The light changed and the cab lurched forward, knocking the joker away. In spite of herself Jane found herself almost wanting to laugh. There was no comparison between the joker's crudeness and the genteel come-ons she politely turned away at Aces High, but for some reason something about it had touched her. Maybe just because it was so funny, or because the joker was a victim refusing to kneel to his affliction, or because he hadn't actually come out and said what else it was he had. Someone earthier than she would have laughed out loud. I'm just a hothouse flower, she thought, a bit ruefully. A hothouse killer-flower.
The cab turned a corner sharply and went down two blocks before pulling over in the middle of the third. "This's it," the driver said sullenly. "You mind hurrying?"
She looked at the meter and pushed several bills through the slot in front of her. "Keep the change." The door was stuck, but the driver showed no inclination to get out and help her. Disgusted, she kicked it open on the second try and got out. "Just for that, I won't bother telling you to have a nice day," she muttered as the cab roared away from the curb, and then she turned to look at the building in front of her.
It had been renovated at least twice, but nothing had helped; it was just plain ugly and shabby though obviously solid. It wasn't going to fall down unless the Great Ape kicked it down, except, she remembered, the Great Ape didn't exist anymore. Five stories, and the place she wanted was on the top floor. She'd grown up in an apartment on the top floor of a seven-story tenement building, the kind with no elevators, and she'd sprinted up and down all seven flights without stopping several times every day of her young life. Five floors wouldn't give her any problem, she thought.
Her sprinting gave out in the middle of the second flight, but she did manage to keep going without pause, albeit more slowly, catching her breath on each landing. The darkness was relieved by the frosted skylight directly over the squaredoff spiral of the stairs, but the light was anemic and depressing.
There was only one apartment on the top floor. Hiram might as well have had his name on it, she thought as she paused at the head of the stairs, panting a little. Instead of the drab, grayish door that all the other apartments had, there was a custom hardwood job with an ornate brass knocker and an old-fashioned handle instead of a doorknob. The lock above it was completely modern and secure but made to look just as refined. Hiram, Hiram, she thought sadly, does it pay to advertise in a place like this?
What would he say when he opened the door and saw her? What would he think? It didn't matter. She had to make him see what was happening because then it would save him-save his life. It would be a bit different from the way he had saved hers, but Aces High was his life, and if she could save that for him, then she would have repaid him for her own life. The balance between them would be restored after all, whereas before she hadn't thought there'd be any way to do that.
No way but one, and she couldn't. The feeling wasn't there. She knew Hiram would have welcomed her regardless, that he would be considerate and tender and funny and loving and everything a woman could want in a lover. But ultimately it would be horribly unjust to him, and when it came to its inevitable end, it would be painful and scarring to both of them. Hiram deserved better. Such a good man deserved someone whose devotion would match his, someone who would enter fully into every part of his life and give him all the pleasures of attachment. He needed someone who could not live without him.
Instead of someone who would have died without him? her mind whispered nastily, and she felt another hard pang of guilt. All right, all right, I'm a bitch and an ingrate, she scolded herself silently. Maybe it's some fatal flaw in me that
I don't love him, as good as he is. Maybe if gratitude could make me fall in love with him, I'd be a better person.
And maybe he wouldn't be holed up in a Jokertown apartment with poison like Ezili Rouge, either.
God, Jane thought. She had to talk to Hiram. She couldn't believe he would really want to keep company with such a creature. She had to help him get away from her, find some way to bar her from Aces High. Whatever she had to do to help him, anything, anything at all, she would do it especially if saving Hiram meant she never had to see that woman again.
She forced herself to walk along the landing to the apartment and gave the brass knocker three sharp taps. To her dismay, it was Ezili who answered.
Ezili was dressed, if that was the word for it, in a whisper of transparent gold material over nothing. Jane looked steadily into Ezili's face, refusing to let her gaze fall below the woman's chin, and said in her driest, most controlled voice, "I've come for Hiram. I know that he's here, and it's imperative that I see him."
A slow hot smile spread across Ezili's face as if Jane had said the one thing in the world she could possibly have wanted to hear. Swaying a little, as though dancing to some inner music she moved back and gestured gracefully for ane to enter.
The apartment was a surprise. The living room had been carefully decorated in a completely Haitian motif that also reflected Hiram's high tastes. Jane found herself unable to look at anything except the deep brown carpet, exactly like the one in Hiram's office. The place was so Hiram, but Hiram changed, Hiram the stranger who had come back from the tour. With Ezili, who was moving leisurely around her like some sort of predatory creature whose favorite dinner had walked obligingly into its claws.
"Hiram's in the bedroom," she said. "I guess if it's imperative that you see him, then you can see him there." Standing in front of Jane, she lifted her arms to run her hands along the back of her own neck, practically thrusting her large breasts into Jane's face. Jane maintained her steady, even gaze, refusing to look. Something shiny flashed on Ezili's right hand as she brought it around.
Blood. Jane's severe composure almost broke. Blood? What in God's name could Hiram have gotten himself into? Ezili's reddened hand undulated through the air in a pointing gesture. "That way. Just walk in and you'll see him. In bed."
Jane marched past her to the shadowy doorway and stepped into the bedroom. She cleared her throat, started to speak, and then froze.
He was not in bed but kneeling on the floor next to it in an attitude of prayer. But he was definitely not praying.
At first she thought she had surprised him in the act of giving a piggyback ride to a small child, and it flashed through her mind that it was his child by Ezili, the pregnancy, birth, and growth drastically foreshortened by the wild card infection, which had also made the child a hideously deformed joker.
She took a step toward him, her eyes filling with tears of pity. "Oh, Hiram, I…"
The look on Hiram's face went from rage to agonized sorrow, and she saw what it really was on his back. "H-H-Hiram…"
Her voice died away as a bizarrely alien expression of curiosity spread over Hiram's face. It was not the expression of a father interrupted while tending to his child, and no child would have been fastened to a father's neck by the mouth. The wizened creature on Hiram's back quivered in a way that reminded her of Ezili's movements. Even as she turned to bolt for the door, she knew it was too late.
She thought she must have weighed at least three hundred pounds when she hit the floor.
Later on, when she thought of it, when she could bring herself to think of it, she knew that it could have been at most half a minute before Hiram moved from the bed to where she was anchored to the floor on her stomach. It was completely silent in the apartment for what seemed to Jane like an excruciating stretch of time before Hiram finally rose and came to stand over her where she lay with water pouring off her, soaking her clothes and the carpet.
She tried to say something to him, but all the breath had been knocked out of her by the fall. In a minute, when she could talk, she would tell him he hadn't had to do that, that no matter what kind of trouble he was in, she wouldn't give him away to anyone, and she would try to help him in any way she could-