Taltos - By Anne Rice Page 0,191

asked. He started up, the ice-chest cradle beginning to feel like a sack of rocks to him. “Why doesn’t this whole place just disintegrate?”

“Well, in a way, I guess it is,” said Mary Jane, “only it’s taking a couple hundred years, you know???” She went thumping up the steps in front of him, pushing right in his way as she hit the second-floor hall, and then turning around and saying, “You come with me, we got to go up to the attic.”

But where was that clickety, clickety, clickety coming from? He could hear somebody humming, too. But she didn’t even give him a chance to look around, rushing him to the attic steps.

And then he saw old Granny Mayfair at the very top in her flowered flannel gown, waving her little hand at him.

“Hey, there, Dr. Jack. How’s my handsome boy? Come give me a kiss. Surely am glad to see you.”

“Glad to see you too, Grandma,” he said coming up, though Mary Jane once again shoved right past him, with the firm admonition that he was to hold tight to the baby. Four more steps and he’d be glad to set this bundle down. How come he was the one who’d wound up carrying it, anyway?

At last he reached the warm, dry air of the attic, the little old lady standing on tiptoe to press her lips to his cheeks. He did love Grandma Mayfair, he had to admit that much.

“How you doing, Grandma, you taking all your pills?” he asked.

Mary Jane picked up the ice chest as soon as he set it down, and ran off with it. This wasn’t such a bad place, this attic; it was strung with electric lights, and clean clothes hanging on the lines with wooden clothespins. Lots of comfortable old furniture scattered around, and it didn’t smell too much like mold; on the contrary, it smelled like flowers.

“What is that ‘clickety-clickety’ sound I’m hearing on the second floor down there?” he asked as Grandma Mayfair took his arm.

“You just come in here, Dr. Jack, and do what you got to do, and then you fill out that baby’s birth certificate. We don’t want any problems with the registration of this baby’s birth, did I ever tell you about the problems when I didn’t register Yancy Mayfair for two months after he was born, and you wouldn’t believe the trouble I got into with the city hall and them telling me that …”

“And you delivered this little tyke, did you, Granny?” he asked, patting her hand. His nurses had warned him the first time she came in that it was best not to wait till she finished her stories, because she didn’t. She’d been at his office the second day he opened up, saying none of the other doctors in this town were ever going to touch her again. Now that was a story!

“Sure did, Doctor.”

“The mama’s over there,” said Mary Jane, pointing to the side gable of the attic, all draped in unbleached mosquito netting as if it were a tent with its peaked roof, and the distant glowing rectangle of the rain-flooded window at the end of it.

Almost pretty, the way it looked. There was an oil lamp burning inside, he could smell it, and see the warm glow in the smoky glass shade. The bed was big, piled with quilts and coverlets. It made him sad, suddenly, to think of his own grandmother years and years ago, and beds like that, so heavy with quilts you couldn’t move your toes, and how warm it had been underneath on cold mornings in Carriere, Mississippi.

He lifted the long, thin veils and lowered his head just a little as he stepped under the spine of the gable. The cypress boards were bare here, and dark brownish red and clean. Not a leak anywhere, though the rainy window sent a wash of rippling light over everything.

The red-haired girl lay snug in the bed, half asleep, her eyes sunken and the skin around them frighteningly dark, her lips cracked as she took her breaths with obvious effort.

“This young woman should be in a hospital.”

“She’s worn out, Doctor, you would be too,” said Mary Jane, with her smart tongue. “Why don’t you get this over with, so she can get some rest now?”

At least the bed was clean, cleaner than that makeshift bassinet. The girl lay nestled in fresh sheets, and wearing a fancy white shirt trimmed in old-fashioned lace, with little pearl buttons. Her hair

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