The Clouds Roll Away Read Online Free Page B

Maybe it was already there. Ivy invaded the top floor. Moss smothered the gutters. Autumn leaves, still not raked, swirled across the slate, hissing their opinion.
    But a song was playing inside the house, a tune about deep and dreamless sleep, a place where silent stars go by. Nobody was in the kitchen, however. Or the den. The dining room was empty, along with the front parlor where the windows faced General Robert E. Lee’s statue on Monument Avenue. I stared at the record, the RPM, spinning on my grandparents’ hi-fi. I thought of the man with a cross burned into his lawn, and I listened to verses about hope and fears.
    Three cardboard boxes rested on the velvet chairs, dusty tops open.
    â€œAnybody home?” I called out, walking up the walnut staircase to the second floor. I knocked on my mother’s bedroom door. No answer. Her four-poster bed was crisply made with red and green Christmas pillows lined up against the headboard. Down the hall, I could hear another kind of music. It sounded nothing like a Christmas carol.
    We rented a room in the big house to Wally Marsh, a local photographer who helped take care of my mother. He’d lived with us for about a year and had proved a loyal friend, although since our return from Seattle, I’d noticed some changes. Like the music, loud enough to rattle the iron hinges on his bedroom door. A rapper rhymed town , down , crown , frown —
    I knocked. No reply.
    I pounded. “Wally!”
    The door finally opened. “I didn’t hear you,” he said.
    No kidding. “Can you turn that down, please?”
    His flat expression drained warmth from his brown eyes. A cold breeze blew through the open window, lifting the heavy scent of his cologne. Another new element, cologne. And jewelry. The rapper rhymed dawn , con , turned on .
    â€œSeriously,” I said, “it’s too loud. Turn it down.”
    He shuffled over to the desk, his thin frame swallowed by baggy jeans. He lowered the decibels on the boom box from assault to annoying. The CD player glinted with chrome next to a computer whose monitor measured roughly the size of my television.
    â€œWhazzup?” he said.
    I let it go. “I can’t find her.”
    â€œNadine?” he said, as if another woman lived here besides my mother. “She’s been creeping around the attic all morning, putting on holiday tunes, giving me a headache. I was trying to get some work done.”
    I glanced at the computer monitor. Four black guys wearing baggy black clothing flexed their hands in gestures that reminded me of dive-bombing crows. After years as a struggling freelance photographer, Wally hit the mother lode. Rappers.
    â€œNew clients?” I nodded at the picture.
    He crossed his arms. “Be glad I’m not scrounging up rent every month. These guys pay.”
    I couldn’t count the months we bartered dog walks, handyman services, and taking my mother for drives. Freelance photography paid enough to feed a houseplant and I knew that when we signed the lease. “Do you know a guy named RPM?”
    He gave a dismissive laugh.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” I asked.
    â€œRPM? He’s the bank. Dig?”
    â€œPardon?”
    â€œHis production company cuts my checks.”
    The urban patois didn’t fool me. Wally’s true citizenship was Nerdville. That’s what I liked about him. He read the gossip section in the newspaper and argued religion with my mom. His parents, now deceased, sent him to Catholic schools and none of this simulated rap-speak changed my mind. Wally was still a nerd.
    â€œIf you run into the bank or anyone in that crowd,” I said, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œAbout your landlady being an FBI agent.”
    His eyes opened so wide I saw the dendritic veins radiating from the dark irises.
    â€œMe?” he said. “How about you don’t say