The Blue Hour

“I’m no expert on the tradition, Mrs. Colesceau, but the eggs are beautiful.”

Colesceau smiled and bowed to Trudy very slightly. In the afternoon light that came through the still-open door Trudy Powers looked like a goddess. She was radiant, beautiful and filled with power. The dust rising in the sunlight around her was gold. Her skin and her hair and her thoughts were gold. Beside her, Helena seemed like one of those black holes they always talked about on the Discovery Channel, a place of hungry nothingness that ate solar systems like appetizers.

“Miss Powers,” he said, bowing again.

“I’m concerned that they did the wrong thing in demonstrating at the Parole Board building today. I’m really sorry they did that, and I advised them it was wrong. I apologize for what they’ve done. I made you a pie.”

Helena turned away and waddled into the living room. Colesceau extended his arm toward the kitchen, encouraging Trudy to go in ahead of him. She smiled on her way past him, a nervous smile. “Can I set it here on the counter?”

“That’s fine. It was kind of you.”

She put the pie on the counter, then looked at him. She was nervous but she didn’t back away. He could tell it took resolve. But she seemed convinced that she was animated, or at least endorsed, by a higher power than herself. God’s little errand girl, he thought, placating the evil monster.

“How nice to have your mother here.”

“Oh, very.” Colesceau felt a swirl of things just then: hatred, attraction, frustration, power. And a light, fizzing sensation down in the fleshy end of himself.

“Mine died when I was young.”

“But you still are young.”

“I’m thirty-four. You’re just twenty-six, aren’t you?”

“Miss Powers, I feel a hundred. At least.”

“After all you’ve gone through, it’s understandable.”

“I’ve sinned. But it was a long time ago. And I have honored the promise I made you. My behavior has been excellent I in all ways.”

Colesceau thought he heard his mother grunt from the living room, but it could have just been the TV, or the blood rushing against his eardrums.

“It’s good you can acknowledge your sins.”

“It’s easy when they’re as large as mine.”

“Paul was the great sinner, until his conversion. The farther you have fallen, the higher you can rise.”

He pursed his lips and looked down. It was a look of contrition he’d practiced for years on Holtz. “What’s inside the pie?”

“Apples. Organic apples. I hope you like apple pie.”

“Oh, powerfully.”

“Mr. Col... Moros. I brought you something else. I hope you don’t think it’s presumptuous or something, but I just thought, from some of the things you’ve said, that you’d understand it.”