But Babylon had taken control of his house. He'd last seen his best suit being worn by the notorious bisexual Marcella St. John, while she straddled one of her girlfriends. His bow ties had been purloined for a competition to see which of three erections could wear the most, a tournament won by Moses "The Hose" Jasper, who'd ended up sporting seventeen.
Rather than try and tidy up, or claim any of these belongings back, William decided to let the celebrants have their way. He rummaged in his bottom drawer and found a sweatshirt and jeans he'd not worn for several years, put them on, and wandered down to the Mall.
At about the time he was doing so Jo-Beth was waking with the worst hangover of her life. The worst, because the first.
Her memories of the previous night's events were uncertain. She remembered going to Lois's house, of course, and the guests, and Howie arriving, but how all of this had ended up she couldn't be sure. She got up feeling giddy and sick, and went to the bathroom. Momma, hearing her moving about, came upstairs and was waiting for her when she emerged.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"No," Jo-Beth freely admitted. "I feel terrible."
"You were drinking last night."
"Yes," she said. There was no purpose in denial.
"Where did you go?"
"To see Lois."
"There'd be no liquor in Lois's house," Momma said.
"There was last night. And a lot more besides."
"Don't lie to me, Jo-Beth."
"I'm not lying."
"Lois would never have that poison in the house."
"I think you should hear her tell it herself," Jo-Beth said, defying Momma's accusing looks. "I think we should both go down to the store and speak to her."
"I'm not leaving the house," Momma told her flatly.
"You went out into the yard the night before last. Today you can get in the car."
She spoke as she'd never spoken to Momma before, with a kind of rage in her tone which was in part response to Momma's calling her a liar, and in part against herself for not being able to think her way through the blur of the previous night. What had happened between Howie and herself? Had they argued? She thought so. They'd certainly parted on the street...but why? It was another reason to speak to Lois.
"I mean what I say, Momma," she said. "We're both of us going to go down to the Mall."
"No, I can't..." Momma said. "Really I can't. I feel so sick today."
"No you don't."
"Yes. My stomach..."
"No, Momma! Enough of that! You can't pretend to be sick for the rest of your life, just because you're afraid. I'm afraid too, Momma."
"It's good you're afraid."
"No it's not. It's what the Jaff wants. What he feeds on. The fear inside. I know that because I've seen it working and it's horrible."
"We can pray. Prayer—"
"—won't do us any good any longer. It didn't help the Pastor. It won't help us." She was raising her voice, which in turn made her head spin, but she knew this had to be said now before full sobriety returned, and with it, fear of offending.
"You always said it was dangerous outside," she went on, not liking to hurt Momma the way she surely was, but unable to stem the flow of feeling. "Well it is dangerous. Even more than you thought. But inside, Momma—" she jabbed at her chest, meaning her heart, meaning Howie and Tommy-Ray and the terror that she'd lost them both "—inside, it's worse. Even worse. To have things...dreams...just for a while...then have them taken away before you can get a hold of them properly."
"You're not making any sense, Jo-Beth," Momma said.
"Lois'll tell you," she replied. "I'm going to take you down to see Lois, and then you'll believe."
Howie sat at the window and let the sun dry the sweat on his skin. Its smell was as familiar to him as his own face in the mirror, more familiar, perhaps, because his face kept changing and the smell of sweat didn't. He needed the comfort of such familiarity now, with nothing certain in all the world but that nothing was certain. He could find no way through the tangle of feelings in his gut. What had seemed simple the day before, when he'd stood in the sun at the back of the house and kissed Jo-Beth, was no longer simple. Fletcher might be dead but he'd left a legacy here in the Grove, a legacy of dream-creatures which viewed him as some substitute for their lost creator. He couldn't be that. Even if they didn't share Fletcher's view of Jo-Beth, which after last night's confrontation they surely did, he still couldn't fulfill their expectations. He'd come here a desperado and become, albeit fleetingly, a lover. Now they wanted to make a general of him; wanted marching orders and battle plans. He could supply neither. Nor would Fletcher have been able to offer such direction. The army he'd created would have to elect a leader from its own ranks, or disperse.
He'd rehearsed these arguments so often now he almost believed them; or rather, had almost convinced himself he wasn't a coward for wanting to believe them. But the trick hadn't worked. He came back and back to the same stark fact: that once, in the woods, Fletcher had warned him to make a choice between Jo-Beth and his destiny, and he'd flown in the face of that advice. The consequences of his desertion, whether direct or indirect was immaterial now, had been Fletcher's public death, a last, desperate attempt to seize some hope for the future. Now here was he, the unprodigal son, willfully turning his back on the product of that sacrifice.
And yet; and yet; always, and yet. If he sided with Fletcher's army then he became part of the war he and Jo-Beth had studiously attempted to remain untouched by. She would become one of the enemy, simply by birth.
What he wanted more than anything, ever in his life— more than the pubic hair he'd tried to will into growing at age eleven, more than the motorcycle he'd stolen at fourteen, more than his mother back from death for two minutes just so he could tell her how sorry he was for all the times he'd made her cry; more, at this moment, than Jo-Beth—was certainty. Just to be told which way was the right way, which act was the right act, and have the comfort that even if it turned out not to be the way or the act it was not his responsibility. But there was nobody to tell him. He had to think this out for himself. Sit in the sun and let the sweat dry on his skin, and work it out for himself.
The Mall was not as busy as it usually was on a Saturday morning, but William nevertheless met half a dozen people he knew on his way to the supermarket. One was his assistant Valerie.
"Are you all right?" she wanted to know. "I've been calling your house. You never answer."
"I've been ill," he said.
"I didn't bother to open the office yesterday. What with all the trouble the night before. It was a real mess. Roger went down, you know, when the alarms started?"
"Roger?"
She stared at him. "Yes, Roger."
"Oh yes," William said, not knowing whether this was Valerie's husband, brother or dog, and not much caring.
"He's been ill too," she said.
"I think you should take a few days off," William suggested.
"That would be nice. A lot of people are going away at the moment, have you noticed? Just taking off. We won't lose much business."
He made some polite remark about how she should treat herself to a rest, and parted from her.
The muzak in the market reminded him of what he'd left at home: it sounded so much like the soundtracks of some of his early movies, a wash of nondescript melodies bearing no relation to the scenes they accompanied. The memory hurried him up and down the long aisles, filling his basket more by instinct than planning. He didn't bother to cater for his guests. They only fed on each other.