The Taker (60 page)

And then I did, waking up in the woods with the one I loved rocking, convulsing, in the dirt before me, choking and sputtering, but smiling. His chest rose and fell with deliberation, and I realized I’d seen Jonathan do this once already, in Daughtery’s barn. And in an instant I was next to him, pressing his shirt against the wounds, foolishly trying to hold back the flow of blood. And Jonathan shook his head and tried to push the shirt from my hands. In the end, all I could do was hold him.

That was when it hit me, what I had lost. Jonathan had always been there, even during the years when we were apart, and the resonant hum had always been in the back of my mind, a comfort. Now all I had was a great, sucking void. I had lost the only important thing in my life. I had nothing, I was alone, the weight of the world crushing down on me with no one to help me. I’d made a mistake. I wanted Jonathan back. Better to be selfish. Better for him to resent me to the end of time than to feel like this. To feel like this and have no way to make it right or make it go away.

I held his body a very long time, until the blood had gone cold and I was covered with a film of wet slickness. I don’t remember letting go of Jonathan. I don’t remember leaving the body and running through the woods, screaming to the heavens to take pity on me and let me die. Let it be over for me, too. I could not go on without him. I don’t remember ending up at the highway, limping along the logging road to be found by the sheriff and his deputy. It wasn’t until I’d been locked in the car with my hands cuffed that it all came back to me, that I realized all I wanted was to be back in the woods with him, to die with him so we could stay together forever.

FIFTY

P
ARIS, PRESENT DAY

T
he narrow front hall of the town house is filled with crates, the wood fresh and prickled with splinters. A hammer, nails, and a pair of work gloves rest on a pedestal table along with a pile of unopened mail. Luke carries a marble bust down the stairs, his face reddening from the exertion. The bust is the second in a pair going to the Bargello, in Florence—one of Italy’s many museums, chosen over the Uffizi for its superior collection of Renaissance sculpture—the first piece already packed in its own crate. From the wall, watching the activity, is the one piece of artwork that will never leave the house, the charcoal sketch of Jonathan that Lanny took from Adair’s house. The portrait was moved from its original spot—at the foot of Lanny’s bed—to the front hall, though Luke had no particular objection to leaving it in place. He is no more capable of being jealous of the man in the picture than he is of hating the golden sunrise or the Notre Dame cathedral.

Lanny comes out from the study with a sealed envelope in her hand. Inside the envelope is a note of apology for having kept the piece of art from its rightful owners, whoever they might be after
all this time. The note—which has accompanied every piece shipped so far—is contrite but vague, devoid of any facts relating to how the piece was appropriated, or when, or by whom. Lanny worked on it for days, read several versions aloud to Luke before the two settled on the final wording. They wear latex gloves as they work, so they’ll leave no fingerprints. Lanny has arranged for the shipping and the donation of the anonymous gifts to be done through her Parisian lawyer, whom she picked especially for his devotion to his clients and his flexible attitude toward aspects of the legal code. She has no concern that the shipments will be traced back to her, no matter how insistent the various museums and other recipients may become.

As for Luke, he’s a little sorry to see all these marvels go so soon after his arrival. He’d like more time to make sense of what must be the most expansive private collection of art and artifacts in the world. Lanny hadn’t exaggerated when she told him her house was more amazing than any museum. The upper floors were stuffed with treasures, stored with no rhyme or reason. Each time he dislodges one item to ship, he uncovers eight or ten more. And it’s not just paintings and sculpture; there are mountains of books, undoubtedly including many first editions; Oriental carpets made of silk so fine they can pass through a woman’s bracelet; Japanese kimonos and Turkish caftans of embroidered silks; all manner of swords and firearms. Grecian vases, Russian samovars, bowls carved from jade, made of beaten gold, chiseled from stone. Several chests filled with fists of crumpled silk and velvet, each one housing a piece of gem-studded jewelry. Then there are the complete surprises: for instance, inside a fan box, he found a note to Lanny written by Lord Byron. Luke can’t make out most of the words, but he manages to find “Jonathan” written among the scrawl. Lanny claims she can’t remember what the letter was about, but how do you forget a note from one of the world’s great poets? It’s the house of a mad collector, trying to compensate for an unarticulated, undisclosed lack in her life, a slave to a compulsion to amass beauty. Still, she has generously set aside some pieces to be placed in a
trust for Luke’s daughters, enough to pay for tuition at a good college when they are older.

Luke discovers that, aside from the collection of ancient Chinese ceramics, no attempt was ever made at an accounting, so he makes Lanny catalog the pieces as they go out: a description, a guess at where she’d acquired it, the name of the person or place that will receive it. He thinks it will be a comfort to her one day; it will give her the ability to remember her distant adventures without being weighed down by the objects themselves.

It’s good for her to divest herself of these things, he thinks. It takes her mind off Jonathan, though not entirely; Luke has caught Lanny crying, in a bathroom or in the kitchen while waiting for water to boil for tea. Still, the crying has tapered off of late and their current project, shipping out the contents of her house, has made her visibly happier. She says she feels more at peace, that she’s atoning for some of the bad things she’s done. Once, she even said she also hoped that if she tried very hard to make amends, she’ll be forgiven and the spell will be broken. She’ll be able to grow old with Luke, to leave this earth at the same time, more or less. To never suffer that profound loneliness again. That sort of talk—dependency on a magical intervention—makes Luke uncomfortable. Given the circumstances, though, he knows not to doubt (entirely) in improbable interventions.

Lanny tucks the note under the bust and Luke hammers the lid on the wooden box. The courier is coming at two o’clock for the day’s delivery and Luke has gotten only the two busts packed up. He’d hoped to have at least a half dozen pieces ready. He’ll have to work faster.

When he puts down the hammer to wipe his forehead, he notices the stack of unanswered mail. On the top is a thick envelope from America and, out of reflex, he strains to read the address. It’s from a lawyer’s office in Boston, the one watching Adair’s house—or rather, Adair’s crypt. Luke flips through the stack quickly: there are seven letters with the same lawyer’s address, going back nearly a year. He opens his mouth to say something about it to Lanny when she rushes by,
purse over her shoulder, hunting distractedly for her house key. “I’ve got a hairdresser’s appointment, but I should be back before the courier arrives. Shall I get lunch for us while I’m out? What would you like?”

“Surprise me,” he says.

Luke takes delight in how she’s fallen back into her routine—a sign that she hasn’t been immobilized by depression—and, in particular, how quickly she’s incorporated him into her life. He loves that they are so comfortable together. She’s given up smoking because he asked, because he can’t bear the sight of it even though he knows it poses no health risk to her. She shares everything with him: her favorite bakery, her favorite afternoon walk, the old men she chats with in the park. He is happy to do things for her, to take care of her, and in return she’s grateful for every consideration he shows her. Does he love her? He’s skeptical, truly skeptical, that love could happen so quickly, especially given who she is and what she has told him, but at the same time there’s the giddy sensation that’s overtaken him, a feeling he hasn’t had since his daughters were born.

Once Lanny has left, he heads back upstairs in search of the next item to be repatriated. He must remember to leave Lanny to deal with the courier because Luke has an appointment later in the afternoon. He’s meeting the director of volunteer services at Mercy International, an organization that sends doctors into war zones and refugee camps, clinics for the homeless. It was the last organization that Jonathan worked for; someone had contacted Lanny shortly after she and Luke arrived from Quebec, looking for Jonathan. He’d given the organization her address as a way to get in touch with him during his absence, only he’d never returned and they wanted to know if Lanny knew where he was. She was speechless, momentarily, then collected her wits and said she knew another doctor who might want to donate his services, as long as he could remain in Paris. Luke is glad for the interview, glad that Lanny knows he won’t be happy if he can’t make use of his medical training, hopes that his rusty French will be good enough to tend to immigrants from Haiti and Morocco.

Luke selects the next item to be shipped, a large tapestry that will go to a textile museum in Brussels. The tapestry has been rolled like a rug and is jammed against a barrister’s bookcase that has been packed with all manner of bric-a-brac. Half the glass faces on the bookshelf had been left up and an item falls from a shelf as Luke tries to wrestle the tapestry upright.

He leans over, picks it up. It’s a small ball of chamois, and he recognizes by the way the chamois is wadded up—Lanny’s haphazard way of packing things—that there’s something inside the dusty old cloth. He peels it back carefully—who knows what fragile thing might be inside—to find a tiny metal object. A vial, to be precise, about the size of a child’s pinkie finger. Though it is mossy and dark with age, he can tell it’s as delicately wrought as a piece of jewelry. Fingers trembling, he tugs off the lid and pulls out the stopper. It’s dry.

He sniffs the empty vial. His mind races: it may be dry but there are ways to analyze the residue. They could send it to a lab and find out the elixir’s ingredients, the proportions. They could try to make a batch and probably, after some trial and error, they would succeed. Re-creating the potion means he could be with Lanny forever. She wouldn’t be alone. And, of course, other people would be interested in immortality. They could sell it for ridiculous sums, dole it out on the tongues of their customers like communion wafers. Or they could be completely charitable—after all, how much money does anyone need?—and give it to great minds to study. Who knows what impact this could have for science and medicine? An elixir that regenerates wounded tissue could revolutionize the treatment of injury and disease.

This could change everything. As would revealing Lanny’s condition to the world.

And yet … Luke suspects that analysis of the residue would reveal nothing. Some things resist scrutiny, can’t be examined in the cold light of day. A tiny fraction of a percent of occurrences can’t be explained or reproduced. In his time as a medical student, he’d heard of a few, offered spontaneously by a sage old professor at the end of a
lecture, whispered among the students as they filed out of the operating theater after a dissection. There are some physicians and medical researchers who dismiss such stories and would have you believe that life is mechanical, the body no more than a system of systems, like a house. That you will live as long as you eat this, drink that, follow these rules, as though they were a recipe for life; if you fix the plumbing or shore up the frame when they become damaged, because your body is only a vessel for carrying your consciousness.

But Luke knows it’s not straightforward like that. Even if a surgeon were to search inside Lanny—and what a nightmare that would be, the body trying to close itself up even as the hands and instruments probed inside—he wouldn’t find what part of her had changed to make her eternal. Nor would bloodwork or biopsies or any amount of radiological scans. So, too, you could analyze the potion, give the recipe to a thousand chemists to have them re-create it, but Luke thinks not one would be able to duplicate the result. There is a force at work in Lanny, he can feel it—but whether it is spiritual or magical or chemical or some kind of energy, he has no idea. All he knows is that the grace that is Lanny’s existence, like faith and prayer, works better in solitude, protected from skepticism and the brute force of reason, and that, if the facts of her circumstances were made public, she might disintegrate into dust or evaporate like dew in sunlight. That’s probably why none of the others—these others Lanny told him of, Alejandro, Dona, and the diabolical Tilde—have gone public, Luke thinks.

He rolls the vial between his fingers like a cigarette and then, quickly, places it under his heel and brings all his weight down on it. It folds as easily as if it were made of paper, squashed flat. He goes to the window, opens it, and throws the chip of metal as far as he can, over the rooftops of his neighbors, deliberately not following its trajectory with his eyes. Immediately, he feels relieved. Perhaps he should have spoken to Lanny before he destroyed the vial, but no—he knows what she would have said. It’s done.