“No, not a sound. If she had, if she’d let even the least little bit of that sorrow out, we’d have been lucky to go mad. Most likely, we’d have turned into something that could endure to hear her—stones, air. She ate that pain to save us. That’s what destroyed her, you know.”
“I don’t know that. I don’t know anything about her, except that she’s a goddess and immortal, and you’re not. You’re supposed to scream.”
“Oh, I will. But not for a while yet.” He smiled at Farrell then and touched his shoulder. “You do know how it is with really little kids, when they get hurt or really upset? That long, awful moment before the howl?” Farrell nodded. “That’s where I am right now. I can’t even get my breath to cry, but I still have to live.”
Briseis met them halfway down the block, ignoring Ben entirely to dance and yap around Farrell as if she were a much smaller dog, running between his legs and all but snapping at his ankles. Ben said, “Well, somebody sure knows an authority figure when she sees one.”
“It’s not funny. Don’t encourage her. Ever since we told her about the will, she’s been getting nutsier by the minute. Knock it off, Briseis,” he ordered, as the dog leaped up to him. “See that? That’s not fawning, she never licks my face, she just looks at me as if I know where all her puppies are. Wake up in the night, and she’s standing right by the bed, waiting. I hate to tell you, but if she keeps this up, the ducks are going to get your house. Briseis, God damn it!”
They stood outside the house for a few minutes, watching timers turn lamps on and off. Ben said finally, “You still talk about Sia in the present tense. I always notice.”
“I think of her like that. Hell, I dream about her most nights. The strange thing about that is, we’re always out of the house, going shopping, working in the garden, just walking down Parnell. Don’t you have dreams about her?”
Ben shook his head. “I can’t afford to, Joe. Sometimes I think she’s really dead, sometimes she’s just gone somewhere I don’t know how to imagine. But it doesn’t make any difference, it can’t. Where she is, she’s done with me, the same way she’s done with Nicholas Bonner. He was the real reason she hung around the human shape, he was her responsibility, but he’s gone, and she’s done with all of us, she meant what she said. And I still have to live.”
Farrell’s unease deepened with the autumn, putting him at vague but constant odds with everything. His dreams of Sia persisted, companionable and undemanding in themselves, but more and more leaving him angrily bereft each time he woke to look up into Briseis’ foolish, urgent eyes. The dog took to following him to work, which was bad enough but manageable; the people at the auto restoration shop liked her and fed her bits of their lunches. But the second time she dragged the blankets off him in Julie’s house at three in the morning, he came up reaching for her throat, and it took all of Julie’s efforts to make him stop yelling and throttling Briseis. It took a good deal longer for him to stop trembling, even when Julie held him.
“I wouldn’t say this to everybody,” she said, “but I suspect you’re getting a message.” Farrell huddled in a chair, glowering across the bedroom at Briseis. Julie said, “I think our friend wants to talk to you.”
“Not me. Definitely not me. Ben’s her man, and you’re her friend, practically a second cousin. I’m the straight man, the dummy—I’m Briseis, when you get down to it. You don’t make long-distance calls to Briseis.”
“We’re all her Briseises. What else could we be to her? Tenth-rate material, cheap styrofoam, meant for packing cartons, not to be depended on by a goddess. But she didn’t have any choice, she was stuck with us and, damn it, she could have done a lot worse for familiars. Maybe we couldn’t be much help, but we must have been some, because she’s sending for you again. And if she wants you, you have to go.”
“Go? Go where?” Farrell sat up, and Briseis ran into the bathroom, rousing the white cat Mushy, who won the ensuing two-rounder by a TKO. Farrell said, “Jewel, I couldn’t even guess if she’s on the bloody planet anymore. And it’s not just where, it’s what. She could come back as the Pocatello National Bank or a manhole cover in Kuala Lumpur, I would not know.”
“Briseis would. She left her to you for a reason.” Farrell snarled. “So would your ring, probably. Look at the way it’s shining right now.”
“It just does that. It’s not any good for anything, it’s just supposed to remind me of her.” Julie smiled and spread her hands. Farrell said heavily. “Even if. Even if I quit the job and pile my stuff in the bus one more time, and sit Briseis on the dashboard so she can point where she wants me to go. Even if I’m that crazy. What happens to us?”
“What always happens to us,” Julie said. “It just took longer this time. I’m very glad it did.” She patted the edge of the bed, and Farrell came and sat next to her. They were quiet together for a long time. She said, “I told you before, we’ll always be together because we’ve shared something we’ll never be able to share with anyone else, and our other lovers will always be jealous. But neither of us wants to live with anyone. You know that’s true, Joe. It happens to be one of the big things we have in common.”
Farrell said, “We waited too late. There were times for us long ago, I remember them. We could have been an old couple by now.”
“An immortal is summoning you on a quest, and you’re sitting here mumbling domestic fantasies. I’m going back to bed.”
Farrell put his arms around her. “When they bust me for vagrancy and mumbling in Pocatello, will you come and get me?”
“As long as you tell me when you find Sia. You will find her, old buddy. Nobody else could, but you will.”
The morning that he set out was glass-crisp, not rounded off with fog but sharp-cornered, making him sneeze when he inhaled deeply. Ben helped him pack the last of his belongings into Madame Schumann-Heink, where Briseis had insisted on spending the night. He said very little, and Farrell was the one who volunteered, “This is lonely. Leaving’s never been lonely for me before. I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you a lot,” Ben said. “I know you’re going on my quest, and it feels really strange. But I can’t go with you.”
“Of course you can’t. You’ve got your work, you’ve got a whole life to keep together, like Julie. She sent for me because I’m the one who’s still just messing around.”
“That’s not the reason.” Ben petted Briseis, speaking directly to her. “Tell your mistress that I will love her all my life and that I’m as angry as I can be at her for leaving me when I needed her. I know it’s presumptuous and insulting, but you tell her. You tell her I’m angry.” Briseis licked his hand, and Ben said, almost inaudibly, “Tell her I do speak her language to myself.”
Farrell drove Julie to work for the last time. Neither of them spoke at all. They held hands all the way, even when Farrell had to shift gears. When he parked near her office, she got down by herself, walked around to the driver’s side and pulled him halfway through the window to kiss him. “Be careful,” she said. “You’re the only one I’ve ever had.”
“The only one what?” There was no way to avoid asking the question, and they were both laughing when she replied, “Ah, if we only knew that. Wouldn’t we be somewhere then?” She kissed him again and walked away without saying good-bye. Farrell found this oddly hopeful and reassuring, since he had never known Julie to say good-bye, and they had always seen each other again.
“Pilot to navigator,” he announced to Briseis. “Which the hell way?” Briseis bounced her paws on the dashboard and whined in the general direction of the Bay. Farrell waited until Julie was out of sight, then put the bus in gear.
Leaving the campus, he spotted a red-haired man in a three-piece suit who looked like a game-show host, standing next to a hot-pretzel barrow, screaming out his timetable for the arrival of the Antichrist. Farrell said to Briseis, “Look at that. They’re all over the place, preaching to muggers in the rain, converting fire hydrants, absolutely crazy as jaybirds. But they have to do it, they have to tell people what God tells them, they’re all on quests, too. And here I go sliding on by, just as easy and civilized, and nobody knows I’m asking a dog to tell me which turn-off I take to find our goddess. A remarkable thing.”