Unable to resist, she met its gaze. They were not the Devil’s eyes that looked at her-they were slightly stupid, even comical, eyes-and below them a weak mouth which only reinforced her impression of witlessness. Suddenly she was not afraid. This was no demon. It was a delusion, brought on by exhaustion and pills; it could do her no harm. The only danger here was that she hurt herself in her attempts to keep the hallucinations at bay.
Buck sensed that Virginia was losing the will to resist. “That’s better,” he coaxed her. “You just want a bit of the old jazz, don’t you, Ginnie?”
He wasn’t certain if she heard him, but no matter. He could readily make his intentions apparent. Dropping one of her hands, he ran his palm across her breasts. She sighed, a bewildered expression in her beautiful eyes, but she made no effort to resist his attentions.
“You don’t exist,” she told him plainly. “You’re only in my mind, like John said. The pills made you. The pills did it all.”
Buck let the woman babble; Let her think whatever she pleased, as long as it made her compliant.
“That’s right, isn’t it?” she said. “You’re not real, are you?”
He obliged her with a polite reply. “Certainly,” he said, squeezing her “I’m just a dream, that’s all.” The answer seemed to satisfy her. “No need to fight me, is there?” he said. “I’ll have come and gone before you know it.”
THE manager’s office lay empty. From the room beyond it Gyer heard a television. It stood to reason that Earl must be somewhere in the vicinity. He bad left their room with the girl who’d brought the ice water, and they certainly wouldn’t be taking a walk together in weather like this. The thunder had moved in closer in the last few minutes. Now it was almost overhead. Gyer enjoyed the noise and the spectacle of the lightning. It fueled his sense of occasion.
“Earl!” he yelled, making his way through the office and into the room with the television. The late movie was nearing its climax, the sound turned up deafeningly loud. A fantastical beast of some kind was treading Tokyo to rubble; citizens fled, screaming. Asleep in a chair in front of this papier-mâché apocalypse was a late middle-aged man. Neither the thunder nor Gyer’s calls had stirred him. A tumbler of spirits, nursed in his lap, had slipped from his hand and stained his trousers. The whole scene stank of bourbon and depravity. Gyer made a note of it for future use in the pulpit.
A chill blew in from the office. Gyer turned, expecting a visitor, but there was nobody in the office behind him. He stared into space. All the way across here he’d had a sense of being followed, yet there was nobody on his heels. He canceled his suspicions. Fears like this were for women and old men afraid of the dark. He stepped between the sleeping drunkard and the ruin of Tokyo toward the closed door beyond.
“Earl?” he called out, “answer me!”
Sadie watched Gyer open the door and step into the kitchen. His bombast amazed her. She’d expected his subspecies to be extinct by now. Could such melodrama be credible in this sophisticated age? She’d never much liked church people, but this example was particularly offensive; there was more than a whiff of malice beneath the flatulence. He was riled and unpredictable, and he would not be pleased by the scene that awaited him in Laura May’s room. Sadie had already been there. She had watched the lovers for a little while, until their passion became too much for her and had driven her out to cool herself by watching the rain. Now the evangelist’s appearance drew her back the way she’d come, fearful that what-ever was now in the air, the night’s events could not end well. In the kitchen, Gyer was shouting again. He clearly enjoyed the sound of his own voice.
“Earl! You bear me? I’m not to be cheated!”
In Laura May’s room Earl was attempting to perform three acts at the same time. One, kiss the woman he had just made love with; two, pull on his damp trousers; and three, invent an adequate excuse to offer Gyer if the evangelist reached the bedroom door before some illusion of innocence had been created. As it was, he had no time to complete any of the tasks. His tongue was still locked in Laura May’s tender mouth when the lock on the door was forced.