LITMIR.BIZ

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by summer, she thought (whatever it was, however unlikely), then she’d up and go looking for it.

      ii

      Nobody seemed to walk much in this town, Howie noticed. On his three-quarter-hour stroll up and back down the Hill he encountered only five pedestrians, and they all had children or dogs in tow to justify their waywardness. Short though this initial journey was it took him to a fair vantage point from which to grasp something of the town’s lay-out. It also sharpened his appetite.

      Beef for the desperado, he thought, and selected Butrick’s Steak House from the eating places available in the Mall. It was not large, and not more than half full. He took a table at the window, opened the tattered copy of Hesse’s Siddhartha, and continued his struggle with the text, which was in the original German. The book had belonged to his mother, who had read and re-read it many times – though he could not remember her so much as uttering a word of the language she was apparently fluent in. He was not. Reading the book was like an interior stuttering; he fought for the sense, catching it only to lose it again.

      ‘Something to drink?’ the waitress asked him.

      He was about to say ‘Coke’ when his life changed.

      Jo-Beth stepped over the threshold of Butrick’s the way she had three nights a week for the last seven months, but tonight it was as if every other time had been a rehearsal for this stepping; this turning; this meeting of eyes with the young man sitting at table five. She took him in with a glance. His mouth was half open. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles. There was a book in his hand. Its owner’s name she didn’t know, couldn’t know. She’d never set eyes on him before. Yet he watched her with the same recognition she knew was on her own face.

      It was like being born, he thought, seeing this face. Like coming out of a safe place into an adventure that would take his breath away. There was nothing more beautiful in all the world than the soft curve of her lips as she smiled at him.

      And smiling now, like a perfect flirt. Stop it, she told herself, look away! He’ll think you’re out of your mind staring. But then he’s staring too, isn’t he?

      I’ll keep looking – as long as she keeps looking

      – as long as he keeps looking –

      ‘Jo-Beth!’

      The summons came from the kitchen. She blinked.

      ‘Did you say a Coke?’ the waitress asked him.

      Jo-Beth glanced towards the kitchen – Murray was calling her, she had to go – then back at the boy with the book. He still had his eyes fixed on her.

      ‘Yes,’ she saw him say.

      The word was for her, she knew. Yes, go, he said, I’ll still be here.

      She nodded, and went.

      The whole encounter occupied maybe five seconds, but it left them both trembling.

      In the kitchen Murray was his usual martyred self.

      ‘Where have you been?’

      ‘Two minutes late, Murray.’

      ‘I make it ten. There’s a party of three in the corner. It’s your table.’

      ‘I’m putting my apron on.’

      ‘Hurry.’

      Howie watched the kitchen door for her re-emergence, Siddhartha forgotten. When she appeared she didn’t look his way but went to serve a table on the far side of the restaurant. He wasn’t distressed that she failed to look. An understanding had been reached between them in that first exchange of gazes. He would wait all night if need be, and all through tomorrow if that was what it took, until she had finished her work and looked at him again.

      In the darkness below Palomo Grove the inspirers of these children still held on to each other as they had when they’d first fallen to earth, neither willing to risk the other’s freedom. Even when they’d risen to touch the bathers, they’d gone together, like twins joined at the hip. Fletcher had been slow comprehending the Jaff’s intention that day. He’d thought the man planned to draw his wretched terata out of the girls. But his mischief had been more ambitious than that. It was the making of children he was about, and, squalid as it was, Fletcher had been obliged to do the same. He was not proud of his assault. As news of its consequences had reached them his shame had deepened. Once, sitting by a window with Raul, he had dreamed of being sky. Instead his war with the Jaff had reduced him to a spoiler of innocents, whose futures they had blighted with touch. The Jaff had taken no little pleasure in Fletcher’s distress. Many times, as the years in darkness passed, Fletcher would sense his enemy’s thoughts turning to the children they’d made, and wondering which would come first to save their true father.

      Time did not mean to them what it had meant before the Nuncio. They didn’t hunger, nor did they sleep. Buried together like lovers, they waited in the rock. Sometimes they could hear voices from the overground, echoing down passages opened by the subtle but perpetual grinding of the earth. But these snatches offered no clue to the progress of their children, with whom their mental links were at best tenuous. Or at least had been, until tonight.

      Tonight their offspring had met, and contact was suddenly clear, as though their children had understood something of their own natures, seeing their perfect opposites, and had unwittingly opened their minds to the creators. Fletcher found himself in the head of a youth called Howard, the son of Trudi Katz. Through the boy’s eyes he saw his enemy’s child just as the Jaff saw Howie from his daughter’s head.

      This was the moment they’d waited for. The war they’d fought half way across America had exhausted them both. But their children were in the world to fight for them now; to finish the battle that had been left unresolved for two decades. This time, it would be to the death.

      Or so they’d expected. Now, for the first time in their lives, Fletcher and the Jaff shared the same pain – like a single spike thrust through both their souls.

      This was not war, damn it. This was nothing like war.

      ‘Lost your appetite?’ the waitress wanted to know.

      ‘Guess I have,’ Howie replied.

      ‘You want me to take it away?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘You want coffee? Dessert?’

      ‘Another Coke.’

      ‘One Coke.’

      Jo-Beth was in the kitchen when Beverly came through with the plate.

      ‘Waste of good steak,’ Beverly said.

      ‘What’s his name?’ Jo-Beth wanted to know.

      ‘What am I, a dating service? I didn’t ask.’

      ‘Go ask.’

      ‘You ask. He wants another Coke.’

      ‘Thanks. Will you look after my table?’

      ‘Just call me Cupid.’

      Jo-Beth had managed to keep her mind on her job and her eyes off the boy for half an hour: enough was enough. She poured a Coke, and took it out. To her horror, the table was empty. She almost dropped the glass; the sight of the empty chair made her feel physically sick. Then, out of the corner of her eye, the sight of him emerging from the rest-room, and returning to the table. He saw her, and smiled. She crossed to the table, ignoring two calls for service en route. She already knew the question she was going to ask first: it had been on her mind from the start. But he was there with the same enquiry before her.

      ‘Do we know each other?’

      And of course she knew the answer.

      ‘No,’ she said.

      ‘Only

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