Fifteen

Friday, January 6

Hester's new friends, the Bundys, had decided on Vanilla Creme for the bedroom and a lustier color for the living room, called Fiesta Red, which went well with the heavy Mexican furniture and earthy artifacts they'd collected while living in semi-retirement in Cuernavaca. Also, Meg swore, it was the exact shade of the dress she'd worn for the climactic zocalo number in Holiday in Guadalajara, their last film for MGM in 1952. Miles disagreed, provoking a Spirited dust-up, which Miles attempted to settle Friday afternoon by borrowing a 16-millimeter print from a collector and screening it on a dirty wall of their new living room.

Hester enjoyed the gaudy and corny movie, which was slightly older than she was. Jane Powell was adorable and Red Skelton had some delicious business, like the taco eating contest with the little Mex boy who turned out to be triplets. The dancing, by petite Vera-Ellen and the Bundys, was spectacular, although the back-lot sets didn't look much like the Guadalajara Hester had toured three summers ago.

Meg's disputed dress was almost, but not quite, the shade she recalled. Meg blamed deterioration of the negative and a bad print. Miles, aglow with gin-fired nostalgia, conceded peaceably, and they all got back to the decorating.

Hester had volunteered to paint the bathroom, not much of a chore for her: she was speedy and efficient. Meg tackled the living room in more leisurely fashion. Miles, for his part, moved furniture, stirred paint, drank more gin and ambled around in jeans and shoddy sneakers while he reminisced in hilarious fashion. Hester dropped her brush more than once in the throes of a giggling fit. The Bundys certainly had had a lot of fun during those last golden years of the old Hollywood, before TV and the bitterness and paranoia generated by the witch hunts all but destroyed the place.

At six o'clock Miles went out for Chinese food. Hester and Meg cleaned up, opened more windows to dilute the paint fumes and sprawled on cushions in the living room.

Meg was, had to be, in her middle fifties, the farmer's daughter gone silver-gray but still in robust good health and with a damn fine figure; there was just the nicest hint of earth mother about Meg. Miles was as dapper and California recherche as he looked in all the bygone flicks. They'd danced every day together, for the fun of it, they thought, while operating their modest dance-and-drama school in 'Vaca. Neither expected to appear professionally again, in movies or elsewhere. But a recent successful pastiche of glorious moments from the classic MGM musicals had featured them; suddenly they were in demand, sought by those promoters and packagers waxing fat off candyland camp. So the project they'd settled on was a funny-sentimental salute to the postwar film capital, scheduled to go into rehearsals in February. And here they were back in New York after a quarter of a century, loving every minute of their new adventure. Already they'd been to Roseland twice, just kicking up their heels.

"All the regulars, the old-timers, applauded," Megsaid dreamily. "But it wasn't a rowdy scene, everyone crowding in, talking at once, trying to cop a feel or two. They stood back at the edge of the floor, politely and expectantly, as if we were royalty. Billy the bandleader announced that we would dance for them. Then—it was eerie—almost in one voice they requested a waltz. Imagine, a waltz! So we did that bit of introductory dialogue from The Perfect Gentleman, Miles and I meeting late at night in Waterloo Station. We'll have to run that one for you sometime, kiddo. We set the scene, you could almost see the billowing clouds of train smoke, and then we danced, and it was like falling in love all over again. Everyone at Roseland seemed to be caught up in this magical spell. I saw tears as we drifted past them; we heard them whispering, 'Welcome back,' and, 'We've missed you'—sentiments like that. Gee, did we have a swell time."

"What was Judy Garland really like?"

"You too? Truth is I didn't really know her, even though we were on the lot together for years. We made that one picture together, I think I had four or five scenes with Judy. What I remember most vividly about Judy is running across her absolutely naked in a dim corner of the stage behind some scenery. Oh, I don't mean bare assed, she had on this ponderous hoopskirt costume. I'm talking about the naked emotion she displayed, over a chocolate éclair someone had smuggled to her. You know she had a terrible problem with her weight, they just didn't allow her any goodies when she was working, which was practically nonstop. So here was Judes clutching—fondling—this enormous chocolate éclair, it must have been a foot long, but I couldn't tell for sure because one end of it was in her mouth: she was licking, sucking, all but ravishing it, I felt like some kind of voyeur just watching her.

"Judy almost choked on her sweet-treat when she saw me out of the corner of her eye. She stood there with that naughty thing melting and oozing in her two hands—even away from the lights it was plenty hot on the stage—and there was goo ear to ear. To add to her misery she began to cry. She didn't know me, and she was afraid I was one of the company spies who reported every move she made to the director or to Louis B. himself. Poor miserable kid! I told her I loved chocolate éclairs myself (although I never wanted to blow one), and then I helped her get her face in order because they were hollering for First Team. There was no place to hide the rest of the éclair, but she wasn't about to give it up. She wrapped it in a big hurry and shoved it at me and said in that inimitable voice, 'Here, I'll love you forever, just don't let anything happen to it.' "

"What did you do?"

"Well, I was wearing this working-girl's apron and had some storage space, I was able to stuff the éclair out of sight. I figured I wouldn't have to keep it more than a few minutes. I forgot I was in the background of the scene they'd been resetting the lights for. A second A.D. grabbed and hustled me into place, and there I stood, babes, for an hour and a half while Judy flubbed twenty-three takes in a row beneath those big arcs they used to simulate desert sunshine. Calamity. I could smell the éclair going bad right under my nose. As soon as the shot went in the can I got out of there, but Miss Garland was right behind me, drooling. Her dressing room was full of spies, so she dragged me to another hidey-hole and demanded her éclair. I wish you could have seen the look on her face when I reamed it out of the apron. She was furious! She stamped her foot and said over and over, 'Jesus Jumping Christ, look at it! What did you do to my éclair?' She wanted to lick the wrapping but I wouldn't let her. By then it was virulent enough to wipe out half of Culver City."

Miles came back staggering under a load of succulent Cantonese vittles, but after laying out the cartons he discovered he'd forgotten eggrolls. He was willing to trudge another ten blocks in the biting cold to redeem himself, but Hester had commercially packaged eggrolls in her freezer, and she ran down two flights to get them.

Hester had been having such a good time with Meg she hadn't watched the clock, and she was startled to see when she entered her kitchen that it was now close to seven. She grabbed the eggrolls, charged back upstairs, ran into the Bundys' flat, dropped the package where Meg would find it and ran out the door again.

"Phone call!" she blared. "Ten minutes! Start without me!"

Meg trailed her to the door. "Use our phone, you can eat and talk at the same—"

"Long distance!" Hester shouted back and the apartment door slammed behind her. Meg shook her head and went back to the kitchen.

"I'll put the eggrolls in, would you close the other window in there, Miles? It's getting drafty."

"The place is shaping up," Miles observed, crossing the half painted living room. "Hester's been a lot of help, hasn't she?"

"Hester is a goddamn jewel," Meg said from the kitchen.

Miles put the window down but he didn't lower the blinds. He stood with his hands behind his back looking out until, below, he saw Hester hurrying down the front steps of the brownstone, getting into her parka. He looked at his watch.

"Hester's gone out to make her phone call," he observed.

"Uh-huh."

"That makes every night this week, at seven o'clock on the dot."

"Do you want a little moo goo gai pan, or a lot?"

"A lot."

"Tummy, tummy," Meg admonished.

"I'll work it off in bed," Miles advised her. In the kitchen doorway Meg clutched at her heart, miming terror. With a smile every bit as endearing as Fred Astaire's, Miles gave her the finger, then lowered the blind and closed the slats. After turning on another lamp he visited the bathroom. He returned to the table rubbing his hands together in anticipation of a feast.

"The loo looks terrific; how do you suppose she does it without leaving any brush marks?"

"Deft," Meg said. "Hester is deft."

"We'll have to do something for Hester," he said, sitting down.

"I know."

"What?"

"I'm giving it some thought," Meg said, pouring strong tea.

Peter had warned her to use only the public telephones on the street, but there was a scarcity of those in her immediate neighborhood; she had to run all the way to Thirty-Sixth-and Lex. Hester arrived almost completely out of breath, her face scalded by cold. Her watch, which kept excellent time, told her it was already twenty-one seconds past the hour. She tore off a glove and pressed her dime into the slot and began poking the stainless steel buttons. When she had punched out the number she huddled up against the phone box, trying to keep her face out of the abrasive wind.

Hester let the phone ring nineteen times before she gave it up for the night.

By then she was sobbing. She had not seen Peter since shortly after 2 P.M. on New Year's Eve, when he left her alone on Long Island. All she knew about his subsequent problems she had inferred from a few paragraphs in the Daily News: a priest, obviously mistaken for Peter, shot and killed. It was a brief story, not followed up. A full week had passed, without a word or a sign from Peter himself. She wanted to scream at the unresponsive phone.

Alive? Dead? Where are you, Peter?

Tonight she didn't even get her dime back.

No longer in the mood for company but feeling the pressure of a social obligation, Hester walked back to her building between Second and First. When she rejoined the Bundys she was still falsely radiant from the cold, but even so they could tell Hester was more than a little heartsick. She was thankful that Meg and Miles had the class to respect her privacy and make no mention of her sadly altered mood.

While there was snow in the streets of New York City, the state of Virginia south of Charlottesville was enjoying an unusually balmy week.

From the Puma helicopter flying at four thousand feet, a soupy red sun could be seen as it set behind the Blue Ridge. Near the sun in the faded sky, but perhaps a thousand light years 1 from our solar system, was an object bright as an evening star, an exploding nova.

Nick O'Hanna, one of the supergrades aboard the chopper, pointed it out to his chief. Byron Todfield looked up from the fresh file of intelligence grist he was studying, but he wasn't all that interested in something which was happening outside his sphere of operations. Another supergrade, the druidical Bose Venokur, was reading Mishima on the trip down to the Plantation; he quoted from Spring Snow: "History is a record of destruction. One must always make room for the next ephemeral crystal." Nobody paid any attention to him. One of the bodyguards from Watchbird Section swore under his breath; he was losing at blackjack. The mighty helicopter flew on at a cruising speed of 165 miles per hour.

They reached the Plantation a little before six and the helicopter landed in the compound on the south bank of the James. The night sky was clear but already there was a haze over the fallow land, thickening to mist in the low-lying bends of the river. Around them as they hurried into waiting vehicles, lights burned like droplets of napalm. O'Hanna shivered momentarily, crisis-conscious. He didn't know much about what went on at the Plantation because it hadn't been his business to know. Still, he'd heard a few lurid stories.

The drive to the manse took a couple of minutes. It was a brick Colonial house with a veranda that overlooked the river valley. There were smaller outbuildings in the style of the main house, boxwood hedges that had been planted before the Revolution. A houseboy in knickers was at the door to take their coats.

Their host, a small man wearing mirror sunglasses, came down the wide curving staircase to greet them. His name was Marcus Woolwine. He was pleasant, even effusive, and though he shook hands well he bothered O'Hanna: but then Nick had never liked looking at a man and seeing little more than his own badly posed and eavesdropping reflection. Woolwine's assistant, by contrast, was a milk-fed slab of young farmer, cornshock hair and red cheeks, but O'Hanna didn't care for the set of his mouth, a lip that met his underlip sharp and slanted as the blade of a guillotine. O'Hanna felt uneasy again; no, he didn't like these men, and the implications of their power disturbed him.

"How's Peter?" O'Hanna asked.

Woolwine smiled. "Your friend is working out in the gym."

"What?" O'Hanna said, amazed. "He was pretty sick when he—"

"Dangerously ill, I would say: dwelling far out on the ragged edge of nervous exhaustion. A temperature of a hundred and three. Spot of pneumonia in the left lung, no doubt from the ingested filth of the river. We also discovered a good-sized duodenal ulcer. But he's fit again—"

"After five days?"

"I've been called on to perform much more difficult feats of rehabilitation in seventy-two hours or less," Woolwine replied tartly. "The mind heals the body far more effectively than any drug. Come see for yourself. Mr. Todfield, will you be speaking to him at this time?"

"By all means," Todfield said.

They reached the outlying gym via an enclosed and heated walkway. Peter, wearing a red sweat suit, was lifting weights. He was assisted by a lovely blonde with intriguing ginger ale-and-verdigris eyes. She was the sort of girl who could be sunny and indomitable without triggering insulin shock. Peter lay on his back on a bench doing leg lifts, twenty pounds on each leg. He had worked up a healthy sweat. He had a good sunlamp tan going, and seemed in a bonny frame of mind.

O'Hanna, Todfield and Venokur crossed the maple floor. The blonde girl glanced at them, then touched Peter's shoulder. He got up and flashed a smile at Nick O'Hanna, studied the other men.

"Peter? Goddamn, if you don't look great!"

Peter shook the offered hand. "I've never felt better, Nick."

"I want you to meet my boss, Byron Todfield. And this is our chief of Hothouse Section, Bose Venokur."

Peter shook hands all around. "Just get in?"

"A few minutes ago," Todfield said.

"I suppose Nick told you what's happened to me—and to my son."

"The full story. Of course we've always known a great deal about you, Peter. You're a resourceful and valuable man. I wish we'd had you on our team. It's absolutely amazing how you've survived Childermass's treachery, not to mention a full-scale manhunt."

Peter looked at his friend O'Hanna.

"I might not have pulled through this time. But for Nick."

O'Hanna said, "We've wondered why you didn't come to me sooner, Pete. I mean, opposite sides of the fence and all, but you know I would've believed you."

"My old Navy buddy," Peter said with nostalgia. "But there's an axiom they drill into us at MORG, from the very beginning. You can't trust the FBI, or NSA. Above all you can't trust the Langley gang. I was afraid you'd hear me out politely, then turn me over to Childermass."

O'Hanna scowled. "Jesus! That madman. Not a chance."

"The important thing now is—" Peter turned to Todfield. "Do you think you can help me, sir?"

"You bet, " Todfield replied vigorously. "But I have to say to you, Peter, that as of this moment we still don't know where Robin is. We'll keep trying to locate him. In the meantime— you'll have all the moral support and material help you could ask for."

Peter nodded soberly.

"Thank you. Thank you." He couldn't stop nodding then; his face became pinched-looking and his eyes were blurry. "Thank you. Because the important thing is, the thing is, I have to find my son. My son. I've got to. Find him. Find Robin. Find Robin." He turned to the wall and began hammering it with a fist. "Find Robin."

The girl stepped in protectively and put her hands on Peter's shoulders.

"Peter, don't," she said. She looked at the incredulous men. "He's a little tired," she explained.

Peter sobbed once, a wild gulping sound, and then he was motionless as the winsome girl slipped an arm around him. She cupped his raised fist with her free hand.

"Your friends will be having dinner now," she said softly. She addressed O'Hanna: "Is there anything else you'd like to say to Peter?"

O'Hanna swallowed bitterly.

"The boss is sticking around for a couple of days, Pete. We'll —we'll be talking to you."

As they walked away Peter turned: he seemed to have recovered totally from his frenzied agitation over his son. He was grinning.

"Hey, Nick."

Nick turned distractedly. "Ole buddy."

"How are they biting for you?"

"Oh—just fair, I guess."

"Keep at it," Peter advised him.

"Sure. You keep well, Pete."

"I've never felt better, Nick. Listen, we'll be out on the flats first thing in the morning."

"How about a dip now?" the girl said to Peter: her voice had acquired a seductive furriness. "The ocean's warm as spit this time of night; great for a long lazy swim."

They heard Peter laugh, deep in his throat, as they left the gym.                                                                 

Outside Woolwine and his young assistant joined them. Woolwine was itching with self-satisfaction.

"Gentlemen?"

"Jesus," O'Hanna muttered, shaking his head. "To see him like this—you should have known him—that was always one hell of a man. Where does Peter think he is?"

"Fishing with you, in the Florida keys. The two of you left Falls Church on Sunday afternoon, flying down in your Cherokee to your lodge on Lower Matecumbe. You've been there ever since. It was useful to provide Peter with a continuous memory beginning moments before he collapsed on your living room carpet on New Year's night. So bear in mind when you talk to him that you're catching bonefish and boozing a little and soaking up sun, getting decently but not gaudily tanned—we don't want Peter calling attention to himself in the dead of winter when he's turned loose in New York again."

Venokur said thoughtfully, "For a robot he seems altogether too emotional."

"What a curious idea," Woolwine said, looking at him in mild surprise and then (as if he hadn't seriously observed Venokur before) with contempt. "I don't create robots. That's hackwork. Mr. Sandza is engaged in a life and death pursuit, a quest of epic proportions. He must find his son. Our primary aim is to strengthen his resolve, to make him even more single-minded and resourceful. We don't want to do anything to blunt the cutting edge of his high purpose; he mustn't lose a jot of animal cunning. His outburst seemed somewhat theatrical, I grant you, but you should remember that he is in a stage forty trance, and will remain at that deep level until we finish our implant counseling. Let us say, Wednesday of next week. By Wednesday I assure you he will be without flaw."

"You can do some amazing things here," Todfield said respectfully.

Woolwine chuckled, mollified.

"I think we can at that, sir."

The limousine carrying Dr. Irving Roth and his Paragon associate Dr. Maylun Chan We paused at the gates of Sutton Mews and was waved through as soon as the guard verified that it had the correct number of passengers.

"So this is Sutton Mews," Maylun said. She had the not-uncommon physical perfection of Oriental peoples: clean, spare, eyes like matched black pearls, she seemed too exactingly made to have come from any womb. A small tooth-white scar on her forehead was a valuable flaw, a hint of fallibility. "I've seen these houses from the deck of the Circle Line. I always wanted to know who lived here, the lucky devils."

"Nothing but goddamn Bellavers," Roth said. "The whole block."

"Not what you'd call a pretentious house. But oh, so charming."

"He's not a pretentious man."

To prove Roth's assertion Avery Bellaver met them at the door. He took their coats and hung them up, then escorted his guests to the library where Katharine was waiting.

Roth saw immediately that Katharine Bellaver was under a bone-breaking strain; she looked glazed by opiates. Nevertheless she was still a dazzler, and he smiled warmly at her.

Then Roth looked expectantly at his host.

"Will Gillian be joining us?"

"Gillian isn't here—she went to the Philharmonic, and she'll be staying overnight with a friend." When Roth didn't speak Avery said, "From my conversation with you I was under the impression that Gillian wasn't dangerous unless she came into contact with a—a potential bleeder."

Roth touched the bald spot on his head. It looked as vulnerable as a bit of underbelly. "But exposing her to a large crowd —I really wish you hadn't let her go."

Katharine spoke up. "I thought she needed—a touch of normalcy in her life. Good music, someone her own age to talk to." Her voice threatened to break, but she controlled it with a frowning self-hatred which he found clinically interesting. "I wanted to get her out of this house, and away from—him."

Roth had no idea who Katharine was referring to. "We can hope that it was a wise decision."

Katharine defended it. "You don't know what's been happening. You don't know what's going on."

"I know very little," Roth replied humbly. But he had guessed a hell of a lot. Maylun was setting up her Nagra tape recorder. "Do you have a recent picture of Gillian?" Avery produced a framed photograph from his desk. She looked very different from the girl Roth had seen for only a few seconds in the hospital corridor. She looked modest, intelligent, self-sustained. A heroic width of forehead, ravishing eyes, spacious smile. Roth was extravagant about her beauty and asked those questions that could only solicit answers flattering to parent and child alike. In this manner he began skillfully to pick at the lacings of the pitiably straitened Bellavers, setting them up for the difficult investigation that lay ahead.

It was past midnight when he finished with his questions. For three or four minutes longer no one spoke at all. Katharine sat absent-mindedly rearranging her abundant hair, pausing to cough dryly into a handkerchief. Avery's eyes were inflamed; he scraped at the bowl of his pipe with a sharpened kitchen match, a sound that got on everyone's nerves. Maylun rewound the tape she had made. Roth, who was stiff and sore from sitting so long, got up and stretched and then helped himself to the pitcher of Ind Coope bitter; he'd already put away three pints of one of the world's great ales, which Avery Bellaver had flown in by the barrel direct from the brewery in England. Roth envied him that touch of gracious living.

He faced the Bellavers as they sat side by side on a sofa.

"All you know of Skipper, or Robin, is what Gillian has told you. Neither of you has seen a manifestation."

Avery shook his head. Katharine shuddered.

"Seen—? No."

Roth smiled indulgently. "What is it, Mrs. Bellaver?"

She lowered her eyes.

"The night Gillian came home from the hospital she showed me a—puppet. Her Skipper puppet. It had red hair. It was a lascivious, grinning thing with a—a man-sized cock. Gillian claimed she'd always had Skipper. But I never saw it before."

"Where is the puppet now?"

"Wouldn't I like to know? It disappeared. An hour, two hours later, I went back to the marionette theatre. Not there. In its place was a mangled cat."

"A mangled cat," Roth echoed.

"Yes. No, not exactly what the word implies. But dead. Distorted. A cat shape. It had Sulky Sue's coloring, although it was difficult to tell—I had Patrick get rid of it."

She stared at Roth with pinpoint eyes.

"I'm not making this up," she said huskily. "Patrick saw it too."

"The cat," Roth said with a fixed marveling smile.

"Yes, the cat!"

"Then there most certainly was a cat," Roth conceded. "A hit-and-run victim, perhaps?"

"That's—just what I told myself. But—the puppet—"

"I think Gillian made you believe in Skipper for a little while. She believes, most passionately."

Avery said, "There is no Skipper? No Robin?"

Roth shook his head. "No, sir. As a child Gillian invented him to fill a need; obviously he took the place of the twin who died shortly before birth. Now, faced with a crisis, she's reinvented him, or perhaps a more adult version equipped with telemagical powers, to help her out. Nevertheless Robin S—Robin is a fantasy."

"Dr. Roth, I can't believe my daughter is mad."

"Of course she isn't! But the psychometric power she possesses is frighteningly real, and dangerous. Are you familiar with the short story about the man who went on a time-travel expedition, and changed the fate of the world by inadvertently stepping on a butterfly in some prehistoric epoch? When he returned to his own time he found that, because of his carelessness, it was now a grotesque, savagely distorted world with nothing beautiful in it any more. Gillian, as she flashes back and forth in time, is like our man who crushed the butterfly. Her very thoughts can significantly affect reality as we know it. She urgently needs professional help to cope with her power."

"Can you help her?" Katharine demanded.

"Yes. Try not to worry, Mrs. Bellaver."

Roth polished off the mug of Ind Coope. He felt persuasive and confident; things were going much better than he'd hoped. He had not missed the relief in their faces when he abruptly dismissed Robin as delusional. Words could be magic too, and his magic was potent tonight.

"I think it would be a very good idea," he said, "if we sent for Gillian now."

At mid-concert, between Brahms's Tragic Overture and the excerpts from Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, Gillian had felt unwell and needed to go to the lounge in a hurry. Larue, worried that she might faint, accompanied her, but Gillian took a tablet and her spell of nausea soon passed. Crowds, a little too much excitement. They strolled the lobby through Gerontius and except for a minor headache Gillian felt okay.

Larue suggested they skip the Marosszek Dances and go back to her place.

Gillian wanted to walk, and she argued that the cold air would pick her right up. It was about a half mile from Lincoln Center to Larue's building on Central Park South; Larue tried to discourage her. Gillian worked out a compromise: she would ask Seamus, the chauffeur they'd borrowed for the evening from her cousin Wade, to follow them in the copper-colored Rolls. But she was determined to start exercising, she hated having to stop midway on a longish flight of stairs to catch her breath.

"Do you think the show will make it?" Gillian asked during the course of their walk. She was referring to the musical Larue's father was trying to whip into shape in Boston.

"Just might."

"Either way he's out of a job, once it opens in New York."

"I know."

"Then where will you go?"

Larue sighed. "London, I think. A movie. My mother might be in it. We'd all be together for a while, that wouldn't be so bad."

"I'll miss you if you go."

"I'll miss you too. You could come visit. Do we have to talk about sad things?"

The bedroom Larue occupied in the duplex apartment overlooked Central Park from the twentieth floor. The moon was bright, and, as Gillian took off her clothes, she could see the white rectangle of skating-rink ice glistening through leafless trees.

Larue was downstairs making hot chocolate and warming cinnamon doughnuts. Gillian brushed her teeth and put on her nightgown and gave her hair a few licks. Then she took a turn around the room, which was grandly furnished in Louis XIV, a style Larue hated. Everything in the apartment was rented, including the bath towels and the cutlery. Larue had brought only clothes and a few personal things with her.

On one wall there was a blown-up photo of her late half brother Michael. He was wearing a USC athletic jersey. He had the long bones and grayhound look of a basketball player. His hands were on his hips and his head was thrown back as he laughed about something.

Larue came up and saw Gillian looking at the photo. She put down the tray she was carrying, went silently into her dressing room and came back fastening her own gown between her breasts.

"From the time I was old enough to follow him around I wanted to marry him," Larue said.

Gillian looked compassionately at her.

Larue's face squeezed up; she tensed all over. The spasm passed in a few seconds.

"Sometimes I think my heart's going to stop beating," Larue said matter-of-factly. "One of these days I'll think about how beautiful he was and how much I loved him, and my heart will stop and I'll die too." She sat down and poured chocolate for them, taking great care not to spill any.

Gillian sat near her on a chaise and nibbled a doughnut.

"Anything good on TV?"

"Junk," Gillian said.

The French telephone rang and Larue answered. Her mother, calling from Yugoslavia. The connection was poor. The conversation went on for a long time. Larue didn't say much, but when she spoke she was obliged to use a great deal of volume. For the most part she sat slumped with her eyes closed, the receiver of the phone on one shoulder. Her fingers stealthily pressed and , smoothed her forearms, as if she were afraid her skin might be crawling.

When she hung up Larue said, "They're six-weeks over, with another two weeks to go, and she has to report for another flick in Spain in ten days. My mother goes from one picture to another. She's tired and lonely and probably balling somebody she doesn't like very much. Basically my mother is a very good person, and she has an old-fashioned sense of sin. Nothing is discardable when it comes to human integrity, that sort of thing. I heard an actor say that in show business emotions are used as hard currency. Well, my mother spends too much. Most of us are like her, don't you think? On the other hand, my father is —too costly. He doesn't make friends, he creates dependents. Gets the job done, I suppose. Once in a great while someone like Mike happens. Totally giving. No prejudice, no fear." Larue looked at her brother's laughing face. "He paid for all the giving, though, all the demands. Do you read Frost? Frost said, 'Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.' Mike took everybody in. That was part of his karma."

"What was the other part?"

"For the grace to go on living he had to accomplish beautiful, difficult, dangerous things." She held her hands out, brought the spread swooping left hand slowly against the clenched right fist.

"Oh, Larue," Gillian said softly, sorry that the mother had called to further upset her.

Larue's hand flew gracefully once more; she watched it with a brooding eye.

"Isabella knew he was going to die. She tried to prepare me."

"Who's Isabella?"

"A witchy friend in Malibu. Just darling. Her entire family is witchy, going back to the seventeenth century."

"God, I never heard of such a thing!"

"Where've you been, Gil? Well, I suppose New York isn't a very big witching ground."

"You believe in witchcraft?"

"You don't understand. Along with dope it's the number one fact of life out there. If you're a girl and good-looking they come up to you on the street or the beaches, for God's sake, warlocks looking for recruits. The covens will fuck you over fast if you don't know how to protect yourself. Oh, it's creepy in southern Cal. Last year I met this guy at the Renaissance Faire. He had a thing going for me right away, but I was with friends, I wouldn't split with him. For a week after that I had big trouble.

Nightmares every night. I felt drawn to a certain occult shop I passed on the way to school. When I refused to go in I suffered terrible headaches. Isabella said I was under psychic attack. But she broke the spell."¹

"How?"

"I don't know; it's white magic, folk magic. She's under oath not to talk about it."

Gillian brushed doughnut crumbs from her lap into a napkin. She got up and went slowly to the windows and stared Out for so long Larue became restless.

"Are you sick again?"

"No. Thinking."

"I guess you find it a little hard to believe. About the psychic attack. Those things go on all the time. Gil, I thought we had the sort of relationship where we could tell everything that was on our minds. Everything, no matter what."

Gillian turned and looked intently at her friend.

"We do."

"Because I've always been straight with you."

Gillian smiled and nodded. She looked again at the photo of Larue's beloved Michael. Then still smiling, she stretched out on the canopied bed.

"Larue?"

Larue came and lay down near her, chin in hands, eyes inquisitive.

"I'd like to tell you about Robin," Gillian said.

The telling took considerable time. Larue was fascinated, as Gillian had thought she might be. Larue asked sensible questions about all the aspects of the relationship that puzzled or intrigued her. At one point she sat up and, closing her eyes, stretched out her hand, trying to imagine the astral world just beyond her fingertips.

"What's happening there?" she said.

"Everything that's happening here, and more. It's a busy place."

"What do you look like? When you're there."

"Just the same. But I could look different if I wanted to; or if I were condemned to."

"How do you mean, condemned?"

"Evil doesn't stop with this world; it goes on. But where it exists in the astral, it exists visibly. You just can't hide your thoughts or emotions in the astral."

"And that's the first place we go? When we die?"

"Always."

Larue said excitedly, "Would Mike be there?"

"Well—he might be. But he was so young when he died. If he has a cycle to finish, part of the eighty-four-year cycle, then he'll be coming back soon."

"At times I've felt like he was still really close to me. Keeping an eye on me."

Larue suddenly put her arms around Gillian and hugged hertightly. Gillian went rigid with distress; then she struggled.

"Larue, don't. "

"Don't be afraid—if anybody's going to be afraid it should be me. I had terrible nosebleeds when I was a little kid. I used to get so nauseated and dizzy I'd faint. I can't stand the sight of blood! But nothing's going to happen. You've got to get over this, Gil, being scared to touch or be touched."

They wrestled strenuously for a few moments, but Gillian had little stamina and Larue won easily. She lay her head on Gillian's damp breast and listened to the alarmed heartbeat.

"I'm all right," she said soothingly. "I'm all right. Nothing's going to happen. Don't be upset, Gil."

After a while Gillian relaxed and tenderly touched the back of Larue's head. They breathed together, ruddy and warm.

"You're crazy," Gil said. "I really love you. I've never had a friend like you. Now get up, you're breaking my ribs."

Both girls sat up smiling without pretense, secure in their poignant admiration for each other. Gillian leaned forward and with her tongue licked away a few crumbs of cinnamon and sugar from the side of Larue's mouth.

"Do you suppose you could get in touch with him?" Larue asked.

"You mean Mike? Oh, no, I don't think so. It would be like trying to find you down there in the subway. If I didn't know just where to look I could ride the trains forever and not see you."

"But what if he's close to me right now, just on the other side, like a few feet away?"

"I don't know," Gillian said doubtfully.

"If you could only talk to Mike for a little while. Find out how he is."

"Don't cry, Larue."

"I would never ask another f-favor of you as long as I live."

"I guess it isn't such a big thing to ask. I just don't know how lucky we'll be."

Gillian walked around and around and stopped in front of Michael's photograph.

There was a flare on the glass, and she couldn't see him well. She lifted the frame down from the wall. The flare persisted, but she was infected by his sense of fun, by the horseplay that had him laughing. Gillian laughed too until the reflected light, or, more accurately, the light that seemed to shine from the center of his body, hurt her eyes.

Blinking, tearing, she shook her head sharply.

"Gillian?"

"Awfully bright in here," Gillian complained, holding the frame with one hand, rubbing her wet eyes with the other. Then she broke up again because it was just too funny, the pillow fight on the long pole that no one seemed to win. If you smote your opponent too lustily then you couldn't keep your seat, and if you didn't keep your seat there was the guckiest mud bath she'd ever seen a few feet beneath the pole . . .

"It's the overhead light," Larue said. She switched it off but the light in the glass continued to shine forth powerfully, like the sun, striking Gillian full in the eyes.

Speechless, transfixed, Gillian began to whirl around, holding the frame at arms' length.

"What's happening?" Larue asked in a shrill voice.

"Look out, look out," Gillian said, blinded, her feet going frantically faster, her mouth falling open from the strain. Suddenly the outstretched frame shattered against a bed post. Shards of glass flew.

Gillian stopped, teetered, and fell backwards onto the soft carpet.

As if from the bottom of a well she stared at a wafer of blue sky, the no-longer-painful orb of the distant sun. She heard and felt the wind, it flowed coolingly over her flushed face as she was gently lifted and floated free, no longer burdened by the twenty-five pounds of dacron sail above her, no longer earthbound. . . .

Am I in the right place? she thought, as she looked down at her skimming shadow on the rocky slope of the mountain. A little gust of wind shook her; the tubular frame of the glider trembled uneasily. She moved the control bar to the left and shifted her horizontal weight to the right, banked effortlessly. Then, below, she saw the others waiting for her in the high alpine meadow. As she floated gradually down to the landing place, throat clogged from the exhilaration of her longest flight yet, she dropped her feet and pushed out on the control bar, raising the nose of the sky sail.

Her forward motion stopped just as she touched down, landing into the wind as she'd been taught. Perfect. No awkward nose dive this time. A couple of the other kids ran up to help her get out of the harness. She had flown fifteen hundred feet in half a minute. She was sputtering with wonder and delight.

Taking off her helmet, she turned to look at Mike way up there on the peak, just beginning his run to lift-off. An unexpected gust of wind snarled her hair, riffled the sleeve of her nylon jacket. It was much stronger than the gust which had momentarily caused her trouble not long after she became airborne.

If the tricky cross winds continued they would have to call it quits for the day, and she badly wanted to fly one more time . . . but Mike was aloft now, soaring higher than she had dared go, his yellow sail almost transparent against the burning blue. Little salutory winks of sun from the brightwork of his harness, the visor of his helmet: he was as beautiful as the stars of God.

She cheered and waved her arms, but then Mike seemed tempted by his power, he went so high it looked as if he would never come down; she was afraid that in a final demonstration of his freedom he would choose to soar above the peaks themselves and disappear over the great rim of the earth.

Two minutes, three minutes. Then, reluctantly, Mike drifted down toward the meadow.

It was as if he'd run into a wall up there.

He stopped, crazily, and for a few disastrous moments his legs thrashed as the delta sail, caught by wind-shear, ripped and puffed like a yellow burst of smoke from a cannon. Mike tried to regain control of the damaged kite but it turned, sadly crippled, toward the cliff rising steeply at one end of the meadow. He spun like a scrap of paper in the air, then was taken helplessly by another bad gust which pushed him farther down—and faster —and oh, suddenly much too fast, plummeting then with only pennants of sail left streaming above him: down he went five hundred feet or more, striking the naked rock a blow that put out the sun, put out her eyes, left her writhing in thick meadow grass, breathless in the ringing dark—

Sickened by disaster, Gillian struggled up from the comforter which Larue had thrown over her as she lay on the floor, lay— how long? She didn't know. Her only point of orientation in the darkened bedroom was the night light of the ringing phone.

"Larue?"

She might have been deeply asleep on the bed, Gillian couldn't tell. She reached the telephone before it could ring again.

"Larue, I'm very sorry to call at this hour, it's Avery Bellaver and I must speak—"

"Dad?"

"Gillian, is that—I'm so happy to hear your voice, I—I was afraid—"

"Afraid of what?"

"Never mind that now. Gillian, you'll have to come home tonight after all. I'll be at the door in about twenty minutes."

"What? Why?"

"Please give Larue my apologies."

"Apol—? Daddy, I don't have any idea what you're—"

"We can discuss it when I see you."

Her father rang off without saying goodbye, something he did only when supremely distracted. Gillian sat holding the receiver of the telephone, too surprised to think very clearly. So untypical, what had got into him?

"Larue," she whispered, "are you awake?"

Nothing from Larue. Gillian fumbled for the pull chain of a lamp and filled the room with golden light. Larue was not in the bed.

Gillian rose, turned, caught sight of herself in a free-standing mirror.

Big drops of blood drying in, turning to rust on the front of the blue nightgown.

Frantically Gillian went to her knees and pawed at the comforter. She uncovered more bloodstains, as if Larue had hemorrhaged suddenly while bending over to cover her up.

And blood had spilled nearby on the velvet pile carpet, not in drops but in ropes, a slaughterhouse trail to the dressing room and beyond, to the closed bathroom door.

There, bloody handprints on the white wood. A considerable spill on the floor.

Screaming, Gillian threw her weight against the door. It yielded, but not enough. Gillian screamed and screamed and fell back in a daze as Bjorn, the Swedish houseman, came running in.

—Terrible nosebleeds when I was a kid. I used to get so nauseated and dizzy I'd—.

"She's fainted in there! She's bleeding to death! Get her out, get her out. "

Bjorn set his shoulder to the door and "moved it a stubborn inch at a time. Larue was lying inside on the floor, face up, blocking entry. She looked as if someone had taken an ax to her. Bjorn wedged his way into the doorspace. He tried to find a pulse. He stayed hunkered over Larue for a long time, two fingers against her throat.

His wife Aase came in, glanced at Gillian, looked over Bjorn's shoulder. Then Aase looked away and took several deep breaths. She turned back and grasped Bjorn's shoulder with a hard hand. She said his name sharply. She had to shake him to rouse him. He came up weeping. He wiped his fingers on his pajama top. Soon it was red as the flag. His wife closed the bathroom door. They both looked at Gillian.

"Get her out of there!"

The woman shook her head.

"What is the matter with you people? She's bleeding to death!"

"Dead already," Aase said.

She didn't take her eyes off Gillian, even as her husband broke down and sobbed. Gillian was curiously dry-eyed. But something happened in her eyes, some dire shift toward madness.

"That's—she—you—"

"I'm sorry; dead," the woman said.

Gillian made a gagging sound. "But—how much do you think I can stand?" she said reasonably. She was standing against one wall of the dressing room, hands pressed flat against the paneling. Her skin tone changed first, to a deep rose shade shadowed with blue. As she grew more and more rigid almost every muscle stood but beneath the skin, sinew and vessel and many bones were delineated against white wood. It was a freakish and riveting exhibition. "How much, how much?" Her teeth were bared. Her eyes looked like polished bone. There was so much tension in her throat it seem impossible she could go on breathing. Her eyes went from the man to the woman. And back again. And faster. They were filled with such violence, violence in the face of the inexplicable and unendurable, that the woman turned cold. Aase was afraid that Gillian would spring at them, with a psychotic strength that would ultimately destroy her. But not before she did Bjorn and herself considerable harm.

Aase pulled Bjorn gently by the arm—led her distraught husband past the crouching Gillian, who watched them with a savage interest but didn't move. The woman's heart was beating violently. She avoided the bloody places on the carpet and sat Bjorn down and grabbed the telephone, keeping a wary eye on the dressing room as she dialed for help.

Inside, Gillian made another small, critical sound of suffering. But nothing happened. Nothing changed.