The Witching Hour

  She didn't answer. She didn't confess this dark fear that they weren't going to survive, that somehow everything that had ever given her consolation would be lost. And then she remembered the old woman's face, upstairs in the death room where the man had died years and years ago, and the old woman saying to her, "You can choose. You can break the chain!" The old woman, trying to break through her own crust of malice and viciousness and coldness. Trying to offer Rowan something which she herself perceived to be shining and pure. And in the same room with that man who had died, bound helplessly in that rug, while life went on in the rooms below.

  "Let's go, darling dear," he said. "Let's go back to the hotel. I insist. And let's just get into one of those big soft hotel beds and snuggle together."

  "Can we walk, Michael? Can we walk slowly through the dark?"

  "Yes, honey, if you want to."

  They had no keys to lock up. They left the lights shining behind soiled or draped windows. They went down the path and out the rusted gate.

  Michael unlocked the car and took out a briefcase and showed it to her. It was the whole story, he said, but she couldn't read it before he explained a few things. There were things in there that were going to shock her, maybe even upset her. Tomorrow, they'd talk about it over breakfast. He had promised Aaron that he wouldn't put it into her hands without explanations, and it was for her that he was doing this. Aaron wanted her to understand.

  She nodded. She had no distrust of Aaron Lightner. It wasn't possible for people to fool her, and Lightner had no need to fool anyone. And when she thought of him now, remembering his hand on her arm at the funeral, she had the uneasy feeling that he too was an innocent, an innocent like Michael. And what made them innocent was that they really didn't understand the malice in people.

  She was so tired now. No matter what you see or feel or come to know, you get tired. You cannot grieve on and on hour after hour day after day. Yet glancing back at the house she thought of the old woman, cold and small, and dead in the rocker, her death never to be understood or avenged.

  If I had not killed her, I could have hated her with such freedom! But now I have this guilt on account of her, as well as all the other doubts and misery she brought to the fore.

  Michael stood stranded, staring at the front door. She gave a little tug to his sleeve as she drew close to him.

  "Looks like a great keyhole, doesn't it?" she asked.

  He nodded, but he seemed far away, lost in his thoughts. "That's what they called that style--the keyhole doorway," he murmured. "Part of the Egyptian Greek Italianate mishmash they loved so much when they built this house."

  "Well, they did a good job of it," she said wearily. She wanted to tell him about the door being carved on the tomb in the cemetery but she was so tired.

  They walked on slowly together, winding over to Philip Street and then up to Prytania and over to Jackson Avenue. They passed lovely houses in the dark; they passed garden walls. Then down to St. Charles they walked, past the shut-up stores and bars, and past the big apartment houses, and towards the hotel, only an occasional car slipping by, and the streetcar appearing once with a great iron clatter as it rounded the bend, and then roared out of sight, its empty windows full of butter yellow light.

  In the shower, they made love, kissing and touching each other hastily and clumsily, the feel of the leather gloves exciting Rowan almost madly when they touched her naked breasts and went down between her legs. The house was gone now; so was the old woman; and the poor sad beautiful Deirdre. Just Michael, just this hard chest of which she'd been dreaming, and his thick cock in her hands, rising out of its nest of dark glossy curling hair.

  Years ago some idiot friend had told her over coffee on the campus that women didn't find men's bodies beautiful, that it was what men did that mattered. Well, she had always loved men for both what they did, and their bodies. She loved this body, loved its hardness and its tiny silky soft nipples, and the hard belly, and this cock, which she took into her mouth. She loved the feel of these strong thighs under her fingers, the soft hair in the curve of this backside. Silky and hard, that's what men were.

  She ran her hands down Michael's legs, scratching the backs of his knees, and squeezing the muscles of his calves. So strong. She shoved him back against the tile, sucking in longer more delicious strokes, her hands up to cup his balls, and lift them and bind them against the base of the cock.

  Gently, he tried to lift her. But she wanted him to spill in her mouth. She brought his hips more tightly against her. She wouldn't let him go, and then he spilled over, and the moan was as good as everything else.

  Later when they climbed into the bed, warm and dry, with the air-conditioning blowing softly, Michael stripped off the gloves and they began again. "I can't stop touching you," he said. "I can't stand it, and I want to ask you what it was like when that thing happened, but I know I shouldn't ask you that, and you know, it's like I've seen the face of the man who touched you ... "

  She lay back on the pillow, looking at him in the dark, loving the delicious crush of his weight against her, and his hands almost pulling her hair. She made a fist of her right hand and rubbed her knuckles along the dark shadowy stubble on his chin.

  "It was like doing it yourself," she said softly, reaching up and catching his left hand and bringing it down so that she could kiss the palm of it. He stiffened, his cock poking against her thigh. "It wasn't the thunder and crackle of another person. It wasn't living cells against living cells."

  "Hmmmm, I love these living cells," he purred in her ear, kissing her roughly. He mauled her with his kisses, her mouth coming back at him as disrespectful and hungry and demanding as his own.

  When she awoke it was four o'clock. Time to go to the hospital. No. Michael was deep asleep. He didn't feel the very gentle kiss she laid on his cheek. She put on the heavy white terry-cloth robe she found hanging in the closet and went silently out into the living room of the suite. The only light came from the avenue.

  Deserted down there. Quiet as a stage set. She loved early morning streets when they were like that, when you felt you could go down and dance on them if you wanted as if they were stages, because their white lines and signal lights meant nothing.

  She felt clearheaded and all right, and safe here. The house was waiting, but the house had waited for a long time.

  The switchboard told her there was no coffee yet. But there was a message for her and for Mr. Curry, from a Mr. Lightner, that he would return to the hotel later that day and could be reached this morning at the retreat house. She jotted down the number.

  She went into the small kitchen, found a pot, and coffee, and made it herself, and then went back and carefully shut the bedroom door, and the door to the little hallway between the bedroom and the living room.

  Where was the File on the Mayfair Witches? What had Michael done with the briefcase he'd taken from the car?

  She searched the little living room with its skirted chairs and couch. She searched the small den and the closets and even the kitchen. Then she slipped back into the hallway and watched him sleeping there in the light from the window. Curly hair on the back of his neck.

  In the closet, nothing. In the bathroom nothing.

  Clever, Michael. But I'm going to find it. And then she saw the very edge of the briefcase. He had slipped it behind the chair.

  Not very trusting, but then I'm doing just what I more or less promised I wouldn't, she thought. She drew it out, stopping to listen to the pace of his deep breathing, and then she shut the door, and tiptoed down the hall and shut the second door, and laid the briefcase on the coffee table in the light of the lamp.

  Then she got her coffee, and her cigarettes, and sat down on the couch and looked at her watch. It was four fifteen. She loved this time, absolutely loved it. It was a good time to read. It had been her favorite time, too, for driving to the hospital, running one red light after another in the great quiet vacuum, her mind filled with orderly and detailed thought
s of the operations waiting for her. But it was an even better time to read.

  She opened the briefcase and removed the great stack of folders, each of which carried the curious title: The File on the Mayfair Witches. It made her smile.

  It was so literal. "Innocent," she whispered. "They are all innocent. The man in the attic probably innocent. And that old woman, a witch to the core." She paused, taking her first drag off the cigarette and wondering how she understood it so completely, and why she was so certain that they--Aaron and Michael--did not.

  The conviction remained with her.

  Flipping quickly through the folders, she sized up the manuscript, the way she always did the scientific texts she wanted to devour in one sitting, and then she scanned one page at random for the proportion of abstractions to concrete words, and found it very comfortable, the latter outnumbering the former to an extremely high degree.

  A snap to cover this in four hours. With luck, Michael would sleep that long. The world would sleep. She snuggled back on the couch, put her bare feet against the rim of the coffee table, and began to read.

  At nine o'clock, she walked slowly back First Street until she reached the corner of Chestnut. The morning sun was already high in the sky, and the birds were singing almost furiously in the leafy canopy of branches overhead. The sharp caw of a crow cut through the softer chorus. Squirrels scurried along the thick heavy branches that reached out low and far over the fences and the brick walls. The clean swept brick sidewalks were deserted; and the whole place seemed to belong to its flowers, its trees, and its houses. Even the noise of the occasional traffic was swallowed by the engulfing stillness and greenness. The clean blue sky shone through the web of overhead foliage, and the light even in the shade seemed somehow bright and pure.

  Aaron Lightner was already waiting for her at the gate, a small-boned man in light, tropical clothing, with a prim British look to him, even to the walking stick in his hand.

  She had called him at eight and asked for this appointment, and she could see even from a distance that he was deeply worried about her reaction to what she'd read.

  She took her time crossing the intersection. She approached him slowly, her eyes lowered, her mind still swimming with the long story and all the detail which she'd so quickly absorbed.

  When she found herself standing in front of him, she took his hand. She had not rehearsed what she meant to say. It would be an ordeal for her. But it felt good to be here, to be holding his hand, pressing it warmly, as she studied the expression on his open and agreeable face.

  "Thank you," she said, her voice sounding weak and inadequate to her. "You've answered all the worst and most tormenting questions of my life. In fact, you can't know what you've done for me. You and your watchers--they found the darkest part of me; and you knew what it was, and you turned a light on it--and you connected it to something greater and older, and just as real." She shook her head, still holding his hand, struggling to continue. "I don't know how to say what I want to say," she confessed. "I'm not alone anymore! I mean me, all of me, not merely the name and the part that the family wants. I mean who I am." She sighed. The words were so clumsy, and the feelings behind them so enormous, as enormous as her relief. "I thank you," she said, "that you didn't keep your secrets. I thank you from the bottom of my heart."

  She could see his amazement, and his faint confusion. Slowly he nodded. And she felt his goodness, and above all his willingness to trust.

  "What can I do for you now?" he asked, with total and disarming candor.

  "Come inside," she said. "Let's talk."

  Thirty

  ELEVEN O'CLOCK. He sat up in the dark, staring at the digital clock on the table. How ever did he sleep that long? He'd left the drapes open so the light would wake him. But somebody had closed them. And his gloves? Where were his gloves? He found them and slipped them on, and then climbed out of bed.

  The briefcase was gone. He knew it before he looked behind the chair. Foiled.

  At once he put on his robe and walked down the little hallway to the living room. No one here. Just the scorched smell of old coffee coming from the kitchen, and the lingering perfume of a cigarette. Made him want one immediately.

  And there on the coffee table, the empty sack of a briefcase, and the file--manila folders in two neat stacks.

  "Ah Rowan," he groaned. And Aaron was never going to forgive him. And Rowan had read the part about Karen Garfield and Dr. Lemle dying after they had seen her. She'd read all the delicious gossip gleaned over the years from Ryan Mayfair and from Bea and from others whom she had most surely met at the funeral. That, and a thousand other things he couldn't even think of at the moment.

  If he went into the bedroom and discovered that all her clothes were gone ... But her clothes weren't here anyway, they were in her room.

  He stood there scratching his head, uncertain what to do first--ring her room, call Aaron, or go screaming crazy. And then he saw the note.

  It was right beside the two stacks of manila folders--a single sheet of hotel stationery covered in a very clear, straight hand.

  Eight thirty A.M.

  Michael,

  Read the file. I love you. Don't worry. Going to nine o'clock appointment with Aaron. Can you meet me at the house at three o'clock? I need some time alone mere. I'll be looking for you around three. If not, leave word for me here.

  The Witch of Endor

  "The Witch of Endor." Who was the Witch of Endor? Ah, the woman to whom King Saul had gone to conjure the faces of his ancestors? Don't overinterpret. It means she has survived the file. The whiz kid. The brain surgeon. Read the file! It had taken him two days. Read the file!

  He peeled off his right glove and laid his hand on the note. Flash of Rowan, dressed, bending over the desk in the little room off this parlor. Then a flash of someone who'd put the stationery here days ago, a uniformed maid, and other foolish things, cascading in, none of which mattered. He lifted his fingers, waited until the tingling stopped. "Give me Rowan," he said, and touched the paper again. Rowan and Rowan not angry, but deeply secretive and ... what? In the midst of an adventure?

  Yes, what he was sensing was a strange, defiant excitement. And this he understood perfectly. He saw her again, with shocking clarity, only it was someplace else, and at once the image was confused, and then he lost it, and he put back on the glove.

  He sat there for a moment, drawing back into himself, instinctively hating this power, yet thinking about the question of excitement. He remembered what Aaron had told him last night. "I can teach you how to use it; but it will never be precise; it will always be confusing." God, how he hated it. Hated even the sharp sense of Rowan that had invaded him and wouldn't leave him; he would have much preferred the visceral memories of the bedroom and her lovely deep grosgrain voice speaking to him so softly and honestly and simply. Much preferred to hear it from her own lips. Excitement!

  He called Room Service.

  "Send me a big breakfast, Eggs Benedict, grits, yeah, a big bowl of grits, extra side of ham, toast, and a full pot of coffee. And tell the waiter to use his key. I'll be getting dressed, and add a twenty percent tip for the waiter, please, and bring me some cold cold water."

  He read the note again. Aaron and Rowan were together now. This filled him with apprehension. And now he understood how fearful Aaron had been when he himself had begun to read the materials. And he hadn't wanted to listen to Aaron. He had wanted to read. Well, he couldn't blame Rowan.

  He couldn't shake this uneasiness either. She didn't understand Aaron. And he certainly didn't understand her. And she thought he was naive. He shook his head. And then there was Lasher. What did Lasher think?

  Last night, before he'd left Oak Haven, Aaron had said, "It was the man. I saw him in the headlights. I knew it was a trick, but I couldn't chance it."

  "So what are you going to do?" Michael had asked.

  "Be careful," said Aaron. "What else can I do?"

  And now she wanted him to
meet her at the house at three o'clock, because she needed some time alone there. With Lasher? How was he going to put a lid on his emotions until three o'clock?

  Well, you're in New Orleans, aren't you, old buddy? You haven't been back to the old neighborhood. Maybe it's time to go.

  He left the hotel at eleven forty-five, the engulfing warm air surprising and delighting him as he stepped outside. After thirty years in San Francisco, he had been braced for the chill and the wind reflexively.

  And as he walked in the direction of uptown, he found he had been braced for a hill climb or hill descent in the same subconscious fashion. The flat wide pavements felt wonderful to him. It was as if everything was easier--every breath he took of the warm breeze, every step, the crossing of the street, the gentle looking around at the mature black-barked oaks that changed the cityscape as soon as he had crossed Jackson Avenue. No wind cutting his face, no glare of the Pacific coast sky blinding him.

  He chose Philip Street for the walk out to the Irish Channel, and moved slowly as he would have in the old days, knowing the heat would get worse, that his clothes would get heavy, and that even the insides of his shoes would become moist after a little while, and he'd take off this khaki safari jacket sooner or later and sling it over his shoulder.

  But he soon forgot about all that; this was the landscape of too many happy memories. It drew him away from worrying about Rowan; it drew him away from worrying about the man; and he was just sliding back into the past, drifting by the old ivy-covered walls, and the young crepe myrtles growing thin and weedy and full of big floppy blossoms. He had to slap them back as he went on. And it came to him again, as strongly as it had before, that longing had embellished nothing. Thank God so much was still here! The tall Queen Anne Victorians, so much larger than those of San Francisco, were still standing right beside the earlier antebellum houses with their masonry walls and columns, as sturdy and magnificent as the house on First Street.

  At last, he crossed Magazine, wary of the speeding traffic, and moved on into the Irish Channel. The houses seemed to shrink; columns gave way to posts; the oaks were no more; even the giant hackberry trees didn't go beyond the corner of Constance Street. But that was all right, that was just fine. This was his part of town. Or at least it had been.