"I fell during the quake."
"We need to get outside and find Maxine."
"Really?"
"She's lost out there. And Sawyer's dead. I'm afraid if somebody doesn't get to her—"
"I heard the shouts," Jerry said vaguely, looking and sounding like a man who'd lost all interest in the drama that was being played out around him.
"Who else is here?" Todd asked him.
"Eppstadt's downstairs with some kid he brought from the party—"
"Yes, I saw him. Is he one of Maxine's new superstars?"
"No. He's just a waiter," Jerry said.
Todd looked down the rest of the flight. There was a body at the bottom of the stairs, and somebody else, a woman, bent over, touching the face of the dead man. With great gentility, she closed the dead man's eyes. Then she looked up the stairwell.
"Hello, Todd," she said.
"Hello, Tammy."
"I thought you were drowned."
"Sorry to disappointment you." He started down the stairs toward her. She turned her face from him, returning her gaze to the body.
"Did you see Eppstadt?" he asked her as he came down the flight.
"You mean that sonofabitch from the studio?"
"Yes. That sonofabitch."
"Yes, I saw him." She glanced up at Todd. There were tears in her eyes, but she didn't want to shed them in front of him. Not after what had happened on the beach. He'd been so horribly careless of her feelings. She wasn't going to show any vulnerability now, if she could help it.
"Where did he go?" Todd asked her, as if there were much choice in the matter.
She nodded down the passageway toward the door to the Devil's Country.
"He went in there, I think. I didn't see it. Jerry told me."
"How long ago?"
"I don't know," she said. "And frankly, I don't really care right now." Todd put his hand on Tammy's shoulder. "I'm sorry. This is a bad time. I never was very good expressing my feelings."
"Is that supposed to mean you're sorry?" she said.
"Yeah," he replied, the word hardly shaped; more like a grunt than an apology. She made the tiniest shrug of her shoulder, to get him to take his hand off her, which he did. There was so much she wanted to say to him, but this was neither the time nor the place to say it.
He got the message. She didn't have to look back to see that he'd gone; she heard his footsteps as he headed off down the passageway. Only after ten or fifteen seconds did she look up, and by that time he was stepping through the door.
Suddenly, the tears she'd held back broke: a chaotic cluster of feelings battling to surface all at once: gratitude that Todd was alive, sorrow that Zeffer was dead, anger that Todd had no better way to show his feelings than to grunt at her that way. Didn't he know how much he'd hurt her?
"Here."
The voice at her shoulder was that of Jerry Brahms. He was offering her a cleanly pressed handkerchief: a rather old-fashioned gesture but very much appreciated at that particular moment. "Which one are you crying over?"
She wiped her tears from her eyes.
"Because if it's Todd," he went on, "I wouldn't bother. He'll survive this and go on and forget all of us. That's the kind of man he is."
"You think so?"
"I'm sure of it."
She wiped her nose. Sniffed.
"What was he talking to you about?" Jerry asked.
"He wanted to know about Eppstadt."
"Not Todd. Zeffer."
"Oh. He ... he had something he wanted me to do for him."
She wasn't sure she wanted to share Zeffer's proposal with Jerry. This was a world filled with people who had extremely complicated allegiances. Suppose Jerry, out of some misplaced loyalty to Katya, tried to stop her? It was perfectly possible that he might try. But then how the hell did she get rid of him, so that she could go upstairs and do what she had to do?
One obvious way presented itself, although it was playing with fire. If she went to the door of the Devil's Country, Jerry would probably follow her. The place had a way of holding your attention, she knew. And if it held his for long enough, then she could slip away upstairs into the kitchen. Find a knife. Go to the threshold, and get to work.
It wasn't her favorite plan (the further she stayed away from that door the happier she was) but she had no alternative at that moment. And she needed to act quickly.
Without saying anything she got up and walked off down the passageway toward the door. The wind came out to meet her, like an eager host, ready to slip its arms through hers and invite her in. She didn't need to look over her shoulder to know that Jerry was coming after her. He was talking to her, just a step behind.
"I don't think you should go any further," he said.
"Why not? I just want to see what's in here. Everybody talks about it. I think I'm the only one who hasn't actually seen it properly for myself."
As she spoke she realized that there was more truth to this than she was strictly admitting. Of course she wanted to see. Her little plot to lure Jerry's attention away was also a neat opportunity to excuse her own curiosity. Talk about muddled allegiances. She had some of her own. One more glimpse into that other world was on her own subconscious agenda, for some reason.
"It's not good to look in there for too long," Jerry said.
"I know that," she replied, a little testily. "I've been in there. But another peek can't hurt, can it? I mean, can it?"
She'd reached the door, and without further debate with Brahms, pushed it open and stared at the landscape before her with eyes that had recently been washed with tears. Everything was in perfect focus; and it was beautiful. She didn't hesitate to debate the matter with her conscience, Brahms or God in Heaven. She just stepped out of the passageway and followed where Todd had gone just a couple of minutes before.
SEVEN
It wasn't difficult for Todd to find Eppstadt. Unlike his first visit to this little corner of Hell, when his eyes had taken some time to become used to the elaborate fiction that the tiles were creating for him, this time everything was warmed up and ready to go. He looked through the door and there it was, in all its glory, from the spectacle of the eclipse overhead to a single serrated blade of grass bent beneath the toe of his shoe, along which a little black beetle was making its way.
And standing in the midst of all this, looking as appropriate as a hard-on in the Vatican, was Eppstadt. He'd obviously had some problems while he was here. The man who'd been several times cited as the "best-dressed man in Los Angeles" was looking in need of a tailor. His shirt was torn and severely stained with what looked like blood, his face was covered in sweat, and his hair—which he obsessively combed over the bald patch (where the hair plugs hadn't taken)—had fallen forward, exposing an area of shiny pink scalp, and giving him a ridiculous fringe.
"You!" he said, pointing directly at Todd. "You fucking lunatic! You did this deliberately! And now people are dead, Pickett. Real people. Dead because of your stupid games."
"Hey, hey, slow down. Who's dead?"
"Oh, as if you give a damn! You trick us all into following you into this. . . this. . . obscenity . . ."
Todd looked around as Eppstadt ranted. Obscenity? He saw no obscenity. Given the shortness of his acquaintance with this place he had certainly felt a lot of different things about it. He'd been enchanted here, he'd been so terrified that he'd thought his heart would burst, he'd been absurdly aroused and as close to death as he ever wanted to get. But obscene? No. The Devil's Country was simply the ultimate E-Ticket Ride.
"If you don't like it," he said to Eppstadt, "why the hell did you come in here?"
"To help Joe. And now he's dead."
"What happened to him?"
Eppstadt glanced over his shoulder, dropping his voice to a whisper. "There's a child around here. Only it's not a child. He's a goat."