Then I stretched out on my bed. Satin tufted tester above me. Satin counterpane below. Fairly shadowy. I turned my face into the down pillows, of which I always had a sizable heap, and with all my muscles sort of scrunched up against the modern world.
Not a masculine thing to do, not a macho posture, not a show of strength to otherworldly entities, not a take-charge attitude at all.
I was comforted by the sound of Mona's clicking away, the low note of Quinn's voice. Footsteps on the boards.
But nothing could take the edge off Rowan's angry words, those eyes like hematite, her entire frame trembling with her passion as she accused me. How could Michael Curry stay so close to that blaze and not get scorched?
Suddenly, there was an agitation in me so great that
only lying alone, scrunched up on the bed, could comfort me. Sleep. Sleep, but I could not. They weren't wicked enough for me, Quinn and Mona. No one was. I wasn't wicked enough for me!
And I had to see if the ghosts would come.
A clock ticked somewhere. A clock with a painted face and curlicue hands. Not a huge clock. A clock that with its whole soul knew only how to tick and might tick for centuries, maybe had ticked for centuries, a clock to which people would look, and which people would dust, and which people wound with a key, and which people might come to love; a clock somewhere in this flat, perhaps in the back parlor, the only piece of all this furniture that could talk. I heard it. I knew what it was saying. Its code was lovely to me.
There was a knock at the door. Funny. It sounded as if it was right by my ear.
"Come in," I said. Damn fool that I am. But I wasn't fooled by the sounds I heard. That wasn't the door
opening. That wasn't the door being clicked shut.
Julien stood at the foot of the bed. He came walking up along the side. Julien in his downtown black tailcoat and white tie, hair very white under the chandelier. His eyes were black. I'd thought they were gray.
"Why did you knock?" I asked. "Why don't you just tear my world to pieces instead?"
"I didn't want you to forget your manners again," he said in perfect French. "You're atrocious when you're ill-mannered. "
"What do you want? To make me suffer? Join the crowd. I've been tormented by much stronger creatures than you. "
"You haven't begun to understand what I can do," he said.
"You made a 'disastrous mistake. ' What was it?" I asked. "I wonder: do you even know?"
He paled. His placid face became visibly enraged.
"Who sends you here to play with the living?"
"You're not the living!" he said.
"Temper, temper," I said mockingly.
He was too angry to speak. It made him all the more vivid, blanched though he was with anger. Or was it sorrow? I couldn't bear the thought of sorrow. I had enough sorrow.
"You want her?" I asked. "Then tell her yourself. "
He didn't reply.
I shrugged as best I could, being all snuggled up on the counterpane.
"I can't tell her," I said. "Who am I to say, 'Julien says you should expose yourself to the sun and thereby enter into the Totality of Salvation. ' Or is it possible that my questions of last night were more than pertinent and you don't know where you come from? Maybe there is no Totality of Salvation. No Saint Juan Diego. Maybe you just want her with you in a spirit world where you wander, waiting for somebody who can see you, somebody like Quinn or even Mona herself or me. Is that it? She's supposed to want to be a ghost? I am showing you my best manners. This is my most polite voice. My mother and father
would be pleased. "
There was a real knock on the door.
He vanished. I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Had Stella been sitting to my left all this time?Mon Dieu! I was going mad all right.
"Coward," I whispered.