Page 66

"Without question. Put your affairs in order tonight. You don't need to worry about mine. Take care of yourself, that you are ready to embark on this. "

I watched her for a long time. I was still seated at the table. She stood with her back to the glass. It struck me that she had been drawn against it in black ink except for her white face.

"Is there a God, Dora?" I whispered. I had spoken these same words so many times! I had asked this question of Gretchen when I was flesh and blood in her arms.

"Yes, there is a God, Lestat," Dora answered. "Be assured of it. Maybe you've been praying to Him so loud and so long that finally He has paid attention. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't the disposition of God, not to hear us when we cry, to deliberately shut His ears!"

"Shall I leave you here or take you home?"

"Leave me. I don't ever want to make a journey like that again. I will spend a good part of the rest of my life trying to remember it precisely and failing to do so. I want to stay here in New York with my father's things. With regard to the money? Your mission has been accomplished. "

"And you accept the relics, the fortune. "

"Yes, of course, I accept them. I'll keep Roger's precious books until such time as they can be properly offered for others to see¡ªhis beloved heretical Wynken de Wilde. "

"Do you require anything further of me?" I asked.

"Do you think . . . do you think you love God?"

"Absolutely not. "

"Why do you say that?"

"How could I?" I asked. "How could anyone love Him? What did you just tell me yourself about the world? Don't you see, everybody hates God now. It's not that God is dead in the twentieth century. It's that everybody hates Him! At least I think so. Maybe that's what Memnoch is trying to say. "

She was amazed. She frowned with disappointment and yearning. She wanted to say something. She gestured, as though trying to take invisible flowers from the air to show me their beauty, who knows?

"No, I hate Him," I said.

She made the Sign of the Cross and put her hands together.

"Are you praying for me?"

"Yes," she said. "If I never lay eyes on you again after tonight, if I never come across a single shred of evidence that you really exist or were here with me, or that any of these things were said, I'll still be transformed by you as I am now. You are my miracle of sorts. You're greater proof than millions of mortals have ever been given. You're proof not only of the supernatural and the mysterious and the wondrous, you're proof of exactly what I believed"

"I see. " I smiled. It was all so logical and symmetrical. And true. I smiled, truly smiled, and shook my head. "I hate to leave you," I said.

"Go," she said, and then she clenched her fists. "Ask God what He wants of us!" she said furiously. "You're right. We hate Him!" The anger blazed in her eyes, and then subsided, and she stared at me, her eyes looking larger and brighter because they were wet now with salt and tears.

"Good-bye, my darling," I said. This was so extraordinary and painful.

I went out into the heavy, drifting snow.

The doors of the great cathedral of St. Patrick's were closed and bolted, and I stood at the foot of the stone steps looking up at the high Olympic Tower, wondering if Dora could see me as I stood here, freezing in the cold, and letting the snow strike my face, softly, persistently, harmfully, and with beauty.

"All right, Memnoch," I said aloud. "No need to wait any longer.

Come now, please, if you will. "

Immediately I heard the footsteps!

It was as though they were echoing in the monstrous hollow of Fifth Avenue, among the hideous Towers of Babel, and I had cast my lot with the whirlwind.

I turned round and round. There was not a mortal in sight!

"Memnoch the Devil!" I shouted. "I'm ready!"

I was perishing with fear.