Eph winced. "You know what? Maybe if I managed a Sears, if I had a job that was just that, a job, and not another marriage entirely...maybe you wouldn't have felt so left out. So cheated. So...second place."
They were quiet for a bit then, Eph realizing how bigger issues tended to crowd out the little ones. How true strife caused personal problems to be set aside with alacrity.
Kelly said, "I know what you're going to say. You're going to say we should have had this talk years ago."
"We should have," he agreed. "But we couldn't. It wouldn't have worked. We had to go through all this shit first. Believe me, I'd have paid any amount not to-not to have gone through one second of it-but here we are. Like old acquaintances."
"Life doesn't go at all the way you think it will."
Eph nodded. "After what my parents went through, what they put me through, I always told myself, never, never, never, never."
"I know."
He folded in the spout on the milk carton. "So forget who did what. What we need to do now is make it up to him."
"We do."
Kelly nodded. Eph nodded. He swirled the milk around in the carton, feeling the coldness brush up against his palm.
"Christ, what a day," he said. He thought again about the little girl in Freeburg, the one who had been holding hands with her mother on Flight 753. The one who was Zack's age. "You know how you always told me, if something hit, some biological threat, that if I didn't let you know first you'd divorce me? Well-too late for that."
She came forward, reading his face. "I know you're in trouble."
"This isn't about me. I just want you to listen, okay, and not flip out. There is a virus moving through the city. It's something...extraordinary...easily the worst thing I've ever seen."
"The worst?" She blanched. "Is it SARS?"
Eph almost smiled at the grand absurdity of it all. The insanity.
"What I want you to do is to take Zack and get out of the city. Matt too. As soon as possible-tonight, right now-and as far away as you can possibly go. Away from populated areas, I mean. Your parents...I know how you feel about taking things from them, but they have that place up in Vermont still, right? On top of that hill?"
"What are you saying?"
"Go there. For a few days at least. Watch the news, wait for my call."
"Wait," she said. "I'm the head-for-the-hills paranoiac, not you. But...what about my classroom? Zack's school?" She squinted. "Why won't you tell me what it is?"
"Because then you would not go. Just trust me, and go," he said. "Go, and hope we can turn it back somehow, and this all passes quickly."
"'Hope?'" she said. "Now you're really scaring me. What if you can't turn it back? And-and what if something happens to you?"
He couldn't stand there with her and address his own doubts. "Kelly-I gotta go."
He tried to walk out, but she grabbed his arm, checking his eyes to see if it was okay, then put her arms around him. What started as just a make-up hug turned into something more, and by the end of it she was gripping him tightly. "I'm sorry," she whispered into his ear, then left a kiss on the bristly side of his unshaven neck.
Vestry Street, Tribeca
ELDRITCH PALMER sat waiting on an uncushioned chair on the rooftop patio, bathed in night. The only direct light was that of an outdoor gas lamp burning in the corner. The terrace was on the top of the lower of the two adjoining buildings. The floor was made of square clay tiles, aged and blanched by the elements. One low step preceded a high brick wall at the northern end, with two door-size archways hung with iron-work. Fluted terra-cotta tiling topped the wall and the overhangs on each side. To the left, through wider decorative archways, were oversize doorways to the residence. Behind Palmer, centered before the southern white cement wall, was a headless statue of a woman in swirling robes, her shoulders and arms darkly weathered. Ivy slithered up the stone base. Though a few taller buildings were visible both north and east, the patio was reasonably private, as concealed a rooftop as one might hope to find in lower Manhattan.
Palmer sat listening to the sounds of the city rising off the streets. Sounds that would end so soon. If only they knew this down there, they would embrace this night. Every mundanity of life grows infinitely more precious in the face of impending death. Palmer knew this intimately. A sickly child, he had struggled with his health all his life. Some mornings he had awakened amazed to see another dawn. Most people didn't know what it was to mark existence one sunrise at a time. What it was like to depend on machines for one's survival. Good health was the birthright of most, and life a series of days to be tripped through. They had never known the nearness of death. The intimacy of ultimate darkness.
Soon Eldritch Palmer would know their bliss. An endless menu of days stretched out before him. Soon he would know what it was not to worry about tomorrow, or tomorrow's tomorrow...
A breeze fluttered the patio trees and rustled through some of the plantings. Palmer, seated facing the taller residence, at an angle, next to a small smoking table, heard a rustling. A rippling, like the hem of a garment on the floor. A black garment.
I thought you wanted no contact until after the first week.
The voice-at once both familiar and monstrous-sent a dark thrill racing up Palmer's crooked back. If Palmer hadn't purposely been facing away from the main part of the patio-both out of respect as well as sheer human aversion-he would have seen that the Master's mouth never moved. No voice went out into the night. The Master spoke directly into your mind.
Palmer felt the presence high above his shoulder, and kept his gaze trained on the arched doors to the residence. "Welcome to New York."
This came out as more of a gasp than he would have liked. Nothing can unman you like an un-man.
When the Master said nothing, Palmer tried to reassert himself. "I have to say, I disapprove of this Bolivar. I don't know why you should have selected him."
Who he is matters not to me.
Palmer saw instantly that he was right. So what if Bolivar had been a makeup-wearing rock star? Palmer was thinking like a human, he supposed. "Why did you leave four conscious? It has created many problems."
Do you question me?
Palmer swallowed. A kingmaker in this life, subordinate to no man. The feeling of abject servility was as foreign to him as it was overwhelming.
"Someone is on to you," Palmer said quickly. "A medical scientist, a disease detective. Here in New York."