City of Masks (26 page)

"What's going on? Is Lila all right?"

"I talked to her. She's fine. I assume. Nothing's going on. Nothing except I really wanted to see you. As I think must be evident. Man, I'd figured out something intelligent and hip to say, but I'll be goddamned if I can remember what it was!"

Relief flooded through Cree. She retrieved the equipment case and joined him at the edge of the gallery. Closer, she could see he was dressed in jeans and a gray sweatshirt. They stared at each other in the gray-blue streetlight glow. She was close enough to catch his scent, a clean sweaty smell only very slightly augmented with cologne, and she felt the magnetism stirring between them. He looked wide-eyed and unsettled, and Cree guessed she probably looked about the same. She'd had one of the longest, strangest, most difficult days she could remember, yet the prospect of being with Paul was attractive and energizing. The memory of her own cracked face in the mirror came back to her, and the determination to become something other than a ghost. The way he looked gave her a certain courage.

"One question," she said finally.

"Anything."

"Do you know anywhere to get something to eat this late? I'm absolutely starved."

He paused for just a heartbeat. Then he said, "I know just the place."

23

P
AUL'S APARTMENT WAS ON THE
third floor of a Creole-style town house on the far end of the French Quarter. Like the buildings adjoining it on either side, the tall, narrow building had a shabby-looking, flat facade that descended directly from roof to sidewalk, with wrought-iron balconies on the second and third floors. Paul opened a door on the right side and led Cree into a gangway that led straight back into the house. It ended at an interior courtyard, surrounded by high brick walls, open to the sky above and landscaped with flower beds and small trees. Exterior stairs led to galleries on the upper floors. A few scattered windows glowed and gently illuminated the greenery. It was lovely and strange, a tiny private oasis in the middle of the city.

"It's a condo," Paul told her. "Just bought the place about four months ago, and I'm doing some fixing up — you'll have to forgive the mess. But the kitchen is done, I can make you something good."

They went up the wooden staircase. From the third-floor gallery, Cree could look down into Paul's courtyard and the others on either side. This was the face of the French Quarter invisible from the streets, where the real lives of residents were conducted.

Leaning over the railing, Cree noticed a statue at the center of Paul's courtyard, only vaguely visible - a woman's pale form, smooth bare limbs and draped cloth.

"That's Psyche," Paul explained from behind her. "When the Realtor first brought me here and I saw her, I knew I had to buy this place. Given that I make my living studying her domain." She heard him unlock his apartment door.

Psyche, personification of the soul,
Cree was thinking.
Also the lover of Eros,
god of sexual love.

The thought put her suddenly on edge as Paul switched on lights and stood aside to let her into the apartment.

"These old places were mostly left to rot for a long time," Paul explained, "and back in the fifties the city was going to tear down pretty much the entire district. But then a bunch of civic-minded people began a movement to restore and preserve them. And thank God. When you get them fixed up, they're like nothing else. Let's start in front."

He led her through the kitchen to the front by means of a hallway that ran down one side of the apartment. The living room was gorgeous. Ceiling fans spun lazily high above. The streetside wall was lined with floor-to-ceiling French doors that opened to the balcony. Paul's taste in furniture and art was mostly modern, with a few Asian curios here and there, but it went well with the high ceilings, faux-finished moldings, battered but nicely refinished wooden floors, crackled plaster walls. It all came together in a style like nothing Cree had ever seen: not quite a Parisian apartment, or a Greenwich Village loft, or an antebellum Deep South parlor, but rather a little of each.

When Cree stopped to tap a knuckle on a xylophonelike instrument, Paul explained that it was from Bali, where he'd visited some years ago; the tarnished gong and parchment shadow puppets above the bookcase were also Balinese. They moved on into the hallway, where he opened a door to reveal a room under construction: bare split-lath walls, piles of broken plaster, sawhorses, plastic sheets, scattered tools. "The once and future master bedroom," he told her. "And here's the bathroom. And this's my office - not where I meet patients, God forbid, I run my practice from a suite downtown, this is just where I do my homework. The couch is a convertible, that's where I've been sleeping while the bedroom's a mess. I know it's not Beauforte House, but my daddy was a humble physician and he had six kids to divide his inheritance. Let's head back to the kitchen so I can make you something to eat."

The kitchen had new appliances but cabinets and counters that were apparently original. The track lighting, fine cutlery, and built-in wine rack showed that he'd lavished some money on the remodeling here. A photo above the sink showed Paul in a some tropical-looking place, naked but for a knee-length sarong. Cree gazed at the articulation of his chest and stomach muscles before realizing what she was doing and snapped her eyes away.

"I take it you're an accomplished cook?" she asked.

"Huh!" he snorted. "No, it's something I keep thinking I'd
like
to do but never quite get around to. I'm afraid I don't have some great culinary genius to astound you with. Sorry. But I'm pretty sure I can whip up something reasonably palatable and nutritious. What're you in the mood for?"

"Whatever's easy."

"Wine?"

"Wine, definitely."

What was easy was an eclectic meal of a good baguette, pate, mustard, some leftover jamb alaya, Greek olives, several cheeses, a bunch of grapes, and a bottle of burgundy. Paul set it all out on a big tray, but instead of bringing it over to the dining area, he carried it to a door at the far corner of the kitchen. Balancing the tray on one knee, he opened it to reveal a steep staircase, almost a ladder, that led up into darkness. When Cree gave him a questioning look, he said, "The other reason I bought this place. You go first, hold the upper door for me. This is a little tricky with a tray."

She went up. At the top of the stairs she found herself in a slope-ceilinged attic, its dimensions invisible in the dark, still stuffy from the heat of the day. A faint square of light drew her, and approaching it she entered a narrow roof dormer with a small door at its end. When she opened it she found herself outside in the city night. The dormer gave to a wooden deck built over the roof, which Paul had set up with a makeshift trellis, several planters full of growing things, and a teak table and chairs covered by a Cinzano umbrella. There were no stars visible, but the city's glow lit the hazy sky in every direction, and rows of bright windows defined several of the tall buildings downtown. Though it was Monday midnight, Cree could still hear the distant sound of a blues band from the direction of Bourbon Street. The varied peaks of nearby rooftops stretched away into darkness. The air had cooled considerably, but the roof still gave off some of the day's heat, making it perfectly comfortable.

Paul moved past her in the dim light to set the tray down. It clattered, the wine almost toppling, and as they both moved to catch it their bodies collided. Neither backed away from the contact. Without thinking about it Cree turned toward him, bringing her body against his, her arms going around him. One of his hands went to the bare skin at the back of her neck, the other slid into the incurve at her waist and found a fit there. Against her body she felt his breathing, a little quick from the climb up the stairs.

It happened so fast she was startled, but she just shut her eyes and felt the fascination of it. A man gave off heat, she realized, half surprised, as if she'd never known that fact. Her hands moved and found hard ridges of muscle where his back flared wide to the shoulders. The solidity of him seemed to give off gravity, too, and her body responded, falling toward him. They rocked side to side minutely as if they were dancing to each other's heartbeat. After a moment he turned his head slightly and put his lips to her ear. His warm breath tickled, and she thought he was going to whisper something, but instead he bit the rim of her ear —just with his lips, not a kiss at all but a way of tasting her or taking her a little into him.

In the dark, she felt vertigo. With the plummeting sensation came fear.

She pulled away, breathless. "Jeez. How much wine have I had?" she joked. "I'm dizzy already."

"None. But I know what you mean." He chuckled with her, but he'd heard her request for some time, a little distance. He let her go.

Cree took her arms back, though her hands were uncertain what to do.

They sat on either side of the table. Paul lit a couple of candle lanterns, poured the wine, and they clinked glasses. The wine was smooth and smoky. In the light, she could see the question in his eyes.

Why had she pulled away? A moment ago she was just free falling, and it was nice, it was . .
.fascinating.
This was what Joyce, Deirdre, anybody sane, would call a romantic situation. Soft rooftop air, the strange cityscape, good food, a handsome man, that undeniable charge of attraction and, yes, expectation. Two adults with that unspoken understanding that had been forged between them, by degrees, each time they met.

It should've been easy. It wasn't.

Cree found herself increasingly at war inside, wanting somehow to tell him, warn him, explain. Explain what? How unbalanced she was right now. How at odds this simple, sweet moment with nine years of habit. How long it had been.

"Weather's changing," Paul said, breaking what had turned into an awkward silence. "Supposed to get a couple of days of rain. This time of year, hard to believe, but it can be hot enough to boil crawfish one day, then turn truly nasty cold. I hope you brought sweaters and umbrellas with you."

"I'm from Seattle, remember?"

"Right. Of course. Where the biblical deluge never quite stopped." His smile flashed in the candlelight, and he tasted his wine. "You know, I've been thinking about what you do. On one level, I have this skepticism, I've told you that. But every time I think about what you've told me, I can see ways it makes sense."

"Such as?"

He sipped, looking over the rooftops. "In graduate school, I was fascinated with traditional healing disciplines, even wrote a paper on shamanism from a psychoanalytic perspective. I pointed out that all over the world, throughout history, healing traditions are remarkably consistent. I saw it firsthand in Bali, but you'll find the same basic ideas in Siberia or Central America or Congo. People with bad health or troubled circumstances go to the village shaman. To fix the problem, the shaman enters a special state of mind that allows him to make a journey to the underworld, where he intercedes on the patient's behalf with ghosts of the sufferer's ancestors or maybe spirits of nature. The affliction is always assumed to have a psychological as well as a physical element, and so does the cure. The shaman finds that some part of the afflicted person's soul is held hostage because he's offended some spirit by doing wrong in his life - there's some unfinished business. Say a son marries someone his mother disapproves of. Later, after the mother dies, he gets sick or his crops fail repeatedly. The shaman identifies his guilty feelings as the cause of his misfortunes, figures out an appropriate way for him to atone to her ghost. And it often works! Because the shaman allows the victim to have closure with the unfinished business. Same principle as psychoanalysis, just a different vocabulary!" He looked over the rim of his glass at Cree as if a little wary of her reaction. "But why am I telling
you
this? You're the modern-day shaman."

"I've observed the parallels. You're very insightful."

"So then I was thinking, how does your methodology compare with mine? And I realized yours has several advantages. Me, I see only the patient - I listen to his story, I probe, I ask questions. I accept the story, regardless of its literal truth, and help the patient formulate a constructive coping process. Conventional psychoanalysis is based on creating useful, therapeutic fictions, and I've never been comfortable with that . . . separation from objective reality. The issue of recovered memory you brought up is a perfect case in point. The patient may come to believe he was ritually abused by satanic parents, but if it's literally, objectively
not
factual,
it creates a damaging schism between the patient and the rest of the world. But you, you do research on the whole picture, so you have much more information at your disposal. You not only talk to the patient, but you also talk to family and friends, you look at patients' home environment and family history, you observe how they live, you see their relationships firsthand. Which allows you to be more . . . objective. More reality based." He looked surprised at himself and then added with a grin, "I can't believe I said that! If one accepts that there are such things as ghosts to begin with, I mean."

"It's really a more intuitive process, Paul. I get pretty far out there, by your standards. I know ghosts to be a literal reality. And some of my processes - I doubt you'd appreciate them all in the same light."

"That sounds like something of a warning — 'Keep back! I'm weirder than you think.'"

"Paul, I am for sure weirder than you think." She said it flippantly, but it reminded her of just how much there was to warn Paul Fitzpatrick away from. It wasn't just issues of scientific credibility, things like empathic identification with clients and telepathic communion with ghosts. It was personal.

"But I didn't hear you say, 'Keep back,' right?" he asked.

Cree didn't answer. She was starving, and yet she was too tense to eat. A pressure grew in her, something that had begun when she first met Paul. How could she ask Lila to brave her own depths if she herself wouldn't? Wasn't this the first step to becoming a living person again? But it was so huge. It would have to begin with Mike and expand into metaphysics and psychology and life after death and professional commitments, and there seemed no end and no way out. Going into it now would twist her up inside and imperil her process.

"So you
did
sort of say it," he prompted, disappointed.

The wind was cooling rapidly now, bringing with it a coarse mist and the scent of the wet Delta lands to the south.

"I don't want to get into my own convolutions right now. I'd rather get a little drunk. Enjoy the view, unwind in good company. Cut loose a little."