When Devils Sing(43)
It was worse realizing that, because of her, he may truly end up dead.
CHAPTER 17NEERA
Waffle House was a strange place at sunrise.
Customers were slumped over in slippery booths, faces nearly buried in plates of syrupy waffles and greasy bacon. Waitresses in black aprons, covered in kitschy pins, ran plates to tables filled with obnoxious drunks. The cooks shouted orders from the exposed kitchen, wiping sweat from their foreheads while they flipped piles of steaming hash browns on the stove.
Waffle House was the best place to be without really having to be anybody at all. Was that why Isaiah had suggested it?
A hazy country tune played on the jukebox beside the door as Neera hovered by the entrance. No one paid her any mind as she walked to the corner booth in the back by the tall windows and waited for Isaiah to arrive.
“Two waters and coffees, please,” Neera said to a waitress as she slid into the cold seat.
A moment later, the sticky tabletop was filled with drinks and several laminated menus. Neera blew on the scalding-hot coffee as she pretended to consider what to eat.
Neera’s fingers drummed against the table, at first absent and anxious, keeping rhythm with the thoughts racing through her head. She kept thinking about seeing Dawson at the motel, the blood on his hands, in his room. And now, he was dead. But then she found the tune of the song playing over the speakers—Johnny Cash singing about shooting a man in Reno—and she eased ever so slightly.
The parking lot was unchanged. No sign of Isaiah’s white BMW. Insecurity bloomed inside of Neera, like a kudzu vine snaking around her throat. Would he stand her up? Not bother to show because he knew there was nothing between them worth salvaging?
In the ways of real friendship, Neera had always been lacking. But she supposed Isaiah had once truly known her. He knew the girl who hadn’t yet lost the sun. There was something special about that—something worth protecting. Because whoever she met from then on, they only met a girl that had been broken and hardened by grief.
But it was music that kept her safe all those years, and it was music that was going to change her life for the better. It couldn’t judge or hurt her. Music would never leave her.
Neera’s phone buzzed on the table.
Isaiah: Ten minutes away. Really sorry!
Frowning at the screen, she responded: No worries. See you soon
Neera’s hands were sticky from drumming her fingers on the dirty table. She rose in search of the bathroom, so she could wash up before Isaiah arrived. Down a narrow hallway, she pushed open the squeaky door, only to find a woman in wrinkled scrubs slumped on the floor, hovering over the toilet. The bathroom reeked of piss and bile.
“Ma’am, you all right?” Neera asked, covering her nose with the neckline of her oversized T-shirt.
The woman blinked slowly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She waved Neera away with a grunt. “I’m … fine.”
“You don’t look fine.” Hesitating for a moment, Neera knelt to the woman’s level. “Is there anyone I can call to come get you?”
The woman shook her head as silent tears slid down her worn, sun-spotted face, falling quietly into the toilet. “There ain’t nobody left,” the woman whispered, her words a barely audible slur. “Ain’t nobody left,” she repeated, her eyes bloodshot as she stared at nothing.
The woman was clearly intoxicated, beyond point of reason. Neera didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t help but think of her mom as she stared at the woman. She’d found Kiran in the same position more times than she cared to remember after Ajay’s death. Curled up on the bathroom floor, begging for him to come back. But no amount of drinking would change anything. It only made the grief worse.
If Neera knew nothing else, it was that solace wasn’t at the bottom of a bottle. She’d like to think it could be found in better things, like her Yamaha resting across her lap. But who was she without it? The thought shook her to the bone.
“I’m sorry,” Neera said, and she meant it. She was sorry for the woman, as she recognized the loss written across her face. Neera didn’t know her, but she felt her pain, even on the grimy bathroom floor of a Waffle House on the edge of town. “I’m sorry for whatever happened to you.”
The woman blinked a few times, then her cloudy blue eyes locked with Neera’s. “They’ll … get you.”
Neera’s thick eyebrows furrowed. “What?”
In a hoarse whisper, she said, “If you ain’t careful … they’ll get you, too.” The woman’s eyes went glassy again as she began to heave, then vomited in the toilet.
Neera grimaced, quickly rising from the floor, and stumbled out of the bathroom and into the other one across the hall. Her heartbeat thudded loud in her ears. She tried not to take the woman’s words to heart, but it was impossible not to in a place like Carrion.
As she dried her hands, Neera noticed the wall riddled with writing. There were phone numbers of people looking to hook up, initials of couples enclosed within poorly drawn hearts, but then there was handwriting in small, crooked lettering that was barely noticeable at all. But Neera saw it, clear as day, as she tossed her wet paper towel in the trash can.
The devil went down to Georgia and never left
Neera recognized it as the lyrics from a folk song Ajay had taught her years ago—a folkie blues ballad, slow and methodical. Relentless and haunting.