Turning back toward the river, I directed thoughts toward the slow-moving waterspout until so much time had passed that I thought I had better get out before I lost my own character identity.
There were steps up . . .
V
The candlelight gleamed in her green eyes, glinted from the hair that fell over her bare shoulders, sparkled on the sequins of her high-collared, sleeveless Oriental sheath.
“I would want nothing held back.”
“Nothing,” I assured her for the tenth time.
We sipped the wine, but I felt giddy without it.
“All your feelings toward Artificial Creation, toward the FBI, toward all those who have used you.”
“That could be a blunt book.”
“Anything watered down would be a flop. Believe me, sensationalism sells a book.”
I remembered some passages from Bodies in Darkness and smiled.
She stood and walked to the plexi-glass view deck that looked out over the Atlantic. The moon was high. She was quite beautiful, flushed with its light.
I walked over, forcing myself to be calm, and stood beside her . . .
“I keep thinking of Dragonfly,” she said, her eyes on the stars.
I looked up into the black velvet and watched one lonely cloud drift toward the horizon, gray against the purity of the Stygian sky.
“Why do people like the ugly?” she asked suddenly. “There is all that beauty, and they try to make it ugly. They like ugly movies and ugly books.”
“Perhaps, in reading about the worst parts of life, the darknesses, the grays, the dirt, the terrible things in reality seem more tame, more easily lived with,”
Her lips were like cherries . . .
“What do you think of my books—truthfully?” she asked, turning to face me.
I was thrown off balance. “I—”
“Truthfully.”
“You mean . . . the ugliness in them?”
“Yes. Exactly.” She turned back to the ocean. “I tried writing beautiful books about sex. I gave that up. It’s the ugliness that sells.” She shrugged those heavenly shoulders. “One must eat.”
I was overly aware of the tightness of her bodice.
With the soft glow light melting over her face, I felt the urge to clutch at her, to hold on, to kiss. But I had to fight that! Kiss. No! And I began pacing the room, looking for some solid object to grasp.
She turned and looked at me curiously for a moment. Then she crossed the room, placed a soft, dove hand upon my lips. “It’s getting late,” she said, suddenly withdrawing the slim hand with the red nails. “Starting tomorrow we tape all interviews.” And she was gone in a whirlwind of efficiency that left me standing with my drink in my hand and my “goodbye” in my mouth like a lump of used lard. I went to bed to dream.
I woke up needing comfort, a strange comfort I could find but one place.
IT IS FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, the metal headshrinker said.
I know.
RELAX AND TALK.
What should I say? Tell me what it is that I should say to you.
START WITH A DREAM IF YOU’VE HAD ONE.
I always have one.
THEN START.
There are storm clouds in the sky, dark, thick, mysterious. There is no place where the sun shows. Below all this gray-ness, there is a hill, a large, rounded hill formed by nature into a grotesque, gnarled lump, a blemish upon the face of the earth. There are people . . .
GO ON.
There are people . . .
. . . and there is a cross . . .
FOCUS ON THE CROSS. WHAT DO YOU SEE?
Me.
YES?
Nailed. Blood. White, festered wounds dribbling rusty blood around the edges of little holes, neat little holes like the cavities left when you rip the buttons from the faces of rag dolls. Rusty blood.
WHO IS IN THE CROWD?
Harry is weeping.
WHO ELSE?
I’m thirsty.
THEY WILL GIVE YOU WATER SOON. NOW WHO ELSE IS IN THE CROWD?
Morsfagen is casting dice for my cloak. And over there is a pregnant woman who . . .
GO ON, PLEASE.
I look at her belly . . . and . . . there … is Child. He’s weeping too. And I’m weeping. Child wants up where I am. He wants out of her womb and up there before it is too late . . .