Part 4 (1/2)
”You would be, too Maybe you should be”
”What do you mean by that?”
”Come on It's a lovely day”
THE COMMON WAS ALIVE with the desperate festivity that comes with the last warm day of the season Couples pushed children in strollers Brownstone Brahs, and couples dozed, curled up in quilts A coed football garess on the lawn, and leaves were everywhere, the trees having thrown their autu behind a slew of red, yellow, and orange confetti
I hadn't been to the Common since last year's July 4 e-Dan, Sheila, Aubrey, and I-had decided to caood view of the fireworks Aubrey was distant that day, and her moodiness had irritated me Two days later, I found the e-ain, this time with either a demon or a psychopathic, albeit talented, hypnotist-part ofpossibility that an explanation ht still be found in this corporeal world-and last year's Fourth of July seemed as surreal a life astoward the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, in the direction of the Public Garden, but even now I could see the blackness of Eden, the blaze of light that was Lucifer, the trailing streaht bodies But before I would hear ht that you careat risk” ”Yes”
”What's the risk?”
Lucian sighed heavily, as though it would take great effort to explain ”Is it not enough that I have assuree that this is highly unconventional,” he said at last
To say the least
”It would not be looked well upon,with you”
”By whoh now This does not serve my purpose”
”Your purpose? What aboutfrom heaven, and you knohat? I'm exhausted”
”What do you want, Clay?” He sounded weary, and this aggravated erous for you-and I have no idea what kind of ramifications this will have forit” you're doing it”
”I told you you were safe Any 'ramifications,' as you call the this, I've already told you that as well I' the saain, that I h I had heard his reasons, I did not understand them Why would a dehed at ain But despite his irritation atthat there was so you away, but I didn't see where he took you”
The deside me, his pasty skin and black boots a decided 180 after the stylish redhead, the dignified black man ”We assumed he would lead us to a place of our own A place of his h he had truly becoh he cared for us and would recreate that garden and walk in it a us But he led us nowhere” He looked up toward the tops of the trees, their branches like the sparse scalps of aging o We hovered on the edge of the earth in fear-fear and silence And I longed for Eden, settling even then beneath those e but darkness I was sick for it, would have given anything-if I had had anything to give-to have it all back as it was”
I remembered the day Aubrey left our apart: El went down to Eden and laid hi sorrow And it infusedBesidefaces Some of them wept I had never seen such tears before-dark, remorseful, bereft of joy There was only sadness and dread, that terrible sense that had I been a God, I would have set it all back I would have erased everything, returned it all to the way it had been”
”Why couldn't you?” I said ”For that hter that sounded slightly hysterical, and then his lips curled back from his teeth, and spittle flew out with his words ”I'll tell you why: Because ere damned! damned! Oh, not that I knew it then-how could I? There was no precedent for any of it Wrong had never existed Lucifer had to manufacture that first aberration himself Until then, there had been one law dictated by the sole fact of our creation: Worshi+p the creator And now, as surely as Lucifer's throne had broken into a thousand splinters, we had violated that order” Oh, not that I knew it then-how could I? There was no precedent for any of it Wrong had never existed Lucifer had to manufacture that first aberration himself Until then, there had been one law dictated by the sole fact of our creation: Worshi+p the creator And now, as surely as Lucifer's throne had broken into a thousand splinters, we had violated that order”
”I thought Adainal sinner”
”You humans always like to think of yourselves as the first at everything”
I ignored his open sneer ”What if you had apologized?”
”Apologized” He spit onto the edge of the path ”LetHalf the time they're insincere And even when they aren't, there's nothing a person can do to undo whatever he did Oops, I ran over your cat So sorry Meanwhile, the cat's dead, entrails oozing out of its ed anything except that I now have an opportunity to run over your new cat as well If Aubrey had apologized, would it have e of the path ”LetHalf the time they're insincere And even when they aren't, there's nothing a person can do to undo whatever he did Oops, I ran over your cat So sorry Meanwhile, the cat's dead, entrails oozing out of its ed anything except that I now have an opportunity to run over your new cat as well If Aubrey had apologized, would it have made it all better?”
I didn't answer that
”Besides, even though we knee had co, we had no idea how irrevocable our actions were Not yet So there was only re like acid we had no idea how irrevocable our actions were Not yet So there was only re like acid
”Meanwhile, there was the shaking of El's spirit like the keening of a banshee, as though the whole world had died And I suppose it had It was unbearable, that sound-a pain without end or even the hope of death to escape it I could not watch, was unable to stand the sight of that spirit hovering over the darkness, though I couldn't block out the sound of it
”But this was theof all: El had turned away” He tried to tuck a rogue strand of hair behind his ear When it wouldn't stay put but teased along the edge of his cheek, he yanked it out with a savage pull I stared as the patch along the side of his teainst the white of his scalp
”I didn't knohy” He seemed not to notice the deviance of his own actions as he flicked the hair off his fingers ”I didn't understand that we had opened an unbridgeable chasm between us All I kneas that he couldn't stand to look at us Oh, but to know that everything is wrong with the universe, and to know that you had a part in that irrevocable drama, is just about too much for any mind to take I had lived always for the moment-that was, after all, all there had been-and now I could see no end to it Regret ate at one insane”
Are you sure you didn't? I rehter but said only, ”Obviously it did end” I rehter but said only, ”Obviously it did end”
He shrugged ”Eventually And I ht have spent only an epoch like that But it felt like an eternity”
We walked in silence What did one say to sootten who I was talking to
The de Pond When winter sets in, we should go ice skating there”
DESPITE MY LIMITED KNOWLEDGE of Lucifer, I couldn't picture hi idle after that When I asked Lucian about it, he shook his youthful head
”He kept to himself and wouldn't even look at Eden He was like a child who abandons a toy after he's broken it What was Eden to hiht as well have been ruined; he had set his eyes on heaven As for us, we no more existed to hihts It was all one night to me, those hours like years, as Lucifer raised his head to heaven and narrowed his eyes at God”
The dees of Lucifer's light-all the rest of the world was darkness but for hier or any farther away for fear of the darkness And all the while there was that terrible, shuddering spirit of El
”Meanwhile, Lucifer grew bolder by the day He blasted El with sharp, serrated words I thought for sure the Host would come for us, that El would send us away or worse, scatter us like salt over a field”
”Did you think he would obliterate you?”