Hymn (16 page)

Reaching behind him, he stabbed at her frantically with his vegetable knife. But there didn't seem to be anything there to stab. In spite of her heat, in spite of her weight, she appeared to be completely insubstantial. Like smoke. Like someone's soul. Like nothing at all.

‘Marianna!' he roared, with his clothes on fire and his hair shrivelling.

But Marianna shrieked, ‘It's a game! It's a game! You have to guess who I am!'

‘Oh God!' cried Joe, dropping to his knees. ‘Oh God, Marianna, you're burning me!'

‘It's a game, Joe! Who am I? Who am I?' and she clapped her hands over his eyes, so that he wouldn't be able to see her.

Smoke poured out from between Marianna's fingers as she burned her way through Joe's upper cheeks and eyelids, and then fried his eyes. Through all of that pain, Joe felt his eyeballs burst, and heard the sharp sizzle of optic jelly. He was beyond screaming. The pain was too much. The horror of being blinded was more than his brain could accept. All his brain was interested in right now was survival.

He stabbed at her wildly, stabbed again. But she forced him down and rolled him over on to his back and forced him flat on to the floor.

All he could think of was pain. It flooded over him, as if he had been washed over by a tidal wave of concentrated hydrochloric acid. He shuddered and shuddered and windmilled wildly at her with his fists, but she pressed down on him more and more heavily, and there came a moment when he understood that it was futile, that he was going to die.

It was at that moment that he felt no pain at all. His brain had plainly decided that he didn't need any further warnings that his body was under attack. He had accepted death, pain was no longer necessary.

He lay still, not dead yet, but remarkably calm; as calm as the dead; as calm as anyone for whom there are no alternatives left.

He didn't even flinch when Marianna reached down and opened his jeans with fingers that scorched the denim.

‘You broke your oath, Joe,' she sang. ‘You broke your oath.'

With burning-hot hands she prized his penis out of his jeans, and stretched it upwards. The skin shrivelled and blistered. The spongy tissue crackled, and smoke poured out of the meatus. All around it, Joe's pubic hairs burned like scores of tiny fuses. Then Marianna was holding what looked like a flaring candle, the last fiery moments of Joe's manhood.

Sometime after that, Joe thought he heard someone singing. It was ‘Bei Mir Bist Du Schön'. ‘Please let me explain, bei mir bist du schön, means that you're grand . . . again I'll explain . . . it means you're the fairest in the land . . .'

Marianna took off her dark glasses and stared down at him with empty eyes. Then she kissed him, and his mouth caught fire, and he died.

Kathleen lived in Escondido. On the night of her husband's death, her older sister Lucy had flown in from Tucson, Arizona, to stay with her. But Lloyd persuaded her to come back with him to La Jolla that evening, and to have dinner with him at the Original Fish Depot.

‘You can't say that we don't have something in common,' Lloyd told her.

‘But I don't have anything to wear.'

He smiled, shook his head. ‘The Fish Depot isn't formal. Not unless you want it to be. And, besides, you look great as you are.'

Waldo was delighted to see Lloyd, and shook his hand up and down as if he were priming a reluctant pump. ‘You want dinner, Mr Denman? Yes, of course! Look how busy we are! Full up to bursting! And every night this week!'

‘Maybe I should stay away more often,' Lloyd suggested, as Waldo fussily piloted them over to the special guest table by the window, overlooking the Cove, and lit the candles.

‘Mr Denman, we miss you,' Waldo told him. ‘We work hard, we fill up the restaurant. But the restaurant is yours. Your dream, yes? Your inspiration. You know what my grandfather always used to say, when we walked on the beach? You can take everything away from a man. His family, his money, his clothes, his dignification. But you can never take away his ideas.' His voice dropped grimly. ‘Not unless you are prepared to kill him.'

Lloyd clapped Waldo on the back. ‘After Plato, this man is the world's greatest philosopher,' he told Kathleen. ‘He's also the world's worst flatterer. Beware! That's how he gets whatever he wants.'

They sat facing each other over the dipping candlelight. Kathleen looked tired but very pretty. She had strong cheekbones, wide brown eyes. A mixture of determination and vulnerability that Lloyd found very appealing. The kind of woman who would cry when things went wrong; but who would wipe away the tears and promise herself that nothing would ever upset her so badly again.

Nil illegitimae carborundum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.

‘When you've been married for so long, you forget what it's like, being alone,' Kathleen told him.

Lloyd nodded. ‘Celia and I weren't officially married, but I guess you could say that we were married in the eyes of God. I never expected to spend my life with anyone else.'

‘Tom misses him so much,' said Kathleen.

‘Tom?'

‘Our son. Our one and only.'

‘I'm real sorry,' said Lloyd. ‘Look—here's the starter.'

They began with coquilles St Jacques with a light mornay glaze. While they were eating, Louis came out from the kitchen and asked them how they liked it. He was a thin, diminutive Frenchman from Marseilles, by way of New Orleans, with a concave chest and a pale waxy face, and a limited grasp of English. But he could cook with verve and delicacy, and flavour his creations as precisely as a pianist hitting the right note; and he was a living denial of Paul Prudhomme's notion that any chef lighter than eighteen stone can't cook shit.

‘Louis, this is brilliant,' said Lloyd.

Louis modestly shook his head. ‘Not brilliant, monsieur. But just as it should be.'

After he had returned to the kitchen, Lloyd shook his head and smiled. ‘Did you hear that? It is how it should be. That man is so uncompromising. I've seen him throw away lobsters because he didn't like the colour of their shells.'

Kathleen said, ‘You surprise me, you know. You don't seem like the kind of guy who would want to open a restaurant.'

Lloyd shrugged. ‘I fell into it, I guess. I was tired of insurance, I wanted to be free. I thought of starting my own outboard motor company . . . in fact, I was better qualified to start an outboard motor company than anything else. I can strip an Evinrude blindfold. But I thought to myself, where's the class, where's the image? Where's the fun?'

‘But a restaurant must be such hard work.'

‘Are you kidding? This isn't work. This is complete and utter self-imposed slavery, from morning till night. And still the customers complain.'

Their mutual bereavement sustained them through the hors d'oeuvres. But when they got into the crabbed halibut they began to realize that they had very much more in common than the sudden death of somebody that they had loved. They both liked theatre, they both liked music, they both liked water sports. They both liked Maria Callas and Robbie Robertson and Woody Allen.

‘You've been marvellous,' Kathleen told him, as they left the Original Fish Depot and walked out into the warm night air. ‘It's pretty hard to have fun after something like this, but I've had fun.'

‘I guess the world keeps on turning, no matter what,' Lloyd told her. ‘Now, how about a ride home? You could leave your car in the parking-lot here, and I could have one of the waiters bring it out to you tomorrow.'

‘All the way to Escondido? Come on, Lloyd, you're tired. I could take a cab.'

‘Well . . . if it doesn't sound too forward, maybe you could come back to my place for a nightcap, and then make up your mind what you want to do.'

She took hold of his arm. ‘That doesn't seem too forward at all. In fact it sounds very inviting.' He was breathing the smell of her perfume, Ombre Rose, and her hair was very fine-filamented and shiny in the streetlight. Somehow her plain black dress made her even more alluring. It was no good pretending: he liked her a lot.

They climbed into his BMW and Lloyd backed out of his parking-space.

‘I just love your licence plate,' Kathleen told him.

‘What, FISHEE? I don't know. The joke's kind of worn off.'

They drove down the long swooping curves of the road that would take them to North Torrey. It was slightly foggy, a late-night ocean fog, and the lights all around them were blurred and star-whiskered.

Kathleen said, ‘Do you know what Mike always used to tell me?'

Lloyd glanced at her quickly. ‘Go on. What did Mike always tell you?'

‘Mike always used to tell me that when his grandfather died, he took off north, all the way to Eureka, even further. He said it was the greatest spiritual experience of his life. He stood on the seashore way up north, in winter, and he heard his grandfather speak to him clear as a bell. He said his grandfather told him that nobody dies until they're completely forgotten, until everybody that ever knew them dies, too.'

‘I guess that's right,' Lloyd told her. ‘I guess it makes it a little easier.'

‘Well, maybe,' Kathleen replied. ‘But I think I'd feel better if I thought that Mike had gone for good. Vanished, you know? Just like he never existed. My God, Lloyd, he was alive a week ago. He held me in his arms. Now there's nothing. Nothing! I find that pretty damned hard to accept.'

Lloyd said, ‘Did Mike belong to any kind of religious study group?'

Kathleen stared at him. ‘Mike? You're kidding! He wasn't into religion at all! What made you ask me something like that?'

‘I don't know, just fishing,' Lloyd said guardedly. He didn't want to tell her too much about Otto, not yet.

‘He used to go bowling a couple of nights a week,' Kathleen volunteered.

‘Do you know where?'

She stared at him. ‘No, I don't know where. He went with a gang from the office. You're making it sound like it's something really important.'

‘It could be, yes.'

‘Then what are you trying to say? Was he doing something wrong? Was he mixed up in something illegal or something? Come on, Lloyd, you can't just let it go.'

Lloyd turned toward North Torrey. His face was lit up by the passing streetlights—lit, then shadowed, then lit, then shadowed. ‘It seems like Celia and Marianna were both attending regular religious study groups run by a character called Otto. Otto, apparently, was offering them everlasting life.'

Kathleen frowned at him. ‘Everlasting life? Are you serious?'

‘My feelings exactly,' Lloyd told her. ‘But it seems like a whole lot of people believed it. Enough people to make up a coachload, anyway.'

‘What are you trying to say?' Kathleen demanded. ‘Mike was always so positive. He couldn't have been interested in everlasting life, or anything like that. He wasn't even superstitious. He didn't mind spilling salt or breaking mirrors from time to time, or black cats crossing his path.'

‘He wasn't into drugs?'

Kathleen shook her head very firmly. ‘He hated drugs. He didn't smoke and he didn't drink. He had a physique like Sylvester Stallone. He ran three miles every morning before breakfast and he voted Democrat.'

Lloyd turned into the drive of his house, and killed the BMW's engine. ‘I'm sorry, Kathleen, I guess I shouldn't try to play detective. All I manage to do is upset people.'

Kathleen laid her hand on his arm. ‘You've been great. Really. That's not just flattery. I was beginning to wonder if there was any kind of future after Mike, whether life was worth living. I admire what you're trying to do, you know that? Even if you find that Celia took her own life because of depression, or PMT, or who knows what . . . at least you're not giving in. You're looking for answers. You're fighting back. That makes life worth living, doesn't it? That alone.'

They got out of the car, and Lloyd ushered Kathleen toward the house.

Kathleen said, ‘Do you smell burning? Do you smell smoke?'

Lloyd sniffed. The sourness of burning was unmistakable, and as they approached the house he saw a blueish curtain of smoke hanging over the back yard. Dear God, he thought, they've burned my house down. He unlocked the front door and, turning round to Kathleen, said, ‘Stay back!'

‘It's still alight!' called Kathleen, frantically pointing toward the bedroom windows at the back. Reflected flames danced in the window of the house next door. Lloyd hesitated for a moment. If he opened up the front door, he might feed the fire with a huge surge of oxygen. On the other hand, he had to get inside to put it out. No matter how fast the Fire Department made it to North Torrey, his precious house would be ashes before they could connect up their first hose.

‘Call the Fire Department!' he yelled at Kathleen.

‘What?'

‘Call the Fire Department! Call them now! Use the car phone!'

Kathleen shouted at him, ‘You're not going inside? You can't!'

‘Just call the Fire Department, will you?'

He hesitated for only a second. Then he unlocked the front door, shouldered it open, and rolled head-over-heels across the hallway. He heard the fire bellow like a wild animal, and felt the side of his face scorched. Crouched by the foot of the stairs, his hands clasped protectively over his head, he waited until the flames had subsided, then he stood up and quickly looked around him.

The living-room had been ransacked. All the drawers were hanging open, and all of the display-cabinets had been smashed. The air was thick with smoke, and Lloyd coughed and spat to clear it out of his lungs. Then he ducked toward the kitchen.

In the kitchen, the story was the same. There was so much cutlery on the floor that it looked as if a fisherman had emptied his baskets of sardines on to it. Every jar was broken open. Coffee, rice, cookies, salt. Even the burners had been prized out of the hob.

They were looking for their lizard charm, thought Lloyd. They wanted it so much so that they lost sight of the fact that it doesn't mean anything to me. Not yet, anyway. But it will.

He hop-jumped across the living-room. The bedroom door was wide open, and the bedroom itself was a mass of fire. He could see his bedside table burning, and the photograph of Celia twisting and curling up. He could see flames licking out from under his bed. It was so hot that he couldn't approach closer than six or seven feet, holding his hand up to protect his eyes. He didn't have a fire-extingusher in the house, but he guessed that a few bowlfuls of water might douse it down. He hurried back to the kitchen, flicked on the tap, and waited impatiently while the red plastic washbowl noisily filled up with water.

Then he hurried back again, balancing the bowl, slopping water, but as he approached the fiery entrance to the bedroom, he realized that what he was attempting was completely futile. The bed was alight, with huge flames roaring up to the ceiling, and fabric burning in a blackened blizzard. The heat was huge; it dried the moisture on his eyeballs as soon as he approached; and when he tossed the bowlful of water, it did nothing more than sizzle momentarily, and vanish into the smallest puff of steam. He might just as well have tried spitting.

He threw the plastic bowl aside, and hurried across to his desk, where he kept his accounts, and his diaries, and the photograph albums that his mother had given him. If he could save nothing else, he could save those.

He fumbled for his keys, slotted them into the keyhole, and it was only then that he realized that the desk wasn't locked. Somebody had been here before him. Somebody with a key. He opened the desk and saw that everything had been searched and shuffled aside: diaries, photographs, files, papers, passports, cheque books.

Still, he didn't have time to worry about that. He stuffed the most important papers into two large envelopes, and hunched his way across the living-room with his arms full. The bedroom was burning so ferociously now that long tongues of fire were roaring out of it, and the bureau beside the door was already sprouting flames. It would be only a matter of minutes before the whole house was ablaze.

Lloyd had almost reached the hallway when he heard somebody calling him.

‘Lloyd! Wait! Lloyd!'

At first he thought it was Kathleen, and he yelled out, ‘Kathleen! I'm okay! I'm coming out!'

But then he suddenly realized that the voice was coming from his left. He stopped, disoriented, and dropped some of his photograph albums.

‘Lloyd! Wait! Please, Lloyd, wait!'

He shielded his eyes against the heat. The living-room was filling up with smoke and he could scarcely breathe. He coughed, and coughed, and coughed again. At first, he couldn't see anything. But then he began to distinguish a shadowy figure in the bedroom doorway. He smeared his eyes with his fingers, trying to focus. The figure wavered in the flames, but didn't attempt to move; as if the flames meant nothing, as if the flames were no more than confetti, or flowers, or bright running water.