They arrived eventually at Vale’s town house. The street was quiet, all windows primly dark. Crane paid the cabbie, removed two immense suitcases from the vehicle, lugged them through Vale’s front door, and dropped them insolently next to the umbrella stand.
“Staying a while?”
“Afraid so, old chap.”
Old chap? Preserve me, Vale thought. “Do we have that much to talk about?”
“Lots. But it can wait until morning. Suppose you get a good night’s sleep, Elias. You’re really in no condition. We can discuss this when we’re both more refreshed. Don’t worry about me! I’ll curl up on the sofa. No formalities between us.”
And damned if he didn’t stretch out on the velvet settee, still smiling.
“Look here. I’m too tired to throw you out. If you’re still here in the morning—”
“We’ll talk about it then. Fine idea.”
Vale threw up his hands and left the room.
Morning arrived, for Elias Vale, just shy of noon.
Crane was at the breakfast table. He had showered and shaved. His hair was combed. His shirt was crisp. He poured himself a cup of coffee.
Vale was faintly aware of the stale sweat cooking out of his own clogged pores. “How long do you imagine you’re staying?”
“Don’t know.”
“A week? A month?”
Shrug.
“Maybe you’re not aware of this, Mr. Crane, but I live alone. Because I like it that way. I don’t want a houseguest, even under these, uh, circumstances. And frankly, nobody asked me.”
“Not their style, is it?”
The gods, he meant.
“You’re saying I have no choice?”
“I wasn’t offered one. Toast, Elias?”
Two of us, Vale thought. He hadn’t anticipated that. Though of course it made sense. But how many more god-stricken individuals were out there walking the streets? Hundreds? Thousands?
He folded his hands. “Why are you here?”
“The eternal question, isn’t it? I’m not sure I know. Not yet, at least. I gather you’re meant to introduce me around.”
“As what, my catamite?”
“Cousin, nephew, illegitimate child…”
“And then?”
“And then we’ll do as we’re told, when the time comes.” Crane put down the butter knife. “Honestly, Elias, it’s not my choice either. And I suspect it’s temporary. No offense.”
“No offense, but I hope so.”
“In the meantime we’ll have to find a bed for me. Unless you want my luggage cluttering up your front room. Do you entertain clients here?”
“Often. How much do you know about me, anyway?”
“A little. What do you know about me?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Ah.”
Vale made a desperate last try. “Isn’t there a hotel in town—?”
“Not what they want.” The smile again. “For better or worse, our fates appear to be intertwined.”
The astonishing thing was that Vale did get used to Crane’s occupation of his attic room, at least in the way one grows accustomed to a chronic headache. Crane was a considerate houseguest, more meticulous than Vale about cleaning up after himself, careful not to interrupt when Vale was with paying customers. He did insist on being taken to the Sanders-Moss salon and introduced as Vale’s “cousin,” a financier. Fortunately Crane seemed to have genuine working knowledge of banking and Wall Street, almost as if he had been raised to it. And maybe he had. He was vague about his past but hinted at family connections.
Just now, in any case, the Sanders-Moss table talk turned most often to the loss of the Finch expedition, the prospect of war. The Hearst papers had been touting a war with England, claimed to have evidence that the English were funneling weapons to the Partisans, which would make them at least indirectly responsible for the loss of American lives. An issue Vale cared nothing about, though his god apparently took an interest.
When they were together in the town house they tried to ignore one another. When they did talk — generally after Vale had taken a drink — they talked about their gods.
“It doesn’t just threaten,” Vale said. Another cold night, trapped in doors with Crane for company, a bitter wind rattling the casement windows. Tennessee whiskey. Timor mortibus conturbat me. “It promised I would live. I mean live… forever.”
“Immortality,” Crane said calmly, paring an apple with a kitchen knife.
“You too?”
“Oh, yes. Me too.”
“Do you — believe?”
Crane peered at him quizzically. “Elias. When was the last time you cut yourself shaving?”
“Eh? I can’t remember—”
“Long ago?”
“Long ago,” Vale conceded. “Why?”
“Appendicitis, influenza, consumption? Broken bones, toothache, hangnail?”
“No, but — what are you saying?”
“You know the answer, Elias. You just don’t have the nerve to test yourself. Haven’t you ever been tempted, standing over a basin with a razor in your hand?”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
Crane spread his left hand on the dining table and drove the knife smartly through it. The blade cracked through small bones and into wood. Vale recoiled and blinked.
Crane winced, briefly. Then he smiled. He tightened his grip on the shaft of the knife and pulled the blade out of his hand. A drop of blood welled out of the wound. Just one. Crane dabbed it away with a napkin.
The skin beneath was smooth, pink, seamless.
“Christ,” Vale whispered.
“Apologies for damaging the table,” Crane said. “But you see what I mean.”
Chapter Eighteen
From the Journal of Guilford Law:
Excuse my handwriting. The fire is warm but doesn’t cast much useful light. Caroline, I think of you reading this and take some comfort in the thought. I hope it is warm where you are.
We are relatively warm here by the standards we’ve grown accustomed to — maybe too warm. Unnaturally warm. But let me explain.
We left this morning on our hobble-legged expedition to the heart of the ruins, Tom Compton, Dr. Sullivan, and I. We must have made a comical sight (Diggs certainly seemed to think so) — the three of us bundled in snake fur, white as dandelion clocks, two of us limping (on opposite legs), four days’ supplies lashed to a sledge behind a grunting snake. A “snipe-hunt,” Digby calls this little voyage.
In any case, we ignored the jibes, and soon enough our beast had pulled us deeper into the ruins, into the oppressive silence of the city. I cannot communicate, Caroline, the eeriness of this haunted place, its slablike structures so uniformly arrayed and far extended. The snow, as we made our way southwest under a sunny sky, lay bright and crisp beneath the sledge. But the low angle of the winter sun meant that we traveled most often in shadow, down broad avenues cloaked in wintry melancholy.
Tom Compton led the fur snake by its rope halter. The frontiersman was in no mood to talk, so I hung back with Dr. Sullivan, hoping the sound of a human voice would dispel the gloom of these immense, repetitive alleys. But the mood had affected Sullivan, too.
“We’ve been assuming the city was built by intelligent beings,” he said. “That may not be so.”
I asked him to explain.
“Appearances are deceptive. Have you ever seen an African termite hill? It’s an elaborate structure, often taller than a man. But the only architect is evolution itself. Or think of the regularity and complexity of a honeycomb.”
“You’re saying we might be inside some kind of insect hive?”
“What I’m saying is that although these structures are obviously artificial, the uniformity of size and presumably of function argues against a human builder.”