To my surprise, the healer, who couldn’t have been more than five feet six inches, picked Joan up in her arms, all the while murmuring to her, and carried her to the centre of the room, where she set her down in a jewelled circle. With the various chalk she drew a series of concentric circles around Joan, representations of the various worlds she would travel through to reach Joan: the Earth, the Sky, the Sun, Moon and Stars, the Land of the Dead, and the worlds of her various spirit helpers. The rounded corners of the room glowed with wavy lines of neon light, a physical picture of the Living World.
Harry pulled me away from the doorway as the healer began swaying back and forth and singing very softly—snatches of old songs, I think, particularly “Oh Susanna” and “My Old Kentucky Home”.
“Let’s go, sweetie,” Harry said to me.
“Shouldn’t we make sure it’s really helping?” I whispered.
“We’ll just get in the way. Maybe suck something up ourselves. Or cause a backlash. And you know it can take hours. Or days.” I let him lead me away, only looking back briefly at the healer shining her flashlight towards the ceiling as she moved her head from side to side.
In the street, Harry put an arm around me and stroked my cheek. “She’ll be fine,” he said.
Moving away from him, I sighed and shook my head. “Thanks,” I told him. “I don’t know…I just—” I took a deep breath. “That was my fault, Harry. She’s in all that spirit shit because of me.”
He took out his prosthetic cigarette from the pocket of his striped blazer. He tilted back his head to blow pretend smoke. “Are you going to stop having sex with people because of the danger of possession? Ellen, Ellen, I find it hard to envision you turning your clothes inside out and joining a chastity support group.”
“It’s not that,” I said.
“Then what? Your insincerity? The fact that you were using her? Don’t you think she was using you? Perhaps one should not speak ill of the possessed, but Joan Monteil is an emotional masturbator.”
I took his arm and began moving him down the street. “Harry,” I said, “let’s go get some coffee. I need to talk with you.”
“A conversation with you is always a delight.”
I laughed. “Thanks. The thing is, it’s kind of dangerous. What happened to Joan—it didn’t happen because of the sex. That was part of it, but it involves a lot more. I’m scared, Harry. Scared for me, and…”
“Your old family friend. Alison Birkett, wasn’t it?”
I stopped. “You sonofabitch,” I said, laughing. “Did you just remember her from that time on the street, or—”
He smiled at me, radiantly. Harry can do a great radiance. “Darling,” he said, “I knew who you were when I first met you. It was very thrilling, let me tell you. Ellen Pierson! I thought to myself. You were a hero of mine when I was a teenager.”
“You never said anything.”
He waved the hand with the cigarette. “You didn’t seem very eager to discuss it.”
I looked down. “Yeah. Thanks, Harry.” Raising my head again, I said, “But then you know the kind of thing that can happen around me and Alison. I don’t want you hurt, Harry.”
“Well,” he said, “I suspect you did not take Joan into your deepest confidence and that did not seem to protect her. So if I’m going to be in danger, I might as well know why.” He tilted his head back to blow imaginary smoke. “Besides, what would life be without adventure?”
We went to a pita parlour on Avenue A, where Harry ordered hummus and I had coffee. I told him everything, or at least everything about Timmerman, ending with, “I know the answer is right there, and I just feel so stupid that I can’t see what’s going to happen.”
Harry called the waitress as she went by and ordered tea and halvah. When the woman had gone, he leaned forward. “Maybe you’re a trifle fixated,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you see this Margaret Tunnel Light and all you can think of is the Ferocious One who killed your cousin. So even though you accept that she will not directly harm Timmerman, you still assume that she will in some way attack him.” I thought of how I’d said to Alison that maybe Tunnel Light would do something to Timmerman without knowing what she was doing and how I’d assumed that meant a kind of programming. Harry went on, “The point is this, Ellen. You know that Timmerman is being set up. Played for a patsy. But maybe Ms Light is being set up as well. Maybe they’ve taken this rather impressionable Bright Being and are playing her for a patsy as much as Timmerman.”
I leaned back and put a hand over my face, closing my eyes. I could hear the waitress setting down Harry’s halvah, but I paid no attention. I was remembering the Being telling Alison and me, “Alexander is safe”. But what of Consumer Liberation? What of his plans? Channing didn’t care about Timmerman personally, he cared about the plan to expose the banking system. I’d been assuming that Tunnel Light would have to betray her trust. But suppose she did something with all her good intentions and with no intent at all to harm Timmerman—but that was the effect? Did she think she was harming Joan? Did she possess Joan and send her to me to attack me? It struck me that Maggie Tunnel Light probably thought she was helping us. Showing us the potential of her gifts to humanity. She was insane, I realized. I didn’t know if you could use such terms for a Bright Being, but I thought how I could come up with few things scarier than an insane Devoted One.
“Alexander is safe,” she’d said. And something else. “It is possibly a small thing.” The blessings, the frenzied arousal. These were possibly a small thing. What if she wanted to do something bigger? Some act of sexual liberation so overwhelming, so dramatic, it finally would make it into the newspapers and all the television stations. Suppose she was waiting for the proper moment. Some moment when all attention was focused on Timmerman.
I opened my eyes. “Harry,” I said, “she could do something horrible and think she was helping humanity. She could ‘aid’ Timmerman in such a way that she tore him to pieces. And if she ‘helped’ him enough no one would ever listen to him again.” I felt a kind of awe for the simplicity of it. I’d been looking for tricks and surprises, but in fact the whole thing just hinged on the single-minded stupidity of divine benevolence.
I took hold of Harry’s hands. “Sweetheart,” I said, “I’ve got to go speak to Alison. I can’t tell you how much I thank you. For Joan, for being so smart, for just helping me face these things. For letting me keep my secrets. I can’t tell you how good you are to me.”
Harry leaned back and smiled happily. With his pc in the corner of his mouth, he sucked in air, then blew it out. “I will assume the check,” he said. “You go see your friend. Glorybe and I will stand proudly on the sidelines while you overthrow the government.”