A Cruel Season for Dying (53 page)

Naked and stripped, he stood before the closet in this bedroom they had shared, he and Marian, his wife. Head back, eyes closed,
mouth held open in a feral kind of inhaling. Molecules of scent, the carriers of memory, leapt from her clothing, invading
his nostrils to mass at the back of his throat.

Beyond her flesh scent that still lingered, he could taste the flavor of their days. Candle wax and fresh bread. Coffee and
burning leaves. They had been so happy here on those days stolen from the city, before
it had become apparent that the children for which Marian had abandoned her career would never, in fact, be born. And even
with all their troubles, they had been happy still, laughing on the night she had died.

He reached on a shelf for her sweater. Fisherman knit. A soft creamy yellow. So wonderful a color with her hair. He must have
photographed her wearing this sweater at least a dozen times. He held it against his chest, buried his face in the softness
of its fiber. It was not weakness, this good-bye. Rather, it was a salute to the last of his lifetimes here on Earth, an affirmation
of all for which he had so dearly paid. The rebellion might have been a mistake, but not a foolish one. What the life of flesh
had meant to him, what Marian had meant to him, had to be acknowledged.

The
Fall
was a fall into time. The glory of imperfection. The possibility of change. The irony had lately occurred to him that he
might be more instrument than opponent—that the rebellion had been anticipated, an immutable part of the Plan. And he wondered
if his present mission to regain Heaven for the Fallen was less a continuation of war than the salvation of some principle
beyond his understanding.

God works in mysterious ways.

The thought brought an anger that shook his human shell—a shadow of the discontent that had driven the Fallen to defiance.
The rage of a cog that is all too conscious of the wheel.

He was tired of the present battle. Grateful that he’d succeeded with Samyaza. He had bet on his strength and had won. He
could retire from the field with honor, having left the campaign to one much greater than himself.

He returned the sweater to the shelf. Marian was truly lost. The bond that was flesh would soon be broken forever. They could
never meet again kind to kind.

But he was ready. Zavebe waited. He must return to her and begin the process that would strip away not her physical blindness
but the truer blindness that plagued her. He would send her fully awakened to the place between. Then he would join her to
wait together with the others he had sent before. Kasyade, Jeqon, Barakel. Asbeel, Rumel, Penemue. And the others whom Samyaza
would awaken before he, too, came in glory to lead them.

With the nose of his gun, Sakura tapped on the door of Lovett’s apartment. He waited. Dead silence. Backing away, with his
shoulder down, he rammed the solid expanse of wood. Once, twice. The third thrust caused the door to implode. For an instant
he stood in the deserted hallway, waiting for the sound of the falling door to die, for the throbbing in his shoulder to ease.

The dull morning was fading into afternoon, and a weak stream of light reflected through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting
the loft in pale blue shadow, glinting off the chrome of gym equipment. He stepped in. The living area was a single undivided
space. The furnishings were spare and modern, oversize to match the room’s dimensions. The only color or pattern was a pair
of matching Orientals on the hard-wood floor.

His eyes made a wide circle, settling on a large black-and-white photograph hung on one of the support walls. It was of a
nude woman who seemed to be dancing, her long hair swirling around her in a pale foglike mass. The dead wife? Killed in the
auto accident?

From someplace in his mind, he was aware of his feet padding across a section of one of the rugs, then the woodsy
knock-knock
of his shoes against bare floor. A small kitchen was set to the right. To the left, a squared-off partition. He moved toward
it, slowly snaking around its edge, gun drawn between his hands.

The bedroom’s interior was almost in complete darkness, shades blocking the outer windows. The bed was a bloated white mound,
too low to the floor for anyone to fit beneath. No closets. A single large chest. A bathroom wedged itself to the side. Pressing
against the wall, he flicked the shower curtain with the leveled.38. Empty.

He walked across the living room back toward the kitchen. A small pantry door was fitted against the short wall. He shifted
his gun to his right hand and swung the pantry door out. A tunnel of fluid blackness hit him. Instinctively, he stepped back.
Listened to the silence. His free hand reached out, connecting with a switch. He flipped the lever. Instantly the space filled
with red light. A drying line stretched out over him. Empty metal pans rested on a tiled counter. Bottles of
developing fluid lined up in neat rows. A couple of cameras, like abstract sculptures, stood on a shelf. No photographs.

He clicked off the darkroom light, closed the door, and moved out of the kitchen back into the living area. From across the
room the glass in the picture frame glinted dully. He moved toward the desk, abutting the back of the sofa. The photograph
was a five-by-seven color shot of the same woman in the large black-and-white portrait. In jeans and a sweater, under a bowl
of cloudless blue sky, with autumnal forest ablaze behind her, the woman smiled for a camera that clearly loved her. And just
inside the frame, the weathered shoulder of a large two-storied home. He turned the frame over and unhinged the back. In a
woman’s hand, at the bottom of the photograph, an inscription:
In the country.

He set the frame down and opened the center drawer. The usual clutter—pens, pencils, clips. He rummaged through paper but
found nothing that could help him. He opened a side drawer.

They were scattered like pieces of a child’s jigsaw puzzle, bright and colorful. All the snapshots were of her, taken that
same day, against the backdrop of turning trees. Except for one photograph, taken of a man sitting astride a motorcycle, the
shadow of a cap obscuring his face. And in the distance, against a flash of burnished leaves, its name just making it into
the frame—
Chatwell.

For a long moment he stared into the man’s face, the letters of the town’s name like runes thrown against the ground of his
consciousness, the red leaves burning a fire into his brain. He had always known that his soul was bruised by the full force
of his life in the city, by the brutality of the work he did. But he also understood that he endured because daily Hanae healed
him. It was as simple a fact as he could know. He could not live without her. He opened his jacket and tucked the photos inside
his breast pocket.

It was then he noticed it. At eye level, across the wide space of the room, a long screen situated against the wall that ran
at a right angle to the kitchen. The screen rested almost flush against the wall. It was surprisingly light and he was able
to move it easily. A blind door lay behind it. He raised his.38, reached out, and twisted open the door. Another door stared
back. A highly polished steel door, like
those fitted for walk-in refrigerated lockers. He reached with his free hand, feeling the door’s resistance. He pulled hard
and the grip popped.

Nothing human lay within, and he waited for the thick wall of refrigerated air he’d released to clear. There was shelving
on either side of the locker. Boxes wrapped in freezer paper lined the metallic racks. Beyond, to the rear and overhead, suspended
from aluminum poles were wings. Hung in pairs, they stirred in the dry frigid air.

Hanae opened her eyes to light. An explosion of light that left her exhilarated, fully sensible. Gone was the death-darkness.
And with it the crush of crippling fear. She placed her hand over her left breast. Her heart moved in a safe, slow, and steady
rhythm. She counted the measured beats, the accented-unaccented syllables, and numbered her pulse against her fingertips.
How easily her breaths came now. Her chest, a gentle sea of rising and falling inhalations and exhalations.

She closed her lids. The light remained, but she was no more. Where once there had been Hanae, a distinct and unique separateness,
there was
Kami.
No longer alone, a thing apart, but in the way of Shinto, part of the pure energy of all things. At one with the cushion
upon which she sat, at one with the fire and the floor. Joined to the walls and the door of the room so that they ceased to
form a prison against her. And in that same instant, joined to Jimmy. One with her husband in a completeness that her madness
had almost caused her to forget.

But he would not forget. Nor would he forsake her. She felt a smile come to her lips and savored the joy that brought it.
For she understood that beyond her confidence in the absolute goodness of his heart and mind, she could offer Jimmy the gift
of time. Time to find her. It was up to her to remain safe until he did.

She had returned to the bed when she heard a small noise from across the room. The sound of the door opening, and then the
soft padding of the flesh of his feet against the floor.

“Touch me … ,” Adrian said, taking her hands in his. “Like before.”

The skin of his face was as smooth as she remembered. But the planes were sharper now, so only the bone of his skull was left
to define him. The eyes had fallen deeper into their sockets.

“You are thinner,” she said, withdrawing her hands, making her voice calm.

“I have little appetite for food.” He laughed then. And she thought the sound, like the feel of him, bore an acuter thinness,
emanating from some airless place, resonating now through flesh as fragile as rice paper, bone as brittle as glass. There
existed now an uncharacteristic emptiness that was not there before, and it seemed to her that he was in the process of slowly
dissolving so that any moment he would simply cease to exist.

“Body and soul are one,” she said. “You cannot starve one and not starve the other.”

“What about Buddhist monks who fast for days?” He lowered himself to the edge of the bed. She felt the mattress give with
his weight. A wave of wet warmth hit her, and she realized that he, too, was naked.

“They feed on spiritual food.”

“Oh, Hanae … ,” he whispered, bending over so that his chest rubbed against her breasts, his thigh against her thigh. “This
body, this soul, you speak of, they are not one, but enemies who war.”

“Adrian, why?” Her voice kept gentle, without accusation. “Why are you doing this?”

“This is not meant to hurt you.”

“Taking me from my home hurts me, Adrian. This hurts me….” She turned her head away. Hard, this was hard. “Taiko …”

“Drugged. He will be all right.”

She turned back. “And Jimmy?”

“A most worthy adversary. But he cannot win.”

Then like a dark star piercing the landscape of light, the truth came. And she understood. Understood at last exactly who
this man was. Understood how carefully she must walk this dangerous path she had set for herself. How precious the gift of
time she was offering Jimmy.