She moved her head away from his lips. "No," she said.
"Can I see you again?"
She shook her head. "I don't think so."
He was shaking. "What about the money?" he asked.
"I paid you already," she said. "I paid you when you came in. Don't you remember?"
He nodded, nervously, as if he could not remember but dared not admit it. Then he patted his pockets until he found the envelope with the cash in it, and he nodded once more. "I feel so empty," he said, plaintively.
She scarcely noticed when he left.
She lay on the bed with a hand on her stomach, his spermatic fluid drying cold on her skin, and she tasted him in her mind.
She tasted each woman he had slept with. She tasted what he did with her friend, smiling inside at Natalle's tiny perversities. She tasted the day he lost his first job. She tasted the morning he had awakened, still drunk, in his car, in the middle of a cornfield, and, terrified, had sworn off the bottle for ever. She knew his real name. She remembered the name that had once been tattooed on his arm and knew why it could be there no longer. She tasted the colour of his eyes from the inside, and shivered at the nightmare he had in which he was forced to carry spiny fish in his mouth, and from which he woke, choking, night after night. She savoured his hungers in food and fiction, and discovered a dark sky when he was a small boy and he had stared up at the stars and wondered at their vastness and immensity, that even he had forgotten.
Even in the pettiest, most unpromising material, she had discovered, you could find real treasures. And he had a little of the talent himself, although he had never understood it, or used it for anything more than sex. She wondered, as she swam in his memories and dreams, if he would miss them, if he would ever notice that they were gone. And then, shuddering, ecstatic, she came, in bright flashes, which warmed her and took her out of herself and into the nowhere-at-all perfection of the little death.
There was a crash from the alley below. Someone had stumbled into a garbage can.
She sat up and wiped the stickiness from her skin. And then, without showering, she began to dress herself once more, deliberately, beginning with her white cotton panties and ending with her elaborate silver earrings.
CHAPTER 31: In the End
In the end, the Lord gave Mankind the world. All the world was Man's, save for one garden. This is my garden, saith the Lord, and here you shall not enter.
There was a man and a woman who came to the garden, and their names were Earth and Breath.
They had with them a small fruit which the Man carried, and when they arrived at the gate to the garden, the Man gave the fruit to the Woman, and the Woman gave the fruit to the Serpent with the flaming sword who guarded the Eastern Gate.
And the Serpent took the fruit and placed it upon a tree in the centre of the garden.
Then Earth and Breath knew their clothedness, and removed their garments, one by one, until they were naked; and when the Lord walked through the garden he saw the man and the woman, who no longer knew good from evil, but were satisfied, and He saw it was good.
Then the Lord opened the gates and gave Mankind the garden, and the Serpent he raised up, and it walked away proudly on four strong legs; and where it went then none but the Lord can say.
And after that there was nothing but silence in the Garden, save for the occasional sound of the man taking away a name from another animal.
CHAPTER 32: Babycakes
A few years back all the animals went away. We woke up one morning, and they just weren't there anymore. They didn't even leave us a note, or say good-bye. We never figured out quite where they'd gone.
We missed them.
Some of us thought that the world had ended, but it hadn't. There just weren't any more animals. No cats or rabbits, no dogs or whales, no fish in the seas, no birds in the skies.
We were all alone.
We didn't know what to do.
We wandered around lost, for a time, and then someone pointed out that just because we didn't have animals anymore, that was no reason to change our lives. No reason to change our diets or to cease testing products that might cause us harm.
After all, there were still babies.
Babies can't talk. They can hardly move. A baby is not a rational, thinking creature.
We made babies.
And we used them.
Some of them we ate. Baby flesh is tender and succulent.
We flayed their skin and decorated ourselves in it. Baby leather is soft and comfortable.
Some of them we tested.
We taped open their eyes, dripped detergents and shampoos in, a drop at a time.
We scarred them and scalded them. We burnt them. We clamped them and planted electrodes into their brains. We grafted, and we froze, and we irradiated.
The babies breathed our smoke, and the babies' veins flowed with our medicines and drugs, until they stopped breathing or until their blood ceased to flow.
It was hard, of course, but it was necessary.
No one could deny that.
With the animals gone, what else could we do?
Some people complained, of course. But then, they always do.
And everything went back to normal.
Only…
Yesterday, all the babies were gone.
We don't know where they went. We didn't even see them go.
We don't know what we're going to do without them.
But we'll think of something. Humans are smart. It's what makes us superior to the animals and the babies.
We'll figure something out.
CHAPTER 33: Murder Mysteries
The Fourth Angel says:
Of this order I am made one,
From Mankind to guard this place
That through their Guilt they have foregone
For they have forfeited His Grace;
Therefore all this must they shun
Or else my Sword they shall embrace
And myself will be their
Foe To flame them in the Face.
Chester Mystery Cycle, The Creation And Adam And Eve, 1461
This is true.
Ten years ago, give or take a year, I found myself on an enforced stopover in Los Angeles, a long way from home. It was December, and the California weather was warm and pleasant. England, however, was in the grip of fogs and snowstorms, and no planes were landing there. Each day I'd phone the airport, and each day I'd be told to wait another day.
This had gone on for almost a week.
I was barely out of my teens. Looking around today at the parts of my life left over from those days, I feel uncomfortable, as if I've received a gift, unasked, from another person: a house, a wife, children, a vocation. Nothing to do with me, I could say, innocently. If it's true that every seven years each cell in your body dies and is replaced, then I have truly inherited my life from a dead man; and the misdeeds of those times have been forgiven, and are buried with his bones.
I was in Los Angeles. Yes.
On the sixth day I received a message from an old sort-of-girlfriend from Seattle: she was in L.A., too, and she had heard I was around on the friends-of-friends network. Would I come over?
I left a message on her machine. Sure.
That evening: a small, blonde woman approached me as I came out of the place I was staying. It was already dark.
She stared at me, as if she were trying to match me to a description, and then, hesitantly, she said my name.
"That's me. Are you Tink's friend?"
"Yeah. Car's out back. C'mon. She's really looking forward to seeing you."
The woman's car was one of the huge old boatlike jobs you only ever seem to see in Callfornia. It smelled of cracked and flaking leather upholstery. We drove out from wherever we were to wherever we were going.