Chương 34: A bouquet

Rebecca Tilliam collapses onto the hotel couch with a groan of relief. She drops her suitcases and carry-ons in a pile of leather and canvas around her.

"What a lovely room, Carol." She shuts her eyes.

"Thank you."

"Uh huh." Rebecca hears the shuffling of her handler's papers, the clicking of her pen.

"We were fifteen minutes overtime on breakfast. So you're going to have to meet Paul in five if we want to keep to schedule."

"Maybe he can wait a little longer, please? I just took these pumps off." Rebecca rubs her ankle. She used to live in shoes like this, do day-long shoots and flawless choreography in them. She's getting too damn old for heels. Carol tsks.

"Should have thought of that before you took so long picking the cafe."

"I haven't been to Pastornos in years," Rebecca says.

"Not since the last Grand Covenant. All the teahouses shuffled around."

"Go meet him, Rebecca." A hand on her shoulder. She sighs and opens her eyes.

"And be accommodating," Carol says.

"The man's been through it." Perhaps today is the day Rebecca melts down and crashes everything into a brick wall. Perhaps she could stop with the airships and the limousines. Perhaps she could never set foot in one of those giant, echoing, cold, dead, beautiful, awful basilicas again, starting today. No more beaming through the balderdash. Perhaps today she fires Carol and tells the Diocese PR team to fuck off and tells Paul she's doing movies again, whether or not he likes it.

Movies where she dances and sings and shows off her legs. The right time for that was a decade and a half ago, Rebecca, she thinks, when those legs were worth showing. So perhaps not. Instead, she straps her smile on and rises lightly to her aching feet with all the grace her hemmed-in life has let her keep.

"All right," she says, because of course it's all right. She's all right. She's a very lucky woman.

"Be right back, Carol." Her handler already has her nose back in those damn schedules.

"Uh huh." Rebecca takes a moment to herself in the elevator. She rubs her temples. It will be nice to see Paul again, she tells herself. She insists. That's your husband. Won't it be nice to see him? She knocks on the door she was instructed to knock on.

"Enter," comes the reply, and she obeys that too. Paul's standing before a desk in the middle of his well-appointed suite, worrying over the assortment of a bouquet clutched in his white-knuckled hand.

"Becca. My dear." He looks as though he wants to embrace her, but he stands instead, in that contrapposto presentation mode he wears like a security blanket.

"I'm so sorry for the short notice." Rebecca offers her jumpy husband a practiced laugh.

"You were kidnapped by terrorists, Paulie. I think I can forgive some scheduling hiccups." Stood behind him are two people Rebecca's never seen before, tall and broad and bedecked in black clothes and indoor sunglasses. Security, she presumes. Deactivated cameras and anonymous strongfolk in black. Temple protocol. She's used to this.

"Hi there, folks," she says.

"Rebecca Tilliam."

"Madam." This and a nod from the one on the left, a scarred but good-looking woman in sleek pinstripe. Paul flickers, as if he's remembered a piece of blocking he's been schooled in.

"Would you like to sit down?" Rebecca squints into the low amber light of the room.

"Is someone else here?" In its far corner, seated on a couch with one of those lanky greyhound dogs on her lap, is…

"Paul," she says, slowly.

"When did your secretary get here?"

"Hello, Mrs. Tilliam," Corinne says.

"Rebecca." Paul's face is solemn and drawn.

"I know the Diocese thought it best to have us together here. And I am quite… grateful, and sorry, that you've made the continental crossing." He closes his eyes. His lid twitches.

"But I think it's best if you turned back and went home now. I can talk to Carol." Rebecca's freckled brow furrows. Frost creeps into her voice.

"Would you please tell me what is happening, Paul?"

"I." Paul gets the one word out and then falls to silent fidgeting again. Fumbling with the flowers, straightening the stems.

"You ought to tell her," Corinne calls from the couch.

"Before I do." He refocuses on Rebecca's chocolate brown eyes.

"I've been unfaithful to you." Fifteen seconds of silence. Then two minutes of rage. You don't need me to reproduce most of it. Paul Tilliam's betrayal is banal. I witness this gentle and sincere woman reduced to a stock character by what he's done to her. Rebecca is a phenomenal individual, one of the few genuinely admirable higher-ups in the Pastornist church I've ever seen. And here's your first, maybe your last, impression of her, and it's full of how could you s and how long s and how dare s.

Even as she's saying it, she recognizes it, the pattern she's fallen into, the same role she's seen so many Temple wives play. How many tears of powerless rage have been wept onto her comforting shoulder? How stupid was she to think her turn wouldn't come? I flit behind Tilliam's eyes so I can see Rebecca through them.

I feel his nauseating wave of self-loathing, his regard for this woman, who he hasn't loved as anything but a sister-in-faith for a very long time, but who today, in her righteous anger, looks as beautiful as the day he met her, the wrath bringing the long-snuffed glow back to her face, straightening and steeling her meek little form.

"I've let you turn me into your ventriloquist dummy," she says.

"I let you take my life and hollow it out. And I told myself: at least he believes."

"I do. I swear to the Father I do." What's horrible is he does. I feel it in him, the conflict and the contrast that he swallows in so many of his waking hours. He's never had to face it with the lights on.

"Then why? Why do you do these things that by your doctrine condemn you to the purgatorial fire? You believe and you sin. You speak one way and act the other."

"Becca." He's looking for the words.

"Tessamon 32: 13 says that the folly of man—""You have railed against using Tessamon 32: 13 as an escape hatch, Paul. I've clapped for you while you did it. And, and, and the sanctity of betrothal and the value of a virtuous woman and I've done everything you told me to, I've done everything you asked, you and the Father, and is it because I got old?"

"It's nothing with you," he says.

"Nothing you've done."

"Tell me it's because I got old and wrinkled and worn out. I'd understand that. I'd see you for what you are. Just tell me. Just be honest with me."

"I erred. I mistook. But I believe—that is to say, I am sure. That with your faith, and your strength, and work from me, such hard, hard work, every day. I want to be redeemed. I want your forgiveness." Her grip tightens on her flowers.

"And now you want me to go home."

"Mrs. Tilliam—" Her husband's secretary stands up, moving the dog from her lap." Don't." Rebecca stabs a finger at her.

"Do not talk, please, Corinne. I am not ready to speak to you yet. I would be too unkind."

"Just for a while," Paul says.

"Just until I can come home to you. To, to ah. To heal. I couldn't bear to troop you out in front of the world, with this… this hanging from you. To humiliate you and to force you to smile and pretend."

"I've smiled and pretended for years, Paul. Years. If you want me out of your thinning hair, just tell me that." He wants to tell her much more than that. He plans to tell her much more than that. I lean forward as I drill further into the archbishop's brain. Oh, no.

"The flowers," I say to my unhearing husband, like I'm warning a horror movie.

"Caspar, take the fucking flowers."

"Just please… you need time." Paul's smile is sickly. He holds out the bouquet.

"Take these and take some time. Maybe I could walk you back to your car." He takes a pleading look at the more musclebound of his two bodyguards, whose face wears an oddly transparent frown.

"You know what, Paul?" Rebecca utters a caustic laugh as she snatches the bouquet from his hands.

"You can take your flowers —""No!" Paul throws his hands out.

"And you can shove them up—" Rebecca slams the bouquet to the floor. A torn-off cover board from a hotel copy of the Father's precepts lays between the stems. HELP I AM A HOSTAGE is scratched into it. The Tilliams and their security stare at the soggy cardboard.

"Shit," the dog says. Rebecca's mouth hangs ajar.

"What—" Tilliam's secretary steps forward. A flickering movement. Rebecca's head jerks like she's been slapped. She tries to say what the hell? Nothing comes out. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. The room blurs. Rebecca's hand rises to her neck, to that golden throat whose music brought her to the summit of her reality. It comes away bloody." No!" A man's voice. Paul? Why is it so hard to see?

Rebecca takes a hesitant step toward the sound and trips and falls. Ow. She hasn't tripped in heels since grade school. These fucking shoes. She used to live in shoes like this. She gets back up to her elbows. The ground is soft. She's outside. When did that happen? She sits up and blinks in the early evening light. A woman made of night stands in front of her.

"Hi?" she manages.

"Hi, Rebecca," I say. I extend a hand. She takes it and rises uncertainly to her feet.

"Your hand," she says. She puzzles over it, my delicate joints, my platinum engagement ring.

"It's—wispy."

"Uh huh. How are you feeling?"

"I'm…" She rubs her neck. Did that jackass Carol slip her something? When could she have?

"Fine, thanks. You have me at a bit of a loss." Armor back on, Rebecca. Stand up straight and smile. She pastes it back on over her confusion.

"Rebecca Tilliam. I suppose you knew that."

"I did. But it's nice to meet you face-to-face. My husband is a huge fan." I squeeze her hand.

"Irene Cartwright."

"Irene." Rebecca rolls that name over. It's pretty. I'm rather pretty, she thinks. Not much of a face, just three eyes and some lips if you look closely, but I'm petite and shapely, in a way that puts the old pre-Pastornist master sculptors to mind.

"You're an angel, maybe?" she ventures.

"Not exactly."

"I only ask," she says, and giggles apologetically.

"I ask—this is ridiculous—because I'm afraid I might be dead."

"Take a walk with me, why don't you?" I say.

"And we can talk about that."

"The thing is, these shoes…" She looks down. She's wearing a sturdy, padded pair of hiking boots.

"Oh. Let's walk, then." ₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪"I am dead," Rebecca says. She's said a variation on that sentence a few times now, trying to fit it into her brain.

"You are."" I am dead."

"Sorry."

"I am dead." She squats to the ground. She stares into the distance. I give her time.

"I'm going to do a primal scream," she decides.

"My therapist said to do this when I was overwhelmed, and then after a few weeks, Paul told me to stop, and I've always missed it. May I scream?"

"Sure." She takes a deep breath and lets it out in a resounding, bestial screech that rolls across the forest. At the edge of the woods, the denizens of Little Paradise (as they've started calling it) pause briefly in their work shingling the roof of the in-progress dance hall. But only briefly. They've heard this sort of cry before from other new arrivals.

"Sounds like another lady," Alys comments to Jessie.

"Sounds like you should lock your boyfriend in the basement, then," Jessie says.

"Deg's been very good lately." Alys gives her a warning nudge.

"Don't make me knock you off this roof. Kill you all over again." The shriek takes longer than I expected to peter out. Rebecca has a songstress's lungs. She takes a ragged, restorative breath.

"Do you have water, please?" I hand her a glass.

"The last act of my life was getting into a fight with my philandering husband." She sits on the forest floor.

"Like a kitchen table melodrama. My God." She drains the glass in three greedy gulps.

"I wanted to be so much more. I thought I was so much more. And I was just a wife, in the end. Just another jilted Temple wife." I crouch next to her.

"This isn't the ending. I know it feels like one. But you still have time. You have a lot of time. You wanted to do movies again, right?" She looks up at me with consternation.

"I think it's a great idea," I say.

"Wouldn't be Heaven without a Rebecca Wallace musical or three."

"It's—" It's Rebecca Tilliam, she's about to say, but something stops her. Her fingers dig into the dirt. She takes a deep breath. She drapes her grace back over herself as she stands.

"Thank you for the water." She holds the glass up.

"Where should I put this?" I take it from her and underhand toss it into the woods. Her eyes follow its parabolic arc. Once it's hidden in the bushes, I dissolve it into ribbons of tendon and reabsorb it through my leafy dermis. I start off into the forest. She follows.

"I never really believed in you, to be honest," she says.

"Or anything else I couldn't see or touch. Had little time for faith except to make people do kind things. I had questions, but not the sort of questions you can ask."

"I'm sure. Statement of faith in the contract?"

"Uh huh." She plucks a leaf from one of my trees as we pass.

"Every contract I ever signed, and every production prayer we ever started a shoot with, and then of course you marry a man of position like Paul and there's no room to talk about doubts. But even heads-down in the prayer circle, I thought: you die, and that's that. It made me feel smart. Not much makes you feel smart when all you do is hang off an arm. I held onto that. Like, look at all the churchly cattle. Go figure."

"I hope it's a pleasant surprise, at least," I say.

"That there's something, I mean. Not that you died."

"It's pleasant enough so far. Autumn's my favorite." Her chestnut locks drift in the cool evening. I understand why she was Caspar's pubescent crush; two decades later, she's still gorgeous.

"This isn't some kind of punishment, is it? For not believing?"

"Nope," I say.

"This is just what happens."

"For everyone?"

"Everyone whose death my husband plays a part in. You're about ten thousand feet over heaven right now, in a pocket dimension I've made to keep everyone comfortable while… renovations happen. Paradise is not in a livable state."

"I was in a dorm at the Chamchek Performance Academy for four years," she says.

"You want to talk about livable states."

"There's levels to the word. I've been showing it to some people when they get here, if they don't believe me. But I'm hoping that won't be necessary for you. It's an unpleasant experience."

"I've had a lot of those today," she says.

"Maybe let's just keep the hike going." I lead Rebecca through the woods, toward our blossoming undead community.

"I'd like to apologize," I say.

"On my husband's behalf. He is feeling just awful about this. There's a quiet but vicious argument happening right now." Rebecca is putting two and two together.

"Your husband is down there. He's a warlock, isn't he? I just got bumped off by warlocks, didn't I? By devil worshippers."

"You did." She releases an amused breath through her nose.

"Can I tell you—this is exactly what my weirdest aunt told me would happen if I went into show business." We share a laugh. Hers is higher and longer than mine.

"I think I forgive you," Rebecca says.

"You and him. I think I'm okay." She bends down back to the forest floor and places her plucked leaf on a crinkly pile.

"Unless this is some dying hallucination."

"You take as long as you need to convince yourself otherwise," I say, as we reach the crest of the hill, where my stone table sits. I gesture to the village in the middle distance.

"Do you want to meet the others?" Rebecca squints. She's surprised at how well her eyes are working. She doesn't feel her contact lenses over them.

"Those people are all Pastornist down there? From Chamchek and Pastornos and such?"

"Yes indeed," I say.

"Ugh, Father forfend." She grimaces.

"Can we not, for a while? I'm afraid there'll be fans."

"Almost certainly, there will be." She shakes her head.

"I love a fan, I do. I just, ah… I've got a great deal queued up for processing right now."

"I understand perfectly," I say.

"If you'd like, I can leave you alone for a while. You can holler if you need something. I know you're good at hollering."

"What would you do?" she asks.

"How does the Adversary spend her day?"

"Mostly, I watch my warlock," I say.

"It's an addiction."

"May I join you?" she asks.

"I really don't know if that's a good idea, Rebecca. They're, uh… moving you right now."

"You mean my corpse." I nod.

"How about this? You let me watch and I forgive your husband killing me."

"Rebecca." I lay a scandalized hand on my chest.

"Are you takesy-backsing your forgiveness?" She sticks out her hip wryly.

"According to you, there's no Hell for liars. So I am hereby takesy-backsing, yes. Unless you let me watch."

"I need you to appreciate that I don't normally take requests like this from anyone but Caspar." I tap the surface of the stone table and it liquefies into a swirling, foaming whirlpool. Rebecca stares, enthralled.

"Is Caspar your husband?"

"Mmhmm."

"He's the broad one, yes? He's handsome."

"He is indeed the broad one, though the face you saw isn't the face he usually has." The fluid surface hisses and bubbles as it becomes crystal clear water. An image resolves. Jordan Darius is tearing into a weeping Tilliam with whispered fury. She smacks him upside the head. Adaire and Caspar reposition Rebecca's rag-doll corpse on the center of the carpet, which now sports a splotchy bloodstain spread across it like a map of some undiscovered continent.

"I look old," Rebecca says.

"Old and used up."

"I can close this," I say.

"Might be better to leave it behind." She shakes her head.

"This is helping. A definitive conclusion." She rests her palm on the lip of the viewport.

"But would you hold my hand, please?" I take her fingers in mine. She laughs softly to herself as they roll her body up, her arms above her head in a ghoulish simulacrum of a ballet.

"Look at me go. Such a strange feeling. Like I've finally sold the clunky old rustbucket I learned to drive with."

"Father, receive this your servant." Tilliam is on his knees.

"Father, give her the rewards her life of faith has prepared for her." Jordan kicks him in the ribs. Rebecca winces.

"You dumb fucking dick," the inspector snarls.

"No more books, no more alone time, no more nothing. I'm hogtying this dipshit until we need him."

"We could have salvaged that, Adaire," Caspar says.

"There's a million ways we could have controlled that situation."

"We lost control of the situation when you let Paul keep those precepts and buy those flowers," Adaire says.

"I didn't think he'd rip it," Caspar says.

"You don't do that, deface the precepts." Tilliam's red face snaps upward.

"Am I gonna get a lecture about my hypocrisy now, or will you wait until you've cleaned my wife's blood off your shoes?"

"Shut the fuck up." Jordan shoves Paul." You killed her. Your pussy-ass note." His returned gaze is damp and splotchy with tears, his voice full of hate and sorrow.

"Tell yourself whatever you want, demon."

"This is an opportunity." Adaire paces the denuded floorboards.

"Yes. This is an opportunity. I'll be Rebecca." Caspar wipes his bloody hands on the carpet.

"This is the most-viewed woman in the Western Dioceses. We grew up watching her."

"I grew up watching her, too, Caspar. She was your charm offensive. I can do this." Peat Moss's face melts back into his usual fawn form.

"I never saw this poor lady before, but we gotta try, Cas. Otherwise, she just kicked it for no reason." Rebecca puts her hand over her mouth.

"You have a talking dog that's a talking deer," she says.

"Long story."

"Is the rest of my existence going to be this… destabilizing?"

"The next couple of centuries, at least," I say.

"And then I'll figure it out, you suppose?"

"I'm sure of it."

"That's good. I never figured that out, you know." She gestures to the stone table.

"Being a woman. It really ought to be lovely. But they just—" She sighs.

"It always felt like I was doing something wrong, disappointing someone. And then they hurt you, on purpose or by accident, and you ask what it is you're doing wrong, how you can make them happy, and everyone has such a confident answer, and it's never ever the same one. I don't suppose you've had that, being the devil and all." I shake my head.

"My first picture, I thought, how lucky I am that I can just do the things I like, just sing and dance, and it'll make them happy. But it doesn't go that way. Not my life, anyway. I sang, and danced, and the rest of the time I was anxious and confused and I kept getting hurt, and then I died, and that hurt too." She snorts.

"Put that on the headstone." She sits on one of the boulders around the table's circumference. I take position next to her.

"Some ladies talk about it like the pain is the thing," she says.

"Like you must experience it—the cramps, the kids, the jerks, the stupid fucking shoes. The pain is womanhood. I always thought that was very foolish."

"I like the shoes, honestly."

"Oh, of course. Love a shoe. A very chunky heel? Fabulous. But they hurt." She puts her chin on her hand.

"I wish I could have come to it like you, that's all. By choice. Without pain."

"Choice, sure," I say.

"No pain, I don't know. I still had to break in the heels. And I was torn in half recently." She raises her elegant brows.

"Oh."

"You sing and dance very beautifully," I say.

"You can keep doing that here, you know. You let me know if anyone tries to start that pastornist shit and I'll make them puke bugs or something, Ms. Wallace." She closes her eyes. When they reopen, I see the silky steel of gentility back on them.

"All right," she says.

"Let's meet the neighbors." We start down the hill.

"Are you this nice to everyone," Rebecca asks, "or do I have a new friend here?"

"I used to be very brusque with the dead," I say.

"Just showed them how bad Heaven had gotten and tossed them into the taphouse. I didn't sign up for the job, being a psychopomp. I was annoyed. It felt like an imposition. But I've come a very long way from there." I realize it as I say it.

"A very long way."

"What changed your mind?"

"The usual story." I shrug.

"I met a boy."