Virgin (12 page)

"Whenever
you see red." Joe took the other half of his bread slice and dipped it
into his soup.
"By the way, how's Sister Carrie?"

"You just
missed her."

"Oh."

"She's in
the back. Want me to get her?"

"No. Don't
bother her. Just wanted to say hello if she happened to wander through."

Is that the
only reason people come here? Dan thought. To see Carrie?

First Hal
asking about her, now Joe. They were like puppies, panting for a glimpse of
her. No lascivious ogling here--no curves in those asexual, baggy clothes she
wore-- just a simple desire to bask in her glow. He knew their love for her was
the worship-from-afar kind, but still it bothered him. He should be used to it
by now, but he wasn't.

After all, Dan
loved her too.

I knew a place for her, a small cave set far back on the
ledge above the tav rock. Together we prepared a bier for her and place her
upon it.

And then we
sealed her in, carrying rocks that one man could not lift alone, and choking
the mouth of the cave with them.

It will take
many men to reopen her Resting Place. But they shall not touch these stones.
They shall have to deal with me first.

from the Glass scroll

Rockefeller
Museum translation

8

Paraiso

As Emilio
wheeled the black Bentley limo through the iron gates on the rim of his estate,
Arthur Crenshaw sat alone in the backseat and closed his eyes, praying for
guidance in the coming confrontation with his son.

Charlie,
Charlie, what are we going to do about you?

He'd been up
all night praying over the problem. And during the six hours alone in the passenger
compartment of his
Gulf stream II,
four-and-a-half miles over the
country he prayed would elect him its president, he'd continued praying for an
answer.

Thank the Lord
for prayer. He only wished he'd discovered it sooner in his life. He'd never
been much of a one for prayer in his younger days. In fact he remembered secret
sneers at the breast-beaters, the bead-pushers, the doe-eyed heaven-gazers who
couldn't solve their problems on their own and had to beseech some Santa Claus
in the sky to bail them out. He'd always considered them fools and losers.

Until he ran up
against a problem neither he nor anyone else could solve: Olivia's cancer.

The tumor
started in her left ovary, growing, insidiously, worming its way out into her
pelvis. By the time the first symptoms appeared--subtle even then--it was seeded
throughout her abdominal cavity.

What a vicious,
ruthless, perfidious disease, a spreading army of militant cells causing no
pain, no visible lumps, no
blockages, covertly
infiltrating the abdomen until it had gained a foothold upon every organ within
reach.

Even now Arthur
suppressed a moan as he remembered the moment in the hospital room when they
got the news. Too late, the doctors said. They'd give it their best shot but
the prognosis was bleak.

Still fresh in
his mind was the look on Olivia's face--the panic and terror that raced across
her features before she controlled them and donned the brave mask she wore to
her grave. For the timeless instant between the devastating realization that
her lifespan was numbered in months, and the determination that she would not
surrender to the tumor, her innermost fears had lain naked before him.

Olivia, God
bless her, never gave up. Together they tried everything. When traditional
therapies failed, she volunteered for experimental protocols. When the cancer
resisted those, Arthur took her around the world, to the sincere quacks and out-and-out
charlatans who offered hope to the hopeless. Arthur spent a fortune--perhaps two
fortunes-- but it was only money. What was money? He could always make more of
it. But there was only one Olivia.
And brave
Olivia, she withstood the endless array of tests and scans and pills and
needles and baths and rubs until she could stand no more.

Because none of
it was working.

And then, for
the first time in his adult life, Arthur Crenshaw began to pray. Not for
himself--he swore he'd never stoop to praying for himself--but for Olivia. He
resented the need to pray. He knew now it was pride. He'd always been the
problem solver, always the one who managed to find the needed answer. But he'd
already done everything humanly possible; now the only place left to seek help
was beyond the human.

He went to a
church and spoke to a young minister who told him to put Olivia's problem in
God's hands and pray to Him to save her.

Arthur did just
that. He prayed and he forced himself to let go, to step back and trust in the
Lord. To his dismay,
despite his prayers, his
agonized cries to heaven, Olivia continued her downward course.

Only one person
appeared to benefit from his prayers: Arthur Crenshaw. It left him feeling
buoyed, lighter than air, filled with an inner glow that could only be the
Peace of the Lord.

He could imagine the facile rationalizations the unbelievers in
his circle would offer to explain his sudden inner tranquility: Giving over
responsibility for Olivia to God had relieved him of an awesome psychological
burden. What he interpreted as Divine Grace was merely his psyche rebounding
after being released from the crushing weight of accountability for Olivia's
cure.

Nonsense. God had willed him to be tranquil so he could fully
concentrate on being with Olivia. Which was exactly what he did.

And when Olivia
died in his arms in their bedroom in Paraiso, they were both at peace.

But Arthur
hadn't stopped praying then. Prayer had become a habit during Olivia's illness
and so he'd continued a ritual of starting and finishing each day by talking
with the Lord. And when he'd been troubled by problems with the company, when a
solution eluded him, he'd pray. And, praise the Lord, not long after he prayed
the answer would come to him.

He was well
aware of the nonbeliever's rational explanation for that, as well: When you
gave a problem over to God you stopped gnawing at it; you relaxed your
stranglehold on the elements of the problem, allowing them to reassemble into
new and different configurations. The fresh perspectives afforded by those new
configurations, the different light in which you saw the problem, allowed you
to arrive at a solution. Nothing divine about it. The same thing happened with
Transcendental Meditation. With self-hypnosis. With standard mental relaxation
techniques.

Again,
nonsense. Arthur came to realize that the Lord had become an integral part of
his life and was working through him. To bind himself closer to Him, he went to
Bible study groups, prayer meetings, healing sessions, immersing himself in the
new Christian Fundamentalism and becoming one of its more visible members. And
when he sold his company and decided to run for the Senate, he discovered that
his new beliefs guaranteed him a huge, ready-made constituency eager to work
for him and propel him to the Capitol.

Surely anyone
with half a brain could see the hand of God at work in all this.

He opened his
eyes as he heard the rattle of the bridge timbers under the wheels. He leaned
against the window and stared down over the edge of the narrow, one-car span.
Afternoon sunlight dazzled and danced on the cascading surface of the brook one
hundred feet below.

Emilio guided the Bentley from the bridge onto a path that wound
through the pines for half a mile, then they broke from the shade into the
light. Before them stretched a lush garden of flowering fruit trees surrounded
by sprays of forsythia and rhododendrons and azaleas. Wild flowers bloomed in
the interstices. No grass. Just ground cover and natural mulch. Arthur spent
tens of thousands of dollars a year to keep the garden looking wild and
untended and yet perfect. Beyond the garden stretched the western sky. And two
hundred feet straight down--the Pacific Ocean.

Emilio pulled
into the bower that served as a carport. Arthur opened his own door--he disliked
being waited upon--and stepped out. The fresh, salt tang of the on-shore breeze
felt marvelous after the fumes of New York.

Every time he
returned from a trip he appreciated anew Olivia's wisdom in naming their home
Paraiso.

Then he thought
of his son and his mood darkened. Yes, their home looked like a paradise. If
only it could
be
a paradise.

"Where's
Charlie?"

"He was
still asleep when I left," Emilio said. Arthur nodded. Time for the
showdown. He didn't want this. And when he'd left New York he hadn't known what
to do. But during the flight he'd prayed and placed the problem in God's hands.

And praise the
Lord, by the time the
Gulfstream
had landed he had the solution.

He strode
toward the low dome that was the only part of the house visible from the
garden. He tapped the entry code into the keypad and the door swung inward. He
passed the door of the waiting elevator, preferring the extra time the spiral
staircase would afford him. As he descended to the top floor, the endless
grandeur of the Pacific opened before him.

Arthur had
built the house downward instead of up, carving it into the rocky face of the
oceanfront cliffs. It hadn't been easy. When he finally found a suitable
coastal cliff south of Carmel that was an extrusion of bedrock instead of the
soft clay that dominated the area, strong enough to support his dream house, he
ran up against the California Coastal Commission. Many were the times during
his epic battles with those arrogant bureaucrats that he'd wished he'd never
started the project. But he was determined to see it through. After all, he'd
promised Olivia. It took threats, bribes, and in one case, plain, old-fashioned
blackmail to get all the permits. It was during that period that he learned the
power of the government, and decided that the only way to protect himself from
it was to join the club and wield some of that power himself.

But Paraiso was
finally built, exactly to his own specs. The entire front was a dazzling array
of floor-to-ceiling windows, enticing the sky and the sea indoors, making them
part of the interior.
From the sea, Paraiso appeared as a massive mosaic of steel
and crystal--a three-story bay window. At night it glowed like a jewel set into
the cliff side. On sunny weekends the waves below were acrawl with a bobbing
horde of boats, private and chartered, filled with sightseers pointing and
gazing up in open-mouthed awe.

Within, the
ceilings were high, the rooms open and airy. The dining room, the kitchen,
Arthur's office, and the bedrooms made up the two lower levels.

Arthur paused
on the first landing and surveyed the sprawling expanse of his favorite place
in the world, the pride of Paraiso--the great room that occupied the entire top
floor.

The afternoon
sun beat through the glass ceiling; he adjusted a switch on the wall to his
left, rotating the fine louvers above to reduce the glare. He gazed outward
through the convex expanse of glass before him and watched the whitecaps
flecking the surface of the Pacific. Carved into the living rock of the room's
rear wall was a huge fireplace, dark and cold. He and Olivia had planned to
spend the rest of their days entertaining friends and family in this room.
Since her death he'd converted it to a chapel of sorts. No pews or crosses or
stained-glass windows, just a quiet place to pray and contemplate the wonder of
this majestic corner of Creation. It was here that he felt closest to God.
,

Be with me,
Lord, he thought as he tore himself away from the view and continued toward the
lower levels.

He found
Charlie in his bedroom, its walls still decked with the Berkeley pennants and
paraphernalia left over from his undergraduate days. He was sipping coffee from
the lunch tray Juanita had prepared for him. He looked up and slammed his cup
on the tray. His eyes blazed.

"Damn you," he said softly. "Damn you to
hell."

Arthur stood in
the doorway, unable to move, unable to speak, staring at the son he hadn't seen
in nearly two years.

Charlie looked
awful. The old gray sweatsuit he'd worn to bed hung around him in loose folds.
He looked a decade older than his twenty-five years. So thin. Cheeks sunken,
face pale, his black, sleep-tangled hair, usually so thick and shiny, now thin
and brittle looking. His eyes were bright in their deep sockets. The dark
stubble on his cheeks accentuated his pallor.

"Charlie,"
he said when he finally found his voice. "What's happened?"