“No. She’s gone. Nobody knows where she is.”
He made an anguished face. “Ahh—she’s really gone, then, it’s too late anyway—” He stopped, ran a hand across his forehead. “Jesus.”
“Do you—do you think she’ll be all right?”
“All right? Angelica?” He laughed incredulously. “She’ll be fine! I mean, probably every guy she ever meets will end up like this—”
He cocked his head, rolling his eyes with his tongue hanging out and gabbling Ngah ngah ngah—
“Maybe we’ll all end up like that, but She’ll be fine. Blessed art Thou among women and all that shit. Listen, Sweeney, don’t you worry about her: Angelica is destined for Big Things.” His voice dropped to a conspiratory whisper. “Very, very Big Things.”
I decided to change the subject. “I got kicked out.”
His eyebrows arched in amazement. “You did? My little Sweeney, expelled from the Divine all by herself? Congratulations!”
“Jeez, Oliver, I’m not happy about it.”
“You should be,” he said quickly. “Oh yes very yes, you should get out of here as fast as your little bunny legs can take you, before this thing starts to blow. Oh yes.”
He fell silent, staring thoughtfully into the empty space between us. After a moment he took a few steps, until he stood in front of the wooden chair beneath the cross. He reached up and took the cross in one hand, lifted it carefully from the wall, and turned it over thoughtfully.
He looked up at me and said, “There is nothing for me but misery.”
I started to protest but he went on as though he hadn’t heard.
He lifted the cross in front of him. Around its crossbar tiny green vines moved, twining up and over the dull wood, their leaves so pale at first they were nearly white, but then quickening to yellow and gold and finally a rich deep green. As I watched in horror the vines spread, crept along the spars of the cross and then twisted around Oliver’s fingers, writhing and creeping like elvers or tiny serpents. They covered his arm in a tracery of gold and green and brown, leaves springing out so quickly that his white flesh was completely buried beneath them and I could see a few places where his veins had burst, sea green and crimson and the pale lavender of a new bruise, and the vines fed there and swelled to the thickness of a finger, a wrist, a thigh; then burst into scarlet blossom.
“Oliver!”
Now they began to trace the outlines of his torso, his shoulders and neck and face crumbling like old stones beneath a mantle of ivy and honeysuckle, his bald scalp covered with a frail yellow filigree that quivered and darkened to emerald. From within all that greenery only his eyes still glowed, twin flashes of blue as though some bright clever jay nested there, and his voice rang out like a blade slashing through the curling vines—
I screamed. But the sound choked within my throat, as all around me there was green, a horrible livid glory of green and living things, vines coiling about my breasts and ivy everywhere, bitter leaves thrusting themselves into my mouth and their stems pulling taut around my wrists and neck and ankles; but even as I struggled to free myself suddenly all fell away, leaves and vines turning into whirling ropes and arabesques that flared blindingly and then died into grey ash and disappeared. There were no vines, no leaves, no ivy. Only Oliver standing in front of me with his twisted smile, holding a simple wooden rood.
“He that has no cross deserves no crown,” he said lightly, and tossed it to me. I shrieked and jumped back. But the cross only struck the floor and lay there, a dull brown thing as lifeless as a pencil.
“What is going on?”
Behind us the door swung open to reveal the nurse, Joe. He frowned and strode inside, glancing around quickly.
“You’re not supposed to have the door shut,” he said. He stooped to pick up the cross. “Maybe we better cut this short, okay, Oliver? You seem a little overstimulated.”
Oliver said nothing.
“I’ve kind of got to go anyway,” I said stiffly. “But could we, like, say good-bye first?”
Joe went to the wall, moved aside the chair, and placed the cross back upon its hook. “All right. But they’re starting to bring dinner around, and your friend’s had a long day—”
He turned to me so I could read the message in his eyes: so give him a break, okay?
“—so maybe you and he could catch up some more tomorrow.”
We waited until he left, the door hanging open behind him like an unanswered question. When Oliver took my hand and led me to the bed I was shaking uncontrollably. I wanted to scream, to ask him a million things; but I said nothing, only clung to him as though he really were a tree and I was in danger of plunging to my death.
We sat together in silence for a long time. From outside the barred window I could hear faint sounds of traffic and machinery; the steady hum of the hospital’s air-conditioning system; and the rustle of voices, distant and muted as though heard from underwater.
“You won’t forget me, will you?”
At the sound of Oliver’s tremulous voice I looked up, shaking my head fiercely. “Never! I love you, you know I’ll be back tomorrow—”
“I know,” he said. He put his arm around me and hugged me close. “But in the meantime you have to be careful. Don’t sleep in the subway, button up your overcoat, hang on to your head. Don’t forget your friends, Sweeney.”
I looked down so he wouldn’t see that I was crying. “My—my friends?”
“Oh, Sweeney.” His voice was low and solemn as he tilted my head back up. He touched my cheek, drew away a finger with a tiny droplet on it, and brought it to his mouth. He touched his finger to his tongue and smiled, the same sweet crazy knowing smile I’d seen so many times before when he was out there skimming across some private sea. “You remember…”
His eyes gleamed, blue and strange as scallops’ eyes, and I knew he was looking at me from some great distance.
“You remember… you were little and you woke up on Sunday morning before your parents did and your brothers were still asleep, and outside there was that kind of golden rain that comes sometimes in the spring and the air smelled like roses and bacon, and when you looked over the side of your bed you saw him there, a little green lizard with hands like a baby, and he looked up at you and you fed him limes.”
He cupped his hands as though to receive an offering, and smiled.
“Oh, Oliver,” I whispered, and, weeping, buried my face in the folds of his robe.