, I know, but I’ve been going through this, and I think Cell should have a cut of the song royalties.”

“How about me?” Claire fired back. There was no hesitation. Not a trace.

Ran smiled, hoping he was supposed to, knowing, deep down, he was not. “It’s sort of the same thing, Claire, isn’t it?” he said. “What’s in my pot—so to speak—is in your pot, too.”

She started to retort, but Ransom cut her off before she could. “But okay, okay, whatever, you, too. You guys tell me what you think is fair.”

“How about fifty percent for you,” Claire said, “twenty-five apiece for Cell and me.”

Ran smiled, but it was slow to come. “Gee, Claire,” he said, carefully modulating his tone, “from the point of view of strict equity, that seems a little steep.”

“All right,” she rejoined, “‘from the point of view of strict equity,’ what do you consider fair?”

“Something more along the lines of ninety percent for me, the two of you split ten.”

Claire smiled bitterly. “You think it would be number one if the title was ‘Talk Is Cheap’?”

“How about something in between?” Shanté put in. “Ran says ninety, you say fifty. How about seventy-fifteen-fifteen?”

“That’s way too much.” Having set out to be generous, Ran felt the old resistance rising now.

“I think it’s not enough,” Claire said. “You wouldn’t even have retained mechanicals if I hadn’t put Gruber’s feet to the fire.”

“That’s true,” said Ran. “You negotiated that. Why don’t you take twenty, Cell gets ten.”

“Sixty-forty.”

“Actually, guys,” Cell said, “I don’t want anything.”

“He’ll take it, though.” Claire kept her eyes fixed on Ransom’s as she put her hand on Marcel’s arm. Ran stared at it, Claire’s hand, pale, on Cell’s black arm, and he could feel it like a brand searing his own skin. His vision blurred. He went away. For a moment, he did not know where he was or who he is. When he came back, he said, “Why don’t you just take it all?”

“No,” Claire said. “You don’t get to go there anymore with me. You say you want to be grown-ups. This is what grown-ups do. Sixty-five for you; for us, seventeen point-five