Chapter Twenty-Six
“The Lessons of History”

•

9:10 am
Hiawatha Towers

The phone continued to ring.

"Would you get that?" said Lisa. She was bent over one knee on the kitchen floor, picking gingerly at the jagged shards of broken ceramic, her bare feet tucked carefully under the loose fabric of her bathrobe. Jesus, what a mess. Broken vase everywhere, and water spilled all over the floor, and you really would think, wouldn’t you, that given this situation, what a normal person would do would be to kneel down beside her and help out, rather than just standing there gaping like a fish on ice? You would think that, wouldn’t you? Especially when said person was wearing shoes, while the person actually doing all the work was cornered barefoot in her own fucking kitchen? Surely this was not too much to ask. Even Jack, Lisa thought—and her hands shook slightly—even Jack, who had not really been known for his normal reactions to things, even he probably would have managed that much, or at the very least he would have gone by now to answer the fucking—

The phone rang again.

"Shelby," Lisa snapped. "Would you get the phone, please."

"I..." Shelby whispered. "I..."

Lisa glanced up in annoyance. Shelby was still just standing there, wide-eyed, both of her hands pressed flat against her abdomen as if she were about to be sick.

"I’m a little busy here," said Lisa.

"I..." Shelby gasped. "I have to go."

"What?"

"I have to go!" Shelby knelt beside her backpack, rummaging wildly in it, then hoisted it on one shoulder still half-unzipped—and half-empty, too, of course, since her crap was strewn all over the apartment—and backed to the door. "I have to go!" she cried and, throwing the door open, fled. Lisa could hear the rubber soles of her sneakers squeaking on the cheap linoleum of the hallway as she pounded for the stairs, and then the phone rang again, and the dull throbbing ache which had settled behind her eyelids ratcheted up into a screaming drill-like whine.

"Shit," she said. She straightened, eyed the broken shards on the floor nervously, and then leapt for the hallway, knowing, just knowing, that she was going to end up with some dagger-sharp fragment of Jack’s cat vase embedded in her foot when she landed—but instead, of course, she cleared the mess by so many feet that she collided painfully with the blank wall facing the non-door into the too-small kitchenette of her too-small apartment in far-too-small Herschberg, Minnesota.

"Shit," she said again, stumbling her way into the living room, knowing, just knowing, that by the time she picked up the receiver whoever it was would have hung up, because that was just the way of it with telephones—but once again, she was wrong. There was breathing on the other end of the line.

"Yes," she snapped. "Hello?"

"The Sun has entered the sign of the Archer," the voice on the other end of the line said.

"What?" Lisa massaged her aching neck, as her headache subsided into a wave of dull nausea—just like it does every morning, she thought wearily. Just like it does every goddamned time Shelby leaves the room. "Who is this?"

"Where is Bitsumi?"

"God damn it. Look, I’ve told you before. Jack’s been dead for a week now. I don’t know where you got this number, but please stop calling it. He doesn’t live here, and he never did." She slammed the phone down and sat at her table, clenching her teeth against her rising gorge, waiting for the nausea to pass.

I really need to see a doctor about this, she thought. This is not normal. The headaches, the nausea. And the memory lapses. Wouldn’t want to forget about those now, would we? Oh, no. There was something very wrong here, and there had been ever since she had taken up with Shelby. Perhaps it was some kind of allergy, an allergy to some perfume or incense or something that Shelby...

Uh-huh, an unpleasant little voice sneered in the back of her mind. Yeah. So tell me something here, Morowitz. If this is an allergy, then why does it always hit you when she goes away? Especially after you’ve been with her for a while? Maybe you can answer that one for me, because you know what I think? I think you’re full of shit, is what I think.

Lisa shook her head and rose from the table, shuffling to the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee. She stared dully at the shatter of broken ceramic on the floor, trying to remember back.

Did I really, she thought—and her hand rose to her still-aching right temple—did I really forget that Jack was dead?

She opened her mouth as if to speak, then shook her head again, more quickly this time.

Lacunae, she thought. This text is riddled with lacunae.

She fetched a pair of slippers from the bedroom and a dustpan and broom from the closet and set to sweeping up the mess, jerking the bristles across the linoleum with short, choppy strokes that served only to send the smaller fragments of broken vase skittering underneath the refrigerator and into the spaces beneath the cabinets, and thinking rather inexplicably (but then, that smarmy little voice sniggered, there really hasn’t been anything explicable about your thoughts at all lately, has there?) about her advisee, Roberts-comma-Roberta-parenthesis-Bobbi-endparenthesis—not ordinarily a problem student, thankgod thankgod—who had come to see her at the very tail end of her office hours yesterday, come to plead for an extension or an incomplete or an intercession with one of her English professors or something—who cared what, really? It was always the same with the students. They always wanted something from you, always looking for a weakness, always trying to get an edge, always poised to spring, marking you down with their cold beady little eyes as a pushover the instant you so much as smiled at them; give them an inch, they take a mile; invite one over for pizza and the next thing you know, she’s moved into your apartment, eating your food and drinking your drink and calling you love and messing with your mind...

Lisa shook her head. No. That really wasn’t the point. The point was that she had known, of course, perfectly well what was wrong with Roberts-comma-Roberta. She had noticed the way the girl had always acted around that shitty little Feinstein kid—always a bit too quick to laugh at his jokes, always a bit too quick to seek his approval for her own—and it was a pity, really, that her job was not actually to advise her students, because she had some choice advice that she could impart to Roberts-comma-Roberta, if only it were really her place to do so. Advice like "Stand up straight, for Christ’s sake!" Advice like "Why don’t you buy yourself some decent clothes?" Advice like "If you can’t be a flirt, baby, then be a bitch." Advice like "Make them fear you. Size is power—or it can be, if you play it right." Good advice. Helpful advice. Advice that would, however, land her straight into disciplinary proceedings, or at the very least a little chat with that bastard Geltman about appropriate subjects for discussion between students and their faculty advisors.

But no. That wasn’t the point, either. The point here was Roberts-comma-Roberta’s red-rimmed eyes and puffy face and listless demeanor. The point here was: that is the way you are supposed to look. That is the way you are supposed to behave. When somebody dies.

Lisa reached down and plucked the orchid out from the center of the breakage now neatly piled in the center of the kitchen floor. She held it by the stem, twirling it slowly between her fingers, trying to come up with some reaction approximating grief, but it was just no good.

It’s just too much, she thought. How am I supposed to mourn the man? It’s not as if I ever really knew him. The man I knew, she thought, the man I knew would never have run off with a graduate student. Jesus, he never would have run off with anyone, but least of all a graduate student. Least of all a male graduate student. He had known how to be politic about it, but still, the man had been a homophobe.

Or maybe, she amended, a hard mean smile crossing her face as she remembered that one dinner date they had shared with Shelby, remembered how Shelby had obviously thought it necessary or appropriate or something to dress up for the event, remembered the little black dress she had worn and the way that it had showcased those soft helium-balloon tits of hers, remembered how Jack had seemed completely incapable of looking the woman in the eyes when he had talked to her, and how deeply embarrassing that had been, and the way that Shelby had met her own eyes over the table with that frank, appraising look that said: "So just what is a great woman like you doing with this pathetic loser, anyway?" —maybe, Lisa thought, just maybe that homophobia had only been held in reserve for cute little undergraduate dykes. Cute little undergraduate dykes like Shelby, who would never, not in a million years, give someone like Jack so much as the time of day.

She’s good, too, Jack, Lisa thought, discovering that she was now shaking, literally shaking with rage. She’s really good. That first night? I screamed when I came; she is twice the man you ever were and twice the woman you’ll ever have, and just what the fuck did you think you were doing getting yourself killed before I had the chance to share that with you anyway, you cheating lying little fuck? You weren’t supposed to die, you shithead. I wasn’t finished getting back at you yet.

Lisa let out a long shaky breath. Son of a bitch. Just how long had he been screwing her graduate student, anyway? How many days, weeks, months of eating her food and drinking her coffee and sleeping in her goddamned bed? She thought back, searching for signs. He had certainly been worried about something. He had been stressed, nervous; he hadn’t been sleeping well. But then, he had just been like that. Unhappy. Because that had been the entire point, hadn’t it? The reason that a great woman like her had been with a pathetic loser like Jack in the first place? It wouldn’t have done, after all, to have had an affair with a happy tenured professor, a successful one, now, would it? No. It would not have. That would have defeated the entire purpose.

No, she had wanted someone who was established, and tenured, and respected, and utterly utterly miserable, and that was just what she had found. She had found someone who hated his job even more than she did. "You have no idea," he would tell her, late at night, when he got into those confessional moods of his that always annoyed her so much, "no idea, Lisa, I mean none, the kind of...bullshit that you have to put up with in the sciences. You worry about publish or perish?" he would say. "Jesus, that’s a cakewalk compared to what you need to do to get a fucking grant these days." "You know what a scientist is?" he would tell her, as she willed him just to shut the hell up and let her get some sleep already. "It’s a whore, Lisa. I’m a whore for sale to the highest bidder." "Forget tenure," he would tell her. "What the hell do you want tenure for? What good has it ever done me?" And "You’re lucky," he would say. "You’re a historian. You get to keep your principles for as long as you want them." And...

And...and yes. And that had been just what she had wanted to hear, and she had found just the right person to tell it to her, and it had been worth it, she supposed, but still, she thought, all the same, she thought, she had been doing the man a favor, for Christ’s sake, a guy like that with a great woman like her, a great woman like her who really—let’s face the cold, hard facts here, shall we?—who really could have done better, a whole lot better, a whole fuck of a lot better than Jack Bitsumi, and the man had not, she concluded angrily, he had absolutely not been supposed to wind up ditching her for her own graduate student. That had not been part of the fucking deal.

And I don’t really believe it anyway, she concluded wearily, sweeping the pile of ceramic into the dustpan and tossing it into the trash along with the orchid. I can’t even bring myself to believe that it happened. It really just isn’t the sort of thing that Jack would do.

Lisa poured herself a cup of coffee and shuffled back to the living room, sipping. She could, she supposed, just manage to believe in Jack developing a sudden passion for a boy half his age. He had, after all, been unhappy. Discontent, disillusioned, dispirited. And middle-aged. You could make a sort of Death In Venice case for such a thing happening; you could believe it as a peculiar manifestation of a mid-life crisis. Running off to Alaska? Well, yes. All right. By the same token, she supposed that she could just manage to swallow that one. There was a certain romance to Alaska; she could imagine that it might have held a certain seductive glamour for someone like Jack. Maybe he had happy boyhood memories of Jack London stories, White Fang or something.

But there was one thing that she could not believe, and that was that Jack could possibly have died in a spectacular plane wreck. It was simply impossible to imagine. She could just as soon imagine Jack parachuting into occupied Berlin, or Jack riding a horse, or Jack swinging through the jungle on vines like Tarzan. There were things that Jack simply Did Not Do, and plummeting to his doom on an airplane was one of them.

What in God’s name are you thinking? Lisa asked herself then. Are you a historian or aren’t you? You know better than that. This isn’t tragedy, where the things that happen to people happen to them because they are the dramatically appropriate things to have happen to them. This is history. And if history has one lesson to teach us, it is that all too often, the things that happen to people are the wrong things. Things just happen sometimes. People wind up in the wrong place at the wrong time for all the wrong reasons, and then the wrong things happen to them, and sometimes they deal with it and sometimes they shatter like glass, but history doesn’t care either way. You know that. They don’t call a plane crash an "accident" for the hell of it, you know. They call it that because it doesn’t care who it happens to. It just plain happens. So what is all this shit about it being something that Jack Wouldn’t Do?

The role of the historian, Lisa thought, as she finished her coffee and rose to put the cup in the sink, the role of the historian is to pretend that history is tragedy, to look at the events as they have occurred and to try to put together some reason for them to have happened that way, some reason that not only makes sense, but that also satisfies a certain human need: a need for drama and meaning, a need for moral and purpose. Historians are liars who use hindsight to their own advantage. But don’t you go believing in the lie, now, Morowitz, she told herself sternly. Don’t you dare. Because once you actually start believing in the lies that you tell, you are finished as a historian.

She turned the faucet to rinse out her mug, then frowned as nothing happened. Yet another thing to bitch at the super about. She rolled her eyes and poured herself another cup of coffee, thinking: and you were doing so well there for a while!

She smiled faintly. Yes, she had been, hadn’t she? She’d managed to get Jack in bed with Norbert, and she’d managed to get him to Alaska, so why was she balking at getting him to go down in the plane?

"History is an art which must not neglect the known facts." Bernard Berenson had written that, and he had been right, and it was a known fact that Bitsumi had been fool enough to get on a plane doomed to crash in the tundra, so why couldn’t she just accept it and move on?

Because it’s not right, she thought. It’s not right because...

Lisa closed her eyes and thought. About Jack. His insecurities, his neuroses, his habit of imposing his self-flagellating monologues on her late at night, when she was trying to sleep. Telling her all sorts of things to which she simply had no response, because the only possible response—the response that at times he seemed to actively crave—would have been: "Yes, Jack. You’re right. You are an utterly worthless human being. Now go to sleep." God, he could be so depressing sometimes, Jack could, with his tales of woe. So fucking pathetic. "The other kids used to pick on me, Lisa." "My students don’t even pretend to listen to my lectures, Lisa." "My graduate students won’t pull their own weight, Lisa." "Even my mother has contempt for me, Lisa." "I had a goldfish once, Lisa—and it died." I mean, Jesus fucking—

Lisa took a deep breath and opened her eyes.

"...I mean," Jack had whispered to her, one night, when she had been half asleep and really wanting to get all the way there, "do have any idea what that’s like? To hear that tone in your mother’s voice—your own mother, Lisa—and to know, to know exactly the look that must be on her face as she’s speaking, that look of—"

"Jack," Lisa had moaned. "For God’s sake. It’s a phobia. It’s not a personal fucking failing. Go to sleep." Although of course, really, she thought, it damn well was a personal failing, and a pretty major one at that. Fear of flying was one thing, and fear was human, but there were sedatives, and there were therapists, and there was even hypnosis for that sort of thing, and...well, and really! If she’d been Jack’s mother, she would have been pretty pissed off as well. Because there might be a few good excuses for missing your own father’s funeral, but among them was not the lame-ass whining claim that you had simply been—

"Too terrified to get on the plane," she said out loud. She wrapped her fingers tightly around her coffee mug.

Historians, she thought. Historians can only do so much.

We can do a lot. We can twist the facts to serve our own purposes. We can de-emphasize the details that don’t serve our themes, and we can stress the ones we want our readers to pay attention to. We can twist, and we can turn; we can make black look like white and white look like black; we can forge the random events of time into tragedy or into comedy or into anything we damn well please. But history is an art which must not neglect the known facts, and while I can turn whatever it is that Shelby does to my mind when she’s around into an allergy, and I can turn my attraction to her into a revenge strategy, and I can even turn Jack Bitsumi into fucking Aschenbach from Death In Venice if that’s what I need to do to make things fit, if that’s what it takes, then—yes. I can do all that.

But there is one thing that I cannot do, Lisa thought.

I cannot make it feasible that Jack ever stepped on that plane. Because I don’t care how deeply in love he might have thought himself to be, he just never would have been able to bring himself to do it.

She sat, motionless, no longer even noticing her rapidly-cooling coffee, thinking about what Shelby had told her just the night before. About some killer hallucinogen that Jack had been working on. About some government documents that Shelby had gone all the way to Minneapolis to read. And she thought about those peculiar phone calls that she’d been getting lately. About the fact that Shelby was probably at this very moment in the lab, still trying to figure out just what Jack had been doing with his carbon chains...

There was a knock on the door.

Lisa froze in place. Then, very slowly, she put her coffee cup down on the end table. She rose from the couch and tightened the belt of her bathrobe. She opened the door.

"What is it?" she asked. Agents Johnson and Johnson smirked back at her.

"Doctor Morowitz," Agent Johnson said. The Hispanic Johnson. "I wonder if you could spare a few moments."

•

 

10:20 am
The Fig and Bole

The Fig and Bole was unusually crowded, even for a Saturday morning. Bobbi shouldered her way past the dying ferns which dangled from every conceivable hook and nook and nail, turned sideways to edge between two tables, ducked under a dusty macramé planter, currently empty of vegetation, and returned to her seat. Pile slid over to make room for her at the booth.

"All right?" he asked. She nodded and squeezed her way into the too-small space between table and bench. The table, she noticed, was pushed closer to her and Pile’s side than it was to Donald’s and Barry’s and Annabelle’s, but she wasn’t willing to draw attention to herself by shoving it back, so she merely seated herself at an awkward angle, allowing her legs to drift out into the aisle.

Pile spared her one last glance, then returned to his bible. Where could it be? He’d tried Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs, and Psalms, and all four of the gospels, but he hadn’t found it in any of them. Maybe the Book of Job? He leafed irritably, wondering why it was that holy books always seemed to be printed on tissue paper.

"...just causing trouble for its own sake," Donald was saying. "I mean, if there’s even a chance that there’s something dangerous in the water, then obviously people need to be protected from that, don’t they?" He looked around the table for confirmation. "I mean, don’t they?"

"Whatever," said Barry, which was pretty much Pile’s feeling on the subject as well. Donald had been going on about this ever since Alison and Sam had got all fired up about organizing their protest and left them in charge of the van.

Bobbi reached across the table for a sugar packet. She turned it over and over in her hands.

"Did..." she began. "Did anyone else..." She swallowed. "In the van," she said. "Before we hit the roadblock. I keep thinking that I might..." She ripped open the sugar packet and dumped its contents into the ashtray. "I thought," she said. "I thought I saw..."

Pile looked up sharply from his bible. "What?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Nothing."

So she saw him too, Pile thought. He wouldn’t have expected that. After all, wasn’t Leif his own cross to bear now? And Trudy too, of course. My sin, he thought. My sin, my guilt, my fault. Mine. Perhaps only the guilty could see them. Perhaps she hadn’t seen Leif at all. Perhaps she had seen Jill.

He glanced again at Bobbi. She was ripping tiny pieces off of the empty sugar packet now, tearing it to bits with her nimble fingers. Her face seemed swollen—not from crying, Pile thought, but from a lack of crying, from willing herself not to cry, as if all of the tears she had left unshed were building up in there somehow like a toxin, bloating her.

The wages of sin, he thought. But God, what beautiful skin she has.

"And it doesn’t have anything to do with the Middle East, either," continued Donald, in a slightly aggrieved tone. "So what’s all this blood for oil stuff? I don’t get it."

"It is kind of weird, isn’t it?" Annabelle agreed. "On the one hand, she’s supposed to be so upset about them being here, but on the other hand, I’ve never seen her so excited. Like a little kid, you know? On Christmas morning."

"Don’t be too hard on her," said Bobbi. "I mean, the National Guard? In Herschberg? For Alison, that’s like, I don’t know. A once in a lifetime opportunity. Like the Super Bowl or something."

"Just so long as it’s not like Kent State," Pile muttered.

Annabelle and Donald both stared blankly at him. I really, he thought to himself, really have to find myself some smarter friends. I really do.

"You know," he said. "Kent State?" They continued to stare.

"Four dead in O-hi-o?" Bobbi prompted them. "Tin soldiers? Famous photograph of weeping co-ed?"

"Uh-oh," said Barry, without opening his eyes. "We’re in trouble now. You know what they say about those who cannot remember history." The waiter placed a cup of coffee in front of him, and his eyes flew open. He sat up in his seat, practically bouncing with enthusiasm. "Oh, awesome!" he told the waiter. "Thanks." He took a long appreciative sip, then let out a happy sigh. "I so needed this."

"Hey!" Annabelle punched Donald playfully in the arm. "Look, Don. The Sleeper Awakes!" She giggled. Don rolled his eyes.

"What?" asked Bobbi.

"Oh, God. You missed it. While you guys were still out parking the van, and me and Don came in to get the table? We’d just sat down, right, when this weird guy comes over. Like, totally Wilsonsylvania, you know? Like overalls, and brown teeth, and these boots..."

"And chewing on a piece of straw?" Bobbi smiled faintly.

"Well, maybe not that bad. But close. And he goes right up to Don, and he was kind of lurching... I think he must have been drunk..."

"I think he was just crazy," said Donald, shrugging.

"Well, whatever. He comes lurching up to the table, and he goes right up to Don, and he looks right at him, and he goes..." Annabelle lowered her voice in an attempt to do a Darth Vader imitation. "‘The Sleeper Has Awakened, Young Herschberg.’" She giggled again, but less convincingly this time. "Actually," she admitted. "It was kind of scary."

"I’m pretty sure it was Sleepers, actually," said Donald. "Plural. So I guess he wasn’t talking about Barry."

"Oh, bite me, all of you," Barry said cheerfully.

Pile looked up. "How did he know who you were?"

Donald rolled his eyes again. "Damned if I know."

"Everyone knows Don," Barry explained. "It’s the Herschberg name. He doesn’t even have to go to classes."

"Don’t I wish."

"They just give him his 4.0 and move him along."

"Kind of like when your roommate dies," said Annabelle.

It became very quiet.

"Oh God," Annabelle gasped. She turned to Barry, eyes wide. "Oh God. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking."

"Don’t worry about it." Barry took another sip of his coffee. "It’s not as if we were close or anything. I barely even knew the guy." He looked around the table. "It really doesn’t bother me," he told them. "Really."

"Besides," he added, after a moment’s pause and another sip of coffee. "There are worse ways to go. At least he was having fun, you know, right before it happened. And I gather that it was pretty fast. After that. You know, once they fell."

"Which way did it go, anyway?" asked Donald. "Did Leif fall on Trudy, or did Trudy fall on—"

"Can we talk about something else please?" said Pile. It came out louder than he’d intended, and strained, and the others blinked at him. He ducked his head back into his bible. Donald shrugged.

"Sure."

There was a long silence. Bobbi opened another packet of sugar and added it to the ashtray. Pile turned a few pages. Annabelle scrutinized the menu for a few moments, then asked:

"What do you think ‘chorizo’ is?"

"It’s winter sausage," Donald told her.

"Then why don’t they call it winter sausage?"

"The same reason they call the farmer’s skillets the frites-whatever," Bobbi snapped. "Because this place is full of shit."

There was another long silence. Donald gazed vacantly out the window, then around at the table.

"Excuse me," he said.

He elbowed his way past the hanging ferns, around the counter with the cash register on it, and out the door to the sidewalk, where he had seen the man loitering, still hanging around, probably lying in wait for him. The farmer’s back was to the door, and he did not turn around as Donald approached him. Donald marched right up to him and announced without preamble to his back:

"I told you to leave me alone."

The farmer whirled around, gasping, eyes staring so wide that for one brief moment Donald was afraid he might have given the man a heart attack. Jesus, he thought.

"I’m with my friends," he explained. "Do you get that? I don’t want you bothering me when I’m with my friends. I don’t want you bothering me at all. I want you to leave me alone. The next time, I’m calling the police. Do you understand?"

The man seemed to have recovered from his moment of panic. He stared fixedly at Donald, then slowly nodded.

"The Sleepers have awakened, young Herschberg," he said.

"Yeah? Well, I don’t know what that means."

"So it has been written. In the last days, when the first and last of the Egoroi has passed from this earth, then the Sleepers shall ride."

"I don’t care. I don’t want anything to do with your weird-ass cult, don’t you—"

"Venus will stand in opposition to Mars, and the Sun will have entered the sign of the Archer when the Sleepers shall ride."

"I’m not—"

"The Stallion of the Light shall stand on the silver shore. He shall wield the blade of Ashura in his strong right hand."

"Just—"

"Then the Seven shall answer to his call."

"Would you please just listen?"

"They shall awake, to harry the servants of the Dark..."

"...and cleanse the land in preparation for the coming of the Divine Child!" Donald yelled. "Okay? Enough now? I did grow up with this crap, you know, I don’t need to hear it from you. Are you finished now? Will you please just listen to me for a change?"

The man regarded him for a moment. He was younger than Donald had at first realized, probably no more than thirty-five, and looking him over, Donald thought: really, Annabelle does exaggerate. And she’s a bit of a bigot, too, really. This guy’s teeth aren’t that brown. And he’s not dirty, which she certainly implied, even if she didn’t actually come right out and say it. I mean, he doesn’t have cow shit all over him or anything.

"I’m listening," the man said.

"Okay." Donald took a deep breath. "I understand why you might be interested in me—in recruiting me or converting me or...or whatever. Okay? I really do understand that. But I’m really honestly not interested, and you aren’t going to convince me by stalking me like this. It’s creepy, and it scares my friends, and it makes me angry, and I really am going to go to the police if you don’t knock it off. I mean all of you, you know, not just you personally. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before. Maybe you all take turns at this. I don’t know, and I don’t care. Just please. Go back, and tell all of your buddies to leave me alone. I don’t want to join any Holy Brotherhood of Yabukie, and I’ve told you guys that like a million times already, so...what the hell is wrong with you?"

The farmer was staring at him. His mouth worked soundlessly. Donald could just make out the syllables on his lips: Ya. Boo. Kee. Jesus, Donald thought again. He looks like he’s going to faint.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yabukie?" the farmer gasped.

"Jesus." Donald snorted. "You guys are all nuts, aren’t you? Sometimes I think that everyone in the entire Midwest is nuts. I should never have taken that scholarship. I should have just stuck with PSU." He shook his head and stalked back into the Fig and Bole.

Everyone at the table looked up expectantly at him when he returned. He lowered himself into his seat, and then, when they were all still staring at him, said:

"What?"

"It’s a funny thing," Barry told him gently. "About windows? You have to figure that if you can see them, then other people probably can as well."

"It’s like the Heisenberg principle," he added, picking contemplatively at his plate of frites-whatever. "So long as no one’s looking at the window, then anything could be happening. But the instant that somebody does look at the window...well!" He smiled and shrugged.

Bobbi froze, water half-way to her lips, suddenly chilled to the very marrow. She looked warily at Barry, but his attention now seemed riveted on Donald’s explanation about this guy who had been stalking him or something, whatever, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that surely the normal way to say that would have been "so long as no one’s looking out the window," wouldn’t it? Out the window? Not at it?

Bobbi sipped at her water and glanced around the table. Annabelle was listening to Donald’s story as well, but Pile wasn’t. He was staring at her, staring at her with an expression so fixed, so intense, that she nearly dropped her glass. She stared back at him for a moment, and he turned his gaze away.

Do they all know? Bobbi wondered. All of them? Did they all see it?

She tried to remember where they had all been. Barry, near the door next to Sam. Alison, leaning with her back to the closet. Annabelle and Donald, fiddling with the stereo. And she and Pile, on the floor in the center of the room, reading comic books. And then, of course, Albert. On the bed. Right next to Jill. Leaning against the window.

The first scream when the lights had gone out had almost certainly been Annabelle, Bobbi thought. Annabelle was like that—a screamer. Pile had kicked her by accident—at least, she thought it had been Pile. Alison had called for someone to light a match or something, which had been silly, really, because none of them smoked, but then, Bobbi guessed that Alison wouldn’t have remembered that: many of her activist friends were smokers. And she herself, fumbling in her pocket for the tiny penlight on her keychain, squeezing it, waving the pinpoint red light around the room wildly—wildly, because she had lost her balance trying to rise to her knees so that she could get her hand far enough into her pocket to pull the thing out, but also because it was a little frightening, really, the darkness. Spaces always seemed so much larger when there was no light to see by.

Schroedinger’s Cat was what Barry meant to say, she thought. Not the Heisenberg principle, but Schroedinger's Cat. And Schroedinger’s Cat, yes, because things didn’t just seem larger when you couldn’t see them. They were larger. So long as you didn’t see, then anything could be happening, anything at all. And then you were free. You were free to act in any way you wished. It was only, she thought, only when you saw, only when you knew, that everything became suddenly so small, so constrained. It was only then that the entire range of human possibility—which up until that one fateful moment you had possessed in all of its dizzying variety—it was only then that you found that all of that possibility, all of those options, had suddenly dwindled to a single point of decision—you could act, or you could refuse to act—and whichever you chose, you would be left thinking: how did I get here? How did this happen to me?

The elemental question of the historian, Bobbi thought mordantly, remembering something that Professor Morowitz had once written on the board. Arnold J. Toynbee: "The historian’s elemental question: How has this come out of that?"

But who can really answer that? Bobbi wondered. How can anyone have the slightest idea how or why anything happens? Because my parents gave me a penlight keychain, I saw; because I saw, I knew; because I knew, I acted; because I acted, I lied; because I lied, I am guilty. For want of a nail the shoe was lost, and so the kingdom fell. Who could possibly know how anything came about, really? When even the people you thought you knew could act in ways so totally uncharacteristic, so utterly mystifying—when you couldn’t even give an adequate explanation for your own actions half the time—what hope was there for any historian, ever?

"Bobbi?"

She started. "What?"

"I asked if you wanted a piece of my toast." Pile shoved his plate toward her. "You haven’t eaten anything."

"I’m not hungry," she lied, and then, wanting to change the subject, added: "What’s with the bible, anyway?"

"Yeah," Barry chimed in. "What is with the bible? Are you planning on being reborn in the blood of the lamb or something?"

"Yes," Pile snapped, and began flipping pages again. "That’s it exactly, Barry. And then I’m going to sacrifice some Jewish babies." He snorted. "I’m looking for a quotation. But I can’t seem to find it."

"Maybe it’s not in the bible," Annabelle suggested.

"Everything’s in the bible," said Donald. "Either that, or in Shakespeare. What’s the quote? Maybe I can help," he said, and then, when Pile looked dubious, added: "My family was, um, kind of religious."

"You know the one about the mills of God?"

"God has mills?" Annabelle reached over and speared one of Barry’s sausage links. "I thought that mills were supposed to be dark and Satanic."

"Depends on the industry," Bobbi told her. "The dark Satanic ones are textile mills. The mills of God are granary mills."

"Or, to put it another way," Barry suggested, "the dark Satanic mills are the ones that you work in. The mills of God are the ones that work on you. ‘The mills of God grind slowly,’" he quoted softly. "‘But they grind exceedingly small.’"

"That’s the one," said Pile grimly.

"I don’t think that’s in the bible," said Donald.

"You weren’t going to recite that at Albert’s funeral, were you?" Barry stared at him. "I mean, it might be kind of appropriate, although not really, not that bit about ‘slowly,’ but all the same..."

"Of course I wasn’t going to recite it at Albert’s fucking funeral! What do you think? Jesus!"

"What do you mean, 'appropriate?'" Bobbi demanded. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I think we all know what he meant, Bobbi," Donald said cautiously.

"Well, I don’t," said Annabelle.

"Yeah, I don’t either." Bobbi glared. "Why don’t you explain it, Barry?"

"Aw, come on, Bobbi," Donald said.

"Why don’t we talk about something else," said Annabelle.

"No, why don’t we talk about this? You all think he did it, don’t you? Even though there’s no proof. Even though anyone could have—"

"Bobbi!" Pile grabbed her by the arm. "Stop this," he hissed.

"He was the one sitting next to her, Bobbi," said Barry.

"So?"

"So he was the only one who could have done it."

"Not necess... ow!" Bobbi tugged her arm out of Pile’s grasp. "What are you doing? You’re hurting me!"

"Bobbi." Annabelle waved her hands in a vague, come-let-us-reason-together sort of way. "Don’t you see? If Albert wasn’t the one who tried to kill Jill..." She looked around the table, which had grown suddenly very silent. "If Albert didn’t hurt Jill," she continued, "then one of us had to have done it. Someone sitting at this very table. Or Sam or Alison. One of us. Don’t you see that?"

"Not necessarily," Bobbi said stubbornly.

"This is absurd," snapped Pile. "Of course Albert was the one who did it. We all know that he did it. So why don’t we just stop talking about it and leave it alone!" He glared around the table.

"I know no such thing."

"Bobbi..."

"No." Bobbi stood up abruptly, knocking the table to the side as she did so. "There’s no proof," she said. "There’s no evidence. The police haven’t said that he did it. Anyone could have done it. I could have done it. It’s nice to think that the person who isn’t here to defend himself did it, isn’t it? But that isn’t right, and it isn’t fair, and I’m not going to listen to it." She threw the van keys down on the table. "Someone else can take the van back," she said. "I’m going home." She turned and ran.

"Oh, Jesus," Pile said. He sat, along with the rest of them, in silence for a long moment. Then he got up and ran after her.

She was a much faster runner than her size would have led him to expect; they were nearly to Zabar’s by the time he caught up with her. He grabbed her—by the sleeve this time—and she turned to face him. He was somewhat surprised to see that her eyes were dry.

"Are you crazy?" he gasped, clutching at his side. "Are you out of your mind? They all think Albert did it, Bobbi. Leave it alone."

She stared at him.

"It’s okay ." He leaned weakly against a lamppost, panting for breath. "Bobbi, I took care of it. It’s okay. The only evidence was on the wall, do you understand me? It’s gone now. I fixed it. You’re safe."

"You..."

"Don’t!" He was doubled over, but managed to raise one hand in a weak gesture of protest. "Don’t tell me about it. I understand. I think I do, anyway. I don’t really need to. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to tell me anything."

"You..."

"It’s all right." Pile tried to smile at her, but it came out a mad grimace. "It’s all right. I know how you felt about Albert. But it can’t hurt him now, Bobbi, for them to think that he did it. And it’s safer for you that way. So just...just..."

"You think that I was the one who tried to kill Jill," Bobbi said blankly. Then she started to laugh. "You think that I..." she repeated. "I... "

"Bobbi." Pile straightened, catching his breath. "Your prints were all over the wall, don’t you get that? I could see them. They were bloody. And if I could see them, then the police must have seen them as well. But they can’t do anything about it now, don’t you see, because it’s gone. All of the evidence is gone. So you don’t need..." He shook his head. "You don’t need to...to…"

"To confess?" Bobbi shook her head. "I don’t believe this. James..."

She called me James, Pile thought.

"Everyone thinks Albert did it," he said. "It’s okay."

"They think Albert did it," Bobbi told him. "And thinking is one thing. But James...Pile..." She closed her eyes. "People can think anything they want," she said. "But I know. Don’t you understand that? Don’t you see? I know. I’m the one who has to fucking know!"

She turned and ran then, ran from him, finally beginning to cry, yet again beginning to cry, and it wasn’t until she had reached her front door, was fumbling for her key, sobbing and wailing out there on the street for everyone to gawk at, that it suddenly struck her. She leaned against the door, blinking, stunned into a sudden silence.

Pile? she thought. What did you do? What the fuck did you do, Pile? What in God’s name did you do to the fucking wall?

•

 

9:45 am
Conference Room
Herschberg Police Department

The meeting was just about wrapping up when President Hoover’s beeper went off. That awful Riggs woman glared venomously at him as he fumbled in his pocket for it, and Flannery, seated beside him at the table, winced and covered his near ear with one hand.

"Excuse me," he murmured, turning the volume off and frowning at Flannery. For God’s sake, he thought, it isn’t that loud. He wondered if the man had a hangover. Damn, but he wished that Youngjack hadn’t skipped out on him. He could have used him here. This situation was such a mess, what he needed right now was someone like Youngjack, someone with something on the fucking ball.

Hoover glanced down at his beeper. He had only just registered the fact that there was no number on display when the sound started up again, prompting another hand over the ear from Flannery and a smothered giggle from the scientist, Dr. Drasil.

His other pocket.

Oh, fuck.

"I’m sorry," he told them all, rising smoothly to his feet. "I really do need to take this. Please excuse me."

Outside in the corridor he looked around carefully, then closed his eyes and breathed deeply before pulling out his portable phone and flipping it open.

"Yes," he said.

"I know." A young woman’s voice, shrill with terror. "I know everything. I know."

Hoover’s blood ran cold. That, he thought, that can’t possibly be...

"Who is this?" he asked, and then, hearing even over the phone how quickly and shallowly she was breathing, added quietly: "This line is protected."

"I told you." Yes, it was her. Oh, double fuck. "I told you that something would go wrong. I told you that it was a bad time to do it. The planets were all wrong, with Jupiter—"

"Calm down," he said.

"And then that night, I couldn’t get my chakras open, and that reading I did...the most inauspicious cards I’ve ever seen, and...and..." She sounded close to hyperventilation. "And I told Doctor Waitling that, but he wouldn’t listen, he wouldn’t—"

"Events forced our hand. You know that. Where are you? How much are you remembering?"

"You promised me," she whined. "You and Professor Bitsumi both. You promised I wouldn’t remember a thing about it. You promised that it would keep me safe. You promised."

"Pull yourself together," hissed Hoover. "For God’s sake. Where are you?"

There was a pause, then a sniffle.

"I’m at a phone booth," she told him. "Outside of the trailer park. Tall Pines."

Tall Pines. She’d probably spent the night at Morowitz’ apartment again. Hoover’s mouth tightened in disapproval. When the prophet had written of the Virgin Who Will Have Known No Man, he somehow doubted that a morphadite like the Moore girl had been precisely what he had in mind.

"Stay there," he told her. "I’m—"

"Oh God," she moaned. "They got Prof…I mean, Brother Bitsumi, didn't they?"

Saved us a lot of trouble if they did, Hoover thought. The man had become completely unreliable. Something would have had to be done about him sooner or…well, sooner, anyway.

"They did. I know it. That’s why this is happening, isn’t it?"

"No, it isn’t," he snapped. I have no idea why this is happening. "Don’t worry about Bitsumi. Just listen to me."

"And now they’re after me. You told me, you promised me—"

"Miss Moore!" Hoover said sharply. There was silence. "I need for you to listen to me very carefully. All right? I need for you to stay where you are. Do not go anywhere. I’m sending Carlos over right now to pick you up. Stand in the brightest patch of sunlight you can find. If anyone approaches you, you don’t talk to them, and you don’t make eye contact. And don’t think about anything . Do your breathing exercises instead, and your white light. Can you do that for me?"

There was a long silence, then an assenting sob.

Not good enough, Hoover thought.

"Can you do that for me?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, I can do that."

"All right. It’s going to be five minutes, tops." He hung up, and was about to start dialing his driver when the phone rang again.

"Yes," he snapped.

"I have bad news." Waitling didn’t even bother to identify himself. "Jane Caulfield is exerting influence."

"You’re joking," Hoover said, even though of course he knew that the man wasn’t.

"Oh no I’m not. She’s projecting. Not strong, but enough. And I’m pretty sure that she knows exactly what she’s doing, too. I saw her do it, and I would swear that she did it on purpose."

"That’s just wonderful, Waitling," Hoover told him. "But I’m gonna have to call you back about that, you want to know why? That daemon of yours, the one you promised me was reliable? You remember that? Well, it’s flaked out on us. Our Virgin’s remembering everything. She can think about it, she can talk about it, she can panic about it, and we’re gonna have to have a serious talk about that, okay, but later, because right now I have to send someone to pick her up before she broadcasts her thoughts to every fucking wight in Minnesota."

He hung up, and as he began to dial thought: if Bitsumi really did put something in the water, if that is what is causing this shit to happen, then I’m going to have to have a talk with him, too. We are going to have a discussion about that. We are going to have a discussion about that even if I have to drag his sorry soul back from hell to do it.

•

A quarter of a mile away, Shelby held the dead receiver up to her ear and huddled in the phone booth, shivering.

"Uh-huh," she said, listening to the dial tone buzz in her ear. "Uh-huh? Well, what did he say to that? No, really?" she said, trying not to look too closely at the shadows under the trees, trying not to think at all. "Really?"

White Light, she told herself. White Light.

But I know, she thought. I’m not supposed to know anything. But I know.

•

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now. . . .

•

(continued)

•

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