The Duke looked puzzled at this; and then aghast, as he realized the consequences of what she was telling him: that he and his men had hidden their lives away in this fruitless Hunt; around and around and around, chasing a baby who’d put on perhaps two years in the period of the pursuit.
“My father?” he said. “My brother?”
“All dead,” Lilith said, with some little show of sympathy. “All that you knew and remembered has gone.”
The Duke’s face remained unchanged, but tears filled up his eyes and then spilled down his cheeks.
“Men and your hunts,” Lilith went on, addressing, it seemed, some larger error in the Duke’s sex. “If you hadn’t been out killing healthy stags and boars in the first place, you could have married and lived and loved. But,” she shrugged, “we do as our instincts dictate, yes? And yours brought you here. To the very edge of your own grave.”
She was telling him, it seemed, that he’d run out of life and now, after all the sacrifices of his Hunt, his reward would be death: pure, simple and comfortless.
“Let me have my child then,” she said. “Then we’ll have this wretched business over and done with.”
It was at this point that Eppstadt spoke up once more. He’d had a twitching little smile on his face for a while, the reason for which was simple enough: this latest spectacle (the earth opening up, the flowers, the scent that toyed with memory) had finally convinced him that one of his earlier explanations for all of this was most likely the correct one. He was lying unconscious somewhere in the house (probably having been struck by a falling object during the earthquake) and was fantasizing this whole absurd scene. He very seldom felt as self-willed in dreams as he felt in this one; indeed, he seldom dreamed at all; or at least remembered his dreams. But now that he had this nonsense in his grasp, he wasn’t ready to let it go just yet. Ever the negotiator, he stepped forward and put out his hand, to prevent the Duke passing over the child.
“I don’t suggest you do that just yet,” he said, not sure whether the man understood him or not, though the gesture was clear enough. “The moment you hand over the brat, you’re dead. You understand?”
“Don’t do this, Eppstadt,” Todd advised.
“Why the hell not? It’s just a dream — ”
“It’s not a dream,” Jerry said. “It’s real. Everything down here is as — ”
“Oh Christ, Brahms, shut up. You know what I’m going to do when I’m finished sorting this out? I’m going to kick your faggot ass.” He grinned, obviously hugely satisfied to be so politically incorrect.
“You’re going to regret this,” Todd said. “Jerry’s right.”
“How can he be right?” Eppstadt said, his voice dripping contempt. “Look at this place! How can any of this fucking idiocy be real? It’s all going on in my head! And I bet you thought I had the dull little mind of a business school executive!”
“Eppstadt,” Todd said. “This is not going on in your mind.”
Eppstadt made the donkey-bray buzz that accompanied the wrong answer on a quiz show. He was riding high on his newfound, comprehension of his situation, “Wrong, baby. Fuck! So very, very wrong. Can I say something, while we’ve got this moment, and it’s my dream so I’ll fucking say it anyway? You are a terrible actor. I mean, we would get the dailies in at Paramount and we would howl, I mean we would fucking howl, at some of the takes. Tears pouring down our faces while you attempted to emote.”
“You are such a cunt.”
“That I am. And you’re a millionaire many times over because I persuaded a bunch of losers who wouldn’t know a crass commercial decision from a hole in their asses to pay you an obscene amount of money to parade your God-given attributes.” He turned to Lilith, who had been watching this outburst as though amused by the cavorting of an antic dog. “Sorry. There I go mentioning the G-word. Probably doesn’t sit well with you?”