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"You're safe," she said again. They said we were safe. They allsaid Safe, as if it had a magic charm. Safe, safe, safe.
"Oh, no," I cried. I wept. "No, none of us are safe. And we willnever be, never, ever again, ever. ..."22I WOULDN'T let them touch me. I mean, I wouldn't give upanything just yet, not my torn shoe, nothing. Keep away yourcombs, your towels, your comfort. I clung to the secret insidemy coat.
A shroud, that's what I asked for, some heavy thing to wrap aboutmyself. They found it, a blanket, soft, woolen, didn't matter.
The place was almost empty.
They had been steadily moving Roger's treasures south. Theytold me. Mortal agents had been entrusted with this task, and most ofthe statues and the icons were gone down to the orphanage in NewOrleans, and housed there in the empty chapel I had seen, where onlythe Crucified Christ had been. Some omen!
They had not quite finished these tasks. A few precious things remained,a trunk or two, boxes of papers. Files.
I'd been gone the space of three days. The news was filled withtales of Roger's death. Though they would not tell me how it hadbeen discovered. The scramble for power in the world of the dark,criminal drug cartels was well under way. The reporters had stoppedcalling the TV station about Dora. No one knew about this place. Noone knew she was here.
Few knew about the big orphanage to which she planned to return,when all Roger's relics had been moved.
The cable network had canceled her show. The gangster's daughterpreached no more. She had not seen or spoken to her followers.
In newspaper columns and in bites on television, she learnt that thescandal had made her vaguely mysterious. But in the main, she wasconsidered a dead end, a small-time television evangelist with noknowledge of her father's doings.
But in the company of David and Armand, she had lost all contactwith her former world, living here in New York, as the worst winterin fifty years came down, a snow from Heaven條iving here amongthe relics and listening to them, their soft comfort, their wondroustales, uncertain of what she meant to do, believing still in God. . . .
All that was the latest news.
I took the blanket from them and walked, one shoe gone, throughthe flat.
I went into the small room. I wrapped the blanket around me. Thewindow here was covered. No sun would come.
"Don't come near me," I said. "I need to sleep a mortal's sleep. Ineed to sleep the night through and the day and then I'll tell youeverything. Don't touch me, don't come near me.""May I sleep in your arms?" Dora asked, a white and vibrantblood-filled thing standing in the doorway, her vampiric angelsbehind her.
The room was dark. Only a chest was left with some relics in it.
But there were statues still in the hall.
"No. Once the sun rises, my body will do whatever it will toprotect itself from any mortal intrusion. You can't come with me intothat sleep. It's not possible.""Then let me lie with you now."The other two stared over her shoulders at my empty left eyelidsfluttering painfully against each other. There must have been blood.
But our blood is staunched fast. The eye had been torn out by theroot. What was its root? I could still smell the soft delicious blood Ihad from her. It laid on my lips, her blood.
"Let me sleep," I said.
I locked the door and lay on the floor, knees drawn up, warm andsafe in the thick folds of the blanket, smelling the pine needles and thesoil that clung to my clothes, and the smoke, and the bits and piecesof dried excrement, and the blood, of course, the human blood, bloodfrom battlefields, and blood from Hagia Sophia when the dead infanthad fallen on me, and the smell of the horse manure, and the smell ofthe marl of Hell.
All of it was wrapped up with me in this blanket, my hand on thebulk of the unfolded veil against my bare chest.
"Don't come near me!" I whispered one more time for the ears ofthe immortals outside, who were so confounded and confused.
Then I slept.
Sweet rest. Sweet darkness.
Would that death were like this. Would that one would sleep andsleep and sleep forever.
23I REMAINED unconscious the full twenty-four hours, wakingonly as the sun died behind the winter sky the next evening.
There was a fine outlay of my own good clothes for me displayedon the wooden chest, and a pair of my own shoes.
I tried to imagine who had made this selection from amongst allthat David had earlier sent here for me from the nearby hotel. Surelyhe was the logical choice. And I smiled, thinking of how often in ourlives David and I had been utterly entangled in the adventure ofclothes.
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