If Souls Can Sleep Read online

  An emotion rippled across Vincent’s face, but she couldn’t identify it.

  “Sure, that would be great,” he said at last.

  As they made the arrangements, Leah wondered what possessed her to set aside a precious Saturday afternoon for a work-related obligation. She continued to stare at the door after he left, momentarily forgetting her exhaustion as she tried to decide if she were helping Vincent as a favor for an old friend or out of some secret hope that he had a disorder worth writing about.

  Then Leah laughed.

  My first lunch date in months, and it’s with Vincent Cruz. Sorry, Mom. I must be allergic to marriage material.

  Chapter 11

  Vincent sat up slowly, bracing himself for the hangover headache that had haunted him since that morning. The pain, however, had faded into a dull throb. His mouth was dry, and his tongue tasted like something he might have cleaned out of the fifth-floor restroom back at the bank tower.

  Back when he had a job.

  At least I didn’t have The Dream during that last nap. Thank God for small miracles.

  He rose from the Low Rider with a groan and went into the kitchen. He spotted Jerry’s keys on the table. Next to them was a job application for the City of Milwaukee Department of Public Works. The line of light under Jerry’s bedroom door suggested his roommate was inside, likely changing out of his smelly, garbage-stained uniform.

  Vincent took one last look at the job application before going to the refrigerator. Inside, one lonely can of Milwaukee’s Best stared back at him. No milk. No soda. It was either tap water or some hair of the dog. He reached for the beer.

  Might as well get rid of it.

  He took his first gulp as Jerry came out of his room.

  “Oh, hey,” Jerry said. His gaze landed on the can.

  “Sorry, it’s the last one.”

  Jerry took a glass out of the cupboard and filled it with water from the sink. “That’s OK. I got my own little pick-me-up waiting.” He flashed Vincent a goofy grin.

  Vincent followed Jerry into the living room. Once in his recliner, Jerry unrolled a sandwich baggie and sifted through the dark green stuff inside with his index finger. His brow furrowed.

  “Damn, we smoked a lot last night.” His smiled returned as suddenly as it had left. “But it was fun, right?”

  Vincent had to admit that it had been fun—right up until the end. Too much fun, in fact. Thinking of the whiskey shots and foreplay with Paish, he wished he had never agreed to host the get-together.

  “Yeah, it was a blast,” Vincent said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. “I’m paying for it today, though.”

  “No hangovers with weed,” Jerry said cheerfully.

  I was more than hungover this morning. I must have still been a little drunk to show up at that sleep clinic. It almost seems like a dream…except if it had been, Leah would’ve had pointy ears.

  “So, what happened with you and Paish?” Jerry asked.

  Vincent took a long swig of beer, stalling. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean! Marc and I were talking in the kitchen, and when we came back in here, Tara’s passed out, and you and Paish are in your room with the door closed. I’m not askin’ for the dirty details or anything...”

  Vincent relaxed a little, relieved that Paish hadn’t gone back out into the living room to report how he had fallen asleep while they were fooling around. She must have stayed in Vincent’s room for the remainder of the night and left with her friends in the morning after Jerry left for work.

  Vincent wondered if she felt half as humiliated as he did.

  “Yeah, we had fun,” Vincent muttered, hoping his suggestive smile would defer further questions. It didn’t.

  “Are you going to call her?” Jerry asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” he lied.

  Time to change the subject.

  “I had another dream last night, and it was a doozey.”

  Jerry placed the freshly rolled joint in his mouth and lit it. “What happened?”

  Vincent told Jerry about the jailbreak and the battle with the knights, though he didn’t linger on the latter. His stomach soured whenever he thought of what he had done—what Valenthor had done—to the soldiers.

  None of it was even real, so why do I feel so guilty?

  Enthralled, Jerry forgot to smoke as he listened. Ash dropped from the end of the joint onto his pants, but he didn’t notice until Vincent finished talking.

  “That Locke guy really saved your bacon, huh?” Jerry said. “But you took out a few knights by yourself. That’s pretty badass.”

  Vincent shrugged. “Valenthor is bad ass. Those weren’t my bulging biceps, and that wasn’t me swinging that hammer.” He brought the beer up to his lips but then thought better of it. “I just wish I knew why I keep going back there.”

  Jerry stood up, absently brushing the ash off of his pants. After a quick puff, he set the joint on the edge of the ashtray, walked into his room, and returned with the laptop.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Jerry said. “You made some progress this last time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You got a name…the name of a main character. The elf’s name would have been better, but we’ll take what we can get, right?” Jerry typed something on the keyboard and looked up, frowning. “Is it L-O-C-K, like a lock and key?”

  “How should I know? I didn’t ask him to spell it!” Vincent knew he should be grateful for Jerry’s attempt to help with The Dream. He just wished the guy wasn’t having so much fun doing it.

  Several seconds later, Jerry said, “Google isn’t turning up anything, but…oh, wait…the Master is online. Maybe he can help.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Vincent stared at the silver and blue beer can, but his thoughts were back in The Dream as Jerry used instant messaging to update the Master of All Things Fantasy. At the moment, pondering the mysteries of Valenthor’s world was preferable to sorting out his problems in real life.

  I have to figure out The Dream first. That’s Issue Number One.

  Jerry’s exhaled of a stream of smoke. “He’s got a few new theories.”

  Vincent leaned forward. “Such as?”

  “Well, for starters, he’s pretty convinced that the elf chick is a priestess because she can use magic. I’m not really sure how a priestess is different from a wizard, but…oh, he says she might even be a high priestess. She’s definitely someone important in her society, probably a princess. And he says there’s a thirty-five percent chance that the two of you will fall in love.”

  “What? How did he come up with that statistic?”

  “I don’t know. He’s read a lot of books, though. Maybe he’s come up with some kind of formula.” Jerry took another hit off the joint. “It makes sense if you think about it. Valenthor is a single guy, right?”

  Vincent didn’t correct him. He had never told Jerry that Valenthor also had lost a daughter. Vincent didn’t know if Valenthor’s wife was alive or not—or if he had even been married at all—but he had his suspicions. Not wanting to touch upon the details that so closely paralleled his own miseries, he waited for Jerry to continue.

  “And the elf wants you to save her homeland. You have a journey ahead of you. Stuff could happen along the way.”

  Vincent chuckled dryly. “Except now I’ve got a third wheel.”

  Jerry laughed too. “Yeah, well, maybe the Master can shed some light on why the masked man came out of nowhere.”

  Jerry started typing again, using one finger on one hand. It was slow going.

  “So,” Vincent began tentatively, “does the Master have any idea how this is happening to me?”

  Jerry gave a look that might have come off as pensive, were it not for his puffy eyes. “How could he? His specialty is fantasy fiction. As far as he’s concerned, I’m giving him bits and pieces of a story. I think he thinks I’m an amateur writer or something.”

  Because if
he knew the truth, he’d think I was crazy and stop returning your emails. Why don’t you think I’m crazy, Jerry?

  Vincent said, “So the Master only knows half of the story?”

  “Not exactly,” Jerry said, still plinking away on the laptop. “I told him that you…a character named Vincent…becomes Valenthor when he dreams. He told me that the concept was interesting but not really a new one. There have been a handful of fantasy series about people from the real world getting sucked into other dimensions. Let me pull open that email…

  “Here we go. He wrote, ‘One of the more popular examples of this formula is Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, in which characters from several time periods are drawn into a fantasy world steeped in Old West themes, a realm that touches upon the settings and characters of many of King’s other books. Matters get complicated, however, as King introduces alternate Earths, and at one point the protagonists even visit King in the supposed real world in order to get him to finish writing the series. They call that metafiction.

  “‘Other examples include The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson, The Spearwielder Tale trilogy by R.A. Salvatore, and War of the Flowers by Tad Williams. The latter involve an average Joe visiting the faerie realm, which is a device that predates the Arthurian legends.’”

  Jerry stopped talking for a second, then added, “The Master just IM-ed that the knights probably will continue to track you guys and that the elf will wake up in a couple of days…or chapters…oh, and that you shouldn’t trust Locke. Hmm, he’s spelling it with an E at the end. Anyway, he says Locke might have saved your life because he wants to use you and/or the elf for his own purposes. Locke might even be in league with your enemies, and by taking him with you to the elf’s homeland, you’ll be giving him easy access to whatever he’s after.”

  Jerry’s eyes scanned the computer screen. “He says that the mask means Locke is hiding something.”

  “No shit. He told me as much himself.”

  Jerry went on, unperturbed, “If you can get his mask off, there’s a ninety percent chance you’ll discover he’s evil.”

  Again with the statistics?

  “And what about the other ten percent?” Vincent asked.

  Jerry typed the question. A moment later he said, “‘If Locke is not one of the enemy’s lieutenants, he’s probably being coerced somehow. If he is not a spy, he has his own agenda, which can only complicate the plot. It would be rather dull if Locke turned out to be an all-around good guy because that would reduce him to nothing more than a deus ex machina’…whatever that means. ‘In any event, Locke surely is someone the hero has met before. He might even be a relative.’”

  The jarring buzz of the doorbell made both of them jump. Vincent leaned over the couch to look down through the window at the side entrance.

  “Who is it?” Jerry asked.

  “I think it’s…shit, it’s my mom. And she saw me.”

  Vincent crushed his beer can with unnecessary force and stomped past Jerry, who hastily extinguished his joint in the ashtray.

  “We still have some spray in the bathroom, right?” Jerry asked.

  Ignoring him, Vincent tossed the beer can into the garbage on his way to the door. He took his time on the winding stairway. When he reached the bottom, his mother waved to him through the cloudy glass window.

  We look nothing alike.

  Evangeline was fair-skinned and blond. She had passed down her blue eyes to Daniel. Vincent, on the other hand, had his Hispanic father’s dark features. God only knew what else he had inherited from Señor One-Night-Stand. Schizophrenia, maybe?

  Vincent understood why so many men had found his mother to be beautiful, though there were times when her weariness made her look much older than forty-seven. Then again, she had always seemed older than really she was to him. Even in his earliest memories, she was a grown up, though everyone else surely had seen a teenager with a baby.

  He pulled open the door and said, “Hi, Mom.”

  She smiled back, but it didn’t show in her eyes. Picking nervously at her frayed brown gloves, she said, “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d try to catch you before you left for work.”

  “You caught me,” was all Vincent could think to say.

  “Can I come up?”

  “Yeah, of course,” he said and turned back the way he had come.

  When he opened the apartment door, an vanilla fist hit him in the nose. Jerry leaned against the refrigerator, trying to look casual. Vincent could see the top of the air freshener bottle poking out of the sink.

  Smooth, Jerry. Real smooth.

  “This is Jerry, my roommate,” Vincent said. “You two have talked a few times on phone, if I recall.”

  “Nice to meet you in person, Mrs. Cruz,” said Jerry.

  It’s Pierce, not Cruz. And she’s never been missus anything.

  “Please call me Eve. It’s nice to meet you too, Jerry.”

  An awkward silence filled the kitchen. Jerry excused himself with an unintelligible mumble and retreated into the living room. Evangeline pulled a chair back from the rickety kitchen table and sat down. Her slight frown brought out the wrinkles that framed her mouth like parentheses.

  “I know you’re not going to want to hear this, Vincent, but I had another dream about you…and…I just had to see you.” There was no humor in her laugh. “I even left work so I could come here and make sure you were OK. I’m not saying they’re premonitions or anything, but…”

  Vincent felt the color drain from his face. He took a seat next to her at the table. “What was the dream about?”

  For a moment, she just stared at him, probably shocked that he would want to hear more, considering one of their biggest fights had been about a dream in which, she claimed, an angel had spoken to her. But Vincent had to know if there was a connection between her recent dreams and The Dream.

  Finally, she said, “Nothing really happened. It was more like images…of you…with your hands covered in blood.”

  Vincent’s nausea had nothing to do with the hangover. He couldn’t recall if any of the dead knights’ blood had literally spattered onto Valenthor’s hands, but in a metaphorical sense, he felt the weight of what Valenthor had done on his conscience.

  “You haven’t done anything, have you? Not planning anything…?” Evangeline asked.

  The enormity of what his mother was implying hit him like a punch in the gut. “Are you asking me if I’m going to kill somebody?” His laugh sounded like it came from someone else. “I’m not the son who shoots cops!”

  She started to cry, and Vincent suppressed the urge to throw the table across the room. He hated himself for getting his hopes up.

  Sorry, Mom, but I have my own insanity to attend to. You should have checked your religious madness at the door.

  He took a few deep breaths.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that up. It’s a shame what happened to Daniel, but I’m not like him, Mom. I’m not in any trouble.”

  Not any trouble that you would understand.

  She wiped her eyes with the knitted gloves. “I know you two boys are very different. But you are alike too. I believed Danny when he told me that everything was OK because that’s what I wanted to hear.”

  Vincent opened his mouth to protest, but Evangeline pressed on.

  “I know. You warned me he was up to something, and deep down I think I knew he was making his money illegally.” She reached for his hand. “Can’t you see I don’t want to make the same mistake twice? I was blind before, and it nearly cost Danny his life.”

  It did cost him his life! When will you see that Daniel is gone for good?

  “If God is giving me a second chance—”

  Vincent pulled his hand away. “I am not a drug dealer. And I’m not going to kill anybody. I know my life has been in the dumps lately, but I’m doing the best I can.”

  He forced his eyes to meet hers.

  After a coup
le of seconds, she smiled slightly. “Well, please let me how I can help. I know you don’t like it when I butt in, but I could talk to Bella—”

  Vincent held up a hand. “Bella doesn’t want to be married to me anymore. Neither of us should have to beg her to take me back. Anyway, I’m trying to look forward now, not back.”

  Evangeline’s smile was even sadder this time. “But we can’t forget the past, Vincent. And as much as we might like to free ourselves from painful memories, we can only endure our hardships with God’s help.”

  Vincent blinked away the stinging in his eyes. He knew she kept photos of Clementine on the walls of her apartment.

  She still considers herself a grandma, even if I’ve stopped thinking of myself as a dad. She visits her grave too…probably right after her trips to see Daniel at the hospital. Mom doesn’t give up on people. Even though there’s zero chance Bella and I will get back together, she believes we could have a happily-ever-after.

  Does that mean her faith is just another form of denial?

  Evangeline stood up. “I should probably go. Maybe you could come over for supper one of these nights. We can order Chinese and play cribbage.”

  “Yeah, good idea.” Even as he said it, he knew it wouldn’t happen. He had moved out of her apartment following a fight about whether Daniel should be kept on life support, but the truth was Vincent had been looking for an excuse to leave ever since he had gotten there. There were too many memories haunting the place.

  Maybe the same thing happened with Bella too. Maybe I wanted her to kick me out so we wouldn’t have to remind each other of what we once had.

  Vincent walked his mother to the door, said goodbye, and locked it behind her. He stood there for a couple of minutes, looking down at his hands and thinking about his mother’s dream.

  He thought of the Master’s warning about Locke and betrayal, and he smirked.

  Funny how it never occurred to Mom that the blood on my hands might be my own.