The Fury and the Terror (18 page)

Haman shut the door. "I wouldn't have thought so. But she's gone. You say you don't know where she is. In Hollywood as we speak, hiring Mike Ovitz to map out her movie career?"

"That is so far from who Eden Waring really is."

Haman picked up a framed portrait of Eden from atop the TV in the small living room.

"The voice of experience. A man who knows his woman. Fuck her yet, or am I being naive?"

"Get out of my apartment, Haman."

"Coffee's not hot yet. Besides, we're going to be a twosome. Where is that written in the stars, you ask? Granted, this is not the method Impact Sector traditionally employs."

"No, it isn't."

"But you know Eden Waring and I don't. You've been here awhile. What, two years? More? Anyway, you've had the lay of the kid and you've got the lay of the land, and I don't have a couple of days to futz around getting my bearings. Clear now, Big Stuff?"

"Perfectly."

"If Eden doesn't phone in by the time I've finished my coffee, what do you say we drive up to Greenwood Lake and see if we can find the Hassler place. Get acquainted with the folks. It'll be either you or them the girl contacts first. Make it simple. We sit on the parents, and wait. I might have time to work on my new act. Did I tell you what I do in Vegas? My regular job; this is just moonlighting."

"What do you do in Vegas?" Geoff asked, but not as if he cared much.

"I'm a female impersonator. Tina Turner, shit,
my
Tina is a Day-Glo mindfuck. I have one of those faces, not much to look at now, my late psycho stepdad treated me to a lye bath when I was twelve. I just sit down at my makeup table and start adding on. Mortician's wax, prosthetics, contact lenses, wigs. I've got a twenty-eight-inch waist. My Liz Taylor has some mileage left. Liz plays well with the older crowd we get. That silver wig set me back a couple k. You know, and the costume jewelry: I buy only the best fake stuff, can't skimp when you're re-creating a legend. I come out
dripping
diamonds. Liz doing Shakespeare. 'O! That this too too solid flesh would melt.' Fuckin' wonderful. Brings down the house. You're probably curious who the new girl is. I'm the first to do her, over here, but I understand Michel has put her into
his
club Act, that little
boite
in Pigalle he's been operating since Freckles was a pup."

Geoff was still too astonished at hearing Elizabeth Taylor's voice come out of Haman to do more than nod.

"Rona
Har
vester." For the first time since Geoff had laid eyes on him, he saw Haman's teeth, bared in a big wide showbiz smile. The teeth were false, of course. "Just hope we have time for my Rona. Promise, you'll split a gut laughing."

WESTBOUND, NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO • MAY 28 • 7:44 P.M. MDT

B
ertie Nkambe came down the right-side aisle of United's 747, drawing stares from those first-class passengers savvy enough about the fashion world to recognize a
Paris Vogue
cover girl. She dropped into the seat beside Tom Sherard. He was staring out the window. Not much to see. They were at thirty-four thousand feet, the indigo sky filled with stars like sparks from a brushfire, dark cloud cover over Wyoming's Wind River Range.

"Found him. Twenty-six B in Economy."

"Found who?" Sherard asked, slow to pull out of the depths of the poor mood he. was in.

"The telepath who has been nudging around at us. Looking to get in. I brushed him away like
a
tsetse.
A professor type. Those awful squarish eyeglass frames, like Woody Allen's. And he's gone much too long without a haircut. He's wearing a checked Gap shirt and a brown corduroy jacket. Too big for him, but he has shoulders like a goat. He's eating peanuts and pretending to read Noam Chomsky while he peeps the unsuspecting."

Sherard was paying attention now.

"Maybe he's not in the Game."

"It
could
be
a coincidence that he's on the plane with us. But, Tom. Why don't I deep-fry a batch of his neurons, then we don't have to be concerned about him."

"That's rather drastic."

"Why take chances with any telepath? Too many of them are the wrong sort."

"Your grandfather taught me many valuable things when I was learning to shoot. One of them was, a single blade of grass very close to the muzzle can deflect a bullet."

Berrie leaned back in the leather seat and stretched, arms over her head. "Point taken."

"Maybe you should have gone on to London without me. You wouldn't be so bored there."

Berrie pouted. "What makes you think I'm bored? I don't
want
to be without you. And you need me. Look at how helpful I've already been. We wouldn't be staying at the Lambourne if I hadn't weighed in with my vast celebrity." She said it with an amused wink. "They're always booked weeks in advance, you know."

"I don't have anything against the Mark Hopkins."

Berrie laid her cropped head on his shoulder. "We can have a good time in San Francisco, even though we're only going to be there the night. That is, should you permit yourself to have fun." When he didn't respond she rolled her eyes up to him.

"Reckon you're right."

"Of course I am. We don't actually have to
go
anywhere. It's a snug little suite that I've always enjoyed, and with a phone call the best Chinese food in the western world will be delivered to our door."

"Snug little suite? How many bedrooms?"

"One large bedroom. One heavenly extra-long bed, because I am an extra-long person."

"Bertie—Alberta—you're still a teenager, and this whole arrangement you've come up with is totally out of the—"

"I was twenty in March. You
did
pick out those earrings yourself?"

"For your birthday, yes. I happened to find myself near Cartier's, and I remembered
—Birthday,
let me remind you. We are not engaged. And we are not going to sleep together."

"Tom," she said, sorrow and sympathy in her lush contralto voice, "have you had a woman since Gillian died?"

"Simply none of your—yes, dozens."

"You know I don't believe that," Bertie said with a confident smile. "What you
don't
know but will discover is that I've saved myself for you. I mean, I didn't know
why,
at the time. Why I could have only a passing interest—a crush here and there—on some of the world's most attractive men. You were happily married. I loved Gillian, as much as I love you. Nonetheless something told me—oh, God. Forgive me for that. I'm very sorry."

He nodded tensely, not looking at her.

"I don't have that particular gift, Tom," she said after a few moments.

"Yes, you do."

"But I never pried into your life! Or Gillian's. I choose not to know the fate of those who are very close and dear to me."

"Let's not go on with this."

"Things do pop into my head, whether I'm willing or unwilling to have them there. You have feelings for me, why deny it? Even though you want to go on pretending that to marry me would be a failure of fealty to my father. From the day I came to live with you and Gillian you've had this sense of duty. As if you'd sworn an oath to take care of Bertie Nkambe in the evil old world. Touching then, misguided now. Let me tell you. I have also done a very good job of looking after myself in a tough, what does Calvin call it, tough
racket
since I was all of sixteen. You think my father would not approve of our love? Well, you're wrong, Tom."

"Joseph would have me beheaded if I—no, he'd bloody well do it himself."

"Knowing that I've given myself to a good man, a man whose raising was left to him when your father died, would be a thing of joy and a blessing to Joseph. There. I don't think I have any more to say. Except this."

She lifted her elegant brown head and put her lips close to his ear, as close as a kiss. She had a full mouth, of course, but with the contours and demure quality of the Orient that shaded the effect of fortress cheekbones.

Long fingers were poised on his other cheek. Rings glinted at the corner of his eye.

"Sometimes, Tom, you simply have to say—what the fuck. It's
my
heart, and I'm going where it tells me to go."

MOBY BAY •MAY 28 • 8:55 P.M. PDT

E
den sidestepped a jellied mass of bronze-green kelp, some flotsam with a L white opaque bottle at its center, like a vapid eye. She waited while runoff from the last wave to smash against the pebbly shore drained seaward, then waded across a shallow wash, the swirl of water alluringly phosphorescent around her ankles.

She saw someone walking toward her down the beach, where the fog had thinned and moonlight shone on piled driftwood, each blunt stub sheathed in radiance.

They stopped walking when they were ten feet apart. The other girl wore a peacoat with the collar turned up. Blond hair feathered out from beneath a knitted watch cap.

"Hi."

"Hi. You must be—"

"Chauncey. You're wondering what kind of name that is for a girl."

"No, I like it. Thanks for the clothes, Chauncey."

"Hey, no problem." Chauncey sat on a canted length of driftwood and cocked her head, inviting Eden to join her. Chauncey had a very small, delicately boned, heart-shaped face, perfectly formed small features. Her dark round eyes seemed startlingly large in that petite face.

"So you're the new Avatar. Awesome."

Eden shrugged. Her hands were cold. She slipped them beneath the tight cuffs of the borrowed sweater and gazed out to sea. The fog had thinned to furls and wisps. The strong waves rolled in to shore laden with silver like returning champions.

"'I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be,'" she said moodily.

"That's from
Prufrock
, right? I like Eliot, although I don't always know where he's coming from. I'm sixth-generation Wicca, by the way. Nearly everyone in Moby Bay has the Craft, or else they're prescient. Guess I'm just used to being what I am. Of course I'm small 'taters next to you."

Between the crashing of the waves Eden thought she could hear Wardella Tinch playing her accordion.

"I don't know much about witchcraft. It's all fairy tales to me. There's usually a big book of lore, isn't there? Handwritten on crinkly parchment. Spells and incantations."

Chauncey shrugged. "I've never seen one. If I need a spell I get it off the Internet."

Eden smiled. She had the good feeling that she'd met someone she was going to like very much.

"What kind of music are you into?" Chauncey asked.

"Classical, mostly. Guitar. I play a little. But I want to study with someone good, if I ever find the time."

"Did Wardella tell you? I'm with a band.
Pussy Whip
. Skelly, she's our bassist, came up with the name one night when she and her boyfriend were fooling around in bed with a squirt can of that dessert goo, you probably get the association. Of course there are other, um, connotations. We're one guy, drums, and four girls; I guess is what distinguishes us. That, plus we're good."

"Hard-core?"

"Thrash metal/punk, with a social agenda. Our last album on Scrooge Records,
Feeding the Sharks
, sold thirty-five thousand CDs. Enough so the label springs for our tours. We use the bus
Pantera
had before they went arena. We've got a new manager. Raoul Kapooshian, he made
Supermarket Bloodbath
what they are today. There's a tour video. We were hoping to get some of it on MTV, but they don't play any metal at all since
Headbanger's Ball
was canceled. I'm lead singer and do most of the writing."

"What are your songs like?"

"Oh, in-your-face stuff about the things in this world that piss me, that ought to piss everybody off. It helps me cope. As long as there's one starving baby somewhere, the human race is a failure."

"Yeah."

"If you feel up to it, I'd like to show you our video. Maybe you could spend the night? Wardella wouldn't mind. You weren't planning to go somewhere else, were you?"

"No, I don't have any plans. Can't even think straight yet."

"We'll just hang out then. Chill awhile, if you're not cold enough already."

"Sounds good. Chauncey—you mentioned the Internet. Could I use your computer to E-mail my folks?"

"Sure. Let's go."

They walked together along the rocky beach, through webs of fog that sparkled with millions of tiny drops of moisture. When Chauncey talked she used her hands for emphasis, leaving loops and swirls of bluish light, like nocturnal skywriting, that faded slowly behind them. Her face glowed from the same light. Eden was fascinated. Chauncey grinned, teeth with the eerie brilliance of small opals.