Servant of the Bones

19

This stopped her grief, but I couldn’t tell what she made of this revelation or of me. Sick as she was, she definitely contained the full flower of the seeds of beauty in Esther.

As the doors opened again, we saw an army brought out against her—heavily uniformed men, most of them old, all apparently concerned, and most rather noisy. It was an easy matter for me to push the diffident bunch aside sharply—indeed to scatter them far and wide. But this did make them hysterical with fear. She alarmed them further with her voice.

“Get me my car now,” she said. “Do you hear? And get out of our way.” They didn’t dare to reassemble. She fired orders. “Henry, I want you out of here. George, go upstairs. My husband needs you. You, there, what are you doing—”

As they argued with one another, she marched ahead of me, towards the open doors. A man to our right picked up a gilded telephone from a marble-top table. She turned and shot him the Evil Eye and he dropped the phone. I laughed. I loved her strength. But she didn’t notice these things.

Through the glass to the street, I saw the tall gray-haired one who had driven the car earlier, the tall thin one who had mourned for Esther. But he could not see us. The car was there.

The men came flying at us with solicitous words for a new assault—“Come now, Mrs. Belkin, you’re sick”—“Rachel, this isn’t going to help you.”

I pointed out a mourner.

“Look, he’s there, the one who was with Esther,” I said. “That one, who cried for her. He’ll do what we say.”

“Ritchie!” she sang out, standing on her tiptoes, pushing the others away still. “Ritchie, I want to leave now.”

It was indeed the same man with the deeply wrinkled face, and I hadn’t been wrong in my judgment. He opened the door at once as we moved towards him.

Outside the building, the crowd pressed in close to the ropes with their candles and their singing; lights flashed on; giant one-eyed cameras appeared, like so many insects, closing in. They produced no confusion in Rachel any more than they had in Gregory.

Great clusters of these people bowed from the waist to her; others were giving cries of mourning.

“Come on, Rachel, come on,” the driver said, addressing her as if she were kindred. “Let her pass,” he told the straggling troops, who couldn’t make up their minds what to do. He shouted a command to an elderly man at the edge of the pavement.

“Open the door of the car now for Mrs. Belkin!”

On both sides the crowd became frenzied. It seemed they would break through the ropes. Loud greetings to Rachel were called out, but this was in profound respect.

She disappeared into the car ahead of me, and I followed her, coming down beside her, close to her on the seat of black velvet, the two of us suddenly locking our hands together, her left and my right. The door was slammed shut. I squeezed tight her hand.

It was indeed the same long Mercedes-Benz, the same in which Esther had ridden to the palace of death, and in which I had appeared to Gregory. No surprises here. The motor was running. The crowd could not stop such a vehicle even in its devotion. Candles flickered around the windows.

The elderly driver was already behind the wheel in front of us, the little wall that once divided this compartment from his having gone away.

“Take me to my plane, Ritchie,” she said. Her voice had deepened and taken on courage. “I’ve already called! And don’t listen to anyone else. The plane’s waiting and I’m going.”

Plane. I knew this word of course.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, with a hint of enjoyment, or mere exhilaration in his expression. Her word was obviously law.

The car edged forward, crushing back the singing crowd, and then lurched for the center of the street, and moved ahead, throwing us against each other.

The wall went up, shutting us off from the driver, giving us a private carriage in which to ride. The intimacy made me flush.

I felt her hand, and saw how loose the skin was, how white. Hands tell age. Her knuckles were swollen but her fingernails were beautifully painted with red paint, and perfectly tapered. I hadn’t noticed this before, and it sent a pleasant chill through me. Her face was five times younger than her hands. Her face had been stretched like Gregory’s face, tightened and made youthful, and it was a face that had profited by all these enhancements because her bones had such a symmetry, and her eyes, her eyes were for all time.

I cocked my ear, so to speak, for any call from Gregory, for any changes in my physical self as the result of what he might be saying or thundering or doing to the bones.

Nothing. I was completely independent of him as I had supposed. Nothing restraining me.

Indeed, I put my right arm around her and held her tight to me and felt love for her and a tremendous need to help her.

She gave in to all this with childlike abandon, her body far more frail than I’d expected. Or was it simply that mine was becoming ever more solid?

“I’m here,” I said, as if I’d been called to attention by my god, or by my master.

She had an ivory beauty in her illness. But it was bad, this illness. I could smell the sickness—not a repulsive smell but the smell of the body dying. Only her massive black-and-silver hair seemed immune; even the glistening whites of her eyes were dimming.

“He’s poisoning me,” she said, as if she’d read my mind, and her eyes looked up searchingly. “He controls what I eat, what I drink!” she said. “I’m dying, of course. He has that on his side, but he wants me dead now. I don’t want to be with him and his minions when I die, his Minders.”

“You won’t be. I’ll see to it. I’ll stay with you for as long as you want.” I realized suddenly that this was the first time in this incarnation that I had touched a woman, and her softness was enticing me. Indeed, I could feel changes in my body like those a normal man might experience with a frail full-breasted creature pressed against him. I felt myself grow hard for her.

Could such a thing happen, I thought, not wondering about her virtue, but my limitations. All I got for my pains was a gang of confused memories, that I had indeed had women in this spirit form, and that my masters had railed against it because of its weakening effect. Again the memories were faceless and frameless.

I didn’t loosen my grip on her, but my senses were flooded with the sight of her white thighs, her throat, and her breasts.

She was impatient with the drugs that still hobbled her.

“Why did my daughter say your name?” she asked. “She saw you? You saw her die?”

“Her spirit went straight into the light,” I said. “Don’t grieve for her. And she did speak to me before she died, but I don’t know why. Avenging her death, that’s clearly only part of what I am here to do.”

This baffled her but another point concerned her as much. “She wasn’t wearing any diamond necklace, was she?”

“No,” I said. “What is this talk of diamonds? There was no necklace. Those three men killed her painlessly, if it is possible. There was no robbery. She suffered such loss of blood that her mind drifted. I think she died without ever realizing that anyone had done her evil.”

She looked hard at me, as though she didn’t entirely believe me, and she didn’t welcome this intimacy I offered her.

“I killed the three men,” I said. “Surely you read about it in the papers. I killed them with the ice pick they used to kill her. There were no diamonds. I saw her go into the store. I saw her before I knew just how quickly they would act.”

“Who are you? Why would you have been there? What were you doing with Gregory?”

“I’m a spirit,” I said. “A very strong spirit with a will and some form of conscience. This is not human, this body,” I explained. “It’s a collection of elements, drawn together by power. Don’t get frightened, whatever I say. I’m with you and not against you. I came out of a long sleep as the three murderers made their way towards Esther. I did not catch on quickly enough to how they meant to do the deed.”

She didn’t react in fear and she didn’t scoff. “How did my daughter know you?” she asked.

“I don’t know. There are numerous mysteries surrounding my presence here. I’ve come, seemingly on my own, but obviously with a purpose.”

“Then you don’t belong to Gregory in any way?”

“Of course not, no. You saw me defy him. Why do you ask?”

“And this body here,” she said with a slight smile, “you’re telling me this body is not real?”

Indeed, she stared fixedly at me as if she could learn the truth with her eyes. I could feel the heat building between us.

Then she did a most intimate thing that astonished me. She came forward, surprising me, and she kissed me on the mouth. She kissed me as I had kissed Gregory only seconds before she had come into his room. Her lips were damp and hot and small.

I think my mouth was lax and gave back nothing, but then I cupped my hand behind her head, loving the large rustling nest of her hair, and I kissed her, pressing her mouth as hard and sweet as I could. I drew back.

I felt a deep pang of desire for her. The body seemed in perfect condition. Once again, a few echoes of admonition and advice came to me…“lest you vanish in her arms,” or some other antique rot. But I was now through with trying to remember, as I’ve explained.

What was her pleasure?

As for her, she had the passion of a young woman, whether she was dying or not, or perhaps more truly the passion of a woman in full flower. Her lips were still firm and open, as if she were kissing me still or ready to do it. She was shrewd and not afraid of men or of passion. She was like a queen who has had many lovers. Exactly that way.

“Why did you do that?” I asked her. “Why the kiss?” The kiss had strengthened me, enlivened parts of me for specific human function. I call that strength.

“You’re human,” she said, dismissively, her voice deep and a little hard.

“You flatter me but I am a spirit. I want to avenge Esther, but there’s something more involved.”

“How did you get to an upper floor with Gregory?” she asked. “You know his power, his influence. The Lord’s Right Hand, the Founder of the Temple of the Mind of God,” she said contemptuously. “The Savior of the World, the anointed one. The liar, the cheat, the owner of the largest fleet of pleasure cruise ships in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, the Messiah of merchandising and gourmet food. You’re really telling me you’re not one of his men?”

“Ships,” I said. “Why would a church have ships?”

“They’re pleasure boats but they also carry cargo. I don’t understand what he’s doing, and I’ll die before I understand. But what were you doing with him?” She went on. “His ships dock at every major port in the world. Don’t you know all about it? It’s not that I don’t believe you, that you’re not a Minder. I saw you defy him, yes, and you got me out of there.

“But everyone in that building is a Minder. Everyone in my life, Everybody’s one of his church,” she went on, her words becoming rushed and full of distress. “The nurses are from his church. The doormen, the messengers, the entire staff of the building. Those people chanting, did you see them, they’re part of his church. His church covers the world. His planes drop leaflets over jungles and nameless islands.” She sighed, then continued:

“What I’m saying is, if you’re not one of his, and haven’t lured me off to some other place to be locked up, how did you ever get to the upper floor?”

The car was moving away from the crowded streets. I smelled the river.

She didn’t believe me. But she was telling me many things. Many intriguing things. I could see something beyond her words that she didn’t see.

She distracted me slightly from my thoughts. She found me an attractive male. I could feel this, and I could feel in her a despair that comes with the knowledge of approaching death. There was a careless passion in her, a dream it seemed, to possess me.

I was remarkably excited by it.

“Your accent?” she asked. “What is it? You’re not an Israeli?”

“Look, this is trivial,” I said. “I’m speaking the best English I can. I told you, I’m a spirit. I want to avenge your daughter. Do you want me to do that? This necklace, why does he say there was a necklace? Why did you ask me about the necklace?”

“Probably one of his cruel jokes,” she said. “The necklace started the big fight between him and Esther a long time before. Esther had a weakness for diamonds—that was certainly true. She was always shopping in the diamond district. She loved to go there more than to the fancy jewelers.

“The day she was killed, she must have taken the necklace with her. The maid said she did. He latched on to that little detail. He almost sacrificed his big theories of the terrorists killing Esther with all his talk about the necklace. But then the three men, when they were found, they didn’t have the diamonds. You really killed those three men?”

“They took nothing from her,” I said. “I went right after them and killed them. Your papers tell you they were stabbed in rapid succession by one of their own weapons. Look, don’t believe me if that’s your wish, but keep explaining to me. About Esther and Gregory. Did he have her killed? Do you think he did?”

“I know he did,” she said. Her entire demeanor changed. Her face darkened. “But I think he tripped up on the necklace. I have a suspicion that she took the necklace somewhere before she stopped at the store. And if she did that, then the necklace is in the hands of someone who knows that part of the story is a lie. But I can’t get to that person.”

This greatly intrigued me. I wanted to question her.

But she was distracted again by physical desire. She examined me, my hair, and my skin. Her grief for Esther was heavy inside her but it warred with a simple human need for levity.

I loved her looking at me.

When I’ve reached this stage, when I’m this apparently alive, humans notice the same things about me that they would have when I was a true man and walking the earth in an ordinary life that God had given me. They notice the prominent bones of my forehead, that my eyebrows are black and tend to dip in a frown even as I smile but to rise as they move towards the ends of my eyes, that I have a baby’s mouth, though it’s large, with a square jaw. It’s a touch of the baby face with strong bones, and eyes that laugh easily.

She was powerfully drawn to these attributes, and there came again that rush of memory, of ancient people talking and saying things of the utmost importance, and someone saying, “If one has to do it, where could we find a man more beautiful! One who more resembles the god?”

The car moved faster and faster through empty streets. Other engines were quiet, and the pavements of New York were lined with thin, spindly little trees that fluttered with little leaves, almost like offerings before their lordly buildings. Stone and iron were the makings of this place. How fragile the leaves looked when the wind caught them—forlorn, tiny, and colorless.

We took on greater speed. We had come to a wide road, and I could smell more strongly the stench of the river. The sweet smell of water was barely detectable, but it made me powerfully thirsty. I’d passed over this river with Gregory but had not known thirst then. I knew it now. Thirst meant the body was really strong.

“Whoever you are,” she said, “I’ll tell you this. If we make it to that plane, and I think we’re going to, you’ll never want for anything again in your life.”

“Explain about the necklace,” I said gently.

“Gregory has a past, a big secret past, a past I knew nothing about and Esther stumbled on it when she bought the necklace. She bought the necklace from a Hasidic Jew who looked exactly like Gregory. And the man told her he was actually Gregory’s twin.”

“Yes, Nathan, of course,” I said, “among the diamond merchants, a Hasid, of course.”

“Nathan! You know this man?”

“Well, I don’t know him, but I know the grandfather, the Rebbe, because Gregory went to him to find out what the words meant, the words Esther had said.”

“What Rebbe!”

“His grandfather, Gregory’s grandfather. The Rebbe’s name is Avram, but they have some title for him. Look, you said she stumbled on his past, that he had this big family in Brooklyn.”

“It’s a big family?” she asked.

“Yes, very big, a whole Court of Hasidim, a clan, a tribe. You don’t know anything of this at all.”

“Ah,” she sat back. “Well, I knew it was a family. I understood that from their quarrels. But I didn’t know much else about it. He and Esther quarreled. She had found out about this family. It wasn’t just the brother Nathan who sold her the necklace. My God, there was this whole secret. Could he have killed her because she knew about his brother? His family?”

“One problem with it,” I said.

“Which is what?”

“Why would Gregory want to keep his past secret? When I was there with him and the Rebbe, his grandfather, it was the Rebbe who begged for secrecy. Now surely the Hasidim didn’t kill Esther. That’s too stupid to consider.”

She was overwhelmed.

The car had crossed the river and was plunging down into the hellish place of multistoried brick buildings, full of the cheap and mournful light.

She pondered, shook her head.

“Look, why were you with Gregory and this Rebbe?”

“Gregory went to him to find out the meaning of the words Esther spoke. The Rebbe knew. The Rebbe had the bones. Gregory has the bones now. I am called the Servant of the Bones. The Rebbe sold the bones to Gregory on the promise that he would never speak to his brother Nathan again, or come near the court, or expose them as connected to Gregory’s childhood or his church.”

“Good God!” she said. She was scrutinizing me harshly.

“Look, the Rebbe never called me to come forth. The Rebbe wanted no part of me. But he had had custody of the bones all his life from his father, from years in Poland at the end of the last century. I gathered this from listening to them. I had been asleep in the bones!”

She was speechless. “You obviously believe what you’re saying,” she said. “You believe it.”

“You talk,” I said, “about Esther and Nathan—”

“Esther came home and had this fight with Gregory, screaming at him that if he had kindred across the bridge he should acknowledge them, that the love of his brother was a real thing. I heard this. I didn’t pay any attention. She came in and talked to me about it. I said if they were Hasidim they’d recited Kaddish for him long ago. I was so sick. I was drugged. Gregory was furious with her. But they had their fights, you know. But he…he has something to do with her dying, I know it! That necklace. She would never have worn the necklace in midday.”

“Why?”

“Very simple reason. Esther was brought up in the best schools, and made her debut as a girl. Diamonds are for after six o’clock. Esther would have never worn a diamond necklace on Fifth Avenue at high noon. It wouldn’t have been proper. But why did he hurt her? Why? Could it have been over this family? No, I don’t understand it. And he weaves in the diamonds, why? Why bring up the necklace in the middle of all this!”

“Keep telling me these things. I’m seeing the pattern. Ships, planes, a past that is a secret as much for Gregory as for the innocent Hasidim. I see something…but it’s not clear.” She stared at me.

“Talk,” I said. “You talk. You trust in me. You know I’m your guardian, I’m for your good. I love you and I love your daughter because you’re good and you’re just and people have done cruelty to you. I don’t like cruelty. It makes me edgy and wanting to hurt…”

This stunned her. But she believed it. Then she tried to speak and couldn’t. Her mind was flooded, and she began to tremble. I touched her face with comforting hands. I hoped they were warm and sweet to her.

“Let me alone now,” she begged kindly. But she put her hand on my arm, patting me, comforting me, and she let her body lean on my shoulder. She made a fist of her right hand.

She curled up against me, and crossed her legs so that I could see her naked knee against mine, firm and fair beneath her hem. She gave a low moan and a terrible outcry of grief.

The car was slowing to a crawl.

We had come to a strange sprawling field full of evil fumes and planes, yes, planes. Planes now explained themselves to me in all their shuddering, keening glory, giant metal birds on tiny preposterous wheels, with wings laden with oil enough to bum the entire world in its fire. Planes flew. Planes crept. Planes lay about empty with gaping doors and ugly stairways leading into the night. Planes slept.

“Come on,” she said. She clenched my hand. “Whatever you are, you and I are together in this. I believe you.”

“Well you should,” I whispered.

But I was dazed.

As we got out of the car, I knew only my thoughts, following her, hearing voices, paying no attention, looking up at the stars. The air was so full of smoke, it was like the smoke in war when everything is burning.

Amid deafening noise we approached the plane. She gave orders but I couldn’t hear her words; the wind just snatched them up. The stairs spilled down in one firm piece like the Ladder to Heaven, only it was merely the metal ladder into this plane.

Suddenly, as we began to climb together, she closed her eyes and stopped. She groped, sightless, for my neck with her hands and held me tight, as if feeling for the arteries in my neck. She was sick and in pain.

“I have you,” I whispered.

Ritchie, the driver, waited behind me, eager to help.

She caught her breath.

She rushed up the steps.

I had to hurry to catch up with her.

We entered a low doorway together, into a sanctum of intolerable sound. A young woman with brave, cold eyes said:

“Mrs. Belkin, your husband wants you to come home.”

“No, we’re going to my home now,” she said.

Two uniformed men stepped out of the front of the plane. I glimpsed a tiny chamber there, in the plane’s nose, full of buttons and lights.

The cold pale-eyed woman led me towards the back of the plane, but I took my time, listening so that I could be there if needed.

“Do what I tell you,” Rachel said. I heard the rapid capitulation of the men. “Get off the ground as soon as possible.”

The pale woman had left me standing beneath the roof and doubled back to stop Rachel. Ritchie, the loyal driver, hovered over Rachel.

“Leave the magazines and the papers there!” Rachel said. “What do you think, she’ll come back to life if I read about her? Get off the ground as fast as you can!”

There was a little chorus of weakening rebellion—men, women, even the elderly gray-haired Ritchie.

“You just come with me, that’s all!” she said, and once again the silence fell around her as if she were the Queen.

She took my hand, and I was led by her into a small chamber padded in glistening leather. Everything here was smooth. The leather was tender, and the place glowed with refinements: thick glass goblets on a small table, hassocks for our feet, deep chairs that would hold us as dearly as couches.

The voices died away, or sank low and conspiratorial, behind curtains.

The little windows were the only ugliness, so thick and scratched and dirty that they revealed nothing of the night outside. The noise was the night. The stars weren’t visible.

She told me to sit down.

I obeyed, sinking into an awkward couch of odoriferous dyed leather that caught me up as if it wanted to render me helpless and awkward, as a father might pick up his son by the ankle into the air.

We faced each other now in these scooped and oddly comfortable couches. I became used to it, the seeming indignity. I grasped that for the severity of the materials, this was a form of opulence. We were lounging here, like potentates. Brilliantly colored magazines lay on the table before us, one neatly overlapping the other. Folded newspapers that had been arranged in a carefully designed circle. Stale air blew upon us as if it were some sort of deliberate blessing.

“You really have never seen a plane before, have you?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I don’t need them. This is all so very luxurious,” I said. “I can’t sit up straight if I wanted to.”

The woman with the pale cold eyes had come, and she was reaching down beside me for tethers, a strap with a buckle. I was fascinated by her skin and her hands. All of these people were so very nearly perfect. How?

“Safety belt,” said Rachel. She snapped the buckle of her own, and now she did a thing which seduced me.

She kicked off her shoes, her beautiful ornate shoes with their high thin heels. She pushed at them, one foot at the other, till they fell loose, and on her narrow white feet I saw the imprint of the straps that had covered her feet, and I wanted to touch them. I wanted to kiss them.

Was this perhaps one of the most well-developed bodies I’d ever had?

The cold woman looked at me uncomfortably and shifted, and then only reluctantly went away. Rachel ignored all this.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her, vivid and somber in the dim light of this sanctuary, this plane, and I desired her. I wanted to touch the inner flesh of her thighs, and see whether the fleece-covered flower there was as well preserved as everything else.

This was disconcerting and shameful. Another realization came to me. Diseased things can be so beautiful. Perhaps a flame is a diseased thing, if you think about it, a flame dancing on its wick, eating up the wax beneath it, the way this disease was eating up her body from around her soul. She made a dazzling heat in her fever and the keenness of her mind.

“And so we fly in this,” I said, “we go up, and we travel faster than we can on the ground, like a javelin hurled through space, only we have the means of directing ourselves.”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s going to take us to the southern tip of this country in less than two hours,” she said. “We’ll be in my home, my little home which all these years has been mine alone, and there I’ll die. And I know it.”

“You want to?”

“Yes,” she said. “My head’s clearing even now. I can feel pain. I can feel his poison clearing from my system. Yes, I want to know it. I want to be a witness to what happens to me.”

I wanted to say that I didn’t think death was like that for most human beings, but I didn’t want to say anything I wasn’t sure of, and certainly nothing to bring her more pain.

She gestured to the woman, who must have been lingering somewhere behind me. The plane had begun to roll, presumably on its tiny wheels. It didn’t roll easily.

“Something to drink,” Rachel said. “What would you like?” And suddenly she smiled. She wanted to make a joke. “What do ghosts like to drink?”

I said, “Water. I’m so relieved that you asked me. I’m parched with thirst. This body is dense and delicately put together. I think it’s growing true parts!”

She laughed out loud. “I wonder what parts those could be!” she said.

This water had come. Lots of it. Glorious water.

The clear bottle was nestled in a huge bucket of ice, and the ice was beautiful. Ripping my eyes off the water itself, I stared at the ice. Of everything I had seen in this modern age, nothing, simply nothing, compared to the simple beauty of this ice, glittering and sparkling around this strangely dull container of water.

The young woman who had just set down this bucket of wondrous ice now drew the bottle of water out of it, so that the ice fell and crunched and made a gorgeous twinkling in the light. I could see that the bottle was made of something soft, not glass at all; it didn’t have the shimmer or the strength of glass; it was plastic. You could squash the bottle flat when it was empty. It was the lightest container for this water, like a bladder filled with milk strapped to a donkey, the thinnest, finest bladder you could find.

The woman poured the water into two glass goblets. Ritchie appeared. He bent down and whispered something in Rachel’s ear. It had to do with Gregory and his rage.

“We’re on schedule,” he said. He pointed to the magazines, “There’s something—”

“Leave all that alone, I don’t care, I’ve read it all, what does it matter? It comforts me that her picture is on every magazine cover. Why not?”

He tried to protest but she told him firmly to go. The plane was taking off. Someone called him. He had to buckle up.

I drank the water, greedily, the way you’ve seen me drink. She was amused. The plane was leaving the ground.

“Drink it all,” she said, “there’s plenty of it.”

I took her at her word and drained the entire plastic bottle. My body absorbed all of this and was still thirsty, its strongest indicator of growing strength.

So what was Gregory doing? Fuming over the bones? Didn’t matter! Or did it?

It suddenly occurred to me that almost every delicate maneuver I had ever performed had been under the direction of a magician. Even taking a woman, I’d done with their grudging leave. I could rise, I could kill, then dissolve. Yes.

That is not delicate, but the direct arousal of passion I felt for this woman—the strengthening that came to me from this water—this was new.

It struck me with total clarity that I had to find out just how strong I was on my own, and I hadn’t taken any serious steps to do so. I felt as strong in the presence of this woman’s carnal attraction to me as I had in Gregory’s fascination.

As I put the bottle down, I realized I had let drops of water fall on the papers and magazines. I looked at them.

Then I saw what had so concerned the others about these magazines. The pictures on them were of Esther at the worst moment. There were pictures of Esther almost dead!

Yes, there on the cover of one newsmagazine was the picture of Esther on her stretcher, and the crowds around her.

Someone said we were on course for Miami and cleared for an immediate landing when we got there.

“Miami.” The sound made me laugh. “Miami.” It was like a joke word you say to little children to make them laugh. “Miami.”

The plane was bouncing along. But the pale-eyed girl came with another bottle of water. It was cold. It didn’t need the ice. I took it and drank it in easy patient swallows.

I sat back, filling with the water. Oh, this was the most divine moment, a moment almost on a par with kissing Rachel, to feel this water move down my throat and through the coils inside of me made by will and by magic. I breathed deep.

I opened my eyes, and saw that Rachel was watching me. The girl was gone. The glasses were gone. The only water that remained was the bottle I clutched in my hands.

A great pressure bore down on me, fondling me, pushing me against the leather, and teasing me almost with a sweet strength that was mysterious.

The plane was rising fast into the sky, very fast. The pressure increased and my head suddenly ached, but this I sent away from me. I looked at her. She sat still as if praying, as if this were a ceremonial moment, and she did not speak or move until the plane had found some comfortable height and ceased to rise.

I knew the moment by the way she relaxed, and by the sounds of the engines. I didn’t much like this plane. Yet the experience was thrilling.

You’re alive, Azriel, you are alive! I must have laughed. Or maybe I wept. I needed more water. No, I would have liked to have more water. I needed nothing.

But I had to know what Gregory was doing with my bones. Was he trying at this very moment to call me back? He had to be doing something, though I felt no reverberations. I wanted to know. And I also wanted to know if, strong as this body was, I could at will dissolve it and recall it. I wanted badly to know.

I ran my tongue on my lips, which were cold from the water. I realized that my attraction to this woman, this delicate pale creature, had brought my anger and my confusion to the limit. I had to stop wondering about this and that and simply declare myself master. That’s what I had to do. I wanted her. It was all connected in a human way—the carnal desire for her, and the desire to strive against Gregory and defy him, prove to myself he did not control me merely because the bones were now in his possession.

“You’re frightened,” Rachel said. “Don’t be frightened of the plane. The plane is routine.” Then a mischievous smile came on her again, and she said, “Of course it could explode at any minute, but, well, so far, it never has.” She gave an easy bitter laugh.

“Listen, you have an expression in English, kill two birds with one stone?” I said. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to leave you now, and come back. That will prove to you that I’m a spirit and you’ll stop worrying that you’re consorting in desperation with a madman, and also I’ll find out what Gregory is up to. Because he does have those bones, and he is a strange, strange man.”

“You’re going to disappear from here? Inside this plane?”

“Yes. Now tell me our destination in Miami. What is Miami? I’ll meet you at the door of your home in Miami.”

“Don’t try this,” she said.

“I have to. We can’t go on with your suspicions. I see now Esther is like a diamond herself in the middle of a huge necklace, and the necklace is intricate. Where are we going? Where do I find Miami?”

“Tip end of the East Coast of the United States. My home is in a tower at the very end of the town called Miami Beach. It’s in a high-rise. I’m on the top floor. There is a pink beacon on the tower above my apartment. Further south are the islands called the Florida Keys and then the Caribbean.”

“That’s enough; I’ll see you there.”

I looked down at the spilled droplets of water, at the horrifying picture of Esther on the stretcher and then in absolute shock I saw that I was in the picture! I was there! I had been caught by the camera as I had raised my hands to my head and howled in grief for Esther. This was before the stretcher had been put inside the ambulance.

“Look,” I said. “That’s me.”

She picked up the magazine, stared at the picture and at me.

“Now I’m going to prove to you that I’m on your side, and I want to give that devil Gregory a good scare. You want something from your house? I’ll bring it to you.”

She couldn’t speak.

I realized that I had frightened her and silenced her. She was merely watching me. I pictured her body without clothing. The shape of her limbs was pleasing and firm. Her legs in particular had a muscularity to them in their slender form which was graceful. I wanted to touch the backs of her legs, her calves, and squeeze them.

This was quite a lot of strength for me, a lot, and I had to resolve the issue of my freedom now.

“You’re changing,” she said in a suspicious voice, “but you’re certainly not disappearing.”

“Oh? What do you see?” I asked. I wanted to add with pride that I hadn’t tried to disappear yet, but this was obvious.

“Your skin; the sweat’s drying. Oh, it isn’t much sweat. It’s on your hands and your face and it’s gone and you look, you look different. I could swear that there’s more dark hair on your hands, you know, just the normal hair of a hirsute man.”

“That I am,” I said. I lifted my hand, looking at the black hairs on my fingers, and I reached down into my shirt and felt the thick curls on my chest. I pulled at them, pulled them again and again. That was my chest, the rough scratchiness of the hair when it was flat, the silkiness of it when I tugged on it, and played with it. “I am alive,” I whispered. “Listen to me,” I said.

“I’m listening. I couldn’t be more attentive. What is it you see—about Esther’s death and this necklace? You were saying something—”

“Your daughter. She touched a scarf before she died. Do you want it? It was beautiful. She reached out for it right at the moment that the Evals surrounded her, the killers, I mean. She wanted it, and she died with it in her hand.”

“How do you know this!”

“I saw it!”

“I have that scarf,” she said. She went white with shock. “The saleswoman brought it to me. She said that Esther had reached for it, that Esther said she wanted it! How could you know this?”

“I didn’t know that part. I just saw Esther reach for the scarf. I was going to ask you if you wanted the scarf. I was going to bring it to you for the same reasons as this merchant woman.”

“I do want it!” she said. “It’s in my room, the room I was in when you first saw me. It…no. It’s in Esther’s room. It’s lying on her bed. Yes, that’s where I left it.”

“Okay, when I see you in Miami I will have it.”

The look on her face was a terrible thing to see.

In a whisper she said, “She went there to get that scarf!” Her voice was so small. “She told me she had seen it and couldn’t forget it. She had told me she wanted that scarf.”

“In a gesture of love, I’ll bring it to you.”

“Yes, I want to die holding it.”

“You don’t think I’m going to disappear, do you?”

“No, not at all.”

“Keep yourself in check. I am. Whether I come back, that’s the question.” I said something under my breath. “But I’ll try, try with all my might. This must be tested now.”

I leaned over and took with her the liberty she’d taken with me. I kissed her. Her passion passed through me completely. It burned in me.

Now in my heart I spoke the requisite words, Depart from me, all particles of this earthly body, yet do not return to where you belong, but await my command that you come together instantly when I would have you.

I vanished.

At once the body dispersed, sending out a fine mist to all the inner surfaces of the plane, leaving a shimmering spray upon the leather, the windows, the ceiling.

I floated above, free, fully shaped and strong, and I looked down at the empty seat, and I saw the top of Rachel’s head, and I heard her scream.

I rose up, through the plane. It was no harder than passing through anything else. But I felt the passing, I felt the shivering energy and heat of the plane, and then the plane shot onwards at such terrific velocity that I fell towards the earth as if I had weight. Down, down, through the dark until I swung free, spreading my arms, and moving towards:

Gregory. Find the Bones, Servant. Find your Bones. Look after the Bones.

In the wind, as always I glimpsed other souls. I saw them struggling to see me and to make themselves visible. I knew they sensed my vigor, my direction, and for a moment they flashed and glittered and blinked, and then they were gone. I had passed through them and their world, their horrid layer of smoke that surrounded the earth like the filth hanging over burning dung, and I sped forward, like singing, towards the Bones. Towards Gregory.

“The Bones,” I said. “The Bones,” I said into the wind.

The lights of the city of New York spread out in all directions, more magnificent and tremendous than the lights of Rome at its greatest, or of Calcutta now full of millions upon millions of lamps. I could hear Gregory’s voice.

And then before me in the dark, there appeared the Bones, tiny, distant, certain, and golden.