The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,545

mean about the whole big change? Are there moments when you’d just like to pick up where you left off, as if New Orleans never happened?”

“Are you crazy? All I think about is coming back to you. I’m getting out of here before Christmas. I don’t care what’s going on.”

“I love you, Michael.” She could say it a thousand times and it always sounded spontaneous. It was an agony not to be able to hold her. But was there a darker note to her voice, something he hadn’t heard before?

“Michael, burn anything that’s left. Just make a bonfire in the backyard, for heaven’s sakes. Hurry.”

He’d promised her he’d finish in the house by tonight if it killed him.

“Nothing’s happened, has it? I mean you’re not scared there, are you, Rowan?”

“No. I’m not scared. It’s the same beautiful house you left. Ryan had a Christmas tree delivered. You ought to see it, it reaches the ceiling. It’s just waiting there in the parlor for you and me to decorate it. The smell of the pine needles is all through the house.”

“Ah, that’s wonderful. I’ve got a surprise for you … for the tree.”

“All I want is you, Michael. Come home.”

Four o’clock. The house was really truly empty now and hollow and full of echoes. He stood in his old bedroom looking out over the dark shiny rooftops, spilling downhill to the Castro district, and beyond, the clustered steel gray skyscrapers of downtown.

A great city, yes, and how could he not be grateful for all the wonderful things it had given him? A city like no other perhaps. But it wasn’t his city anymore. And in a way it never had been.

Going home.

But he’d forgotten again. The boxes in the attic, the surprise, the things he wanted most of all.

Taking the plastic wrapping material and an empty carton with him, he went up the ladder, stooping under the sloped roof, and snapped on the light. Everything clean and dry now that the leak had been patched. And the sky the color of slate beyond the front window. And the four remaining boxes, marked “Christmas” in red ink.

The tree lights he’d leave for the guys who were renting the place. Surely they could use them.

But the ornaments he would now carefully repack. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing a single one. And to think, the tree was already there.

Dragging the box over under the naked overhead bulb, he opened it and discarded the old tissue paper. Over the years he’d collected hundreds of these little porcelain beauties from the specialty shops around town. Now and then he’d sold them himself at Great Expectations. Angels, wise men, tiny houses, carousel horses, and other delicate trinkets of exquisitely painted bisque. Real true Victorian ornaments could not have been more finely fashioned or fragile. There were tiny birds made of real feathers, wooden balls skillfully painted with lavish old roses, china candy canes, and silver-plated stars.

Memories came back to him of Christmases with Judith and with Elizabeth, and even back to the time when his mother had been alive.

But mostly he remembered the last few Christmases of his life, alone. He had forced himself to go through with the old rituals. And long after Aunt Viv had gone to bed, he’d sat by the tree, a glass of wine in his hand, wondering where his life was going and why.

Well, this Christmas would be utterly and completely different. All these exquisite ornaments would now have a purpose, and for the first time there would be a tree large enough to hold the entire collection, and a grand and wonderful setting in which they truly belonged.

Slowly he began work, removing each ornament from the tissue, rewrapping it in plastic, and putting it in a tiny plastic sack. Imagine First Street on Christmas Eve with the tree in the parlor. Imagine it next year when the baby was there.

It seemed impossible suddenly that his life could have experienced such a great and wondrous change. Should have died out there in the ocean, he thought.

And he saw, not the sea in his mind suddenly, but the church at Christmas when he was a child. He saw the crib behind the altar, and Lasher standing there, Lasher looking at him when Lasher was just the man from First Street, tall and dark-haired and aristocratically pale.

A chill gripped him. What am I doing here? She’s there alone. Impossible that he hasn’t shown himself to her.

The feeling was so dark, so