"News about what?" Joe asked.
"About what's out there."
"And what is out there?"
"I suppose you should be told," Noah replied. "The lad Uroboros is moving this way. The greatest evil in this world or yours."
"What is it?"
"Not it. Them. It's a nation. A people. Not remotely like us, but a people nevertheless, who've always harbore a hunger to be in your world."
"Why?"
"Does appetite need reasons?" Noah said. "They've tried before, and been stopped. But this time-"
"What's being done about it?"
"The volunteers don't know. I'm not sure they even care." He drew a little closer to Joe. "One thing," he said. "Don't engage them in conversation, however tempted you are. Their silence is part of my deal with them." Joe looked puzzled. "Don't ask," Noah said, "for fear you won't like the answer. Just believe me, this is for the best." The vessel was in the water now, rising and failing as the waves broke against it. "We'd better get aboard," Noah said, and with more strength in his limbs than Joe he strode out into the surf and was hauled up onto the deck by one of the volunteers, all of whom were now aboard. Joe followed, his mind a mass of confusions.
"We're out of our minds," he told Noah once he was aboard. The volunteers were at the oars and laboring to row the vessel out beyond the breakers. Joe had to yell above the noise of sea and creaking timbers. "You know that? We're out of our fucking minds!"
"Why's that?" Noah yelled back.
"Look what we're heading into!" Joe hollered, pointing out towards the maelstrom.
"You're right," Noah said, catching hold of a rope ladder to keep from being thrown off his feet. "This may be the end of us both." He laughed, and for a moment Joe considered throwing himself overboard and striking out for the shore while he was still within swimming distance.
"But my friend," Noah went on, laying his hand on Joe's shoulder.
"You've come so far. So very far. And why? Because you know in your heart this is your journey as much as it's mine. You have to take it, or you'll regret it for the rest of your life."
"Which would at least be long," Joe yelled.
"Not without power," Noah replied. "Without power it's over in a couple of breaths, and before you know it you're on your deathbed thinking: Why didn't I trust my instinct? Why didn't I dare?"
"You talk like you know me," Joe replied, irtitated by Noah's presumption. "You don't."
"Isn't it a universal truth that men regret their lives?" Noah said.
"And die wishing they could live again?" Joe had no reply to this. "If you want to make for shore," Noah went on, "best do it quickly."
Joe glanced back at the beach, and was astonished to see that in this short time the vessel had cleared the breakers and was in the grip of a current that was carrying it away from land at no little speed, He looked along the darkened shore towards the city, its harbor lights twinkling, then back to the crack, and the small encampment around it. Then, determined he would regret nothing, he turned his back on the sight, and his face towards the raging seas ahead, Tesla and Phoebe had little in common, beyond their womanhood. Tesla had traveled; Phoebe had not. Phoebe had been married; Tesia had not. Tesla had never been in love, not obsessively; Phoebe had, and still was.
It made her curiously open, Tesla soon discovered; as though anything was plausible in a world where passion held sway. And sway it held; no doubt of that. Though they knew each other scarcely at all, Phoebe seemed to sense an uncensorious soul in Tesla, and soon began to freely talk about the scandal in which she'd played so large a role. More particularly, she spoke of Joe Flicker@f his eyes, his kisses, his ways in bed-all of this with a sweet boastfulness, as if he were a prize she had been awarded for suffering a life with Morton. The world was strange, she said several times, apropos of how they'd met, or how quickly they'd discovered the depth of their feelings. "I know," Tesla said, wondering as she listened how much this woman would accept if and when she asked for Tesla's story in return. That was put to the test when Tesla got off the phone from Grillo, and Phoebe, who'd been in the room throughout the call said, "What was that all about?"
"You really want to know?"
"I asked, didn't I?"
She began with the easy stuff. Grillo, and the Reef, and how she'd traveled the states in the last five years, discovering in the progress that things were damn weird out there.
"Like how?" Phoebe said.
"This is going to sound crazy."
"I don't care," said Phoebe. "I want to know."
"I think maybe we're coming to the end of being what we are. We're going to take an evolutionary jump. And that mak es this a dangerous and wonderful time." "Why dangerous?"
"Because there are things that don't want us to take the jump. Things that'd prefer us to stay just the way we are, wandering around blindly, afraid of our own shadows, afraid of being dead and afraid of being too much alive. they want to keep us that way. But then there's people everywhere saying: I'm not going to be blind. I'm not going to be afraid. I can see invisible roads. I can hear angel's voices. I know who I was before I was born and I know what I want to be when I'm dead."
"You've met people like this?"
"Oh yes."
"That's wonderful," said Phoebe. "I don't know if I lieve any of those things, but it's still wonderful." She got to her feet and went to the refrigerator, talking on as she surveyed the contents. "What about the things that want to stop us?" she said. "I don't think I believe in the Devil, so maybe you're right about that, but if not the Devil then who are these people?"
"That's another conversation," Tesia said.
"Want to talk while we eat?" Phoebe said. "I'm getting hungry. How about you?"
"Getting that way."
"There's nothing worth having in there," she said, closing the fridge.
"We'll have to go out. You want pizza? Chicken?"
"I don't care. Anywhere but that fucking diner."
"You mean Bosley's place?"
:'What an asshole."
'The hamburgers are good." "I had the fish." they walked rather than taking the car, and while they walked Phoebe told Tesla how she'd come to gain a lover and lose a husband. The more she told, the more Testa warmed to her. She was a curious mingling of small-town pretensions (she plainly thought herself better than most of her fellow Evervillians) and charming self-deprecation (especially on the subject of her weight); funny at times (she was wittily indiscreet about the medical problems of those who, upon seeing her on the sidewalk, played the Pharisee) and at other times (speaking about Joe, and how she'd almost given up believing she could be loved that way) sweetly touching.
"You've got no idea where he's gone, then?" Tesia said. "No." Phoebe surveyed the thronged street ahead of them. "He can't hide in a crowd, that's for sure. When he comes back he'll have to be really careful."
"You're sure he'll come back?"
"Sure I'm sure. He promised." She cast Tesla a sideways glance. "You think I sound stupid."
"No, just trusting."
"We've all got to trust somebody, right?"
"Do we?"
"If you could feel what I feel," Phoebe said, "you wouldn't ask that question."
"All I know is, you're alone in the end. Always."
"Who's talking about the end?" Phoebe said.
Tesla stepped out of the stream of people into the street, taking Phoebe with her. "Listen to me," she said, "something terrible's going to happen here. I don't know exactly what and I don't know exactly when, but trust me: This place is finished."