"You could do me a great service," Phoebe said, "if you'd tell Vip to spread the word that I have no intention of reopening this house for business any time soon."
"I'll do that."
"Now... you said he knew something?"
Enko nodded. "He heard his father talking about a misamee that was seen down at the harbor."
"Misamee?"
"Oh, that's a word the sailors use. It means something they find out at sea that's not really made yet."
Half-dreamed, she thought. Like my Joe; my misamee Joe. "Enko, thank you."
"No trouble," the boy replied, turning to go. Hand on the door, he glanced back. "You know, Musnakaff wasn't my father."
"Yes, I had heard."
"He was my father's cousin. Anyway, he told all about how he used to go out and find women for Miss O'Connell." "I can imagine," Phoebe said.
"He explained everything. Where to go. What to say. S@'
Enko halted and stared at his shoes. "So if I ever go back into business@' Phoebe said.
The boy beamed.
"I'll bear you in mind."
She let the bathwater go cold, and began to get dressed again, putting on several layers of clothing against the wind, which had been bitter the last couple of days and was always keener close to the water. Then she went to the kitchen, filled up one of Maeve's silver liquor flasks with moumingberry juice, and headed down to the harbor, thinking as she went that if she failed to find Joe after a year or so, she'd reopen the brothel just to spite the neighbors who'd given her so little help, and like Maeve grow old and sour in luxury, profiting from lovelessness.
As Raul had promised, he was waiting at Eppley Airport, though at first Harry failed to recognize him. He'd warmed up the somewhat eerie pallor of his host body with a little pancake, and was sporting a fancy pair of tinted glasses to conceal his silvery pupils. Covering his bald pate, a baseball cap. The ensemble wasn't particularly fetching, but it allowed him to move unnoticed through the crowds.
On the way back to Grillo's house, with Raul tucked behind the wheel of the antiquated Ford convertible (which he confessed he had no license to drive), they exchanged accounts of their recent adventures. Harry told Raul about all that had happened in Wyckoff Street, and Raul reciprocated by telling of the journey he'd made back to the Misi6n de Santa Catfina, on the Baja Peninsula, where Fletcher had first discovered and synthesized the Nuncio.
"I built a shrine up there a long time ago," he said, "which I tended till Testa found me. I was sure it would have disappeared. But no. It was still there. The village women still go up to the ruins to pray and ask Fletcher to intercede if their children are sick. It's quite touching. I saw one or two women I knew, but of course they didn't know me. There was one woman though@od knows she must be ninety if she's a day-and I did go seek her out and tell her who I. She's blind now, and a little crazy, but she swore to me 'd seen him, the day before she lost her sight."
"You mean Fletcher?"
"I mean Fletcher. She said he was standing on the edge of the cliff, staring up at the sun. He used to do diat@' "And you think he's still up there?"
"Stranger things are true," Raul pointed out. "We both know that."
"The walls are getting thinner, right?" Harry said. "I'd say so." they drove on in silence for a while. "I thought I'd. maybe make another pilgrimage," Raul said after a minute or so, "while I'm here in Omaha."
"Let me guess. The Dead-letters Office."
"If it's still standing," Raul said. "It's probably a deeply uninteresting piece of architecture, but we'd neither of us be here if it hadn't been built."
"You believe that?"
"Oh, I'm sure the Art would have found somebody to use if it hadn't been Jaffe. But we might never have known anything about it. We could have been like them"-he nodded out through the window at Omaha's citizenry, going about their business@'thinking what you see's what you get."
"Do you ever wish it were?" Harry asked him.
"I was born an ape, Harry," Raul replied. "I know what it's like to evolve." He chuckled. "Let me tell you, it's wonderful."
"And that's what this is all about?" Harry said. "Evolving?"
"I think so. We're born to rise. to see more. to know more. Maybe to know everything one day." He halted the car outside a large, gloomy house. "Which brings us back to Tesia," he said, and led Harry up the overgrown driveway where Tesla's bike was parked, to the front door.
The afternoon was drawing on, and the house was even gloomier inside than out, its walls bare, its air damp.
"Where is she?" Harry asked Raul, struggling out of his jacket.
"Let me give you a hand."
"I can do it," Harry said, impatient now. "Just take me to Tesla, will you?"
Raul nodded, his mouth tight, and ushered Har7y through to the back of the house. "We have to be careful," he said, as they came to a closed door. "Whatever's going on in here, I think it's volatile."
With that, he opened the door. The room was packed to capacity with all the paraphernalia of Grillo's beloved Reef, the sight of which put Harry in mind of Nonna's little sanctum, with its thirty screens busily keeping lost souls at bay. Here, he knew, the reverse process was at work. Here the lost and the crazy found refuge; a place to unburden themselves of all that obsessed them. Their reports were on the screens now, scrolling furiously. And sitting in front of them, her eyes closed, Testa.
"nis is how she was when I got here," Raul said. "In case you're wondering, she's breathing, but it's very slow." Harry took a step towards her, but Raul checked him. "Be careful," he said.
.'Why?"
"When I tried to get close to her I felt some kind of energy field."
"I don't feel anything," Harry said, advancing another step. As he did so something grazed his face, oh so lightly, like the tremulous wall of a bubble. He made to retreat, but he was too slow. In one paradoxical moment the bubble seemed to suck him in and burst. The room vanished, and he flew like a bullet fired into the blaze of a scarlet sun, its color pure beyond expression. A moment there, and he was gone, out the other side and into another, this one blue; and on, into a yellow, then green, then purple. And as he traveled, sun succeeding sun, vistas began to open to left and right of him, above and below, receding from him to the limit of his sight. Forms erupted on every side, stealing their incandescence from the suns he was piercing, the blaze of which was retreating now, as the forms claimed his devotion. they came at him from every direction, bombarding him with images in such numbers his mind failed to grasp a single one. He started to panic as the assault intensified, fearing his sanity would abandon him if he didn't find a rock in this maelstrom.
And then, Tesla's voice: "Harry?"
The sound fixed a vision for an instant. He saw a scene of vivid particulars. A patch of scarred ocher ground. A hole and a bitch mutt sitting beside it, chewing at her rump. A
hand with bitten fingernails emerging from the hole, tossing a shard of pottery out onto the cloth laid beside it. And Tesla-or a fragment of her-somewhere beyond the hole and the hand and the mutt.
"Thank God," Harry said, but he'd spoken too soon. The picture slid away, and he was off again, yelling for Testa as he flew. "it Is okay," she said, "hold on."
Again her voice pulled him up short. Another scene. More particulars. Dusk, this time, and distant hills. A wooden shack in a field of swaying grass, and a woman running towards him with a bawling baby in her arms. Behind her, three dark, diminutive creatures in eager pursuit, their heads huge, their eyes golden. The woman was sobbing in terror as she fled, but the child was weeping for very different reasons, its skinny arms reaching back towards the pursuers. And now, as the babe turned to beat at its mother's head, Harry saw why. Though it appeared to be a human child, its eyes were also golden.