be home soon. I don’t want you here
He understood her nervousness, but felt ill treated by this change of tone. As he’d hobbled back through the sleet a tiny part of him had hoped her gratitude would include an embrace, or at least a few words that would let him know she felt something for him. But he was tarred with Estabrook’s guilt. He wasn’t her champion, he was her enemy’s agent.
‘If that’s what you want,’ he said.
‘It’s what I want.’
‘Just one request? If you tell the police about Estabrook, will you keep me out of it?’
‘Why? Are you back at the old business with Klein?’
‘Let’s not get into why. Just pretend you never saw me.’
She shrugged. ‘I suppose I can do that.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Where did you put my clothes?’
They won’t be dry. Why don’t you just keep the stuff you’re wearing?’
‘Better not,’ he said, unable to resist a tiny jab. ‘You never know what Marlin might think.’
She didn’t rise to the remark, but let him go and change. The clothes had been left on the heated towel rack in the bathroom, which had taken some of the chill off them, but insinuating himself into their dampness was almost enough to make him retract his jibe, and wear the absent lover’s clothes. Almost, but not quite. Changed, he returned into the lounge to find her standing at the window again, as if watching for the assassin’s return.
‘What did you say his name was?’ she said.
‘Something like Pie’oh’pah.’
‘What language is that? Arabic?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, did you tell him Estabrook had changed his mind? Did you tell him to leave me alone?’
‘I didn’t get a chance,’ he said, rather lamely.
‘So he could still come back and try again?’
‘Like I said, I don’t think he will.’
‘He’s tried twice. Maybe he’s out there thinking: third time lucky. There’s something … unnatural about him. Gentle. How the hell could he heal so fast?’
‘Maybe he wasn’t as badly hurt as he looked.’
She didn’t seem convinced. ‘A name like that … he shouldn’t be difficult to trace.’
‘I don’t know, I think men like him … they’re almost invisible.’
‘Marlin’ll know what to do.’
‘Good for Marlin.’
She drew a deep breath. ‘I should thank you though,’ she said, her tone as far from gratitude as it was possible to get.
‘Don’t bother,’ he replied. ‘I’m just a hired hand. I was only doing it for the money.’
4
From the shadows of a doorway on 79th Street, Pie’oh’pah watched John Furie Zacharias emerge from the apartment building, pull the collar of his jacket up around his bare nape, and scan the street north and south, looking for a cab. It was many years since the assassin’s eyes had taken the pleasure they did now, seeing him. In the time between the world had changed in so many ways. But this man looked unchanged. He was a constant, freed from alteration by his own forgetfulness; always new to himself, and therefore ageless. Pie envied him. For Gentle time was a vapour, dissolving hurt and self-knowledge. For Pie it was a sack into which each day, each hour, dropped another stone, bending the spine until it creaked. Nor, until tonight, had he dared entertain any hope of release. But here, walking away down Park Avenue, was a man in whose power it lay to make whole all broken things; even Pie’s wounded spirit. Indeed, especially that. Whether it was chance or the covert workings of the Unbeheld that had brought them together this way, there was surely significance in their reunion.
Minutes before, terrified by the scale of what was unfolding. Pie had attempted to drive Gentle away, and having failed, had fled. Now such fear seemed stupid. What was there to be afraid of? Change? That would be welcome. Revelation? The same. Death? What did an assassin care for death? If it came, it came; it was no reason to turn from opportunity. He shuddered. It was cold here in the doorway; cold in the century too. Especially for a soul like his, that loved the melting season, when the rise of sap and sun made all things seem possible. Until now, he’d given up hope that such a burgeoning time would ever come again. He’d been obliged to commit too many crimes in this joyless world. He’d broken too many hearts. So had they both, most likely. But what if they were obliged to seek that elusive spring for the good of those they’d orphaned and anguished? What if it was their duty to hope? Then his denying of their near-reunion, his fleeing from it, was just another crime to be laid at his feet. Had these lonely years made him a coward? Never.
Clearing his tears, he left the doorstep, and pursued the disappearing figure, daring to believe as he went that there might yet be another spring, and a summer of reconciliation to follow.
1
When he got back to the hotel Gentle’s first instinct was to call Jude. She’d made her feelings towards him abundantly clear, of course, and common sense decreed that he leave this little drama to fizzle out, but he’d glimpsed too many enigmas tonight to be able to shrug off his unease and walk away. Though the streets of this city were solid, their buildings numbered and named; though the avenues were bright enough, even at night, to banish ambiguity, he still felt as though he was on the margins of some unknown land, and in danger of crossing into it without realizing he was even doing so. And if he went, might Jude not also follow? Determined though she was to divide her life from his, the obscure suspicion remained in him that their fates were interwoven.
He had no logical explanation for this. The feeling was a mystery, and mysteries weren’t his speciality. They were the stuff of after-dinner conversation when, mellowed by brandy and candlelight, people confessed to fascinations they wouldn’t have broached an hour earlier. Under such influence he’d heard rationalists confess their devotion to tabloid astrologies; heard atheists lay claim to heavenly visitations; heard tales of psychic siblings, and prophetic deathbed pronouncements. They’d all been amusing enough, in their way. But this was something different. This was happening to him, and it made him afraid.
He finally gave in to his unease. He located Marlin’s number, and called the apartment. The lover-boy picked up. He sounded agitated, and became more so when Gentle identified himself.
‘I don’t know what your Goddamn game is -’ he said.
‘It’s no game,’ Gentle told him.
‘You just keep away from this apartment -’
‘I’ve no intention -’
‘-
