Part 15 (1/2)
The rooftops were populated by pigeons; no strange faces up there. The street below was a battlefield of business, and if Amaranth were down there, Adam certainly could not pick them out. The small balconies to each side of him were unoccupied. He even turned around and stared back into his own room, fully expecting to find a face pressed through the wall like a wax corpse, or the wardrobe door hanging ajar. But he saw nothing. Wherever they were, they were keeping themselves well hidden for now.
A car tooted angrily and he looked back down over the railing-straight into the eyes of the bug lady. She was standing on the pavement outside the building opposite the hotel, staring up at Adam, her gaze unwavering. Even from this distance, Adam could see the hopelessness therein.
There was little he could do. He went back inside and closed and locked the doors behind him, pulled the curtains, grabbed a miniature of gin from the fridge because the whiskey had run out.
He tried calling Alison again, but his own voice greeted him from the past. He had recorded that message before the flight, before the crash, before Amaranth. He was a different person now. He dialed and listened again, knowing how foolish it was: yes, a different person. He had known so little back then.
”Just sign on the dotted line,” Maggie said. ”Then the deal's done and you'll have to sleep with me for what I've done for you.”
”Mags, I'd sleep with you even if you hadn't just closed the biggest deal of my life, you know that.” Maggie was close to seventy years old, glamorous in her own way, and Adam was sure she'd never had enough s.e.x in her earlier years. Sometimes, when he really thought about it, he wondered just how serious she was when she joked and flirted.
He picked up the contract and scanned it one more time. Sixth reading now, at least. He hated committing to anything, and there was little as final and binding as signing a contract. True, the gallery had yet to countersign, but once he'd scrawled his name along the bottom there was little chance to change anything.
And besides, this was too good to be true.
He wondered how Alison and Jamie were. And then he wondered where where they were as well. they were as well.
It'll happen to you, too, the bug lady had screamed at him, pus dripping from her lips, insects fleeing her body as if they already thought she was dead.
You'll lose them, Howards had stated plainly.
”Mags...” he muttered, uncertain of exactly what he was about to say. The alcohol had gone to his head, especially after the celebratory champagne Maggie had brought to his room. His aim had been good. The cork had gone flying through the door and out over the street, and he'd used that as an excuse to take another look. The bug lady had gone, but Adam had been left feeling uncomfortable, unsettled.
That, and his missing wife and son.
The contract wavered on the bed in front of him, uncertain, unreal. He held the pen above the line and imagined signing his name, tried to see what effect it would have. Surely this was his own good fortune, not something thrown his way by Amaranth? But he had only been working in fire since the accident...
”Mags, I just need to call Alison.” He put the pen down. ”I haven't told her I've arrived safely yet.”
Maggie nodded, eyebrows raised.
Adam dialed and fully expected to hear his own voice once more, but Alison snapped up the line. ”Yes?”
”Honey?”
”Oh Adam, you're there. I got your messages, but I was hoping you'd ring...”
”Anything the matter?”
”No, no... well, Mum's taken a turn for the worse. They think... she arrested this afternoon.”
”Oh, no.”
”Look, how's it going? Maggie there with you? Tell her to keep her hands off my husband.”
”Honey, I'll come home.”
Alison sighed down the phone. ”No, you won't. Just call me, okay? Often? Make it feel like you're really here and I'll be fine. But you do what you've got to do to make our d.a.m.n fortune.”
He held the phone between his cheek and shoulder and made small talk with his wife, asked how Jamie was, spoke to his son. And at the same time he signed the three copies of the contract and slid them across the bed to Maggie.
”Love you,” he said at last. Alison loved him too. They left it at that.
”Shall we go out to celebrate?” Maggie asked.
Adam shook his head. ”Do you mind if we just stay in the hotel? Have a meal in the restaurant, perhaps? I'm tired and a bit drunk, and...” And I don't want to go outside in case the bug lady's there And I don't want to go outside in case the bug lady's there, he thought. / don't want to hear what she's telling me don't want to hear what she's telling me.
In the restaurant an ice sculpture was melting slowly beneath the lights, shedding shards of glittering movement as pearls of water slid down its sides. As they sat down Adam thought he saw it twitch, its face twist to watch him, limbs flex. He glanced away and looked again. Still he could not be sure. Well, if Amaranth chose to sit and watch him eat-celebrate his success, his good luck-what could he do about it?
What could he do?
The alcohol and the buzz of signing the deal and the experience of meeting the bug lady, all combined to drive Adam into a sort of dislocated stupor. He heard what Maggie said, he smelled the food, he tasted the wine, but they were all vicarious experiences, as if he were really residing elsewhere for the evening, not inside his own body. Later, he recalled only snippets of conversation, brief glimpses of events. The rest vanished into blankness.
”This will lead to a lot more work,” Maggie said, her words somehow winging their way between the frantic chords of the piano player. ”And the gallery says that they normally sell at least half the paintings at any exhibition.”
A man coughed and spat his false teeth onto his table. The restaurant bustled with restrained laughter. The shadows of movement seemed to follow seconds behind.
A waiter kept filling his gla.s.s with wine, however much he objected.
The ice sculpture reduced, but the shape within it stayed the same size. Over the course of the evening, one of the Amaranth things was revealed to him. n.o.body else seemed to notice.
The ice cream tasted rancid.
Maggie touched his knee beneath the table and suggested they go to his room.
Next, he was alone in his bed. He must have said something to her, something definite and final about the way their relations.h.i.+p should work. He hoped he had not been cruel.
Something floated above his bed, a shadow within shadows. ”Do not deny us,” it said inside his head, a cautionary note in its voice. ”Believe in us. Do not deny us.”.
Then it was morning, and his head thumped with a killer hangover, and although he remembered the words and the sights of last night, he was sure it had all been a dream.
Adam managed to flag down a taxi as soon as he stepped from the hotel. He was dropped off outside the gallery, and as he crossed the pavement he b.u.mped into an old man hurrying along with his head down. They exchanged apologies and turned to continue on their way, but then stopped. They stared at each other for a moment, frowning, all the points of recognition slotting into place almost visibly as their faces relaxed and the tentative smiles came. ”You were on the horse,” Adam said. ”The unicorn.”
”You were the disbeliever. You believe now?” The man's smile was fixed, like a painting overlying his true feelings. There was something in his eyes... something about giving in.
”I do,” Adam said, ”but I've met some people... a lucky one, and an unlucky one... and I'm beginning to feel scared.” Verbalizing it actually brought it home to him; he was was scared. scared.
The man leaned forward and Adam could smell expensive cologne on his skin. ”Don't deny Amaranth,” he said. ”You can't anyway, n.o.body ever has. But don't even think about it.”
Adam stepped back as if the man had spat at him. He remembered Howards telling him that he would lose his family, and the bug lady spewing promises darker than that.
He wondered how coincidental his meeting these three people was. ”How is your family?” he asked.
The unicorn man averted his gaze. ”Not as lucky as me.”
Adam looked up at the imposing facade of the gallery, the artistically wrought modern gargoyles that were never meant for anything other than ornamentation. Maybe they should have been imbued with a power, he thought. Because there really were demons...
He wondered how Molly was, whether she had woken yet. He should telephone Alison to find out, but if he hesitated here any longer he may just turn around and flee back home. Leave all this behind- all this success, this promise, this hope for a comfortable and long sought-after future...
When he looked back down, the man had vanished along the street, disappearing into the crowds. Don't deny Amaranth Don't deny Amaranth, he had said. Adam shook his head. How could anyone?