Sacrament

'No I didn't.'

'Then you were the only one. Anyway, he sneezed after he'd come. He sneezed and sneezed and sneezed. He fell downstairs at Lewis's place, sneezing. I swear.'

'Terrible.'

'You don't believe me.'

'Not a word.'

Pat glanced at Will, smirking. 'So,' he said, 'to what do I owe the pleasure?'

'You were telling me about Webster.'

'It can wait. You've got a purposeful look on your face. What's happening?'

'I have to go to England. I'm catching a flight out tonight.'

'This is sudden.'

'My father's got a problem. Somebody decided to beat the shit out of him.'

'You were here on the night in question,' Patrick said. 'I'll swear to it.'

'I mean badly, Pat.'

'How badly?'

'I don't know. I'll find out when I get there. So that's my story. Now back to Webster.'

Patrick sighed. 'I had a heart to heart with him today. He's been great. We're always in line if somebody comes along with some new medication. But ...' he shrugged '... I guess we've run out.' He looked at Will again. 'It's a mess, Will. Getting sick. We've all seen so much of it, and we all know how it goes. Well, it's not going to happen to me.' This sounded like Patrick at his defiant best, but there was no resilience in his voice; only defeat. 'I had a dream, a couple of nights ago. I was in a forest, a dark forest and I was naked. Nothing sexual about it. Just naked. And I knew all these things were creeping up on me. Some were coming for my eyes. Some were coming for my skin. They were all going to get a piece of me. When I woke up, I thought: I'm not going to let that happen. I'm not going to sit there and be picked at, piece by piece.'

'Have you talked to Bethlynn about any of this?'

'Not about the conversation with Frank. I've got a session with her tomorrow afternoon.' He leaned his head back on the head rest, and closed his eyes. 'We've talked about you a lot, you'll be pleased to know. And she was always pretty acute about you, before she met you. Now she'll be useless. Like the rest of us, flailing around trying to work out what makes you tick.'

'It's no great mystery,' Will said.

'One of these days,' Patrick said lazily, 'I'm going to have a blinding revelation about you, and everything'll suddenly make sense. Why we stayed together. Why we came apart.' He opened one eye and squinted at Will. 'Were you at The Penitent last night, by the way?'

Will wasn't sure. 'Maybe,' he said. 'Why?'

'A friend of Jack's said he saw you coming out, looking like you'd just done some serious mischief. Of course, I protected your honour. But it was you, wasn't it?'

'I don't remember, to be honest.'

'My God, that's something I don't hear very often these days. Everybody's too clean and sober. You don't remember? You're a throwback, Will. Homo Castro, 1975.' Will laughed. 'A primitive simian with an oversized libido and a permanently glazed expression.'

'There were some wild nights.'

'There certainly were,' Patrick said with gentle relish. 'But I don't want to do it again, do you?'

'Honestly?'

'Honestly. I did it, and it was great. But it's over. At least for me. I'm making a connection with something else now.'

'And how does that feel?'

Patrick had again closed his eyes. His voice grew quiet. 'It's wonderful,' he said. 'I feel God here sometimes. Right here with me.' He fell silent; the kind of silence that presages something of significance. Will said nothing. Just waited for the something to come. At last, Patrick said: 'I've got a plan, Will.'

'For what?'

'For when I get very sick.' Again, the silence; and Will waiting. 'I want you here, Will,' Patrick said. 'I want to die looking at you, and you looking at me.'

'Then that's what'll happen.'

'But it might not,' Patrick said. His voice was calm and even, but tears had swelled between his closed lids and ran down his cheeks. 'You might be in the middle of the Serengeti. Who knows? You might still be in England.'

'I won't-'

'Ssh,' Patrick said. 'Let me just get all of this said. I don't want somebody telling you what did or didn't happen and you not knowing whether to believe them or not. So I want you to know: I'm planning to die the way I've lived. Comfortably. Sensibly. Jack's with me on it. So's Rafael, of course. And, like I said, I want you here, too.' He stopped, wiped the tears off his cheeks with the heels of his hands, and then continued in the same contained manner. 'But if you're not, and there's some problem; if Rafael or Jack get into trouble somehow ... we're trying to cover all the legal issues to make sure it doesn't happen but there's still a chance ... I want to be sure you'll get it sorted out. You're good with that kind of stuff, Will. Nobody pushes you around.'

'I'll make sure there's no problem, don't worry.'

'Good. That makes me feel a lot happier.' Without opening his eyes, he reached out and unerringly took Will's hand. 'How am I doing?'

'You're doing fine.'

'I don't like weepers.'

'You're allowed.'

There was another silence, lighter this time, now that the deal had been struck. 'You're right,' Patrick finally said. 'I'm allowed.'

Will glanced at his watch. 'Time to go,' he said.

'Go, baby, go. I won't get up if you don't mind. I'm feeling a little frail.' Will went and hugged him, there in the chair. 'I love you,' he said.

'And I love you back.' He had caught fierce hold of Will's arms, and squeezed hard. 'You do know that, don't you? I mean, you're not just hearing the words?'

'I know it.'

'I wish we'd had longer, Will.'

'Me too,' Will said, 'I've got a lot of stuff I'd need to tell you about, but I got to catch this plane.'

'No, Will, I mean I wish we'd had longer together. I wish we'd taken the time to know one another better.'

'There'll be time,' Will said. Pat held on to Will's arms another moment. 'Not enough,' and then, reluctantly loosening his grip, let Will go.

PART FIVE

He Names The Mystery

CHAPTER I

i

Home to England, and the summer almost gone. August's stars had fallen, and the leaves would follow very soon. Riot and rot in speedy succession.

You'll find the years pass more quickly as you get older, Marcello the resident wise old queen from Buddies in Boston - had told him an age ago. Will hadn't believed it, of course. It wasn't until he was thirtyone, maybe thirty-two, that he'd realized there was truth in the observation. Time wasn't on his side after all; it was gathering speed, season upon season, year upon year. Thirty-five was upon him in a heartbeat, and forty on its heels, the marathon he'd thought he was running in his youth mysteriously became a hundred yard sprint. Determined to achieve something of significance before the race was over he'd turned every minute of his life over to the making of pictures, but they were of small comfort. The books were published, the reviews were clipped and filed, and the animals he had witnessed in their final days went into the hands of taxidermists. Life was not a reversible commodity. Things passed away, never to return: species, hopes, years.

And yet he could still blithely wish hours of his life away when he was bored. Sitting in first class on the eleven-hour flight, he wished a hundred times it was over. He'd brought a bagful of books including the volume of poems Lewis had been distributing at Patrick's party, but nothing held his attention for more than a page or two. One of Lewis's short lyrics intrigued him mainly because he wondered who the hell it was about:

Now, with our fierce brotherhood annulled, I see as if by lightning, all the perfect pains we might have made, had our love's fiction lived another day.

It certainly had the authentic ring of Lewis's voice about it. All his favourite subjects - pain, brotherhood and the impossibility of love - in four lines.