Cold Fire

of the dead.”

“Well, nevertheless, what happens to me sometimes is that someone or something else seems to speak through me, an oral form of automatic writing. I know what I'm saying only because I listen to myself saying it.”

“You're not in a trance.”

“No.”

“You claim to be a medium, a psychic?”

“No. I'm sure I'm not.”

“You think the dead are speaking through you?”

“No. Not that.”

“Then who?”

“I don't know.”

“God?”

“Maybe.”

“But you don't know,” Geary said exasperatedly.

“I don't know.”

“You're not only the strangest man I've ever met, Jim. You're also the most frustrating.”

* * *

They arrived at McCarran International in Las Vegas at ten o'clock that night. Only a couple of taxis were on the approach road to the airport. The rain had stopped. The palm trees stirred in a mild breeze, and everything looked as if it had been scrubbed and polished.

Jim opened the door of the Toyota even as Father Geary braked in front of the terminal. He got out, turned, and leaned back in for a last word with the priest.

“Thank you, Father. You probably saved my life.”

“Nothing that dramatic.”

“I'd like to give Our Lady of the Desert some of the three thousand I'm carrying, but I might need it all. I just don't know what's going to happen in Boston, what I might have to spend it for.”

The priest shook his head. “I don't expect anything.”

“When I get home again, I'll send some money. It'll be cash in an envelope, no return address, but it's honest money in spite of that. You can accept it in good conscience.”

“It's not necessary, Jim. It was enough just to meet you. Maybe you should know … you brought a sense of the mystical back into the life of a weary priest who had sometimes begun to doubt his calling — but who'll never doubt again.”

They regarded each other with a mutual affection that clearly surprised them both. Jim leaned into the car, Geary reached across the seat, and they shook hands. The priest had a firm, dry grip.

“Go with God,” Geary said.

“I hope so.”

AUGUST 24 THROUGH AUGUST 26

1

Sitting at her desk in the Press newsroom in the post-midnight hours of Friday morning, staring at her blank computer screen, Holly had sunk so low psychologically that she just wanted to go home, get into bed, and pull the covers over her head for a few days. She despised people who were always feeling sorry for themselves. She tried to shame herself out of her funk, but she began to pity herself for having descended to self-pity. Of course, it was impossible not to see the humor in that situation, but she was unable to manage a smile at her own expense; instead, she pitied herself for being such a silly and amusing figure.

She was glad that tomorrow morning's edition had been put to bed and that the newsroom was almost deserted, so none of her colleagues could see her in such a debased condition. The only other people in sight were Tommy Weeks — a lanky maintenance man who was emptying wastecans and sweeping up — and George Fintel.

George, who was on the city-government beat, was at his desk at the far end of the big room, slumped forward, head on his folded arms, asleep. Occasionally he snored loud enough for the sound to carry all the way to Holly. When the bars closed, George sometimes returned to the newsroom instead of to his apartment, just as an old dray horse, when left on slack reins, will haul its cart back along a familiar route to the place it thinks of as home. He would wake sometime during the night, realize where he was, and wearily weave off to bed at last. “Politicians,” George often said, “are the lowest form of life, having undergone devolution from that first slimy beast that crawled out of the primordial sea.” At fifty-seven, he was too burnt-out to start over, so he continued to spend his days writing about public officials whom he privately reviled, and in the process he had come to hate himself, as well, and to seek solace in a prodigious daily intake of vodka martinis.

If she'd had any tolerance for liquor, Holly would have worried about winding up like George Fintel. But one drink gave her a nice buzz, two made her tipsy, and three put her to sleep.

I hate my life, she thought.

“You self-pitying wretch,” she said aloud.

Well, I do. I hate it, everything's so hopeless.

“You nauseating despair junkie,” she said softly but with genuine disgust.

“You talking to me?” Tommy Weeks said, piloting a push broom along the aisle in front of her desk.

“No, Tommy. Talking to myself.”

“You? Gee, what've you got to be unhappy about?”

“My life.”

He stopped and leaned on his broom, crossing one long leg in front of the other. With his broad freckled face, jug ears, and mop of carroty hair, he looked sweet, innocent, kind. “Things haven't turned out like you planned?”

Holly picked up a half-empty bag of M & Ms, tossed a few pieces of candy into her mouth, and leaned back in her chair. “When I left the University of Missouri with a journalism degree, I was gonna shake up the world, break big stories, collect Pulitzers for doorstops — and now look at me. You know what I did this evening?”

“Whatever it was, I can tell you didn't enjoy it.”

“I was down at the Hilton for the annual banquet of the Greater Portland Lumber Products Association, interviewing manufacturers of prefab pullmans, plyboard salesmen, and redwood-decking distributors. They gave out the Timber Trophy — that's what they call it — for the 'lumber-products man of the year.' I got to interview him, too. Rushed back here to get it all written up in time for the morning edition. Hot stuff like that, you don't want to let the bastards at The New York Times scoop you on it.”

“I thought you were arts and leisure.”

“Got sick of it. Let me tell you, Tommy, the wrong poet can turn you off the arts for maybe a decade.”

She tossed more chocolate morsels in her mouth. She usually didn't eat candy because she was determined not to wind up with a weight problem like the one that had always plagued her mother, and she was gobbling M & Ms now just to make herself feel more miserable and worthless. She was in a bad downward spiral.

She said, “TV and movies, they make journalism look so glamorous and exciting. It's all lies.”

“Me,” Tommy said, “I haven't had the life I planned on, either. You think I figured to wind up head of maintenance for the Press, just a glorified janitor?”

“I guess not,” she said, feeling small and self-centered for whining at him when his lot in life was not as desirable as her own.

“Hell, no. From the time I was a little kid, I knew I was gonna grow up to drive