The Man Who Melted (17 page)

THIRTEEN

It was like awakening from a dream and still being touched by it. He remembered Joan rising out of the lake to pull him into the icy water as if she were death herself. He was choking, drowning, trying to tear himself awake.

And again he felt someone watching him.

“It's all right, Ray, be calm. You're fine,” Faon said, her voice soft, almost a whisper. She sat in a chair beside the bed and caressed him.

“Get away from me, Joan, get—”

“It's Faon. Look at me.”

For an instant, Mantle didn't recognize her, and then everything began to come into focus. Faon's gray-streaked hair was loose and reached to her shoulders, framing her face in a V. She was wearing jeans and a tight-fitting short-sleeve shirt.

“Jesus, I must have been dreaming,” Mantle said, recognizing that this was the room in which he had slept with Roberta. “I must be having another episode—Jesus, I'm losing it, going crazy.”

“You're
not
going crazy, you're fine.”

“But the dream was so real, I dreamed—”

“I know all about it.”

“What?”

“It was not a dream, Raymond, it—”

Mantle sat bolt upright, his legs swinging over the side of the bed. He caught his breath. Yes, he thought, he had slipped back into the dark spaces, and somehow Joan had tried to kill him. His throat ached. “Jesus, I am losing it.”

“Only if you allow yourself to do so,” Faon said. “May I give you an injection?”

“Of what…. Why?”

“A very mild sedative to calm you. But I promise you it won't make you drowsy or impair your thinking.”

Mantle permitted her to give him the sedative—anything to keep him away from the dark spaces—and after what seemed like a few moments, he asked, “Do you mean that Joan actually rose out of that pool and—”

“No, but that's what you saw. You were in the Blue Pool, which is what we call it, and you were drowning. It was Joan who rescued you: she broke out of her coma, ran downstairs, and pulled you out of the pool.”

Yes, Mantle did remember. But how could that be: Joan had tried to drown him! He remembered choking, and then a robot extruding an aspiration catheter down his throat. That was why his throat felt sore now. “But Joan tried to kill me, or that's what I dreamed,” he said. “How could she try to kill me and save me at the same time?”

“You were connected to each other, as if under a hook-in,” Faon said. “And you were reacting to Joan's thoughts and feelings as if they were physical things in the world.”

“But we
weren't
hooked-in.”

“But you both
were
hooked-into others. You hooked-into the holy Crier and then moved in and out of the dark spaces during your transition, your passage. And Joan was hooked-into a group in the casino. Because of your intense feelings for each other—love, need, call it what you will—you were drawn together and made a connection.”

Once again Mantle remembered the dream of smashing into Joan in the dark spaces. Perhaps they
had
made a connection.

“Your experience is not uncommon, you know,” Faon continued. “Connections are possible outside the dyadic hook-in. They're referred to as
circuits fantomes
.” She explained that the phantom connection between Joan and Mantle was an anomaly in the ebb and flow of the dark spaces, which could be thought of as a collective unconscious. “Directive synchronicity,” she called it.

“My God,” Mantle whispered. “How she must hate me to try to kill me.”

“Remember,” Faon said, “she also saved you. She loves you very much.”

“Then why—?”

“She wasn't in her right mind, she was lost in the dark spaces, she—” Faon stopped herself and then said, “I think she loves you too much. Maybe she thought you didn't love her enough.”

“So she was going to kill me for that.”

“I told you she wasn't in her right mind,” Faon said. “But she's well now; it's all in the past.”

“I
do
love her,” he insisted…and it was true. The sedative blunted the edges of his fear, but he still felt guilt and remorse. He shouldn't have closed her out. She deserved better than that.

“Both of you will need time together to work this out, and that you must do, one way or another, for you have made a connection.”

“What do you mean? That we are still connected?”

“That is possible, yes.”

“Where's Joan now?” Mantle demanded. “Are you
sure
she's all right?”

“Yes, she's fine, and she'll be down to breakfast right along. Breakfast has been waiting for you all morning.”

“What time is it?” Mantle asked.

“Almost twelve.”

“How much time have I lost?”

“A day and a night. It was the day before yesterday when we found you and Joan by the pool”

“Was I drugged all this time?”

“Yes, we thought it best. And by now you should be ravenous.”

“I am hungry,” Mantle confessed.

Faon brightened and said, “We can talk again later, if you wish. But now you must let the daylight evaporate your anxiety, which it will, believe me. You must give yourself up to the daylight world, just as you gave yourself to the dark spaces. You must pretend that everything's back to normal. Don't think bad thoughts or try to order and understand everything that has happened,” she warned, “or you might initiate another transition.”

Mantle felt a chill feather up his spine. He was still vulnerable to the dark spaces, and to Joan….

“Now that your passage is over, which I'm sure it is, you should be with people,” Faon continued. “The sedative should help you, too. Can you feel it?”

“I don't know…I'm not sure.”

“Then it's working.”

“But that business by the pool feels like a dream,” Mantle insisted.

“Are you afraid of Joan right now?” asked Faon.

“No, I don't think so.”

“The drug will keep it all at bay until you can handle it. But it wasn't a dream. Now, everybody's waiting for you—Do you feel up to coming downstairs?”

“I suppose—if they can accept that I'm still wonky.”

“Pardon?”

“Still unsteady,” Mantle said, remembering that American slang had only recently become faddish again and would not reach the coast for another few weeks. He dressed quickly, and they went downstairs to the southern side of the house where he had first entered the stucco-walled anteroom and large, arched sitting room that contained the Limoges miniature. Faon guided Mantle through a bright parlor, down a short hallway radiant from high, pink stained-glass windows, into a large, formal dining room, and out onto a veranda where a table had been set up.

“Everyone, this is Raymond Mantle, whom we all met when he was in a slightly more disordered state,” Faon said.

Everyone laughed, and two men—the same two who had rescued him in the car—stood up and shook hands with Mantle.

Mantle saw that Joan wasn't at the table, but the drug lent him patience.

“The older one with the ugly scar is Charles, my husband, and this pretty young thing is Peter, who is married to Danielle whom you already know, I think.” Faon's introduction was light, without a hint of sarcasm or
double entendre
. Danielle waved to him to sit beside her, which he did.

“She always steals the men,” Faon said, passing him a tray of chocolate brioches, croissants, orange tea rolls, and raised muffins. He took a croissant, and Faon pushed the butter and jam toward him. The food was warm and smelled delicious. Although his throat ached with every swallow, he ate a fresh quiche filled with shrimp and lobster. The coffee was strong and good.

Mantle felt as if his senses were suddenly heightened, and a dark heaviness seemed to slough away from him; it was as if everything around him were somehow more real, and he was grateful for the company and the food
and the warmth of the late-morning sun. He finally felt that he had come through the dark spaces. He was the man who, having been saved from drowning, suddenly discovers that what had previously been mundane is now poignant and poetic. The clouds were thin, so many white smears against the pale blue sky; it would be a clear afternoon after the clouds were burned away and the last of the dew-dampness left leaf and soil.

“And Roberta, where is she?” Mantle asked, having taken the edge off his hunger. This was a roundabout way of asking after Joan.

“She'll be along,” Faon replied.

“Are you sure she's all right? After the slaughter at Dramont…” Once again, just by remembering, Mantle became vulnerable to the dark spaces, to the black and silver that he now sensed as strange angles in his peripheral vision. Blundering on, he said, “I understand that Monsieur Pretre was—”

“Monsieur, please!” Faon said. Then, softly, as if she had lost control for only a second, she continued: “Roberta has been attending Joan, who had as much need of her ministrations as yourself. And we don't grieve for our dead, at least when we are in our right minds. If you think back to our meeting the other night when you saw dear Stephen in the candle room, you will understand why.” With a touch of irony in her voice, she said, “We have more important things for which to grieve.”

“I apologize—”

“No, no, it's going to be a beautiful, warm day, and we must celebrate for you. Your passage, as it were, but I warned you not to dwell on the past, lest the dark spaces….” She paused, then said, “Become part of this day; give yourself to it.”

It occurred to Mantle that this house and its tended grounds were themselves celebrations of both the bright and dark spaces. Perhaps one could learn to live in both worlds, make daily transitions. He thought of Joan and what had happened in the pool—that was simply a bad dream. He would leave it at that. And this place…it was like the surface of the moon: scorched by the sun in the day, cold and dead at night.

“I understand you're an artist,” Peter said as he poured himself another cup of coffee.

“Actually, I'm an illustrator,” Mantle said, distancing himself from the
past, trying to be just in the here-and-now. But Joan was still a ghost swimming through his mind, waiting to pull him under again, kill him….

“Then you do most of your work on computer?”

“Some, not all. But advertising is almost entirely computers and cybernetics now. It's quite sophisticated, I'm told.”

Peter chuckled and said, “But your recent work seems to have had a profound effect on the field.”

“Watch him,” Danielle said. “He's manipulating you into giving him a painting.”

“I would do no such thing. I only wish him to sell me a painting.”

“You shall have one,” Mantle said. “It would be my pleasure.”

“What did you do?” asked Faon.

“Pardon me?”

“Peter said you profoundly affected the field of advertising. How did you do that?”

“I'm afraid that's quite an exaggeration. With all due respect.”

“I shall let you off this time,” Peter said. “But don't let it happen again.” Mantle smiled back at him. Peter was dark and extraordinarily handsome; he looked like an Israeli travel poster with his deeply set eyes, long, straight nose, narrow mouth, and strong chin. He was thin and probably would not look as good naked, Mantle thought. But for all the geometry of his face, there was something weak about him: a hint of the spoiled child in his movements, and a whine in his voice. Surely it was he who depended on Danielle, probably both financially and emotionally. But perhaps he had family money—he could well be Arabian with those looks.

“I really didn't change anything,” Mantle said to Faon. “I was doing a lot of painting and experimenting with some of the techniques of the old masters, and I naturally introduced some of this into my work. I had no idea it would take on as it did, but it's just a fad, that's all. It will be over in another month or so, maybe two. People are amused right now at seeing and feeling nonrealistic representations of their favorite drug or whiskey or toilet paper, but that will change. It swings back and forth.”

“But it's
your
style, the way
you
see the world,” Danielle said. “Surely that is what sells the products. ‘Products' is such an ugly word, isn't it?”

Mantle took another croissant, although he wasn't hungry. Where was Joan? He had to see her.

“Our friend is a genius, an artist, of the sublime,” Charles said.

Mantle laughed, but it was forced. “I've never heard it put quite so well.” He was sure that Charles had done his homework. After all, Pretre had made it very clear that Mantle would have dues to pay. But did he owe the church anything after the debacle at Dramont, where he had almost lost his life?

“No, I mean that,” Charles said, “and without all the irony you're reading into it.”

“Just take a half-portion of it,” Peter said as he put his arm around the back of Danielle's wicker chair.

“You've done marvelous things with subliminals in your private work too, no matter how much your commercial style has changed the market.” Charles glanced at Faon quickly, as if for support, but that was a private conversation to which Mantle was not privy. Charles and Faon were a real couple; they lived in each other's private worlds, something most couples cannot manage. Danielle and Peter, although they looked perfect, seemed almost two-dimensional.

“I didn't think my private work was that well known.”

“We have a few paintings right here in the house,” Charles said, smiling.

That took Mantle aback “Well, I'm very flattered. Where, may I ask, did you purchase them?”

“From various private collections. Your best work—to my mind, at least—was either given to your friends or sold to collectors. You see, I'm a Raymond Mantle connoisseur.”

“I can see that. From
whom
did you purchase them?” Mantle regretted giving away, much less selling those paintings, for if one knew how to read them, they laid bare his deepest fears, anxieties, and hate.