Stepovich frowned, wondering. Did he want to leave? "What about the old woman?" he asked.
"Not your job. Remember?" The Gypsy smiled kindly. "We can leave any time you want. How about now?" He scratched his chest through his yellow shirt. Stepovich could see that a few threads of the blue embroidery were coming undone. Jennie could fix that in a minute. He knew she could, but she wouldn't. She didn't fix things anymore.
Something else was cooking on the fire, something that boiled over the lip of the old kettle and fell in slow drips into the fire. The flames leaped up to catch the drips, eager to devour, and a terrible stench and smoke arose. The smoke stung Stepovich's eyes."Where does the coach go?" he gasped, rubbing his eyes and trying to see the Gypsy through the smoke.
"The one place you can't get to from here," the Gypsy said. He stood up and put his knife away. "Do you want to go?"
"It's the only place I want to go," Stepovich said,and stood up.
The corner of the coffee table hit him on the cheekbone, and the sharp pain almost stunned him. He got slowly to his hands and knees, staggered to the kitchen, dragged the pot off the stove and turned the burner off. He clicked on the fan in the range hood. It squealed annoyingly, but he let it run. The stew that was left in the pot looked disgusting, thick and stringy. He scraped it into a bowl and got some bread to go with it. And another beer. He set it all out on the coffee table, turned off the fan and went to look in the bathroom mirror.
Well, it was going to swell, but at least it wasn't going to be a black eye. He looked at himself. Square jaw. Blue eyes. The kind of hair they called sandy,just starting to slip back at his temples. He'd lost weight in the last two years. Steadily. At his last cop physical, the doctor had complimented him on it."Looking fine, Stepovich," the man had said, prodding his belly muscles. "You'd put a lot of younger men to shame. Work out regularly?" Yeah, he'd told the doctor. Sure. Real regular. For a while, it had been the only way he could stop thinking. Now even that didn't work.
He went back to the couch. The quiz show was gone. Three people were in a living room, and the studio audience was laughing uproariously while one of the characters struck an offended pose and the other two simpered. Stepovich opened his beer,drank, had two spoonfuls of the burnt stew. He reached to the other end of the coffee table, dragged the phone toward him. He punched in the number,then hung up before it could ring.
He wondered what she'd do if he ever really did it.Just called her up and said, "I'm sorry, it was a big mistake,1 love you, can I please come home?"
He ate more stew. Probably get another restraining order. Probably send the kids to her mother.
He drank some beer. It hadn't been a mistake. They both knew that. The divorce had been right. And he didn't love her. He loved something else, the idea of being married and having the kids and all. That's what he loved. If he went home right now, they'd probably have a fight before two hours were up. No. He'd screwed it up too badly. Screwed it up once by walking out when she dared him to. Screwed it up again by following her everywhere, always trying to talk to her, phoning her up at midnight, being outside the building when she got off work, by following her as she drove home each day. She'd thought he was going to hurt her, had gotten the restraining order, had filed harassment charges, had nearly made him lose his job.
So now it was this. Send her a check, talk to the kids on the phone. Eat alone, sleep alone, because you're too damn tired to go through all that dating shit. So zone out on the tube, after exercising for three hours so you can sleep, then fall asleep and dream about goddamn gypsies.
He set down the empty bowl. Well, he was through with the last part. He was going to take the knife back to the cemetery, tonight. Somehow he was sure that would get the Gypsy out of his mind.
THREE
The Gypsy and the Wolf
Beasts and demons laugh and yell.
The lonely midwife sings;
They dance around like puppets,
But the Lady works the strings.
"THE FAIR LADY"
Cigany left the diner without paying; simply got up and walked out before they noticed him, turned the corner around a building and was gone. He was cleaner, though he wished he could jump into a river,and there were two pieces of tasteless chicken in his stomach along with a great deal of city water.
As he walked, scenes from his most recent past began to return to him. The holding tank, for one; where they put you before they knew where to put you. That, he had figured out. He wasn't certain how he had escaped it, or what the cost had been. Moreover,he wasn't certain why they had arrested him. He didn't think he'd done anything, but, then, it was always like that. A pal from Ireland once sang him a song about being born in the wrong place. He smiled at the memory. But he, Cigany, had been born in the right place, and then had left. Why?
His head began to hurt, and he reached for, for something he couldn't remember. Pills of some sort?He had had this sort of headache before, he knew; in fact, now that he thought of it, he almost remembered getting it every time he ate-that strange pulsing in his head, and then his vision would waver, and then the pain.
He shook his head. Ignore the pain. There was something he had to do, he knew that. He'd been trying to do it for so many years that he could no longer estimate the decades that had passed. But what was it? Had it been so long that he'd forgotten his mission? He had promised to do something, he knew that. He took a deep breath, brushed his mustaches, and-
–And realized that his knife was missing.
He began to tremble.
Of course it was missing, the police had taken it.Why was he so upset? What was it about the knife?He knew that it could protect him, but-
It had killed. While out of his possession, someone,who didn't know what he had, had allowed it to kill. That meant that there was an enemy who knew that he, Cigany, didn't have it, and that he was vulnerable, and the enemy had killed a friend.
He leaned against the wall, and he wondered who his enemy was. He almost knew. Was it his brother in the vision? No, his brothers were scattered, lost. The enemy was the one who had been preventing him from completing his mission for so long.
What mission? What enemy? He ducked behind abuilding, squatted there, and tried to think. His head throbbed, like his skull was being split with an ax.
It had snowed, not too long before, and then melted,although he hadn't noticed it at the time. But there was water dripping from the gutter, and it formed a puddle on the paved ground, perhaps a foot wide.
Cigany felt his mouth become dry again. Here he was going off to find his knife, and, because he didn't have it, he hardly dared to go. He stood up and waited for several minutes until the moon was in the proper place over his shoulder. It wasn't quite full,but he thought it might be close enough. He stepped forward once with his left foot, once with his right,and again with his left, the last landing him squarely in the puddle.
The Fair Lady looks up, suddenly, seeing before Her a figure all of fire, with one leg that of a goose and the opposite arm that of a horse. She puts down Her knitting and smiles sweetly. "Yes, what is it?" Her voice is the tinkling of fine crystal, with a very faint echo if you listen closely. Her face is young. Her eyes are old, and they reflect the firelight; Her hair and skin are fair. There is a crown of candles on Her head, making folds in the skin of Her forehead. There are nine candles, but three of them have gone out.
"Fair Lady," says the liderc. "Someone is coming."