Heart’s blood, he thought, exalted without knowing why. All at once, and for the first time in years, he remembered how you could take your mind away, how you could just put it on parole. And even as he thought of it he felt his thoughts lifting. The rose petals gleamed on the scarred surface of his desk like rubies, like secret light spilled from the world’s secret heart.
Not just one world, Bobby thought. Not just one. There are other worlds than this, millions of worlds, all turning on the spindle of the Tower.
And then he thought: He got away from them again. He’s free again.
The petals left no room for doubt. They were all the yes anyone could ever need; all the you-may, all the you-can, all the it’s-true.
Now they go, now they slow, Bobby thought, knowing he had heard those words before, not remembering where or knowing why they had recurred to him now. Not caring, either.
Ted was free. Not in this world and time, this time he had run in the other direction . . . but in some world.
Bobby scooped up the petals, each one like a tiny silk coin. He cupped them like palmfuls of blood, then raised them to his face. He could have drowned in their sweet reek. Ted was in them, Ted clear as day with his funny stooped way of walking, his baby-fine white hair, and the yellow nicotine spots tattooed on the first two fingers of his right hand. Ted with his carryhandle shopping bags.
As on the day when he had punished Harry Doolin for hurting Carol, he heard Ted’s voice.
Then it had been mostly imagination. This time Bobby thought it was real, something which had been embedded in the rose petals and left for him.
Steady on, Bobby. Enough is enough, so just steady on. Control yourself.
He sat at his desk for a long time with the rose petals pressed to his face. At last, careful not to lose a single one, he put them back into the little envelope and folded down the torn top.
He’s free. He’s . . . somewhere. And he remembered.
‘He remembered me,’ Bobby said. ‘He remembered me.’
He got up, went into the kitchen, and put on the tea kettle. Then he went into his mother’s room. She was on her bed, lying there in her slip with her feet up, and he could see she had started to look old. She turned her face away from him when he sat down next to her, a boy now almost as big as a man, but she let him take her hand. He held it and stroked it and waited for the kettle to whistle. After awhile she turned to look at him. ‘Oh Bobby,’ she said.
‘We’ve made such a mess of things, you and me. What are we going to do?’
‘The best we can,’ he said, still stroking her hand. He raised it to his lips and kissed the palm where her lifeline and heartline tangled briefly before wandering away from each other again. ‘The best we can.’
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