I found myself in front of the building, next to the patient, about to move toward that lovely form. All the disdain had been drained from me; my plan to hate her had utterly failed. She was all my imagination had created, and more. And I would have followed her anywhere, if she would have me.
A hand gripped my elbow.
Get along your way, sir, said the guard, his eyes fierce with threat, his arm turning me away from Market Street.
But I am a tenant here, I said weakly.
I said, Get along your way!
The patient was leaving me! I watched her shape recede as she crossed Market Street, where she would disappear into the crowd. I tried to tug my elbow away from the grip of the guard. I looked down at the hand restraining me. And I was about to protest again—when suddenly it came to me that I was being held in the hand of Providence.
Truly, I was not a believer. Before that moment I had no faith in divine intervention into the world of men. Yet right then I knew some force had been sent to save me from my fearful desires. There was no reason this guard should have left the building to accost me. I had never seen him challenge anyone as he had challenged me. Now I knew why he was placed in our building; why his beauty so unnerved me. Each single angel is terrible.
Thank you, sir, I said to my angelic guard.
He screwed up his eyes. He had not expected this gratitude. He hung over me, still holding my elbow.
I suppose I missed my niece, I said to him. I should go in and phone her.
He said nothing, only continued to hold me by the elbow to escort me inside, then see me into an elevator car. I rose up the shaft knowing I was being watched over: the guard watching the eyes of the cherubim, as they watched me ascend to eight.
66.
The August hiatus was an orgy of self-recrimination.
I had thought I would be safe as long as I could hear the patient’s voice. Her story, my desire to know it, was all that was decent in me; all that kept me from the trail inscribed in my blood. Yet I had succumbed to the crows—or nearly. I had been on the brink of following her! Who knows what I would have done if not for the intervention of my frightening angel?
Dr. Schussler was gone. The patient was where? At home? On vacation? Traveling for work? How tempted I was to find 732 Alpine Terrace and watch for her. I locked myself in my cottage and forbade myself to go.
It was a time of the truest of lonelinesses (since loneliness is plural, various in its aspects and effects); and by this I mean not simply the absence of companionship but a complete estrangement from all feelings except self-loathing. The world tolerated me, I believed, only because of my subterfuge: the fraud I perpetrated which fooled them into thinking I was human.
67.
Labor Day came, and ten days lay between me and the patient’s return. Was I worthy of her? Could I return to her? Each night my imagination was invaded by hideous images. In my dreams I opened my eyes yet remained blind.
Finally came Wednesday morning, the tenth of September. I awoke in a sweated puddle of fear. Yet, as if enchanted, I found myself dressing, leaving the cottage that had been my prison all the month long, climbing onto the N Judah for the long ride downtown. It was a blisteringly hot day. The wind came from inland, from the dry hot valley, and standing in the sun merely to cross Market Street was nearly intolerable. My gargoyles labored under the eaves. I came to the door; I entered the blind white of the lobby.
The guard was not there! The podium and desk: bare! The sign-in book: gone! Had the guard been let go? Fired? Had the building management decided it did not need a guard or could not afford one? Or had the guard never existed at all, his presence and intervention in my life having no more reality that the unnatural images of my nightmares? I knew I should have feared the disappearance of my observing angel. I knew I should have worried for my sanity. But a calm washed over me. For no reason at all, I was certain the good