Four o’clock. The house was really truly empty now and hollow and full of echoes. He stood in his old bedroom looking out over the dark shiny rooftops, spilling downhill to the Castro district, and beyond, the clustered steel gray skyscrapers of downtown.
A great city, yes, and how could he not be grateful for all the wonderful things it had given him? A city like no other perhaps. But it wasn’t his city anymore. And in a way it never had been.
Going home.
But he’d forgotten again. The boxes in the attic, the surprise, the things he wanted most of all.
Taking the plastic wrapping material and an empty carton with him, he went up the ladder, stooping under the sloped roof, and snapped on the light. Everything clean and dry now that the leak had been patched. And the sky the color of slate beyond the front window. And the four remaining boxes, marked “Christmas” in red ink.
The tree lights he’d leave for the guys who were renting the place. Surely they could use them.
But the ornaments he would now carefully repack. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing a single one. And to think, the tree was already there.
Dragging the box over under the naked overhead bulb, he opened it and discarded the old tissue paper. Over the years he’d collected hundreds of these little porcelain beauties from the specialty shops around town. Now and then he’d sold them himself at Great Expectations. Angels, wise men, tiny houses, carousel horses, and other delicate trinkets of exquisitely painted bisque. Real true Victorian ornaments could not have been more finely fashioned or fragile. There were tiny birds made of real feathers, wooden balls skillfully painted with lavish old roses, china candy canes, and silver-plated stars.
Memories came back to him of Christmases with Judith and with Elizabeth, and even back to the time when his mother had been alive.
But mostly he remembered the last few Christmases of his life, alone. He had forced himself to go through with the old rituals. And long after Aunt Viv had gone to bed, he’d sat by the tree, a glass of wine in his hand, wondering where his life was going and why.
Well, this Christmas would be utterly and completely different. All these exquisite ornaments would now have a purpose, and for the first time there would be a tree large enough to hold the entire collection, and a grand and wonderful setting in which they truly belonged.
Slowly he began work, removing each ornament from the tissue, rewrapping it in plastic, and putting it in a tiny plastic sack. Imagine First Street on Christmas Eve with the tree in the parlor. Imagine it next year when the baby was there.
It seemed impossible suddenly that his life could have experienced such a great and wondrous change. Should have died out there in the ocean, he thought.
And he saw, not the sea in his mind suddenly, but the church at Christmas when he was a child. He saw the crib behind the altar, and Lasher standing there, Lasher looking at him when Lasher was just the man from First Street, tall and dark-haired and aristocratically pale.
A chill gripped him.
The feeling was so dark, so full of conviction, that it poisoned him. He hurried with the packing. And when at last he was finished, he cleaned up, threw the trash down the steps, took the box of ornaments with him, and closed up the attic for the last time.
The rain had slacked by the time he reached the Eighteenth Street post office. He’d forgotten what it meant to crawl through this dense traffic, to move perpetually among crowds on grim, narrow, treeless streets. Even the Castro, which he had always loved, seemed dismal to him in the late afternoon rush.
He stood in line too long to mail the box, bristled at the routine indifference of the clerk-an abruptness he had not once encountered in the South since his return-and then hurried off in the icy wind, towards his shop up on Castro.
She wouldn’t lie to him. She wouldn’t. The thing was playing its old game. Yet why that visitation on that long-ago Christmas? Why that face, beaming at him over the crib? Hell, maybe it meant nothing.
After all, he had seen the man that unforgettable night when he first heard the music of Isaac Stern. He had seen the man a hundred times when he walked on First Street.
But he couldn’t stand this panic. As soon as he reached the shop and had locked the door behind him, he picked up the phone and dialed Rowan.
No answer. It was midafternoon in New Orleans, and it was cold there, too. Maybe she’d taken a nap. He let it ring fifteen times before he gave up.
He looked around. So much work still to be done. The entire collection of brass bath fixtures had to be disposed of, and what about the various stained-glass windows stacked against the back wall? Why the hell didn’t the thief who broke in steal this stuff!
At last he decided to box up the papers in the desk, trash and all. No time to sort things. He unbuttoned his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves, and began to shove the manila folders into the cardboard cartons. But no matter how quickly he worked, he knew he wouldn’t get out of San Francisco for another week at best.
It was eight o’clock when he finally quit, and the streets were wet still from the rain, and crowded with the inevitable Friday night foot traffic. The lighted shopfronts looked cheerful to him, and he even liked the music thundering out of the gay bars. Yeah, he did now and then miss this bustle of the big city, that he had to admit. He missed the gay community of Castro Street and the tolerance of which its presence was proof.
But he was too tired to think much about it, and with his head bowed against the wind, he pushed his way uphill to where he’d left his car. For a moment he couldn’t believe what he saw-both front tires were gone off the old sedan, and the trunk was popped, and that was his goddamned jack under the front bumper.
“Rotten bastards,” he whispered, stepping out of the flow of pedestrians on the sidewalk. “This couldn’t be worse if somebody had planned it.”
Planned it.
Someone brushed his shoulder. “
“Yeah, you’re telling me,” he muttered under his breath, not even bothering to look up, and barely noticing the French accent.
“Very bad luck, Monsieur, you’re right. Maybe somebody did plan it.”
“Yeah, that’s just what I was thinking myself,” he said with a little start.
“Go home, Monsieur. That’s where you’re needed.”
“Hey!”
He turned, but the figure was already traveling on. Glimpse of white hair. In fact, the crowd had almost swallowed him. All Michael saw was the back of his head moving swiftly away and what looked like a dark suit coat.
He rushed after the man.
“Hey!” he shouted again. But as he reached the corner of Eighteenth and Castro, he couldn’t see the guy anywhere. People streamed across the intersection. And the rain had started up again. The bus, just pulling away from the curb, gave a belch of black diesel smoke.
Despairing, Michael’s eyes passed indifferently over the bus, as he turned to retrace his steps, and only by chance did he see in a flash through the back window a familiar face staring back at him. Black eyes, white hair.
“Julien!”
With a sudden violent motion he was jerked off his feet; he felt an arm around his waist, and a person of great strength dragging him backwards. Before he could reason or begin to resist, the bright red fender of a car bumped over the curb, smashing with a deafening crunch into the light pole. Someone screamed. The windshield of the car appeared to explode, silver nuggets of glass flying in all directions.
“Goddamn!” He couldn’t regain his balance. He tumbled back on top of the very guy who’d pulled him out of the way. People were running toward the car. Somebody was moving inside. The glass was still falling out all over
