She smiled a bit so he kept going. A nurse stuck her head in the room, curious about the sound, but then backed out again, staying near the doorway to listen but trying not to intrude. Theo ignored her, struggling to remember the words, the tale of some nameless poet's regret.
The words were coming back to him, which was a relief, since he didn't want to break the spelclass="underline" this felt more like being called upon to perform a ritual than just singing an old song. He sang it as simply as he could, avoiding the reflexive mannerisms of pop music. Only as he finished the last verse and began the final chorus did he remember what it was really about, the poet's regrets in the face of imminent death. He faltered for a moment but saw that his mother was asleep, the smile still on her lips, faint as starlight on a still lake.
He left her there sleeping. The nurse, a young Asian woman, smiled and started to say something to him as he came out of the room, but saw the look on his face and decided not to speak.
In the end, Anna Vilmos did not get even half a year. She died in the middle of the night, August 8th. It seemed to be a good death, given the circumstances. A nurse saw that she didn't appear to be breathing, took her pulse, then began the list of procedures that would ultimately free up the bed for another patient. Someone from the hospital called Theo at home and, after giving him the news, told him there was no point in coming in before the morning, but he roused himself anyway and got into his mother's old car, feeling that it would be safer to drive in his somnambulant condition than to ride his motorcycle. They had drawn the curtain around the bed, covered her face with a sheet. He pulled it back, his thoughts fractured into such tiny, whirling pieces he felt like a snow globe, felt he had been shaken and shaken and then set down.
She did not look peaceful, particularly. She didn't look like anything.
She looks like where someone used to be, but isn't anymore.
He kissed her cold cheek, then went to find the night administrator to make arrangements.
4
THE HUNGRY THING
The warehouse district sweltered in heat unusual even for the season. A work gang of nixies, lounging on a break in the shade of one of the tall old buildings, were reluctant to move back out of the black coach's path until one of them recognized the flower-glyph on the license plate. A name passed between the lean, hard-muscled creatures, a murmur like the sea that was denied to them until their indenture had been paid, and they quickly flattened themselves against the wall to let the limousine past.
The nixies talked of it that evening in the tavern called Tide's End, but not much, and only in nervous, rippling whispers.
The coach pulled to a silent stop in front of the last building in the row, a large, windowless, ramshackle structure perched at the end of the wharf like an ancient animal sleeping in the sun. The coach shimmered in the heat-haze; when the first two figures got out the distortion made them seem even more monstrous than they were. Both wore long black overcoats which did little to hide the immensity underneath. The pair stood for long moments, motionless except for eyes constantly moving in the shadows of their wide-brimmed hats. Then, at some unspoken signal, one of them leaned and opened the coach door.
Three more figures stepped out, all in fine suits of dark, understated weave. The tallest of these newcomers looked up and down the now-abandoned wharfside road — the nixies had ended their break early and made themselves extremely scarce — then turned and led the rest into the building, pausing only to allow one of the gigantic bodyguards to pass through the door first.
The inside of the building was quite different than the rust-flecked, peeling exterior suggested. The five visitors made their way down a long hallway, through pools of light angling down from what seemed to be ragged holes in the high ceiling but on closer inspection proved to be oddly shaped skylights, each one carefully fitted. The hall itself was featureless, the walls painted a uniform smooth black, the floor carpeted in some dark, velvety material that suggested its owner had no need to be warned by the sound of approaching footsteps, no fear of anyone piercing his sanctum without him knowing about it long before they reached the door at the end of the hall.
The door had a brass plate, but the plate was blank. One of the bodyguards reached for the handle, but the tallest of the well-dressed figures shook his head. He pushed it open himself and led his two slightly smaller companions inside, leaving the bodyguards to shuffle their feet nervously, making sparks crackle in the velvety corridor.
The huge room inside was lit by more of the high, strange sky-windows, so that the distant ceiling seemed to be held up by columns of angled light. The air was hot and close and the smells that mingled there would have been unpleasant to a mortal, perhaps even maddening. The newcomers, despite superior senses, did not seem taken aback by the odor of the place, but as their catlike eyes became accustomed to the strange striping of light and dark the tall man's two companions slowed and then stopped, seemingly astonished by the jumble that surrounded them.
The vast space was a warehouse of sorts, but even in this most ancient and mysterious of cities it was unlikely there were any other warehouses like this. Although the down-stabbing light from the ceiling picked out much, it illuminated little, but what could be seen was very strange: manlike shapes, statues perhaps, frozen in a thousand different attitudes, filled the room like a crowd of silent watchers, most standing but many tumbled onto their sides, arms that once reached toward some heavenly object now seeming to grapple at the legs of their upright fellows. The silent figures were only part of the room's catalog, and many other objects were less immediately familiar: fantastic animals stuffed or reduced to rolled skins and piled bones; open crates overflowing with rusting weapons or lengths of fabric whose colors seemed inconstant; urns; caskets; and overturned cases that had spilled a wild variety of trinkets, from silver and gold jewelry to things that looked like children's toys formed from purest black carbon. Raw gems were even scattered carelessly about the floor like wildflower seeds. Shelf after shelf along the walls held jars in which things floated that did not encourage close study, things with eyes and even facial expressions, although in no other way manlike. Other jars were opaque, many extensively and carefully sealed, but some with the lids propped against the containers as though whatever was inside had been sampled in haste (or had perhaps escaped on its own). None of these containers appeared to be labeled, and even the small traces of powder sprinkled on the shelving around them in what were obviously careful patterns gave no clue as to what the contents might be.