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Subject: {ASSM} TxM6: Taxi Murders the Novel  Chapter 78  --  April  9 1992 -- Day Before Laurie Screams
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 05:10:02 -0500
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If you have missed any parts of Taxi Murders the Novel,
they are archived on ASSM --Google and at my web site.
I welcome feedback. Chapters 1-76 are available at my
site, which updates every few days.

http://www.seanfarragher.com/taximurdersbook


Taxi Murders the Novel -- Chapter 76
April 9, 1992  Day Before the Scream
(c) 2003 Sean Farragher
sfarragher@nj.rr.com

http://www.seanfarragher.com
http://www.seanfarragher.com/Joss
http://www.seanfarragher.com/taximurdersbook



Chapter 76
April 9, 1992 -- The Day Before Laurie Screamed



Prelude to Truth?

Does the Present tense imply an inverse? Henry asked this question every
day Laurie was missing. Dreams repeat as lovers show the future not as a
time but a state of mind, Laurie had said this on that last night before
she was abducted. Lovers, even if not present with each other, repeat
shared dreams. She whispered this oath to Henry the last night they slept
together.

Once or twice over the years that she knew Henry Laurie drove with Henry in
his cab sitting in the front seat.

It broke company rules, but they did it. Of course, some driver reported
Henry, and he was written up. Best thing that could happen is that they
fire me.  Henry didn't mean it. He loved hacking and riding the streets.

When Laurie held Henry's hand, and he hers, she felt his past. They could
be talking about anything. She told him it was her sixth sense. I always
feel your turmoil and your peace. It is an odd combination. I am attracted
to it.

Laurie made a rule early in their relationship that they would never plan a
future. Live day by day, she said. That way we are not too disappointed
when life fucks us up.

Tonight, Laurie had an agenda. She needed to tell Henry that she was
pregnant and that he was the father. When she first learned she was
expecting, she lied about the dates, and told Henry he was not the father.

Laurie and Henry had just gotten back together after breaking up. Henry
accepted her pregnancy but was not completely happy.

Henry's oldest daughter Michelle was also pregnant. She lived in Boston and
was planning on bringing up the child as a single parent. Maybe they could
all live together. He'd help Michelle move to Jersey. Laurie was not
pleased with the idea. Laurie tried to be open about it, but it bothered
her, and she knew it shouldn't.

Henry's relationship with his daughter reminded Laurie of the ones she had
had with her stepfathers, Huw and Billy. Laurie knew she could never talk
to Henry about her suspicions.

Laurie knew she wasn't pregnant by anyone but Henry. She never slept with
anyone after she moved in with Henry.

Laurie told Angela that she lied to Henry because she did not want him to
feel obligated for anything. "You know how men try to own you. I liked what
Henry and I have. Why would I want to change it? And besides Henry is going
to have to help Michelle, and this leaves some options open.

Angela warned Laurie that her must tell the truth. "You will you know," she
said. You know how generous Henry is, Angela said. How could you do this to
him? This is one lie that you have to correct. What if lied to you like
this. How would you feel?

Riding through the Palisades she started to tell Henry, but suddenly, he
got involved with a fare, and the more she thought about what she had to
say the less certain she was that she could do it.

How could she tell him that she had lied, I do not want to upset him just
before he flies to Boston.  Laurie stayed silent.

They made love all night, and after Laurie slept uneasy, and in the morning
Henry left. He seemed sad to leave and tried to change his plans, but
Laurie insisted. You are going to be a grandpa in a few days. Don't you
want to be there? I have to work so I can't go with you, and besides
Michelle and I clash. It is her time. I understand that.

The next night, Laurie kidnapped by Abel, would not get the chance to tell
Henry the truth that she carried his child.











2. Dreams

Henry drove the thin layers of melancholy across the synapses of memory
again and again. In these daydreams he held Laurie in his life returning to
them as he drove from taxi yard to taxi yard across the George Washington
Bridge.

Every night after Henry returned to make their memories more visible. He
remembered that night that they talked endlessly bout the past in the
present and wondered present had an inverse larger than the past or the
future.

"Imagine witnessing the sacrifice of Job," Henry said, as that classical
man struggled for faith.

In Henry's dream the Laurie possessed the narrative. Their stories seemed
everlasting and at the same time fragile waiting for destruction.

Most of the debris caught by lingered in the closet as useless and wasted.
It was boxed up and it would be hard to discard it. We are trapped that
way.

That night before he left for Boston Henry dreamed of Laurie riding the arm
of his taxi half in and out of his side window. He didn't suspect that a
tragedy was about to haunt him.

Denial to acceptance is carried everywhere. Laurie and I cover each other
as we sleep. It is more than protection from the cold or loneliness. He did
not protect her. She needed no protection.

When he learned that Laurie was taken, captive or dead, he believed she
would not die. If she was dead, he would know it, and his dreams of her,
and her of him, he reasoned would stop. If he died before her by some
fluke, she would know of his death as he would know.

When most had given up Henry and Angela believed. How can she not be alive?

Once a week or so after Laurie was lost, Henry retraced their last drive
together as he casually drove his Car #4, Hudson Street cab from the taxi
yard to the gallows of paradise. This must be Dante's vision.

Henry, like Laurie, didn't believe in the innate goodness. He believed
contrary to the Bible that the search for the fruit of the tree of
knowledge was a blessing not a sin. His search for Laurie had been only
good.

How do I know if I win, Lord, Henry asked again mocking religion?

If Laurie is dead, I lose. If she is alive she suffers.

How do we know the truth? Henry was uncomfortable in prayer, but he also
knew he had nothing to lose. Prayer holds on to the past too long Laurie
once said. Why?



Murder is one moment.

Henry remembered how last year Zammy beaten almost to death by two men with
baseball bats while a third their boss, watched and laughed.  Henry
realized that violence was a sign of something. But what?

Self advertised greed had shattered Zammy's life.  What use was a drug
addict pusher? That was Zammy's life. How can we say this person or that,
no matter what their crime, is not essential?

Laurie had asked Henry that question the day after Zammy's assault. She
missed his laughter most, she said. I wanted him back all of him. I loved
his flaws. Zammy didn't deserve to have his mind turned to soup.

"Nothing is valuable but our lies" and that last night Laurie remembered
how she had lied to Henry about fatherhood. At that moment she had decided
to tell him the truth the moment of his return from Boston.

Henry didn't know Laurie had a lie to correct, but he wondered endlessly
what Laurie thought that moment when she knew she could not escape.

Every night Henry relived his life with Laurie as the cold, gray and red
sunset slid downward not as delusion but beautiful over the western hills
of the palisades they both had cherished.

Suddenly Henry was terribly sad. It was moment not unlike the one that the
patriot Benedict Arnold discovered (or Judas) that it was his cause he
would betray.

Henry didn't know that Laurie had misled him. She lived with her lie. It
fucked up her life and helped her survive. I need to tell him the truth,
and I will, she said.

When the baby was born in captivity and released set out in Van Saun Park
to be found by the authorities.

Abel called the police using a voice modification device. Laurie wrote the
child's name, Molly Whitman on her belly in lipstick. Henry would know from
that.

Lilith discovering the message and she erased it. She didn't tell Laurie
that she did it, and then at an odd moment a month later to fuck with
Laurie, she told her what she had done. "Do you think you can get away with
out thinking me," she said.













3. Laurie's Captivity

He lived suspended and missed Laurie. I would die for my country. I am not
brave just ignorant. I want to help Laurie, but I do not know how. Henry
felt powerless like the times in Nam just before insertion or extraction
when he had to act no matter what and save the lives of his men. How do we
know the brave? Do they stop death? Do they hunt out inequity? Do they lust
for justice? Do they swallow their own ego and mark down curses that their
lives have mattered?

Laurie is the larger hero if she lives and victim if she is dead. Is that
the only value we place on her?

If we perform we win. If we do not survive or fail in our attempt we lose
and the prize if you can call it that for loss is the missing spaces of our
lives where we feed our loneliness that food called self-pity.  Validation.

I mattered. Laurie mattered more. If she is dead, her life is not wasted.
Henry over the months of Laurie's captivity constantly reassured himself
that he had no evidence of her death."

Henry pursued that notion. How do we make the ache go away? What is the
difference between virtual and actual memory. How do we talk to anyone
about right or wrong when it is the abuse of guilt that makes us wrong and
not what we imagined we have done? Can memory ever be wrong?  Of course it
can.

I can wonder if I am whole or not. Laurie cannot if she is dead. She cannot
be not alive. Life abused her and she was making it right. It is not fair.

Suddenly sex stirred. Henry remembered Laurie's hands on his cock, He felt
her kiss. Henry had discovered in Nam that the sun would swallow its own
lips to prepare you for a breathless death.

Light reaches ahead in time, Henry dreamed. It becomes the light
distinctive and not a rigid map of chemical and emotional phosphorescence.

Must be that Laurie's alive. I cannot imagine her dead.






























for More TxM6  http://www.seanfarragher.com/taximurdersbook






END

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