He shook his head. "You're right, Doc," he said. "I'll be careful. I'll be all right."
He went to his suitcase, took out his Sony Walkman from the zipper pocket, and checked that he had remembered to bring a book for the plane.
"Vivaldi," he said, slipping the Walkman with its tiny earphones into his jacket pocket. "And my Dickens. I go nuts when I fly without them. It's better than Valium and vodka, I swear."
She smiled at him, the most exquisite smile, and then she laughed. "Vivaldi and Dickens," she whispered. "Imagine that."
He shrugged. "We all have our weaknesses," he said. "God, why am I leaving like this?" he asked. "Am I crazy?"
"If you don't call me this evening ... "
"I'll call you, sooner and more often than you could possibly expect."
"The taxi's there," she said.
He had heard the horn, too.
He took her in his arms, kissing her, crushing her to him. And for one moment, he almost couldn't pull away. He thought of what she'd said again, about them causing the accident, causing the amnesia, and a dark chill went through him, something like real fear. What if he forgot about them, forever, what if he just stayed here with her? It seemed a possibility, a last chance of sorts, it really did.
"I think I love you, Rowan Mayfair," he whispered.
"Yes, Michael Curry," she said, "I think something like that might be happening on both sides right now."
She gave him another of her soft, radiant smiles, and he saw in her eyes all the strength he'd found so seductive in these last few hours, and all the tenderness and sadness, too.
All the way to the airport, he listened to Vivaldi with his eyes closed. But it didn't help. He thought of New Orleans, and then he thought of her; and back and forth the pendulum swung. It was a simple thing she'd said, but how it jarred him. It seemed all these weeks he'd clung to the idea of a magnificent pattern and a purpose that served some higher value, but when she'd asked a few simple and logical questions, his faith had fallen apart.
Well, he didn't believe the accident had been caused by anyone. The wave had simply knocked him off the rock. And then he'd gone somewhere, a stratum others have visited, and there he'd found these beings, and they had found him. But they couldn't do things to people to hurt them, to manipulate them as if they were puppets on strings!
Then what about the rescue, buddy? What about her coming, alone in that boat, just before dark to that very spot in the sea?
God, he was going crazy again already. All he could think about was being with her again, or getting a good slug of bourbon with ice.
Only when he was waiting for the plane to board did something occur to him, something he had not given the slightest thought to before.
He'd lain with her three times in the last few hours, and he had not taken the usual precautions against conception. He had not even thought about the prophylactics he always carried in his wallet. He had not asked her about the matter, either. And to think, in all these years, this was the first time he had let such a thing slip by.
Well, she was a doctor, for the love of heaven. Surely she had the matter covered. But maybe he should call her about it now. It wouldn't hurt to hear her voice. He closed the copy of David Copperfield and started looking for a phone.
Then he saw that man again, that Englishman with the white hair and the tweed suit. Only a few rows away he sat, with his briefcase and his umbrella, a folded newspaper in his hand.
Oh, no, Michael thought dismally, as he took his seat again. All I need now is to run into him.
The call came for boarding. Michael watched anxiously as the Englishman rose, collected his things, and moved to the gate.
But moments later, the old gentleman didn't even glance up when Michael passed him and took a seat by the window in the rear of first class. The old fellow had had his briefcase open already, and he'd been writing, very rapidly it seemed, in a large leather-bound book.
Michael ordered his bourbon with an ice-cold beer chaser before the plane took off. By the time they reached Dallas for a forty-minute stopover, he was on his sixth beer and his seventh chapter of David Copperfield, and he didn't even remember anymore that the Englishman was there.
Seven
HE'D MADE THE cab driver stop on the way in for a six-pack, already jubilant to be in the warm summer air, and now as they made the turn off the freeway and came down into the familiar and unforgettable squalor of lower St. Charles Avenue, Michael felt like weeping at the sight of the black-barked oak trees with their dark foliage, and the long narrow St. Charles streetcar, exactly as he had remembered it, roaring and clattering along its track.
Even on this stretch, in the midst of the ugly hamburger joints and the seedy wooden barrooms and the new apartment buildings towering over boarded-up shopfronts and deserted gas stations, it was his old, verdant, and softly beautiful town. He loved even the weeds exploding in the cracks. The grass grew rich and green on the neutral ground. The crepe myrtle trees were covered with frothy blooms. He saw pink crepe myrtle and purple crepe myrtle, and a red as rich as the red of watermelon meat.
"Look at that, will you!" he said to the driver, who had been talking on and on about the crime, and the bad times here. "The sky's violet, it's violet just like I remembered it, and goddamnit, all these years out there I thought I imagined all this, I thought I colored it in with a crayon in my memory, you know."
He felt like crying. All the time he'd held Rowan while she'd cried, he'd never shed a tear. But now he felt like bawling, and oh, how he wished Rowan were here.
The driver was laughing at him. "Yeah, well, that's a purple sky all right, I guess you could call it that."
"Damn right it is," said Michael. "You were born between Magazine and the river, weren't you?" Michael said. "I'd have known that voice anywhere."
"What you talking about, boy, what about your own voice," the driver teased him back. "I was born on Washington and St. Thomas for your information, youngest of nine children. They don't make families like that anymore." The cab was just crawling down the avenue, the soft moist August breeze washing through the open windows. The street lamps had just gone on.
Michael closed his eyes. Even the cab driver's endless diatribe was music. But for this, this fragrant and embraceable warmth, he had longed with his whole soul. Was there anyplace else in the world where the air was such a living presence, where the breeze kissed you and stroked you, where the sky was pulsing and alive? And oh God, what it meant to be no longer cold!
"Oh, I am telling you, nobody's got a right to be as happy as I am now," Michael said. "Nobody. Look at the trees," he said opening his eyes, staring up at the black curling branches.
"Where the hell you been, son?" asked the driver. He was a short man in a bill cap, with his elbow half out the window.
"Oh, I've been in hell, buddy, and let me tell you something about hell. It's not hot. It's cold. Hey, look, there's the Pontchartrain Hotel and it's still the same, damn, it's still the same." In fact, it looked if anything more elegant and aloof than it had in the old days. It had trim blue awnings, and the old complement of doormen and bellmen standing at the glass doors.
Michael could hardly sit still. He wanted to get out, to walk, to cover the old pavements. But he'd told the driver to take him up to First Street, that they'd double back to the hotel later, and for First Street he could wait.
He finished the second beer just
as they came to the light at Jackson Avenue, and at that point everything changed. Michael hadn't remembered the transition as so dramatic; but the oaks grew taller and infinitely denser; the apartment buildings gave way to the white houses with the Corinthian columns; and the whole drowsy twilight world seemed suddenly veiled in soft, glowing green.
"Rowan, if only you were here," he whispered. There was the James Gallier house on the corner of St. Charles and Philip, splendidly restored. And across the street the Henry Howard house, spiffed up with a new coat of paint. Iron fences guarded lawns and gardens. "Christ, I'm home!" he whispered.
When he first landed he had regretted getting so drunk--it was just too damned hard to handle his suitcase and find a taxi--but now he was past that. As the cab turned left on First Street and entered the dark leafy core of the Garden District, he was in ecstasy.
"You realize it's just the way it used to be!" he told the driver. An immense gratitude flooded him. He passed the fresh beer to him, but the driver only laughed and waved it away.
"Later, son," he said. "Now where are we going?" In the slow motion of dream time, it seemed, they glided past the massive mansions. Michael saw brick sidewalks, the tall stiff magnolia grandiflora with their shiny dark leaves.
"Just drive, real slow, let this guy here pass us, yeah, very slow, until I tell you to stop."
He had chosen the most beautiful hour of the evening for his return, he thought. He wasn't thinking now of the visions or the dark mandate. He was so brimful of happiness all he could think about was what lay before him, and about Rowan. That was the test of love, he thought dreamily, when you can't bear to be this happy without the other person with you. He was really afraid that the tears were going to come pouring down his face.
The cab driver started talking again. He had never really stopped talking. Now he was talking about the Redemptorist Parish and how it had been in the old days, and how it was all run-down now. Yeah, Michael wanted to see the old church. "I was an altar boy at St. Alphonsus," Michael said.
But that didn't matter, that could wait forever. Because, looking up, Michael saw the house.
He saw its long dark flank stretching back from the corner; he saw the unmistakable iron railings with their rose pattern; he saw the sentinel oaks stretching out their mammoth branches like mighty and protective arms.