Imajica

‘He should be dead,’ she said. ‘His face was smashed up … it was a wonder he could even stand. Do you want sugar or milk?’

‘Maybe a dash of Scotch. Does Marlin drink?’

‘He’s not a connoisseur like you.’

Gentle laughed. ‘Is that how you describe me? The alcoholic Gentle?’

‘No. To tell you the truth, I don’t really describe you at all,’ she said, slightly abashed. ‘I mean, I’m sure I’ve mentioned you to Marlin in passing, but you’re … I don’t know … you’re a guilty secret.’

This echo of Kite Hill brought his hirer to mind.

‘Have you spoken to Estabrook?’ he said.

‘Why should I do that?’

‘He’s been trying to contact you.’

‘I don’t want to talk to him.’ She put his tea down on the table in the lounge, sought out the Scotch and set it beside the cup. ‘Help yourself,’ she said.

‘You’re not having a dram?’

‘Tea, but no whisky. My brain’s crazed enough as it is.’ She crossed back to the window, taking her tea. ‘There’s so much I don’t understand about all of this,’ she said. To start with: why are you here?’

‘I hate to sound melodramatic, but I really think you should sit down before we have this discussion.’

‘Just tell me what’s going on,’ she said, her voice tainted with accusation. ‘How long have you been watching me?’

‘Just a few hours.’

‘I thought I saw you following me a couple of days ago.’

‘Not me. I was in London until this morning.’

She looked puzzled at this. ‘So what do you know about this man who’s trying to kill me?’

‘He said his name was Pie’oh’pah.’

‘I don’t give a fuck what his name is,’ she said, her show of detachment finally dropping away. ‘Who is he? Why does he want to hurt me?’

‘Because he was hired.’

‘He was what?’

‘He was hired. By Estabrook.’

Tea slopped from her cup as a shudder passed through her.

‘To kill me?’ she said. ‘He hired someone to kill me? I don’t believe you. That’s crazy.’

‘He’s obsessed with you, Jude. It’s his way of making sure you don’t belong to anybody else.’

She drew the cup up to her face, both hands clutched around it, the knuckles so white it was a wonder the china didn’t crack like an egg. She sipped, her face obscured. Then, the same denial, but more flatly: ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘He’s been trying to speak to you to warn you. He hired this man, then changed his mind.’

‘How do you know all of this?’ Again, the accusation.

‘He sent me to stop it.’

‘Hired you too?’

It wasn’t pleasant to hear it from her lips, but yes, he said, he was just another hireling. It was as though Estabrook had set two dogs on Judith’s heels - one bringing death, the other life - and let fate decide which caught up with her first.

‘Maybe I will have some booze,’ she said, and crossed to the table to pick up the bottle.

He stood to pour for her but his motion was enough to stop her in her tracks, and he realized she was afraid of him. He handed her the bottle at arm’s length. She didn’t take it.

‘I think maybe you should go,’ she said. ‘Marlin’ll 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.

CHAPTER EIGHT

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 -’

‘- because if I see your face, I swear -’

‘Can I speak to Jude?’

‘- Judith’s not -’

‘I’m on the other line,’ Jude said.

‘Judith, put down the phone! You don’t want to be talking with this scum.’

‘Calm down, Marlin.’

‘You heard her, Mervin. Calm down.’

Marlin slammed down the receiver.

‘Suspicious, is he?’ Gentle said.

‘He thinks this is all your doing.’

‘So you told him about Estabrook?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘You’re just going to blame the hired hand, is that it?’

‘Look, I’m sorry about some of the things I said. I wasn’t thinking straight. If it hadn’t been for you maybe I’d be dead by now.’

‘No maybe about it,’ Gentle said. ‘Our friend Pie meant business.’

‘He meant something,’ she replied, ‘but I’m not sure it was murder.’

‘He was trying to smother you, Jude.’

‘Was he? Or was he just trying to hush me? He had such a strange look

‘I think we should talk about this, face to face,’ Gentle said. ‘Why don’t you slip away from lover-boy for a latenight drink? I can pick you up right outside your building. You’ll be quite safe.’

‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I’ve got packing to do. I’ve decided to go back to London tomorrow.’

Was that planned?’

‘No. I’d just feel more secure if I was at home.’

‘Is Mervin going with you?’

‘It’s Marlin. And no he isn’t.’

‘More fool him.’

‘Look, I’d better go. Thanks for thinking of me.’

‘It’s no hardship,’ he said. ‘And if you get lonely between now and tomorrow morning

‘I won’t.’

‘You never know. I’m at the Omni. Room 103. There’s a double bed.’

‘You’ll have plenty of room then.’

‘I’ll be thinking of you,’ he said. He paused, then added: ‘I’m glad I saw you.’

‘I’m glad you’re glad.’

‘Does that mean you’re not?’

‘It means I’ve got packing to do. Goodnight, Gentle.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Have fun.’

He did what little packing of his own he had to do, then ordered up a small supper: a club sandwich, ice-cream, bourbon and coffee. The warmth of the room after the icy street and its exertions made him feel sluggish. He undressed, and ate his supper naked in front of the television, picking the crumbs from his pubic hair like lice. By the time he got to the ice-cream he was too weary to eat, so he downed the bourbon - which instantly took its toll - and retired to bed, leaving the television on in the next room, its sound turned down to a soporific burble.

His body and his mind were about their different businesses. The former, freed from conscious instruction, breathed, rolled, sweated and digested. The latter went dreaming. First, of Manhattan served on a plate, sculpted in perfect detail. Then of a waiter, speaking in a whisper, asking if sir wanted night; and of night coming in the form of a blueberry syrup, poured from high above the plate, and falling in viscous folds upon the streets and towers. Then, Gentle walking in those streets, between those towers, hand in hand with a shadow, the company of which he was happy to keep, and which turned when they reached an intersection, and laid its feather finger upon the middle of his brow, as though Ash Wednesday was dawning.

He liked the touch, and opened his mouth to lightly lick the ball of the shadow’s hand. It stroked the place again. He shuddered with pleasure, wishing he could see into the darkness of this other, and know its face. In straining to see, he opened his eyes, body and mind converging once again. He was back in his hotel room, the only light the flicker of the television, reflected in the gloss of a half-open door. Though he was awake the sensation continued, and to it was added sound: a milky sigh that excited him. There was a woman in the room.

‘Jude?’ he said.

She pressed her cool palm against his open mouth, hushing his enquiry even as she answered it. He couldn’t distinguish her from the darkness, but any lingering doubt that she might belong to the dream from which he’d risen was dispatched as her hand went from his mouth to his bare chest. He reached up in the darkness to take hold of her face and bring it down to his mouth, glad that the murk concealed the satisfaction he wore. She’d come to him. After all the signals of rejection she’d sent out at the apartment - despite Marlin, despite the dangerous streets, despite the hour, despite their bitter history - she’d come, bearing the gift of her body to his bed.

Though he couldn’t see her, the darkness was a black canvas, and he painted her there to perfection, her beauty gazing down on him. His hands found her flawless cheeks. They were cooler than her hands, which were on his belly now, pressing harder as she hoisted herself over him. There was everywhere in their exchange an exquisite synchronicity. He thought of her tongue, and tasted it; he imagined her breasts, and she took his hands to them; he wished she would speak, and she spoke (oh, how she spoke), words he hadn’t dared admit he’d wanted to hear.

‘I had to do this …’ she said.

‘I know. I know.’

‘Forgive me …’

‘What’s to forgive?’

‘I can’t be without you, Gentle. We belong to each other, like man and wife.’

With her here, so close after such an absence, the idea of marriage didn’t seem so preposterous. Why not claim her now, and forever?

‘You want to marry me?’ he murmured.

‘Ask me again another night,’ she replied.

‘I’m asking you now.’

She put her hand back upon that anointing place in the middle of his brow. ‘Hush,’ she said. ‘What you want now you might not want tomorrow

He opened his mouth to disagree, but the thought lost its way between his brain and his tongue, distracted by the small circular motions she was making on his forehead. A calm emanated from the place, moving down through his torso and out to his fingertips. With it, the pain of his bruising faded. He raised his hands above his head, stretching to let bliss run through him freely. Released from aches he’d become accustomed to, his body felt new-minted; gleaming invisibly.

‘I want to be inside you,’ he said.

‘How far?’

‘All the way.’

He tried to divide the darkness and catch some glimpse of her response, but his sight was a poor explorer and returned from the unknown without news. Only a flicker from the television, reflected in the gloss of his eye and thrown up against the blank darkness, lent him the illusion of a lustre passing through her body, opaline. He started to sit up, seeking her face, but she was already moving down the bed, and moments later he felt her lips on his stomach, and then upon the head of his cock, which she took into her mouth by degrees, her tongue playing on it as she went, until he thought he would lose control. He warned her with a murmur, was released and a breath later swallowed again.

The absence of sight lent potency to her touch. He felt every motion of tongue and tooth in play upon him, his prick particularized by her appetite, becoming vast in his mind’s eye until it was his body’s size: a veiny torso and a blind head lying on the bed of his belly wet from end to end, straining and shuddering, while she, the darkness, swallowed him utterly. He was only sensation now, and she its supplier, his body enslaved by bliss, unable to remember its making or conceive of its undoing. God, but she knew how he liked to be pleasured, taking care not to stale his nerves with repetition, but cajoling his juice into cells already brimming, until he was ready to come in blood, and be murdered by her work, willingly.

Another skitter of light behind his eye broke the hold of sensation, and he was once again entire - his prick its modest length - and she not darkness but a body through which waves of iridescence seemed to pass. Only seemed, he knew. This was his sight-starved eyes’ invention. Yet it came again, a sinuous light sleeking her, then going out. Invention or not it made him want her more completely, and he put his arms beneath her shoulders, lifting her up and off him. She rolled over to his side, and he reached across to undress her. Now that she was lying against white sheets her form was visible, albeit vaguely. She moved beneath his hand, raising her body to his touch.

‘… Inside you …’ he said, rummaging through the damp folds of her clothes.

Her presence beside him had stilled; her breathing lost its irregularity. He bared her breasts; put his tongue to them as his hands went down to the belt of her skirt, to find that she’d changed for the trip, and was wearing jeans. Her hands were on the belt, almost as if to deny him. But he wouldn’t be delayed or denied. He pulled the jeans down around her hips, feeling skin so smooth beneath his hands it was almost fluid; her whole body a slow curve, like a wave about to break over him.

For the first time since she’d appeared she said his name, tentatively, as though in this darkness she’d suddenly doubted he was real.

‘I’m here,’ he replied. ‘Always.’

‘This is what you want?’ she said.

‘Of course it is. Of course,’ he replied, and put his hand on her sex.

This time the iridescence, when it came, was almost bright, and fixed in his head the magic of her crotch, his fingers sliding over and between her labia. As the light went, leaving its afterglow on his blind eyes, he was vaguely distracted by a ringing sound, far off at first but closer with every repetition. The telephone, damn it! He did his best to ignore it, failed, and reached out to the bedside table where it sat, throwing the receiver off its cradle and returning to her in one graceless motion. The body beneath him was once again perfectly still. He climbed on top of her and slid inside. It was like being sheathed in silk. She put her hands up around his neck, her fingers strong, and raised her head a little way off the bed to meet his kisses. Though their mouths were clamped together he could hear her saying his name -‘… Gentle? Gentle…? - with the same questioning tone she’d had before. He didn’t let memory divert him from his present pleasure, but found his rhythm; long, slow strokes. He remembered her as a woman who liked him to take his time. At the height of their affair they’d made love from dusk to dawn on several occasions; toying and teasing, stopping to bathe so they’d have the bliss of working up a second sweat. But this was an encounter that had none of the froth of those liaisons. Her fingers were digging hard at his back, pulling him on to her with each thrust. And still he heard her voice, dimmed by the veils of his self-consumption:

‘Gentle? Are you there?’

‘I’m here,’ he murmured.

A fresh tide of light was rising through them both, the erotic becoming a visionary toil as he watched it sweep over their skin, its brightness intensifying with every thrust.

Again she asked him: ‘Are you there?’

How could she doubt it? He was never more present than in this act; never more comprehending of himself than when buried in the other sex.

‘I’m here,’ he said.

Yet she asked again, and this time, though his mind was stewed in bliss, the tiny voice of reason murmured that it wasn’t his lady who was asking the question at all, but the woman on the telephone. He’d thrown the receiver off the hook, but she was haranguing the empty line, demanding he reply. Now he listened. There was no mistaking the voice: it was Jude. And if Jude was on the line, who the fuck was he fucking?

Whoever it was, she knew the deception was over. She dug deeper into the flesh of his lower back and buttocks, raising her hips to press him deeper into her still, her sex tightening around his cock as though to prevent him from leaving her unspent. But he was sufficiently master of himself to resist, and pulled out of her, his heart thumping like some crazy locked up in the cell of his chest.

‘Who the hell are you? he yelled.

Her hands were still upon him. Their heat and their demand, which had so aroused him moments before, unnerved him now. He threw her off, and started to reach towards the lamp on the bedside table. She took hold of his erection as he did so, and slid her palm along the shaft. Her touch was so persuasive he almost succumbed to the idea of entering her again, taking her anonymity as carte blanche and indulging in the darkness every last desire he could dredge up. She was putting her mouth where her hand had been, sucking him into her. He regained in two heart-beats the hardness he’d lost.

Then the whine of the empty line reached his ears. Jude had given up trying to make contact. Perhaps she’d heard his panting, and the promises he’d been making in the dark. The thought brought new rage. He took hold of the woman’s head and pulled her from his lap. What could have possessed him to want somebody he couldn’t even see? And what kind of whore offered herself that way? Diseased? Deformed? Psychotic? He had to see. However repulsive, he had to see!

He reached for the lamp a second time, feeling the bed shake as the harridan prepared to make her escape. Fumbling for the switch, he brought the lamp off its perch. It didn’t smash, but its beams were cast up at the ceiling, throwing a gauzy light down on the room below. Suddenly fearful she’d attack him, he turned without picking the lamp up, only to find that the woman had already claimed her clothes from the snarl of sheets and was retreating to the bedroom door. His eyes had been feeding on darkness and projections for too long, and now, presented with solid reality, they were befuddled. Half concealed by shadow the woman was a mire of shifting forms - face blurred, body smeared, pulses of iridescence, slow now, passing from toes to head. The only fixable element in this flux was her eyes, which stared back at him mercilessly. He wiped his hand from brow to chin in the hope of sloughing the illusion off, and in these seconds she opened the door to make her escape. He leapt from the bed, still determined to get past his confusions to the grim truth he’d coupled with, but she was already halfway through the door, and the only way he could stop her was to seize hold of her arm.