I 11
'No.
"I think we are. Maybe it's too much for you to admit right now, but you'll see the sense in it. And when you do-".
"I won't." "When you do I want you to know there's a place for you in my heart"-Aid he turn this phrase deliberately, she wondered, tempting her gaze back towards the spiral at his core?-"and I think a place for me in yours."
Say nothing, Raul murmured.
"I want to tell him to fuck off."
I know you do, but leave him guessing. Biting back a retort, she headed for the door, her legs strong enough not to betray her.
"Let me say something snide," Tesla implored.
Don't even look at him, Raul replied.
She took his advice. Without word or glance she opened the door a little wider and slipped out into the cooler air of the hallway.
Phoebe was sitting on the step, her head in her hands. Tesla went to her, comforted her and persuaded her to her feet. Then they hobbled away up the path and down the street, under trees that were sighing in sweet breezes from the mountain.
Perhaps a mile out from the shore, The Fanacapan was caught by a second current, this one of no little ferocity, which threw the vessel around like a plaything before speeding it on its way. The scale of the waves rapidly increased, much to Joe's distress, Lifting the boat up twenty, thirty feet one moment, giving them a precarious perch from which to see the awesome vista ahead, then dropping it like a stone into a trough so deep and dark it seemed with every descent this would be their last, and the foaming waves would bury them. Not so. Each time they rose again, though every board in the vessel creaked, and the decks were awash from bow to stem.
It was impossible to speak under these conditions. All Joe could do was cling to the frame of the wheelhouse door, and pray. It was a long time since he'd begun a sentence with Our Father, but the words came back readily enough, and their familiarity was comforting. Perhaps, he thought, there was even a remote chance that the words were being heard. That notion-which would have seemed naive the day before-did not seem so idiotic now. He'd crossed a threshold into another state of being; a state that was just like another room in a house the size of the cosmos: literally, a step away. If there was one such door to be entered, why not many? And why should one not be a door that led into Heaven?
All his adult life, he'd asked why. Why God? Why meaning? Why love? Now he realized his error. The question was not why; it was why not?
For the first time since childhood, since hearing his grandmother tell Bible stories like reminiscences, he dared to believe; and for all the darkness of the troughs and terrible turmoils that lay ahead, for all the fact that he was soaked to the skin and sickened to his stomach, he was strangely happy with his lot.
If I had Phoebe beside me now, he thought, I'd be lacking nothing.
Tesia refused to answer any of Phoebe's questions until she'd stood under a hot shower for a quarter of an hour, and scrubbed every inch of her body from scalp to feet, sniffing water up her nose and snorting it out to clean the last of the shit from her nostrils and using half a tube of toothpaste and a full bottle of mouthwash to scour her mouth and throat.
That done, she stood in front of the mirror and surveyed her body from as many angles as anatomy allowed. She'd looked better, no doubt of that. There was scarcely six square inches of flesh unmarked by the yellow stain of an old bruise, or the livid purples and reds of a new one, but in its strange way the sight pleased her.
"You've lived some," she told her reflection. "I like that."
Let's be sure we live a little longer, Raul counseled. "Any bright ideas?"
We need help, that's for sure. And don't start with me about Lucien. He'd be no use right now. We need somebody who can help us defend ourselves. And I'm not talking about guns. "You're talking about magic." Right. "There's only D'Amour that I know of," Tesla said. "And Grillo thinks he's dead." Maybe Grillo didn't look hard enough. "Where the hell do you suggest we start?"
He worked with a psychic, remember?
"Vaguely." Her name was Norma Paine.
"How'd you remember that?" What else have I got to do with my time? She found Phoebe in the kitchen, standing beside the dishwasher in a litter of twitching roaches with a can of Raid in her hand. "Damn things," Phoebe said, brushing a couple that had expired on the countertop onto the floor. "they breed where it's warm. I open the machine sometimes and they're swarming everywhere."
"Looks like you pretty much finished them off," Tesla said.
"Nah. They'll be back. You feeling better?"
"Much. What about you?"
"I took some aspirin. My head feels like it's ready to burst. But I'm okay. I made some peppermint tea. You want some?"
"I'd prefer something stronger. Got a brandy?" Phoebe picked up her cup and led the way through to the living room. It was chaotic: magazines everywhere and brimming ashtrays. The whole room stank of stale cigarettes.
"Morton," Phoebe remarked, as if that explained everything. Then, while she went through the array of liquor bottles on the dresser, told Tesla,
"I don't really remember what happened in Erwin's house."
"Don't worry about it."
"I remember going down the hallway with you. Then the next thing I remember was waking up on the step. Did you find Fletcher?"
"No.
"I've only got bourbon. We had some brandy from last Christmas, but-"
"Bourbon's fine."
"But the house wasn't empty, was it?"
"No, it wasn't empty."
"Who was in there?"
"A man called Kissoon."
"was he a friend of Fletcher's?" Phoebe asked. She'd poured an ample measure of bourbon, and now passed the glass to Tesla. She took a stinging mouthful before answering.
"Kissoon doesn't have friends," she said.
"That's sad."
"Believe me, he doesn't deserve them." The bourbon took an almost instant toll on her brain functions. She could practically feel its influence through her cortex, slowing her systems down. It was a pleasant sensation.
"Is the clock on the TV right?" she asked Phoebe. It read three-oh-five.
"Near enough."
"We'd better get some sleep," she said, her words faintly slurred.
"This man Kissoon-" Phoebe said.
"We'll talk about it tomorrow."
"No. I want to know now," she said. "He's not going to come after us, is he?"
"What the hell put that idea in your head?"
"The state of you when you came out of there," Phoebe said. "He messed you up. I thought maybe-"
"He wasn't done?"
"Right."
"No. I think we can sleep easy. He's got bigger fish to fry than me. But tomorrow morning, I think you should get the hell out of here."
"Why?"
"Because he's a malicious sonofabitch, and if things don't go the way he wants them to he'll trash this city from one end to the other."
"He could do that?"
"Very possibly."
"I can't leave," Phoebe said.
"Because of Joe?" Phoebe nodded. "He's not coming back any time soon," Tesla said. "You've got to look after yourself for a while."
"But what if he does come back and I'm gone?"
"Then he'll go looking for you, and he'll find you."
"You believe that? Really?" Phoebe said, studying Tesla's face. "If we're meant to be together, then we will be?"
Tesia avoided her gaze for a few moments, but at last had no choice but to meet Phoebe's eyes. When she did, she couldn't find it in her heart to lie.
"No," she said. "I don't believe that. I wish I did, but I don't." There was little to say after that. Phoebe retired to her bed, and left Tesia to make herself comfortable on the sofa. It was ill-sprung and smelled of Morton's cigarettes, but these were minor details given how exhausted she was. She laid down her head, and was just wondering whether the bourbon in her head would keep her awake, when she stopped wondering, and slept.