“It may cross your mind to try and take the gun from me,” she said. “Let me assure you, I’m an excellent shot. I won’t kill you, but I will happily cripple you. It’ll make your self-defense plea slightly more difficult to justify. But I can always say I was confused—I thought you had attacked Carl and realized too late what the actual circumstances were.”
I did not hesitate in making a decision, for in truth there was no decision to be made. She had walled me off from every possibility but one.
“I’ll wait for the police,” I said.
All the events of this world are liable to a variety of interpretations. I have always understood this, but only lately have I come to recognize the absolute rule of this truism, and the corresponding impossibility of penetrating to the heart of any action. Either there is no heart, no immutable center, or else the ultimate nature of the universe is a profound ambiguity that will not admit to certainty. I believe the nature of the Sublime Act reflects that essential imprecision, that core deceptiveness. Evidence of this may or may not have been presented me on the third day of my incarceration in the King County Jail, when I received a visit from Amorise LeDore.
The guard ushered me into a closed-in metal booth equipped with a telephone and scored with graffiti, most of it obscene in character. Seated opposite me, separated by a divider of scarred, clear plastic, Amorise was wearing a green silk blouse adorned with delicate silver accents. Her long black hair was loose about her shoulders, and her hawkish face was made up to seem softer and more feminine. She picked up her receiver and asked, with no apparent irony, how I was doing.
“Is that a formality?” I asked. “Or do you really care?”
“Of course I care, David. You’re dear to me…as you well know.”
Though I despised her, I had become acclimated to hate—it was an environment in which I dwelled, and I felt I could speak to her without losing my temper.
“Then you’ll be glad to hear I’ve been writing,” I said, and held up several sheets of paper that I had brought with me from my cell.
“May I see?”
One after the other I pressed the pages against the plastic so she could read them. When she had done she said, “It’s good…but not up to standard. You’ll have to do better.”
“I might be more highly motivated if you were to recover your memories of the crime of which I’ve been accused.”
Her brow furrowed, expressing a transparently insincere degree of concern. “I’m working very hard in therapy. I’m sure I’ll have a breakthrough soon.” She brightened. “But I do have something to tell you. Whether you perceive it as an encouragement…that’s entirely up to you.”
I signaled that she should continue.
“Joan Gwynne, as you recall, came to embody the soul of Villon’s lost love, Martha Laurens. Carl was Tacque Thibault. John Wooten…Guillaume du Villon. But have you ever asked yourself who embodies the soul of Amorise LeDore, and why, of all those people gathered in the Martinique to celebrate the inception of the Sublime Act, she is the only one with whom you have no apparent previous connection?”
“Is that important?”
“Everything is important, David.” A note of venom crept into her voice. “Surely as a craftsman, a devisor of murderous machines, you realize the importance of details?”
“Very well,” I said. “Who are you?”
“Let us suppose that this woman, the woman whom you know as Amorise LeDore, is also named Allison Villanueva. And that her brother Erik and her sister-in-law Carmen were murdered by one of your security devices.” She gave these last two words a loathing emphasis. “Let us further suppose that in her grief Allison came to recognize that if the courts would not punish you, she must seek her own vengeance, and after the lawsuit against you was dismissed, she traveled from her home in Merida to do that very thing.”
Astonished, I jumped to my feet and the guard stationed behind Amorise gestured at me with his baton. I sat back down. “What are you telling me!”
“What I’m telling you,” she went on, “is what I am telling you. Make of it what you will.” She reached into her purse and withdrew the book I had taken from her locker at Emerald Street Expansions. “Novallis. Did you notice, David, that by rearranging the letters you can also spell out the name Allison V? It’s not a difficult chore to forge an antique, and Allison may have taken pains to do so. Or she may not. Did you verify the book’s age?”
“No,” I said in a tight voice. “I did not.”
“Well, if you had, you might have discovered that the book, if a forgery, is a very good forgery. I doubt any expert would claim that it is inauthentic. Be that as it may…” She restored the book to her purse.
“I don’t believe you!”
“What is it you don’t believe? That I’m Allison, or that I’m Amorise? Perhaps both are true. That would suit the subtle character of the Sublime Act, would it not? The subjects must be suitable, and Allison is perfect for Amorise. But then, too, Amorise is precisely what Allison needed.”
“You fucking witch!” I said. “Don’t try to con me!”
“Why not, Francois? You’re a natural-born mark.”
“I know who you are…and I know who I am.”
“Let’s examine who you are,” said Amorise. “I must confess I’ve deceived you to an extent. We did do a little something to you at Emerald Street.”
“That’s crap!” I said. “The woman there…the blonde. She told me the machine didn’t work. The leads were burned out.”
“Jane Eisley. She’s a friend. Actually, you know her, too. You dated her sister at Stanford. There was some slight unpleasantness involved. A pregnancy, I believe. An abortion, a broken heart. And a very long time ago, you may have known her as Fat Margot, a Parisian prostitute.”
I was at a loss, capable only of staring at her.
“We didn’t have to do much,” she said. “It’s as I told you the other night, you were perfect for Francois. Well…almost perfect. I needed you to fall in love with Joan, so we tweaked your emotional depth a bit. The rest of it…the anger, the violence, the disdain. You supplied all that. But love was needed to make you fully inhabit those qualities, to bring them to flower.” She fixed me with her disturbing green eyes. “Do you understand me, David? I wove the web, but you flew into it with passion, abandon, arrogance. All those qualities you thought you lacked and wanted to explore. From the moment we met, you surrendered yourself to me. You desired what I have given you…and what I have given you is yourself.”
“What do you want?” I pressed my palms hard against the plastic barrier, hoping for a miraculous collapse that would allow my hands to close about her throat.
“No more than what I told you at the club. I want you to enact the laws of your nature. So far you’re doing a splendid job.” She settled back in her chair, folded her arms and regarded me coolly. “I’d like you to consider the possibilities. On the one hand, it’s possible that this is no more than an ornate Latina cruelty. That Allison Villanueva has manipulated you through completely ordinary means in order to avenge her brother and her sister-in-law. That utilizing your suggestibility, your gullibility, your penchant for the macabre and your underused yet nonetheless potent imagination, she has persuaded you that a witch has come from the fifteenth century to implant the soul of Francois Villon into your body for some arcane purpose—something she may have done many times before. And now she’s telling you that the entire scenario may be a fraud. That would be the logical conclusion…at least if we are to accept the logic of the age. On the other hand, it’s conceivable that the story of the witch is true. Or, a third possibility, both stories are true. This speaks to the beautiful symmetry of the Sublime Act. It begins with a multitude of options, but eventually reduces those choices to three. Ultimately those three become indistinguishable.”