thrust vaguely in Kate's direction. Kate stretched and shook that one too.
'And that's Jules,' added Hawkin. He slithered down from their impromptu seat, swore at the splinters, and helped Kate get down undamaged.
'Jani is the world's foremost authority on medieval German literature, and Jules is going to be San Francisco's youngest D.A. You needn't worry about Kate, Jani,' he added offhandedly. 'She's a lesbian.'
Kate buried her face in her cup, which was already empty, and so missed the woman's reaction, but when she looked back the child was examining her with considerable interest. Finally, with the academic air of someone discussing the historical development of the iota subscript, she spoke.
'Are you, in fact, a lesbian, or more properly speaking bisexual?' she began. 'I was reading an article the other day that stated—'
There was a rapid dispersion of the party toward the food tents, with Jules and her mother in the rear in intent conversation (consisting of a firm low voice punctuated with several
At the food tents Kate allowed herself to be steered past the Cornish pasties (beef, vegetarian, or tofu) and tempura prawns (medieval Japanese, she assumed) to the sign that advertised the dubious claims of something called 'toad in the hole,' It turned out to be a spicy sausage in a gummy bread surround, but when she had washed it down with another beer and followed it with strawberries in cream (poured, not whipped, and with honey, not sugar—authenticity reigned in the strawberry booth), she was content.
The three adults sat on a bench in the shade of a colorful tarpaulin while Jules stalked off to try her hand at a game suspiciously like the ancient three-cup sleight-of-hand con game. Hawkin smiled almost paternally as the child stood gazing in intense concentration at the current players, a metal-mouthed page girl amid the lords and ladies who swept up and down the avenues among the stalls of crafts, foods, and games. The three of them chatted comfortably about Tyler, festivals, minor gossip concerning the department, the development of music, and the production of beer. At the end of half an hour Kate realized that Jani was someone she could easily come to like, and furthermore she saw that Hawkin was very much in love with her. She was quiet, even aloof, in manner, but listened carefully to words and currents, and when she spoke it was precise, to the point, and, like her daughter, not always politic. She and Hawkin argued, laughed, and touched, as if old companions, and other than a twinge of pain at the thought of Lee in the mechanical bed at home, she was glad. Eventually Jani stood up, gathered her brocade skirts, and went off after her daughter, with an agreement to meet Hawkin beneath the golden banner in half an hour to watch a demonstration of sword-play.
They watched her go.
'I like her,' Kate told him.
'I'm glad. She's a remarkable woman.'
'And as for her daughter…'
He laughed. 'She's something, isn't she? Poor Trujillo, he's terrified of her.'
'Have you seen Vaun?'
'A number of times. I brought Jani and Jules here to meet her, on Monday, in fact. We drove up.'
'Ah, yes, Monday being one of the days cars are allowed. I take it Tyler's prohibitions are back in force.'
'Slightly modified. They've strung a telephone line through the trees, to Angie's place and the Riddles'.'
'Sacrilege. How is she? Vaun?'
'Recovering. Fragile. Determined. She sent you the pass.'
'1 thought so.' She watched the mob, unseeing, until the question leaped out of her. 'Did he win?' Was it all in vain? Were lives shattered, was Lee crippled, were three children dead, four, so that Andrew Lewis could win his creative revenge? Did we catch him and kill him and still lose the one faint spark that might have justified it? Did he have the last word in the whole disastrous, ugly, horrifying mess? Did he win?
'No.' His answer was sure. 'No, he did not. She's painting again. Vaun Adams is an even greater human being than she is an artist, if that's possible. She is not going to allow him to win.'
'Thank God,' she said, and heard the tremble in her voice. 'Lee—Lee will be glad,' she added, inadequately, but his eyes said he understood.
'You'll want to see her,' he said, and stood up.
'Have you any idea where she is? I saw Mark Detweiler at the entrance and he said she was here, though I'd have thought she'd be hiding out.'
'She is, like the purloined letter.'
In a few minutes Kate saw the sense of this cryptic statement, as Hawkin pointed her to a seated figure, clapped her on the back, said he'd call her Sunday night, and went off to find his Jani. Eva Vaughn had disguised herself as a painter— of faces. She was dressed in characteristically understated fashion—as a nun—but her face was transformed by greasepaint into the visage of a cat. Not that she had fur, ears, and black whiskers drawn on, but the arched eyebrows, self-contained mouth and neat chin were decidedly feline.
She was finishing the delicate webbing that outlined huge butterfly wings covering a young woman's face, the eyes two matching dots high up on the upper wings, the nose blackened as the body. It was a most disconcerting image, like a double exposure in a piece of surrealistic cinema, for the wings trembled with the movements of the face. The woman paid and went happily off with an astounded boyfriend, and a child settled in anticipation on the stool in front of her. Vaun spoke to him for a moment, smiled a feline smile, and turned to rummage through the tubes at her side. Kate stood and watched, but suddenly Vaun glanced up. The catty smile became tentative, and she got up and went to stand before Kate. She reached out a hand to touch Kate's arm, and drew it back.
'You came, then. I so wanted to see you, but I didn't think you'd come, until I thought, maybe, this would bring you.'
'I would have come.'
'Would you?'
'Maybe not at first,' she admitted, 'but I'm here now.'
'Look, just let me finish this one and then I'll shut down for the day.'
The child's requested face, that of an alien monster, grew up from the chin, with eyes that bulged when he puffed out his cheeks. He tried this out in the mirror, delighted; his parents paid, and Vaun firmly shut her box and stuck it under the drapery of the nearby weaver's stall (not Angie's, Kate saw). Again she made the tentative gesture toward Kate's sleeve, and again she drew back and with her other hand waved up the hill.
'There's a tent up there for us, the residents. Let me go and take this stuff off my face.'
The house-sized canvas tent, a green one this time, was set off by a low fence and signs that informed the public that this was For Residents Only. It was high up in the meadow, brushed by the low branches of the first redwoods, and the opening was on the uphill side. Kate followed Vaun into the cool, spacious interior, which was scattered with chairs, tables, mirrors, portable clothes racks, sleeping children, and perhaps a dozen adults. A young man in shepherd's dress stood up at their entrance, took up his crook, and stalked toward them with an aggressive set to his shoulders. Vaun held up a pacifying hand, appropriately nunlike.
'It's okay, Larry, she's a friend.'
He stopped, his petulance fading into embarrassment.
'Oh. Right. Sorry, it's just that we've had about ten people in here already snooping around, and Tyler said…'
'That they'd be looking for me? What did you tell them?'
'Like Tyler said, you're in New York. One of them didn't believe me, but she was pretty stoned.'
'I'm sorry to give everyone the problem, but it'd be the same even if I were in New York. If you see Tyler or Anna, would you tell them I've gone up the hill and that I don't know if I'll be here for the dinner or not, but not to save me a plate. Thanks.'
With a shrug and a swirl the habit came off. Vaun hung it and the veil on one of a series of chrome racks that held an odd assortment of garments, from dull homespun jerkins to a brilliant brocade cape, and dozens of empty wire hangers. The ex-nun, dressed now in shorts, sandals, and a damp T-shirt, went to a table and mirror and began rubbing cream from a large tub into her face. The feline cast to her eyes and the catty mouth disappeared beneath a scrap of cloth, and then Vaun was there, in the mirror, as Kate had seen her (was it only four months before?)—black curls, ice-blue eyes, a waiting expression.
But different. Somehow very different.
