His throat working, his voice on the verge of crumbling, Jack stepped back and stared at the semicircle that had formed around him.
"You people…you people. Where'd you all come from? Where've you been all my life?"
His voice failed him then, so he simply turned and walked out the door.
When he was gone, they stood and stared at each other in silence.
"There's no hope then?" Carol said.
Glaeken heaved a sigh, slow and heavy, as he shook his head. His eyes were remote, his disappointment palpable.
"If there is," he said, "I don't know where to look for it."
"That's it?" she said. "We've lost? What do we do now?"
"We do what we've always done," Bill said. "We don't back down. And we refuse to be anything less than we are."
Carol looked at him standing tall and defiant. He'd told her what he'd been through in the past five years, and if that hadn't broken him, she doubted anything could. She realized then in a blaze of heat how much she loved Bill Ryan.
Glaeken, too, seemed to draw strength from him.
"You're right of course. We can make Rasalom come for us rather than crumble and fall toward him. That will be a victory of sorts." He extended his elbow toward Sylvia. "Mrs. Nash, if you'll allow me, I'll show you the apartment I've been holding for you."
As they left, Bill turned to Nick.
"Want me take you back to your room, old buddy?"
Nick was staring at the flames in the fireplace. To Carol's surprise, he answered.
"I want to watch the fire. I want to see where all the ashes go."
Carol dared a quick glance at the fireplace, ready to turn away if Rasalom's skin was still there. But it wasn't—at least not recognizably so. Just burning logs.
"They go up the chimney and float away, Nick," Carol said.
"Not all of them. Some are on the window."
Carol turned and for the first time noticed the ashes sticking to the picture window. She gasped and clutched Bill's arm when she realized that they clung there in a gray, feathery pattern—the shape of a headless man, spread-eagled against the dying light.
Bill hurried to the wall and touched a button. The drapes slid closed.
"Maybe I'd better walk you home."
"I can't go back there." The thought of that pile of dirt on the rug, the memory of what he'd planned to do—it sickened her.
"Sorry," he said. "I wasn't thinking."
Carol looked at Bill. She didn't know how else to say this, other than come right out and say it.
"Can't I stay with you?"
He stared at her for a long moment, then reached out to her, pulled her close, and kissed her.
"I've been wanting to do that for days," he sighed. "For years. For decades. Forever, I think."
She looked up at him, into his clear blue eyes.
"It's time, isn't it?"
He nodded. "Yes. Long past time, I think."
He took her hand and led her toward his room.
WXRK-FM:
dead air
Until tonight, Carol had made love to only two men in her life, both of them husbands. Bill was the third and by far the most anxious. His hands trembled as he undressed her, as he helped her remove his own clothes, as he caressed her.
"I'm a virgin," he told her when they were lying skin-to-skin, and even his voice trembled. "Alive for half a century, and I'm a virgin."
"I'm not," Carol said, and drew him into her.
What he lacked in technique he more than made up for with the intensity of his passion. Their lovemaking rocked the mattress. It was hot, it was fierce, and it was over too soon for Carol, but somehow it left her as breathless as Bill. She hugged him tight against her, reveled in his being warm and wet within her.
And then she heard him sobbing softly on her shoulder.
"Bill? Are you okay?"
"No. Yes. I don't know. It's just…I keep thinking…what a waste. This is so wonderful. I've never felt so close to another human being in my entire life. I'm fifty, Carol. We can all count the rest of our days on one hand, and I'm just learning what it's like to make love. All those years—wasted! My life—wasted! What an idiot!"
"Don't you say that, Bill. Don't you ever let me hear you say that!" She shared his hurt, but she was angry at him too. "You did not waste your life. Maybe your beliefs were misplaced, but not your actions. You spent your life being a father, a real father, to hundreds of lost and abandoned boys, the first and maybe the best father they ever knew. You couldn't have done that as well if you'd had a wife and children of your own. You couldn't have been there twenty-four hours a day for them like you were. So it wasn't wasted at all. You made a difference, Bill. A big difference. A lot of grown men are walking around who still remember you, who still have a warm place in their hearts for you, who are maybe good to their own kids because you were good to them, because you showed them how it's done. That's a legacy, Bill, one that might have gone on for generations if Rasalom wasn't trying to bring all our generations to an end. So don't you dare say you've wasted your life—at least not in front of me."
After a long pause, Bill lifted his head and kissed her.
"I love you," he said. "I puppy-loved you in high school and then buried it in an unused corner like a bone. But it never went away. I think I've always loved you."
"And I think part of me always loved you, a little bit. But now all of me loves you—a lot."
"Good. Does that mean we do this again? Soon?"
"How soon?"
"Now?"
And then she realized that he was hard again inside her.
"Oh my."
3 • THE FINAL PIECE
WNEW-FM:
JO: It's 4:00 in the afternoon, ten minutes to sunset.
FREDDY: Yeah. And according to the Sapir curve, this is the next to last sunset. Let's all hope he's wrong, man.
Glaeken had settled Sylvia Nash and her son in her apartment and was on his way back to his own when Julio, the muscular little fellow who owned the bar where he and Jack had shared their first pint of Courage, ran up to him in the hall.
"Mr. Glaeken! There's a woman downstairs looking for Jack!"
"What does she want? You let her in, I hope." It was dark out now. The streets would be lethal.
"Yeah, but I've got somebody staying in the lobby with her. Thing is, I can't find Jack nowhere an' she's real crazy 'bout seeing him."
"Is it the woman he sent into hiding?"
"Gia? No way. I know Gia. This lady's dark. Says her name's Cola-body or som' like that."
Glaeken closed his eyes and steadied himself, making sure he'd really heard that last sentence. Could it be? Could it truly be her? Or could this be another of Rasalom's games?
Well, he'd know soon enough, wouldn't he?
"Bring her to the top floor. Immediately."
A few moments later, Glaeken was waiting by the door to his apartment when Julio ushered a slim, dark, raven-haired woman from the elevator. Her clothes were torn, her hands and face smudged with grime, the dark almonds of her eyes were wide, wild, exhausted. Not at all the way Glaeken had pictured her, but he sensed the years crowded beneath the smooth youth of her skin.
He could barely drag his eyes from the necklace encircling her throat. He had to get it from her. How he was going to do that, he did not know, but he could not allow her to leave here with that necklace.
"Miss Bahkti?"
She nodded. "And you're the man Jack told me about, the old one?"