She smelled bread toasting.
“In a still house, with everyone dead, your movement should have made currents in the air, like a cool breath on the back of my neck, shivering the fine hairs on my hands. Your every movement should have been a different texture against my eyes. And when I walked through a space where you’d just been, I should have sensed the displacement of air caused by your passage.”
He was stone crazy. So cute in his chambray shirt, with his beautiful blue eyes, his thick dark hair combed straight back from his forehead, and the dimple in his left cheek—but pustulant and canker-riddled inside.
“My senses, you see, are unusually acute.”
He ran the water in the sink. Without looking, she knew that he was rinsing the whisk. He wouldn’t put it aside dirty.
He said, “My senses are so sharp because I’ve given myself to sensation. Sensation is my religion, you might say.”
A sizzling arose, much louder than the cooking sound of onions, and a new aroma.
“But you were invisible to me,” he said. “Like a spirit. What makes you special?”
Bitter, she murmured against the tabletop, “If I was special, would I be here in chains?”
Although Chyna hadn’t actually spoken to him and wouldn’t have thought that he could hear her above the crisp sputtering of eggs and onions, Vess said, “I suppose you’re right.”
Later, when he put the plates on the table, she raised her head and moved her hands.
“Rather than make you eat with your hands, I’m going to give you a fork,” he said, “because I assume you see the pointlessness of throwing it and trying to stick me in the eye.”
She nodded.
“Good girl.”
On her plate was a plump four-egg omelet oozing cheddar cheese and stippled with sautéed onions. On top were three slices of a firm tomato and a sprinkling of chopped parsley. Two pieces of buttered toast, each neatly sliced on the diagonal, were arranged to bracket the omelet.
He refilled her water glass and added two more cubes of ice.
Famished only a short while ago, Chyna now could hardly tolerate the sight of food. She knew that she must eat, so she picked at the eggs and nibbled the toast. But she would never be able to finish all that he had given her.
Vess ate with gusto but not noisily or sloppily. His table manners were beyond reproach, and he used his napkin frequently to blot his lips.
Chyna was deep in her private grayness, and the more Vess appeared to enjoy his breakfast, the more her own omelet began to taste like ashes.
“You’d be quite attractive if you weren’t so rumpled and sweaty, your face smudged with dirt, your hair straggly from the rain. Very attractive, I think. A real charmer under that grime. Maybe later I’ll bathe you.”
Chyna Shepherd, untouched and alive.
Uncannily, after a further silence, Edgler Vess said, “Untouched and alive.”
She knew that she had not spoken the prayer aloud.
“Untouched and alive,” he repeated. “Is that what you said… on the stairs earlier, on your way down to Ariel?”
She stared at him, speechless.
“Is it?”
Finally: “Yes.”
“I’ve been wondering about it. You said your name and then those three words, though none of it made sense when I didn’t know that Chyna Shepherd was your name.”
She looked away from him, at the window. A Doberman roamed the backyard.
“Was it a prayer?” he asked.
In her desolation, Chyna hadn’t thought that he could scare her any more, but she had been wrong. His intuitiveness was frightening—and not entirely for reasons that she could understand.
She looked away from the Doberman and met Vess’s eyes. For one brief moment, she saw the dog within, a dark and merciless aspect.
“Was it a prayer?” he asked again.
“Yes.”
“In your heart, Chyna, deep in your heart, do you truly believe that God really exists? Be truthful now, not just with me but with yourself.”
At one time—not long ago—she had been just barely sure enough of what she believed to answer Yes. Now she was silent.
“Even if God exists,” Vess said, “does he know that you do?”