When the sky had lightened, and everybody had stood up and put on his or her coat and the engines were gunning in reverse as the boat surged in toward the docks of the marina, Leon rang an empty glass with one long, manicured fingernail.
"Attention, gamesters," he said. He was smiling under the bandage, but there was a harshness in his voice that silenced all the idle, tired chat. "Tomorrow is Good Friday, and out of respect this game will end at three in the afternoon. Therefore, to get in at least a little bit of decent play, this boat will … set sail at noon. That's only about six hours from now, so you might want to get rooms at the Lakeview Lodge here, and arrange for wake-up calls."
Fatigue coursed through Crane's arteries like a powerful drug, but it struck him as odd that the game should end at three. When businesses had acknowledged Good Friday, he recalled, they were closed from noon until three.
If this was a gesture of respect, it was a strangely inverted one.
Dancing on the edge of the cliff.
Shuffling dizzily through the still-cool air along the Fremont Street sidewalk, Dondi Snayheever was momentarily eclipsed in the shadow of the towering steel and neon tubing cowboy over the Pioneer Casino. He paused to squint up at the slowly waving figure, and he wondered what personage it might be nearly the shape of.
His maimed hand jerked him forward, and he resumed pushing himself forward through the resistance of the morning air.
Shapes waiting, he thought, like the implicit whirlpool in a bathtub just waiting to come into existence when someone would pull the plug. As if when a cloud formation came to look very damn like some certain enormous bird that was waiting in potential, it would actually become that bird.
Birds. Eye of the crow was right last week, but Isis's temple was blown up now. Another bird now, according to the dreams, a pink one.
In a dream Snayheever had seen the fat man blow up the temple. The fat man had achieved a shape, too—had become the giant that had got stunted and round and lost his green color, had become the warty black ball in the math field, containing all the points that would never become infinite.
The fat man wasn't that anymore. He was dead, his boundary broken, and the points would soon be scattered across the desert, free to become infinite or not, as they pleased. Snayheever wondered how long he himself would continue to be the thing he had come authoritatively to resemble.
Dancing on the cliff edge, the dog snapping at his heels.
He could sense his missing finger; it was far away to the south, up high, ringing with the vibrations of tremendous hydroelectric power.
He had no choice but to go there; the personage whom he had become was going to be there, and of course would need its shape.
But first there was someone to say good-bye to, and someone to forgive.
CHAPTER 48: Last Call
When Crane unlocked the hotel room door and pushed it open, he smelled hot coffee. Diana and Dinh were standing by the window with cups in their hands, and they looked over at him anxiously.
"No," said Crane. He took off his wig and watched, to his own mild surprise, as his arm drew back and flung the cap of auburn hair against the mirror. "No, he didn't buy it. I've got to be back there before noon, and I've got to stack the deck again in the meantime. I won't have time to get any sleep."
Diana hurried over to him and touched his arm. He forced himself not to pull away. "Would you like some coffee?" she asked.
" 'Wood eye, wood eye?' " said Crane absently, quoting the next-to-last line of an old joke Susan had liked.
Diana gave him her cup, which was nearly full and still steaming. "Here," she said. "I'll make me another one."
Crane put it down on the bedside table. "I don't want any." The smell of coffee hung in the air like smoke, and he couldn't get out of his mind the image of a coffee cup on a stove set on low.
And paramedics, and an ambulance, and after that a bottle to keep him from remembering his dreams.
"That was a line from a joke," he said irritably. " 'Wood eye, wood eye.' " Diana stared at him blankly, apparently never having heard the joke herself. How could she not ever have heard it? " 'Hunchback, hunchback' is the last line," he snapped. "I've also heard it as 'Harelip, harelip.' "
Mavranos had walked in from the next room, and Crane saw him exchange a look with Dinh. That's right, Arky, he thought, I'm going crazy—talking about hunchbacks and harelips. Damn my soul, I would move heaven and earth for a—
The telephone rang on the bedside table, and everyone except Crane jumped. Dinh started toward it, but Crane was closer and snatched it up.
"Hello?" he said.
" 'Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,' " crooned the voice on the telephone, " 'Save Me, save only Me?' "
Crane recognized the lines. They were from Susan's favorite poem, Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven."
And of course he recognized the voice.
It's my wife, he thought.
I shouldn't talk to her.
Why not?
Because it's not my wife, he told himself. Remember? It's drink, or Death, or something that's both of those things. So I can't even talk to her. But what if it's her, a bit of the real Susan, too! Maybe it really is her ghost, and the bad stuff has been laminated onto her.
And even if it's not her at all, what if drink can do a convincing imitation of her? I'm probably going to die tomorrow, after I've failed to do this stupid card trick for the third time, after my father kicks me out of my body. Can't I at least talk to this thing for a couple of minutes, over the phone? What's the harm of just listening to what it has to say? And it might have some information we need. And it sounds so much like Susan, and I'm so tired, that I know I can make myself believe that it is Susan. If everyone would just leave me alone.
Finally he spoke. "Just a sec," he said into the phone, then put his palm over the mouthpiece. "This is private," he told the other three, "do you mind?"
"Jesus, Scott," said Mavranos, "that's not—"
"Do you mind?" Crane repeated.
"I mind," said Diana, her voice breaking. "Scott, for God's sake—"
"Well, if I can't even—all I'm—" He shook his head as if to clear it. "Damn it, go mind in the other room, would you?"
For several seconds Mavranos and Diana and Dinh stared at him; then Mavranos jerked his head toward the connecting doorway, and the three of them silently filed through it and closed the door.
"We're alone," Crane said into the mouthpiece.
"What do they say," Susan's voice asked, "in a bar, at ten to two, when it's your last chance to get a drink?"
"They say 'last call.' " Crane was trying to be calm, but his voice was shaky.
"This is last call," said Susan. "This is the last time I'll call you. After you hang up, I'm either gone forever or with you forever."
"You're—um, you're a ghost," said Crane. He wished he could think clearly. His false eye stung—he hadn't washed it or irrigated the cavity since Wednesday; he knew he was just asking for meningitis—and his leg ached and he could feel blood leaking out of the bandage below his right ribs. A wave of exhaustion made him close his eyes.
"So would you be, a ghost, if you'd come with me. Forever, whole again. Go to the card game, why not? Pretend you turned me down—go ahead and stack the deck again, if you want, but leave it in your purse. Who cares what hands go where? And have a drink …"