For Love of Audrey Rose

24

Blue grit hung in the early summer air in slow currents, wallowing in the baking haze of day. New York was bottled in a smoky, whitish presence that sucked the oxygen from the river basins. Noise muffled itself in the stone canyons like muted thunder, boiling with the horrid hostility of ten million people jammed together. Day after day the atmospheric layers burned, until a putrid smell of something decomposed laid itself on everything that moved below.

Within Goodland Sanitarium, the air conditioners failed to keep pace with the heat, though water dripped from them onto towels on the floor, and steady throbs of machinery echoed down the dank corridors. Staff and patients perspired freely, and the grit flecked each and every window.

Janice nervously twisted the straps of her handbag. She was in a small lobby, an alcove where the tiles were stained by coffee and shoes, and the ashtrays stank of old cigarettes. She listened to the sounds of approaching footsteps, disappearing conversations, the vaguely threatening murmur of activity that was so horrible because it was never defined, only whispered and hinted at in the labyrinth of corridors.

Janice reflected bitterly as she sat in the steaming lobby. Upon the guilts and maneuvers of administrators depended the lives of so many broken people. Dr. Geddes was reluctant at first to enter into their conspiracy with Jennie. Palming the sick child off to Bill as an Ivy substitute offended his professional and moral ethos. But Elliot Hoover’s persuasive arguments for the ultimate good that would accrue not only to Bill, but — and especially — to the orphaned child, at last mitigated the doctor’s qualms and drew him wholly into their compact. In his best eloquence before Dr. Boltin, Dr. Geddes explained his approach to transfer-therapy, how Bill responded ever so slightly to objects of transference. Why not a real girl? Indeed, a girl of the right age, attractive, and with similarities of personality to those of his own late daughter? Finally, Dr. Boltin acquiesced, but demanded safeguards for the sanitarium. Dr. Geddes executed an application to the State of Pennsylvania for permission to transfer the continuation of Jennie’s treatment to the Goodland Sanitarium in the State of New York, and Pennsylvania responded by agreeing to a six-month trial period of treatment. It took all of May and June to accomplish, but it was done.

As Janice exhaled slowly, she watched Jennie. The small girl wore a red jumper, sneakers, and a red plaid shirt. The black silken hair was freshly washed, brushed into a hundred soft curls that lost their form in the sultry heat. A small area of rash threatened to break out inside her elbows. Jennie’s movements were now more fluid. Passing doctors and hospital personnel took no notice that the little girl on the vinyl couch looked into the air at nothing. From a distance, Jennie looked only bored, fidgeting by the tall aluminum ashtrays, waiting for a father or brother swallowed up somewhere in the recesses of the institution.

“Mrs. Templeton—”

Janice turned, and saw Dr. Geddes.

“Have they started?” Janice asked.

“No. They’re waiting for Mr. Hoover.” He sat down beside her on a worn brown chair.

“I don’t want you to build your hopes up too much,” he said. “What we’re attempting is a long-shot at best.”

“I only wish it were over,” Janice whispered.

Down the corridor there was a blurred motion. An orderly carried a brass canister from a storeroom and disappeared into the darkness. A slow parallelogram of light diminished as the storeroom door silently shut and locked.

That was how the light had gone out behind Bill’s eyes, Janice thought. It just got locked up. It took sixty days for him to realize that they wanted him to see a child. Forty-five days before he stopped cursing them all. Depriving him of his rightful daughter, he yelled. Illegitimate fruit of their lust. A scheme to falsify his religious quest. It was not until the beginning of summer that the silence began. That was worse. A slow, cynical smile on his lips, dark hostility in his eyes, and saying nothing — nothing at all.

He tore up Jennie’s photograph. Laughed at their claims. But finally, maybe out of boredom or a hideous despair, he assented to see Hoover. Just once. There were a few religious questions to pose. And they damned well better be answered, he warned.

That was when matters began to spiral in. Elliot Hoover procured a copy of a birth certificate from the Pittsburgh Hall of Records, paid an engraver to duplicate the scrolls and objects embedded in the margins. Then another man was found to forge the inks and signatures. A kind of evil began to filter into the entire enterprise.

“I’d better go,” Dr. Geddes said. “See if Hoover’s arrived.”

Behind the locked door, vague premonitions of voices insinuated themselves into Bill’s mind. He could not distinguish them from other, exterior voices. Sweat broke out along his forehead. In an agony of horror he shook himself from side to side, but the voices insisted, stung, and poked icy fingers through the nerves within his temples.

Bill’s wrists chafed against leather straps connected to the bar of a hard, iron bed. He could sit up, feet on floor, but his arms were bound down beside his thighs.

Suddenly the door opened. Bill stared at the incoming figure through the dampness of sweat fallen along his eyes. Bill’s slow, grinding teeth were audible. In the doorway, Dr. Boltin paused, breathing heavily, mopping his neck.

“Well, Bill,” he said breezily. “How are we doing? Not too badly, I trust?”

Bill’s gaze followed the portly director.

“Where is he?” Bill whispered, his forearms bulging against the restraining straps.

“Come now, Bill. I was told you were calm. Calmness is everything now. Do you understand me?”

Bill licked his lips, stared moodily at the floor, and made his body relax.

The lock on the door gave off a metallic scratching, then it clicked. Dr. Geddes stepped in. Bill slumped against the wall. Dr. Geddes avoided Bill’s eyes.

Dr. Boltin checked his watch. “Are you sure he knew it was for two o’clock?”

“Absolutely,” Dr. Geddes said quickly.

For a long time none of the men in the chamber moved. Their breathing was vaguely audible. Dr. Geddes stared at the discolorations on the floor. They looked like streaks left by dragging shoes. Fights, violent suppressions. He turned away.

“You don’t think this is all a horrible mistake?” Dr. Boltin whispered.

Before Dr. Geddes answered, the lock clicked again. An orderly opened the door, and beside him, forehead glistening with sweat, stood Elliot Hoover in a blue suit. The light picked up his light hair, like a bruised halo, and the heat had reddened his face as though he blushed.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said, catching his breath, smiling. “Sorry I’m—”

“Let’s get on with it, Mr. Hoover,” Dr. Boltin wheezed, pointing to the single empty chair opposite the iron bed.

Hoover hesitated. Bill’s body seemed to repel him with an almost magnetic barrier. Hoover seemed unable to stand the gaze of the manacled man on the bed. He stared at Bill’s shoes, at the standing orderly, back at the psychiatrists; then, he went slowly to the chair and sat down. He did not look at Bill. He licked his lips and swallowed heavily. The door closed behind them and a horrific silence drummed in their ears.

“The, uh, certificate,” Dr. Geddes suggested.

Hoover reached into his interior coat pocket. He produced a long brown envelope. Carefully, controlling nervous fingers, he slit it open. An elegant, scrolled document slid into his palm.

He cleared his throat. “This is the birth certificate of Jennie Dunn.”

Hoover looked up, recoiled from Bill’s stare, and in a kind of psychic defense, held out the document. Bill slowly pulled himself upright, using powerful forearms, until the two men sat facing each other, less than two feet apart. Dr. Geddes now observed that Bill’s feet were unstrapped.

“Look at it, Bill,” Dr. Boltin said.

Bill glared at Dr. Boltin, but like a talisman the document slowly drew his eyes back.

“Jennifer Dunn,” Hoover recited. “February 3, 1975. 10:43 A.M. Signed by the Registrar of Births.”

Bill stared at the document for a long time.

“What do you think, Bill?” Dr. Boltin asked.

“Nice forgery.”

“What makes you think it’s a forgery?” Dr. Geddes asked.

Bill sneered, but he could not take his eyes from the document.

“Look,” Hoover reasoned. “How could anybody duplicate the old scrollwork, the emblems, of the State of Pennsylvania? Only the Hall of Records in the City Hall has these plates.”

Bill’s lips pressed together. He agreed to nothing, but he looked demoralized. Sensing the shift of moral power, Hoover quickly leaned to the attack.

“Now listen to me, Bill,” he said. “Ahimsa requires it.”

“Who?” Dr. Boltin asked.

“The humility of universal love. Ahimsa.”

“Oh.”

Hoover turned slowly back to Bill. Bill had softened even more. Compulsively he twined his fingers at the restraining straps. It was pathetic, ritualistic, a bizarre muscular reaction to frustration.

“Listen to me, Bill,” Hoover said softly. “Jennie Dunn is a lovely girl, Bill. She is fragile in many ways, but she is also full of tiny secrets. She moves as though afraid of disturbing the air.”

Bill sighed, and let his hands fall back onto the iron rail. He sat inert under Hoover’s hypnotic monotone.

“When she sleeps, she curls her left leg, as though ready to fly away into the night.”

“Shut up.”

“She’s delicate, Bill. She walks up and down, like a figure on a music box. She dances with herself in the morning sunlight.”

“So does every kid.”

“She needs a soft blue night-light. No other color will do. Her dreams make her sit up, still sleeping.”

“Hoover, I’m warning you.”

Hoover leaned forward, smiling. Suddenly Bill’s foot lashed out, the point of the shoe smashed against Hoover’s right knee. Hoover gasped, turned pale. The sound had cracked like the chop of an axe.

“That’s all right, orderly,” Dr. Boltin barked.

The orderly retreated to his place at the wall. Hoover grimaced in pain, drew his chair back, and tried to ignore the shock spreading outward from his knee, burgeoning into brilliant throbs of agony.

He paused, seeing the hostile stare on the iron bed.

“You’re lying, Hoover!”

“Jennie is frightened by birds. Isn’t that peculiar? Don’t you know another child who was afraid of birds?”

Bill glared at him, the eyes sunk darkly in the sockets, head lowered.

“Janice tell you this?” he demanded. “What is this, pillow talk?”

Hoover said nothing. They watched the fingers grope at the iron rail. Sweat broke out again on Bill’s face, along his neck, drenching his shirt. His back trembled with a hideous effort.

“What about it, Bill?” Dr. Boltin asked. “Is all this familiar?”

Suddenly Bill repeatedly rammed his fists against the iron rail. The leather straps exploded into tautness over and over, but Bill was helpless, impotent, in a fury of rage. His legs jerked out like a demented marionette, his head shook violently, and an inarticulate roar tore from his throat.

“Wipe his mouth,” Dr. Boltin ordered.

The orderly flourished a large white tissue over Bill’s mouth. Bill jerked his head away, then hung awkwardly against the straps, crying silently.

“Come now, Bill,” Dr. Geddes said gently. “Isn’t this truly like your own daughter?”

Bill slumped, defeated, his whole body caving in. An occasional spasm crossed his back. Trembling, he tried to control his voice.

“I found my daughter! I held her in my arms!”

“You were mistaken,” Hoover said.

Bill shook his head, sank lower, and could not stifle the sobs.

“She was my own — my Ivy. I held her in the snowstorm.”

“But, Bill, there were no signs. How could you think she could give you any signs? Why, she was only an infant, not even a personality yet. She could not speak, walk— nothing!”

Bill only wept, losing control altogether.

“Please,” he whispered. “Go away. Please go away.”

“She was an illusion, Bill,” Hoover said quietly. “All right, maybe by some freak of arithmetic she was born at the right time. But she was never what you thought her to be. She was never your own.”

The words pierced Bill like tiny needles, exploring his body to search out the heart. He seemed to tremble at every phrase, deflate, until he was a rag doll.

“Never your own, Bill,” Hoover intoned. “Never your own.”

For a long moment, nobody moved. Dr. Boltin became restless. The orderly slowly shifted his weight and stared at the ceiling.

“What karma did I inherit,” Bill whispered, “that I should live in hell?”

Elliot Hoover sensed the fatal vulnerability and lunged forward.

“Every karma can — is obligated to — improve, Bill,” he said gently.

Bill shook his head.

“The seven levels of hell — I have been there.”

“No. Remember the doctrine of brahmacharya. Self-control. Do not despair.”

Bill’s eyes were nearly hidden under the hair that slanted across his forehead. The two men faced each other, eyes locked in a peculiar, savage, muted combat.

“Brahmacharya,” Bill retorted softly. “Are you clean enough to speak to me of that?”

Hoover paled, withdrew slightly, confused. “What are you talking about?” he stammered.

“Have you reddened her breasts with saffron?” Bill asked. “Have you tasted the golden nectar?”

“I’m not sure what you’re driving at, Bill.”

Bill smiled sardonically.

“Did you not,” he whispered with a manic glee, “practice the deep womb-thrust? From the calves, the thighs? Did you not light the lamp of mystic jewels?”

Hoover reddened, but maintained his ground, staring back at Bill.

“This is your imagination, Bill,” Hoover exclaimed. “Your wife and I have only tried to help you.”

Bill laughed. Then a strange smile fixed upon his face, and he seemed to look down on Hoover from a thousand miles away.

“You have not stood firm,” Bill said, mocking. “You are corrupted. You are utterly lost, Hoover!”

Hoover swallowed, looked at Dr. Boltin, whose face was screwed up in utter incomprehension. Hoover wiped the sweat from his face. He turned back, but Bill was no longer listening.

“The body is a possession like any other,” Bill said in subtle simplicity. “You should not have enslaved yourself to it. The two of you are forsaken.”

Bill seemed to watch them all from far away, as though he had become bodiless. He smiled bitterly.

“You see,” Bill continued calmly, “man is a transitional being. He is the secret, holy workshop of evolution. Bit by bit, he transcends his past. Like one who climbs mountains, he looks down on all he has surpassed with contempt. He evolves to a new system of values. He experiences a luminous expansion.”

The orderly coughed slightly, oblivious to everything. Dr. Boltin waited, making sense of nothing. Dr. Geddes, however, was transfixed by the change in Bill. Bill’s face had grown serene, and the words flowed easily, without a pause in their articulation.

“Therefore, I have forsaken my wife,” Bill concluded, letting the thought evaporate slowly, like a mist in the crowded air. The silence was pregnant with a bleak density. In contrast to Bill’s calmness, Hoover fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair.

“Yet, by works,” Hoover said at last, “one may strive for liberation. Without the performance of works, it is as a journey into the wind.”

Bill laughed. “I know all about your works,” he sneered. “A clinic for overflow misfits in Pittsburgh. Since when is Pittsburgh a place for spiritual works?”

“Pittsburgh was where my daughter died.”

“So?”

“Therefore, Pittsburgh being the locus of her greatest happiness, it stands to reason that she would return — at some point.”

“Ivy was born in New York,” Bill chuckled derisively.

“Nevertheless, the problem — the tragedy — began in Pittsburgh.”

Bill considered this, and finally shrugged.

“Children often inherit the sick karma of their parents,” he observed maliciously.

“That is precisely why we must perform our rituals, Bill. You as well as I. To cure the lame of spirit.”

Bill laughed softly. “Depends which rituals you perform. Do you know about the Tibetan mysteries?”

Hoover stirred uncomfortably. “No, I’ve never looked too closely at them.”

Bill laughed again, softly but with an edge of malice. “For starters, there’s too much light here. You need darkness. The darkness, say, of a cave.”

“You could pull the curtains.”

“And skullbowls full of red blood. Rancid butter. Decomposing dogs, goats, and wild bears along the walls.”

Hoover said nothing. Dr. Boltin looked at Dr. Geddes, who shrugged.

“The painted, vermilion gods on the black stone,” Bill continued. “Death in copulation with life. Skinless carcasses on pointed posts around the fire.”

“This kind of magic,” Hoover said with a superior smile, “is utterly fallible. It takes a lifetime of humility, prayer, and discipline to gain any real influence, and that only over the self.”

“No! That’s not true!” Bill insisted. “You can control reality.”

Dr. Boltin tried in vain to light a pipe. The red, round cheeks puffed and drew, but there was only a wet gurgle. “What are you talking about, Bill?” he snapped.

“I could show you better if my hands were freed.”

“That’s all right, Bill. Just tell us.”

Bill shook the hair from his forehead. As he spoke he grew pale, shivering as though an arctic wind roared into his soul. His eyes grew small and bright.

“You start with an effigy,” Bill said. “Rag doll, wood. You concentrate on it. On the nothingness of it. You identify with the nothingness. Then you write the holy syllable and you sew it in with red thread. You recite the mantra: Om kurulle hrih! Vasam kuru hoh! Akarsaya hrih suaha!”

The orderly jumped at the sudden wail of the mantra. Dr. Boltin stared, white with surprise.

“Jesus Christ!” he blurted.

“Of course,” Bill added, smiling, “you add in the name of your victim. You put your concentration into the effigy. The concentration on your victim. That’s what you sew up inside. You forget your senses, your imagination, until the vision of the victim comes. Do you understand? And then, Jah hum bam hoh! Jah hum bam hoh! over and over until you can’t breathe, until the walls swirl like a cloud of bees, and you summon, absorb, bind yourself, into the effigy! You cast off your ego! You grasp the ego of the victim!”

Dr. Boltin stared, transfixed. Dr. Geddes slowly, absently, dabbed at the perspiration at his neck.

“You start a fire,” Bill whispered. “The effigy melts! Slowly! Dripping slowly! You stamp on it, reciting! It takes hours. It seems like years. Until you have no more strength. Your hands are too tired to make the signs of revenge.”

Bill did not so much finish as wind down. Like a huge clock, unable to go on, he stared disconsolately at the two psychiatrists. Hoover mopped his forehead.

“Exactly what does this get you?” Dr. Boltin asked curiously.

“Power. I summoned Elliot Hoover.”

Bill smiled secretively, said nothing more. An ominous atmosphere built up in the stark chamber.

“These Tibetan rituals,” Hoover ventured. “They lead the laymen astray.”

“Nothing leads me astray, Hoover.”

“You don’t really believe all that, do you, Bill?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

Dr. Boltin, short of air, walked into the corridor. He found a water fountain, drank copiously, even splashed some onto his face. Vague arguments between Hoover and Bill reached him, all incomprehensible. Dr. Boltin looked at his watch, sighed, and went back inside.

“There is no duality!” Hoover shouted. “No subject! No object! It’s — it’s ridiculous! The Atman! The Absolute! Why, it’s a-dvaita, just like in the Vedas!”

“Bullshit!” Bill yelled back. “Even you have to concede that the essence of the subject — the tat tvam asi— never returns. Never!”

“Listen to reason, Bill,” Hoover insisted, poking him in the shoulder. “A liberated self cannot appear to itself! Isn’t that obvious?”

Dr. Boltin leaned over to Dr. Geddes.

“Have you been, uh, following any of this?” he asked.

“Not a word. But look at Bill. I’ve never seen him so articulate. He’s reasoning!”

“Are you sure this is reason?”

Elliot Hoover and Bill were both shouting now, a dialectic of polemics, each trying to crush the other, oblivious of the psychiatrists.

“Your illusions of individuality,” Hoover yelled, “are totally unfounded!”

“You live in a perverted dream, Hoover,” Bill sneered. “Without power, without development, you can achieve nothing. Nothing! The soul, I tell you, is a creator!”

The verbal flow rose and fell, a strange current of attack and counterattack that seemed to belong on the far side of the earth.

“They seem to be slowing down,” Dr. Geddes observed.

“It’s been almost an hour.”

Elliot Hoover had removed his coat and tie, and he vigorously mopped his throat through the unbuttoned shirt. Bill, exhausted, slumped on the edge of the iron bed.

“Well?” Dr. Boltin demanded, irritated. “What’s the verdict?”

Hoover looked up wearily. Slowly he rolled down his shirt sleeves and buttoned them again. His face betrayed an agony of weariness, even a kind of fear, no triumph at all, only a sensation of having survived something terrible.

“He’s willing to meet the child,” Hoover said quietly.

Bill groaned softly.

“If she — is — Ivy,” he murmured, “her soul — will— speak — to me.”

25

The orderlies unlocked the door. Inside, Bill suddenly looked up, saw Dr. Geddes put a restraining arm in front of Hoover.

“I want Mrs. Templeton to take Jennie in. Just the two of them.”

Hoover nodded. Janice quickly smoothed down Jennie’s hair. Janice felt she was on the threshold of something worse than an asylum room: it was the threshold of the last chance they would ever have. She nervously straightened Jennie’s red jumper and stared into the quiet, lovely, mysterious face.

“Don’t be frightened, Janice,” Hoover whispered. “Have faith.”

Janice smiled, pressed his hand, and then cautiously led Jennie into Bill’s room.

The door closed behind her. Jennie shuffled her feet. Bill looked absently at Janice. Then slowly he focused on the child. Curious, nothing more.

“This is Jennie, Bill,” Janice said softly.

Bill observed the red jumper, the new sneakers. The black hair surprised him. He softened when he realized how frail she was, how slender her limbs really were. But he said nothing.

“Jennie,” Janice said. “Jennie doesn’t talk.”

“I know. They told me.”

Jennie let go of Janice’s fingers. A complicity of awkwardness and silence surrounded the girl. She walked in her mincing, teetering steps, across the tile floor, away from Bill.

Jennie looked down at her sneakers. A loose shoelace obsessed her. She bent down, completely absorbed in the mystery of the string. Her tiny fingers smoothed it, her foot jerked away with it. Then she broke away from it and walked against one of the orderlies, taking no more notice of him than if he had been made of stone.

Bill’s eyes followed her in growing curiosity.

As she walked to the edge of his desk something bothered her. Slowly her head turned in the direction of Bill. He was staring at her with an intensity she did not like. She ran her fingers through her hair, violently shook her head, and slumped down to play dead.

The orderlies looked at each other. One felt impelled to rescue the girl, but the other gestured for him to remain at his post. Janice watched Jennie roll over slowly, then look back to see if Bill was still watching.

For a stony eternity their eyes locked. Again Jennie shook her head as though a swarm of bees attacked her. She grew still, then rose and stood in the center of the room. Her arms moved ritualistically at her sides, pumping up and down, then froze. She stared at Bill’s right arm.

Slowly Bill’s right hand opened, beckoned her closer.

Jennie, startled, looked back at the man’s face. An almost deranged intensity poured out of her small eyes. She was frightened, rooted to the spot.

Bill licked his lips.

“Ivy…” he whispered.

Jennie suddenly tilted her head, looking at the ceiling, tossed her arms over her head, and stomped noisily around the room. She marched like an insane drum majorette, over the toes of the second orderly, then stopped in front of Janice, oblivious to Bill.

“Ivy!” Bill called desperately, in vain.

A horrific chill swept through Janice, and she turned, looking for Hoover beyond the orderlies at the opened door.

Jennie shook her limbs in a mindless parody of an African dance, then paused and quietly surveyed the room as though she had never seen it.

“Ivy!” Bill whispered urgently.

A strange look appeared on Jennie’s face. Her eyes locked with Bill’s face, now streaming with tears.

“Ivy…” he said, barely audible, the final whisper of his tortured need.

Janice remained rooted to the floor as the girl’s smile grew softer, a steady signal of muted love, and legs carried her without awkwardness, carried her toward Bill. Like a soft fawn she fell forward, gently onto his chest, and his cheek, glistening wet, pressed down on her hair.

“Oh, Ivy…Ivy…” he repeated, the litany of a broken man.

Gradually he pressed close against her, and her small body relaxed against him.

“Ivy…Ivy…”

Hoover, overjoyed, pushed his way past the orderlies, but Dr. Geddes grabbed his arm.

“Leave them alone!”

Janice circled closer, unable to believe it. She whirled back to the doorway, congested with men.

“Elliot — she went to him.”

“Yes,” Hoover whispered. “Exactly what we prayed for.”

Janice, her hand to her mouth, watched incredulously. Bill rocked Jennie back and forth, and the girl seemed to have found shelter there forever.

Finally Dr. Geddes led both Hoover and Janice farther out into the corridor. From where they stood, they could barely see the girl, so completely was she lost in Bill’s embrace. But they heard Bill again and again call her Ivy.

“This is one of the greatest days of my life,” Dr. Geddes whispered. “We’ve made contact!”

“H-he called her Ivy!” Janice stammered. “And she went to him!”

“Yes,” Dr. Geddes said. “You’re right. Go back in and say that Ivy has to go home now. She’s tired and has to rest.”

Janice stared at him in confusion.

“Do it,” Hoover softly urged.

Mechanically, Janice walked back up the corridor, entered the room, and saw how completely safe and secure the girl felt in Bill’s arms. She was not asleep. The small, lovely eyes were open, but dreamy and at peace for the first time since Janice had known her.

“Ivy… Ivy has to go now, Bill. She’s tired.”

Bill heard nothing. Janice stepped closer.

“Bill, darling, Ivy has to get some rest.”

He closed his eyes, nodded, and with infinite sorrow released the girl. Janice took her by the hand. Jennie walked in the peculiar, mincing, teetering steps once again. When the door closed, Janice caught a last glimpse of Bill’s face — still tear-wet, but serene, even luminous with expansive love and, for the first time, hope.

Elliot Hoover lifted Jennie from the taxi. For a while he was unwilling to step into Des Artistes.

“The last time I came into this building,” he mused, “it was to take a daughter. Now it is to return one.”

Janice looked at him distantly, wondering what it was that had resolved itself in such a peculiar circle of events.

Hoover carried the girl slowly toward the elevator. He seemed to walk on tiptoe, and he ignored Mario’s incredulous gaze as they rode up. Down the hallway he carried the girl, following Janice. The noise of the door being unlocked broke the silence.

The apartment door swiveled open. The stained-glass windows displayed a buoyant light, a subdued extravagance of reds and greens in the hushed atmosphere. In some unspoken way when he crossed the threshold, a terrifying sense of responsibility wakened in him.

Jennie stirred in his arms. Her eyes remained closed.

“The ceiling,” he marveled softly. “It hasn’t changed.”

“No. The ceiling never changes.”

He turned to her, having heard a deeper meaning in her words.

“But so much else has changed.”

“Yes. In all of us.”

Jennie stirred again.

“Shall I put her to bed?” he asked softly.

“She can sleep upstairs.”

Janice led them up the carpeted steps. She paused at what had been Ivy’s room. Delicately she pushed it open. Jars of paintbrushes, ink bottles, and piles of sketchbooks lay on white shelves and a desk.

“In Ivy’s room…” marveled Hoover.

“I have a cot in the closet.”

Hoover lifted Jennie carefully to Janice’s arms. He went to the closet, briskly brought out a metal cot and unfolded it. Then, as directed, he brought in sheets and two blankets from the closet in the hallway. Gently he undressed Jennie down to the underpants and covered her, tucking the sheet and blanket around the slender shoulders.

“She normally sleeps like a log,” he said, stroking her chin.

“Elliot, why did she go to him?”

Hoover shrugged. “She was tired. It was a long, hard flight, a strange environment. She heard a man’s soothing voice and simply went to him.”

“She’s autistic; she doesn’t respond to voices.”

“She’ll hold my hand. And yours. Maybe she does distinguish tones of voices.”

Janice stared at the sleeping child. “It frightened me,” she confessed, “to see her go to him like that.”

“We should be happy, Janice,” Hoover said. “Isn’t it what we worked for? To make contact with him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel right about it.”

Hoover said nothing. He walked to the window and stared down at the grimy, sultry city. He almost seemed to forget her, lost in thought. To Janice the silence was unbearable.

“Will you stay?” she asked simply.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t. We can’t. Not for a while.”

“Did Bill say something that changed your mind?”

He turned to her, confused and not hiding it. “It would spoil the — the sanctity of what we’ve done,” he said very quietly.

“Sanctity?” Janice replied almost harshly. “We deceived him! That birth certificate was phony! And he’ll find out! He’ll call the Hall of Records! You know he will.”

“He’ll find the certificate, properly filed, just as I told him.”

“But there is no certificate!”

He glared at her, and she grew silent.

“Now there is,” he said simply. “I’ve arranged it. That’s all you have to know.”

Janice looked down at Jennie sadly. “This kind of deception can come to no good.”

“Look. You saw him when we left. He was joyous, calm, a gentle soul. What the hell was he before? A maniac. A vegetable.”

Something dangerous filled the air, like smoke. Hoover sensed it too and softened. He looked out the window again, but this time he saw only the grit and streaks that adhered to the glass.

“We are instruments of heaven,” he said. “We can only follow its dictates. Blindly.”

She said nothing. The feeling of vague horror consolidated into the specific fear of being discovered. She felt a peculiar darkness everywhere, hovering over her, all over the apartment.

“Will you take care of Jennie?” he asked. “For as long as Dr. Geddes needs her?”

“Yes. Of course.”

Suddenly tears burst from Janice’s eyes, and she turned away. Hoover quickly turned her back, held her, and she sank against his chest.

“What’s going to happen, Elliot?” she said unevenly.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. All we can do now is help Dr. Geddes.”

“What about us?”

He stiffened. She felt him draw away. It was as though they were saying farewell forever.

“I’ll come see you, Janice. But it can’t be for a while.”

“Elliot—”

He smiled, stroking her cheek.

“I’ll be with you, darling,” he whispered. “I always am.”

Something softened within her.

He smiled gently. “Let me call you from Pittsburgh.”

She nodded slowly. Together they went down the stairs to the apartment door. He kissed her lightly on the cheek. They tried to convince each other that there was no leave-taking, that they would be together, that night and every night, but there was a wrench of emptiness when he drew away. She watched him walk to the elevator. With a friendly smile, sweet and bashful, yet complicitous, he waved. Then he was gone.

The impact of his absence hit her as though she had fallen into a vast and empty shaft. Now the apartment was denuded of protection — Bill was gone, Elliot Hoover was gone, and upstairs was a strange child who needed help.

Janice went to Ivy’s bedroom and peered in. For an instant the bundle of blankets deceived her. Then Jennie’s small face appeared. An eye lazily opened and closed. Janice stroked the girl’s hair, but the room seemed alive with muted whispers. They barraged her in long enfilades of obscene, mocking jeers. She looked up. It was silent. Nothing in the room was left from the night when Ivy, in that mad whirl of pain, ran from the nightmare that finally destroyed her.

“Five.”

Janice nearly gasped in shock. For an instant she did not know who spoke. Then Jennie sat up, stared blankly at her.

“Five-four-two.”

Janice, trembling, went to the bathroom and brought Jennie a glass of water. The girl drank greedily and hiccupped lightly. Janice kissed her forehead.

Slowly Jennie’s eyes closed, the glassy, cool stare of sleep disappeared under the soft lids. The tiny lips curled around a word, like releasing bubbles, and a tiny aspiration made a sound: “Four.”

What a peculiar malady, Janice reflected. A child makes an analogue of language, but not language itself. What, if anything, did Jennie speak of now, in her unimaginable dreams?

The following morning Janice cut bananas into cereal for Jennie, poured milk into the bowl, and made a ring of strawberries on top. Then she heard faint sounds overhead. They were light, delicate sounds, unlike Ivy in her terror. Jennie peered uncertainly down from the top of the stairs. A shy smile spread over the elfin face.

“Come on down, darling,” Janice called.

But Jennie recoiled into Ivy’s room. Janice ran upstairs, found the girl hiding under the cot, quickly dressed her, and carried her down to breakfast. Jennie had a fabulous appetite. Her metabolic rate must be high, Janice thought, to keep her so thin.

That morning, Janice braved the department stores with Jennie. A jumper in green, two pairs of jeans, four shirts, numerous underclothes, and a dress found their way back to Des Artistes. Then Jennie, exhausted, teetered over to Janice and fell, half asleep, against her breast.

So it was nothing freakish, Janice thought. Jennie’s collapse on Bill was just a lucky piece of timing. Janice, much relieved, took her upstairs to the cot for a nap, and worked through the afternoon on an assignment she and Elaine had decided could just as well be done at home.

Jennie was popular with the hospital staff. She had a sly sense of humor. She metamorphosed paper clips, file folders, and pencils into objects of ritual, forming semicircles composed of prime numbers. Psychiatrists tried to catch her at subtraction, but she only added, multiplied and divided. No one knew why. But she never made a mistake.

By early autumn, she knew the way to Bill’s room. She walked in front of Dr. Geddes, avoiding the swirls printed in the tiled floor.

Bill rose eagerly on the mornings of Jennie’s visits. He shaved, wore his best clothes, and paced the floor nervously. An inner love glowed from his eyes. He ignored Janice, but found delight in every action, every sound from Jennie. He became irritated at Dr. Geddes and Janice, jealous of their time with the child.

“This awareness of the child,” Dr. Geddes confided as they left. “It’s a real relationship. The first step to social reintegration.”

In fact, to preserve his meetings with Jennie, Bill controlled his every act. He tried never to be suspicious, never angry, amenable to any test Dr. Geddes proposed. He learned to mimic the easy pleasantries of men shaking hands and discussing the weather. He read the newspaper, forced himself to discuss things with other patients, until he was certain he could speak without hesitation.

By the end of autumn he had purchased, with Janice’s help, a small library of books for Jennie.

“Do you remember, Ivy?” he whispered into Jennie’s ear, seating her on his lap. “You loved this one.”

He read through an entire fable of the hippopotamus that worked for a baker, and barely suppressed his anger when Jennie made no response.

“Soon, darling… soon…” Bill whispered, kissing her behind the ear.

Bill bought toys, the toys that Ivy had loved, and was mystified that Jennie went dead when brought before them. He bought a red plastic phonograph and yellow records that played tinkling chimes of folk songs, but Jennie appeared to be deaf. Bill drew pictures of the pumpkins Ivy loved more than anything in those bright autumn days upstate, but Jennie clumsily stepped on the crayons and tore the pictures into shreds.

In the evenings, Bill sat by the edge of the bed, brooding in the darkness, steeling himself for patience, ever more patience.

Autumn died suddenly. The trees were bleak. The frigid winds piled detritus of the seasons in doors, grates, and alleys.

It was not until the first snow fell that Bill truly divined the mystery of autism. In the midst of tramping a path through the hospital grounds — a field of glistening white— with Dr. Geddes and two orderlies watching, he stopped. Instead of following, instead of playing the game, Jennie collapsed in the snow. A soft white spray glittered upward in the sun. Bill knelt at her side. Gently he brushed the snow from the tiny face.

“You don’t understand anything, do you?” he murmured.

“No one knows,” Dr. Geddes said, hunching down next to the girl. “Some say the child refuses to be aware, but has the capacity.”

“Well, I used to be locked up, too. You just have to find the key all by yourself.”

Pleased, Dr. Geddes reported to Dr. Boltin that Bill felt compassion for the girl, and understanding of another’s suffering. He added that Bill had inquired about adoption.

Dr. Boltin chuckled. “Not very likely, I should imagine.”

“Perhaps not, but don’t you see? He’s suddenly taken a look into the future. He feels the coherence within himself. So he can plan for tomorrow.”

At the beginning of December, Jennie caught a cold. The fever persisted, the symptoms lasted weeks. A physician recommended bed rest. Bottles of pills, cups of orange juice, a thermometer, and several toys collected at the side of the cot. Jennie’s eyes grew dazed, her arms weak.

Bill fought against despondency. He was hooked on Jennie’s visits. Pretend as he might, the desolation closed in tighter and tighter as the month dragged wearily on toward Christmas.

Bill purchased seven boxes of crepe paper, five of ornaments. He and three other patients strung them across the cafeteria and along the hall leading to Bill’s room. In the room itself, Bill put up the most elaborate white angels, gold stars, and glittering balls. He persuaded the nurse to bring him branches of pine trees from the edge of the hospital grounds and these he decorated with hoops of colored paper.

Dr. Geddes walked in, amazed at the frenetic activity.

“Bill. You’re putting on a Christmas pageant.”

Bill turned, eyes red but dry.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “For Ivy, even though I know she can’t be here. Isn’t it the strangest thing? A few months ago I’d never seen her, and now…”

Dr. Geddes stepped closer.

“This relationship is a stepping-stone, Bill. You are quite right to cherish it.”

Overcome, Bill grabbed Dr. Geddes’s hand. He squeezed hard.

“Thank you, Dr. Geddes,” he whispered. “For everything you’ve done.”

“Bill, I just — Well, I guess I just hope for the same things you do.”

Bill nodded; then, to break the impasse, moved away. He sadly fingered the twirled crepe paper that arched along the window.

“How is she?”

“Getting better, Bill.”

“Won’t be here for Christmas?”

“No.”

“What about New Year’s?”

“Maybe. I doubt it.”

“Well, there’s always her birthday.”

Dr. Geddes smiled quickly. “Really? When is her birthday?”

“February third. Ten forty-three in the morning.”

“That’s right, the birth certificate.”

“I called the Hall of Records in Pittsburgh.”

“And?”

“Her certificate’s there, all right. Guess I was wrong.”

Dr. Geddes chuckled pleasantly. “Now, when you’re through in here, I’d like you to come down to my office.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Some legal matter. Shouldn’t be serious.”

At 2:30 Bill stepped into Dr. Geddes’s office. Janice sat against a small window covered in brown drapes. At her side were two men, one of whom was Harold Yates, their family lawyer. Self-consciously Bill sat down, feeling all eyes fixed on him. Harold flashed him an uncomfortable smile.

The other man, in a blue suit a size too tight, introduced himself as Charles Petty, deputy assistant to the Attorney General of the State of New York. He had enormous hands and a craggy face, a thin black tie, and a habit of chewing his tongue.

“Mr. Petty has been very kind to come down here,” Dr. Geddes began, “his time being limited.”

Petty cleared his throat, looking Bill up and down. Petty’s casual manner was studied.

“The — uh — case which provided for your original detention—”

“What case?” Bill asked.

“The kidnapping.”

“Oh.”

“By order of the court you were remanded, under a psychiatric provision, to the Goodland Sanitarium. Now, the theory of such placement is not punishment, but to make the person well enough to stand trial.”

“Trial?” Janice blurted.

“Or whatever action the court deems, in its wisdom, to undertake.”

Harold Yates held up a beefy hand for silence. “That’s the formal scenario. A trial is most unlikely.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No previous arrests or convictions. The death of an only daughter. The peculiar nature of the trial which preceded her tragic death. Its bizarre publicity. The marital difficulties, incarceration at the Eilenberg Clinic — you see, Bill acted in extremis. He’s not an extortionist, or sexually driven.”

Bill stared back at the two men.

“So what are you saying?” he demanded. “A whole task force came down just to tell me there’s nothing to worry about?”

Petty cleared his throat. “There will be some formalities, affidavits, interviews.”

“But Bill won’t have to appear in court?” Janice asked anxiously.

Harold Yates shrugged. “Offhand, Janice, I’d say there is a ten percent chance he’ll see the inside of a courtroom. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the State quashed the whole thing.”

Embarrassed, Petty squirmed in his seat. “Well, I can’t speak for the District Attorney. He’s funny. Blows hot and cold. But I’ve seen him throw out better cases. I mean, stronger cases than this one.”

“There? You see?” Harold insisted. “Straight from the horse’s mouth.”

For half an hour the lawyer and Petty detailed the material, spelling out the probable steps. Most of it was procedural, explained slowly and carefully to Bill. Exhausted by the meeting, Bill politely shook their hands, thanked them for coming, and went to the door.

“Does the cook make birthday cakes?” he asked.

“What?” Dr. Geddes said. “Oh. Yes, of course. Tell her it’s for me.”

“Right. Merry Christmas, gentlemen.”

Only Dr. Geddes caught the fact that Bill only nodded dutifully at Janice before he left.

Harold Yates left with Charles Petty. Dr. Geddes escorted Janice to the door. The noises of the hospital were muted, as though the snow outside absorbed sound, or sealed them from the outer world. Something made Janice pause as she saw the Christmas ornaments stretched over the lobby, leading to the cafeteria.

“What did he say about a birthday party?” Janice asked.

“Oh,” Dr. Geddes said, smiling, “for Jennie. In early February. She’ll certainly be well by then.”

“Yes, of course,” Janice said lightly, but a palpable shiver went up her spine. A birthday party? For Jennie. Who, to Bill, was Ivy.

Janice left, crossed through the deep snow of the parking lot, and found a taxi waiting. When she arrived at Des Artistes she saw that Christmas decorations had been strung along the lobby there too. In the apartment, Jennie slept by the small window in Ivy’s room. Janice paid the baby-sitter. After ten minutes she telephoned Pittsburgh.

“Elliot, he’s going to give a birthday party for Jennie!”

“What about it? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I just sense that everything’s about to explode. They’re going to bring Bill into court.”

“What?”

“Because of the kidnapping. They say it’s a formality, but—”

“Then he really is better. They don’t try sick men.”

“Elliot, you don’t understand. The media; they’d love to roast us a second time.”

“Pay them no attention. I never did.”

“They’ll drag up everything. They’ll find out about us.”

There was a long pause. Janice heard him sigh after a while.

“I see,” he said.

Janice waited, but he said nothing more. “I miss you,” she said simply.

“If you knew how I miss you.”

They spoke generalities, pleasant hopes for the future, but it did not stall the gnawing doubts within. They did not want to hang up. It was like being together, only more ethereal. When Janice cradled the telephone, a pleasant lassitude came over her. Talking with Elliot Hoover usually did that. She relaxed on the couch, nearly asleep, and it seemed that nothing on earth could disturb the deep pleasure of listening to the city move and breathe far away in the early evening.

But in Pittsburgh, Elliot Hoover could not sleep. He stared at the vermilion icons lost in the gloom of the bedroom, and he listened to the silence where Jennie had once slept in the adjacent room. It had been thirteen days since he had prayed. Something inside him had altered, frozen to stone.

Bill was right. He had not stood firm. He was corrupted. Utterly lost.

Hoover’s fingers went cold. He was divided now and he knew it. It brought upon him a peculiar fear of spiritual death. He was chained again, in the great cycle of being, in the passions of those who love and fear to lose. It made the night cold, even horrifying. The frost sparkled against the window glass, and the pane rattled in the bitter wind.

Woman made the life energy concentrate upon the body. And the body was the cage of the soul. Yet Hoover knew, staring into the cold night, lying naked on top of the bedcovers, that he was capable of preferring the unholy prison of earthly love to anything.

There were prayers, soft and insistent, but high in the sanitarium in New York. Bill was one with the night, its cold, its inhuman stars. He cherished the winds that battered the windows, for they were harbingers of liberty. He was disciplined now, enough to wait; only he did not want to wait beyond February.

“February,” he whispered.

February was the darkest month. It was the month the winter sucked children into its craw. February had been the end of the trail, he reflected. The month Ivy Templeton had stopped breathing. The month all her fibers, bone marrow, and flesh had turned to ash and smoke. But the darkness gave birth once again. He looked out the window. The frost against the darkness pleased him. The crystalline structure of universal forms, producing white perfection. Beyond, small lights glittered on the sound. Whether a bridge or ship he did not know. The vastness of night pleased him. It was another form of perfection, another harbinger of the greater liberty.

Far away the hospital staff made preparations for Christmas and New Year’s. Bill lay back on the bed, arms under his head, and smiled. The earth as it moved dragged along the accumulated karma of its billions of living beings. It impregnated the cosmos with sorrow. None but the very few dreamt of liberation as he did.

“February,” he murmured, like a prayer.

Soon it would be February again, as it had been before, and it would signal his time to reenter the world of the living… with Ivy.

26

Jennie recovered on Christmas day, spoke numbers on the telephone, which Bill heard with delight. By New Year’s, she and Bill tramped long circles in the snow behind the dormant rose garden. Jennie recognized him now by the scent of his after-shave lotion, and gravitated toward it.

The birthday party was scheduled for the afternoon of February third.

Janice accompanied Jennie from the elevator. The girl knew the way to Bill’s room, but she always hesitated, walking in big circles, before she entered. As usual, a bored orderly sat in a chair outside the door. Janice marveled at the brilliance of the room, festooned with flowers, small wooden carvings, and bright aluminum shapes.

“Come on in, darling,” Bill said, smiling, extending his arms to Jennie. “Happy Birthday!”

Janice watched Bill seat the girl on his knee. On the bed were gaily wrapped presents. Somehow it always hurt her to see Bill reduce himself to win the affection of a child who, by definition, could not love. Bill noted her pitying expression.

“You can leave,” Bill whispered. “If it disgusts you.”

“It doesn’t disgust me, darling.”

“Well, why don’t you just let us get on in private for a while?”

Janice sighed, watched for a while, and then went outside. The orderly looked up, smiled, then turned the page of his magazine.

Janice walked down the hall. At a small alcove at the end of the corridor was a large window, two dilapidated chairs, and a cigarette machine. She sat down. Generations of nervous relatives had scraped the floor, and no amount of wax and polish had covered it completely.

The warmth of a radiator made her remove her coat. The winter light was steady and even, a blank absence of color. It soothed the limbs, emptied the mind. Janice found herself observing the whitish mass of clouds through the window, a symbol of peaceful oblivion that she cherished.

February third, she thought. The day Ivy had died. Janice stirred uneasily. Birth and death were the same. The deity of creation was also the deity of destruction. Janice felt herself tighten up inside. The orderly was gone. The door to Bill’s room was closed. Janice stood, paced the floor, sat down, then stood up again.

Screams shook the building.

From Jennie!

Horror swept through Janice. She ran down toward Bill’s room at the far end of the corridor. The door was shut. The orderly was nowhere to be seen.

“Bill!” Janice shouted as she ran.

Inside, Jennie screamed. Hysterical, as though her arms and legs were being twisted off. Glass shattered. Pieces of metal smashed against the door.

“Bill!” Janice bellowed, arriving at the door just as the orderly appeared and, twisting the knob, burst into the room. Bill stood by a broken window, in the freezing wind sweeping from the icy marshes. Janice stared down at the debris of the room.

Broken toys, creamed cakes, and incense sticks lay mutilated over the floor. In the center of the floor, Jennie sat, red-faced in terror, head held back, mouth open in a demented scream.

Then Bill reached down, shook the child, and yelled, “Ivy! It’s Daddy!”

But the girl’s arms and legs banged up and down in a manic tantrum. The small face was unrecognizable. It was as though an electric current was being shot into her mouth. Her nostrils quivered, her eyes nearly rolled back, and she struggled for breath.

“She just went crazy, started throwing things,” Bill panted. “It was her birthday party.”

He turned to Jennie again. The orderly had bent down to the screaming child. Bill spun on one heel and threw the ball of his fist square into the meaty face.

“Leave her alone, bastard!” Bill roared.

The orderly, smashed against the remnants of the pine boughs, slid down onto fragments of glass.

“She’s mine! Mine!”

The orderly tasted the trickle of blood from his nose, shook his head and bellowed, “Mrs. Templeton! Find Dr. Geddes!”

Janice backed away, but Bill raised the desk lamp over his head and staggered forward.

“Don’t take her from me!”

The orderly walked bearlike to grapple with Bill. Bill kicked, spat, and punched, but the orderly absorbed it with stifled grunts.

“Hurry, Mrs. Templeton!”

Janice ran to the elevator, rode it down, and burst upon Dr. Geddes in the annex to Dr. Boltin’s room. Together they ran back to the elevator. As the door slid open, they heard Jennie’s screams.

In the room, the orderly had Bill pinned onto the bed, one wrist strapped to the rail, but the blood flowed freely from the orderly’s nose and ear. Bill’s shoes kicked viciously, and an inarticulate howl mingled with Jennie’s.

“Give me a hand, will you?” the orderly wheezed.

Mechanically the orderly sat on Bill’s legs, holding a handkerchief to his nose. Dr. Geddes, trembling, looking at Bill’s face, then at Jennie, strapped the ankles down.

“Christ, this guy packs a wallop,” the orderly mumbled.

Bill felt his other wrist confined by inflexible leather. His body arched, then spasmodically writhed. Slowly a high-pitched whine came from his lungs, and his back fell to the bed, as though he had died there in front of them.

Dr. Geddes stared at Bill, then picked Jennie from the floor.

“What — what the hell happened?” Dr. Geddes stammered.

“It was all going so well,” Janice said. “Then Jennie started screaming.”

Dr. Geddes loosened the girl’s blouse. “She’s burning up!” He rocked her, but she did not stop screaming. “I’m taking her to the infirmary.”

He began to leave.

“Ivy!” Bill howled, a long, drawn-out wail that sent shivers up their backs.

Mucus ran from Bill’s nose. His head thrashed back and forth. Suddenly Janice burst into tears, lowered her head, and sobbed. Bill moaned, arched his back, and the long wail began again.

Janice ran into the corridor, caught up with Dr. Geddes just as the elevator doors opened. Under the bleak light inside, Jennie was shaking uncontrollably.

“Is she epileptic?” Dr. Geddes asked.

“I — don’t think so.”

In the infirmary, a quick injection stopped the convulsion. The frail body lay on a white cot. A nurse daubed the limbs and forehead with rubbing alcohol. Cold water filled a small basin, and Dr. Geddes undressed and lowered Jennie into it. The brilliant lights overhead threw wrinkled shadows, like goldfish, around the girl’s legs.

“Might just be a return of the fever,” Dr. Geddes said, bathing her gently.

“Oh, God, Dr. Geddes! He just blew apart!”

“Forget Bill, Mrs. Templeton. We thought we had him cured, but—”

“Please don’t say that….”

“It’s over. There’s no chance. I’m sorry. Just pray to whatever gods you and Mr. Hoover believe in that he didn’t harm the girl.”

A nurse gently toweled Jennie dry. Jennie’s cheek twitched occasionally, but the color had returned. Her eyes remained closed. Janice stared at the small, soft face, and it seemed as though the child merely slept soundly. The nurse carried Jennie off to the examining room.

Dr. Geddes slumped down in an overstuffed chair next to a cabinet of gauze bandages, steel scissors, and vials of clear liquid. His hands trembled.

He leaned back, closed his eyes so tight the lids tremored. Janice saw the tears emerge from the ravaged face.

“Why?” he whispered. “We were so close….So damn, damn close…”

Janice leaned against the white cot. She bit her lip in anguish, but there was nothing to say. The sight of Dr. Geddes in despair removed her last support. For a long moment they waited. Dr. Geddes kept his eyes closed, his head immobile. Then he stared uselessly at the ceiling.

The nurse and a physician stepped into the infirmary annex. The physician smiled and held up thumb and forefinger in a circle.

“Are you sure?” Dr. Geddes asked.

“He never touched her,” the physician said.

“Thank you.”

The nurse picked up Jennie’s clothes and went back to the diagnostic chamber. The physician made a few brief entries into the infirmary logbook. Dr. Geddes stood up, and he lit a cigarette with shaking fingers, avoiding Janice’s pleading eyes.

“What’s going to happen to Bill now?” she asked softly.

“He won’t be facing any judge, that’s for damn sure. He’s going to a nursing home. Same one I picked out a long time ago.”

Janice turned on her heel, went through the corridors to the elevator, and returned to Bill’s room.

The orderly had torn down what remained of the decorations. They were swept, along with the broken glass, into a pile in the corner. A rectangle of cardboard was jammed over the broken window. With the roll of tape held between his teeth, he secured the cardboard onto the sill.

Bill moaned softly. Janice pulled up a chair. Gently she smoothed his hair back, cleaned the flecks of dirt from his lip. The face, once again, was not his. It belonged to an animal, a caricature of the man who sought love so desperately, so unforgivingly.

“She remembered,” he mumbled. “I know she did.”

“I can’t hear you, Bill.”

She leaned over, her ear to his face. The warm breath of her husband muttered sibilant syllables.

“She remembered…. She remembered….”

“That’s all he says,” the orderly ventured.

For nearly ten minutes she tried to speak to Bill. But his lips worked over and over those vague sounds as though he himself no longer knew what they meant. Janice felt the tears coming, so she rose to go.

She gave the orderly ten dollars.

“I’m sorry he hit you,” she said. “Please be kind to him.”

“Right, ma’am. And thanks.”

Then Janice slowly left, went down to the infirmary, and took Jennie home.

Janice dressed Jennie in new pajamas and covered her with several blankets. Chills alternated with the fever. She had relapsed into the December illness.

“Five-five-five—”

Mechanically Janice brought a glass of water to the cot, helped Jennie drink, and was glad to see the small eyelids close again.

She telephoned Allegheny Airlines, reserved two seats for the early evening flight. She telephoned the clinic, but Hoover was at Temple University. Miserable, she hung up. Outside, the wind screeched up Sixty-seventh Street, banging potted plants over the sidewalks. A garbage can rolled over and over, echoing against cement.

“No-no-no-no—!”

Upstairs Jennie recited the numbers. Was it a string of zeroes, or was she refusing something? Hesitating, Janice went slowly up the stairs.

Jennie’s eyes were open, but they were glazed in tormented sleep.

“No-no-no-no—”

The glassy face looked as though it were in the throes of denial. Denying something from within.

Janice took her temperature. Just under 100 degrees. She looked at the clock. They had two hours to catch the flight.

“No-no-no—” Jennie whispered plaintively.

“Nobody’s going to frighten you ever again, darling.”

In thirty-five minutes, the taxi deposited them at La-Guardia Airport. Through the blackness swirled the lights of departing aircraft, livid behind the falling sleet.

The flight was delayed due to the storm. When it took off, an uncomfortable shiver shook the wings, and the passengers laughed nervously. In her arms, Jennie grew warmer. Janice took her to the lavatory and kept her face cool with wet paper towels.

Sleet turned to heavy snow, flailing past the red light at the wing tip. White particles out of nowhere, flashing, then disappearing to nowhere.

A bang of tires on hard cement, a second thud, a third, and then the plane decelerated and taxied carefully to the terminal.

This time Elliot Hoover stood at the bottom of the steps. He raised his hat in mute, worried greeting.

“They told me you were coming.”

He took Jennie in his arms, kissed her, but it was not until they nearly reached the terminal building that he saw the flush on her face.

“She looks ill,” he stammered.

“The fever. It’s come back. Elliot, I had to get her out of New York! Bill’s collapsed! He’s become a raving maniac! Dr. Geddes wants to lock him up and throw away the key!”

“This is terrible,” Hoover murmured. Jennie stirred in his arms.

“It was during the birthday party,” Janice continued stridently. “They were alone together in his room. Jennie started screaming. Wouldn’t stop. By the time we entered the room, the whole place was a shambles and she wouldn’t stop screaming.”

Hoover swallowed. A wave of despair passed over his face.

“Did he say anything?”

Janice took a deep breath. “He said, ‘She remembered.’ Over and over, Elliot.”

Hoover sighed. The sorrow of the night was softened in the deep snow. The warehouses, coal cars, and stacks of iron pipes looked like fanciful sculptures. Only a few red lights blinked high on the water tower, and then the Ford stopped in front of the clinic.

“Let’s get her to the clinic.”

“Elliot. What’s happening?”

He put a gloved hand on hers. “I don’t know.” Then gently, “Come. Let’s take her home.”

Inside the clinic most of the children were in bed. Roy peered suspiciously from behind a bookshelf. The carpet was littered with toys, pictures torn from magazines, and pieces of crayon. A smell of wet wool permeated the halls.

Mr. Radimanath, surprised, stood up from the desk in Hoover’s office and came into the hall.

“Mr. Templeton has had a relapse,” Hoover said calmly.

Mr. Radimanath’s hand went to his mouth.

“Please listen. I want you to fix up Jennie’s room. She has a bad fever.”

With an anxious glance at Janice, then at Hoover, Mr. Radimanath shuffled rapidly to the stairs.

Hoover hung his coat on one of a small series of pegs. He took Jennie from Janice’s arms and felt the girl’s neck and forehead. Mrs. Concepcion peered in from the hallway leading to the kitchen.

“Rosa,” Hoover whispered, “could you prepare a hot drink for Jennie?”

“Right away, Mr. Hoover.”

Hoover turned Jennie’s face to him, smiled, and kissed the small forehead.

“No-no-no—” she murmured sleepily.

“Yes, yes, yes,” he said, smiling.

Mrs. Concepcion returned with two cups of steaming broth. Shivering, Janice accepted a cup. Then Mrs. Concepcion spooned the broth gently into Jennie’s mouth and carried her upstairs to her room. The clinic’s quiet was broken by a low moan upstairs.

“You see?” Hoover said after a while. “Nothing changes here.”

Janice looked anxiously out the window. Fat flakes continued to fall. The sills were blocked up with snow.

“The roads will be closed by morning,” Hoover said. “At least two feet. That’s what the radio forecast.”

Janice sipped the soup, fondling the cup. The trembling did not go, even though she was finally warm. She put her coat across a child’s desk and leaned wearily against the wall. The stairwell light went off. After several minutes the upstairs lights went off. A thin outline of luminosity rimmed Hoover’s forehead.

“Good night, Mr. Hoover,” came Mrs. Concepcion’s voice from above.

“Good night, Mrs. Concepcion. Thank you.”

“Good night, Mr. Hoover,” followed Mr. Radimanath’s voice.

“Good night and peace to you, Mr. Radimanath.”

Another light went off. Hoover slumped against the wall, head down, massaging his face.

“What next, Janice?” he whispered.

She walked to him slowly. He felt her presence, but did not move.

“I’ve tried everything,” he said hoarsely. “I’ve given everything I have. Everything.”

She put a hand against his neck, gently pressed on the knotted muscles, slowly eased the tension there.

“Poor Elliot,” she whispered ironically, and yet afraid that she was all too correct. “I’ve ruined you, haven’t I?”

“Saved me, Janice. You saved me. That’s the miracle.”

Suddenly his cold finger traced a curve against her cheek.

“Miracle,” he whispered gently. “So utterly miraculous.”

She hesitated, then let him come forward. It made her feel real again. The silence was an ally, not a horror. Janice waited, and, like the falling snow, was content to be moved by the night.

“An extraordinary woman,” he whispered, in all-consuming awe.

She closed her eyes and rested against him. She felt his heart beat through his shirt. A fragrance of lotion filled her nostrils.

“Elliot, I’ve been so lonely.”

She moved, and her breasts were warm under his palms. He pressed against her until her back pushed up against the wall.

“Not here. Mr. Radimanath may come.”

But whatever he whispered back, she caught only the urgency of it. Her back was pressed hard against the wall. His breath was hot against her ear. Her fingers hesitated, then clutched at the back of his neck.

The urgency of his entry surprised her. The violence of his insatiable need. She faltered, holding him at the wall, in the darkness. But then there was a soft, slow explosion within her belly, and she gasped, and she felt limp as a rag doll. It seemed to go on forever, exhausting her, until everything stopped, and she hung on to him for dear life itself.

“Oh God,” she whispered after a dizzy moment.

“Janice, darling Janice…”

“Oh — I feel so — Oh, God…”

She hung on to his neck, leaning on his chest. He rocked her gently side to side, as though they danced. Partially dressed still, their hair and faces passed in and out of the glow cast by the streetlamps and the snow. She felt soft inside, transformed, and she pressed her body closer to his, though her mind remained troubled. For the wages of sin, she knew, was death.

“Hold me, Elliot. Don’t ever let me go!”

Gently he rocked her, and his large hands rested against her back and neck.

The snow stopped. Darkness gleamed from the recesses of the neighborhood. Janice leaned, breasts against his chest, so that he might love her again. The rising and falling of his breathing comforted her. Against the window, she had descended, at long last and painfully, into a different kind of night.

27

Bill lay on his cot. His wrists chafed against leather restraints. Turning his head, he perceived the rotund outline of the orderly by the window. A vicious storm of sleet and jagged ice pellets beat against the cardboard taped there.

“Untie me,” Bill mumbled.

“Have to get two more orderlies if I do,” replied the man without looking up. “And we ain’t got nobody to spare.”

Bill let his neck rest, the muscles strained, and his head rolled back on the mattress.

“Untie me, for God’s sake,” he repeated.

The orderly turned a page in his magazine.

Then the storm brought a bulge at the cardboard. Wet stains showed in long striations. The orderly shivered and drew his white shirt tight about his throat.

“You’re damn lucky you didn’t ruin her,” the orderly said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Child molesters rot in here. Take it from me. That’s the one kind of pervert never gets out of here.”

“I didn’t molest her.”

“Sure you didn’t.” The orderly turned a page of the magazine. “Goddamn kook.”

Bill stared at the ceiling. The room was going cold, and only a light from the hall glinted off the metal shapes inside. Bill did not know why the window was broken, why there were no lights, only assumed that he had smashed them somehow. He closed his eyes.

“I need her,” he whispered. “She was all I had.”

“Then you shulda kept your fingers off her.”

“I never touched her!”

“Keep your voice down!”

Bill’s head arched upward, his neck throbbing.

“She remembered! That’s why she started screaming! She remembered what happened in Darien!”

“Calm down!”

Bill glared at the obsequious, immovable man at the desk chair, then settled back to the mattress.

“I saw it in her eyes,” Bill whispered. “It was a kind of horrible memory…. But it came too fast for her. Much too fast. It frightened her.”

The orderly yawned, checked his watch, and rubbed his eyes. There were footsteps in the hall. Eager for company, the orderly went to the door, poked his head out, and engaged two other orderlies in a bantering conversation. One was tall and black, the other equally tall, but with a limp that made him look diminutive. A pint of whiskey made the rounds. In the darkness there was the sound of cards shuffled.

Bill shivered in the cold that seeped into the room.

For thirty minutes the orderlies played poker and drank. The dimes and quarters glinted in the dim hallway. The whiskey bottle went empty, and was carefully hidden behind a radiator. A groan emerged from Bill’s room.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said the first orderly.

He rose and lurched into Bill’s room. Bill smelled whiskey-laden breath just over his face in the darkness, and felt the straps being removed from his wrists and ankles.

“Now you be good,” the orderly warned. “I’ll leave you loose for ten minutes, so make the most of it.”

Bill flexed his wrists, but the sensation of constriction remained. Slowly he rubbed his wrists and then reached down to massage his ankles. He was too tired to sit up, and lay back again on the blanket.

The orderly’s large hand tapped him lightly on the chest.

“Behave yourself. We ain’t in no mood to be interrupted. You hear?”

Bill nodded.

“What’s that you say?”

“I hear you, I said.”

“Goddamn right you do.”

The orderly lurched back to his game. For a while the coins clinked onto the glazed wooden surface. Bill shivered and crawled from under the blanket. He rose to his feet unsteadily, his senses keened, and tiptoed to the door.

For fifteen minutes the orderlies played cards. Their curses became more frequent, more amiable. Their laughter was stifled with difficulty.

“Roy, did you lock the door?”

“Sure did.”

“Are you sure, Roy?”

“Sure of what, fat man?”

“The goddamn door, and watch your language.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Go check it, Roy.”

With annoyance, the orderly went to the door and gave a violent pull. It opened.

“Jesus Christ,” he shouted. “You’re sure you done something and it turns out you ain’t done it.”

Alarmed by his tone, his two companions quickly joined him. In the density of their drunkenness they stared at the bed. The rumpled forms coalesced into a human shape, then receded into a mixture of pillow, mattress, and blankets. With a sudden lurch all three orderlies jumped toward the bed. The black orderly’s hands threw the blankets high into the air, onto the floor.

“He’s gone!”

“Jesus Christ! He jumped!”

They ran to the window, laboriously stripped away the cardboard and peered down in the storm. The hospital lights illuminated a small patch of white snow below, obscured in the driving sleet.

“Do you see him?”

“There’s something dark on the snow — I can’t tell.”

The sleet drove down, almost horizontal to the ground. The lights were small bulbs of opaque light in the dizzying storm. The ground was caked in ice, and the whistling wind covered the sound of a man’s feet over the frozen earth.

Bill wore a long black overcoat, stolen from a closet on the first floor. It stretched from his shoulders clear down to his knees; an expensive, severely styled black coat with thin strips of fur along the collar and down the lapel. His feet were still in slippers, and they slipped painfully over the ice.

Bill thought he saw a smaller figure emerge from the sanitarium, limping under the small globes of light. He ducked his head and ran south, cutting across the parking lot. A man’s voice called out to him.

“Dr. Henderson!”

Panicked, Bill whirled, lost his balance, and nearly fell. Two enormous headlights swirled slowly toward him out of the darkness, blinding him. He held his hand in front of his face. The door of a taxi opened.

“Here, Dr. Henderson, climb in.”

In the distance, a limping figure made its way under the windows of the dormitory wing of the building. His feeble arms were waving.

Bill scrambled quickly into the cab.

“Sorry,” laughed the cab driver, “but I had my lights off. You couldn’t see me but I spotted you.”

Bill craned his neck backward through the rear window. He saw an orderly running toward them, losing ground.

“Hell, I’d recognize that black coat anywhere, Dr. Henderson,” the driver chuckled.

Under the gentle noise of the radio, Bill heard the sound of the wheels spinning out of control, digging down to the asphalt beneath the ice. The taxi went slowly sideways in a great arc, then straightened and skidded slowly ahead.

“It’s a lot better on the main road. Pisser of a night, isn’t it?”

Bill coughed. He felt the severe chill penetrating the overcoat, through to his legs covered only with thin pajamas. He felt nothing at all in his feet. Dimly he saw them and thought they had turned blue. Ice melted very slowly from his ankles, sliding off in crinkling little cakes of light.

The taxi swerved, jolted, and finally found traction. The sanitarium very gradually glided past them. Bill ducked as far back into the seat as he could, and he kept his face averted from the driver. For several minutes they drove in silence, and the storm buffeted the car, while the driver wrestled it back to control.

Bill stared wide-eyed at the vision of the night. Headlights swarmed in his mind. It had been a lifetime since he had seen the manic jaws of civilization so close about him. From time to time he saw his own reflection in the dark panes, pale as dirty snow, the eyes deep in sockets of shadow, like two tiny animals hiding in caves.

“You’re going the wrong way!” Bill shouted.

“You’re not going home to Glen Cove?” the driver asked, surprised.

“Manhattan!”

The driver noted a different inflection in the voice than the one he was used to. He peered in the rearview mirror. Bill huddled in his coat and did not look up, but shrank against the door, in the shadow where the driver could barely see. The driver shrugged.

“To the city, then,” the driver mumbled, changing lanes.

The taxi fought its way back around a jug-handle, then up a ramp, and bumper to bumper with traffic on a single lane. Flashing red lights everywhere revealed the touch of a thousand brakes on the slippery road. Then they were moving west again.

The taxi picked up speed, occasionally slipping on ice patches. The city was a hallucination of glimmering yellow and red lights, streaks of blinking neon in the black, and clouds livid with painfully bright reflections.

The driver set his lips hard and fought his way down into the Queens Midtown Tunnel, dipping and rising toward the main heart of Manhattan. He leaned back. Heading north on the East Side Drive, the driver glanced in the rearview mirror.

“Where exactly did you want to go?”

“Des Artistes.”

The driver screwed up his face.

“Where?”

“Home!”

“Home?”

The driver turned. His eyes widened.

“Hey, you ain’t Dr. Henderson!”

A violent screech of brakes, horns, and shouts snapped his head back to the slapping windshield wipers. The cab skidded to the center divider, bounced lightly off it, and regained its momentum as Forty-second Street momentarily came into view.

“I ain’t go no money,” breathed the driver quickly, his eyes darting back and forth. “See that sign? Driver carries no more than five bucks change—”

“Des Artistes!” Bill roared, leaning suddenly forward.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, mister!”

“Home!”

“You’re a goddamn loony! That’s what you are! I’m taking you right back to the asylum!”

The cab skidded onto the Forty-second Street off-ramp, the driver pressed on the accelerator, the tires whined, spat snow in a long arc behind them, and then Bill reached through the small opening in the glass wall that divided driver from passenger, and grabbed the driver’s hair. With a murderous yank, he jerked the driver’s head backward.

In incoherent rage and frustration, Bill beat the driver’s head back against the glass divider, then bit the man’s finger until red spurted into his mouth.

“Help! Help!” the driver yelled, arms flailing, his legs kicking wildly, smashing into the dashboard.

The taxi began to decelerate, finally crashing into the car ahead at a traffic light. Immediately there was an angry snarl of car horns. Bill looked around wildly. It seemed all of New York poured its alien, annihilating light directly at his heart. In a single, terrible lunge, he was out in the cold, white as a rabbit, stock-still in the middle of the street.

The driver came out, holding his ear, wobbling, pointing at Bill.

“Grab him! He’s a maniac!”

Bill leaped across the snow that divided the road, slipped, and somersaulted in the black overcoat over the ice. His hands emerged bleeding. He picked himself up, and ran in his iced and torn slippers into the heart of the crowds and flashing, swirling lights.

He ran down Forty-second Street, away from the tangle of red flashes, shouts, and glistening roads.

The swirling storm turned to blankets descending in soft folds. Traffic was stalled. Disgusted, police stood by patrol cars.

Pedestrians walked around Bill as he ran from the reflection of his own form in dark windows. Slipping, his ragged slippers torn in half, he went sprawling into a filthy snowdrift.

“Here you go, friend. Up and easy.”

Two strong hands grabbed him under the elbow.

Bill looked into the eyes of two priests. They backed away from the intensity of his stare.

“Dr. Geddes?”

“What’s that? You want a doctor?”

Bill stumbled backward, frightened, tore himself away, retreating down Forty-second Street. He ran into the lights that poked holes in the darkness, glittered through the falling snow. Evil followed him everywhere, and he looked back over his shoulder.

Bill reached an enormous structure that exhaled warmth. It smelled like New York. Gritty, sweaty, oily. Something seemed to click into place. Cautiously, he walked down the stairs, went through large glass doors, and looked around at the rolling, incessant crowds under brilliant lights.

It was Grand Central Station. Bill smiled. He had been here before. In another incarnation. Bewildered, he ducked away from the vents that roared at him with hot air. A group of sailors jostled him. Businessmen pushed him out of their way. A teenager shot past him with a radio blaring rock.

Instinct led him to a kind of bright tunnel. There was a series of urinals. Trembling, he relieved himself. Then he examined his feet. They were soaked, dirty, bleeding, and the toes tingled ominously, as though the flesh was barely alive. He tucked the black overcoat carefully over the pajamas and went to the shoeshine stand in a lobby.

A crippled black boy bent over shining black shoes on metal forms.

Bill waited until the last man left the washbasins, then he went to the stand, grabbed the shoes, and ran.

“Hey — What the hell are you doing?” the cripple yelled.

Bill escaped into the crowd.

He was lost in Central Park. He stopped. The snow was cold and wet on his bare feet, shivering within the black shoes. But he recognized the park. The configuration of black trees, paths, and the hillock over the rowing lake. It triggered primitive memories. Carefully he retraced his steps, then struck out over virgin fields of white.

“Ivy,” he whispered happily.

Nobody heard him. The streets were deserted. New York at night was a study of black recesses in dull white. Snow filled the crevices of soot and oily asphalt. Bill sensed a maze of bizarre patterns gliding by, but he kept his head down, following his black shoes. They knew where to go.

Disoriented now, he walked very carefully. He distrusted each side street that opened up — a truncated vista of fire escapes, back doors, stone steps.

“Ivy!” he called.

But the voice died away. The city absorbed all sounds. Slowly he continued toward the north.

Silently, the soul that had been frightened peered out through the eyes of Bill Templeton. He saw Des Artistes. He stopped. That, certainly, had not changed. It haunted him, that image of a different life. It sent out unpleasant signals in the darkness and cold.

He drifted toward the entrance of the building. A man in uniform beat his arms for warmth. Bill came closer, hesitated. The doorman stopped beating his arms, peering into the blackness.

“Mr. Templeton…” gasped the old man.

“Yes. I’ve come home. It’s good to be home. Very, very good.”

“Yeah… Sure…”

“I want to go in now.”

“Of course. Right this way. Goodness, but you gave me a fright.”

Bill licked his lips, afraid. He followed the doorman into the narrow vestibule, and then very slowly descended the steps into the lobby. The warmth and bright lights frightened him. He retreated. The doorman turned, surprised.

“Right this way, Mr. Templeton.”

The doorman escorted Bill to the elevator. Bill dared to look around him. The walls, the familiar entry to the restaurant and bar had a lurid, dangerous light.

Mario, shocked, stared at Bill.

“P-please, Mr. Templeton. Step in.”

Bill walked into the elevator, leaned against the wall, and saw the doors glide shut. Mario punched a button, and the elevator hummed upward through the building.

“You look great, Mr. Templeton. That is one hell of a coat.”

Bill’s jaw clenched, a nervous reaction to the claustrophobic space.

“We’ll have you upstairs in no time.”

The door glided open. Bill stared vacantly at the wall opposite. Mario waited. Bill did not move.

“You don’t have a key, do you?” Mario asked quietly. “That’s all right. I have a master key.”

Mario walked into the hallway. Bill hesitated, then followed. With each step toward the apartment door he went slower and slower. Finally, he stopped nearly ten feet away, while Mario unlocked the door. A black abyss greeted him.

“Why is it so dark?”

“What? You want me to turn on a light?”

Mario reached an arm into the apartment, flicked a switch, and three soft lights glowed from lamps.

“Where are they?”

Mario turned, shocked at the maniacal roar. Suddenly an immense force hurled him into the apartment. Ceramics showered into fragments, and a table leg crashed upward into his shoulder.

The door slammed, and a livid Bill stood over him.

“Where did they go?” he hissed.

“I–I don’t know, Mr. T-Templeton.”

A rough fist seized Mario’s hair, yanked him to his feet. A bright hailstorm passed before Mario’s eyes, and the pain leaped down into his skull. Bill shook the head violently, side to side.

“Where are they?” Bill bellowed into his face.

“P-P-P—”

Bill slapped the trembling cheeks hard with two resounding cracks.

“Tell me!”

“P-P-Pittsburgh—”

Bill stared at him in disbelief, then gritted his teeth and threw the diminutive man back against the remains of the coffee table.

“Pittsburgh?” Bill whispered.

“Mr. Hoover’s clinic, sir. The girl was sick.”

Bill wiped his sweated face, then shook himself. He stared viciously at Mario. Mario tried to crawl away, but his arms were entangled in the broken table legs.

“P-please, Mr. Templeton…”

Bill spun him around and wedged his arms behind his back with a belt. He carried Mario, who kicked furiously, toward the main closet and threw him in. He tore the electric cord from a lamp, held it out between two hands, and advanced into the closet. Mario went white, but the cord only lashed his feet.

Bill bounded upstairs. There were violent sounds of drawers being emptied, thrown onto the floor. Objects fell from dressers, more glass smashed, and he kicked something heavy away from him. Then he did the same through every room and closet upstairs until he found what he sought.

Suddenly Bill opened the closet door and seized Mario.

“Mr. Templeton! Let me get a doctor for you!”

“I have to go to the airport!”

“Rest here. Untie me….”

Bill shook Mario until his teeth rattled.

“How do I get to the airport?” Bill growled.

“G-go downstairs. Tell the doorman. He’ll get you a taxi.”

“A taxi? Yes, of course. Mario, I…”

But he lost his train of thought. Furious, he shoved Mario back in among the coats and shoes, then slammed the closet door. Mario heard the apartment door close, and footsteps pattering quickly to the stairwell.

Bill ducked against the rear seat of the taxi. It was late, but he did not want to be seen.

“Don’t turn back,” he muttered.

The taxi driver turned down his radio and leaned back.

“What’s that?”

“I said, don’t turn back.”

“I wasn’t going to turn back, mister.”

Bill muttered to himself, looked out the window as Manhattan slid by. Most of the roads were closed. Only the main arteries were open, and they were clogged with traffic.

“Man must not turn back,” he said. “Forward — always forward.”

The driver turned down his radio a second time.

“Forward,” Bill said louder.

“Where the hell do you think I’m going?”

“We are all voyagers on a dark sea. Voyaging beyond the barriers of death.”

“Well, I ain’t going that far.”

They were on a dark road now, and only a few globes of light went by, their poles invisible. They hovered like visitors from Pluto. Bill leaned forward suddenly.

“I’m going to see my daughter,” he said confidently.

“Yeah? Where’s she at?”

“Pittsburgh. She’s been sick.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?”

“No. She just got frightened.”

The driver glanced at him from the rearview mirror, studied Bill more carefully.

“Which terminal, sir?”

Startled, Bill looked in front. A complex of yellow and white lights were visible in the darkness. Signs directed the traffic to various terminals.

“I’m going to Pittsburgh.”

“American?”

“I don’t know.”

“Probably Allegheny.”

The taxi pulled up at the Allegheny terminal. The parking area was not plowed, covered high in snow. There were few passengers, and over the runway the ground crews worked furiously with snowplows.

The driver turned apprehensively.

“That’ll be ten dollars and eighty cents.”

Bill stared blankly at him.

“Ten dollars,” the driver repeated. “Eighty cents.”

Bill’s forehead wrinkled with an effort. He looked troubled. The driver swallowed, tried to estimate the kind of passenger he had.

“Do you have any money, sir?”

“Yes. Yes, I found some in her stocking drawer.”

“Show me.”

Bill pulled a fistful of bills from his overcoat pocket. The driver’s eyes widened. Gingerly he helped himself to several notes.

“See? Ten dollars.” He held up the money. “Unless you want to tip me.”

Bill stared at him, frightened. Quickly the driver added two dollars. Bill leaned forward. The driver recoiled, slamming against the steering wheel.

“Do you think my daughter… will recognize me?”

“Sure. Sure, mister. You’re her father, ain’t you?”

Bill nodded, gratified. He stepped from the taxi. Then he went to the front door, leaned in, and said, “God bless you.”

The driver smiled sadly. He recognized the manic look of Bill’s eyes, though few who had that look also had the money to ride in taxis and buy expensive black coats. A flicker of sympathy passed between them.

“God bless you, too, sir.”

The taxi pulled away.

Bill walked into the Allegheny Airlines Terminal, carrying hundreds of dollars in his fist. First he went to a coffee shop, ate five doughnuts and drank two glasses of orange juice. The startled cashier picked the money from his fist. Bill walked away before she could give him change.

He bought a ticket to Pittsburgh. One way. He ran on pure instinct now, as he had since escaping from the sanitarium. Only now the instinct was running down, growing confused. He did not know what would take over when the instinct went haywire.

“If you hurry, sir, there is a three o’clock flight boarding now. Gate seventeen.”

“Where is gate seventeen?”

“Follow the red carpet, sir.”

Bill walked into a narrow corridor, felt the air grow thick and the lights overhead press down upon him.

Ahead of him, two stewardesses waited with clipboards. It seemed like a thousand miles into the airplane. Even when he sat down, it felt unlikely that he would escape New York. Below the window the snow fell, whirled in monstrous eddies by passing vehicles.

There were few passengers. Already some of them slept. Tiny rays of light beamed onto their laps from the overhead luggage racks. Bill sank into his seat. All at once the exhaustion came — like a wave, it ravished his limbs, reduced them to sodden rubbery appendages, and his eyes grew instantly heavy. He thought he was blacking out.

“Not now,” he prayed, mumbling aloud. “Please God, not now.”

But he felt the lights going out inside the plane. The stewardess came to buckle his seat belt. She turned off the overhead beam of light, smiled and left. She did not see the panic on his whitened face.

The roar of the engines, like the demented gongs of a Himalayan temple, stirred his blood with power.

Then he laughed, but the laughter turned harsh and crude. The pain of the last three years flooded into him, a vile, black poison that spilled into his bones, and he choked on his own tears.

Fighting for control, he called on the one-eyed god of Tibet. The whisper of the jets soothed him. He closed his eyes.

Pittsburgh was iced, buried under a foot and a half of snow. Except for the turnpike and a few central roads, there was no traffic. Even from the air, it looked weird and peaceful. No taxis were available. The buses remained at garages. And there were no more flights until the work crews could clear the runways again.

Bill stared disconsolately across the terminal. It was cold, nearly deserted. Only an occasional menial worker strolled by, with brooms, dustpans, rags, and window cleaner.

Before him was a white booth with an Avis logo. There was no one behind the desk. There was no bell to ring. Bill slammed his fist on the desk.

A group of ground crew workers turned. They wore orange slickers and matching trousers, heavy black boots thick with melting snow.

“Hey, Herb! You got a customer!”

“Oh, hell.”

A thin, rat-faced man with a small smile came out from the group, straightened his black knitted tie, and slid easily onto a stool behind the desk.

“Nice time of day to visit Pittsburgh,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“I need a car.”

The man reached for a triplicate form.

“I’ll have to see your driver’s license, and I’ll need a major credit card.”

Bill stared at him blankly, then pulled out his roll of bills and thrust it at the man.

“No, no. Money’s no good. I’ll need to—”

With an animal grunt, Bill snatched back the money, wheeled brusquely, and stalked across the foyer toward the exit doors.

A blast of frigid air smashed into Bill’s face as the doors opened automatically. Pressing forth into a strong wind, Bill spied a long line of cars parked beneath the Avis canopy. The area was deserted but for an attendant who was gassing a mud-encrusted white Dodge Dart. The attendant slapped his arms vigorously against his body for warmth. His back was to Bill, who watched him furtively from behind a pillar.

His chance came when the attendant cradled the hose, capped the gas tank, then hurried inside the terminal with the meter reading.

Bill approached the Dodge cautiously. With trembling fingers, he opened the door. The car smelled of fresh upholstery. He had trouble finding the key in the ignition switch. Then he had trouble finding the hand brake. Finally, he eased the car onto the main road, swerved, dipped into the snow at the side of the road, and then very carefully, very nervously, following signs, maneuvered toward the city.

There was little traffic. The car felt strange, immensely smooth, quiet, and powerful. After a few moments he began to relax. Then he found the light switch and turned on the headlights. The landscape rolled swiftly past. It was exquisitely cold, exhilarating. Bill drove with the windows wide open.

The signs diverged. A lane went up a long, curved ramp toward Harrisburg. Bill wiped the windshield, continued on toward Pittsburgh. Far away a cluster of lights gleamed over freshly fallen snow. Half a dozen trucks, massive headlights blazing, illumined an Arco station.

He skittered down the off-ramp, turned the wrong way onto a one-way street, circled, and stopped in the midst of the trucks’ lights.

“Closed, mister,” a trucker called. “No gas tonight.”

A group of truckers looked idly in his direction from the gas station door. One of the vans had jackknifed against the wall. The men drank coffee.

“Closed,” the trucker repeated. “Whole town’s shut down. No gas anywhere.”

Bill, blinded by the headlights, the reflection of the snow, glass, and metal, held his hand up in front of his eyes. He turned in all directions. The enormous filaments glared at him in a hideous crossfire. Then a trucker walked slowly to his window.

“You looking for something?” he asked, sipping coffee, his breath billowing into the brilliant cold.

“There’s a children’s clinic. On Tanner Street.”

The trucker shook his head.

“This here is Fitzwilliam Street. Cross street there is Cummins Avenue.”

“My daughter— Please…”

The trucker sighed.

“Just a minute, friend.”

The trucker ambled back to the group. Then two of them went inside the station. They argued over a map taped to the rear of the door. Then a different trucker strolled to the Dodge.

“Go down Fitzwilliam,” he said, “to Ninety-fifth. All the way. To Colman. Should be open. Turn right to Tanner. It’s a real small street. A kind of industrial zone.”

Bill eased the Dodge to Fitzwilliam Street. Snow whirled from the rear wheels, the rear end swung heavily, bumped against a hidden curb, and the car jerked into the middle of the road and stalled. Bill had trouble starting it again. Then it cruised easily along the quiet, snow-softened street.

He did not accelerate, though time was short. Probably the police were alerted. From the sanitarium. From Mario. But he was content to watch the dark alleys drift by, the brilliant pools of light under the streetlamps, a few isolated neon signs, dead-looking trees. It was a malevolent night, soaked in an evil darkness. Yet it was soft and inviting.

“Ekajata!” Bill mumbled.

The one-eyed deity. One-breasted. One-toothed hag.

“Za!”

Serpent with one thousand eyes.

“Damchen Doje!”

He who rides a goat, carries a blacksmith’s anvil and bellows.

Were they really here? Or just articulations of teeth, tongue, and breath? Had they truly deserted him? Or did they wait, far at the end of the cumbersome roads, perhaps at Tanner Street?

Bill grinned. Colman Street. Down the center was a thin layer of snow. Once plowed, now devoid of traffic. Even the shops were dead. The cold wind ran its fingers through his hair.

“Damchen Doje!”

Odd sound. Here in Pittsburgh. Yet how else had his instincts taken him here? Over every obstacle? Out of every darkness? Jennie, through their agency, was Ivy. Ivy called to him through their dark powers.

Tanner Street was blocked with snow. Bill jammed on the brakes, the Dodge swerved sideways, slid, and bumped against a telephone pole. The door buckled. He crawled out the other door.

“Ivy?” he whispered.

All the houses were slums. Derelict shacks. Leaning structures, tucked under the walls of a dark factory. Mountains of junk loomed fantastically in backyards. Bill walked quickly up Tanner Street.

A far garage glowed feebly with a pale yellow light behind a window. His feet, still bare within the tight shoes, cramped. Dizzy, he clutched his forehead. A black branch sank under his weight. He looked up. There was a tangled mass of sawdust, broken snow, and pieces of tree trunk. Behind it was a fence. Behind that, a long green building.

Bill grinned. There were no lights. No tracks in the snow. It was the culmination of his journey. A journey three years in the making. Deftly, he climbed the fence and jumped into the yard.

He struggled to a long, dark window and peered in. Cheerful mobiles dangled from yellow strings. It was a dining room. In the farthest shadows was the kitchen. He stepped around to the other side of the clinic, where a fire escape crawled upward to the second floor.

He paused. Nothing moved. A sensation of breeze. Whispering in his ear. Like a soft, trusting voice, he thought.

Gently, he tiptoed up the iron steps, shuffling his way through thick piles of snow. Shivering at the top, he silently peered into the nearest window.

It was a dark room, oddly decorated. Vaguely red curtains. Icons from India. Hoover’s room? An old-fashioned wooden wardrobe, richly carved. On the chair a pillow. Clothes. Bill licked his lips confused, yet eager to begin. He wiped an oval where his breath had condensed on the frosted glass.

Bill grinned a second time. But it was a death’s-head grin. A spasm traveled through his brain. It shook him like a wire doll. Then the chill passed. An awesome vacuum opened before him. He bent forward to look again.

Janice, as she slept, was completely still. Only her breasts moved as she breathed, a soft undulation like a distant sea, silent, a pale memory of the body that he once had shared. Janice stirred. A man’s hand slipped from her naked hip.

Bill ducked. The neighborhood was utterly silent. The trees were cased in ice. Ice covered the metal rails. The sky was livid pink over the city, but black over the clinic. Shivering, he turned again to the window, furiously wiping another hole in the frost.

The rounded torso, the long, slender arms, small but firm breasts, the jutting pelvis, the black, completely black hair that flowed nearly to the shoulders, that had a fragrance of its own. In the gloomy interior her face was barely decipherable. An amalgam of shadows and deeper shadows. By her side, Hoover’s hand stirred familiarly in sleep.

Bill jerked away. In agony he ground tears away with balled fists. He shook all over with a cold he had never experienced before. Long red marks covered his face where his hands dug in. Violently he spun around, found nothing but the frigid night, and pressed his eyes to the window a third time.

The edge of the bed was crumpled with sheets, soft red blankets, a side of a white bedcover. Janice’s ankles were soft, ivory white in the pale glow of a distant streetlamp.

“Ekajata!” he whispered fervently. “Za, Damchen Doje! Help me!”

Had the deities ridden away? Was Pittsburgh the center of a curse? Weeping, Bill backed away, found a door on the landing, and slipped inside the building.

The tears fell hotly down his cheeks.

“Hare Krishna!” he murmured desperately.

But the Lord of Destruction and Creation had flown beyond all hearing. The clinic was polluted, profaned.

A small blue light nestled in the lower hall. It gave the only light, a glow that extended in an oval over the carpet. He crept to the light and looked in the room.

Jennie stirred. The soft cheek tinged with blue against the sheets. Bill nestled her in his arms, cradled her, and felt the living warmth against his cheek.

“My daughter,” he whispered. “My own.”

No, the deities had not ridden away. They were with him still, and their power was evident, their design clear. They had taken him beyond the crass and mundane realm of earthly deception into the heart of his true and single destiny. Love was no longer Janice. Love moved in his arms, small-limbed, smelling of sleep.

Bill covered her in blankets, listened. There were no movements in the clinic. Holding Jennie close, he edged sideways through the door, onto the fire escape. For a second, the window to Hoover’s bedroom transfixed him. He smiled, then clutched his child tighter and bounded down the slippery steps.

28

Elliot Hoover had a dream.

He crouched in a cave on the slopes of Mount Everest. Outside, a storm battered the rocks, driving sleet into the cave. He was naked. Suddenly, from the dark interior of the cave came a deity riding a goat. Strings of human skulls bounced against his chest. The goat’s eyes glowed red. Smoke issued upward from the long hair.

For several seconds Hoover did not realize the telephone rang. Then he stirred, shook his head, and went to his desk by the window.

“Yes?” he mumbled thickly. “When? No. No sign. Really? To Pittsburgh? I see. Yes, Dr. Geddes. Thank you.”

He hung up. Mystified, he rubbed his chin. Janice propped herself up on her elbows and saw his nude form, outlined in the gray of the early dawn.

“What’s wrong?”

“Bill’s escaped.”

“What?”

“He went to the apartment.”

“When?”

“A few hours ago. The elevator man told him you were here. They think Bill’s on his way.”

Janice sat up, looked around for her clothes, grabbed them, and without shame, dressed in front of him.

“Look,” Hoover said. “The roads are blocked in with snow. He’ll never make it.”

“He’s going to kill us, Elliot.”

“Now don’t be such an alarmist. He just wants Jennie.”

Suddenly Janice’s hand went to her mouth. She looked white in the first light of day.

“Jennie!” she gasped.

Janice rushed into Jennie’s room. She screamed. Hoover ran in. The bed was empty.

“He’s got her!” she yelled.

Hoover ran his hands through the sheets. “Still warm. Look, there’s water on the carpet.”

They pulled open the door, saw the churned snow all over the fire escape landing. Hoover stared in dismay at the disturbance in front of his own bedroom window.

Janice backed slowly away from him.

“Elliot,” she whispered, “He’s seen us!”

Hoover blanched. “He can’t be far.”

Hoover dashed into his bedroom, threw on trousers and a sweater, socks and shoes, then ran into Mr. Radimanath’s room. There were feverish whispers, a sleepy man’s grunt. Lights went on in a corridor. Then he ran back to the landing, grabbed Janice’s arm, and they went down the fire escape.

They saw a clear tangle of footprints leading away from the fire escape to the dining room window, then there was another disturbance of snow at the fence.

“He climbed the fence!” Hoover exclaimed, quickly unlocking the gate. They ran out into the snow of Tanner Street. Hoover pointed. A long double line of tracks led back to Colman Street.

At a gritty rectangle in the ground, where the snow was shallow, tread marks of tires had ground deep ruts down to the asphalt.

“He’s got a car?” Hoover said in disbelief.

At the side of the road the telephone pole leaned slightly. A streak of white had been gouged into its splintered side, about three feet off the ground.

“A white car,” Janice added.

The dug-up snow was an icon of hideous violence. Bits of black rubber melded into the white, blackened by a manic attempt at escape. It was an icon of Bill, of them all, their spiritual nature mutually defiled.

“We’d better follow him,” he said hesitantly. “Shouldn’t be hard. There are tire tracks, and no traffic yet.”

But he didn’t move. He stood rooted to the spot, gazing at the tracks of the car, converging in the fresh daylight, narrowing in the distance, toward Colman Street. They hypnotized him. They taunted him, beckoned him, waited for him like a hideous destiny.

“The snow’s falling again,” he said at last. “The tracks are filling in.”

He took Janice’s arm and they hurried up Tanner Street, unlocked his Ford, and got in. Mr. Radimanath came, shivering in his robe, to the edge of the road.

“He has a car,” Hoover shouted, rolling down the window. “It may be white. We’re following. Tell the police when they come.”

The Ford sputtered into life, the wipers cast off heavy coats of snow, and Hoover slid into Tanner Street. The tires skidded, caught, and skidded again. In the rearview mirror, he saw Mr. Radimanath put his palms together, with a small bow in his direction.

Hoover turned carefully onto Colman Street.

“He drove down this way,” he said. “See? He’s following his own tracks out of here.”

Janice shivered. She tried to coax the heater, but it would not work.

The shops were still closed. Heavy rills of snow hung down from black roofs, half iced, glittering over brick and tarpaper. At times snow broke, falling in disintegrating clumps on the sidewalks. It was a wonderworld, like the first day of creation. But God had withheld his blessing.

“Where do you think he’s going?” she asked, warming her fingers in her sweater.

“Probably just following the plowed roads.”

“You don’t think he’s going back to New York?”

“I doubt he knows which direction that is anymore.”

“Don’t underestimate him, Elliot.”

He looked at her sharply, surprised at the bitter tone of her voice. Grimly he cleared a circle in the fogging windshield. The car tracks led on, still fresh, tinged with black where the asphalt showed through.

The snow became softer and fatter, almost a rain.

“He’ll be going back to the airport,” she said, “if he’s just following his old tracks.”

“Depends on what happens at Ninety-fifth.”

The tracks ahead wallowed uncertainly, dug up the snow into a foul mixture of brown-black granite grit, then smoothed out onto Ninety-fifth.

“That’s where he’s going, all right,” Hoover muttered.

At Fitzwilliam Street the tires swerved clear across the road. An immense arc had been scraped up over the curb. The snow now was very soft, slushy, and the tracks were melting into shallow undulations up the street. The windshield was spattered by fat drops of rain.

As they drove up Fitzwilliam Street, a barrier of police cars protected an overturned Volkswagen van. It was blue. The entire front hood was buckled in, the contents spread unevenly up the embankment of the highway. The barriers were being erected, sawhorses hung with red flashing lights, and beyond, the highway was completely clear of snow. A few cars already traveled on the glistening, rain-soaked road, headlights poking into the gloom.

“Damn!” Hoover exclaimed, trying to see through the fogged windshield.

Janice leaned forward. “Elliot, there’s a white car!”

“Where?”

“Up on the highway. Getting on. It has lights on.”

“Let’s take a look.”

But the policeman at the barrier waved his arm vigorously, directing them back down Fitzwilliam Street. Hoover backed the car, then rammed it up onto the steep slope that supported the on-ramp. A suitcase from the van crunched underneath, ground into the mud, and the Ford careened, spitting muddy water and snow over the police cars.

Suddenly they were on the highway.

“It’s Bill!”

Far ahead of them a shining white Dodge, with its side slightly buckled, changed lanes erratically. It seemed to follow no lanes, gliding along rapidly through the downpour, fishtailing, and a mist of cold water flew from the rear wheels.

The Ford crept closer, now exceeding sixty miles an hour. Glistening lakes of water roared up into the fenders. Hoover peered ahead. Only a single head — Bill’s — was visible at the driver’s wheel.

Hoover flicked his lights on and off, then tried the high beam. The Dodge cruised serenely on. They saw the head turn to stare at them. The face was lost in the indistinct, murky shadows within the Dodge, but it looked back a long, long time. At the last minute, it turned back and the Dodge jumped away from the restraining barrier at the dividing strip.

“Where is he going?” Janice cried.

Slowly, very slowly, Hoover’s hand stopped wiping the sweat from his forehead. His eyes softened, dilated, his whole face radiated an unearthly revelation.

“I know where he’s going.”

Hoover swallowed. The Dodge took a sudden off-ramp. The Ford missed the ramp, skidded, spun around on the edge strip; panicked drivers slammed on brakes all over the lanes.

Hoover glimpsed the Dodge as it plunged into a muddy pool, then shot into an industrial zone, weaving insanely through parking lots, loading zones, and out of culde-sacs.

“He’s heading for the turnpike. I’m going to cut him off.”

Hoover drove down a frontage road, past corrugated sheds, then up a long ramp. Down below, the white Dodge careened away from them, past factories and heavy equipment, throwing a violent spray behind.

Hoover wheeled the Ford onto an overpass, cut past a truck filled with new cars, and heard the mighty horn blast near his ear. A landscape of snow, cut by gashes of brown-red mud, spread into the rural rain. Factories spewed black smoke to the clouds. The whole earth extended in a vista of crude mud, grit, and wet winds.

Entering the turnpike, the signs diverged, some to Harrisburg, some to Pittsburgh.

A cold chill invaded Janice’s body.

“Elliot, isn’t this where Sylvia and Audrey Rose were—”

“Yes! Here!”

Hoover peered forward, furiously wiping the windshield. He lowered the side window, a wet chill blew onto them. There was the full sound of wheels slapping against the hard, drenched cement below.

The rain came now in torrential squalls. Most of the snow was gone. Wisps of cloud rolled through the valleys, disintegrating, reforming, reaching fingers over the icy roadway.

The white Dodge ploughed through eddies of molten ice on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and Bill smiled.

“Nobody will bother us ever again,” he exclaimed.

In the front seat, Jennie shivered, chills shaking her slender shoulders. Bill tucked the blankets around her.

“Poor darling,” he said. “Daddy is taking you home.”

Bill glanced into the rearview mirror at a world of gray pools of dirty water, smoke above rows of factory walls, and grimy snow. He was exhausted. He had been without sleep so long that his fingers trembled.

Instinct had brought him here. But now instinct was confused. Instead, there was a horrifying buzzing in his head.

“Four-five-nine-no—”

Bill turned. The sweat poured down his face. His hand calmed Jennie.

“It’s all right, darling. Daddy’s here.”

“No-no-no-no—”

“Yes, yes, it’s Daddy.”

The Dodge careened along the slick surface at ever-increasing speeds.

“No-no-no—”

Frustrated, Bill alternated between looking at the road and at Jennie. Veils of spray roared at the Dodge from traffic. Horns honked as he fought to maintain control.

“Don’t be frightened, Ivy. I love you.”

But Jennie squirmed. The chills were disappearing as fast as a fever began to rise. Her cheek quivered. Then the small limbs began to convulse.

“Ivy, what’s wrong?”

A smothered gurgle stopped in Jennie’s throat. Panicked, Bill felt her face. It burned with an unnatural heat. He desperately looked around, but heavy freight trucks hemmed him in. Rain blasted at the windshield.

“D-D-D—” Jennie gasped.

“Yes, yes, Daddy’s here!”

A blast of horns, and Bill grabbed the steering wheel. He was driving much too fast, the wheels losing their grip on the curves. But his cold hands, like his feet, felt disconnected from his body.

He thought he saw the old Ford approaching behind him.

“D-D-D—”

“Yes, Daddy’s here, darling! You’ll be all right!”

But a sudden crimp of muscles arched Jennie’s back. She shook from side to side. Her glazed eyes stared out at the rain. Her throat worked convulsively. Inarticulate syllables lodged there, and when she breathed it sounded like strange words. Bill’s head was dizzy, light, and her voice mingled with the whispers from the fissures of his own fears.

“Da — Da — Da—”

“Going home, Ivy. Try to sleep.”

“No-no-no—”

Jennie began to twist and turn. The embankment dropped beside the lane. Jennie’s screams merged with the squeal of brakes behind him. Bill fought to keep her down, to keep the blankets around her, but the slender arms pummeled his face and chest.

“Ivy! You’re burning up! Oh God, Ivy!”

A cacophony of truck horns, squealing brakes, and automobile horns blasted through the rain. The Dodge hit the center divider.

Through the windshield he saw the old Ford hard behind as the Dodge tumbled slowly, ever so slowly, it seemed, down the embankment, spitting mud in great arcs over itself, throwing off huge segments of metal and glass. As in a dream, through the mist, he saw the Ford skid to a stop above him, as his own car lifted into the air, rolling over and over, a twirling mass of white iron and steel. The blast blew glass through the upholstery of the front seat. Blackness, a hideous stench of near death, swallowed Bill, and the explosion deafened him.

Hoover crawled to the lip of the embankment and peered in horror at the smoldering wreckage below.

A figure, blackened and ragged, crawled frantically over the mud below, clawing at the wreckage.

“Bill!” Janice screamed, holding Hoover.

“He’s alive!”

Furiously the silhouette beat his fists against the twisted body of the white Dodge.

“It’s on fire!” Hoover cried, catapulting himself down the steep embankment. Rain plastered his hair. He peered into the flaming cauldron below, and the brilliance of the reflections hurt his eyes. Slipping, sliding, his ankle collapsed and he fell. He hobbled, crawled, and rolled down over the slippery mud.

A strong hand grabbed him.

“Keep back!” said a deep voice. “She’s gonna blow!”

A police officer held his arm. Now Hoover saw a trio of policemen with fire extinguishers, racing away from the Dodge. He shook off the hand, slipped under the officer’s reaching arm, ducked under low, rolling clouds of black smoke and flung himself toward the burning car. At the rear door of the Dodge, where the metal was jammed immovable into the earth, Bill was weeping furiously, beating his hands against the window.

A muffled scream emerged from the Dodge, under the crackling of burning fabric.

Hoover stumbled closer. The black smoke seared his lungs. He kept low to the wet earth. There was a rush of hot air, and flames licked upward from the engine block. In the rear window, black hair torn into streamers, Jennie beat against the glass.

“daddydaddyhothothot!”

The scream barely came through the roar of the flames.

“Ivy!” shouted Bill.

“daddydaddyhothothot!”

Hoover knelt forward. The heat sucked at his eyes. Flames shot up over the roof. Smoke twined lazily from the upholstery inside. Jennie began to choke.

“IVY!!!” Bill bellowed.

“daddydaddyhothothot!”

“Dear God! No!” Hoover wailed in anguish. “Not this time!”

But Bill’s hands flailed uselessly at the thick glass. Jennie was on the rear seat choking, and the black smoke rolled quickly through the car.

Bill reached to the ground, picked a heavy piece of cast steel from the engine block, and raised it over his head. With a roar of anger, fear, and sheer exertion, Bill heaved the cast steel into the plate glass and it blew apart, fragments shining, scattering over Jennie’s crumpled form.

“GET WAY FROM IT, MISTER!” called a bullhorn.

“IVY!!” Bill shouted.

The door would not budge. Smoke roared out through the shattered window, fumes of hot, acid smells. Bill leaned in through the window, and gathered Jennie’s body to his chest. He coughed furiously, and slowly the white Dodge, gathering momentum, began to slip back on top of him.

“Bill!” cried Hoover.

Bill turned. His face was haggard, blackened, deep gouges of blood gashed through his forehead and chin. Hoover tried to come forward, but the heat pressed his clothes against his own body.

“Bill!”

Bill’s blackened eyes locked onto Hoover’s. The Dodge teetered farther.

“Bill!”

Looking into Hoover’s eyes, Bill threw the child into his arms. Their hands brushed, inches apart.

Then Hoover recoiled. A rush of intense heat swirled around him, dazed him, sizzled the water on his hair. He fell backward, clutching Jennie. He saw dirt spray oddly up into the shining air, black clods of death, and then the smoke billowed out, followed by a deafening roar, a thunder of all creation, and then came the twin horror — fire, leaping upward from the hideous pile of melted and destroyed metal, and the Dodge settling lower, rolling farther over Bill’s flaming body.

Arms pulled Jennie from him. The last thing Hoover saw before he lost consciousness was the inexhaustible forces of destruction and creation, the white Dodge now utterly consumed in dense clouds of smoke, topped with leaping fingers of triumphant fire against the leaden sky, a paean to the divinity that worked its immutable will.