“I have an angel here, that’s what I am pregnant with—a beautiful angelic force. I will protect you.”
“Protect me!” I practically spat the retort. “You’ve attempted to destroy me.”
“The entities occupying your body are already leaving,” she said. “Can’t you feel that?”
I thought about what she was saying. I had to admit that something was indeed happening to me, something strange. I felt in that instant as if the waking dreams I had been experiencing for the past few months were beginning to recede. My body felt calmer. I started to get a warm feeling. Not the “Little Mother” of heroin, but something almost as good.
“Yes,” I admitted. “I know you have healing powers, Selena. I just wish you weren’t so fucking wicked.”
Chapter 23
Selena truly was a healer, the real thing. It was then that Selena properly captured me, ensnaring me, and she would hold me forever.
The wine I had been drinking in the tent may also have contributed to what made me feel better, but she had been right. The whole time she’d been speaking to me, bringing me down, now building me up, she had held my right arm close to her bosom.
I could feel the swell of her breasts and the hardening of the nipple closest to me. She was seducing me. She had accused me of a rape only she had witnessed, then been outed as a fantasist if not an outright liar, and now she was seducing me. It was bizarre, but to be honest it was also a wonderful feeling. I can’t say I felt normal again, but the anxiety and nausea receded to be replaced by a sense of something solid and reassuring in the pit of my stomach. I only ever feel that when I know for certain that the woman I am with is going to have sex with me.
So, I defend myself. I had never known, perhaps since the act itself, that I had tried to impose myself on Floss, if I had—or had she pulled me down onto her? Those two girls had been hard cases, even when they were younger. Spiritual twins, that’s what they thought they were. But they were wild, intoxicating girls—no, they had been women. Truly they were. Worldly and fabulous is how they had seemed at Siobhan and Walter’s wedding. Playing at being bridesmaids. Stunning. But I had been so drugged, so insane, and so had they; and now here I am covering my arse again.
I had either lived for years in denial, or been unconscious of what I had done to Floss, Selena, and Ronnie with my stupid drug sharing. Either way, if it happened the way it seemed, it was the worst thing I had ever done to any human being, even if my godson’s wife, this young woman I had groped and tried to kiss in drugged insanity, might never remember it.
I felt at least Selena knew the worst of me, and was forgiving me. Selena, who had stabbed her brute of a father to death, was forgiving me for what she had taken to be a terrible sexual assault against her best friend. I had to forgive her in return, otherwise the scales would collapse.
And so it must be clear now why this narrator felt the need to tell this story. It must also be obvious why I have struggled to keep Walter at the heart of it, and to bring the heroine of my tale—the beautiful Floss who it seems I so brutally abused one way or another—to the finale in all her glory as a mother reunited with her lost daughter. For I knew that as Walter and Floss moved on to their next chapter, my entire relationship with both of them would probably end. I hope readers of this story will understand even if they cannot forgive. This story is my penance to Floss, to Walter, to Pamela, to Rain, and to all the angels, entities, and bed-head ghosts and drug-induced apparitions that had haunted my relationships with my most precious friends and family.
Yet all this insanity swirling around in my world had made me rich. The premiere of Walter K. Watts’s Apocalyptic Soundscapes in Hyde Park was dedicated to the memory of Walter’s mentor, and the founder of Hero Ground Zero, Nikolai Andréevich. It would help sell many pictures.
I come to the end of my story. Bingo is getting restless. Selena is calling from downstairs; she has made some lunch for us both. This house of ours in Grasse, that she looks after so beautifully, is a wonderful place. It has sunshine, breezes, and in the distance a view of the sea. From the hills comes the smell of fir trees and pinecones. I suppose I am hiding here. Selena’s version of what happened at the wedding will certainly become widely known. One day the police may turn up. Floss may visit to gaze into my eyes and try to see the truth. Or Walter will come to beat me up. Or Molly will want to meet the man who for a moment—before Ronnie interceded—was apparently willing to put his hand up to being her long-lost father and perhaps still could be a good godfather to her. The waiting is the worst part, not knowing. But I am not hiding from Walter or Floss, or from anyone else in my story. Neither am I hiding from angels or faces in the clouds or the bedhead. Not anymore. Remember what I said at the beginning? I don’t want to be forgiven; I want to sense some balance. I can’t change the past, but neither can I allow a misunderstanding of the past to change the future. After you’ve heard my story, you will be able to make up your own mind.
You will now make up your mind, and I am afraid. Before we set off to come home to Grasse, Walter sent me a copy of the completed lyric he wrote before the show, the one I had found him writing. It seems to fit this moment.
Today I am hiding from normal people like you, who will read my account of the life and career of my godson Walter Karel Watts and his second wife Florence Agatha Spritzler, and you will judge me. You, who constantly feel fear and apocalyptic anxiety that cannot be described; you, who need Nik and Walter—indeed me as their narrator—to foretell your future.
You must learn to wait. The moment will come. Waiting is the black art of creativity, not inspiration. Be ready. Be alert. Always. And then when the moment comes, you will be waiting, and you will have nothing else to do, nothing better to do than to fall in love all over again. As I once was, you are the mirror of everyone around you. You are their conscience and their voice. Look to the future, whatever you see will come about, good and bad, it is inevitable. Look to the light.
Chapter 24
I am Selena Collins. Dealer in angelic miracles. I bring you the epilogue. Yes, yes, yes, Louis. Yours could have been a very nice ending. Very neat. Very high-toned. But let me complete the book. I remind everyone: without me none of this would ever have taken place. After the concert, which I admit was a wonderful event, and the chaos I caused at the aftershow party, I was left with you. Sweet Louis. Rich Louis. Stupid Louis. I love you so much.