"I'm not," she said. "I love all that shit. I just think words are-" She stopped. Peered more closely at the map. "Mitchell Street," she said. "That's got to be it. Mitchell."
She pocketed the map and started the bike. "Are you ready for this?" she said.
Precious, he replied.
"What?"
You were going to say words are precious.
"was I?"
And no: I'm not ready.
Erwin had journeyed down to 10tty's Diner in search of the familiar; some face or voice he knew and liked, to settle the panic in him. Instead he'd heard a woman he'd never seen in his life before asking about his murderer, and he had almost gone crazy with frustration, haranguing her at a volume that would have torn his throat if he'd had a throat to tear, while she paraded her command of gutter-talk for Bosley.
She was neither as stupid or insensitive as that display might have suggested, however. Once she was outside she'd stopped to listen, and he'd pressed so close to her it would have been deemed molestation if he'd been flesh and blood, telling her over and over where Fletcher was. His tenacity had paid off. She'd gone back for the city map, and while she'd studied it, he had tried to warn her that Fletcher was dangerous.
This time, however, she hadn't heard. He wasn't quite sure why. Perhaps people couldn't map-read and hear the dead talk at the same time.
Perhaps the fault Jay with him, and he'd lost the knack of communication with the living moments after finding it. Whichever, what he had hoped would blossom into a fruitful exchange had been cut short, and the woman had been off on her motorcycle before he could tell her about Fletcher's murderous tendencies. He was not overly concerned for her well-being.
If she was in search of Fletcher, he reasoned, then she surely knew what he was capable of, and to judge by her performance in the diner she was no Milquetoast.
He watched her carving her way through the traffic on Main Street and envied her access to the combustion engine. Though he'd always been contemptuous of ghost stories (they'd belonged to the negligible realm of fable and fantasy), he knew phantoms had a reputation for defying gravity. they hovered, they flew; they perched in trees and steeples. Why then did he feel so earthbound, his body-. which he knew damn well was notional; the real thing was lying in his living room still behaving as though gravity had a claim on it?
Sighing, he started back towards his house. If the return journey took as long as the outward, then by the time he reached home the encounter he'd initiated would be over. But what was a lost soul to do? He would have to make his way as best he could, and hope that with time he'd better understand the state he'd died into.
Phoebe went to Erwin's office unannounced and found it closed. On any other day but today she would have left the matter there. Gone home. Waited till Monday. But these were very special circumstances. She couldn't wait; not another hour. She would go by his house, she decided, and beg for just half an hour of his time. That wasn't much to ask, now was it? Especially since she'd inconvenienced herself for him the day before.
She popped into the drugstore two blocks down from the offices, and asked Maureen Scfimm, who had her hair tinted for the celebrations and looked like the local tart, if she could borrow the phone book. Maureen wanted to gossip, but the store was crowded. Armed with Erwin's home address, Phoebe left Maureen to make eyes at every able-bodied man under sixty-five, and headed for Mitchell Street.
It was a quiet little thoroughfare lined with attractive, wellkept houses, the lawns and hedges trimmed, the fences and indow frames painted. The kind of haven Tesla had fantazed about many times on her journey across the Americas; a ace where people were good to each other, and lived, physically and spiritually, within their modest means. It didn't take much guesswork to figure out why Fletcher had chosen to lodge here. He had staged his own immolation back in the Grove in order to imagine from the dreams of its healthy, loving citizens, a legion of champions. Hallucigenia, he'd dubbed them, and left them to wage war in the streets of the Grove after his demise. If another battle was now in the offing, as Kate Farrell had predicted, then where better to seek out minds from which he could create new soldiers than in a haven like this, where people still had faith in a civilized life, and might conjure heroes to defend it? Listen to you, Raul said as Tesla wandered along the street looking for Fletcher's hideaway. "was I thinking aloud or were you just eavesdropping?" Eavesdropping, Raul replied. And I'm amazed. "By what?" By the way you're drooling over thiv place. You hated Palomo Grove. "It was phoney." This isn't? "No. It looks... comfortable." You've been on the road too long. "That may have something to do with it," Tesla conceded. "I am a little saddle-weary. But this looks like a good place to settle down-" Maybe raise some kids? You and Lucien? Wouldn't that be nice. "Don't be snide." All right, it wouldn't be nice. It'd be a living hell they had come, at last, to the whisperer's house, and very smart it was too. Tesla"What?" Fletcher was always a little crazy, remember that. "How could I forget?" Soforgive him his trespasses"You're excited. I can feel you trembling." I used to call him father all the time. He used to tell me not to, but that's what he was. That's what he is. I want to see him again "So do I," she said. It was the first time she'd actually admitted the fact in so many words. Yes, Fletcher was crazy, and yes, unpredictable. But he was also the man who'd created the Nuncio, the man who'd turned to light in front of her eyes, the man who'd had her half-believing in saints. If anyone deserved to have outwitted oblivion, it was him.
She started up the front path, studying the house for some sign of occupancy. There was none. The drapes were drawn at all but one of the windows, and there were two newspapers uncollected on the step.
She knocked. There was no response, but she wasn't that surprised. If Fletcher was indeed in residence, he was unlikely to be answering the door. She rapped again, just for good measure, then went to the one window without closed drapes and peered in. It was a dining room, furnished with anfique furniture. Whoever lived here when Fletcher wasn't visiting had taste.
Something's wrong with the sewers, Raul said.
"The sewers?"
Don't you smell it? She sniffed, and caught a whiff of something unpleasant.
"Is it from inside?" she asked Raul, but before he could reply she heard a footfall on the gravel path and somebody said, "Are you looking for Erwin?"
She turned. There was a woman standing a couple of yards from the front gate: large, pale, and overdressed.
"Erwin@' Tesla said, thinking fast, "yeah. I was just... is he around today?"
The woman studied Tesla with faint suspicion. "He should be," she said.
"He's not at his office."
"Huh. I knocked, but there was no reply." The woman looked distinctly disappointed. "I was going to try round the back," Tesla went on, "see if he's getting himself a tan."
"Did you try the bell?" the woman replied. "No, 1-11
The woman marched down the path and jabbed the bell. A saccharine jingle could be heard from inside. Tesia waited ten seconds. Then, when there was no sign of movement, she started round the side of the house, leaving the woman to try jabbing the bell again at the front.
"Ripe," she remarked to Raul as the smell of excrement tensified. She watched the ground as she went, half-expectg to find that a pipe had burst and the last flushings of Erwin's toilet were bubbling up from the ground. But there was nothing. No turds; and no Erwin either, sunning himself in the backyard. "Maybe this isn't the house," she said to Raul. "Maybe there's another street that sounds like Mitchell."
She turned on her heel, only to find that bell-jabber was coming down the side of the house herself, with a look of slight agitation on her face.