Cochran remembered having called Nina! when Plumtree’s mother had been controlling her body, right after the pre-dawn earthquake. “That was this morning, early,” he said steadily. He had been ashamed of calling her name, immediately after he’d done it, and he didn’t want to look squarely at the action now. “I didn’t think you heard me.”
“I had a long way to come, to answer.” She was frowning thoughtfully, and Cochran felt goose bumps rise on his forearms as he recognized the top-of-the-nose crease of Nina’s characteristic frown, on Plumtree’s sunburned face. “I was in a—unless it was a dream?—a bar, with a lot of very drunk people.” She visibly relaxed, and smiled at him “Rut I’m home now.”
This isn’t her, he told himself as his heart hammered behind his ribs, it’s just her ghost. Wherever the real Nina is—her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl—she has no part in this. Still, this is a ghost of her, this is her ghost. Could she stay? Sleep in the bed, dampen the toothbrush? She was building a stone fountain in the garden, when she died; could she finish building it now?
But there was something wrong—something subtly but witheringly grotesque—about the idea of dead-reflex, mimic hands finishing the living woman’s interrupted garden work.
And would the unborn baby’s ghost come back, sobbing inconsolably in the darkness late some night?
And could he do this to Cody?
He lifted his coffee cup and stood up and crossed to the sink, pausing by the refrigerator to pry off of its door one of the little flat promotion-giveaway magnets stamped to look like a miniature bottle of Pace Zinfandel. “I’ve decided to have the mark on the back of my right hand removed,” he said over his shoulder as he dumped the half-cup of lukewarm coffee into the sink. He was speaking carefully. “Laser surgery, get it done in a couple of outpatient sessions.”
“Ce n’est pas possible!” she exclaimed, and he heard Plumtree’s shoes scuff on the floor as she stood up. “It is your Androcles mark! The lion owed Androcles an obligation after Androcles merely pulled the thorn from the lion’s paw—but you at some time put out your hand to injury to save the god! I’ve never spoken of it; but the mark is for only the god to take away, as it was for him to bestow it. I would never have—I would not have your child, if its father were not marked by him. My family didn’t send me here simply to—” She gripped his shoulder with Plumtree’s strong hand. “Tell me you won’t do it, Scant.”
“Okay,” he said gently. “Sorry. I won’t do it.”
He filled the coffee cup with cold tap water and carried it back to the table. “Sit down,” he told her, placing the cup of tap water on the table between them and stirring it with the forefinger of his right hand. After she had resumed her seat, he asked, “What…happened, on New Year’s Day?” He touched his forehead with his wet fingertip. Then he took the cassette from the phone-answering machine out of his shirt pocket.
“In the morning, at dawn,” said Nina’s voice with Plumtree’s lips. “I thought it might be him again, this morning, when you called me on the leaping bed. I was thrown awake at dawn on New Year’s Day, and I knew he was calling me, from outside the house. My…I was married to him, through you. And he was freed that morning, when the earth moved and the trees were all knocked down. I wrapped myself in a bedsheet, and tied ivy in my hair, and I ran out to meet him, down the backyard path to the highway. And I—did?—it was loud, and it hurt—but I knew that was how he would come.” She was staring into the clear water in the cup, and she sighed deeply.
Cochran felt empty. “What’s your name?” he asked, in a voice that he tried to keep from being as flat as a dialtone.
Slowly, he slid the little bottle-shaped magnet back and forth over the cassette.
“Nina Gestin Leon. Ariachne.” Plumtree’s blue eyes met his. “I see two of you, Scant. I died that morning, it seems to me now. Didn’t I?”
“Yes, Nina.” Fighting to conceal the aching bitterness in his throat, he said hoarsely, “You died that morning. I flew your ashes back to the Bas Medoc, to Queyrac, and I talked to your mother and father. We were all very sorry that you were gone, none sorrier than me. I loved you very much.” He pushed the erased tape away, until he felt it tap against the coffee cup.
She shivered visibly, and blinked away tears. “Where do I go now?”
Her peace is the important thing here, he told himself wonderingly, not your betrayed love, not your pride. Let her rest in what peace there is to be had. “To your real husband at last, not just to a symbol anymore.” He couldn’t tell if the quaver in his voice was from rage or grief. “I imagine you’ll find the god…in the garden.”
The frown unkinked from Plumtree’s forehead, leaving her sunburned face expressionless; and Cochran closed his eyes and slowly lowered his face into his, hands. He was panting, his breath catching in his throat each time he inhaled, and when he felt hot tears in his palm he realized that he was weeping.
He heard the lifeless voice of Valorie: “O he is even in my mistress’ case, just in her case!” A cold finger touched his cheek. “Stand up, stand up! Stand an you be a man.”
He raised his head and dragged his shirtsleeve across his wet eyes. And then it was recognizably Cody who sat across from him now, blinking at him in bewildered sympathy.
“Sid,” she said. “There’s a car pulling into your driveway.”
He pushed his chair back and stood up. He had left his revolver in the bedroom, and he started down the hall—but then, in the moment before the engine in the driveway was switched off, he recognized the sound of the rumbling exhaust.
He padded barefoot to the front door and squinted through the peephole.
The old Suburban in his driveway was bright blood red. An aura like heat waves was shimmering around it for a distance of about a foot, and the green box hedge on the far side of the driveway shone a brighter green through the aura band.
Pete and Angelica Sullivan were climbing out on this side, and he could see Arky Mavranos getting out from the driver’s side. Kootie’s head was visible in the back seat, “and there was no one else with them.
Cochran unlocked the door and pulled it open, and the ocean-scented breeze was chilly on his wet face.
Pete and Angelica were helping Kootie step down from the back seat, but Mavranos plodded around the front of the truck and up the cobblestone walkway.
“Congratulations,” Mavranos said from the bottom of the porch steps. “You’ve got four houseguests.” He looked over Cochran’s shoulder and smiled tightly, and Cochran realized that Cody must have followed him to the door. “It looks like the trick can still be done—somehow—on new terms that no one’s got a clue about.” His smile broadened, baring his white teeth. “I hope you’re still feeling up for it, girl.”
“Oh, shut up, Arky,” Cody said. She stepped past Cochran, out onto the porch. “Is Kootie hurt?”
“Somebody shot him,” said Mavranos. “Probably your psycho doctor. But the oy’s apparently gonna be okay.”
Cody gave a hiss of concern and hurried down the steps, past Mavranos, to help Pete and Angelica.
IN COCHRAN’S living room Angelica stitched up Kootie’s wound with dental floss from a freshly opened box, Pete kneeling alongside to hand her scissors and cotton, while Mavranos paced back and forth at the front window with his revolver in his and, watching the road. Cochran and Plumtree retreated into the kitchen, where they threw together in a stockpot a big stew of canned clam chowder, crabmeat, chopped green onions, cheap Fume Blanc and curry powder. When it was hot, the aroma apparently convinced everyone that the late breakfast at Seafood Bohemia hadn’t been adequate, and in half an hour all of them, even Mavranos, were sitting around Cochran’s dining-room table mopping the last of the makeshift chowder out of their soup bowls with stale sourdough bread. By unspoken common consent they were all drinking Pellegrino mineral water.