Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [139]
“Nobody really knows the future,” I said. “But you’re right. You know all kinds of things I don’t know. It figures.” I picked up Saint Juan Diego.
“It’s you and Quinn and Mona that’ll move on,” she said. “I feel your restlessness. But Blackwood Farm? It will outlast all of us.”
She gave me one more quick kiss. Then off she went, hips swaying beautifully in the tight red dress, pencil heels making her legs fine, her tightly cropped blond head high—the lady with the keys, and the future.
I went with Stirling.
We climbed into the low-slung car, delicious smell of leather, Stirling slipping on a pair of handsome beige driving gloves, and we roared down the drive, rattling over every rock and pebble.
“Now this is a sports car!” I declared.
Stirling flashed his lighter in front of his cigarette, then threw the car into high gear. “Yes, baby!” he shouted over the wind, sloughing off twenty years of his life, “and when you want to stub out your cigarette, you can do it right on the road,” he said. “It’s a beauty.”
We went roaring on into the swampland.
We didn’t leave the paths of speed and recklessness for Mayfair Medical until about three hours before dawn.
For a long time I walked the corridors, marveling at the murals and the benches and seating areas for the patients’ families, and the finery of the waiting rooms with their warm furniture and paintings. And the lobbies with their grand sculptures and sparkling marble floors.
And then I penetrated the halls of the laboratories and research areas, and lost myself in a labyrinth of secret places where white-coated individuals who passed me nodded, assuming I knew where I was going carrying the statue of a saint close to my chest.
Enormous, more than my mind could contain, this monument to a family and to one woman. Affecting the lives of so many thousands. A great garden with so many seeds carefully planted to grow into a forest of self-perpetuating splendor.
What was I doing on the Sacred Mountain of the One Who Walks with God?
Find Oberon in the velvety quiet.
Oberon was standing at the window, in white scrubs, looking out at the lighted arcs of the two river bridges. Soft crystalline glow of downtown buildings. He spun around when I entered the room.
“Saint Juan Diego,” I said, as I put the saint on the table by the bed.
“Oh, thank you,” he said warmly, without a trace of the old disdain. “Now I’ll be able to sleep.”
“Are you unhappy?” I asked.
“No,” he said softly. “Only wondering. In my cell I told myself that all beauty was contained in the ever changing waves of the sea. I had to believe it. But oh, the great world is such a wilderness of marvels. I am very happy. And my soul is not on guard for Miravelle, my sweet foolish Miravelle! I am safe. And so is she. And I am free.”
28
THE ROOM WAS MAINTAINED at about 40 degrees. Even I was cold. Rowan’s lips were blue. But she stood, uncomplaining, right inside the door, her arms folded, her back to the wall, allowing for us to take as much time as we wanted. She was wearing her white coat, even her name tag, and white pants. Her shoes were black, simple. Her hair was brushed back from her face. She didn’t look at me. I was glad.
The walls were white. So was the tile floor. There was all kinds of equipment in the room, monitors, wires, tubing, tanks, but it was shut off and retired to the sidelines and into the corners. The windows were covered with white metal blinds, shutting out the colorful night.
Miravelle, dressed primly in a long pink cotton nightgown, cried quietly. Oberon, in white silk pajamas and robe, merely observed with those half-mast gleaming eyes.
Mona stood silent, the wanderer in safari clothes, her left hand against Miravelle’s back, her right arm holding a huge bunch of random flowers. Mona’s eyes were dry and she looked cold and careworn.
Quinn remained against the door with me. Quinn held the bouquet which Mona had asked him to