I was sleeping on my sofa when laughter woke me. I had not experienced joviality, even vicariously, in longer than I could remember. Now I recognized Mrs. Russo's voice outside my door, wishing someone well. Apparently her group had already come and was taking their leave.

I bolted up with a curse, stumbled into the kitchen to see the time on the stove.

It was past noon.

I didn't even bother to shower, only changed my shirt and grabbed my coat, my laptop, my wallet. Outside my door, Mrs. Russo was still chatting with one of her group members, a man close to her age who held his jacket over his arm.

"Well, Clay! You're home on a weekday. Have you met Mr. Hollingswor- "

"I'm sorry, I can't talk." I brushed past the man and hurried down the stairs.

I could not remember the T T ever operating so slowly. I was frustrated by the wait, by my inability to take the stairs out of the Kendall Station two at a time-I started to, but had to lean back against the railing to catch my breath and let my vision clear. ever operating so slowly. I was frustrated by the wait, by my inability to take the stairs out of the Kendall Station two at a time-I started to, but had to lean back against the railing to catch my breath and let my vision clear.

Inside the Brooks and Hanover offices I slipped past Sheila's desk, now occupied by a temp, a girl in her twenties who might have been pretty had she refrained from drawing her eyebrows on with a marker. If I could get inside my office without being seen, it was feasible that no one might know I had not been there all morning. I shut my door, docked my laptop, stared at the stack of office mail in yellow tie-top envelopes on the corner of my desk.

Exactly ten minutes later my phone rang. It was Helen. "Clay, can you come see me?"

"Helen, hi. I'm really behind-I was sick this morning. I'm trying to get going on my day. I know I haven't gotten the contract back to Anu-"

"Clay, can you just come in, please?"

I sighed. "Sure."

I scratched my unshaven face, combed my hair with my fingers. I didn't feel like another reprimand. I was soon to become a double a.s.set to this house, and I needed some flexibility and respect.

Helen was wearing her usual cashmere turtleneck-nutmeg today-her gla.s.ses hanging on their beaded chain, her hair in a headband worn only by girls in high school and women in their fifties.

"Clay." She sighed as I sat down. "I don't know how to say this."

My first thought was of the book-she couldn't get the larger advance, or they'd have to defer its release by a season.

"We can't work this way. The marketing team is behind, you haven't had a single viable proposal accepted by the committee-not counting your own-in the last three months, and despite the fact that we just spoke yesterday, you still showed up well after noon today." She threw up her hands. "I mean, we just talked yesterday!"

I just sat there in my wrinkled slacks, mutely gazing at her.

"There's still a fine chance that we'll offer you a contract for your book, though I think we should give that a few weeks to re-evaluate how many projects we're going to be behind on and how quickly we can find an editor to take your place. It's a good book, Clay. This is not a statement on your work as a writer-only your work habits as an editor."

All of this came to me through a time warp, each of her words registering in slow, crawling baritone.

"Are you kidding me?" I said at last, incredulity slowly washing over me. "Are you kidding me?" I repeated when she said nothing. In one stroke she was relieving me of not only my job but also of the book that was, to my mind, all but published. How could this be possible?

I'm going to tell you my story, Lucian had said, Lucian had said, and you're going to write it down and publish it. and you're going to write it down and publish it. He had said it. And I had written it, and the committee had accepted it! Obviously this decision would be reversed. Something would happen to change Helen's mind. He had said it. And I had written it, and the committee had accepted it! Obviously this decision would be reversed. Something would happen to change Helen's mind.

Helen shook her head. "I'm afraid not."

"The contract is in my e-mail. It's been sent." Why hadn't I gone through it-or just signed it and sent it right back, never mind the details?

"It hasn't been signed, Clay," she said in that tone adults take with recalcitrant teens. "And this might be the best for both of us. We can both take some time to think. Maybe you should try your luck with a larger house. The book is certainly good enough."

"Are you patronizing me?" I realized my voice had risen. "And we didn't talk yesterday, Helen. You pulled me aside like a wayward student in the middle of the hall."

"Clay, I'm sorry about that, but the fact is-"

"The fact is you have no idea what my life has been like. What I've been going through these last few months. You have no clue, Helen." I was shaking, venting my anger as I waited, waited for the reversal that I knew must happen.

"Clay"- her voice steeled-"You're not the only one with problems."

"Exactly. And when Sheila put herself in the hospital after drinking herself half to death, did you fire her? No. I don't think you did. You gave her time to get her act together. That's some kind of double standard, Helen."

I was on fire, all the tension of the last week, of the last three-and-a-half months, spewing from me as if from a cannon.

"Clay"-she rose and extended her hand-"I wish you luck."

I stared at her hand for an instant before turning on my heel and striding out, slamming her door behind me.

In the hallway, the temp waited with a box. "I'm supposed to help you get your things." What was she, twenty-two? Fresh out of college, maybe, if she had gone at all? Sheila had gone to community college at least. What did this temp straight from-wherever-know? What gave her the right to follow me into my office with a box?

I shoved items off my desk and into the box, threw in the contents of drawers: pictures and books, most of them signed by authors I had acquired, greeting cards acc.u.mulated through the years. I sorted through my card file, pulled a few to keep, Katrina Dunn Lampe's among them. I threw in coffee mugs, a Cross pen set, a quote-a-day calendar from the year before opened to July 7. I left the rest-the ma.n.u.script pages, the proposals, the galleys, the covers-where they lay on my desk and then, on impulse, knocked the stack to the floor.

I undocked my computer and put it into the box. The temp chewed her lip. "That's a company laptop, right?"

I stopped cold. My story was on that laptop. Almost as important, my calendar was on it too. It was the only one I kept, and every one of Lucian's mysterious appointments had appeared on it.

I forgot the demon's horrible smile, the dire awareness so similar to that first night in the cafe, the voice within me compelling me to leave the Starbucks. He had frightened me before, I had walked out before, and always there had been another meeting. But without my computer, what would happen to the appointments? How would I know if he made one?

I had no way to contact him. No way to tell him. He had told me never to attempt it again, and after what had happened the last time, I was too afraid to try. Would he know? Would his buzzing network tell him?

I rummaged around in the box, found a cheap flash drive, and copied my book onto it. Then I deleted my ma.n.u.script on the hard drive along with my sent and deleted e-mails and, facetiously, several drafts of edited copy.

No one stopped me. As I left, no one rushed out after me. I had arrived at work an editor, writer, and soon-to-be-published author and left the proud owner of a box full of junk. As I walked to the station, I noticed a dumpster outside a neighboring building. I set down the box, threw open the lid, and dumped the entire box, contents and all inside. It was all junk. The only thing of value, the flash drive with my ma.n.u.script on it, was already tucked into my coat pocket.

TURNING IN MY LAPTOP meant I had no computer. Despite the fact that I now had no idea how I would pay for my trip to Cabo, let alone a new computer, I walked the several blocks to the Galleria. Had I my own laptop, or had Helen given me any warning, I could have ordered one online. As it was, I was at the mercy of whatever the computer store had in stock.

After enlisting the help of a kid half my age, I chose the most affordable, basic model I could find and charged it to my credit card. I took a cab home via the local liquor store, my new computer resting on my knees in its small, white carrying box, a paper bag on the seat beside me.

FOR THE NEXT TWO days I drank, slept, and somehow set up my new computer, which came complete with its own schedule, contact, and mail software. I set up the calendar, which now had nothing on it, and opened a new e-mail account through a free online service. And then I waited.

How strange it was to see that expanse of pristine days, each of them legal-pad yellow, unmarred by meetings or deadlines.

I have no life. I found this insanely funny. I found this insanely funny.

It wasn't, really, but I had just finished the second bottle of boutique merlot on an empty stomach, and terrifically funny seemed better than horribly sad.

THE NEXT DAY, AMID a pounding headache and tripping heart, my entire body sore and swollen, I called my family doctor and set up an appointment for the following week.

I checked my calendar, my e-mail. Nothing.

Perhaps with the status of my ma.n.u.script uncertain, he had no more use for me.

I ate and slept at odd hours. Helen's new henchwoman called to request the last of the ma.n.u.scripts on my desk at home. She would send a FedEx box for them-boxes again-no need to come in. Not that I had any intention of taking them in.

I almost asked about the contract but thought it best to wait. Meanwhile, the only thing that mattered to me was Lucian and finding an end to my book.

So I left my new laptop running, the calendar alive in the corner, waiting, the volume turned up so that I might hear that ping from any place in my apartment if I were away from my desk. But I was never away from my desk for long. I returned to my ma.n.u.script, combed through it, rewrote sentences and then entire pa.s.sages that did not need it. My back hurt, and my eyes strained from looking at it in the half light of day and early afternoon twilight. When the screen and the lamp gave off the only light in my apartment, I got up, turned on another lamp, wondered when it had gotten so dark, and returned to my desk to check my calendar again.

DAYS Pa.s.sED.

I realized I was growing an inadvertent beard. I wondered if I was slipping into some stereotypical decline, if I was, as people said, hitting bottom.

You're losing it, man.

No, I'm waiting.

But my calendar remained empty, a vacant face staring back at me every time I opened it. I came to regard it with contempt, swearing at it for yielding nothing, calling it names and slamming my desk drawers.

On the eighth day, I sat on my sofa, staring at the laptop across the living room, the glow of it like an oversized LCD nightlight. I found myself thinking of Sheila and wondering how she was, wishing I had her phone number so I could call her and apologize for my callousness. She might have made a mistake, but she had obviously suffered for it in ways Aubrey never had.

I thought also about how centerless and adrift I had been after Aubrey's leaving-until I found a new, more compelling body by which to fix my existence: Lucian. But now I wondered if he would leave me, too, and what could possibly take his place as he had taken Aubrey's. Even in losing Aubrey, I had not felt this level of anxiety, these jolts of panic, had not gone to these mental lengths. I felt sad about that, in retrospect, sad and regretful. While I might never have measured up, might not have prevented her leaving, I saw so many things now that I could have done-if not to keep her, then at least to have allowed myself more closure.

The monitor started to go into hibernation. As I got up to tap it awake, it blinked to life. I sucked in a breath.

4:30: Hurry.

It was 4:28. I stuffed my feet into my shoes, grabbed a jacket, and left.

I WALKED ON SHAKY legs to the closest restaurant, a wrap-sandwich-and-soup joint on the corner of Norfolk and Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue. I had never eaten here; I had always thought it looked dingy. Scanning the spa.r.s.e, stained tables, I saw I was right. A college student talked on the phone behind the counter. A couple ate in chilly silence on a pair of bentwood chairs. A blonde woman, the only other patron, waved impatiently to me.

Her eyebrows were too dark for her sallow complexion, the wavy blonde hair bleached too light. She did not smile at me as I sat down.

A wrap sandwich lay on a plate between us. She pushed it toward me. I didn't want it.

"I lost my job."

"I know." She sat back, regarded me with a dispa.s.sion I found amazing and infuriating. I had been sick with waiting, with the need for explanations, and now she sat, looking at me like a babysitter biding her time until my parents returned.

"But they're still considering the contract, Helen says. I hadn't signed it yet-"

"I'd be surprised if they take it."

My mouth opened, but no sound came out.

"You ruined it, Clay."

I blanched. "But you said they'd publish it."

"No, I said you you would publish my story." would publish my story."

"Do we have to argue semantics? You said-"

"Just because I say something doesn't mean it will happen, Clay." She crossed her arms, regarded me over high cheekbones that seemed too patrician for the bad bleach job and cheap makeup. And I saw my hoped-for payoff in all of this, the reward I felt I had coming to me, begin to trickle away.

"Then-then I'll submit it elsewhere. It's bigger than Brooks and Hanover anyway."

She seemed to consider this, a ring-laden hand toying with a strand of pale hair, her gaze returning to me, searching mine. "All right. Then let's get to it."

And then I noticed her eyes. They were the least human I had ever seen them, glittering in a menage of mercurial colors beneath a brown veneer. I sat, transfixed, not knowing what to do, hearing again the voice in my head: Leave! Leave!

"How does it end?"

"With you," she said simply. "As I said, it has always been about you."

"You say that, but what do you mean?" My every question seemed laced with desperation, every answer not enough.

"My story has given way to yours. Don't you see? No, of course you don't. Listen to me. It was all done. These children of G.o.d were bursting to life like kernels of corn popping into bloom. Suddenly, El was everywhere, manifest by the sheer act of belief in this Messiah, this gift of spilled blood drunk from the cup of acceptance. We were forgotten, disinherited in favor of the mud race.

"I saw that black lake yawning beneath me, a little bit wider with each pa.s.sing day. We all did. And we could have given up, lain down. Instead, we struck out more vehemently than before, a.s.suaging pain with more pain. Our hearts turned numb, and our fear became the more palatable mission of hatred. We felt better because we felt less. We were bent on only one purpose: the destruction of El's believers."

"But you played havoc with them before."

"Not like this. Now, with the bellow of Satan loud in our ears, we went to war. As in any campaign, any ethnic cleansing, we struck out at their members, their leaders, their generals. They're not who you think."

"What do you mean?"

"There's a reason Jake Salter is dead, Clay."

The flesh rose on my arms. Jake Salter, the punk kid who, I had learned that day in the Commons, died just years ago. "He drowned," I whispered.