Edward sat on the toilet. The quartz lamp stood unplugged next to the linen cabinet.
“You’re sure that’s what you want,” he said, his shoulders slumping.
“Yeah. I’m sure,” Vergil said. “Reunion. Take back the prodigal son, not so prodigal? You know, I never understood what that prodigal bit meant. Does it mean ‘prodigy’? I’m certainly that. I’m going back in style. Everything’s style from here on.”
The pinkish color in the water didn’t look like soap. “Is that bubble bath?” Edward asked. Another thought came to him suddenly and left him weak.
“No,” Vergil said. “It’s coming from my skin. They’re not telling me everything, but I think they’re sending out scouts. Hey! Astronauts! Yeah.” He looked at Edward with an expression that didn’t quite cross over into concern; more like curiosity as to how he’d take it.
Edward’s stomach muscles tightened as if waiting for a second punch. He had never seriously considered the possibility until now—not consciously—perhaps because he had been concentrating on accepting, and focusing on more immediate problems. “Is this the first time?”
“Yeah,” Vergil said. He laughed. “I have half a mind to let the little buggers down the drain. Let them find out what the world’s really about.”
“They’d go everywhere,” Edward said.
“Sure enough.”
Edward nodded. Sure enough. “You never introduced me to Candice,” he said. Vergil shook his head.
“Hey, that’s right.” Nothing more.
“How… how are you feeling?”
“I’m feeling pretty good right now. Must be billions of them.” More splashing with his hands. “What do you think? Should I let the little buggers out?”
“I need something to drink,” Edward said.
“Candice has some whiskey in the kitchen cabinet.”
Edward knelt beside the tub. Vergil regarded him curiously. “What are we going to do?” Edward asked.
Vergil’s expression changed with shocking abruptness from alert interest to a virtual mask of sorrow. “Jesus, Edward, my mother—you know, they’re coming to take me back, but she said… I should call her. Talk to her.” Tears fell across the ridges which pulled his cheeks out of shape. “She told me to come back to her. When… when it was time. Is it time, Edward?”
“Yes,” Edward said, feeling suspended somewhere in a spark-filled cloud. “I think it must be.” His fingers closed about the quartz lamp cord and he moved along its length to the plug.
Vergil had hot-wired door-knobs, turned his piss blue, played a thousand dumb practical jokes, and never grown up, never grown mature enough to understand how brilliant he was and how much he could affect the world.
Vergil reached for the bathtub drain lever. “You know, Edward, I—”
He never finished. Edward had inserted the plug into the wall socket. Now he picked up the lamp and upended it into the tub. He jumped away from the flash, the steam and the sparks. The bathroom light went out. Vergil screamed and thrashed and jerked and then everything was still, except for the low, steady sizzle and the smoke wafting from his hair. Light from the small ventilation window cut a shaft through the foul-smelling haze.
Edward lifted the toilet lid and vomited. Then he clenched his nose and stumbled into the living room. His legs went out from under him and he collapsed on the couch.
But there was no time. He stood up, swaying and nauseated again, and entered the kitchen. He found Candice’s bottle of Jack Daniel’s and returned to the bathroom. He unscrewed the cap and poured the contents of the bottle into the tub water, trying not to look at Vergil directly. But that wasn’t enough. He would need bleach and ammonia and then he would have to leave.
He was about to call out and ask Vergil where the bleach and ammonia were, but he caught himself. Vergil was dead. Edward’s stomach began to surge again and he leaned against the wall in the hallway, cheek pressed against the paint and plaster. When had things become less real?
When Vergil had entered the Mount Freedom Medical Center. This was another of Vergil’s jokes. Ha. Turn your whole life deep midnight blue, Edward; never forget a friend.
He looked into the linen closet but saw only towels and sheets. In the bedroom, he opened Vergil’s clothes closet and found only clothes. The bedroom had a master bathroom attached and he could see a small closet in there from where he stood by the corner of the unmade bed. Edward entered the master bath. At one end, opposite the closet, was a shower stall. A trickle of water came out from under the door. He tried the light switch but this whole section of the apartment was powerless; the only light came from the bedroom window. In the closet he found both bleach and a big half-gallon jug of ammonia.
He carried them down the hall and poured them one by one into the tub, avoiding Vergil’s sightless pale eyes. Fumes hissed up and he closed the door behind him, coughing.
Someone softly called Vergil’s name. Edward carried the empty bottles into the master bathroom, where the voice was louder. He stood in the doorway, one plastic jug brushing the frame, and cocked an ear, frowning.
“Hey, Vergil, that you?” the voice asked dryly. It came from the shower stall. Edward took a step forward, then paused. Enough, he thought. Reality had been twisted enough and he didn’t really want to go any farther. He took another step, then another, and reached for the door of the shower stall.
The voice sounded like a woman, husky, strange, though not in distress.
He grasped the handle and tugged. With a hollow click, the door swung open. Eyes adjusting to the darkness, he peered into the shower.
“Jesus, Vergil, you’ve been neglecting me. We’ve got to get out of this hotel. It’s dark and small and I don’t like it.”
He recognized the voice from the phone, though he could not possibly have recognized her by appearance, even had he seen a photograph.
“Candice?” he asked.
“Vergil? Let’s go.”
He fled.
15
The phone was ringing as Edward came home. He didn’t answer. It could have been the hospital. It could have been Bernard—or the police. He envisioned having to explain everything to the police. Genetron would stonewall; Bernard would be unavailable.
Edward was exhausted, all his muscles knotted with tension and whatever name one could give to the feelings one has after—
Committing genocide?
That certainly didn’t seem real. He could not believe he had just murdered a trillion intelligent beings. “Noocytes.”
Snuffed a galaxy. That was laughable. But he didn’t laugh. He could still see Candice, in the shower. Work had proceeded on her much more rapidly. Her legs were gone; her torso had been reduced to an impressionistic spareness. She had lifted her face to him, covered with ridges as if made from a stack of cards.
He had left the building in time to see a white van speed around the curve and park in front, with Bernard’s limousine not far behind. He had sat in his car and watched men in white isolation suits climb out of the van, which, he noted, was unmarked.
Then he had started his car, put it in gear, and driven away. Simple as that. Return to Irvine. Ignore the whole mess as long as he could, or he would very soon be as crazy as Candice.
Candice, who was being transformed over an open shower drain. Let the little buggers out, Vergil had said. Show them what the world’s about.
It was not at all hard to believe that he had just killed one human being, a friend. The smoke, the melted lamp cover, the drooping electrical outlet and smoking cord.
Vergil.
He had dunked the lamp into the tub with Vergil.
Had he been thorough enough to kill all of them in the tub? Perhaps Bernard and his group would finish what he had started.