St. Cyr sighed. “Well, money and muscle has kept them out of this hospital, although they’ve tried, but this isn’t a country where secrets are easily kept and this is a pretty large hospital. It’s one thing for you to have your private agony, a wound of war, but it’s not private now. It’s an enormous story, you know. Everyone who reads or watches television knows what happened to you, and also knows Angelique’s problems. The Enquirer even paid a bundle to interview your ex-wife on what she thought of it and what kind of lover you used to be. The same goes for Angelique, of course, but it’s a different sort of case there.”
The implications of it all hit him now, and he groaned. There would be no anonymity, no privacy, ever. Even when it had cooled down and become old news, everyone he’d come in contact with would know. “Hey, what’s it feel like to be castrated?” “Hey, when you gonna grow breasts?” “Oh, I like being out with a celebrity. You’re the only guy I feel really safe with.” Jesus!
“The company will provide good security, but sooner or later you’re going to have to face this. I thought you ought to understand, before making your decision.”
He sighed. “What would you do?”
“Well, I can’t comment, and at my age it wouldn’t make much difference, but it’s far easier to be one thing than neither, socially. With hormone, peptide, and plastic surgery you would appear normal and fit into society as one thing. A change of name and location, a false background, and you would be able to have a private life. Even without the change, you’d be ten minutes of old news then instead of a continuing. …”
“Freak. Yeah, I know. Shit!” Normal, huh? To them, perhaps, but not to himself.
It was several days of exercising before he could manage even to stand with a walker, and he couldn’t go far, but he did manage to look at himself, naked, in a full-length mirror. St. Cyr had been right—aside from what appeared to be a permanent new dark reddish complexion and white hair, whatever damage had been done to him had been so skillfully rapaired he could hardly believe how little he’d changed. He looked at himself, and tried to imagine himself as a woman, and failed miserably. All he could do was look at it all and cry.
But he knew he’d always be Gregory MacDonald, not Georgette or whatever, until he died, and he so told his physicians.
The therapists were excellent, and he was on solids in a week and walking where he pleased within the month, although it would still be some time before he was absolutely right. He could, in fact, go to outpatient soon, although the truth was he had no idea where the hell he was to go now that it was over.
Father Dobbs paid him a visit near the end of the eighth week after he’d been freed of his devices. He’d been busy filling out forms and writing official reports and it had taken up a lot of his time and taken his mind off things.
He was glad to see King’s Bishop, even if the title elevated him a notch, but he knew that Dobbs had not come all the way down to Port of Spain just to see him.
After the usual pleasantries and small talk and comments on how fit he looked, the priest got around to the point. “She wants to see you, my boy. She wants to see you very much, and the doctors think that it will be the best thing for her.”
He was instantly excited, but he came down fast. “Does she—know about me?”
“No. We thought you should be the one to tell her. It’s a hurdle you’ve already faced, and she must now.”
He nodded. “How is she?”
“Well, she is as fit as she will ever be. There is no trace of the old paralysis, but she had extensive internal injuries. One of the bullets that struck the Bishop passed through into her right hand at an odd angle, and she’s got only limited control of the hand and she’s lost two middle fingers on it. Her scars aren’t disfiguring, but they dwarf yours. She broke bones in her hip and pelvic region when she fell—repairable, but because of the time lost she’ll always walk a bit stiffly. She claims that these are small prices to pay for having full muscular control, but we know it’s bothering her. Of course, she’ll need continuing physical therapy and medication for a while, as will you.”
“And her hair’s white, too? I been thinking of a dye job now that I have enough to matter, but I’ve let it slide.”
Dobbs sighed. “No. Uh—she wasn’t quite as fortunate as you. She was on the lower end of the stone and got more of the heat blast. She has no hair at all, and they say that none will ever grow there. They’ve tried transplants from others and some artificial business, but none of it took. She’s done small eyebrows with a liner or somesuch, but she won’t abide a wig. She says it’s part of her penance and she wants to be seen just like that.”
He nodded. “That sounds normal. Does she remember anything?”
“All of it, until that last night. They put her into some sort of trance state. She has occasional visions, but nothing more, and the visions are disjointed and distorted and make little sense. She knows what happened, though. The only clear thoughts she has is someone pushing her onto the rock and then the screams and the heat, and she says that, during that time, Bishop Whitely came and talked to her. You can see the state she’s in.”
“Well, maybe,” he responded, remembering his own visitation.
“She’s been burdened by tremendous guilt, as if everything that happened and everyone who died was on her own head. It’s taken a lot of work on the part of psychiatrists here, all Jesuits, of course, to get her back this far. She’s always been a mystic of sorts, and while she’s quite normal in most ways, she’s the Angelique who’s been through all this. She puts on a brave front, but deep down she’s scared to death.”
“When do we go?”
“As soon as you get dressed.”
He put on an old pair of jeans and a tee shirt, rejecting the hospital garb for such an occasion, and followed Dobbs. They had kept her in the opposite end of the wing from him.
A middle aged man in the black suit and clerical collar of his profession met them and shook hands with MacDonald. “I’m Father LaMarche, from Montreal,” he said. “Glad to meet you. I’ve heard quite a lot about you.” He paused a moment. “She wants to see you alone. I concure, but I think we ought to have an understanding first.”
“Go ahead.”
“She considers herself married to you. Even though it was by an Anglican cleric and wasn’t consummated or legally registered, you’ll never convince her that anything Bishop Whitely did wasn’t with God’s will. He must have been quite a man.”
He nodded. “He was. Uh—you know it’ll never be consummated?”
“Yes, but break it to her gently. I don’t know what it will do to her, and she’s come so very far.” He hesitated a moment. “Her theology has also become, shall we say, radically unorthodox, despite her background and my best efforts. Be prepared there, too.”
He nodded. “My theology’s gone a little around the bend, too, Father. Don’t worry. Can I see her now?”
“Yes, go on in. Just—take it slow. Be gentle.”
He could never be otherwise with Angelique.
They had cleared out a small visitor’s room for them. It was glass enclosed and looked out on the beach and the sea. It had a number of plants and several padded chairs and one sofa. She stood there, wearing a silk robe of blue which had a hood to cover all of her head but her face. She was looking out at the sea, but she turned when he entered and he saw her face, the same beautiful face he’d seen on her when they had first met so long ago on Allenby Island. Her eyelashes, at least, had grown out, and she had put on lipstick and drawn fine brow lines with an eyebrow pencil that looked quite natural and attractive.
She smiled when she saw him. “Hello,” she said, her voice the same as it had been. “You look just as I expected you would. They told me you’d grown white hair. I think it looks very nice.”
He returned the smile but did not approach her. “Then I won’t dye it.”
“You like the robe? I seem to have gotten a taste for silk somehow, and I have the money to get what I want.”
“You sure do,” he responded, trying to be light. “All I got was an unlimited expense account.”
There was a certain tension on both their parts, each not sure how to really break their own secrets with the other.
“All that I have is yours,” she told him, “if you want it. This is a Commonwealth country. We could make it legal at a magistrate in no time. But you must—see me—first.” She pulled back the hood and undid the robe, letting it fall to the floor.
She had never stood more naked than she did there. The total absence of hair, particularly on her head, produced a startling effect, but she did not look like some horror. She had the head for it, and while she looked quite different, she was still somehow sensual and erotic. Her body was the same fine one she’d had before, although not the perfection it had been. Clearly she had been eating well. Still, her injuries were far more apparent that his. In spite of the unmarked face and good figure, she’d never be a photographer’s model.
“You’ve put on weight,” he noted softly.
She smiled, and the smile turned into a laugh, and she ran to him and hugged him and he hugged her back. She was overjoyed at his reaction, but she suddenly sensed a coolness in him, in his less than total embrace, and stepped back.
“Something is the matter. Something you are not telling me.”
“You lost your hair. I lost something—else.” Since it was public exposure time, he felt he might as well get it over with and undid his pants and let them fall to the floor.
She stood back and stared, and her jaw dropped a little. The physicians had done a perfect job. Aside from the growth of some pubic hair, which he hadn’t expected, his looked just like hers.
“Then—then it wasn’t a dream,” she whispered. “They really did it.”
He nodded and bent down and pulled his pants back up. “They really did.”
“Does it—work?”
“If you’re asking if I can get pregnant, the answer’s no. Otherwise, they tell me I’d feel just what you would.”
“You haven’t—tried it?”
“No. I’m Greg, and I’ll stay Greg.”
Suddenly she started to laugh. Concerned, he went over to her. “You all right? I know it’s a shock, but it was a shock to me, too.”
“No, no! I am just thinking that after all this, somehow we are both now virgins!”
He had to smile at that, no matter what the internal anguish.
She stopped, seeing that it hurt him, and hugged and kissed him, then picked up her robe once more and donned it, this time leaving the hood down. “I am sorry. Truly so,” she told him sincerely. “We two are not as far apart as all that. Much of me, inside, is now plastic. I, too, am barren.”
He looked at her, and found more pity for her than for him. He still was in pretty good shape and he’d had half a lifetime whole and free. She had never had that kind of chance. She had mobility and money now, but she would never know normalcy
Up until now, she’d been open, confident, more extroverted than she’d ever been, but now she seemed small and weak once more. “I need you, Greg. I really do. My money will bring me fair weather friends and leeches, who will say that they adore me until I am out of the room and they can laugh behind my back, but nothing else. They say you can leave any time? Be an out-patient almost anywhere?”
He stared at her. “Yeah, sure. I just haven’t had any place to go, and I couldn’t leave without seeing you.”
“Very well, then. I have all this money, and money talks. I am selling Magellan to a group headed by Doctor Bonner for a pittance. A mere four hundred million dollars—American, not Canadian—in a massive trust fund with the other inheritance. Half of it I will donate to various religious charities and to medical research. I do not know yet what I will do with the rest. But, I think if I wish to go, they cannot stop me.”
“I’ll go along with that. Where are you going?”
“We are going. First we are going to a magistrate who will waive all the technicalities because of who I am, and with whom you will not discuss your—injury. Then we are going to the finest hotel in Port of Spain and taking the grandest suite they offer.”
“Huh? Why—what?”
“You idiot\ Did you think that would matter”? Did I fall in love with your organ or with you”? Once I was confused and silly on this matter, but I have learned so much about myself and the world now. Did not the Bishop, like the God he served, love us all far more than we deserve to be loved? And is it not love that makes us more than the animals the Dark Man claimed we were? It is lust that is from the animal. It is love which is the part of us that is from God.”
He wanted to do it, wanted to very badly, but he couldn’t bring himself to inflict it on her, particularly as the years went by.
“It—it just isn’t going to work, Angelique. I do have lusts, and I’m going to have a hard time dealing with them, even harder if I am always with you. Besides, I have no stomach for the rich life. I’d just get fat and lazy and vegetate, while you would want and deserve the glamor of the world. And eventually you would want what I can’t give you, and I’d want it, too. What would we do in that honeymoon suite? Have some kind of two way dildo sent up from the local sex shop?”
She stopped and frowned. “What is this ‘dildo?’ ”
He told her, and she laughed again. “That sounds interesting. By all means we must try it!” Suddenly the laugh faded, and she grew almost somber. I think you truly do not love me, then. Is it the money? I will give it all away. I have never had need of it before. Oui. I will give it away. We will start clean. And if your pride demands it, I will stay home and be the good little wife and clean and mend.”
“No, my pride doesn’t demand that. I just—can’t—see how it’ll work out.”
“Then I give it all away anyway. I return to Quebec and take my vows. Without you, without your support, your friendship, your love, the rest is meaningless.”
He grabbed her suddenly. “You’re really serious?”
“I am more than serious. I will do it. I will marry either you or Christ within the week.”
He sighed. “I guess you’ll have to marry me, then. But keep some of the money. We’re going to need competent security for the rest of our lives, I’m afraid, and that costs. Besides, if I ever needed to find a job, I couldn’t pass the physical.”
She smiled broadly and threw her arms around him.
“Come, Gregory Mac Donald! I will show you how serious I am, and how much you failed to learn through all this!”
Many on the staff and otherwise did not approve of it, but her chief psychiatrist thought it was the best thing for both of them and helped. When you’re rich, what you want comes to you, including a magistrate and a pre-filled out marriage license and all the rest. Arrangements were also quickly made to sneak them past the waiting press and off to a private, well secured resort for the very rich on an isolated stretch of the Grand Cayman Islands. There, in a luxury condominium overlooking the ocean, unobtrusively protected by a security system and staff he himself designed, they were finally able to feel a measure of peace and relaxation.
MacDonald pretty much was along for the ride. He was washed up as a lover and even as a good socialist, yet he found himself surprisingly happy. He remembered his files, and his ex-wife’s own evaluation, that he was the ultimate egocentric personality, and he realized with a start that he had changed far more than physically. He was no longer the sun, but a world in orbit around a different sun, that of Angelique. For the first time, he needed someone else to give him purpose and meaning, and it wasn’t a terrible condition at all.
And now a three-quarters moon was rising above a darkened sea, and as they stood hand in hand at the doors to the balcony of the luxury suite, they held hands and comtemplated their first really private moments together after all of this. In a sense, he’d been dreading, even putting off this moment, when they were alone together.
“Are you happy, my darling?” she asked him.
“Yes, in a crazy kind of way, I think I am. Something dear was taken from my body, but, the funny thing is, something else was added in my head, something that had always been missing but I hadn’t known it before. For the first time, I care about the victims.”
“What?”
“Don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t. I think Bishop Whitely understood it, though. I think that’s what he was trying to tell me at the end.”
“He—came to you on the rock?”
“Yes. And you, too, I understand. You want to tell me what he said?”