He'd no sooner spoken than his rescuers laid their hands on him. was she perhaps invisible to all but the man who had brought her here? It seemed so, for they made no attempt to detach her arms from around his body. they simply tugged on him; as though it was the weeds he'd fallen prey to.
Joe had no choice but to unhand Phoebe in order to beat them off. But the moment he did so, they claimed him. He was hauled up through her arms, a shocking burst of blood coming from his groin as he was detached from her. For a moment she lost sight of him in the stained water. All she could do was cry out to him, mind to mind.
"Joe! Joe!"
He answered her, but all the strength had gone from his voice.
"No... " he moaned, "I don't want... don't want to...
She started to flail blindly, hoping to catch hold of his leg or ankle, and keep him from being taken, but the weeds resisted her motion, and by the time the water cleared enough for her to see his body, it was beyond her grasp.
"Can you hear me, Joe?" she sobbed.
The sound she heard in her head was not words, not even moans, but a hiss, like gas escaping a slit pipe.
"Oh God, Joe," she said, and began to struggle against the weeds afresh, desperate to rise and be with him. But their desire for her, which had been so arousing a couple of minutes before, had become nightmarish.
they pressed at her orifices with the same insistence as ever, the pods swaying in her mouth and depositing a bitter fluid down her throat.
She started to shudder from head to foot, her whole body spasming. There were other sounds coming from somewhere: distant voices, children's laughter. was it from the ship?
No. Not the ship. The world. It was coming from the world. It was morning, Festival morning, and folks were already up to meet the day.
"Don't panic," she told herself, and gave up thrashing in the weeds for a few moments, to regain control of her body. The spasms lessened. The sounds withdrew a little way. Very slowly, she looked for Joe. He and his rescuers had broken surface, she saw. Others were leaning over the side of the vessel to haul him out of the water. It didn't take her long to realize why he hadn't replied to her. He was a dead-weight, his arms hanging loosely at his sides.
A shudder of horror shook her.
"Not dead," she murmured. "Oh God, please; please, not dead."
Blood was running from between his legs, a spreading pool staining the surface.
"Joe," she said. "I don't know if you can hear me... She listened, hoping for a reply, but none came. "I want you to know I'm going to come and find you. I know you told me not to, but I am. I'm going to find you and we're going to-"
She stopped, puzzled to see one of the creatures leaning over the side of the vessel, gesturing to Joe's rescuers. The mystery was solved a moment later. Without ceremony, they released the body, returning it to the elements they'd claimed it from. "No!" she yelled, seeing her worst fears confirmed. "No, please, no-"
There was no controlling the spasms this time. they convulsed her body from scalp to sole. And as they came, so did the day she had shunned, laughter, light, and all. She felt the lumpy mattress beneath her back; smelled the staleness of the room. Even now, she fought to keep wakefulness at bay. If she could only catch hold of Joe's body-stop him from tumbling away down into the darkness-perhaps she could work some miracle upon him. Put her last dreaming breath into him, and keep him from oblivion.
She started to reach up towards his sinking form-the day was upon her; she had seconds at best-and her fingers caught hold of his trouser leg. She pulled him closer. His mouth was open and his eyes closed. He looked deader than Morton had looked. "Don't, love," she said to him, meaning don't give up, don't die, don't leave me.
She let go of his trousers and took hold of his face, cupping it in her hands and drawing his mouth to hers. He came with horrible ease, but she refused to be discouraged. She laid her lips on his, and said his name, like a summons.
"Joe.
There was light in her eyes. She could not resist it any longer.
"Joe."
Her eyes opened. And as they did so, in the last moment before the sea and the weeds and her lover disappeared, she saw, or imagined she saw, his lids flicker, as though her summons had stirred some sliver of life in him.
Then she was awake, and there was no way of knowing.
She squinted up at the beam of sunlight slipping between the crack in the drapes. The sheets were as tangled around her as the weeds where she'd almost let her body go to joy; the pillow was damp with her sweat. She had dreamed all that she'd just experienced, but she knew without question this was no ordinary dream. While her body had tussled and sweated here, her spirit had been in another place, a place as real as the bed on which she lay.
It was probably wonderful that such a place existed. It would probably change the world, if the world were ever to find out. But she didn't care. All that concerned her right now was Joe. Without him, the world wasn't worth a damn.
She got up and pulled back the drapes. It was Festival Saturday, and the sky was a perfect, cloudless blue. An escaped helium balloon, shining silver, floated into view. She watched it as the breeze carried it up over the pinetops towards the Heights. She would be following soon, she thought. No matter that this was Everville's day of days. No matter that the valley would be ringing from end to end with the din of people making music and money and love. Somewhere on the mountain a door stood open, and she would be through it before noon, or be dead in the attempt.
PART FOUR. THE DEVIL AND D'AMOUR
"That," said the man with the salmon-pink tie, gesturing towards the canvas on the gallery wall, "is an abomination. What the hell's it called?" He peered at his price sheet.
"Bronx Apocalypse," the man at his side said.
"Bronx Apocalypse," the critic snorted. "Jesus!" He eyed the man who'd supplied the title. "You're not him, are you?" he said. "You're not this fellow Dusseldorf.?"
The other man-a well-made fellow in his late thirties, with three days' growth of beard and the eyes of an insomniac-shook his head. "No. I'm not."
"You are in one of the paintings though, aren't yout' said the Asian woman at Salmon Tie's side.
"Am]L
She took the sheet from her companion's hand and scanned the twenty or so titles upon it. "There," she said. "DAmour in Wyckoff Street. It's the big painting next door," she said to Salmon Tie, "with that bilious sky."
"Loathsome," the man remarked. "Dusseldorf should go back to pushing heroin or whatever the hell he was doing. He's got no business foisting this crap on people."
"Ted didn't push," D'Amour said. He spoke softly, but there was no doubting the warning in his voice.
"I was simply stating my opinion," the man said, somewhat defensively.
"Just don't spread lies," D'Amour said. "You'll put the Devil out of work."
It was July 8, a Friday, and the Devil was much on Harry's mind tonight. New York was a stew as ever, and, as ever, Harry wished he could be out of the pot and away, but there was nowhere to go; nowhere he wouldn't be followed and found. And here, at least, in the sweet-and-sour streets he knew so well, he had niches and hiding places; he had people who owed him, people who feared him. He even had a couple of friends.
One of whom was Ted Dusseldorf, reformed heroin addict, sometime performance artist, and now, remarkably, a painter of metropolitan apocalypses.
Tiiere he was, holding court in front of one of his rowdier pieces, all five foot nothing of him, dressed in a baggy plaid suit, and chewing on a contender for the largest damn cigar in Manhattan.
"Harry! Harry!" he said, laying eyes on D'Amour. "Thanks for coming."
He deserted his little audience and hooked his arm over Harry's shoulder. "I know you hate crowds, but I wanted you to see I got myself some admirers."