She wasn't the first woman to have said she loved him, nor even the first he'd replied to in kind. But she was the first he was afraid to lose, the first he knew his life would be empty without; the first he thought he might love after the fierce heat was gone, after the time when she'd cared to spread her cunt for him, or he to see it spread.
A sharp pain in his groin reminded him of his present state, and he looked down to see that all was not lost. His cock had risen to respectable erection while he'd pictured, Phoebe's display, and he had to concentrate on counting flies until it had subsided. Then he finished putting on ointment, and bandaged himself up, albeit roughly. It was time to move on, before the search spread as far as the creek; and before the effect of the painkillers wore off.
He pulled up his pants, buried the litter from his salvings, and wandering a little way up the bank found a place where the creek was narrow enough to be crossed in a hobbled leap. Then he clambered up the opposite bank and headed off up the slope between the trees.
At six-seventeen, while Phoebe was at the hot drink machine getting a cup of coffee, Morton opened his eyes. When she got back to the room, he was babbling to the nurse about how he'd been on a boat, and fallen overboard.
"I coulda drowned," he kept saying, clutching at the sheets as though they were lifelines. "I coulda. I coulda drowned."
"No, Mr. Cobb. You're in a hospital-"
"Hospital?" he said, raising his head off the pillow an inch or two, though the nurse did her best to restrain him. "I was floating-"
"You were dreaming, Morton," Phoebe said, stepping into his line of vision.
At the sight of her the memory of what had brought him here seemed to come back. "Oh Christ," he said through clenched teeth, "Christ in Heaven," and sank back onto the pillow. "You bitch," he muttered now.
"You fucking bitch."
"Calm down, Mr. Cobb," the nurse insisted, but fueled a sudden spurt of rage, Morton sat bolt upright, tearing at e drip tube in his arm as he did so. "I knew!" he screamed, jabbing his finger in Phoebe's direction.
"Do as the nurse says, Morton."
"Please, give me a hand, Mrs. Cobb," the beleaguered woman said.
Phoebe put down her coffee and went to assist, but the proximity of his wife threw Morton into a frenzy.
"Don't you fucking touch me! Don't you-"
He stopped in mid-sentence, and uttered a tiny sound, almost like a hiccup. Then all the venom went out of him at once-his arms dropped to his sides, his knotted face slackened and went blank-and the nurse, unable to support the weight of his upper body, had no choice but to let him sink back onto the pillow. It did not end there. Even as the nurse raced to the door calling for help, Morton began to draw a series of agonizing breaths, each more panicked and desperate than the one before.
She couldn't watch him suffer without trying to do something to calm him.
"It's all right," she said, going back to the bedside and laying her hand on his cold brow. "Morton. Listen to me. It's all right."
His eyes were roving back and forth behind his lids. His gasps were horrible. "Hold on, Morton," she said, as his suffering continued to mount. "You'll bust something."
If he heard her, he didn't listen. But then when had he ever listened? He went on gasping, until his body was out of power. Then he simply stopped.
"Morton," she murmured to him. "Don't you dare-"
There were nurses back at the bedside now, and a doctor spewing agitated orders, but Phoebe registered none of them. Her focus was upon Morton's stricken face. There were flecks of spittle on his chin, and his eyes were still wide open. He looked the way he'd looked at the bathroom doorraging; raging even as the sea he'd been dreaming about closed over his head. One of the nurses took hold of her hand and now gently escorted her away from the bed.
"I'm afraid his heart's given out," she murmured consolingly. But Phoebe knew better. The damn fool had drowned.
There was always a moment at the close of day when the blue gloom of dusk had settled on the city, but the sun was, still in glory on Harmon's Heights. The effect was to make Everville seem like a ghost town, sitting in the shadow of a living mountain. What had seemed unequivocal a minute ago had now become ethereal. Folks who'd been able to read their neighbors' smiles across the street could no longer do so; children who'd known for certain there was nothing darting behind the fence, or snaking between the garbage cans, were no longer secure in their belief.
In that uncertain time before the sun left the Heights entirely, and the streetlamps and porch lights of Everville asserted their authority, the city bathed in doubt, and insolid souls in insolid streets entertained the notion that this life was just a candle-flame dream, and likely to flicker out with the next gust of wind.
It was Seth Lundy's favorite time of day. Better even than midnight, or that time before dawn when the moon had sunk, and the sun was no more than a gray hope in the east. Better than those, that minute.
He was standing in the town square, looking up at the last of the light on the mountaintop and listening for the hammering, which was often loud at this uncertain hour, when a man he hoped at one glance he would come to know better stepped out of the murk towards him and said, "What can you hear?"
He had only ever been asked that question by doctors. This was no doctor. "I can hear angels hammering on the sky from Heaven's side," he replied, seeing no reason to lie.
"My name's Owen Buddenbaum," the man said, coming so close that Seth could smell the brandy on his breath. "May I ask yours?"
"Seth Lundy." Owen Buddenbaum came a little closer still. Then, le the city waited in doubt around them, he kissed Seth on the lips. Seth had never been kissed on the lips by a man before, but he knew the rightness of it, to his heart, soul, and groin.
"Shall we listen to the hammering together?" Owen Buddenbaum said, "or shall we make some for ourselves?"
"For ourselves," Seth replied.
"Good," said Owen Buddenbaum. "Ourselves it will be."
PART THREE. VESSELS
Tesla had woken early, despite the late-night call with Gfillo and the pukings from Lucien; early enough to enjoy the birdsong before the sound of traffic from Melrose and Santa Monica drowned it out. With the kitchen cupboards empty she ambled up to the cafe below the Health Club on Santa Monica, which had been open since five for the benefit of masochists, and bought coffee, fruits, and bran muffins for herself and her guest.
I don't want you screwing him, Raul reminded her as she walked back to the apartment. We agree& No sex till we're separated
"That may never happen, Raul," she pointed out, "and I'm damned if I'm going to live like a nun for the rest of my life. Which might be, by the way, a very short time."
My, we arefeeling chipper this morning.
"Anyway, monkeys like sex. It's all they ever do at the ZOO.
Gofuck yourself Bombeck.
"That's all I've been doing. Which you haven't been complaining about, by the way. Did you get off on me diddlin' myself?"
No comment.
"I'm going to fuck Lucien, Raul. So you'd better get used to the idea."
Slut.
"Monkey."
Lucien was showered and sitting on the balcony in the sun by the time she got back to the apartment. He had found some of Tesla's old clothes in the closet: patchwork jeans circa 1968 and a leather vest which fitted his skinny torso better than it had ever fitted her. Ah, the resilience of youth, she thought, seeing how quickly he'd recovered from the excesses of the previous night. Face flushed, smile lavish, he rose to help her unpack the breakfast and partook with no little appetite.