"Was there ever--with Dora, I mean—a concept of atonement in all of this, a guilt?"
"You mean, for letting Terry disappear without explanation, for never asking, until years later? I thought of that. If it was there in the beginning, Dora's passed it a long time ago. Dora thinks the world needs a new revelation. A new prophet. But you just don't become a prophet! She says her transformation must come with seeing and feeling; but it's no Revival Tent experience."
"Mystics never think it's a Revival Tent experience."
"Of course not."
"Is Dora a mystic? Would you say that?"
"Don't you know? You followed her, you watched her. No, Dora hasn't seen the face of God or heard His voice and would never lie about it, if that's what you mean. But Dora's looking for it. She's looking for the moment, for the miracle, for the revelation!"
"For the angel to come."
"Yes, exactly."
We were both quiet suddenly. He was probably thinking of his initial proposition; so was I, that I fake a miracle, I, the evil angel that had once driven a Catholic nun to madness, to bleeding from her hands and feet in the Stigmata.
Suddenly he made the decision to continue, and I was relieved.
"I made my life rich enough," he said, "that I stopped caring about changing the world if ever I really thought of it; I made a life, you see, you know, a world unto itself. But she really has opened her soul in a sophisticated way to ... to something. My soul's dead."
"Apparently not," I said. The thought that he would vanish, had to, sooner or later, was becoming intolerable to me, and far more frightening than his initial presence had ever been.
''Let's get back to the basics. I'm getting anxious. . . ." he said.
"Why?"
"Don't freak on me, just listen. There is money put aside for Dora that has no connection to me. The government can't touch it, besides, they never got an indictment against me let alone a conviction, you saw to that. The information's in the flat. Black leather folders.
File cabinet. Mixed right in with sales slips for all sorts of paintings and statues. And you have to save all that somewhere for Dora. My life's work, my inheritance. It's in your hands for her. You can do it, can't you? Look, there's no hurry, you've done away with me in a rather clever way,"
"I know. And you're asking me now to function as a guardian angel, to see that Dora receives this inheritance untainted. . . ."
"Yes, my friend, that's precisely what I'm begging you to do. And you can do it! And don't forget about my Wynken! If she won't take those books, you keep those books!"
He touched my chest with his hand. I felt it, the little knock upon the door of the heart.
He continued. "When my name drops put of the papers, assuming it ever makes it from the FBI files to the wire service, you get the money to Dora. Money can still create Dora's church. Dora is magnetic, Dora can do it all by herself, if she has the money! You follow me? She can do it the way Francis did it or Paul or Jesus. If it wasn't for her theology, she would have become the charismatic celebrity long ago. She has all the assets. She thinks too much. Her theology is what sets her apart."
He took a breath. He was talking very rapidly, and I was beginning to shiver. I could hear his fear like a low emanation from him.
Fear of what?
"Here," he said. "Let me quote something to you. She told me this last night. We've been reading a book by Bryan Appleyard, a columnist for the papers in England, you've heard of him? He wrote some tome called Understanding the Present. I have the copy she gave me. And in it he said things that Dora believed ... such as that we are 'spiritually impoverished.' "
"Agreed."
"But it was something else, something about our dilemma, that you can invent theologies, but for them to work they have to come from some deeper place inside a person... I know what she called it... Appleyard's words ... 'a totality of human experience.' " He stopped.
He was distracted.
I was desperate to reassure him that I understood this. "Yes, she's looking for this, courting it, she's opening herself for it."
I suddenly realized that I was holding on to him as tightly as he was holding on to me.
He was staring off.
I was filled with a sadness so awful that I couldn't speak. I'd killed this man! Why had I done it? I mean, I knew he'd been interesting and evil, but Christ, how could I have . . . but then what if he stayed with me the way he was! What if he could become my friend exactly the way he was.
Oh, this was too childish and selfish and avaricious! We were talking about Dora, about theology. Of course I understood Appleyard's point. Understanding the Present. I pictured the book. I'd go back for it. I filed it in my preternatural memory. Read at once.
He hadn't moved or spoken.
"Look, what are you scared of?" I asked. "Don't fade on me!" I clung to him, very raw, and small, and almost crying, thinking that I had killed him, taken his life, and now all I wanted to do was hold on to his spirit.
He gave no response. He looked afraid.
I wasn't the ossified monster I thought I was. I wasn't in danger of being inured to human suffering. I was a damned jibbering empath!
"Roger? Look at me. Go on talking."
He only murmured something about maybe Dora would find what he had never found.
"What?" I demanded.
"Theophany," he whispered.
Oh, that lovely word. David's word. I'd only heard it myself a few hours ago. And now it slipped from his lips.
"Look, I think they're coming for me," he said suddenly. His eyes grew wide. He didn't look afraid now so much as puzzled. He was listening to something. I could hear it too. "Remember my death," he said suddenly, as if he'd just thought of it most distinctly. "Tell her how I died. Convince her my death has cleansed the money! You understand. That's the angle! I paid with my death. The money is no longer unclean. The books of Wynken, all of it, it's no longer unclean. Pretty it up. I ransomed it all with my blood. You know, Lestat, use your clever tongue. Tell her!"
Those footsteps.
The distinct rhythm of Something walking, slowly walking...
And the low murmur of the voices, the singing, the talking, I was getting dizzy. I was going to fall. I held on to him and on to the bar.
"Roger!" I shouted aloud. Surely everybody in the bar heard it. He was looking at me in the most pacific manner, I don't even know if his face was animate anymore. He seemed puzzled, even amazed...
I saw the wings rise up over me, over him. I saw the immense obliterating darkness shoot up as if from a volcanic rip in the very earth and the light rise behind it. Blinding, beautiful light.
I know I cried out. "Roger!"
The noise was deafening, the voices, the singing, the figure growing larger and larger.
"Don't take him. It's my fault." I rose up against It in fury; I would tear It to pieces if I had to, to make It let him go! But I couldn't see him clearly. I didn't know where I was. And It came rolling, like smoke again, thick and powerful and absolutely unstoppable, and in the midst of all this, looming above him as he faded, and towards me, the face, the face of the granite statue for one second, the only thing visible, his eyes—
"Let him go!"
There was no bar, no Village, no city, no world. Only all of them!
And perhaps the singing was no more than the sound of a breaking glass.
Then blackness. Stillness.
Silence.
Or so it seemed, that I had been unconscious in a quiet place for some time.
I woke up outside on the street.
The bartender was standing there, shivering, asking me in the most annoyed and nasal tone of voice, "Are you all right, man?"