Stones Unturned (28 page)

Clay nodded, and said nothing more.

The Lexus rolled on in silence.

Gabriella's skin is the olive hue common to her native Italy, dark compared to some, but not nearly dark enough to avoid the stares of white people as she rides the IRT train out to Flushing Meadows with Leonard. One of the things Dr. Graves admires most about her is that she does not merely ignore the stares and whispers of bigots who are disgusted or angered by the sight of a white woman with a black man. No, Gabriella just does not care.

God, how he loves her.

All of his life has been devoted to science, the pursuit of knowledge, and the improvement of the human condition. In all that time he had given little thought to love. It is an unquantifiable variable and so, to him, it is as much a bit of superstition and fancy as ghosts and magic. When it struck him, he was far from ready for it, and for the first time he has been forced to accept the existence of love.

The train rattles and sways. Gabriella and Dr. Graves hold on to the same metal pole on the standing-room-only train, but their hands do not touch. He gazes at her wide brown eyes and the gentle curve of her neck, and he knows what it must be to believe in sorcery. Surely, this must be it.

It is warm, today, a late spring preview of what the summer of 1940 will hold for New Yorkers. Dr. Graves ought to have taken a car out to Queens, but Gabriella insisted on riding the train. All that she has heard and read about the Fair has given her the impression that the experience is meant to be a universal one, that throngs of people are almost required to fully understand the impact of the exposition.

And so they ride the train and suffer the dark looks of those who disapprove of a white woman escorted by a black man, no matter that he is better dressed than perhaps anyone else on the IRT that day. It isn't the clothes that make the man, he has found. For far too many people, it is the skin. So they smile at one another, and they talk when the rumble of the train is not too loud, but their hands do not touch, and there are words absent from their conversation. To be too obvious with their love would be to invite calamity.

This has been the case ever since Gabriella came to live in America to be with Dr. Graves. Along with the other adventurers and crime fighters who have cropped up in recent years, such as the Whisper and the daredevil pilot known as Joe Falcon, he has achieved a certain notoriety. This celebrity has meant that for every righteous bigot ready to punish him for his audacity, there are two or three who will pull the fool aside and mutter in his ear that the man he is about to taunt or chastise or attack is Dr. Graves. Some are drawn away from conflict reluctantly, and others are sheepish and apologetic.

As if their behavior would somehow have been excusable had he been some other man.

Taking the train was, perhaps, not the best idea.

But it was Gabriella's wish, and so he says nothing.

"We're almost there," she says.

Dr. Graves — Leonard — smiles. The train pulls into World's Fair Station and shudders to a stop. All in all, the ride is worth the nickel apiece they had paid. The passengers are disgorged upon the platform, and Leonard and Gabriella join the hordes walking along the broad boardwalk. The sun shone brightly, and as one they looked up and saw the two towering symbols of the World's Fair straight ahead. The triangular spire of the Trylon rises perhaps one hundred and fifty feet into the air, and beside it rests the massive globe of the Perisphere. The structures gleaming white in the sun, Leonard is astonished to find that the photographs he has seen in the papers did not do the architectural centerpieces of the Fair any justice at all. These symbols, so proudly male and female, are breathtaking to behold.

"It's beautiful," Gabriella says, and she reaches out to take his hand.

Leonard flinches and almost pulls away, concerned about the crowd around them. But her smile chides him, and he twists his fingers more tightly in hers. If there is anywhere in America where they might be together without fear of reprisal, shouldn't this be the place, this monument to Progress, this World of Tomorrow?

Once within the fairgrounds themselves, they find themselves carried away with the beauty and marvel of the place. Leonard cannot believe he has waited this long to visit the World's Fair, for it is everything he hoped it would be. In his heart he has always believed in the forward momentum of the human race, in Progress, and the whole atmosphere of the Fair reeks with faith in that very philosophy. Strolling through the Court of Peace and past the Lagoon of Nations, examining displays in the Medicine and Public Health Building and the complexes erected by Ford and Firestone and AT&T, and enjoying the individual identities of the presentations made in the Court of States, it is impossible not to absorb the hope and confidence of the whole proceeding.

After long hours of exploring — just the beginning of their adventure at the Fair — they stand in front of the Italian Pavilion and stare up at the white marble steps and the waterfall that cascades down them into a pool at the base. A statue of the goddess Roma caps the steps. A warm breeze blows up, and spray from the waterfall dampens their faces.

Gabriella laughs and turns to him, eyes sparkling. This place is a touchstone for her, a gift that he hopes will make her feel she is not so far from home after all.

"It's amazing here."

"What is?" he asks.

"All of it. But I meant, well, the feeling. You must sense it, too. Hitler and the Soviets and their war, it all seems so far away, standing here. This is the world to come, once their foolishness is done with."

Leonard nods. He does sense it. Gabriella has put words to what he's been feeling since their arrival. Yet Hitler's lust for power is not going to simply go away. Of that he is certain. He will not stop in Poland.

And though on this perfect day the war in Europe seems so far away, it has already marred the World's Fair. The Soviet Pavilion is gone; dismantled and taken away. The pavilions representing Poland and several Baltic States are closed, shuttered up tight.

Yet he sees the faith in the future in her eyes, and he agrees.

"It is spectacular," he says. "I only wish I had brought you here sooner."

Gabriella reaches up and traces the contours of his face with the tips of her fingers. "We have forever, love. There's no need to rush."

And so they do not rush. It is the middle of the afternoon before they ride the curving, moving stairway called the Helicline, that carries them inside the Perisphere. The sight of so many people all moving together, smiling and full of life, erases the last lingering shadow of Leonard's earlier thoughts. He is with Gabriella in the World of Tomorrow. Nothing else matters.

As they have strolled through the Fair, several times they have caught a glimpse of the Parachute Jump, a prominent feature in many newspaper articles about the amusements offered to visitors. Now, hand in hand, they find their way almost instinctively to the area of the Fair that has come to be known as the Great White Way. The change in atmosphere is palpable. The laughter here is more boisterous and the music more raucous. There is no theme to the Amusement Zone, no grand philosophy or intent. It exists solely for pleasure. Once upon a time, Leonard would have looked askance at such endeavors, considering them pointless. Love has changed his mind.

The Parachute Jump awaits them as they meander through the Amusement Zone. A banjo player winks at Leonard and, feeling oddly lighthearted, Leonard winks back. Gabriella sees this and giggles, coyly covering her mouth to hide her laughter. Acrobats tumble past them, and they stop to watch the show.

The Great White Way, an afterthought when they were making their plans for the Fair, absorbs them completely. At the Indian village, Gabriella watches, mesmerized by the beat of drums, as Seminoles dance. When an Indian smoking a cigarette tosses his Lucky Strike aside to wrestle an alligator, Leonard can only shake his head in wonder at the strangeness of it all.

Yet the strangeness is only beginning. They visit the Monkey Island at Jungleland Village, Admiral Byrd's Penguin Island, the replica Elizabethan township, and Tiny Town, a village inhabited by midgets and built to scale. They cross Empire Bridge to visit the Aquacade, where they watch the beautiful Eleanor Holm perform elegant water ballet, and witness high dives that make even the famous Dr. Graves catch his breath.

And so much more.

Exhausted, they stroll back along the Great White Way long after night has fallen. Fireworks explode overhead, painting the sky with a rainbow of falling stars. Their fingers are still entwined, having rarely parted, and they walk ever more closely together, something they would not dare to do elsewhere. But in the World of Tomorrow, all things are possible.

The Trylon and Perisphere are bathed in multicolored spotlights, surreal in their Utopian perfection. Yet Leonard is happy amid the dancers and singers and clowns — and the scents of exotic foreign foods — that fill the Amusement Zone. Carefree, in a way he has never been before.

At last, as they leave the Great White Way, they come upon the Parachute Jump again. The line is short enough to be inviting. The entire structure of the two-hundred-and-fifty-foot attraction is festooned with decorations from the Life Savers Company, promoting their candy. The sponsorship is amusingly apropos.

When their turn arrives, Leonard pays eighty cents so that the two of them can share one of the eleven wooden benches that hung below brightly colored cloth parachutes. At the first jerk of the cables suspending them, Gabriella turns to look at him. Her smile is wide and giddy with fear and excitement, but she does not speak. The look is enough to express all that she is feeling.

Leonard holds her hand and they ascend.

The wind blows. They rise higher and higher and laugh together in delight at the view of the Fair at night that spreads out below them.

"Gabriella," Leonard says, not looking at her. Not yet.

"Yes?"

He turns and gazes at her. "I never want to spend a day without you. Marry me, Gabriella, so that that day will never come."

Her smile is shy and electrically intimate, all at the same time.

The parachute reaches the top of the tower. There is a clank above them.

"Will you?" Leonard asks, searching her eyes.

"You know I will."

With a loud clack, the mechanism releases. They plummet downward, ten feet, twenty feet, and Gabriella screams with wild, terrified laughter.

The parachute opens, halting them in midair, and then they float gently downward.

Leonard slips one hand behind her head, feeling the silk of her hair between his fingers, and he draws her to him. He kisses her, long and slow. And if the other parachutists cast unpleasant looks at them as they disembark from the ride, he chooses not to notice.

His heart is full of the unquantifiable variable, that magic that is love.

The future awaits.

Danny knew he ought to be terrified, but somehow he was not.

He kept pace with the demon as it moved through the vast labyrinth of subway tunnels beneath the streets of Boston. They had been traveling for what seemed like hours, and he wanted to ask it, ask his father, where they were going. But they were moving much too quickly. In amazement, he watched the demon move, scrabbling along the ground, clinging to the sides of the tunnel walls so as not to come in contact with the electrified third rail. What amazed Danny even more amazing was that he was able to do it as well.

He had only been with his sire for a matter of a few hours and already he was learning more about himself and his capabilities than he had during his entire stay with Conan Doyle.

Danny was even getting used to the rats.

Upon entering the first tunnel through the Symphony Hall station, he had heard them squeaking and thought nothing of it. But it had grown louder and louder, and he'd realized that his father's presence seemed to have an odd effect on the rodents. Even now, as the two demons crawled along the side of a Red Line tunnel, the rats were scrambling in pursuit, a moving blanket of gray and black bodies on the floor of the tunnel.

They were coming up to another station, and Danny wondered if they would pass this one by as well. Baalphegor had said they were going somewhere away from prying eyes so they could have privacy. Danny was growing more curious as to where exactly that place was.

Up ahead, his father sprang from one side of the tunnel to the other, the station closer now. Clinging to the wall, he turned to peer down at the growing swarm of rats below him. The rats raced by, streaming into the T station. Late night commuters shrieked and jumped and ran around the platform and bolted for the stairs. The rats skittered around their feet, nipping at their ankles.

Danny grinned.

When the station was in utter chaos, Baalphegor climbed up the wall and onto the ceiling of the subway tunnel, then crawled into Andrews Station above the heads of the panicked people. His father beckoned to him, and Danny followed, careful not to lose his grip as he crawled above the mayhem.

His father waited for him, nearly invisible in a deep pool of shadow upon the ceiling. Danny joined him, the screams of the Red Line passengers bringing a smile to his lips.

"Where are we going now?" he asked, stifling a giggle.

Baalphegor's deep yellow eyes studied his expression, and he immediately became self-conscious.

"What's wrong?" Danny asked, glancing away from the intensity of his sire's gaze.