coffee?'
Dooley's little raisin eyes were nuggets of suspicion. 'Mr. Miller ' he began grimly, 'alcohol is not…'I put a hand on Skippy's arm to steer him elsewhere.
A celesta rang out. Everyone looked at the far end of the room.
The bells were struck again and the crowd parted to admit Angel and Mary Claire. Both of them had changed clothes, the mother into a simple dark dress, and Angel into a sky-blue middy blouse with matching skirt. Her dazzling blond hair was pulled back into a pony tail now, and she looked like any other beautiful little girl. She held on to her mother's arm as though the presence of all the adults made her feel shy. She'd left the kitten backstage. There were four men with them, dressed alike in vaguely naval white jackets and dark trousers. A shimmer of coral behind them drew my eye, and I saw Dr. Merryman following along in their wake.
'I guess her stomach's better,' Skippy said. 'See, Simeon, she doesn't look like she's been through anything terrible.'
'Who are the Gilbert-and-Sullivan sailors?'
'Ushers. They're supposed to take care of Mary Claire and Angel. Just in case of crazies, you know?'
People were pressing in on them now, squeezing past the Ushers to greet Angel and thank her for the Revealing. A couple of them shook her hand. Mary Claire's hand fell protectively onto her daughter's shoulder, but Angel ignored it. She exchanged polite words with the adults, and when a girl her own age came up to her, a friend, apparently, she whispered something and giggled.
'I want to meet them,' I said.
'Sure,' Skippy said, 'no problem.' We started toward them.
'What do I call her?'
'What do you mean? You think she's the Queen Mother or something? When she's not Speaking she's just a little kid. Call her Angel.'
We were about ten feet from them when something behind us fell with a loud crash. I turned quickly to see the heavyset woman who'd asked for Skippy's autograph, looking mortally embarrassed in front of an overturned table of books. She and two Listeners started to pick them up. When I looked back at Angel, she was surrounded by a white wall of Ushers, as alert as Secret Service men, standing shoulder to shoulder. Merryman had one hand on Mary Claire's shoulder and the other on Angel's. His face was set and hard.
'Come on,' Skippy said. 'The emergency's over.'
Merryman caught sight of us as we approached and he relaxed into a pointy-toothed smile. 'Ah, Skippy,' he said, 'I see you found Simeon.'
'How's Angel?' Skippy asked.
'Fine. Too many french fries. She and her mother went into the McDonald's in Carmel this afternoon, and Angel, as they put it these days, pigged out. Have you enjoyed yourself, Simeon?'
'It's been very instructive, Dick.' The electricity between us was so negative that if we'd been hanging from the ceiling on wires we'd have flown apart.
'You'll want to say hello to Angel,' he said. 'And Mary Claire, of course.'
Mary Claire gave me a grave smile and a cool hand. Up close there was something coarse and worn about her. Her hair wasn't quite clean, and there was a slack looseness to her full lips. Angel was chatting animatedly with Skippy, asking him something about the young male lead on his show, but when Merryman touched her shoulder she looked up politely.
'Angel Ellspeth, this is Simeon Grist. This was Simeon's first Revealing, Angel.'
'Pleased to meetcha,' Angel said in a voice that was pure New York. 'Didja like it?'
I couldn't have been more surprised if she'd sung the bass aria from Aida. If I'd had my back turned I would have thought it was a joke, Skippy imitating the Dead End Kids in falsetto.
'Yes,' was the best I could manage at first. Then I said, 'Did you like it?'
'Sure,' she said, pronouncing it 'shooah.' She looked puzzled at the question.
'What does it feel like when you Speak?'
'Great.' She gave me a broad smile. 'It's like I got a really good friend, you know?'
'Do you remember what you said?'
'Never,' Merryman said. 'It's ironic. Angel is the only person in the room who doesn't hear the Revealing.'
We smiled at each other over how ironic it was.
'I listen later, onna tape,' Angel said in the voice of a castrato Manhattan cabdriver. 'I got a little Walkman, I play it on that.' She looked up at her mother. 'I don't get a lot of it, though.'
'We learn about the Church through Revealings, of course,' Merryman said, 'but we learn about ourselves through Listening, and children don't begin Listening sessions until they're ten. Even though they're spoken through her, the Revealings are a little advanced for her.' He threw me the smile again. I didn't throw it back.
'Hell,' Skippy said, looking apprehensively from Merryman to me and back again. 'They're advanced for me.'
Angel tugged at her mother's arm. Mary Claire leaned down, and Angel whispered something in her ear. Merryman watched them closely.
Mary Claire raised a hand. People stopped talking at once. 'Angel's tired now' she said. 'I've got to put her to bed. Please stay and enjoy yourselves. Over on Table Ten, by the way, are tapes of the First Revealing, through poor little Anna. This is the first time they've been available in some time. Thank you all for coming.'
The Ushers closed ranks around them, and Angel, Mary Claire, and Merryman went back the way they'd come. I found myself looking at the back of Angel's slender neck, bared by the upsweep of the pony tail. It was a neck made for the headsman's ax.
'Hey, the time,' Skippy said. 'Your plane is at when?'
'Ten,' I said, watching them go. Angel had hold of her mother's hand.
'You'd better roll. Unless you'd like to stay here, I mean. I've got an extra bed in my cottage. I've also got some more Glenfiddich. You could sit up and chat with Dr. Merryman, you seem to like him so much.'
'Thanks,' I said. 'I've got an early morning, and it'll be better if the clock goes off in L.A.'
He walked me out to the rented car. As I sat there fiddling with the controls and trying to remember how the damn thing started, he cleared his throat meaningfully and I looked up at him.
'So,' he said. 'Do you think I'm crazy?'
'No.' I gave the steering wheel a half-twist and turned the key again. This time the engine caught. 'I think I am.'
My plane left two hours late. At two-twenty that morning I coasted Alice to a stop in front of Sally Oldfield's house and watched the rain spatter the windshield.
There wasn't a lighted window on the block. I could have fired a load of grapeshot down the middle of the street and not hit anyone. Even the cats were inside waiting for the rain to let up. The clouds were low enough to reflect the lights of the city with a chill, chalky glow. It looked like the cats were going to have a long wait.
I wasn't dressed for this. By the time I'd pushed open the little gate at the side of Sally's house, I was soaked to the skin and colder than the glimmer of hope at the gates of hell. The low-hanging leaves of a ficus brushed at my face as I tracked along the side of the house. They felt almost warm by comparison. I rounded the corner into the tiny backyard and found myself looking at a perfectly maintained little vegetable garden. I was so cold that my thought processes had slowed; it took me maybe ten seconds to realize why I could see it.
There were lights on in the back of the house.
I ducked beneath a window and let the rain pelt me. I had visions of running into the boys in blue. Then I remembered that they didn't have Sally's name, and I had visions of running into something worse.
The time seemed ripe for a futile gesture, so I turned up the collar on my shirt and got exactly what I should have expected: an icy rivulet of water down my back. In the conventions of Japanese samurai literature, such moments usually bring the hero instantaneous enlightenment. What this one brought me was an overpowering desire to sneeze.
But I didn't. And then I didn't again. In all, I didn't sneeze about once every thirty seconds during the fifteen minutes or so I huddled there waiting for any kind of movement within the house. When the fifteen minutes were up I raised myself an inch at a time and looked in through the window. Another futile gesture. The blinds were drawn.
