the universe, Charlie, maybe you should count me out. The cures are scary enough. You’re talking about . . . I don’t know . . . a kind of doorway.”
A small one, I thought. Covered with dead ivy.
“Calm yourself,” he said. “Yes, there’s a doorway—Prinn speaks of it, and I believe Astrid did, as well—but I don’t want to open it. I only want to peek through the keyhole.”
“In God’s name, why?”
He looked at me then with a species of wild contempt. “Are you a fool, after all? What would you call a door that’s closed against all of humankind?”
“Why don’t you just tell me?”
He sighed as if I were hopeless. “Drive on, Jamie.”
“And if I won’t?”
“Then I’ll walk, and when my legs won’t carry me any further, I’ll crawl.”
He was bluffing, of course. He couldn’t have gone on without me. But I didn’t know that then, and so I drove on.
• • •
The cabin where I’d made love to Astrid was gone. Where it had stood—swaybacked, slumping in on itself, tagged with graffiti—was a nifty little cottage, white with green trim. There was a square plot of lawn, and showy summer flowers that would be gone by day’s end, stripped clean by the storm. East of the cottage, the paved road gave way to the gravel I remembered from my trips to Skytop with Astrid. It ended at that bulging dome of granite, where the iron pole jutted toward the black sky.
Jenny, dressed in a flower-print blouse and white nylon Nancy Nurse pants, was standing on the stoop, arms crossed below her breasts and hands cupping her elbows, as if she were cold. There was a stethoscope looped around her neck. I pulled up at the steps and walked around the golf cart’s snout to where Jacobs was struggling to get out. Jenny came down the steps and helped me get him on his feet.
“Thank God you’re here!” She had to shout to be heard over the rising wind. The pines and spruces were bending and bowing before it. “I thought you weren’t coming, after all!” Thunder rolled, and when a flash of lightning followed it, she cringed.
“Inside!” I yelled at her. “Right now!” The wind had turned chill, and my sweaty skin was as good as a thermometer, registering the change in the air. The storm was only minutes away.
We got Jacobs up the steps, one on each side. The wind spun the thin remnants of his hair around his skull in whirlpools. He still had his cane, and hugged the mahogany box protectively against his chest. I heard a rattling sound, looked toward Skytop, and saw bits of scree, smashed out of the granite by the lightning strikes of previous storms, being tumbled down the slope by the wind and off the edge of the drop.
Once we were inside, Jenny couldn’t get the door shut. I managed, but had to put some real muscle into it. When it was closed, the howl of the wind dropped a little. I could hear the cottage’s wooden bones creaking, but it seemed sturdy enough. I didn’t think we’d blow away, and the iron rod would catch any close strokes of lightning. At least I hoped so.
“There’s half a bottle of whiskey in the kitchen.” Jacobs sounded out of breath but otherwise calm. “Unless you’ve polished it off, Miss Knowlton?”
She shook her head. Her face was pale, her eyes large and shining—not with tears, but with terror. She jumped at every clap of thunder.
“Bring me a small taste,” Jacobs told me. “One finger will be plenty. And pour one for yourself and Miss Knowlton. We’ll toast to the success of our endeavor.”
“I don’t want a drink, and I don’t want to toast anything,” Jenny said. “I just want this to be over. I was crazy to get involved.”
“Go on, Jamie,” Jacobs said. “Bring three. And speedily. Tempus fugit.”
The bottle was on the counter next to the sink. I set out three juice glasses and poured a splash into each. I very rarely drank, fearing booze might lead me back to dope, but I needed this one.
When I returned to the living room, Jenny was gone. Lightning flashed blue in the windows; the lamps and the overhead flickered, then came back bright.
“She needed to see to our patient,” Jacobs said. “I’ll drink hers. Unless you want it, that is.”
“Did you send me to the kitchen so you could talk to her, Charlie?”
“Nonsense.” Smiling on the good half of his face; the other