Chapter 21-23
21
AUGUSTUS BRINE
"I found them. The car is parked in front of Jenny Masterson's house. " Augustus Brine stormed into the house carrying a grocery bag in each arm.
Gian Hen Gian was in the kitchen pouring salt from a round, blue box into a pitcher of Koolaid.
Brine set the bags down on the hearth. "Help me bring some of this stuff in. There's more bags in the truck. "
The genie walked to the fireplace and looked in the bags. One was filled with dry-cell batteries and spools of wire. The other was full of brown cardboard cylinders about four inches long and an inch in diameter. Gian Hen Gian took one of the cylinders out of the bag and held it up. A green, waterproof fuse extended from one end.
"What are these?"
"Seal bombs," Brine said. "The Department of Fish and Game distributes them to fishermen to scare seals away from their lines and nets. I had a bunch at the store. "
"Explosives are useless against the demon. "
"There are five more bags in the truck. Would you bring them in, please?" Brine began to lay the seal bombs out in a line on the hearth. "I don't know how much time we have. "
"What am I, some scrounging servant? Am I a beast of burden? Should I, Gian Hen Gian, king of the Djinn, be reduced to bearing loads for an ignorant mortal who would attack a demon from hell with firecrackers?"
"O King," Brine said, exasperated, "please bring in the goddamn bags so I can finish this before dawn. "
"It is useless. "
"I'm not going to try to blow him up. I just want to know where he is. Unless you can use your great power to restrain him, O King of the Djinn. "
"You know I cannot. "
"The bags!"
"You are a stupid, mean-spirited man, Augustus Brine. I've seen more intelligence in the crotch lice of harem whores. "
The genie walked out the door and his diatribe faded into the night. Brine was methodically wrapping the fuses of the seal bombs with thin monofilament silver wire designed to heat up when a current was applied. It was an inexact method of detonation, but Brine had no access to blasting caps at this hour of the morning.
The genie returned in a moment carrying two grocery bags.
"Put them on the chairs. " Brine gestured with his head.
"These bags are filled with flour," Gian Hen Gian said. "Are you going to bake bread, Augustus Brine?"
22
TRAVIS AND JENNY
There was something about her that made Travis want to dump his life out on the coffee table like a pocket full of coins; let her sort through and keep what she wanted. If he was still here in the morning, he'd tell her about Catch, but not now.
"Do you like traveling?" Jenny asked.
"I'm getting tired of it. I could use a break. "
She sipped from a glass of red wine and pulled her skirt down for the tenth time. There was still a neutral zone between them on the couch.
She said, "You don't seem like any insurance salesman I've ever known. I hope you don't mind my saying, but usually insurance men dress in loud blazers and reek of cheap cologne. I've never met one that seemed sincere about anything. "
"It's a job. " Travis hoped she wouldn't ask about the details of his job. He didn't know a thing about insurance. He had decided on the career because Effrom Elliot had mistaken him for an insurance man that afternoon, so it was the first thing that came to mind.
"When I was a kid, an insurance man came to our house to sell my father some life insurance," Jenny said. "He gathered the family together in front of the fireplace and took our picture with a Polaroid camera. It was a nice picture. My father was standing at one side of us all, looking proud. As we were passing the picture around, the insurance man snatched the picture out of my father's hands and said, 'What a nice family. ' Then he ripped my father out of the picture and said, 'Now what will they do?' I burst into tears. My father was frightened. "
Travis said: "I'm sorry, Jenny. " Perhaps he should have told her he was a brush salesman. Did she have any traumatic brush-salesman stories?
"Do you do that, Travis? Do you frighten people for a living?"
"What do you think?"
"Like I said, you don't seem like an insurance man. "
"Jennifer, I need to tell you something. . . "
"It's okay. I'm sorry, I got a little heavy on you. You do what you do. I never thought I'd be waiting tables at this age. "
"What did you want to do? I mean, when you were a little girl, what did you want to be when you grew up?"
"Honestly?"
"Of course. "
"I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to have a family and a man who loved me and a nice house. Pretty unambitious, huh?"
"No, there's nothing wrong with that. What happened?"
She drained her wineglass and poured herself another from the bottle on the coffee table. "You can't have a family alone. "
"But?"
"Travis, I don't want to ruin the evening by talking more about my marriage. I'm trying to make some changes. "
Travis let it go. She picked up his silence as understanding and brightened.
"So, what did you want to do when you grew up?"
"Honestly?"
"Don't tell me you wanted to be a housewife, too. "
"When I was growing up that's all any girl wanted to be. "
"Where did you grow up, Siberia?"
"Pennsylvania. I grew up on a farm. "
"And what did the farm boy from Pennsylvania want to be when he grew up?"
"A priest. "
Jenny laughed. "I never knew anyone who wanted to be a priest. What did you do while the other boys were playing army, give last rights to the dead?"
"No, it wasn't like that. My mother always wanted me to be a priest. As soon as I was old enough, I went away to seminary. It didn't work out. "
"So you became an insurance man. I suppose that works. I read once that all religions and insurance companies are supported by the fear of death. "
"That's pretty cynical," the demonkeeper said.
"I'm sorry, Travis. I don't have much faith in the concept of an all-powerful being that would glorify war and violence. "
"You should. "
"Are you trying to convert me?"
"No, it's just that I know, absolutely, that God exists. "
"No one knows anything absolutely. I'm not without faith. I have my own beliefs, but I have my doubts, too. "
"So did I. "
"Did? What happened, did the Holy Spirit come to you in the night and say, 'Go forth and sell insurance'?"
"Something like that. " Travis forced a smile.
"Travis, you are a very strange man. "