Several times he decided to leave Liverpool altogether-he didn't find the sights and sounds of reconstruction comforting; they only reminded him of how removed from life he'd become-but something kept him from leaving. He tried to attach some rationale to his reluctance (he needed time to recuperate, time to plan, time to understand his condition), but none of these explanations touched the truth. Something was holding him in the city, an invisible cord around his invisible neck.
Then, one gloomy day while he was loitering down by the harbor watching the ships, he felt something tug at him.
At first, he dismissed the sensation as wish-fulrillment. But it came again, and again, and on the third try he dared allow himself a measure of excitement. This was the first time since the fire watchers he'd felt some interaction with the world outside his thoughts.
He didn't resist the summons. Up from the harbor he went, following the unspoken call.
Phoebe dreamed she was back in Dr. Powell's office, and Joe was out in the hallway, where she'd first seen him, painting the ceiling. It was raining hard. She could hear the deluge slapping against the window of the empty waiting room, and beating on the roof.
"Joe?" she said.
Her lover-to-be was perched on the top of a ladder, naked to the waist, his broad back spattered with pale green paint. Oh, but he looked so fine, with his hair cropped close to his beautiful head, and his ears jutting out, and that patch of hair at the small of his back disappearing under his belt into the crack of his ass.
"Joe?" she said, hoping she could get him to turn around. "I've got something to show you."
As she spoke she went to the low table in the middle of the waiting room and, clearing off all the dog-eared magazines with one sweep of her arm, she lay on it facing him. For some reason the rain had started to come through the ceiling, and it fell on her in sharp, straight drops. they did more than drench her; they began to wash the clothes from her body as if her blouse and dress had been painted on, the colors running off her limbs and pooling around the table, leaving her naked, which was exactly how she wanted to be.
"You can turn round now," she said to him, putting her hand down between her legs. He always liked to watch her play. "Go on," she said to him,
"turn round and look at me."
He'd passed by this house on the hill before, and wondered who lived here. He would soon find out.
He was moving down the path to the steps, up the steps to the door, through the door to the staircase. Somebody at the top of the flight was murmuring: He couldn't quite hear what. He paused a moment to listen. The speaker was a woman, he could make out that much, but he couldn't yet grasp the words, so he started to ascend.
"Joe?"
He had heard her; there was no doubt of that. He'd put down his painthrush and was wiping his hands, taking his time, knowing it only made the moment when their eyes met all the more intense if it was delayed a little.
"I've waited a long time for this... " she told him.
He didn't dare believe what he was hearing. Not the words themselves, though they were wonderfuclass="underline" the voice that spoke them.
Phoebe here? How was that possible? She was in Everville, the world he'd left and lost forever. Not here; not in this musty house, calling to him. That was too much to hope for.
"Oh, Joe the woman was sighing, and God in Heaven, it sounded like her, so very like her.
He went to the door, knowing whoever was speaking was on the other side of it and suddenly afraid to enter, afraid to know it wasn't her. He paused a moment, preparing himself for the pain to come, then slipped inside. The room was huge and chaotic. His gaze instantly went to the bed at the far end. It was piled high with pillows and scattered with pieces of paper, but there was nobody lying there.
Then, from the tangle of sheets on the floor, the voice, her voice, warm with welcome.
"Joe... " she said. "I've missed you so much."
He was looking at her. Finally, he was looking at her. She smiled at him, and he smiled back, descending the ladder and sauntering in from the hallway to the table where she lay, her body wet with rain.
"I'm all yours," she said.
It was her. God in Heaven, it was her! How she came to be here didn't matter. Nor did why. All that mattered was that here she was, his Phoebe, his glorious Phoebe, whose face he'd despaired of ever seeing again.
Did she know he was close?
Her eyes were shut, her pupils roving behind her lids, but he didn't doubt she was dreaming of him. There was sweat on her face, and on her legs, which were bare. He longed for the fingers to pull away the sheet that lay between; for the lips to kiss that place and the cock to pleasure it. to make again the love they'd made those afternoons in Everville, bodies intertwined as though they'd never be separated.
"Come closer," she said in her sleep.
He did so. Stood over the bottom of her bed and looked down on her. If love had weight, she'd feel it now. Or if a scent, smell it, or if a shadow, know it was cast upon her. He didn't care how she came to realize his presence, as long as somehow she did; somehow understood that after the dream of him she would find his spirit waiting close by, ready for the moment when she opened her eyes and made him real.
He was standing between her legs now, covered in paint. Flecks and splashes of it, all over his face and in his hair, on his shoulders and down over the chest. She reached up towards him.
In dreams, and out of them, reached up...
He felt her touch. Though he had no skin, he felt the contact nevertheless, where his belly had been.
"Look at the state of you," she said, her fingers moving up from his stomach to the muscle of his chest, brushing his invisible presence, now with her fingers, now with her thumb. And wherever she'd touched him, he saw the air begin to seethe and knit, as though-dared he even hope?she was dreaming him back into being.
The paint was coming off, bit by bit. She brushed a little from his cheek and from the bridge of his nose, from his left ear, and from around his eyes. Then, though the job of paintremoval was far from finished, she went back down to his belt and unbuckled it. He smiled conspiratorially, and let her unbutton and unzip his pants, which despite their bagginess could not conceal his arousal. It seemed her finger had learned the trick of the rain, because the fabric around his groin now ran off as her dress and blouse had done, fully exposing him. He put his hands on his head, and thrust his hips forward, grinning while she ran her fingers over his cock and balls.
There were no words for this bliss, seeing his flesh knitting together as she stroked it; his balls remade unwounded, his cock as fine as she remembered it, perhaps finer.
And then-4ammit!-from somewhere in the rooms below, the sound of children shouting. Phoebe's hand stopped moving, as though the din had reached into her dream.
Children? What were children doing in the doctor's offices? Oh Lord, and here was she, stark naked. She froze, hoping they would go away, and for a few moments the hollering faded. She waited, holding her breath. Five seconds, ten seconds. Had they fled? It seemed so.
She started to reach for Joe's arm, to draw him down onto her and into her, but as she did so they began again, pounding up the stairs, shrieking in their games. He would gladly have strangled them both at that moment and there wouldn't have been a )over alive who'd have blamed him for it. But the damage was done. Phoebe's hand dropped back down onto her breast. She let out a soft, irritated moan. Then her eyes flickered open.
Oh, what a dream; and what a way to be woken from it. She'd have to tell Janieffa that in future the children Something moved in front of her, silhouetted against the window. For a heartbeat she thought it was outside-some shreds of cloth or litter, rising in a gust of dusty wind-but no. It was here, in the room with her: something ragged, retreating into the shadows.
She would have screamed, but that the thing was plainly more afraid of her than she of it. And no wonder. It was a tattered, twitching thing, wet and raw; it posed no threat.