Part 50 (1/2)

'Yes,' he said wryly. 'A walking tour of the neighborhood.

I'll show you how the other half. . .dies.'

So they set out, Sylviana forgetting that this unraveled the last of her plans, and that Kalus would no longer be close at hand.

For better or worse.

Kalus remained, still as the stone on which he sat. He had moved some time before to the more level ground before the Obelisk, though the grotesque figures carved upon it kept him from coming too close. The peyote had begun to work on him, but its effect was entirely different than what he had hoped. Instead of giving him peace and a quiet understanding, it filled him with a dread that was almost physical. All his thoughts, worded and otherwise, seemed to crash in upon themselves like the breaking of a wave, crus.h.i.+ng and smothering every positive impulse, every hopeful thought within him. He was back in the hopeless world of his past, from which she had helped him to escape.

But there was no escape. No matter how he turned it around, no matter what contingencies he tried to make and force himself to swallow, the bitter truth remained. Without his woman he had nothing: no love, no purpose, no home. No way to go on, and no reason to try. The ancient sense of fatalism and betrayal returned to him, with still greater intensity, because for a time he had been free. And the brief interval of spoken words and close female companions.h.i.+p evaporated, could no longer protect him from the silent, brutal worlds he had known. Again he saw before him the long chain of savagery and violence, of endless pain and pointless perseverance. All leading to this. To be broken and alone, as only the last of a species is alone.

He too felt the razor, though dully. And his one regret in those darkened moments was that he had been so skilled in eluding it.

'Forty-second street,' said William, continuing in the manner of a tour through h.e.l.l. They stood at the base of a long, flat stretch, like a sunken airport runway before them, the gra.s.sy dikes to either side still suggestive of the tombs, the ma.s.s graves they barely covered.

'You see before you a busy street---strip joints, adult book stores, p.o.r.nographic theaters. But you don't seem to notice the background much. No. It's the ragged flowers springing from the sidewalk that catch and hold your eye: prost.i.tutes, the whipping girls of the city.

'On a good day all they're required to do is give their bodies to pawing, drooling idiots, who in their half-a.s.sed pa.s.sion call them ?mother', ?cheap wh.o.r.e', or the name of some long-lost lover. Oh, but of course they don't really FEEL anything.

They're not real people, like you and I.' At this he curled his lip, barely able to contain his rage. 'On bad days..... They're hara.s.sed and preyed upon by police, jaded social workers and psychotic killers, or just beaten and abused by the ?fatherly' pimps.

'And what is their crime, that makes them the object of universal scorn and reprisal? They're VICTIMS, vulnerable, bringing out the predatory instinct in all of us. And more than that, they commit the most unforgivable sin of all: they make us look at ourselves, and see something about our pretty little world that we don't like. Because they do, in fact, what the rest of us do in spirit: sell themselves, body and soul, for MONEY. Only they lack the skills and social graces, like the ones you learned in college, to be subtle and self-justifying about it. They are OBVIOUS, and much too real, an easy target for nearly everyone. And the human animal never misses easy prey.'

Sylviana heard the words---stark and depressing enough---but what gave them their power were the images her own memory provided. She saw it all: the rooster-like pimps grabbing gaudily dressed women by the hair, and without remorse throwing them into the back seats of still gaudier cars, for later punishment, which no doubt included beating and rape.

And if her head happened to strike the roof, starting a rivulet of blood.....

And she remembered the murder she had so nearly witnessed: saw the chalk outline that the homicide detectives had drawn on the sidewalk as the paramedics arrived to wheel her into a waiting ambulance, her death a foregone conclusion, the eyes still terrified though the life even now fled from them. A face once young and fair: a sixteen-year-old runaway from nameless suburbs, driven from her home perhaps by an abusive parent, drawn to the city like a moth to flame. And brought to the same end. While the jagged man the police had cuffed and were dragging away, screamed in bursts of occasional coherence, 'All women are wh.o.r.es!'

And she remembered too, even as he said, the thoughts that she had always used to dismiss such women, and the hopeless tragedy of their lives. HOW CAN THEY DO IT? THEY MUST JUST TURN OFF THEIR MINDS, AND NOT FEEL ANYTING..... IT'S AWFUL, BUT SHE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER THAN TO WALK THE STREETS ALONE. As if this was something she had done of her own volition, and against the warnings of loved ones and friends. And she thought of her own plan, which was worse. Not to sleep with a man for money, which could at least claim the honest shred of need. But for revenge.

And coming back to herself for a moment, she realized with a sudden shock that this same plan, along with the subconscious safety valve she had built into it, were now completely out of hand. She had no idea where they were (in relation to anything else), only where they weren't: within hearing range of Kalus, on whom she had relied to protect her at need. As the dagger of fear sank an inch lower into her breast.

'You're right William,' she said hurriedly. 'And it's horrible. But please, please take me somewhere else.' Sheer movement seemed the only defense from the razor---

'My G.o.d.' There seemed to be a literal razor forming out of the air before her, a glint of sunlight on cold steel. She cowered, and crossed her arms defensively in front of her.

'Oh, no, not yet,' said the Stranger, as if he understood it all.

He seized her by one foreshortened arm, and led her toward the next exhibit. After an interminable length of time he stopped again, and pointed.

'Seventh Avenue.'

Kalus remained, still as stone, but no longer in confusion and despair.

He stood rooted to the spot in horror.