destroying this entity. Maybe it can act on the energy controlled by him as surely as it acts upon flesh and blood cells.”
“That never even crossed my mind before.”
“That’s why we have to think for ourselves,” she said. “I’m a doctor, first and foremost. Only a woman and a person, second. And as a doctor, it’s perfectly easy for me to see that this entity is existing in some continuous relationship with our physical world. It’s knowable, what this being is. Knowable the way the secret of electricity was knowable in the year 700 though no one knew it.”
He nodded. “Its parameters. You used that word last night. I keep wondering about its parameters. If it’s solid enough when it materializes for me to touch it.”
“Right. Exactly. What is it when it materializes? I have to learn its parameters. And my power also works according to the rules of our physical world. And I have to learn the parameters of my power, too.”
The pain came back into her face, again like a flash of light, somehow distorting her expression, and then broadening until her smooth face threatened to rumple like that of a doll in a flame. Only gradually did she go blank again, calm and pretty and silent. Her voice was a whisper when she resumed.
“That’s my cross, the power. Just as your cross is the power in your hands. We’ll learn to control these things, so that we decide when and where to use them.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what we have to do.”
“I want to tell you something about that old woman, Carlotta, and about the power … ”
“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”
“She knew I was going to do it to her. She foresaw it, and then she calculatedly provoked me. I could swear she did.”
“Why?”
“Part of her scheme. I go back and forth thinking about it. Maybe she meant to break me, break my confidence. She always used guilt to hurt Deirdre, and she used it probably with Antha. But I’m not going to get drawn into the lengthy pondering of her scheme. This is the wrong thing for us to do now, talk about them and what they want-Lasher, the visions, that old woman-they’ve drawn a bunch of circles for us and I don’t want to walk in circles.”
“Yeah, do I ever know what you mean.”
He let go of her eyes slowly, and rummaged in his pocket for his cigarettes. Three left. He offered her one, but she shook her head. She was watching him.
“Some day, we can sit at the table,” she said, “drink white wine together, beer, whatever, and talk about them. Talk about Petyr van Abel, and about Charlotte, and about Julien and all that. But not now. Now I want to separate the worthy from the unworthy, the substantial from the mystical. And I wish you would do the same thing.”
“I follow you,” he said. He searched for his matches. Ah, no matches. Gave them to that old man.
She slipped her hand in her pants pocket, drew out a slender gold lighter, and lighted his cigarette.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Whenever we do focus on them,” she said, “the effect is always the same. We become passive and confused.”
“You’re right,” he said. He was thinking about all the time he’d spent in the darkened bedroom on Liberty Street, trying to remember, trying to understand. But here he was in this house at last and except for two instances last night-when he’d touched Townsend’s remains and when he’d touched the emerald-he hadn’t removed the gloves. The mere thought of it scared him. Touching the door frames and the tables and the chairs that had belonged to the Mayfairs, touching the older things, the trunk of dolls in the attic, which Rowan had described to him, and the jars, those stinking jars …
“We become passive and confused,” she said again, commanding his attention, “and we don’t think for ourselves, which is exactly what we must do.”
“I agree with you,” he said. “I only wish I had your calmness. I wish I could know all these half truths and not go spinning off into the darkness trying to figure things out.”
“Don’t be a pawn in somebody’s game,” she said. “Find the attitude which gives you the maximum strength and the maximum dignity, no matter what else is going on.”
“You mean strive to be perfect,” he said.
“What?”
“You said in California that you thought we should all aim to be perfect.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I? Well, I believe that. I’m trying to figure the perfect thing to do. So don’t act like I’m a freak if I don’t burst into tears, Michael. Don’t think I don’t know what I did to Karen Garfield or Dr. Lemle, or that little girl. I know. I really do.”
“I didn’t mean-”
“Oh, yeah, you did too,” she said with slight sharpness. “Don’t like me better when I cry than when I don’t.”
“Rowan, I didn’t-”
“I cried for a year before I met you. I started crying when Ellie died. And then I cried in your arms. I cried when the call came from New Orleans that Deirdre was dead, and I’d never even known her or spoken to her or laid eyes on her. I cried and I cried. I cried when I saw her in the coffin yesterday. I cried for her last night. And I cried for that old woman, too. Well, I don’t want to go on crying. What I have here is the house, the family, and the history Aaron has given me. I have you. A real chance with you. And what is there to cry about, I’d like to know.”
She was glaring at him, obviously sizzling with anger and with the conflict in herself, gray eyes flashing at him in the half light.
“You’re gonna make me cry, Rowan, if you don’t stop,” he said.
She laughed in spite of herself. Her face softened beautifully, her mouth twisting unwillingly into a smile.
“All right,” she said. “And there is one thing more that could make me cry. I should tell you that, in order to be perfectly truthful. And that is … I’d cry if I lost you.”
“Good,” he whispered. He kissed her quickly before she could stop him.
She made a little gesture for him to sit back, to stay serious, and to listen. He nodded and shrugged.
“Tell me-what do
“I want to stay here,” he said. “I wish to hell I hadn’t stayed away so long. I don’t know why I did.”
“OK, now you’re talking,” she said. “You’re talking about something real.”
“No doubt about it,” he said. “I’ve been walking-back there, in the old streets, where I grew up. It’s not the old neighborhood now. It was never beautiful, but it’s squalid and ruined and … all gone.”
He saw the concern in her eyes immediately.
“Yeah, well it’s changed,” he said with a little weary and accepting gesture. “But New Orleans never was just that neighborhood to me. It was, never Annunciation Street. It was here, the Garden District, and it was uptown, it was down in the French Quarter, it was all the other beautiful parts. And I love it. And I’m glad I’m back here. I don’t want to leave again.”
“OK,” she said. She smiled, the light glinting on the curve of her cheek and the edge of her mouth.
“You know, I kept thinking, I’m home. I’m home. And no matter what does happen with all the rest-I don’t want to leave home.”
“The hell with them, Michael,” she said. “The hell with them, whoever they are, until they give us some reason to feel otherwise.”
“Well put,” he said. He smiled.
How mysterious she was, such a baffling mixture of sharpness and softness. Maybe his mistake was that he had always confused strength and coldness in women. Maybe most men did.
“They’ll come to us again,” she said. “They have to. And when they do, then we’ll think and we’ll decide what to do.”
“Yeah, right,” he said. And what if I took off the gloves? Would they come to me now?
“But we’re not holding our breath until then.”
