Jude got out of the car along with Gentle and on the studio step-out of the driver's earshot-asked him if he had enough money inside to pay the man. She would rather take a taxi from here, she said, than endure his company any longer. Gentle replied that if there was any cash in the studio, it certainly wouldn't be sufficient.

"It looks like I'm stuck with him then," Jude said. "Never mind. Do you want me to come up with you? Have you got a key?"

"There'll be somebody in downstairs," he replied. "They've got a spare."

"Then I suppose this is it." It was so bathetic, parting like this after all that had gone before. "I'll ring you when we've both slept"

"The phone's probably been cut off."

"Then ring me from a box, huh? I won't be at Oscar's, I'll be at home."

The conversation might have guttered out there, but for his reply.

"Don't stay away from him on my account," he said.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Just that you've got your love affairs," he said.

"And what? You've got yours?"

"Not exactly."

"What then?"

"I mean, not exactly love affairs." He shook his head. "Never mind. We'll talk about it some other time."

"No," Jude told him, taking his arm as he tried to turn from her. "We'll talk about it now."

Gentle sighed wearily. "Look, it doesn't matter," he said.

"If it doesn't matter, just tell me."

He hesitated for several seconds. Then he said, "I got married."

"Did you indeed?" she said, with feigned lightness. "And who's the lucky girl? Not the kid you were talking about?"

"Huzzah? Good G.o.d, no."

He paused for a tiny time, frowning deeply.

"Go on," she said. "Spit it out."

"I married Pie'oh'pah."

Her first impulse was to laugh-the thought was absurd-but before the sound escaped her she caught the frown on his face and revulsion overtook laughter. This was no joke. He'd married the a.s.sa.s.sin, the s.e.xless thing who was a function of its lover's every desire. And why was she so stunned? When Oscar had described the species to her, hadn't she herself remarked that it was Gentle's idea of paradise?

"That's some secret," she said.

"I would have told you about it sooner or later."

Now she allowed herself a little laughter, soft and sour. "Back there you almost had me believing there was something between us."

"That's because there was," he replied. "Because there always will be."

"Why should that matter to you now?".

"I have to hold on to a little of what I was. What I dreamed."

"And what did you dream?"

"That the three of us-" He stopped, sighing. Then: "That the three of us would find some way to be together." He wasn't looking at her but at the empty ground between them, where he'd clearly wanted his beloved Pie to stand. "The mystif would have learned to love you," he said.

"I don't want to hear this," she snapped.

"It would have been anything you desired. Anything Anything."

"Stop," she told him. "Just stop stop."

He shrugged. "It's all right," he said. "Pie's dead. And we're going our different ways. It was just some stupid dream I had. I thought you'd want to know it, that's all."

"I don't want anything from you," she replied coldly. "You can keep your lunacies to yourself from now on!"

She'd long since let go of his arm, leaving him to retreat up the steps. But he didn't go. He simply stood watching her, squinting like a drunkard trying to hook one thought to another. It was she who retreated, shaking her head as she turned her back on him and crossed the puddled pavement to the car. Once in, the door slammed, she told the driver to get going, and-the car sped from the curb.

On the step Gentle watched the corner where the car turned long after the vehicle had gone from sight, as though some words of peace might yet come to his lips and be carried from them to call her back. But he was out of persuasions. Though he'd returned to his place as a Reconciler, he knew he'd here opened a wound he lacked the gift to heal, at least until he'd slept and recovered his faculties.

Forty-five minutes after she'd left Gentle on his doorstep, Jude was throwing open the windows of her house to let in the late-afternoon sun and some fresh air. The journey from the studio had pa.s.sed with her scarcely being aware of the fact, so stunned had she been by Gentle's revelation. Married! The thought was absurd, except that she couldn't find it in herself to be amused.

Though it was now many weeks since she'd occupied the house (all but the hardiest of her plants had died from loneliness, and she'd forgotten how the percolator and the locks on the windows worked), it was still a place she felt at home in, and by the time she'd downed a couple of cups of coffee, showered, and changed into some clean clothes, the Dominion from which she'd stepped only hours before was receding. In the presence of so many familiar sights and smells the strangeness of Yzordderrex wasn't its strength but its frailty. Without invitation, her mind had already drawn a line between the place she'd left and the one which she was now in, as solid as the division between a thing dreamt and a thing lived. No wonder Oscar had made a ritual of going up to his treasure room, she thought, and communing with his collection. It was a way of holding on to a perception that was under constant siege by the commonplace.

With several jolts of coffee buzzing around her bloodstream, the fatigue she'd felt on the journey back into the city had disappeared, so she decided to use the evening to visit Oscar's house. She'd called him several times since she'd got back, but the fact that n.o.body had answered was not, she knew, proof of his absence or demise. He'd seldom picked up the telephone in the house-that duty had fallen to Dowd-and more than once he'd stated his abhorrence of the machines. In paradise, he'd once said, the common blessed use telegrams and the saints have talking doves; all the telephones are down below.

She left the house at seven or so, caught a cab, and went to Regent's Park Road. She found the house securely 'locked, without so much as a window standing ajar, which on such a clement evening surely meant there was n.o.body home. Just to be sure, she went around to the rear of the house and peered in. At the sight of her, the three parrots Oscar kept in the back room rose from their perches in alarm. Nor did they settle, but squawked on in panic as she cupped her hands over her brow and peered in to see if their seed and water bowls were full. Though their perches were too far from the window for her to see, their level of agitation was enough to make her fear the worst Oscar, she suspected, hadn't soothed their feathers in a long time. So where was he? Back at the estate, lying dead in the long gra.s.s? If so, it would be folly to go back there now and look for him, with darkness an hour away at most. Besides, when she thought back to her last glimpse of him, she was reasonably certain she'd seen him rising to his feet, framed against the door. He was robust, despite his excesses. She couldn't believe he was dead. In hiding, more like: concealing himself from the Tabula Rasa. With that thought in mind she returned to the front door and scribbled an anonymous note, telling him she was alive and well, and slipped it into the letter box. He'd know who'd penned it. Who else would write that the Express had brought her home, safe and sound?

A little after ten-thirty she was preparing for bed when she heard somebody calling her name from the street. She went to the balcony and looked out to see Clem standing on the pavement below, hollering for all he was worth. It was many months since they'd spoken, and her pleasure at the sight of him was tinged with guilt at her neglect. But from the relief in his voice at her appearance, and the fervor of his hug, she knew he hadn't come to squeeze apologies out of her. He needed to tell her something extraordinary, he said, but before he did (she'd think he was crazy, he warned), he needed a drink. Could she get him a brandy?

She could and did.

He fairly guzzled it, then said, "Where's Gentle?"

The question, and his demanding tone, caught her off guard, and she floundered. Gentle wanted to be invisible, and furious as she was with him, she felt obliged to respect that wish. But Clem needed to know badly.

"He's been away, hasn't he? Klein told me he tried calling, but the phone was cut off. Then he wrote Gentle a letter, and it was never answered-"

"Yes," Jude said. "I believe he's been away."

"But he just came back."

"Did he?" she replied, more puzzled by the moment. "Maybe you know better than I do."

"Not me," he said, pouring himself another brandy. "Taylor."

"Taylor? What are you talking about?"

Clem downed the liquor. "You're going to say I'm crazy, but hear me out, will you?"

"I'm listening."

"I haven't been sentimental about losing him. I haven't sat at home reading his love-letters and listening to the songs we danced to. I've tried to get out and be useful for a change. But I have left his room the way it was. I couldn't bring myself to go through his clothes or even strip the bed. I kept putting it off. And the more I didn't do it, the more impossible it seemed to be. Then tonight, I came in just after eight, and I heard somebody talking."

Every particle of Clem's body but his lips was still as he spoke, transfixed by the memory.

"I thought I'd left the radio on, but no, no, I realized it was coming from upstairs, from his bedroom. It was him him, Judy, talking clear as day, calling me up the way he used to. I was so afraid I almost fled. Stupid, isn't it? There I was, praying and praying for some sign he was in G.o.d's hands, and as soon as it came I practically shat myself. I tell you, I was half an hour on the stairs, hoping he'd stop calling me. And sometimes he did for a while, and I'd half convince myself I'd imagined it. Then he'd start again. Nothing melodramatic. Just him trying to persuade me not to be afraid and come up and say h.e.l.lo. So, eventually, that's what I did."

His eyes were filling with tears, but there was no grief in his voice.

"He liked that room in the evening. The sun fills it up. That's what it was like tonight: full of sun. And he was there, in the light. I couldn't see him but I knew he was next to me because he said so. He told me I looked well. Then he said, 'It's a glad day, Clem. Gentle came back, and he's got the answers.'"

"What answers?" Jude said.

"That's what I asked him. I said, 'What answers, Tay?' But you know Tay when he's happy. He gets delirious, like a child." Clem spoke with a smile, his gaze on sights remembered from better days. "He was so full of the fact that Gentle was back, I couldn't get much more from him."

Clem looked up at Jude.

"The light was going," he said. "And I think he wanted to go with it. He said that it was our duty to help Gentle. That was why he was showing himself to me this way. It wasn't easy, he said. But then neither was being a guardian angel. And I said, Why only one? One angel when there's two of us? And he said, Because we are are one, Clem, you and I. We always were, and we always will be. Those were his exact words, I swear. Then he went away. And you know what I kept thinking?" one, Clem, you and I. We always were, and we always will be. Those were his exact words, I swear. Then he went away. And you know what I kept thinking?"

"What?"

"That I wished I hadn't waited on the stairs and wasted all that time I could have had with him," Clem set down his gla.s.s, pulled a tissue from his pocket, and blew his nose. "That's all," he said.

"I think that's plenty."

"I know what you're thinking," he said with a little laugh. "You're thinking, Poor Clem. He couldn't grieve so he's having hallucinations."

"No," she said, very softly. "I'm thinking, Gentle doesn't know how lucky he is, having angels like you two."

"Don't humor me."

"I'm not," she said. "I believe everything you've just told me happened."

"You do?"

"Yes."

Again, a laugh. "Why?"

"Because Gentle came home tonight, Clem, and I was the only one who knew it."

He left ten minutes later, apparently content to know that even if he was crazy there was another lunatic in his circle he could turn to when he wanted to share his insanities. Jude told him as much as she felt able at this juncture, which was very little, but she promised to contact Gentle on Clem's behalf and tell him about Taylor's visitation. Clem wasn't so grateful that he was blinded to her discretion.

"You know a lot more than you're telling me, don't you?" he said.

"Yes," she said. "But maybe in a little while I'll be able to tell you more."

"Is Gentle in danger?" Clem asked. "Can you tell me that at least?"

"We all are," she said. "You. Me. Gentle. Taylor."

"Taylor's dead," Clem said. "He's in the light. Nothing can hurt him."

"I hope you're right," she said grimly. "But please, Clem, if he finds you again-"

"He will."

"-then when he does, tell him n.o.body's safe. Just because Gentle's back in the-back home doesn't mean the troubles are over. In fact, they're just beginning."

"Tay says something sublime's going to happen. That's his word: sublime."

"And maybe it will. But there's a lot of room for error. And if anything goes wrong-" She halted, her head filled with memories of the In Ovo and the ruins of Yzordderrex.

"Well, whenever you feel you can tell me," Clem said, "we'll be ready to hear. Both of us." He glanced at his watch. "I should be out of here. I'm late."

"Party?"

"No, I'm working with a hospice for the homeless. We're out most nights, trying to get kids off the streets. The city's full of them." She took him to the door, but before he stepped out he said, "You remember our pagan party at Christmas?"

She grinned. "Of course. That was quite a shindig."

"Tay got stinking drunk after everybody had gone. He knew he wasn't going to be seeing most of them again. Then of course he got sick in the middle of the night, so we stayed up together talking about-oh, I don't know, everything under the sun. And he told me how much he'd always loved Gentle. How Gentle was the mystery man in his life. He'd been dreaming about him, he said: speaking in tongues."

"He told me the same thing," Jude said.

"Then, out of the blue, he said that next year I should have the Nativity back, and go to Midnight Ma.s.s the way we used to, and I told him I thought we'd decided none of that made much sense. And you know what he said to me? He said light was light, whatever name you call it, and it was better to think of it coming in a face you knew." Clem smiled. "I thought he was talking about Christ. But now... now I'm not so sure."

She hugged him hard, pressing her lips against his flushed cheek. Though she suspected that there was truth in what he said, she couldn't bring herself to voice the possibility. Not knowing that the same face Tay had imagined as that of the returning sun was also the face of the darkness that might soon eclipse them all.

44

Though the bed Gentle had collapsed into the night before had been stale, and the pillow beneath his head damp, he couldn't have slept more soundly had he been rocked in the arms of Mother Earth Herself. When he woke, fifteen hours later, it was to a fine June morning, and the dreamless time behind him had put new strength into his sinews. There was no gas, electricity, or hot water, so he was obliged to shower and shave in cold water, which was respectively a bracing and a b.l.o.o.d.y experience. That done, he took some time to a.s.sess the state of the studio. It had not remained entirely untouched in his absence. At some juncture either an old girlfriend or a very particular thief had come in-he'd left two of the windows open, so gaining access had presented no difficulty-and the interloper had stolen both clothes and more private bric-a-brac. It was such a long time since he'd been here, however, that he couldn't remember precisely what was missing: some letters and postcards from the mantelpiece, a few photographs (though he'd not liked to be recorded this way, for what were now obvious reasons), and a few items of jewelry (a gold chain; two rings; a crucifix). The theft didn't much bother him. He'd never been a sentimentalist or a h.o.a.rder. Objects were like glossy magazines: fetching for a day, then readily discarded.