“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.
