38

Caviar was supposed to be one of those things you either loved or hated, but Paul had never felt either way. If he was flying first class and a stewardess stuck a plate of it in front of him, he ate it and then forgot there was such a thing as caviar until the next time a stewardess stuck a plate of it in front of him. But now he ate it hungrily, with all the trimmings, as if discovering the great principle of food for the first time in his life.

Annie didn't care for it at all. She nibbled at the one dainty teaspoonful she'd put on a toast point, wrinkled her face in disgust, and put it aside. Paul, however, plowed ahead with undimmed enthusiasm. In a space of fifteen minutes he had eaten half of Mount Beluga. He belched, covered his mouth, and looked guiltily at Annie, who went off into another gay gust of laughter.

I think I'm going to kill you, Annie, he thought, and smiled warmly at her. I really do. I may go with you - probably will, in fact - but I am going to go with a by-God bellyful of caviar. Things could be worse.

“That was great, but I can't eat any more,” he said.

“You'd probably throw up if you did,” she said. “That stuff is very rich.” She smiled back. “There's another surprise. I have a bottle of champagne. For later… when you finish the book. It's called Dom Perignon. It cost seventy-five dollars! For one bottle! But Chuckie Yoder down at liquor store says it's the best there is.”

“Chuckie Yoder is right,” Paul said, thinking that it was partly Dom's fault that he'd gotten himself into this hell in the first place. He paused a moment and then said: “There's something else I'd like, as well. For when I finish.”

“Oh? What's that?”

“You said once you had all of my things.”

“I do.”

“Well… there was a carton of cigarettes in my suitcase. I'd like to have a smoke when I finish.” Her smile had faded slowly. “You know those things are no good for you, Paul. They cause cancer.”

“Annie, would you say that cancer is something I have to worry about just now?” She didn't answer.

“I just want that one single cigarette. I've always leaned back and smoked one when I finished. It's the one that always tastes the best, believe me - even better than the one you have after a really fine meal. At least that's how it used to be. I suppose this time it'll make me feel dizzy and like puking, but I'd like that little link with the past. What do you say, Annie? Be a sport. I have been.”

“All right… but before the champagne. I'm not drinking a seventy-five-dollar bottle of fizzy beer in the same room where you've been blowing that poison around.”

“That's fine. If you bring it to me around noon, I'll put it on the windowsill where I can look at it once in awhile. I'll finish, and then I'll fill in the letters, and then I'll smoke it until I feel like I'm going to fall down unconscious, and then I'll butt it. Then I'll call you.”

“All right,” she said. “But I'm still not happy about it. Even if you don't get lung cancer from just one, I'm still not happy about it. And do you know why, Paul?”

“No.” Because only Don't-Bees smoke,” she said, and began to gather up the dishes.

39

“Mistuh Boss Ian, is she -?”

“Shhhhh!” Ian hissed fiercely, and Hezekiah subsided. Geoffrey felt a pulse beating with wild rapidity in his throat. From outside came the steady soft creak of lines and rigging, the slow flap of the sails in the first faint breezes of the freshening trade winds, the occasional cry of a bird. Dimly, from the afterdeck, Geoffrey could hear a gang of men singing a shanty in bellowing, off-key voices. But in here all was silence as the three men, two white and one black, waited to see if Misery would live… or - Ian groaned hoarsely, and Hezekiah gripped his arm. Geoffrey merely tightened his already hysterically tight hold on himself. After all of this, could God really be cruel enough to let her die? Once he would have denied such a possibility confidently, and with humor rather than indignation. The, idea that God could be cruel would in those days have struck him as absurd.

But his ideas about God - like his ideas about so many things, had changed. They had changed in Africa. In Africa he had discovered that there was not just one God but many, and some were more than cruel - they were insane, and that changed all. Cruelty, after all, was understandable. With insanity, however, there was no arguing.

These wretched musings were interrupted by a harsh, half-superstitious gasp from Hezekiah.

“Mist” Boss Ian! Mist” Boss Geoffrey! Look! She eyes Look she eyes!” Misery's eyes, that gorgeously delicate shade of cornflower blue, had fluttered open. They passed from Ian to Geoffrey and then back to Ian again. For a moment Geoffrey saw only puzzlement in those eyes… and then recognition dawned in them, and he felt gladness roar through his soul.

“Where am I?” she asked, yawning and stretching. “Ian - Geoffrey - are we at sea? Why am I so hungry?” Laughing, crying, Ian bent and hugged her, speaking her name over and over again.

Bewildered but pleased, she hugged him back - and because he knew she was all right, Geoffrey found he could abide their love, now and forever. He would live alone, could live alone, in perfect peace.

Perhaps the gods were not insane after all… at least, not all of them.

He touched Hezekiah on the shoulder. “I think we should leave them alone, old man, don” you?”

“I guess that be right, Mist” Boos Geoffrey,” Hezekiah said. He grinned widely, flashing all seven of his gold teeth.

Geoffrey stole one last look at her, and for just a moment those cornflower eyes flashed his way, warming him, filling him. Fulfilling him.

I love you, my darling, he thought. Do you hear me?

Perhaps the answer which came back was only the wistful call of his own mind, but he thought not - it was too clear, too much her own voice.

I hear… and I love you, too.

Geoffrey closed the door and went up to the afterdeck. Instead of throwing himself over the rail, as he might have done, he lit his pipe and smoked a bowl of tobacco slowly, watching the sun go down behind that distant, disappearing cloud on horizon - that cloud which was the coast of Africa.

And then, because he could not stand to do otherwise, Paul Sheldon rolled the last page out of the typewriter and scrawled the most loved and hated phrase in the writer's vocabulary with a pen:

40

His swollen right hand had not wanted to fill in the missing letters, but he had forced it through the work nonetheless. If he wasn't able to work at least some of the stiffness out of it, he was not going to be able to carry through with this.

When it was done, he put the pen aside. He regarded his work for a moment. He felt as he always did when he finished a book - queerly empty, let down, aware that for each little success he had paid a toll of absurdity.

It was always the same, always the same - like toiling uphill through jungle and breaking out to a clearing at the top after months of hell only to discover nothing more rewarding than a view of a freeway - with a few gas stations and bowling alleys thrown in for good behavior, or something.

Still, it was good to be done - always good to be done. Good to have produced, to have caused a thing to be. In a numb sort of way he understood and appreciated the bravery of the act, of making little lives that weren't, creating the appearance of motion and the illusion of warmth. He understood - now, finally - that he was a bit of a dullard at doing this trick, but it was the only one he knew, and if he always ended up doing it ineptly, he at least never failed to do it with love. He touched the pile of manuscript and smiled a little bit.