"But, Master-"

"How many times have I told you? Dogs cannot do these things! You don't know what you're doing!"

Tentative laughter from the audience.

"Bring her down! Immediately!"

But I didn't want to come down. I wanted to stay weightless for the rest of time while people below looked up and wished they could be me. Staring forever, rapt, at me the angel, the fairy I could fly!

"Bring her down!"

I dropped.

Falling, I saw only faces. Horror, surprise, wonder frozen on their faces as they saw me drop straight at them. The faces grew larger. How fast does a child fall? How long does it take till impact? All I remember is fast and slow. And before I was scared, before I could even think to scream, I hit.

And died.

10. Painting Heaven.

"Darling, are you all right?"

The words poured slowly into my mind like thick, glutinous sauce. Brown gravy.

With great difficulty I opened my eyes and squinted hard at the first thing I saw. It was awful. Jarring and fragmented, the colors were a bad, gaudy, incomprehensible mix adding up to nothing but mess. If they had been bra.s.s instruments, their squawks and squeals would have made me cover my ears and run away.

But as my head cleared, I remembered with a terrible sinking feeling that what was in front of me was mine-I had painted it. I had been painting it for months and months, but nothing I did made it better. Nothing.

Maybe that's why I had been having the blackouts with increasing regularity. Lying on my back longer and longer each day painting the fresco on the ceiling of the church. The church I had connived Tyndall into buying. The fresco that, when finished, was supposed to have convinced the others I was a real painter. Not just everyone's mistress. Not just the great pair of t.i.ts who the famous ones let stay because I was always available. The Arts f.u.c.ker, as De Kooning called me to my face. But when I was done, they would see. See that I was far, far better than any of them had ever imagined. My fresco would prove it.

It had begun as such a wonderful idea. And the only reason for continuing to see Lionel Tyndall. Let him screw me to his heart's content. Make him crazy for me; make myself into his drug. Then when he was hooked, use him. Use his money and connections to get what I really wanted-the respect of the likes of de Kooning and Eleanor Ward, Lee Krasner and Pollock. Yes, even that b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

One of the few interesting things Tyndall ever said was about them, the great ones: They had no empty s.p.a.ce around them. He was right. My dream was to bring them here and show them what I had accomplished. How good the heaven was I had painted on the ceiling of Lionel Tyndall's church. The church he bought me out of the deepness of his l.u.s.t and his pockets.

In a sketchbook, I had written a line from Matisse that became my essential rule: "I tend towards what I feel: toward a kind of ecstasy. And then I find tranquillity." Since beginning the church project, I had done everything I could to follow my instincts, to "tend towards" what I felt. But sadly what I felt was nowhere near what I had painted. Worse, I could no longer imagine even getting close. No empty s.p.a.ces around them? There was nothing but empty s.p.a.ce around-and in-what I had created.

What's worse, going through life trying to find your pa.s.sion but never finding it, or knowing what you want but no matter how hard you try, never being able to accomplish it? I had wanted to be a painter for fifteen years and had done everything I could to achieve it. But it hadn't happened, and, horribly, it was beginning to look like it never would.

"Darling? Are you all right?"

Tyndall's voice sniveled up from below and made me shudder. He didn't care if I was all right; he wanted me to come down so we could go outside and make love in his car or under a tree or in the water or somewhere. That was our unspoken deal. He bought the abandoned church outside East Hampton and gave me everything I needed to paint it. In return, I was expected to climb down and play with him whenever he called.

But the blackouts I'd been having? Those dangerous spells once or twice a month where everything simply fell away and I came to with no memory of them happening?

"Why don't you come down and we'll have some lunch. You've been up there since seven this morning."

I stared at the ceiling and thought about his hands, his breath on my neck, the thin musky smell of his body when he got excited.

I turned on my side to look down at him. As I did, there was a loud sharp crack from below. Alarmed, I tried turning completely over. But all at once there was a second crack, a high wheee-yow of scaffold metal bending, and everything collapsed.

I dropped.

The last thing I saw, before a metal bar snapped off the scaffolding and flew through my throat, was one of the faces I had painted on the ceiling.

Screaming. There was screaming all around and not just human. Metal-the scream and grind of metal against metal for seconds, then gone. Nothing breaking or snapping this time, only meeting. Meeting for earsplitting seconds in a fast hot sparking touch and gone. We flew. The car rocketed forward. I opened my eyes again onto bright sunlight after the tunnel's blackness. We twisted, rose, turned. A fresh gust of screaming from the children in our car. We went up up up, almost stopped, then fell into the intricate loop and swing of the roller-coaster track.

I looked at James. His hair was flattened against his head. Staring straight ahead, he wore a crazy adrenaline smile. As we sped along I kept watching him, trying to find in his face what had been palpable all day but not clear until now. The moment he turned and looked at me, I knew: I no longer loved him.

It was my eighteenth birthday. James had suggested we go to Playland to celebrate. It had been a wonderful day. We were leaving for different universities in two weeks and had never been closer. But now I knew we would not go beyond those two weeks. No matter what we'd said about writing and calling and Christmas vacation isn't so far away... I no longer loved him.

As the roller coaster curved and fled down the track toward the now visible end of the ride, I let out a sob so strange and violent that it sounded like a bark.

"Do you know what I love about you?"

We sat on a bench eating cotton candy and watching people pa.s.s by. I pretended to be busy working a piece of the sweet pink gunk off my fingers and into my mouth. I didn't want to know what James loved about me, not now, not anymore.

"I feel famous in your arms."

"What?"

"I don't know. I just feel famous when I'm in your arms. When you're holding me. Like I mean something. Like I'm important."

"That's a really nice thing to say, James." I couldn't look at him.

But he took the cotton candy out of my hand and turned my face to his. "It's true. You don't know how much I'm going to miss you next year."

"Me too."

He nodded, a.s.suming we were thinking the same sad thoughts, and that made me feel even worse. I felt my throat thicken and knew I was about to start crying. So I squeezed my eyes closed as tightly as I could.

Instant silence. IT was huge after the roar of the amus.e.m.e.nt park ride. When I looked, thirty-year-old James sat in the bay window across the Crane's View bedroom watching me. All of the dolls were gone. It was once again the room I had shared too briefly with Hugh Oakley.

"Welcome back. What'd you learn on your tour?"

"All those women were me. The little girl flying, the painter, me with you at Playland... All lived different lives but they were the same... person inside. And the only thing they thought about was themselves. They were all total egotists. Were there others? Have I lived other lives, James?"

"Hundreds. They would have shown you more of them but you're smart-you saw it with the three most recent."

"And all of the people in them were connected." I touched my ten fingertips together. "Shumda was Frances's boyfriend. The little girl went to his show. And the woman painting the fresco was Lolly Adc.o.c.k, wasn't she?"

James nodded and said sarcastically, "Who tragically fell to her death just before the world recognized her talent. She died in 1962. Miranda Romanac was born in '62. The little girl died in 1924. Lolly was born the same year."

"You were involved in that scandal about the fake Adc.o.c.k paintings. And Frances owned a real one."

He pointed at me. "So did Hugh, but didn't know it. Those four pictures of the same woman he had? Lolly painted them when she was studying at the Art Students League."

"They're paintings of the little girl who fell at the theater, aren't they? What she would have looked like if she'd lived and grown up. Lolly thought she was imagining them. That's why I felt so strangely about those pictures. Like I knew the woman in them even though I'd never seen her before."

James winced and drew a short harsh breath. "How do you know that?"

"How? For G.o.d's sake, James, what do you think I just went through? What do you think all this is all about? Don't play games. I thought you were here to help me."

"No, you're here to help me. Miranda. You're here to get me the f.u.c.k out! I'm not here for you-I'm here for me. Let me go free, please! I've done everything I can. I've shown you what I know. You knew about those paintings; you knew who the subject was. I didn't. Don't you see? I'm done. I've given you everything I've got. So let me go now. Free me!"

"Why is all this happening to me now? Why suddenly now?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"Where is Hugh now?"

"I don't know."

"Who am I?"

Leaping up, he started toward me, furious. "I don't know! I'm here because I was supposed to tell you what I knew. What I know is, you're reincarnated. Everything in all of the lives you have lived is interconnected. Everything. And each time you've lived you cared only for yourself. The girl in the theater was a bratty, selfish kid. Lolly Adc.o.c.k used people like toilet paper. You... Look what you did to me, even after you knew you didn't care anymore. And Doug Auerbach. The guy with the video camera who came into your store and hit you. You broke up Hugh's marriage because you were selfish and you wanted him.... Always you first, no matter what."

"Why did they make you come for me? Who are they?"

"Miranda? You all right in there?" McCabe's voice through the door made both of us turn. James gestured toward it.

"Your friend's waiting."

"Who are they, James? Just tell me that."

Lifting his chin, he slowly twisted his head to one side, like a confused dog.

"Miranda, open up!"

"I'm okay, Frannie. I'm coming."

James's voice was a high plea. "Please let me go."

Without looking, I opened my left hand. Lying on my palm was a small silvery-white stick. Written on it in perfect brown calligraphic letters was James Stillman.

It began to smoke. It flared into rich flame. Although it burned brightly in the center of my hand, I felt no heat or pain. It was hypnotic. I couldn't take my eyes away. The flame danced and grew and spread up my arm. I felt nothing.

Someone said my name but I only half heard the man's voice. James? McCabe? I looked up. No one was there-James was gone.

Then pain came like a roaring explosion. My arm was agony. I screamed and shook it, but the flame only ate the wind thus created and blossomed upward. My skin went red, orange, molten, and shiny as oil.

But from somewhere inside, from someone I was but had never known, I knew how to stop it. Sweep the fire away like a live cigarette ash. With my free hand I brushed it and the flame that devoured my arm slid slickly down and dropped onto the floor like some kind of jelly.

The door behind me banged open and McCabe was there, pulling me by the collar out of the room. I could barely move. My arm did not hurt anymore. I wanted to watch as the flame spread across the floor, caught on the throw rug and jumped to the bedspread.

"Come on! Come on!" McCabe jerked me and I stumbled backward into him. The bedroom smoked and burned, flames rising high off the blazing bed, licking, blackening the ceiling.

As Frannie pulled I knew what had just happened to me but could not frame it clearly in my mind. When James asked me to free him and without warning I felt the stick in my hand, I was the other person. The one who had conjured stick and flame from nowhere. The one who had lived all the lives and understood why. The one capable of hearing impossible noises in Frances Hatch's building. The one I would soon know too well and fear.

She knew how to free James Stillman and keep pain away from a burning hand. But the moment I heard my name called and looked up, I was Miranda Romanac again and she was only mortal.

Out in the hall, McCabe slammed the door shut behind us and looked worriedly around. "Should we try to put it out or just get the h.e.l.l out of here?"

"We can't get out, Frannie. The house won't let us. It's haunted. By my ghosts now. I brought them in when I came."

He remained silent. The fire crackled two feet away.

"It's the same thing that happened to Frances when I was a kid."

"The same thing?"

"No, but it's the same, believe me. You're right, we can't get out of here now. You gotta figure a way to do it."

"What did Frances do?"

"She went to the attic. Did something up there. I never knew what."

I looked toward the ceiling. "There is no attic."

McCabe looked up. "Sure there is, I been there a hundred times."

"It's gone. There's no more attic, Frannie. The house changes."

He opened his mouth to answer but a m.u.f.fled thumping explosion behind the bedroom door stopped him. "What the f.u.c.k are we gonna do, Miranda? We gotta go somewhere!"

"The bas.e.m.e.nt. It's in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"What is?"

"I don't know, Frannie, I'd tell you if I did. But it's in the bas.e.m.e.nt." I saw my arm. The one on fire moments before. There wasn't a mark on it.

"Wait a minute. Just wait a second." McCabe sprinted down the hall and around a corner. Everything stunk of smoke. It poured from beneath the door into the hall, oozing along the floor.

I had been in the bas.e.m.e.nt only a few times. There were two large rooms. Hugh said when we had some money we would do something interesting with the s.p.a.ce. Hugh. Hugh. Hugh... There was a light in each room down there and one at the top of the stairs. I tried to picture it all and what could possibly be down there that was so important.

Frannie jogged back down the hall looking baffled. "You're right, there's nothing there anymore. Used to be a door in the ceiling with a latch you'd pull and a folding ladder would come down. But it's all gone. There is no f.u.c.kin' attic!"

"Forget it. Let's go."

"The house is going to burn down and we're gonna be in the G.o.dd.a.m.ned bas.e.m.e.nt!"

I led the way. Down the front stairs, a left turn, and just before the kitchen, the white bas.e.m.e.nt door. McCabe reached for the k.n.o.b. I stopped him. "Let me go first."

The dank odor of damp earth and stone. A place where the air never changed, a breeze never blew through. Clicking on the light at the top of the stairs did little good. No more than a sixty-watt bulb, it illuminated only a few steps down and then the rest fell away into a brown darkness. I took firm hold of the rickety banister and started down.