WITH ONE GLANCE AT my clock, I shoved out of bed in a panic. It was Tuesday; I was missing my weekly editorial meeting. I stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the shower.
For a moment I stood dumb in the middle of my bathroom, remembering the phone call, the rasping voice.
The figure across the street.
It was daylight now. Emboldened, I walked straight to the window-not in my living room but in the spare room that faced the street. I pulled the shade.
There was the house, the apartment building next to it, and farther down, Saint Mary"s, the liturgies of which I often heard drifting from the open windows of the church in summer. A mother and her young son pa.s.sed along the sidewalk, bundled up in coats and scarves, toward Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue. There was no one else.
I hurried to shower, shave, dress. I hesitated a moment before pocketing my cell phone and another moment upon stepping outside my door. Music was coming from Mrs. Russo"s apartment, a soaring female voice that reminded me of Barbara Streisand. I couldn"t make out the words, but the sound of it, like the daylight, heartened me.
On the single short ride from Central to Kendall Station, one of the train car"s few pa.s.sengers was holding onto the rail to my left and studying me. He looked at least fifty-five and wore a faded Carhartt jacket. His hair was orangish, in the way of men who colored their hair long after it was gray. His large, thick gla.s.ses took up the upper third of his face. An "I didn"t vote for him" b.u.mper sticker with a picture of the president was wrapped around his sleeve like an armband. As far as I could tell, he wore no watch.
"Can I ask you something?" He swayed with the car. Was he a tourist? No, generally they held maps folded open to red and green diagrams of the T T, as though they were the complex capillaries of an organism and not five simple lines named after colors.
"Sure." I prepared to tell him he could switch to the Green Line two stops after Kendall.
"Has someone been talking to you? Contacting you?"
I froze. And then I studied the man more acutely: the faint age spots on his face and the edge of his upper lip, the flannel shirt under his jacket, the too-straight line of his hair across his forehead that indicated a comb-over.
"Don"t be afraid." He regarded me through sagging eyelids magnified by those gla.s.ses. "Has someone been talking to you? Someone not like you?"
The chill and ensuing sweat of the night before returned to me-along with the same need to flee, to shut myself behind a door. The train slowed with a squeal of brakes, and I jumped up, grabbing for the rail near the door as it stopped completely. I squeezed past the doors as soon as they opened, hurried out into the station and up the stairs. Only on the street did I look behind me to confirm that he had not followed me.
I needed to talk to Lucian.
I went into the meeting late, fl.u.s.tered, unprepared. I contributed little, unable to think of anything but the man on the train, the voice on the phone. Were other members of the legion aware of what Lucian was up to, his ambition to have his story-and theirs-outed? Could they interfere?
Helen pulled me aside in the hallway after the meeting. "Clay, I know you"re working on a brilliant piece of writing. And it is brilliant. But I can"t have you doing it at the expense of your responsibilities. It"s all right if it takes longer to finish. You and Anu are still working out the contract particulars, aren"t you?"
"Yes." I"d forgotten the contract.
"Then give yourself the time you need to do your job in the meantime. Please."
I nodded, embarra.s.sed and a little resentful at being openly chastised outside the conference room. I went into my office, shoved the door shut with more force than I meant to, dropped the stack of packets from the meeting onto my desk.
I went to the window and looked out at the people walking by, headed somewhere with a purpose I had once envied.
Returning to my desk, I unpacked my bag, pretending it was any usual day-not that I had had a usual day since early October-putting the packets on the corner of my desk, docking my laptop.
I signed in to the company server, opened my calendar, and faltered.
There. Five o"clock tonight: L. L. But that was not what caused me to hesitate. Below that, a line across the time block read: But that was not what caused me to hesitate. Below that, a line across the time block read:
Don"t EVER try to contact me again.
I sagged into my office chair and rubbed at my face with trembling hands.
27.
In the Marriott Starbucks across the street from my office, I waited. For Lucian. For answers. For the end of the story.
Five o"clock arrived and pa.s.sed. I sipped my coffee, strained to see guests walking through the hotel lobby, studied every patron that came into the coffee shop, most of whom left again. Except for a businessman camped at a table with his laptop, I was the only one there.
I checked my watch. 5:07.
Was this his idea of getting back at me? For what-trying to contact him?
5:11.
I thought through our last conversation that day in the airport before the nuns came along. They had thanked Lucian, not in the way older women coo at the kindness of strangers but in the regal way of those accustomed to respect. I had eavesdropped on their conversation, which consisted wholly of the details of their trip, and had found myself disappointed not to hear them debating Scripture or the devil.
5:19.
I thought about the man on the T T and the figure in the darkness across the street from my apartment. They weren"t the same person; the man on the and the figure in the darkness across the street from my apartment. They weren"t the same person; the man on the T T was short, slightly stooped. The figure across the street was taller, seemingly at ease in the darkness, apparently doing nothing but standing there. was short, slightly stooped. The figure across the street was taller, seemingly at ease in the darkness, apparently doing nothing but standing there.
Waiting to be seen. Watching me.
A man in cargo pants with zippered pockets and a "Carpe Brewem: Seize the Beer" sweatshirt strode into the coffee shop. He was tall, with straight features and a prominent nose. He wore thick socks inside his Birkenstocks, and I could see the gleam of a silver chain disappearing into the neck of his sweatshirt. He might have been a grad student at MIT.
He wasn"t.
"I"m sorry, Clay." He sat down at my table. He did not smile.
"For being late?"
"Well, yes. But mostly for the situation we seem to be in."
"What situation is that? Did you call me last night? Was that you on the street outside my apartment?"
His bangs flopped over his forehead. He raked them back and then frowned. "Someone called you?"
I nodded. I had never considered that he might not know about the call. But he did not ask for details. Instead, he sighed. "I"m afraid I"ve pulled you into the middle of a conflict that existed long before you were aware of it, one that has been happening around you for . . . well, you know the story."
"There was a man on the T T, asking if anyone had been talking to me."
"I"ve heard."
"He had auburn hair, bald on top-"
"It doesn"t matter what he looked like. He could be one of millions."
"Of Legion?"
"I suspect he was with the Host."
"And last night?"
"I suspect the other."
I shivered, felt the sharp claws of anxiety inside my chest. In these meetings, these times together, we had existed in a world of story, separate from the spiritual and corporeal worlds we came from. Now, in the last twenty-four hours, I felt those three realms commingling in a volatile fusion of fiction, speculation, and every concrete thing that const.i.tuted life in this tangible world. And I felt it with a strange excitement mixed with grave fear.
"How can both want-or not want-the same thing?"
"The Host, because the truth is already available if you seek it. The Legion, because they don"t want you finding it." He said this with too much calm, and that maddened me.
"Why then? Why have you done it?" My hands were trembling again, as they had after the phone call last night.
"I"ve told you that as well."
"What will happen to me because I did this? Will they put a hit out on me? Am I going to h.e.l.l?"
Tires skidding on pavement . . .
He studied me. "You asked me once where you were going. I said I didn"t know. Where do you think you"re going, Clay?"
"I-I don"t know! How am I supposed to know?" For the first time in weeks, months, I wanted my old life back, that pre-Oz gray I had known before the world was imbued with strange colors. I wanted back my simpleminded fixation on the marriage I"d ruined, the wife I"d been unable to keep. My failures as a husband and a man had been a comfort compared to these new terrors.
But I might as well have tried to crawl back into the womb. "How much time do we have?"
"Not much. Listen to me. The Host will not wait for you to talk but will speak first. A member of the Host doesn"t come to you because you want it to or because you try to summon it. You might indeed summon an angel, but it"ll likely be a fallen one. As I"ve said, even our master masquerades as an angel of light when it suits him."
I thought of my e-mail, of the call later that night. I had felt exposed, vulnerable, all day. "What will we do?"
"What do you mean what will we do?"
"What do we do? do?"
"We finish the story." As he leaned forward, elbows on the edge of the table, his fingers laced together, I saw the heavy stainless steel timepiece on his wrist. I did not consider then that I should have stopped him. That this answer should have been unsatisfactory. That to proceed in light of what was happening defied logic. I was focused on the singular point my universe had shrunk to: my book.
"One day, not so long after the crucifixion and resurrection and after the G.o.d-man departed, I awoke to a realization. It was as though I had been standing on the brittle edge of a melting lake. Looking down at the crumbling ice before me and the depths below it, a sense of exclusion settled upon me. I was aware that I stood on the fringe of d.a.m.nation. This was far worse than my initial sense after the fall that something awaited me on the road ahead, because now here it was, a yawning pit." The bluntness of his stare was a touch psychotic.
"All that might have saved me, El had made available to you. You. You again. And because of it, you might never stand where I stood, on that brittle cusp. How deeply, how madly I loathed loathed you. you.
"Now you know why fear and jealousy have become twin children to us: Something endeared you to him, something beyond the attachment of a creator for his creation-for we, too, were created. Something beyond what we were capable of, something beyond our control-and yours, too. For that alone, I hated you. For the love of G.o.d there was no word for the ill I bore you. That is when you truly became my enemy."
"You mean . . . when humans became the enemy of the Legion."
"No. I am both representative and individual. And this is the crux of it, Clay. I believe that if you were the only one, had been the only human ever ever-yes, just you-it would not have changed a thing. I would still be as I am, and he would love you so much."
I stared.
"That look on your face, that"s how I feel. Baffled. Because what are you humans but insects? Holy blood for insects. It"s as incongruous as diamonds in mud. It wasn"t enough that he gave you his breath-he gave you his blood as well. Life physical and spiritual. He gave you everything. What makes you so special? Don"t pull away! I ask again: Why you? You. You!" He banged a fist on the table. The businessman with his laptop glanced up. "It all comes down to you. Always, you!"
Leave. You need to leave.
I don"t know where the thought came from, whether from fear or offense, self-preservation or another source altogether. I stood.
The demon watched me lazily. "You asked me where you were going. Do you think you should go to heaven, Clay?"
"I guess so," I said, warily, as though he were a wild animal.
"Why is that?"
"I"ve been a good person."
He said, without a trace of the escalating anger or hatred of a moment ago, "You haven"t understood a thing I"ve said."
I left but was unable to erase the image of his parting smile from my mind. It followed me home, baleful, devoid of any attempt at congeniality. In the past he had been angry, capricious, even hostile.
But not quite like this.
Outside my building, I glanced at the house across the street where I had seen the stranger leaning against a post, but no one was there.
The music was still coming from behind Mrs. Russo"s door, borne along now on the smell of baking desserts. Perhaps her small group was coming over tomorrow.
I wrote well into the night, chasing reason, exorcising insanity. With an editor"s sense of rising narrative tension, I knew I was nearing the end, the climax when events converge to bring the story to a close. Knowing it, feeling it so near, was the one thing that gave me relief.
I worked past 4:00 a.m. and fell, exhausted, onto my couch.
28.