"So it begins," said the Jaff.

He was standing at the highest window of Coney Eye, looking down upon the driveway. It was a little before noon, and the limos gliding up the driveway announced the first of the party guests. He would have liked to have Tommy-Ray at his side at this juncture, but the boy had not yet returned from his trip to the Mission. No matter. Lamar had proved a more than able subst.i.tute. There had been one uncomfortable moment, when the Jaff had finally put off the mask of being Buddy Vance and presented his true face to the comedian, but it hadn't taken long to bring the man around. In some regard he was more preferable company to Tommy-Ray; more sensual, more cynical. What was more he had a thorough knowledge of the guests who would soon be gathering in Buddy Vance's memory; a more thorough knowledge, indeed, than the widow Roch.e.l.le. She had sunk deeper and deeper into a drug-induced stupor since the previous evening; a condition which Lamar had taken s.e.xual advantage of, much to the Jaff's amus.e.m.e.nt. Once upon a time (so long ago) he might have done the same, of course. No, not might, would. Roch.e.l.le Vance was undoubtedly beautiful, and her addiction, informed as it was by a constant undercurrent of rage, made her even more attractive. But these were affairs of the flesh, and for another life. There were more urgent pursuits: namely, the power to be garnered from the guests who were even now gathering below. Lamar had run down the list with him, offering some savage observation or other on practically every one. Corrupt lawyers, addicted actors, reformed wh.o.r.es, pimps, priapists, hitmen, white men with black souls, hot men with cold, a.s.s-kissers, c.o.ke-sniffers, the wretched high, the more wretched low, egotists, onanists and hedonists to a man. Where better to find the kind of forces he needed to keep him from harm when the Art opened? He would find fears in these addicted, bewildered, inflated souls of a kind he'd never have found in the mere bourgeois. From them he'd raise terata the like of which the world had never seen. Then he'd be ready. Fletcher was dead, and his army, if it had indeed manifested itself, was keeping its head low.

There was nothing left between the Jaff and Quiddity.

As he stood at the window and watched the victims disembark, greeting one another with rhinestone smiles and pinched kisses, his thoughts went-of all places-to that dead-letter room in Omaha, Nebraska, where, so many lives ago, he'd first had a hint of America's secret self. He remembered Homer, who'd opened the door to that treasure house, and later died against it, his life stabbed out by the blunt-bladed knife the Jaff still carried in his jacket pocket. Death had meant something then. Been an experience to go in dread of. It wasn't until he'd stepped into the Loop that he'd realized how irrelevant such fears were, when time could be suspended, even by a minor charlatan like Kissoon. Presumably the shaman was still secure in his refuge, as far from his spiritual creditors, or the lynch-mob, as it was possible to get. Lingering in the Loop, planning the getting of power. Or holding it at bay.

That last notion occurred to him now for the first time, like a long-postponed solution to a puzzle he hadn't even known he'd been gnawing at. Kissoon had been holding the moment because if he once let it slip he'd unleash his own death...

"Well..." he murmured.

Lamar was behind him. "Well, what?"

"Just musing," the Jaff said. He turned from the window. "Is the widow already downstairs?"

"I'm trying to rouse her."

"Who's greeting the guests?"

"n.o.body."

"Go to it."

"I thought you wanted me here."

"Later. Once they've all arrived you can bring them up one by one."

"As you wish."

"One question."

"Only one?"

"Why aren't you afraid of me?"

Lamar narrowed his already narrow eyes. Then said: "I've still got my sense of the ridiculous."

Without waiting for any riposte from the Jaff he opened the door and headed about his duties as host. The Jaff turned back to the window. Another limo was at the gates, this one white, its driver showing his pa.s.sengers' invitations to the guards.

"One by one," the Jaff murmured to himself. "One by wretched one."

Grillo's invitation to the party at Coney Eye had been delivered by hand mid-morning, its courier Ellen Nguyen. Her manner was friendly but brisk; there was no trace of the intimacy that had flowered between them the previous afternoon. He invited her into his hotel room but she insisted that there was no time: "I'm needed up at the house," she said. "Roch.e.l.le seems to be completely out of it. I don't think you need give a second thought to being recognized. But you will need the invitation. Fill in whatever name you want to invent. There'll be a lot of security so don't lose it. This is one party you won't be able to talk your way into."

"Where will you be?"

"I don't even think I'll be there."

"I thought you said you were going up there now."

"Just for the preparations. As soon as the party starts, I'm out. I don't want to mix with those people. Parasites, all of them. None of them really loved Buddy. It's just a show."

"Well I'll tell it like I see it."

"Do that," she said, turning to go.

"Could we just talk a moment?" Grillo said.

"About what? I haven't got much time."

"About you and me," Grillo said. "About what happened yesterday."

She looked at him without focusing her gaze. "What happened, happened," she said. "We were both there. What's to say?"

"Well for one: how about trying it again?"

Again, the unfixed look.

"I don't think so," she said.

"You didn't give me a chance-" he said.

"Oh no," she replied, eager to correct any error he was about to make. "You were fine...but things have changed."

"Since yesterday?"

"Yes," she said. "I can't quite tell you how..." She let the sentence hang, then took another thought up. "We're both adults. We know how these things work."

He was about to say that no, he didn't know how this or any other thing worked any longer, but that after this conversation his self-esteem was enfeebled enough without beating it to its knees with further confessions.

"Be careful at the party," she said as she once more turned to go.

He couldn't keep himself from saying, "Thanks for that at least."

She returned him a small, enigmatic smile, and left.

IV.

The trip back to the Grove had been lengthy for Tommy-Ray, but it was lengthier still for Tesla and Raul, though for less metaphysical reasons. For one, Tesla's car was not so hot, and it had taken quite a beating on the way down; it was now much the worse for wear. For another, though she had been raised from near death by the touch of the Nuncio, it had left her with side-effects the full extent of which she didn't really grasp until they were over the border. Though she was driving a solid car along a solid highway her grasp of that solidity was not as good as it had been. She felt a pull on her from other places and other states of mind. She'd driven high on drugs and drink in the past but what she was experiencing now was a wilder ride altogether, as though her brain had summoned up from memory fragments of every trip she'd ever taken, every hallucinogen, every tranquilizer, and was running her through the lot, giving her mind a shot of each. One moment she knew she was whooping like a wild thing (she could hear herself, like another voice), the next she was floating in ether with the highway dissolving in front of her, the next her thoughts were filthier than the New York subway, and it was all she could do to stop herself putting an end to the whole d.a.m.n farce of living with one turn of the wheel. Through it all, two facts. One, that of Raul sitting beside her, gripping the dashboard with white-knuckled hands, his fear pungent. The other, the place that she'd visited in her Nunciate dream, Kissoon's Loop. Though it was not as real as the car she was travelling in, and the smell of Raul, it was no less insistent. She carried its memory with her every mile they covered. Trinity, he'd called it, and it, or Kissoon himself, wanted her back. She felt its pull, almost like a physical claim upon her. She resisted it, though not entirely willingly. Though she'd been glad to be delivered back into life, what she'd seen and heard in her time in Trinity made her curious to return; even anxious. The more she resisted the more exhausted she became, until by the time they reached the outskirts of L.A. she was like someone deprived of sleep: with waking dreams threatening to erupt at any moment into the texture of reality.

"We're going to have to stop for a while," she told Raul, aware that she was slurring as she spoke. "Or I'm going to end up killing us both."

"You want to sleep?"

"I don't know," she said, afraid that to sleep would invite as many problems as it would solve. "At least rest. Get some coffee inside me, and put my mind in order."

"Here?" said Raul.

"Here what?"

"We stop here?"

"No," she said. "We'll go back to my apartment. It's half an hour from here. That's if we fly-"

You already are, baby, her mind said, and you'll probably never stop. You're a resurrected woman. What do you expect? That life should simply fumble on as though nothing had happened? Forget it. Things'll never be the same again.

But West Hollywood hadn't changed; still Boy's Town prettified: the bars, the style stores where she bought her jewelry. She took a left off Santa Monica on to North Huntley Drive, where she'd lived for the five years she'd been in L.A. It was almost noon now, and the smog was burning off the city. She parked the car in the garage below the building, and took Raul up to Apartment V. The windows of her downstairs neighbor, a sour, repressed little man with whom she'd exchanged no more than three sentences in half a decade, and two of those invective, were open, and he doubtless saw her pa.s.sing. She estimated it would take him twenty minutes at the most to inform the block that Miss Lonelyhearts, as she'd heard he called her, was back in town-looking like s.h.i.t, and accompanied by Quasimodo. So be it. She had other things to worry about, like how to align her key with the lock, a trick which repeatedly defeated her confounded senses. Raul came to the rescue, taking the key from her trembling fingers and letting them both in. The apartment, as usual, was a disaster area. She left the door wide and opened the windows to let in some less stale air, then played her messages. Her agent had called twice, both times to report that there was no further news on the castaway screenplay; Saralyn had called, asking if she knew where Grillo was. Following Saralyn, Tesla's mother: her contribution more a litany of sins than a message-crimes committed by the world in general, and her father in particular. Finally there was a message from Mickey de Falco, who made spare bucks providing o.r.g.a.s.mic grunts for f.u.c.k films, and needed a partner for a gig. In the background, a barking dog. "And as soon as you're back," he said in signing off, "come and get this f.u.c.king dog before it eats me outta house and home." She caught Raul watching her as she listened to the calls, his bemus.e.m.e.nt unconcealed.

"My peer group," she said when Mickey had said his farewells. "Aren't they a gas? Look, I'm going to have a little nap. It's obvious where everything is, right? Refrigerator; TV; toilet. Wake me in an hour, yeah?"

"An hour."

"I'd like tea, but we don't have the time." She stared at him, staring at her. "Am I making any sense?"

"Yes..." he replied doubtfully.

"Slurring my words?"

"Yes."

"Thought so. OK. The apartment's yours. Don't answer the phone. See you in an hour."

She stumbled through to the bathroom without waiting for further confirmation, stripped down completely, contemplated a shower, settled for a splash of cold water on her face, b.r.e.a.s.t.s and arms, then went through to the bedroom. The room was hot, but she knew better than to open the window. When her immediate neighbor Ron woke, which was around now, he would start to play opera. It was either the heat of the room or Lucia di Lammermoor. She chose to sweat.

Left to his own devices Raul found a selection of edibles in the refrigerator, took them to the open window, sat down, and shook. He could not remember being so afraid, back since the day Fletcher's madness had begun. Now, as then, the rules of the world had suddenly changed without warning, and he no longer knew what his purpose was to be. In his heart of hearts he'd given up hoping to see Fletcher again. The shrine he'd kept at the Mission, which had been a beacon at the start, had become a memorial. He'd expected to die there, alone, humored to the last as a half-wit, which in many ways he was. He could scarcely write, except to scrawl his own name. He couldn't read. Most of the objects in the woman's room were a total mystery to him. He was lost.

A cry from the next room stirred him from self-pity.

"Tesla?" he called.

There was no coherent reply: only further muted cries. He got up and followed the sound. The door to her bedroom was closed. He hesitated, hand on handle, nervous of entering without invitation. Then another round of cries reached him. He pushed the door open.

He'd never in his life seen a woman so exposed. The sight of Tesla sprawled on the bed transfixed him. Her arms were at her sides, gripping the sheet, her head rolled from side to side. But there was a fogginess about her body that reminded him of what had happened on the road below the Mission. She was moving away from him again. Back towards the Loop. Her shouts had become moans now. They were not of pleasure. She was going unwillingly.

He called her name again, very loudly. She suddenly sat bolt upright, eyes wide and staring at him.

"Jesus!" she said. She was panting, as though she'd just run a race. "Jesus. Jesus. Jesus."

"You were shouting..." he said, trying to begin to explain his presence in the room.

Only now did she seem to realize their situation: her nakedness, his embarra.s.sed fascination. She reached for a sheet and started to haul it over her, but her intention was distracted by what she'd just experienced.

"I was there," she said.

"I know."

"Trinity. Kissoon's Loop."

As they'd driven back up the coast she'd done her best to explain to him the vision she'd had while the Nuncio had been healing her, both as a way to fix its details in her head and to keep a recurrence at bay by coaxing the memories out of the sealed cell of her inner life and into shared experience. She painted a repulsive picture of Kissoon.

"You saw him?" Raul said.

"I didn't get to the hut," she replied. "But he wants me there. I can feel him pulling. " She put her hand on her stomach. "I can feel him now, Raul."

"I'm here," he said. "I won't let you go."

"I know, and I'm glad."

She reached out. "Take hold of my hand, huh?" He tentatively approached the bed. "Please," she said. He did so. "I saw that town again," she went on. "It seems so real, except there's n.o.body there, n.o.body at all. It's...it's like a stage...like something's going to be performed there."

"Performed."

"This is making no sense, I know, but I'm just telling you what I feel. Something terrible's going to happen there, Raul. The worst thing imaginable."

"You don't know what?"

"Or maybe it already happened?" she said. "Maybe that's why there's n.o.body in the town. No. No. That's not it. It's not over, it's just about to happen."

She tried to make sense of her confusions the best way she knew. If she were setting a scene in that town, for a movie, what would it be? A gun-fight on Main Street? The citizens locked up behind their doors while the White Hats and the Black Hats shot it out? Possibly. Or a town vacated as some stomping behemoth appeared on the horizon? The cla.s.sic fifties monster scenario: a creature woken by nuclear tests- "That's closer," she said.

"What is?"

"Maybe it's a dinosaur movie. Or a giant tarantula. I don't know. That's definitely closer. Christ, this is frustrating! I know something about this place, Raul, and I can't quite get hold of it."

From next door, the strains of Donizetti's masterpiece. She knew it so well now she could have sung along with it had she had the voice.

"I'm going to make some coffee," she said. "Wake myself up. Will you go and ask Ron for some milk?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Just tell him you're a friend of mine."

Raul got up off the bed, detaching his hand from hers.

"Ron's apartment's number four," she called after him, then went through to the bathroom and took her postponed shower, still vexed by the problem of the town. By the time she'd sluiced herself down and found a clean T-shirt and jeans Raul was back in the apartment, and the telephone was ringing. From the other end, opera and Ron.

"Where did you find him?" he wanted to know. "And does he have a brother?"

"Is it impossible to have a private life around here?" she said.

"You shouldn't have paraded him, girl," Ron replied. "What is he, a truck driver? Marines? He's so broad."

"That he is."

"If he gets bored just send him back over."