Jack (Gilead #4)(19)

“Yes. All right. This step is really hard.”

“Cold.”

“Damp.”

“I’m sorry I woke you up. There’s nothing like sleep for passing the time.”

She said, “You should come to my place for Thanksgiving.”

He laughed. “What have I done to deserve that?”

“Thanksgiving isn’t something a person has to deserve. That’s the whole point of it. Anyway, you’ve been about as harmless as you could possibly be. I appreciate that. It’s not a thing I take for granted.” Resting her head on her knees, looking at where he was, smiling. He knew that from her voice.

He said, “You could introduce me to your dad. ‘The Prince of Darkness, Papa. I found him in a cemetery. He says he’s harmless. The bruised reed he will not break, probably. Though he might be the one who bruised it.’”

“Don’t joke like that. Anyway, I’m not going home this year. I mean, you should come to my place. You know, where you leave any books you decide to return?”

“I know it well.”

“Just knock on the door this time. Stop being so sneaky.”

He said, “You don’t know what you’re asking. Can the leopard change his spots? Besides, I always lose track of Thanksgiving. It moves around. It’s not for people with disorderly lives.”

She shrugged. “You might make an effort, just this once.”

“I can’t promise anything.”

She said, “Oh, I know that.”





* * *





So here I am, he thought. And here she was, Della, the woman he had recruited into his daydreams to make up for a paucity of meaning and event he sometimes found oppressive. No harm done. She was safe in his daydreams. Cherished, really. He had returned often enough to that one regrettable night, or that one almost regrettable hour in an otherwise wonderful night, to have put things right in his imagination, though not, of course, in his memory. A lingering farewell. Good night rather than goodbye. That was something.

Her sleeve stirred against him. The plum-colored cloth of her coat. He had once asked himself which colors yield to darkness first, and which of them float in it for a while. Twilight has nothing black about it, so black would be absorbed much more gradually than plum. She was clothed in twilight. That is the kind of thought I’ll have when this is over and she is gone. Those ridiculous poems I never write down. In fact, she will be a respectable woman with a job and a street address, reading her newspaper over breakfast in the morning light. I’ll walk by, and she won’t see me. Or she might be on a train to Memphis, rehearsing the words she will say to her mother, her father, accepting disgrace because it would be easier, would require fewer words, after all the excuses and apologies she’d have made already. Never mentioning me, wishing she never had seen me, putting this night out of mind altogether.

Chilly as he was, his shirt dampened. He could not protect her at all. This sham, squiring her through the tombstones, when the fact was that, if she had just spoken to the guard while she still looked respectable and her flowers had not wilted completely, if she had told the man her wistful little lie, he would have opened a gate for her, after the usual sermon about personal responsibility and the like, of course, which was hard to begrudge him, since it was simply an added small compensation for walking around all night. Jack had been too surprised at seeing her there to think this through, and then he had been so pleased to fall into the role of gentleman, which in fact overtook him as often as he had a clean shirt on but was vastly more inescapable with this particular lady on his arm, and in the darkness that so kindly hid the marks of an ungentlemanly life. He actually could have rescued her by telling her to sit on that bench and wait for the guard, standing well back to keep an eye on her, for what that was worth. Then she’d have had the walk home in the dark, which would be bad but probably not as bad as the same walk home by daylight. He had his excuses. Surprise itself accounted for most of it. But excuses only meant that he had done harm he did not intend, which was another proof that he did harm inevitably, intentions be damned.

He said, “I actually believe in predestination. I’m serious.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, of course you don’t. Destiny has made you a Methodist.”

“So you were just talking to yourself?”

“An old habit.”

“You said you were harmless, even though you have no gift for it. Does that mean you’re fated to be something you’re not? That doesn’t make much sense.”

“I said I act harmless. Insofar as in me lies. That doesn’t mean I succeed in being harmless. I don’t usually guess right about what harmlessness would require in a particular situation. And so on. It doesn’t even mean that I won’t give up on the whole business sometime. Won’t just relax and let myself be the rotter I am.”

She was quiet.

He said, “Now I’ve scared you. You see what I mean. That’s the last thing in the world I meant to do.”

“You don’t scare me, especially. You’re just like everybody else. You seem to think other people aren’t doing the same thing you are, more or less. I don’t go around revealing my innermost thoughts, I can tell you that. The minute I did, you’d be scared of me.”