my man in New York, and every conceivable personal protection must be taken. I should pay for all this-guards of any number, round the clock. He must err on the side of excess. You'll hear from me again, very soon. Remember, old-fashioned words. You'll know me when you speak to me.
I put down the phone. I was trembling with rage, unsupportable rage! Ah, the little monster! It is not enough for him to have the body of the god, he must ransack the god's storehouses. The little fiend, the little imp! And I had been so foolish not to realize that this would happen!
Oh, you are human all right, I said to myself. You are a human idiot! And oh, to think of the denunciations Louis would heap upon my head before he consented to help me!
And what if Marius knew! Oh, that was too awful to contemplate. Just reach Louis as fast as you can.
I had to obtain a valise, and get to the airport. Mojo would undoubtedly have to travel by crate, and this, too, must be obtained. My farewell to Gretchen would not be the graceful, slow leave-taking I had envisioned. But surely she would understand.
Much was happening within the complex delusionary world of her mysterious lover. It was time to part.
Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
THE trip south was a small nightmare. The airport, only just reopened after the repeated storms, had been jammed to overflowing with anxious mortals waiting for their long-delayed flights or come to find their arriving loved ones.
Gretchen gave way to tears, and so did I. A terrible fear had seized her that she would never see me again, and I could not reassure her sufficiently that I would come to her at the Mission of St. Margaret Mary in the jungles of French Guiana, up the Maroni River from St. Laurent. The written address was carefully placed in my pocket along with all numbers relevant to the motherhouse in Caracas, from which the sisters could direct me should I be unable to find the place on my own. She had already booked a midnight flight for the first leg of her return.
One way or another, I must see you again! she said to me : in a voice that was breaking my heart.
You will, ma chere, I said, that I promise you. I'll find the mission. I'll find you.
The flight itself was hellish. I did little more than lie there in a stupor, waiting for the plane to explode and for my mortal body to be blown to pieces. Drinking large amounts of gin and tonic did not alleviate the fear; and when I did free my mind from it for a few moments at a time, it was only to become obsessed with difficulties facing me. My rooftop apartment, for example, was full of clothes which did not fit me. And I was used to going in through a door on the roof. I had no key now to the street stairway. Indeed, the key was in my nocturnal resting place beneath the Lafayette Cemetery, a secret chamber I could not possibly reach with only a mortal's strength, for it was blocked with doors at several points which not even a gang of mortal men might have opened.
And what if the Body Thief had been to New Orleans before me What if he had sacked my rooftop rooms, and stolen all the money hidden there Not likely. No, but if he had stolen all the files of my poor unfortunate mortal agent in New York... Ah, better to think about the plane exploding. And then there was Louis. What if Louis were not there What if... And so on it went for the better part of two hours.
At last, we made our rattling, roaring, cumbersome, and terrifying descent, amid a rainstorm of biblical proportions. I collected Mojo, discarding his crate, and leading him boldly into the back of the taxi. And off we drove into the unabated storm, with the mortal driver taking every conceivable risk available to him, as Mojo and I were flung into each other's arms, more or less, over and over again.
It was near midnight when we finally reached the narrow tree-lined streets of uptown, the rain falling so heavily and steadily that the houses behind their iron fences were scarcely visible. When I saw the dismal, abandoned house of Louis's property, crowded by the dark trees, I paid the driver, snatched up the valise, and led Mojo out