Mortal Love (8 page)

“I'm starting to think that was a bad idea, too. Listen—remember that Cramps song? ‘What's inside a girl? Somebody told me it's a whole other world—'”

“Good-bye, Nick.”

“Can't I talk you out of this?”

“No.”

“She'll just use you, Danny—trust me, I know.”

“I've never trusted you in my life, Hayward. Why would I start now?”

Nick's voice edged higher, pleading. “Danny, listen! I introduced you because . . . well, because I knew she'd like you. You're her type.”

“I thought
you
were her type,” Daniel said coldly. “That's what Sira told me.”

“I know. Sira said she spoke to you.” Nick sighed. “Look, Danny—I know what you're thinking, and it's not that. I'm not jealous. Or I'm not
only
jealous. I'll say this: I did think that if the two of you hooked up, I'd get to see more of her. That she'd be around.

“But now . . . well, it was a mistake. Larkin can be dangerous. She
is
dangerous. It always starts like this—she doesn't remember, is what it is. She's not looking at you. She thinks you're someone else. Something else.”

“I thought she thinks
she's
someone else,” Daniel retorted. “Or is that another of your pathological fictions? I'm seeing her tomorrow. It's not a big deal.”

“You're the one who's shouting.”

This was true. So Daniel said nothing: just sat, furious, and refused to give Nick the satisfaction of hanging up on him. Nick remained silent. Finally he said, “All right, Danny. You win. Can I come with you tomorrow?”

“
No!”

“Then promise me this, Danny—go see a movie or something. The Tate Modern, that's a good idea! But for God's sake don't have dinner with her, Daniel. Or lunch. Don't eat anything. Just promise me th—”

Daniel hung up and stood, feeling wide awake now and quite cheerful. He turned and gazed at the orchestrated chaos that was Nick's home: old pine and oak furniture from the West Country, old guitars, old gold records encased in Plexiglas frames. The World War I campaign desk where Nick did most of his writing. Notebooks, boxes of CDs, the original artwork for
Black Water White Rock
and
Sleeping with the Heroine.
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with collections of folklore and folk song, odd photographs and scribbled drawings, yellowing science-fiction paperbacks and books by the depressive women writers Nick favored—Jean Rhys, Laura Riding, Jane Bowles.

“Ha, ha,” said Daniel.

He had completely forgotten about the acorn. He wandered over to the bookshelves, picked up a photograph of himself and Nick, taken shortly after they'd first met. Daniel looked sweet-faced and about fifteen years old; he'd very recently graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism and was still flushed with delight over getting a job at the
Horizon
covering pop music. Nick was grinning lewdly and brandishing a joint the size of a zucchini; he had just finished a gig at the Bayou, the
Sleeping with the Heroine
tour. With his unkempt hair, Nepalese tunic, and knee-high suede boots, he looked very much the madman bard of the younger Daniel's imaginings. Behind the two of them, you could just make out the nightclub's brick façade and neon sign and the blurred shape of someone slipping through the door—a woman dressed like Nick in haute Celtic Twilight gear, head half turned toward the camera, her face indistinguishable from the smoke billowing from Nick's joint. Daniel turned the picture over, to read his own scrawl on the back.

A softly amazed smile flickered across his face.

April 29. That was today.

For just an instant, he looked almost exactly like the boy in the photograph. Then he replaced it on the shelf, shaking his head.

Remember me.
Back then he'd thought Nick Hayward was something close to divine. He'd even written an article to that effect for
Cream. Hayward plays an autoharp strung with his own sinews and broken bones, ragged fragments of love affairs gone bad and the metallic taste of too many mornings when the coke supply's run dry.

Daniel grimaced. He knew now that was all crap. Songwriting was work, just like writing was work. If Nick still thought otherwise, that was just self-indulgence.

And jealousy, too—what the fuck was Hayward doing, telling him not to see that woman? Daniel's grimace turned to a scowl. He ran his hand along the shelf and yanked out a book at random, opened it, and read.

He threw the book onto the floor and stalked to the window overlooking the High Street. This whole fucking sabbatical had been a misguided attempt at blowing on ashes, to move on to the next level, leaving his comfortable aerie above Connecticut Avenue, surrounded by his Bukowski first editions and vinyl picture disks, signed Caponigro photographs and Cremaster 3 screensaver.

But Daniel had no clear idea what the next level was supposed to
be.
In his wildest dreams, he doubted that a pop-culture study of Tristan and Iseult was enough to garner him a MacArthur Grant, or even a good review in the
Sunday Times.
And yet he knew he'd spend the rest of his life thinking he was a failure if he didn't strive for
something
more, even if he didn't know what that something was.

He stared down at Camden High Street, the insectile throngs clad in black and neon microfiber, mobile-phone antennae bristling as the crowd repeatedly coalesced, then dispersed, seeming to heed the dense interior static of a hive mind. A Humvee, a rare sight in the U.K., was parked in front of the Electric Ballroom, its black windows hiding whoever was inside—drug dealer, DJ, office drone. A girl wearing glass stiletto heels and a hat made of a satellite dish hawked glow necklaces and Dasani by the tube entrance while the shoe store across the street played a trip-hop cover of “She's Going Bald.” From the guest room came the soft voice of Daniel's computer, reminding him of the morning's interview, and an answering chime from one of Nick's Palm-Pilots.

He was living in the future he'd so gleefully projected twenty-five years before in one of his first columns for the
Horizon,
and he was bored stiff.

“Your dream of safety has disappeared,” Nick had remarked dryly when Daniel announced he was coming to stay in Camden Town, and yet everything around him now seemed nothing
but
a dream of safety. The Web had become a vast electrical cocoon, and he was trapped inside. He pulled the curtains shut, went into the guest room, checked his e-mail, and went to bed.

He couldn't sleep. His thoughts flashed relentlessly between Larkin and Nick, lit by memory of that strange green light he'd seen, or thought he'd seen, in Larkin's car. No, not light exactly, but not darkness or shadow either: “absence” was the word that came to him. He wished now that he hadn't hung up on Nick, wished he'd listened to whatever ridiculous reason his friend had cooked up to excuse his behavior.

La belle dame sans merci.

Should he have agreed to let Nick tag along with him in the morning?
She thinks you're someone else.

But who was she? He remembered her eyes, a tendril of dark hair pulled taut against her cheek. Should he call Nick after all?

He yawned: nah. His anxiety burned off like ash. In the morning he would not recall it. He pulled the covers over his head, adjusted his earplugs so as to drown out the trippy thrum of the High Street, and at long last fell asleep.

Larkin buzzed herself
in next morning. “I've got a key,” she shouted through the intercom. “Don't come down.”

He met her on the stairs, Daniel shrugging into his leather bomber jacket, Larkin shaking out an umbrella.

“It's really pissing out there.” She tossed her head, droplets of rain flying from her hair, then glanced dubiously at his trendy clogs. “Are you sure you're ready? Don't you want a hat? I'm double-parked.”

“Yes. No. Let's go.”

He ran after her into the street, folding himself in half to scrunch inside the Mini. Music blasted from the speakers, the title song from
Sleeping with the Heroine.
Without thinking, he turned it off as Larkin slid into the driver's seat. The car lurched forward, and Daniel knocked his head against the side window.

“Ow!” He turned to Larkin, rubbing his temple. “How long have you known Nick?”

She switched the music back on. “This was a good album. I've known Nick forever.”

“How long is forever?”

“Ages. Nick and I have a history, if that's what you mean.” She glanced at him, her eyes guileless. “Is it?”

He nodded. “And ... ?”

“I was fascinated by what he did. I've never been able to understand how it happens—writing songs. It seems . . .”

She shook her head. Her expression became implacable. “It's something I wish I could do. I wanted to help him with his work.”

“Really?” Daniel had once seen Nick kick a fan who'd offered him a suggestion on the chord changes in “White Rock.” Nick had mellowed since then, but not much. “How?”

“Folk-song stuff. I gave him some ballads back when he was with Dark Diamond.”

“Oh, so
you're
to blame for ‘Starry Skies and Long Good-byes.'”

“I thought Nick was your best friend.”

“Tragically, he is.”

“Then why do you give him such a hard time?”

“Do I?” Daniel thought about this, then shrugged. “I guess because things just always seem to come so easy to him.”

“Easy? I don't think it's easy to do what he does.”

“Yeah? Well, he should try meeting a deadline.”

“I thought you were on sabbatical now—no deadlines!” Larkin gave him a disconcerting smile. “Doing what you've always wanted to do . . . that's what Nick said anyway.”

“Nick doesn't know shit. Is this place in Soho, or what?”

“Bloomsbury. Hang on—”

The car veered into a side street so narrow it was practically a sidewalk. Daniel braced himself against the dashboard as they wound through alleys and cobblestone drives and past the ruins of an abandoned council estate, its shattered windows opening onto corridors where he glimpsed figures moving slowly toward each other, then away again, as though performing some grotesque gavotte; past trash tips and the backs of restaurants smelling of fenugreek and sour steam, emerging at last into a brick courtyard surrounded by heaps of rubble and a series of grim attached houses dating to the early 1800s. Rain sluiced around piles of broken brick and mortar, pooling in cloudy white puddles scummed with a livid chemical green. One building stood apart from the rest, a solitary relic of a slightly later era; it looked dazed and out of place, its mid-Victorian architecture a form of overdressing for its sentence in this bleak place. As the Mini pulled up beside its doorway, a rat humped from the shadows and began to swim across the poisonous green pool.

Daniel turned to Larkin. “So this is where Fagin lives now, eh?”

She shut off the motor and peered out. “Over there's Woburn Street. This is Saracen Court. And
that's
where we're going.”

She pointed to the door of the solitary building. It was painted dark red, the color of raw liver. Above it was a stone lintel carved with the words
PAYNIM HOUSE
1857. “Daniel? There's no point waiting for this to let up. . . .”

She jumped out and ran for the door. Daniel sat for another minute, staring gloomily at the rain, before unfolding himself from the Mini. He had just closed the car door when he heard a voice cry out, high and desperate.

“Marianne?”

Daniel turned, hunching his shoulders against the rain, and saw a girl staggering to her feet beside a pile of rubble. Young, maybe seventeen or eighteen, wearing flared jeans and platform trainers, her filthy blond dreadlocks matted against her skull. She was emaciated, her face bright red. “Marianne!” she shouted.

Daniel looked at Larkin. She paid the girl no attention whatsoever; just struggled to get a key into the door.

“
Marianne!”

The girl began to stumble across the courtyard. Daniel turned and ran to Larkin. “Hey—look, maybe this isn't such a great place—”

“Come on, come on,” Larkin muttered, then cried in triumph as the door swung open. She slipped inside, Daniel at her heels. He looked back to see the girl still racing toward them. The door slammed closed; there was a crescendo of sobs and curses, then weeping. Daniel stepped quickly into the center of the room.

It had a high-ceilinged foyer, flooded with aquamarine light from skylights of opalescent glass, their copper muntins green with age. There was a green marble floor whorled with dust and dead leaves, plaster walls verdigrised with rot, an oak taboret supporting a vase of dead parchment-colored roses. On the wall behind the taboret hung a tarnished plaque.

“Oh!” Larkin cried softly. She stooped to pick up something on the floor. A leaf, Daniel thought at first; but then she straightened and held it out to him. He cupped his hands to receive it.

A moth. “Is it alive?” he asked.

“Not anymore.”

It had blade-shaped wings, dusky blue-green; a crimson-furred thorax; faceted green eyes. Gently he touched its thorax, soft as down, then drew his hand to his face, sniffing tentatively. “That's weird. It smells like—apples?” He looked at Larkin. “Where did it come from?”

“From away.” She took it from him, walked over to the vase, and nestled the moth within the dead roses. There were others, green moths like handfuls of leaves scattered among the flowers. “They come here by mistake, they get trapped, and then they can't get out. I wish I could help them,” she added, and gave him a stricken look.