Part 7 (2/2)
Lucian pulled over in front of a stately brick Tudor covered with ivy I was not surprised to recognize the curved front entry, the door like an upside-down U, U, the turret to the side of it running up the front of the house, complete with a spire, the steeply pitched roof It was the sao, the sae of success, of a life worthy of Aubrey's expectations A mark I had fallen short of the turret to the side of it running up the front of the house, complete with a spire, the steeply pitched roof It was the sao, the sae of success, of a life worthy of Aubrey's expectations A mark I had fallen short of
The deer , his forear wheel I expected hiale me with the story of how I made out with Deanna Blair in an upstairs bedroom, then drop the bomb that she was dead or paralyzed or kidnapped in Colo
”Why are we here?”
He turned in the seat and regarded one back and forth on it I'm not sure about it, even now, but look-we're here, and I pro”
He see
”The world is not as you see it,” he said finally ”Look at that house So grand, so very upper-crust”
”That it is,” I said warily
”But here's the thing: That house, the cars, the old furniture and interior decorating, even the landscaping-this physical world-is nothing butdressing Beneath all of that lies another realether
”The distinction between our torlds is important for you to understand It's important for you to know that beneath the aesthetics of every temporal veneer lies a stratum of infallible truth: a spiritual realm, the world wiped clean of cosain at that house, the heavy brick began to fall away, translucent as a frahost movie And then the two upper levels silently collapsed, caving in the middle so that the stately old furniture, tables, and consoles with their curving legs and claw feet slid and then toppled through the cru with my brain before in visions and drea open witness to the very thing beforeI jerked in my seat, but it, too, had becoer seated in a cab but standing on a street that was no longer paved, in front of a yard that was nothing but earth and rock
Inhallucination, he turned to me ”I'reat deck out back, the vaulted ceilings, the crystal light fixtures, and old oak floors The grandeur, the status, the sheer custo ile, fading, and easily torn, not to endure very well even the short span of your lifetime”
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, where the house, the raised flower beds, the turret spire, and the iron gate had been, there was nothing but a pile of brick and rubble, dry dirt and stone On the ground perhaps ten feet from me lay the splintered foot of a Queen Anne table, the cabriole wizened as though a century had had its inevitable ith it in the space of that instant
A car motored past us on the street, and ere in the cab once more as a postman pulled over in front of the bronze mailbox The house was restored to its opulence, secure in its legacy, anchored in privilege to the ainst the”I see beyond the comforts of the amenities you seek all your life-thedistractions that proh hu, I find they tend to settle for whatever drifts across the surface”
He had given ranted ht have shared his story just as cohesively and in a more expedient fashi+on And I wondered why To unsettlethe e, discordant notes
He raised a finger ”Granted, every now and then a huift for seeing the world-if only for ”
”Why?”
”It's like peering into a roo one of them step forward to look you directly in the face Huels-demons, whatever-have a monopoly on truth?” I asked, not without defensiveness
He sat up, put the car in gear, and pulled away from the curb ”No We're si at the world through soft and pulpous eyes like you, but through the iris of truth It is neither obscured from us nor spared us”
”I want to knohat this has to do withto that”
Just then the tay radio on the dash crackled with static Though no voice cah, Lucian tilted his head as I had seen him do before to the invisible swarh the country club area, but now he turned around with a curse
”Helen's been asking about you at the office When you get back, tell her you had a doctor's appoint”
”It's on your calendar”
”It's not on ravated ”Why did we even coh I had been antsy about the tis about returning
”I didn't know they'd be talking that s”
”I hear things I observe I'h the very act of talking to ave him a headache
”We have a little bit of ti the clock on the dash as if it had stopped ”So now listen: The world was new All the creatures were vegetarian The rending of flesh was yet to coetarian?” I remembered his T-shi+rt that day in the Common-and then, inevitably, the shattered pink iPod strapped to a sickeningly skewed arn You weren't made to eat meat Of course, you weren't made to die, either”
”What do you mean?”
”I'll co more about Elohim: He is the ultimate force of creativity He is the author of diversity The richness of creation has been lost on your kind for centuries Millennia But it wasn't lost on us Even Lucifer stared in aeous It was extravagant We had never seen the earth like this, a swarel ears every call of bird and whale, the murmur of water, the rustle of tree I thrilled to the sound of crickets, the collective pulse of mortal vein and plant ste, wondering stares: the jade of glaciers, the desert art of sand dune, the silow of firefly”
His voice fell and drifted off When he spoke next, his words were distant, in that way in which we go back to our past to gratify or torture ourselves
”I was intoxicated by the activity of the day but returned alentle light of thethe sun so harshly laid bare I could have spenth he had not cast me into the illusion of his memory, I stood vicariously beside hione on ed for this world We coveted it, and we hoped Even Lucifer, though he wouldn't say it, looked on with greed-softened eyes, infatuated I deludedthat yes, perhaps Elohiotten all, would set him up as a God over this rich and wild neorld The next blessings to come from El would be his, and ours” He shook his head with a brittle laugh, the sound slightly too high-pitched for such a big man
We had skirted the MIT ca
”And eren't they? Why couldn't they be?”
He pulled over, put the car in park, and turned to look at me
”Because then he created the the stairs to , I felt drained but calmer than I had been in days
The incident outside the Garden still haunted me I heard, in unexpected ain the splayed and broken li he wants, I reminded myself before that tendril of panic could teasefrom him in return I reminded myself before that tendril of panic could teasefrom hi writing by hand every bit of our conversation I could feel the urge of it already, de release like an overfull bladder But I hesitated on the landing and, on a sudden whim, went over and knocked on Mrs Russo's door Now that I was composed, I wanted to thank her for thehad been uncanny and, consideringIon her threshold, I wondered if her keen discern trace of the company I had been in today And so I was relieved when, after waiting another moment, there was no answer