no daddy, you’re not listening not one, but many ‘I don’t understand.’
there are gods within gods, three entities in one, mirrors of the old ‘And what do the Not-Gods want?’
they want to put an end to all things ‘And how am I supposed to stop this?’
by living ‘Living is hard.’
dying is harder He strained to see her now. The shadows were renewing their claim on her.
and you will die ‘Stay.’
there will be pain, but i will be there to share it ‘And then?’
we will go together, you and i, to the sea The blackness became complete, and she was gone.
He closed his eyes. All these dreams, all these sorrows. No end in sight.
But it was coming.
20
Parker woke in his bed the following morning, with no memory of leaving his chair by the window. He washed, dressed, and consumed more than coffee and toast for the first time in days. The black dog had retreated.
Because Jennifer had come.
He caught up with some paperwork before booking a last-minute flight to New York. It was time to visit the patient.
The hospital room smelt of suffering. Angel was still weak, and whatever he was being fed wasn’t entering his system through his mouth, but he was able to speak for minutes at a time before lapsing briefly into sleep, and his grip on Parker’s hand when they were about to part was firm.
‘You need to look after Louis for me,’ he said.
Parker and Angel had already shared at least one version of this conversation prior to the operation, but Parker wasn’t surprised that the other man could remember nothing of it.
‘If you’re planning on dying, you’d better leave him to someone else in your will,’ said Parker.
Angel ignored this. ‘Just for a while, until I’m back on my feet again.’
‘He’s doing fine. The world hasn’t stopped turning because you now weigh less.’
‘I’m being serious.’
‘I know you are.’
‘He’s angry. Don’t let him do anything stupid.’
‘He’s already blown up a truck. Does that count?’
Angel thought about this.
‘Okay, so more stupid.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
Louis was waiting outside when Parker left the room. Angel was never truly alone at the hospital, even allowing for the ministrations of the staff. When Louis was not present, a pair of unlikely but effective guardians – the Fulcis – maintained alternate watches over Angel’s bed. Louis had acquired his share of enemies over the years, some of them through his allegiance with Parker, and it was not inconceivable that they might try to get at him through Angel.
‘Well?’ said Louis.
‘He seems pretty lucid.’
‘Yeah? He was talking about religion yesterday, but that might have been the opiates. I don’t want him finding Jesus.’
‘I wouldn’t be too concerned. If Jesus thinks Angel is trying to find him, Jesus will just change his name.’
This appeared to reassure Louis. Whatever Louis’s conception of the next world might entail – and Parker now had a clearer idea after their conversation in Maine – it made little allowance for holy rollers in this one.
Parker left Louis with Angel, and went to have dinner with his ex-partner Walter Cole, and Walter’s wife, Lee. She was aging gently, Walter less so, but they both appeared happy and well. Thanks to their daughter, Ellen, they were grandparents, and were enjoying all the benefits of a small child’s company without most of the drawbacks. Ellen had asked Parker to be godfather to the girl, Melanie. He had politely declined, but he knew Ellen understood his reasons. Years earlier, he had saved her from a predator named Caleb Kyle, and the trauma of those events still lingered for both of them. Yet he was touched that Ellen would think of him in such a way, and a bond would always exist between them, one that now extended to her child.
There were others whom Parker could have seen while he was in the city, including the rabbi Epstein and his shadow, the beautiful mute named Liat, with whom Parker had once spent a single interesting night in bed. He didn’t want to turn his trip into some form of the Stations of the Cross, and so contented himself with calling by Nicola’s on First Avenue to say hello and pick up some imported Italian delicacies before taking a cab to JFK for his JetBlue flight back to Portland.
Upon arrival at Portland Jetport, he bought a copy of the Press Herald with every intention of reading it when he got home, but tiredness got the better of him, and so he went to bed without reading of a woman’s semi-preserved remains found in the Maine woods.
II
The only ghosts, I believe, who creep into this world, are dead young mothers, returned to see how their children fare.
J. M. Barrie, The Little White Bird
21
Daniel opened his eyes. His room was dark except for the night-light shaped like a starship that burned in an outlet by the door, so he could find his way to the bathroom if he needed to go.
On the nightstand by his bed stood a glass of water, a lamp, and a toy telephone made of wood and plastic. His mother had bought it for him when he was very little, because he had been fascinated by it in the store. Its buttons bore animals instead of numbers, so Daniel heard clucking if he put the receiver to his ear and pressed the chicken button, and the sheep bleated, and the cow mooed. The phone rang if the handle at the side was turned.
But Daniel hadn’t used the phone in a very long time. Truth be told, the novelty of hearing animals on the other end of the line had worn off pretty fast, although he had not yet reached the stage where he was willing to discard any toy, however neglected it might have become, and so the telephone had sat at the bottom of the secondary toy box in his closet. There it would probably have remained until it was time to throw out the entire contents, or take them to Goodwill.
Except two nights before, the telephone had started ringing.
Daniel turned over on his pillow to regard the toy. The base was a smiling face, and the nose glowed red when the phone rang, or an animal was making noises, but it was silent now, and the nose remained unlit.
It had taken Daniel a while to notice the sound the first time it happened. He’d been so deep in sleep that the ringing had to penetrate layers of unconsciousness to reach him, and he was confused when he woke. At first he thought the sound was coming from the smoke alarm in the hall, and he almost called for his mother, but it soon became clear that the source of the muffled jangling was somewhere inside the room. He guessed it was one of his toys malfunctioning as a battery died, but he couldn’t go back to sleep while the disturbance continued. He got out of bed and went to the closet, shivering because the heater was on a timer, and the temperature felt as though it was at its lowest point. The closet light turned on automatically as the doors opened, and he had to toss aside sneakers and a couple of jackets in order to get to the box. Once done, it was a moment’s work to find the phone.
The toy didn’t have any batteries to remove – they were long gone – and yet somehow it was still ringing. But even with batteries it shouldn’t have been making a sound, because no one was turning the handle. Yet there it was, tinkling away, the red nose flashing on and off, demanding that he pick up the receiver and listen to the voice of the zookeeper asking him to identify a cow or a lion by pressing the correct button, which was what one heard if one answered the phone, although even at a younger age Daniel had wondered what kind of zoo kept chickens and cows alongside lions.
Which was when Daniel decided, quite logically, that the only way to stop the phone ringing was to pick up the receiver.
From outside Daniel’s window came the steady dripping of ice melting from the roof. Daniel didn’t mind the sound the ice was making. It was comforting, like rainfall.
He wanted the phone to ring.