Alicia began to spend her nights in the stable.
Fanning took little notice of her absence. That horse of yours, he might comment, barely lifting his eyes from one of the books that now completely occupied his waking hours. I don’t see why you feel the need, but it’s really none of my business. His mind seemed distant, his thoughts veiled. Yes, he was different; something had shifted. The change felt tectonic, a rumbling from deep in the earth. He wasn’t sleeping, there was that—if indeed their kind could be said to sleep. In the past, the daylight hours had brought forth in him a kind of melancholy exhaustion. He would fade into a trancelike state—eyes closed, hands folded in his lap with his fingers tidily meshed. Alicia knew his dreams. The clocks’ hands remorseless turning. The anonymous crowds streaming past. His was a nightmare of infinite waiting in a universe barren of pity—without hope, without love, without the purpose that only hope and love could bear upon it.
She had a dream like that of her own. Her baby. Her Rose.
She sometimes thought about the past. “New York,” Fanning liked to say, “has always been a place of memory.” She missed her friends as the dead might miss the living, citizens of a realm she had permanently departed. What did Alicia remember? The Colonel. Being a little girl in the dark. Her years on the Watch, how true they felt. There was a night that came back to her often; it seemed to define something. She had taken Peter up to the roof of the power station to show him the stars. Side by side they had lain on the concrete, still warm with the day’s crushing heat, the two of them just talking, beneath a night sky made more remarkable by the fact that Peter had never seen it before. It brought them out of themselves. Have you ever thought about it? Alicia had asked him. Thought about what? he’d asked; and she’d said, nervously—she couldn’t seem to stop herself—You’re going to make me say it? Pairing, Peter. Having Littles. She understood, much later, what she was really asking of him: to save her, to lead her into life. But it was too late; it had always been too late. Since the night the Colonel had abandoned her, Alicia hadn’t really been a person anymore; she had given it up.
So, the years. Fanning said time was different for their kind, and it was. The days’ ceaselessly melding, season into season, year into year. What were they to each other? He was kind. He understood her. We have traveled the same road, he said. Stay with me, Lish. Stay with me, and all of it is ended. Did she believe him? There were times when he seemed to know the deepest truths of her. What to say, what to ask, when to listen and for how long. Tell me about her. How soft his voice was, how gentle. It was like no voice she had ever heard; it felt like floating in a bath of tears. Tell me about your Rose.
Yet there was another part of him, veiled, impenetrable. His long, brooding silences disturbed her, as did instances of a slightly off-key cheerfulness that seemed wholly manufactured. He began to venture out at night, something he had not done in years. He made no announcement; he would simply be gone. Alicia decided to follow him. For three nights he wandered without apparent destination, a forlorn figure haunting the streets; then, on the fourth night, he surprised her. With deliberate strides he made his way downtown, into the West Village, and halted before a nondescript residential building, five stories tall, with a flight of steps connecting the front door to the street. Alicia concealed herself behind a rooftop parapet at the top of the block. Several minutes passed, Fanning studying the building’s face. Suddenly it came to her: Fanning had lived here once. Something seemed to click inside him, and he marched up to the door, forced it with his shoulder, and disappeared inside.
He was gone for a long while. An hour, then two. Alicia began to be concerned. Unless Fanning appeared soon, there would not be time for him to return to the station before sunrise. Finally he emerged. At the bottom of the steps, he stopped. As if sensing her presence, he cast his eyes around the street, then looked straight toward her. Alicia ducked below the parapet and pressed her body to the rooftop.
“I know you’re there, Alicia. But it’s all right.”
When she looked again, the street was empty.
He made no mention of the night’s events, and Alicia did not press. She had glimpsed something, a clue, but its meaning eluded her. Why, after all this time, would he make such a pilgrimage?