What new perversions would a soul invent to distract itself from the constant threat of ennui?
At last the crowd of fornicators thinned, and Katya led him — by a path he hadn’t previously seen, it being so overgrown — back to the big house.
“What I am about to show you,” she warned him as they went, “will change your life. Are you ready for that?”
“Is it something to do with why you’re here?”
“Why I’m here, why they’re here. Why the Canyon is the most sacred place in this city. Yes. All of the above.”
“Then show me,” he said. “I’m ready.”
She took a tighter hold of his hand. “There’s no way back,” she warned him. “I want you to understand that. There is no way back.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the party-goers cavorting between the trees. “I think that was true a long time ago,” he said.
“I suppose it was,” Katya replied, with a little smile, and led him out of the darkened garden and back into her dream palace.
EIGHT
“I’m hungry,” Tammy told Zeffer. “Can’t we get some food from the house before we leave?”
“You really want to find Todd,” Zeffer said. “Admit it.”
“No, I don’t care.” She stopped herself in mid-lie. “Well, maybe a little,” she said. “I just want to check that he’s all right.”
“I can tell you the answer to that. He’s not all right. He’s with her. Frankly, that means you may as well forget about him. When Katya wants a man Katya gets him.”
“Were you married to her?”
“I was married when I met Katya, but I never became her husband. She never wanted me. I was just there to serve her, right from the start. To make her life easier. Todd’s a different story. She’s going to suck him dry.”
“Like a vampire, you mean?” Tammy said. After all she’d seen the idea didn’t seem so preposterous.
“She’s not the kind who takes your blood. She’s the kind who takes your soul.”
“But she hasn’t got Todd yet, has she?” Tammy said. “I mean, he could still leave if he wanted to.”
“I suppose he could,” Zeffer said, his voice laced with doubt. “But, Tammy, I have to ask you: why do you care about this man so much? What’s he ever done for you?”
It took Tammy a few moments to muster a reply. “I suppose if you look at it that way, he hasn’t done anything … tangible. He’s a movie star, and I’m one of his fans. But I swear, Willem, if he hadn’t been around over the last few years I would have had nothing to live for.”
“You would have had your own life. Your marriage. You’re clearly a sensible woman — ”
“I never wanted to be sensible. I never really wanted to be a wife. I mean, I loved Arnie, I still do I suppose, but it’s not a grand passion or anything. It was more a convenience thing. It made things easy when tax-time came around.”
“So what did you really want for yourself!”
“For myself? You won’t laugh? I wanted to be the kind of woman who comes into a room and instantly everybody’s got something to say about her. That’s what I wanted.”
“So you wanted to be famous?”
“I guess that was part of it.”
“You should ask Katya about fame. She’s always said it was overrated.”
“How did we get off the subject of Todd?”
“Because it’s impossible to help him.”
“Let me just go into the house and talk to him for a while. And maybe get something to eat while I’m there.”
“Haven’t you seen enough of this place to be afraid of it yet?” Zeffer said.
“I’m almost past being afraid,” Tammy replied. It was the truth. She’d seen her share of horrors, but she’d lived to tell the tale.
They were twenty yards from one of the several staircases that ran up from the garden into the house.
“Please,” she said to Zeffer. “I just want to go inside and warn him. If that doesn’t work, I’ll leave and I’ll never look back, I swear.”