While his mother fought, Michael dragged Lenore into the kitchen, toward the back door. They could get into the Volkswagen, go for the police—go somewhere. The hospital. California. They’d have to go without luggage; but they needed money.
He turned from the door to the phone, back to the door again. He looked to Lenore for advice, and then his mother lurched into the kitchen. She was chanting again, still reaching for him. She must have knocked open the bathroom door on her way, since Scabby was now weaving between her ankles, smearing them with blood. Her eyes were bloodshot and bloodthirsty. Weakened by alcohol, she had already lost her battle.
The horror of seeing her like this paralyzed him. It struck past all defenses, all intellectual barriers. He couldn’t convince himself that something alien impelled her. She was still his mother, and if this was the nature of their relationship, the delicate balance on which the universe stood poised, then there was no reason to live. It was better to surrender to her. Better to bare his throat for her nails.
She moved quickly to fulfill his desire. He let out a choked prayer as her hands closed around his neck. Then he heard a dull clang.
Her hands fell away. She collapsed to the floor.
Lenore stood over her, a heavy iron skillet dangling from her hand. Grease from their breakfast, eggs and hamburger, dripped from the pan as she stood there. It mingled with the blood that oozed through his mother’s matted hair.
At the same instant, as if the sound of the pan had been the final beat in a tuneless song, the pounding in the walls stopped dead.
He rushed to the sink. The sight of blood and grease, the sudden memory of Tucker’s bedroom, the panic of the last hours—it all welled up in him.
When he managed to look around again, Lenore was taking his mother’s pulse. She looked calm and controlled, kneeling like an angel over the prostrate woman.
“I think she’ll be all right,” she said. “I didn’t hit her too hard.”
Michael crouched and touched his mother’s slack face, his heart crying out inside him at the sight. Lenore showed him where the skillet had hit; the skin had split, spilling blood, and a knot was swelling through the ooze. She had cut her lip falling, and that was bleeding too. Scabby crouched nearby, sniffing at the hamburger grease.
“We have to get her to the hospital,” he said.
“No,” Lenore said firmly. “We have to go.”
“What?”
“If we do that, Michael, we’ll get caught here. We’ll never get away.”
“We can’t just leave her here. It’s my mother, Lenore!”
“I’ll throw more stuff in a bag. We’ll take her home, tell Earl she came in—blind drunk—fell and hit her head. Leave it to him, Michael.”
He gazed down at his mother. She was breathing steadily, but what did that prove? “I don’t know….”
“It’s the only way. Now get up. Hurry.”
He started to protest; he could think of a million good, logical reasons against what she proposed. But as he looked up, he saw the mandala floating over her, as if it had aligned itself along a fracture plane in a crystal, invisible except at certain angles. It hovered there, malignantly sculling the air, stroking Lenore with great tenderness, but also threatening her—letting him know what it would do if he hesitated, or opposed it in any way.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
15
Derek ‘s answering machine was blinking when he walked in that evening. “You have one message,” said the snorkeled voice. Lilith, he thought, his heart leaping. But he was furious at her too and luxuriated in the thought of her pathetic excuse, her inevitable apology. Of course, she had never broken up with him before, and he could not be sure these things would follow. They were certainly not Lilith’s style. In fact, it was too soon for her to be calling. She would let him dangle for weeks, probably; just as she went for weeks without calling him even when things were going well.
Having convinced himself that it couldn’t be her, he decided not to play the message at all.
At that moment, the phone rang. He snatched it up with a hopeless wish he recognized too late to stifle. Lilith!
“Hello?”
“Have I reached Mr. Derek Crowe?” A man’s voice, unfamiliar; street noises—a siren, in fact, blasting its way into his apartment. He realized he could hear a siren on the street below too.
“Who is this?”
“I don’t want to alarm you, Mr. Crowe, but I would like to speak to you about the mandalas.”
“Alarm me? Why should that alarm me? Are you a reporter?”
Absently he reached out and touched the button on the answering machine, as if Lilith might rescue him from this caller, if she were there. The machine clicked its way to the start of the message.
“No, no. I am a very ordinary person—well, maybe not so ordinary. I have unusual knowledge; I think you will understand me better if we could talk in person, even very briefly.”
The message began: “Hello, I hope this is the number for Derek Crowe—your machine did not say.” It was another strange male voice, this one speaking with a French accent. “We have been trying to reach you for a very long time now, and I hope this time I am successful.”
“How did you get my number?”
“I can’t really tell you that. Let me assure you, sir, I am a very good citizen. I mean to cause you no harm, no trouble. I only want to prevent trouble.”
“My name is Etienne. I am one of the owners of the Club Mandala, which is set to open here on February sixth—the thirty-seventh day of the year!”
Club Mandala? This was ridiculous! Now they were calling him!
He tried to keep his attention on his live caller. “How do you mean?”
“I and my partner were really wishing very much to get in touch with you, eh, to talk to you about the mandalas, and your part in the whole show.”
“I don’t—it’s not something I wish to discuss on the phone.”
“I don’t have time for games,” he said.
“I think we could have some very interesting information to exchange.”
“I promise, this is no game. I am quite sincere. I have come a long way to see you. I assure you, this problem is very important to me, as a representative of the Cambodian people here in California.”
Cambodia? Derek thought with a start. Oh, no.
He started to respond with a poorly formed objection, but the answering machine, the hesitant yet cocky voice, was maddening, breaking his concentration.
“Please give me a call as soon as you can, so we can meet and discuss these things. We hope we can involve you somehow in the club. There is a place in it for all of us, I think. My number—”
Derek slammed down his hand, switching off the machine.
“What do you mean, a representative?” he said. “A politician?”
“Well, I am active in a small way in politics, yes. But I am not here in a political office. I prefer to be very discreet just now. My constituents might be upset even to know what I have learned about your work with these, as you call them, mandalas. I am here for their sake. I hope to spare them much pain.”
The mention of Cambodia exhumed the specter of Elias Mooney. It was as if Eli were hounding him in death, resurrected by the publication of the book; as if every time the mandalas were introduced to another fresh mind, Eli’s shade grew a bit denser and darker, asserting its connection to the whole mess. Michael Renzler, Bob Maltzman, and now this man. He prayed this did not mean his caller had known Elias too.