"No one said it was your fault."
"He spends his whole life drinking and screwing while the world is falling to pieces around him, but the first sign of trouble and everyone looks at me. I'm the only one willing to tell him to get off his ass, that's all. I'm the only one to break the news he isn't living in a fairy tale."
Sarah's shrewd gaze flicked from Jet to Dante and back again. Jet turned away from her measuring eyes. Slowly Sarah nodded. "I see. You're scared shitless too."
* * *
And so, furtively, he tried to gather what will he had left and cast the little card spell that had once made him so proud. It had taken him months to learn, hundreds of hours of practice, visualizing with cards in his hand, flipping back and forth through Crowley's books, concentrating until his mind felt like a dishrag. Jewel's Card, he called the trick. She laughed when he showed it to her.
But it had gotten him out of a few tight jams before. Bought them this pale gold champagne and paid for this hot room in a swank hotel, for that matter. He concentrated on the cards in his left hand, on the useless four of clubs.
Desperately hoping Jewel's friend wouldn't notice.
"I call."
Life emptied from his left arm like water suddenly draining from a sink, leaving his fingers cold and gray and lifeless. Shaking with fatigue, Pendleton laid his hand slowly on the table. "Full house," he whispered. Now instead of two pair and a four of clubs, he had two pair and the ace of diamonds. Jewel's Card. "Full house," he said again. "Aces over eights."
* * *
"Can you imagine it?" Jet murmured. "The whole pregnancy, all nerves and hope and hideous discomfort, and then labor, so agonizing you think you're going to die from the sheer pain—and for what? For nothing. Your baby ripped away and this... thing, left in its place. Worse than retarded because it isn't yours. And your husband's gone, and you're living on your brother's charity, and everyone knows." With thin white fingers Jet touched the butterfly on his cheek, traced the diamonds on its outspread wings. "Everyone knows."
Sarah said, "Shut up."
"I wonder why she didn't strangle me."
"Jet!"
"Or pop me in a sack and toss me in the river. At first they wouldn't leave her alone with me—did you know that? Even so, she had her chances: but she never did it."
"You were still her child," Sarah said, her voice crushed down to a whisper. "That counts for something, you know. You can't imagine how much that means."
"I don't know. Was I her child?" Jet shook his head, strangely vulnerable. "What goes on in someone's heart? I don't know. I've watched you people, watched you all my life and I still don't know. It used to drive me crazy, wondering; wondering what you all were thinking, wondering what you were feeling. I gave up, in the end."
"Who are 'we'?" Sarah asked tartly. "Are you into your tiresome 'I'm not a member of the human race' thing again?"
Jet smiled thinly. "If it's tiresome for you, just think how tired it makes me."
"It's the act that counts, Jet. Whatever Sophie felt, she didn't strangle you. She could have, but she didn't. And I'm glad," Sarah added, awkwardly.
Softly, Jet laughed. "Yeah, you probably are, at least a little. I'm sorry. You have problems of your own. You don't need to listen to me being maudlin."
"Actually, it's sort of refreshing to hear you whine," Sarah remarked. "Usually you just complain about us. This makes you seem more—"
"Human?" Jet said dryly.
Sarah grunted. "Oh no, Jet. I'd never accuse you of that."
* * *
For the longest time, Jewel's friend didn't say a word. Just glanced from Pendleton's hand to his own. "Nice," he said at last. And slowly, very slowly, he folded his cards facedown on the table.
"Well, that's enough don't you think?" Pendleton babbled, leaping up. "Would you care for a little more champagne?"
"Two hundred years, was it?" Jewel's friend said. "Two hundred years of life I owe you."
Pendleton shrugged. "Oh well, whatever." His hand shook as he poured himself another tumbler of champagne. It went down like ice water.
"Think that's enough?" Jewel asked teasingly. "You won't be able to walk, let alone take me dancing."
"M-maybe you're right," Pendleton said. "Why don't you and, and—"
"Albert," Jewel suggested, laughing merrily. "Oh, definitely Albert."
"Fine. Why d-don't you and Albert go on ahead? I'll find you later. I—I just need a few minutes to let the buzz out," Pendleton stammered: but he had never been more sober, not in the six months he had known her. He was straight as a casket and sober as a corpse. "Don't, uh, don't worry about the bet," he added. "Just a friendly game, after all."
Albert smiled. Coolly, like a well-bred tiger. "I never forget my debts," he purred.
The instant they headed downstairs Pendleton packed, shoving a few clothes into his suitcase, leaving behind his gold studs and his sharp hat. His three Crowley books, their margins thickly scrawled with notes, he shoved into the elegant fireplace and sprinkled with fluid from his gold-plated cigarette lighter. They burned up like moth-wings.
In ten minutes he was ready, struggling into his long coat. Sweat stained his white silk scarf. Door or fire escape? Don't be a fool, he told himself. No point panicking now. They'll be in the ballroom. Even if she sees you, so what? Tell her you're going out for a pack of smokes.
Not the elevator: too cramped. Go down the stairs; you can dodge onto a landing if you hear footsteps.
He was stuffing his fine leather gloves into his cashmere coat pockets when his eye fell on the stranger's cards, still facedown on the table.
He stood as if paralyzed. Then, suddenly, he reached out and tipped them over.
A royal straight. Not a flush, but a five-card straight, good enough to beat any hand under a full house. Pendleton's heart thudded painfully in his chest.
A royal straight. With the ace of diamonds at the top.
* * *
"Christ!" Sarah swore, staring at Dante.
Jet spun around, following her gaze.
Dante sat before the bureau mirror, rocking back and forth, eyes closed, lips pressed thin as if in pain. His right hand was curled into a fist around the barbed lure and he was squeezing, squeezing until his knuckles turned white. Blood welled between his fingers. "Dead man's hand," he whispered.
* * *
Portrait
Christmas 1960.
It's written on the back of the picture in Mother's neat round hand. A black and white shot, not in the best of condition. It looks bleached: the black has faded to gray, and the white border is yellowing. Even though I did not take this photograph, it is one of the most precious in my collection.
There are two couples standing in front of the fireplace: Gwen and Anton Ratkay on the left, Aunt Sophie and Pendleton on the right. The two women are seven and a half months pregnant; flanked by their husbands they stand in three-quarters profile so their bulging tummies almost touch.
Anton Ratkay's smile is strained. He is two years out of medical school, working like a demon to establish himself in a community that prefers to deal with old Dr. Thompson. Dr. Thompson is looking to ease into his retirement and has just thrown a bit of business Father's way. Starting in the New Year, he will turn over all the autopsy work.
It is almost impossible to believe that Mother was ever this pretty. Red bangs curl around her Scottish face. The morning sickness they said would end after the first trimester still lasts past lunchtime, but though you can see the weariness around her eyes, her expression is one of wit and resolute good cheer. She is twenty-six years old in this picture, the smart, pretty daughter of an Episcopalian minister. In a pinch she could still play Anne in Persuasion, although pregnancy and five years of marriage have aged her too much to play Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, her favorite book to this day.
Aunt Sophie's smile is radiant.
This hurts.
Aunt Sophie's smile is radiant because she is thirty-
six years old and pregnant. Too colorful, too ironic, too eccentric for this provincial time in American history, she had resigned herself to becoming an old maid when Pendleton burst into her life, proposing to her in the middle of her shift as a cocktail waitress at the Top Hat. She towers over Mother by six inches. Where Mother is wearing a white smock with sensible pockets, Sophie's dress is a fanciful chiffon thing with puffy sleeves, over which she wears one of her Hungarian vests, embroidered with a riot of giant flowers, violets and poppies and roses. She is holding her cigarette like a gangster and smiling like a movie star.
(Don't smoke! I scream inside. That's me in there! How dare you take such a risk?. . . But she doesn't realize, of course. It was a doctor who told her to take up smoking in the first place—to "calm her nerves." She intends to give her baby the best care in the world, feed it from the most hygienic bottles, take it to Europe to broaden its mind. Ecstatic to have made it this far through the pregnancy, she has never questioned her own impulse not to ask her coins about the baby. She barely notices her own unease when she thinks about the future.)
And Pendleton? A sharp-dressed man of forty with immaculate hair, dressed in a tux that makes Anton look dowdy in his cardigan.
Is it only knowing what I know now that makes me see ragged fear in Pendleton's eyes, in his brittle smile? What happened?
Knowing he had cheated in his poker game with Jewel's Sending; knowing the Sending knew it; knowing that his firstborn child was forfeit, how could this have happened? How could he be standing by a pregnant wife at this time of life?
My guess is that she tricked him. Aunt Sophie was never one to let other people's wishes stand in her way.
How easy it would kave been, to say she was barren, or had her tubes tied, or had an IUD in. A man's desire not to wear a condom always makes him gullible on such a score.
Sophie is radiant. Her smile rivets you; you can't look away from it.
* * *
I didn't find the picture by accident; it was Mother's doing. She found me in the parlor a week before the fateful Thanksgiving. I had just rolled up the fort to face another winter.
"I know you're interested in photographs," she said. "I was just putting my albums in order, and it occurred to me you might like to flip through some of these old ones." Her voice was casual, but her eyes were strangely serious; it struck me at the time.
It was no accident I found this picture. Mother wanted me to see it, to think about it.
What impulse moved her, I wonder? Did I look so forlorn that day, puttering around the fort—so lost without Dante? For some time I had been thinking about my place in the family. Inconspicuously, I had thought, but Gwendolyn has sharp eyes. Not much gets by her. It would be very much like her, to let the cat out of the bag indirectly and with minimal fuss, like one of Miss Austen's well-bred heroines.
Maybe she loves me.
These days, even miracles are possible.
* * *
Dante sat in front of the bureau mirror. Blood seeped from his clenched fist and trickled down his forearm.
"Oh, my God," Sarah cried, running to her brother. "Dante! Dante! Are you all right?—Get a bowl of water!" she yelled at Jet.
"What if that wastes everything, so he has to do it again—"
"Get me the damn water and a towel."
Jet stood quivering for a long, wordless moment, then ran from the room. Sarah clasped her brother's face between her hands. "Dante? Dante, look at me."
He blinked and shook his head. "S. . . Sarah?" He frowned, distracted, and looked down at his hand. "Ow, shit!" he yelped, opening his fist. The lure dangled from his hand, its hooks embedded in his palm and fingers. "Ow, shit, get it off! Get it off!"
"Sit still," Sarah snapped, studying the damage through narrowed eyes.
"Ow!"
She paused for a moment, bent down, and swiftly kissed the top of his head. "Idiot." Then she sighed. "Don't expect sympathy from me," she added, teasing out the first hook. "Anyone stupid enough to do this deserves what he gets."
Dante bit his lip to keep from screeching while Sarah worked the barbs free of his hand.
By the time she removed the last hook, slipping it from the flesh at the bottom of his thumb, Jet had returned with a basin of warm water and a tea towel. "Mother caught me," he muttered. "I told her we were up late talking. She said it was bloody late and if we wanted to chat we could bloody well do it in the kitchen."
Sarah grunted, dipping Dante's hand in the warm water. "Get some rubbing alcohol, would you? I think they still keep it in the medicine cabinet. If not, any kind of disinfectant will do. God knows where this lure's been."
"The mouth of a pike," Jet said with a grin that made his butterfly tremble. It faded into uncertainty at Dante's suddenly stricken expression. "Hey, D. What are you staring at?"
"Diamonds!" Dante reached up as if to trace them, etched on jet's cheek. The butterfly's wings were a lace of diamonds. Sarah grabbed his hand and stuck it back in the water. "Jewel's Sending," Dante whispered. "His mark."
* * *
When Jet returned with the rubbing alcohol, Sarah soaked one corner of the tea towel in it. "This is going to sting," she said with grim satisfaction.
She was right.
When the wound had been cleaned and Dante had run out of swear words, she bandaged his injured hand. Then they crept down to the kitchen, where they could talk without disturbing their elders. "All those yips and whimpers!" Jet remarked to a sour-faced Dante. "You sounded like a poodle in a duck press."
"How'd you like your face pressed?" Dante growled.
"Are you going to have to do it again?" Sarah asked.
Dante stared blankly at her. "What?"
"Jet said you'd have to do it all over if we stopped you from mutilating your hand."
Dante regarded Jet unenthusiastically. "How thoughtful."
"It was a legitimate concern."
Dante's shoulders sagged. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. God knows I don't want to go back there."
(The sweat, trickling like ice water down his face as the stranger regarded his cards. The shock as his nerve snapped and he saw himself clearly for the first time in years, and saw he was not young. Saw that he would never be young again.)
(Jewel's eyes as bright and hard as diamonds.)
"I don't want to do that again." Dante wiped cold sweat from his forehead and winced as little needles of pain pricked his hand. He had sat before his mirror and read the squalid diary of another person's life. He felt old and corrupt.
"What were you doing?" Sarah asked.
"The same thing I've been doing for—God, what time is it? Past three!" Dante groaned. "Sleep! God, I need some sleep."
Five more days.
He knew, he knew, god damn it, but how could he put things right when he couldn't keep his eyes from crossing?
Five more days.
Dante sighed. "So I think I know a little more about what happened to Jet. Now we have to find an angel named Jewel."
* * *
But first I must sleep, Dante thought later, lying in bed after Jet and Sarah had gone. I've got to sleep.
He burrowed under his pillow. The bright light in his room kept him awake, but then it kept him from screaming in fear, too. Kind of a trade-off, there.
First thing in the morning, he and Jet would go looking for information on this angel, Jewel. Nothing would be open before nine on a Sunday; he could sleep until seven-thirty, with luck. That would leave him just over four and a half days.
Four and half days.
"Sleep! Sleep, god damn you!" Dante clutched his pillow with both hands and pulled it around his ears. He couldn't breathe.
With a groan he sat up in bed and glared balefully at the bureau mirror. Nothing there but old marble facing, a few spatters of blood, the stub of a fat white emergency candle, and the reflection of a tousled balding puffy-eyed nervous wreck who could use a shave.
Dante groaned again and shambled over to the light swi
tch like a zombie with a hangover. "Screw it," he mumbled, slapping it off. What could he imagine that would be worse than what he'd already seen tonight?
* * *
Lots.
* * *
He tried a small thought experiment and imagined a fat-bodied spider scuttling out of his own dead throat.
Big deal.
"Hoorah!" he muttered. He'd finally blown his terror fuse. He tumbled back into bed.
As for tracking down Jewel's friend, the man she had jokingly called Albert: that would be harder. Even if he could find Jewel, there was no guarantee she would have kept in touch with Albert.
Maybe they could pick up the scent at the hotel somehow. There couldn't be that many hotels that fancy in town; Dante was pretty sure he'd recognize the suite if he saw it, or one like it.
It's been at least thirty years, he reminded himself. All very well to talk about time as stored on slides one second thick, interchangeable, et cetera, but the hotel might have been torn down, or altered beyond recognition. The same might be true of Albert, for that matter.
Dante winced, squeezing his eyelids closed. Sleep! Sleep, you idiot! God, I feel like yesterday's meat loaf. Probably taste like yesterday's meat loaf, for that matter. Ugh. Got to get off this anatomy kick. There is more to life than the meaty organism.
Not much more. Not your life.
("Why not?" Jet had said. "You're almost done with it.")
Dante groaned and turned over again. All right. All. Right. And what do we do when we need to go to sleep? What do we do when we need to relax? he asked himself.
He gripped his penis with grim determination.
It flopped limply in his hand. Apparently there was something about being terminally ill and chronically terrified that took it out of the old libido.
Too bad, Dante thought sternly, rubbing away. The stupid body can make me tired and hungry, so it can rise to the damn occasion now.
There, he thought morosely, feeling the first stiffening tremor in his hand.
Now: Who? Gina from the next lab? Nah—too many times recently. Stephanie? No—too soon since she dumped me for that bookkeeper with the beard. Unnamed fourteen-year-old nymphomaniac with a ponytail and an urge to learn?