in Philadelphia. She hadn't wanted to tell him about Parry's involvement in the case via an answering machine, so she had given no more details. She outlined the case and left it at that. She repeated herself somewhat now but ended with the news that she'd been teamed with James Parry.
The night before, Kim had pretty much said, “How your Richard handles the news will be a defining moment in your relationship.” Jessica believed her friend's words and she held her breath while she waited for Richard's reaction.
“I see…”
He didn't see, she told herself.
“But I thought this fellow Parry was Bureau Chief in Honolulu?”
She explained the situation and circumstances leading to the teaming.
“I see…”
He didn't see, not a thing did he see, she silently muttered to herself.
Richard then added, “Are you saying you had no say-so in whether or not you two were to work together? I'm not quite clear on that.”
Two questions, level and calm. His reaction was to pose a question, perhaps to give him time to mull over his feelings. It had to come as a shock to him, but he characteristically absorbed the shock.
“I was given the choice. I did not decline.”
“I see.”
“You see?” She was beginning to hate those two words. What did I see mean to him?
“Really, Jessica. You don't have to be… so tentative with me. Remember, we, you and me together, we made a formidable team against the Crucifier, and I should think we can overcome this.”
“I've been afraid to tell you.”
“Afraid? Never be afraid to speak to me about anything, dear.”
He was handling the news, and the fact that she'd withheld it from him this long, “swimmingly”-as he might say-well.
“I trust you implicitly, Jessie, I do. I know you, perhaps better than you realize. I really must run, however. Are you all right?”
“Much more than before I spoke to you, yes.”
“I know the pain of closing out an old relationship; it's not something done overnight. All my love, dear.”
“And mine to you,” she replied before hearing the connection go dead.
Richard was right, she now told herself. Silly of her to be so filled with self-recriminations. Still, she had failed to completely inform him of the situation, that Parry still had strong feelings for her. However, she had informed him of the overall picture. She felt a sense of relief come over her, followed by a flood of happiness. Kim had been right. It was a defining moment in their relationship, and he had handled it so well.
Jessica returned to sleep, trying to ease her concerns, replaying Richard's strong, melodious voice in her head. As slumber came, she heard his voice change into that of a stranger without face or body. A stranger who kept repeating the refrain of the poems left by the killer in the melodic voice of a Richard Burton or a Sir Laurence Olivier. She played his deadly words over in her mind again just before consciousness waned.
Chance… whose desire
Is to have a meeting
With stunned innocence…
Subconsciously, she asked, What does it mean? What does the killer poet intend? So peculiar, she felt that someone capable of combining words so beautifully… someone so creative, could destroy lives. We need a cryptologist to decode this so-called poetry, she decided. How can he be both artist and destroyer? What kind of man am I dealing with? her unconscious asked, and again played over the killer's words:
Chance… whose desire Is to have a meeting With stunned innocence…
Is he Chance? Seeking meetings with victims who may, in the end, be stunned by their own innocent acceptance of him and what he plans for them?
Stunned innocence… stunned because they suddenly discover they are his victims? Or stunned to discover something else, something about themselves, something he teaches them? Something to do with flickering life?
These questions played in her head, over and over again, as she slept.
The Poet Lord sleeps the sleep of the innocent, in a spartanly furnished apartment; some say the poet lives the life of a recluse, like a monk, a person with little interest in material possessions or things of this earth. But such as these know him only from this apartment; it's hardly the whole person. The Poet Lord's interests are always in the spiritual possessions of the next life, and the condition of the spirit in this life, but at times material possessions have surrounded him. Perhaps in another life he'd been a priest, but not so in this one. He maintains three separate but equal habitats; this is but one of them. It overlooks the teeming life of Second Street.
In dreams, power is turned over to him in the form of a torch. Dreams are like overflowing cups, and lately the poet's dreams run rampant with reward. Few will ever understand-this he knows-and fewer still will have glimpsed the other side, but he knows that he will be embraced by the light, the love, and the ultimate compassion and wisdom of the angels and their Maker. He has had a recent reading of the tarot cards of his choice, the Enochian tarot cards created by the gnostic and occultist Aleister Crowley, a man who saw the images of the cards in a series of visions brought him by the angels who spoke to Enoch, the only man known to have walked in conversation with God.
As always, his reading was done by Madame Lesia Tahach, the Hungarian woman who knows how to read the cards, the stars, the tea leaves-whatever a client wants- and Tahach had told him that he'd soon be on the journey of his life. He trusts this journey will in fact be the journey toward final reward, final closure, and the new life of the Four Quarters-the angelic forces of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire.
The original message of the angels had concerned knowledge of the known universe in order to overthrow existing governments, to usher in the Apocalypse, but now, like their Creator, the angels had no more use for humankind or Earth the planet; instead, they simply wished to recall their kindred spirits. These spirits, at one time numbering ninety-one, now roamed the land, a mere nineteen remaining.
“Can the wings of the winds understand the voices of wonder?” he had once asked Madame Tahach. She only gave him a grim look, as if he were co-opting one of her lines.
While the Poet has a vague sense that his identity might one day be revealed, at present this concerns him little. He has been assured a seat in the ranks of the angels in another place, another time, far more important than this reality, this era.
His last Chosen One, Maurice, despite the outward happiness he displayed to the world, despite his constant smile and immature wittiness, lived in constant pain and sadness. Maurice had opened himself up, revealed the raw edges, the seething melancholy of his existence, the worm at the center of his being. Maurice had been born a woman in a man's body; his entire being screamed this fact to the world he had inhabited before his departure to a place that embraced his soul, not his body. Because he'd been born a man, he had spent a lifetime-several lifetimes, in a sense-fending off this world. How awful the invisible scars that poor Maurice suffered. In a world where many influential religious leaders called Maurice's lifestyle a growing malignancy, the poor boy had few authority figures to turn to.
Maurice was in fact an angel-in-waiting. A Christ-like child of innocence, who knew enough to believe he was special after all.
It was the same as asking Christ to live in a world filled with ugliness and an ingrained ignorance that only bred falsities, contempt, hatred, and prejudice.
The Lord Poet's answer came in his actions. He convinced Maurice to allow him to write a poem in his honor, to pen it across his back, to be displayed in the clubs and pubs and wherever he wished, to declare himself a living, breathing piece of art, a truly special being created by the touch of angels-inspired, as it were, to combat hate crimes and hate thinking.
“I'll create of your living, breathing, moving skin the most beautiful, enigmatic poem the world has ever seen,” he had promised Maurice.
“Sounds fantastic!” Maurice had been excited, his hands waving, his eyes suddenly the size of saucers. He had not shown such exuberance all evening long. He loved the idea, and he loved his new friend for suggesting it to him. “When? When do we get started? How long will it take? When can I show it off?”
