His face was scrawny-his bones sharp, his black eyes sharper-but the smile he offered was so sweetly tentative, as though he was a little embarrassed to have been caught unawares, that she was instantly charmed. He rose, the water dancing around his feet, and ambled over to her. His watersoaked robes were in tatters, and she could see that his torso was covered with small, pale scars, as though he'd been wrestling in broken glass.
She sympathized with his condition. She too was scarred, inside and out; she too had been stripped of all she'd worn in the world: her profession, her self esteem, her certainty.
"Do we know each other?" he said to her as he approached. His voice lacked music, but she liked the sound of it nevertheless.
"No," she said, suddenly tongue-tied. "I don't believe so.
"Somebody spoke of you to me, I'm certain. was it Fletcher perhaps?"
"You know Fletcher?"
"Then it was," the man said, smiling again. "You're the one who martyred him."
"I hadn't thought of it that way-but yes, I guess that was me."
"You see)' he said. He went down on his haunches beside her, while the water buoyed her up. "You wanted connections, and they're there to be found. But you have to look in the terrible places, Testa. The places where death comes to take love away, where we lose each other and lose ourselves; that's where the connections begin. It takes a brave soul to look there and not despair."
"I've tried to be brave," she said.
"I know," he said softly. "I know."
"But I wasn't brave enough, is that what you're saying? The thing is, I didn't ask to be part of this. I wasn't ready for it. I was just going to write movies, you know, and get rich and smug. I guess that sounds pathetic to you."
"Why?",
"Well, I don't suppose you get to see a lot of movies."
"You'd be surprised," the man said with a little smile. "Anyway, it's the stories that matter, however they're told."
She thought of the child at the crossroads We saw your face, and we said: She knows about the story tree.
"What's the big deal about stofies?" she said.
"You love them," he said, his gaze leaving her face and slipping down to the water. The glowing forms she'd seen rising from below were within a few fathoms of the surface now. The water was beginning to simmer with their presence. "You do, don't you?" he said.
"I suppose I do," she said. "That's what the connections are, Testa."
"Stories?" "Stories. And every life, however short, however meaningless it seems, is a leaf-2'
"A leaf."
"Yes, a leaf." He looked up at her again, and waited, unspeaking, until she grasped the sense of what he was saying. "On the story tree," she said. -He smiled. "Lives are leaves on the story tree."
"Simple, isn't it?" he said. The bubbles were breaking all around them now, and the surface was no longer glacial enough to bear him up. He started to sink into the water; slowly, slowly. "I'm afraid I have to go," he said. "The 'shu have come for me. Why do you took so unhappy?"
"Because it's too late," she said. "Why did I have to wait until now to know what I was supposed to do?"
"You didn't need to know. You were doing it."
"No I wasn't," she said, distressed now. "I never got to tell a story I gave a damn about."
"Oh but you did," he said. He was almost gone from sight now.
"What story was that?" she begged him, determined to get an answer before he disappeared. "What?"
"Your own," he told her, slipping from sight. "Your own."
Then he was gone.
She stared down into the bubbling water, and saw that the creatures he'd called the 'shu-which resembled cuttlefish as far as she could see, and were congregated below her in their many millions-were describing a vast spiral around the sinking man, as though drawing him down into their midst. The vortex made no claim on her spirit stuff, however. She felt a pang of loss, watching him disappear into the bfiglit depths. He had seemed wise, and she had wanted to speak to him longer. As it was, she had something to take back with her: the observation that the story she'd told was her own. It meant little to her fight now, but perhaps if she succeeded in carrying it into the waking world it would comfort her, And now, as the spiral of 'shu faded into the depths, there was news from that world. A telephone ringing, and then the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
"Tesla?"
She opened her eyes. Harry had his head around the door. "It's Gfillo," he said. "He needs to talk to you. He's called once already." She vaguely remembered hearing a telephone ring as she'd wandered the snowy shore. "Sounds like he's in bad shape."
She got up and went downstairs. There was a stub of pencil beside the telephone. Before she spoke to Grillo she wrote I told my own story on the telephone directory, in case the conversation drove the dream from her head. Then she picked up the receiver.
Just as Harry had said, Grillo sounded to be in bad shape; terrible shape, in fact. Like her, like D'Amour, like the water-walker in her dream. It was as though everybody around her was winding down.
"I'm at a place called the Sturgis Motel," he explained, with Howie, Jo-Beth, and their kid Amy."
"Where?"
"A few miles outside Everville."
"What the hell are you doing there?" "We had no choice. We had to move quickly, and I knew we were going to need serious help."
"to do what?" "Tommy-Ray's coming after Jo-Beth."
" Tommy-Ray?
Grillo began to relate to her the events of the last few days. She gave all but five percent of her attention to the account, the remaining portion dedicated to holding onto the dream from which she'd awaken. But the images of terror and night that spilled from Grillo steadily supplanted her memories of the becalmed sea, and of the man who had known Fletcher.
"I need your help, Tes-" Grillo was saying. She clung (o the memory of the water-walker's face for a few desperate moments. "Tes, are you there?" Then she had no choice but to let it go.
"Yeah, I'm here-"
"I said I need some help."
"You don't sound so good, Nathan. Did you get hurt?"
"It's a long story. Look, give me your address. We'll drive into town." She flashed on the swathe Tommy-Ray the DeathBoy-along with his army of phantoms-had cut through Palomo Grove. Hadn't he brought down his own house in his enthusiasm for destruction, with his mother inside it? If he was unleashed in Everville, especially at a time of mass exodus (which couldn't be far off) the death toll would be appalling.
"Stay where you are," she said. "I'll come to you.
Grillo didn't argue. He was clearly too desperate to have her with him as soon as possible. He gave her the motel's whereabouts and urged her to be quick. That was that.
Harry was in the kitchen, burning toast. She told him all that Grillo had said. He listened without comment, until she got to the part about her leaving.
"So Everville's my baby now?" he said. "It looks that way."
She wanted to tell him that she'd dreamed her final dream, and that he should not expect her to return, but that sounded hopelessly melodramatic. What she needed was something pithier; a throwaway line that would seem blasd and wise when she was gone. But nothing came to mind. As it was, Harry had a farewell of his own to offer.
"I'm thinking I might go back up the mountain after dark," he said. "If the lad's coming through I may as well get a ringside view. Which means
... we probably won't be seeing each other again."
"No. I suppose not."
"We've had quite a time of it, haven't we? I mean, our lives, they've been-"