The Astral, or, Till the Day I Die. V. J. Banis

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СКАЧАТЬ don’t see why we shouldn’t.” She made her voice business-like. “I’ve got to go. It was good seeing you. Welcome back.”

      Just like that, she was gone. He stood and stared after her, watched her dash across the parking lot, saw her climb into her car, waited until it had disappeared into the rain.

      So much, he thought, for the fantasies that had kept him burning in his bed night after night. She had looked right through him, had looked downright unhappy to see him—could not, in short, have made her disinterest any plainer.

      And what had he expected, anyway? That after all these years she would throw herself into his arms, would tell him that she did after all love him, that nothing mattered any more but them, together at last?

      Just by passing by she has stolen my heart. Surely, all those thousands of years ago, Ramses had meant those words to be joyous, but remembering them now, they filled him with anguish.

      He cursed himself for a fool and looked around in a daze. He had forgotten entirely what he had even come here for. Disgusted with himself, in despair, he followed her path out into the rain of the parking lot.

      * * * *

      At home, Catherine stripped off her sodden clothes and slipped into a robe. The telephone rang but she ignored it. A fire was already laid in the living room fireplace, and she lit it and poured herself a glass of cognac.

      She didn’t often drink these days, was afraid that she would find that too convenient a relief. Now, though, the burn of the alcohol in her throat was welcome.

      She was still unnerved by the meeting with Jack. Seeing him...my God, how that had shaken her. The thought of resuming sexual relations with Walter had sickened her. She’d had to force herself to make the effort, futile as it had turned out to be. A day ago, an hour ago, she would not have imagined that she could feel—would ever again feel—desire of that sort.

      Yet she had only to lay eyes on Jack McKenzie and she had been panting like a bitch in heat. No use dressing it up in fancy words, my girl.

      It wasn’t only sexual heat, though, now that she’d had time to consider. It was another kind of heat as well that had permeated her. Seeing him, however briefly, however disappointingly, was like stepping from an icy cold outside into a warm, fire lit room. She could almost feel the frigidity within her begin to thaw, like the heat from the fireplace leaching the chill from her body. She turned her glass in her hand, watching the gleam of firelight caught in the amber like some prehistoric insect.

      The clock struck, giving her a start. Walter had said he would be home for dinner. She couldn’t bear the thought of struggling through an evening with him. Though she and Jack had done nothing more than chat in a desultory fashion, she felt oddly guilty. Surely Walter would see her desire written on her face.

      She dialed the restaurant, meaning to plead an excuse. She would say she was going to a movie with her mother, or perhaps that she had a headache and wanted to be alone.

      None of which turned out to be necessary. A girlish young voice she didn’t recognize informed her, “Mr. Desmond isn’t in today, it’s his day off. Can I help you?”

      She hung up without reply, relieved and puzzled at the same time. He had said he was going to the restaurant, hadn’t he? Oh well, she thought, he surely isn’t finding my company any more enjoyable than I do his.

      For a moment, she considered trying his cell phone, and decided against it. Out of the blue, it occurred to her that he might be having an affair. And what if he was, she wondered? She could hardly blame him. Could hardly care, truth be told. Anyway, after the desire—oh, hell, call a spade a spade, she thought—after the lust Jack had inspired in her, she wasn’t in a position to cast stones, was she?

      Maybe, she thought wryly, in Gilbert and Sullivan style, they had become the very model of a modern messed-up marriage.

      The phone rang again. She almost answered it, thinking it might be Walter, and then changed her mind, letting it ring for several long minutes before it finally stopped.

      * * * *

      Walter was not home for dinner after all. She was already in bed when she heard him come in. She listened, and concluded from his stumbling around and muttered remarks that he was drunk.

      She got up to see if he needed help, but when she came near to the bedroom door, she heard him crying. She crept back to her own room, Becky’s room, where she lay in the darkness and imagined, though it would have been impossible, that she could still hear his muted sobs.

      Or perhaps they were Becky’s sobs that she heard. With that thought, there seemed to come to her a chorus of weeping. Children, a vast multitude of them, crying.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      At first, when she woke in the morning, she could not quite think what was different—something about the light? She turned on her side and saw the glow of sunlight beaming into the bedroom. Going to the window, she pulled the curtains aside. The rain that had fallen for days had ended and the sky was blue and high above.

      What was really odd, she thought, as she slipped out of the oversized tee shirt she used for a nightgown, was the fact that she had slept the night through, like the proverbial log. For months her sleep had been fitful, periodic, punctuated with awakenings when she would find herself bathed in sweat and the bedclothes tied in knots.

      She was in the shower when she realized with a sense of discovery that something had happened to her, something was different inside, in the very core of her being.

      She tried to analyze it, and came back to her meeting yesterday with Jack. It was as if that electrical shock of seeing him, of sexual remembering, had jump-started her feelings, all the emotions she had so carefully locked away.

      Out of nowhere, she began to cry—the first tears she had shed since that horrible moment in the parking lot, clinging to the door of a truck, fighting for her daughter.

      She sat on the edge of the tub and let them come. The sobs wracked her body, the tears rolled down her cheeks unstopped. It was painful, but at the same time, she felt alive in a way that she hadn’t been before. It was like being born again. Was this what the church people meant when they said that?

      Walter gave her a concerned look when she came into the kitchen. Probably, she thought, he had heard her sobbing in the bathroom. “Are you all right?” he asked.

      “I’m going to be,” she said, and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He seemed pleased, if a bit mystified. She was grateful that he didn’t question her further. She didn’t have the answers yet herself.

      She did, however, have some plans made. When Walter left, she went to the garage and took down the boxes of Christmas ornaments and without opening them set them on the front step, and called Goodwill to pick them up. She told Goodwill the boxes were Christmas ornaments, but in her mind it was a big chunk of self-pity she was disposing of.

      Then she went to see her mother. She drove up Beverly Glen, seeing for the first time how green the hills were from all the rain, and took Mulholland Drive, following its twisted route across the ridge of hills that separate the valley from West L.A.

      In the summer the valley would be thick with smog and visibility limited to no more than a few miles, but now, the air washed clean by rain, it spread out before her in all its immensity, seeming СКАЧАТЬ