The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,472

Wendell for his display of temper last night. Showed him a thing or two. No more worries there.’

“It goes on like that,” said Aaron, “page after page, book after book. Occasionally there are little maps and drawings, and financial notes. But for the most part that’s all it is. I’d say there are approximately twenty-two entries per year. I’ve yet to come upon a coherent full paragraph. No, if the autobiography exists, it’s not here.”

“What about the attic, are you game to go up there?” asked Rowan.

“Not now. I had a fall last night.”

“What are you talking about?”

“On the staircase at the hotel. I was impatient with the elevator. I fell to the first landing. It might have been worse.”

“Aaron, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, this is soon enough. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about it, except that I don’t recall losing my footing. But I’ve a sore ankle, and I’d like to put off going up into the attic.”

Rowan was crestfallen, angry. She gazed up at the façade of the house. There were workmen everywhere. On the parapets, on the porches, in the open bedroom windows.

“Don’t become unduly alarmed,” said Aaron. “I want you to know, but I don’t want you to fret.”

It was clear to Michael that Rowan was speechless. He could feel her fury. He could see the disfigurement of the anger in her face.

“We’ve seen nothing here,” said Michael to Aaron. “Absolutely nothing. And no one else has seen anything, at least not anything worth mentioning to either of us.”

“You were pushed, weren’t you?” asked Rowan in a low voice.

“Perhaps,” said Aaron.

“He’s deviling you.”

“I think so,” said Aaron with a little nod. “He likes to knock Julien’s books about too, when he has the opportunity, which seems to be whenever I leave the room. Again, I thought it important you know about it, but I don’t want you to fret.”

“Why’s he doing it?”

“Maybe he wants your attention,” said Aaron. “But I hesitate to say. Whatever the case, trust that I can protect myself. The work here does seem to be coming along splendidly.”

“No problems,” said Michael, but he was pitched into gloom.

After lunch, he walked Aaron to the gate.

“I’m having too much fun, aren’t I?” he asked.

“Of course you aren’t,” said Aaron. “What a strange thing to say.”

“I wish it would come to a boil,” said Michael. “I think I’ll win when it does. But the waiting is driving me nuts. After all, what is he waiting for?”

“What about your hands? I do wish you’d try to go without the gloves.”

“I have. I take off the gloves for a couple of hours each day. I can’t get used to the heat, the zinging feeling, even when I can blot everything else out. Look, do you want me to walk with you back to the hotel?”

“Of course not. I’ll see you there tonight if you have time for a drink.”

“Yeah, it’s like a dream coming true, isn’t it?” he asked wistfully. “I mean for me.”

“No, for both of us,” said Aaron.

“You trust me?”

“Why on earth would you ask?”

“Do you think I’m going to win? Do you think I’m going to do what they want of me?”

“What do you think?”

“I think she loves me and that it’s going to be wonderful what happens.”

“So do I.”

He felt good, and each successive hour brought some new realization of it; and in his time at the house, there had been no other fragmentary memories of the visions. No sense of the ghosts.

It was comfortable each night being with Rowan, comfortable being in the spacious old suite, and making love, and then getting up again, to go back to work on the books and on the notes. It was comfortable being tired from a day of physical exertion, and feeling his body springing back from those two months of torpor and too much beer.

He was drinking little or no beer now; and in the absence of the dulling alcohol, his senses were exquisitely sharpened; he could not get enough of Rowan’s sleek, girlish body and her inexhaustible energy. Her total lack of narcissism or self-consciousness awakened in him a roughness that she seemed to love. There were times when their lovemaking was like horseplay, and even more violent than that. But it always ended in tenderness and a feverish embrace, so that he wondered how he had ever slept all these years, without her arms around him.

Thirty-four

HER PRIVATE TIME was still the early morning. No matter how late she read, she