Imajica. Clive Barker

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      Already, after going over the encounter a few times, it was becoming, like the blue overhead, ambiguous. But she held on hard to the facts of the matter. She’d been in the menswear department of Bloomingdales, looking for a sweater for Marlin. It was crowded, and there was nothing on display that she thought appropriate. She’d bent down to pick up the purchases at her feet, and as she rose again she’d caught sight of a face she knew, looking straight at her through the moving mesh of people. How long had she seen the face for? A second; two at most? Long enough for her heart to jump, and her face to flush; long enough for her mouth to open and shape the word Gentle. Then the traffic between them had thickened, and he’d disappeared. She’d fixed the place where he’d been, stooped to pick up her baggage, and gone after him, not doubting that it was he.

      The crowd slowed her progress, but she soon caught sight of him again, heading towards the door. This time she yelled his name, not giving a damn if she looked a fool, and dived after him. She was impressive in full flight and the crowd yielded, so that by the time she reached the door he was only yards the other side. Third Avenue was as thronged as the store, but there he was, heading across the street. The lights changed as she got to the kerb. She went after him anyway, daring the traffic. As she yelled again he was buffeted by a shopper about some business as urgent as hers, and he turned as he was struck, giving her a second glimpse of him. She might have laughed out loud at the absurdity of her error had it not disturbed her so. Either she was losing her mind, or she’d followed the wrong man. Either way, this black man, his ringleted hair gleaming on his shoulders, was not Gentle. Momentarily undecided as to whether to go on looking or to give up the chase there and then, her eyes lingered on the stranger’s face, and for a heart-beat, or less, his features blurred, and in their flux, caught as if by the sun off a wing in the stratosphere, she saw Gentle, his hair swept back from his high forehead, his grey eyes all yearning, his mouth, which she’d not known she missed till now, ready to break into a smile. It never came. The wing dipped, the stranger turned, Gentle was gone. She stood in the throng for several seconds while he disappeared downtown. Then, gathering herself together, she turned her back on the mystery, and started home.

      It didn’t leave her thoughts, of course. She was a woman who trusted her senses, and to discover them so deceptive distressed her. But more vexing still was why it should be that particular face, of all those in her memory’s catalogue, she’d chosen to configure from that of a perfect stranger. Klein’s Bastard Boy was out of her life, and she out of his. It was six years since she’d crossed the bridge from where they’d stood, and the river that flowed between was a torrent. Her marriage to Estabrook had come and gone along that river, and a good deal of pain with it. Gentle was still on the other shore, part of her history; irretrievable. So why had she conjured him now?

      As she came within a block of Marlin’s building she remembered something she’d utterly put out of her head for that six-year span. It had been a glimpse of Gentle, not so unlike the one she’d just had, that had propelled her into her near-suicidal affair with him. She’d met him at one of Klein’s parties - a casual encounter - and had given him very little conscious thought subsequently. Then, three nights later, she’d been visited by an erotic dream that regularly haunted her. The scenario was always the same. She was lying naked on bare boards in an empty room, not bound but somehow bounded, and a man whose face she could never see, his mouth so sweet it was like eating candy to kiss him, made violent love to her. Only this time the fire that burned in the grate close by showed her the face of her dream-lover, and it had been Gentle’s face. The shock, after so many years of never knowing who the man was, woke her, but with such a sense of loss at this interrupted coitus she couldn’t sleep again for mourning it. The next day she’d discovered his whereabouts from Klein, who’d warned her in no uncertain manner that John Zacharias was bad news for tender hearts. She’d ignored the warning, and gone to see him that very afternoon, in the studio off the Edgware Road. They scarcely left it for the next two weeks, their passion putting her dreams to shame.

      Only later, when she was in love with him and it was too late for common sense to qualify her feelings, did she learn more about him. He trailed a reputation for womanizing that, even if it was ninety per cent invention, as she assumed, was still prodigious. If she mentioned his name in any circle, however jaded it was by gossip, there was always somebody who had some titbit about him. He even went by a variety of names. Some referred to him as the Furie; some as Zach or Zacho or Mr Zee; others called him Gentle, which was the name she knew him by, of course; still others John the Divine. Enough names for half a dozen lifetimes. She wasn’t so blindly devoted to him that she didn’t accept there was truth in these rumours. Nor did he do much to temper them. He liked the air of legend that hung about his head. He claimed, for instance, not to know how old he was. Like herself, he had a very slippery grasp on the past. And he frankly admitted to being obsessed with her sex - some of the talk she’d heard was of cradle-snatching; some of deathbed fucks - he played no favourites.

      So, here was her Gentle: a man known to the doormen of every exclusive club and hotel in the city, who, after ten years of high living, had survived the ravages of every excess; who was still lucid, still handsome, still alive. And this same man, this Gentle, told her he was in love with her, and put the words together so perfectly she disregarded all she’d heard but those he spoke.

      She might have gone on listening forever, but for her rage, which was the legend she trailed. A volatile thing, apt to ferment in her without her even being aware of it. That had been the case with Gentle. After half a year of their affair, she’d begun to wonder, wallowing in his affection, how a man whose history had been one infidelity after another had mended his ways; which thought led to the possibility that perhaps he hadn’t. In fact she had no reason to suspect him. His devotion bordered on the obsessive in some moods, as though he saw in her a woman she didn’t even know herself, an ancient soul-mate. She was, she began to think, unlike any other woman he’d ever met; the love that had changed his life. When they were so intimately joined, how would she not know if he were cheating on her? She’d have surely sensed the other woman. Tasted her on his tongue, or smelt her on his skin. And if not there, then in the subtleties of their exchanges. But she’d underestimated him. When, by the sheerest fluke, she’d discovered he had not one other woman on the side but two, it drove her to near insanity. She began by destroying the contents of the studio, slashing all his canvases, painted or not, then tracking the felon himself, and mounting an assault that literally brought him to his knees, in fear for his balls.

      The rage burned a week, after which she fell totally silent for three days; a silence broken by a grief like nothing she’d ever experienced before. Had it not been for her chance meeting with Estabrook - who saw through her tumbling, distracted manner to the woman she was - she might well have taken her own life.

      Thus the tale of Judith and Gentle: one death short of tragedy, and a marriage short of farce.

      She found Marlin already home, uncharacteristically agitated.

      ‘Where have you been?’ he wanted to know. ‘It’s six thirty-nine.’

      She instantly knew this was no time to be telling him what her trip to Bloomingdales had cost her in peace of mind. Instead she lied. ‘I couldn’t get a cab. I had to walk.’

      ‘If that happens again just call me. I’ll have you picked up by one of our limos. I don’t want you wandering the streets. It’s not safe. Anyhow, we’re late. We’ll have to eat after the performance.’

      ‘What performance?’

      ‘The show in the Village Troy was yabbering about last night, remember? The Neo-Nativity? He said it was the best thing since Bethlehem.’

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