The world was wet. It was much warmer. Rags of fog drifted overhead.
They were almost at the scene. Joris was lagging a few yards back. Ahead there was nothing to see, just the hill dropping lower and then the place it broke. The sheared-off earth that had fallen into the creek bed was being washed downstream, cut in two places by the surging waters. The Toro riding mower had been winched up out of the viscous mass choking the creek and left to stand alone farther up the hill on the grass, like a monument. It had been draped in plastic and wrapped around haphazardly with yellow barrier tape. Ends of the tape flapped festively when the wind struck. The far bank of the creek looked normal. It was steep. Thick woodland began just behind the drop on that side. The ground abutting the catastrophe was very torn up: ordinary rubble and broken bricks and chunks of scrapwood showed in it, evidence, maybe, of the quality of the topsoil Douglas had trucked in to raise and contour the hilltop during his program of estate improvement. There were metal stakes here and there. Broad tire tracks scored what was left of the lawn near the site.
Without warning, Gruen dropped to his knees. Ned aborted a motion to reach out after him and pull him back from the edge. It wasn’t necessary. Gruen got up, black spots on the knees of his jeans. Ned saw that he hadn’t been that close to the edge, in fact.
“Say something,” Gruen said. He was weeping. In the group, in the past, Gruen had been everybody’s confessor. Ned knew he hadn’t been paying proper attention to Gruen, not seriously, over the years. The most you could say is that he had been keeping track of him. “Say something,” Gruen said again.
Ned didn’t know what to say. A dry sob came out of him and he said, “Venice is sinking.” He didn’t know why.
They seemed to know what he meant, his friends.
14
Something called the Vale was just ahead of her. Nina thought, Don’t be insecure. She was having a new fear. It was neurotic and it was about Ned and Iva. It was shameful, but fortunately she had no shame. It was a pattern, a potential pattern, she was afraid of. She thought, There are people so physically extraordinary that if they’re for any reason willing to stay with you and be your love you take their shit forever. Claire when she became good riddance still had her perfect skin, which was perfect due to her avoidance of facial expressions. The great Douglas limited himself to great beauties. And Iva was supposed to be beautiful in an ornate Austro-Hungarian way, at least judging by the images on the net from her Prague days and more recently from the jacket of her latest children’s book Hans and the Miles Long Knockwurst or whatever the fuck she called it. So, as to Ned … Number One, her great beauty. Number Two, she was in some kind of distress, which is always attractive. And Number Three, she had a readymade offspring. She had already proven that she produced babies. On the other hand Iva was forty-three. On the other hand, she herself would hit forty before you could say God help me.
What in the name of fuck was the Vale? It looked like an establishment that had come through a time machine with stuff clinging to it from different eras. It was built in a lovely swamp. It was the place she could get a taxi to carry her up to the castle, she’d been told, so she loved it. She toiled forward. Her next roll-on carryon would have larger wheels. That would be superior when rolling your belongings through muck.
She was too tired. She had spent the night in Kingston in a motel from hell. She thought, I stayed in a room that was rejected by the people who made The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari because it was too scary: I’m going to tell Ned that.
She had to get to Ned. And she had to look good.
15
“This happened,” Gruen said. “Where you were, I don’t know. This was thirty minutes ago.”
Ned said, “I was indisposed. Go ahead.”
Gruen said, “Well, this happened. Outside the kitchen there’s a deck and a hatch and stairs that lead down to another deck. On the lower one you’re out of sight and private and you can enjoy the sound of the creeks the livelong day. So there Iva was on a bench and looking very shaky to me. I asked if she was all right and she stood up and asked if I was a smoker by any chance.
“Well I am, I hate to admit. I’m way cut down, but I am. I said something about this being a time when you can be forgiven if you take a drag or two. And I told her, which was the truth, that I didn’t have any smokes on me.
“So she said Here, I’ll give you one. I only have two. We’ll share. We’ll split and later you’ll get a pack for me when you go to the store next. Oh, and Marlboro is what I prefer but it doesn’t matter.
“And she took a lighter out of her pants pocket and then right in front of me she pushes her hand into her cleavage and comes out with two Marlboros and gives me one. It was warm and it smelled like her. I was pretty stunned but I pretended that this was the way I always got my cigs, of course. So we lit up, tra la! I was sorry for her. She smoked the thing like a machine.”
Ned said, “Outré,” which was not a word he’d used since 1974.
Gruen said, “Some people are kind of magnificent. Just an observation.”
16
Ned was running. It was downhill and steep and the road was what it was and he was trying to be careful. Nina was at the Vale, waiting for him. The message had come to the house. Elliot had gotten it. The message was that she could get a taxi but only as far as some bridge, so she was waiting for someone from the estate to come down in a car and pick her up at the store, unless that was unreasonable. When Elliot read him the message Ned turned south and began to run. He could get down to the Vale faster than he could organize the loan of a car. Also he wanted to run. Nina was insane to do this, but she was here.
It was safer to run on the crown of the road than in the ruts or on the margin. How was she going to like all this forest primeval, so dank, so endless. She was insane.
She was going to be a wreck, exhausted, how would she look?
Now everything was going to be impossible, but better.
Ned turned onto the spur path that led to the Vale’s parking area and he could see Nina there. He halted to get his breath. She had seen him and was waving as she mounted a low, broad tree stump at the edge of the lot. She began posing. The stump was a plinth for herself as a living statue representing Wrath. She put a fist on her hip and raised her other fist high in the air. The upraised fist became a claw. She was crazy. But it was going to be all right. She was letting him know he was forgiven, definitely. Yes, she was, she was letting him know. The old burgomaster was on the porch in his wheelchair. She didn’t care who saw what she was doing. There was something to be said for a little idiosyncrasy in the world. Her carryon was leaning against the stump, mud-caked.
She looked fine. Her black hair was done up in a tall bun whose crest was visible over the crown of her head. It was unusual for her, and probably intended to make her look taller, like the heels on the cowboy boots she was wearing.
He was close now. He could see that her eyes were done. She knew how to do makeup when she wanted to, by god. She was wearing tight new jeans and her fringed buckskin jacket, which carried a definite cowgirl reference, which was all right. The rather fierce first impression her small sharp face could give was softened by fatigue.
He jumped up onto the stump with her and embraced her so hard they tottered for a moment.
“I came here to kill you,” she said.
“I know. I know. I’m sorry.”