Gene Wolfe - The Best of Gene Wolfe

He clenched a second finger and touched the third with the index finger of his free hand. “Then there’s future inmates. You used a word J. Gunderson Foul-weather himself wouldn’t say in the presence of a lady, but since you’re the only lady here, no harm done. Colonists, okay?”

“Wait a minute.” Eira looked from him to me. “You both claim they stop off here.”

We nodded.

“On their way to Hell. So why do they go? Why don’t they just go off,” she hesitated, searching for the right word, and finished weakly, “back home or something?”

The demon boomed, “You want to field this one?”

I shook my head. “Your information is superior to mine, I feel certain.”

“Okay, a friend of mine was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. You ever been to Newark?”

“No,” Eira said.

“Some parts are pretty nice, but it’s not, like, the hub of Creation, see? He went to France when he was twenty-two and stayed twenty years, doing jobs for American magazines around Paris. Learned to speak the language better than the natives. He’s a photographer, a good one.”

The demon’s coffee had begun to perk. He glanced around at it, sniffed appreciatively, and turned back to us, still holding up his ring and little fingers. “Twenty years, then he goes back to Newark. J. Gunderson Foulweather doesn’t stick his nose into other people’s business, but I asked him the same thing you did me: how come? He said he felt like he belonged there.”

Eira nodded slowly.

I said, “The staff, as you call them, might hasten the process, I imagine.”

The demon appeared thoughtful. “Could be. Sometimes, anyhow.” He touched the fourth and final finger. “All the first three’s pretty common from what I hear. Only there’s another kind you don’t hardly ever see. The runaways.”

Eira chewed and swallowed. “You mean people escape?”

“That’s what I hear. Down at the bottom, Hell’s pretty rough, you know? Higher up it’s not so bad.”

I put in, “That’s what Dante reported too.”

“You know him? Nice guy. I never been there myself, but that’s what they say. Up at the top it’s not so bad, sort of like one of those country-club jails for politicians. The guys up there could jump the fence and walk out. Only they don’t, because they know they’d get caught and sent down where things aren’t so nice. Only every so often somebody does. So you got them too, headed out. Anybody want coffee? I made plenty.”

Long before he had reached his point, I had realized what it was; I found it difficult to speak, but managed to say that I was going up to bed and coffee would keep me awake.

“You, Eira?”

She shook her head. It was at that moment that I at last concluded that she was truly beautiful, not merely attractive in an unconventional way. “I’ve had all I want, really. You can have my toast for your ham.”

I confess that I heaved a sigh of relief when the kitchen door swung shut behind us. As we mounted the steep, carpeted stairs, the house seemed so silent that I supposed for a moment that the demon had dematerialized, or whatever it is they do. He began to whistle a hymn in the kitchen, and I looked around sharply.

She said, “He scares you, doesn’t he? He scares me too. I don’t know why.”

I did, or believed I did, though I forbore.

“You probably thought I was going to switch—spend the night with him instead of you—but I’d rather sleep outside in your car.”

I said, “Thank you,” or something of the kind, and Eira took my hand; it was the first physical intimacy of any sort between us.

When we reached the top of the stair, she said, “Maybe you’d like it if I waited out here in the hall till you get undressed? I won’t run away.”

I shook my head. “I told you I take precautions. As long as you’re in my company, those precautions protect you as well to a considerable extent. Out here alone, you’d be completely vulnerable.”

I unlocked the door of my room, opened it, and switched on the light. “Come in, please. There are things in here, enough protection to keep us both safe tonight, I believe. Just don’t touch them. Don’t touch anything you don’t understand.”

“You’re keeping out demons?” She was no longer laughing, I noticed.

“Unwanted guests of every sort.” I endeavored to sound confident, though I have had little proof of the effectiveness of those old spells. I shut and relocked the door behind us.

“I’m going to have to go out to wash up. I’d like to take a bath.”

“The Hopsacks have only two rooms with private baths, but this is one of them.” I pointed. “We’re old friends, you see; their son and I went to Dartmouth together, and I reserved this room in advance.”

“There’s one other thing. Oh, God! I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a jerk.”

“Your period has begun.”

“I’m on the pill. It’s just that I’d like to rinse out my underwear and hang it up to dry overnight and I don’t have a nightie. Would you turn off the lights in here when I’m ready to come out of the bathroom?”

“Certainly.”

“If you want to look you can, but I’d rather you didn’t. Maybe just that little lamp on the vanity?”

“No lights at all,” I told her. “You divined very quickly that I am a man of no great courage. I wish that you exhibited equal penetration with respect to my probity. I lie only when forced to, and badly as a rule, and my word is as good as any man’s. I will keep any agreement we make, whether expressed or implied, as long as you do.”

“You probably want to use the bathroom too.”

I told her that I would wait, and that I would undress in the bedroom while she bathed, and take my own bath afterward.

Of the many things, memories as well as speculations, that passed through my mind as I waited in our darkened bedroom for her to complete her ablutions, I shall say little here; perhaps I should say nothing. I shot the night bolt, switched off the light, and undressed. Reflecting that she might readily make away with my wallet and my watch while I bathed, I considered hiding them, but I felt certain that she would not, and to tell the truth my watch is of no great value and there was less than a hundred dollars in my wallet. Under these circumstances, it seemed wise to show I trusted her, and I resolved to do so.

In the morning I would drive her to the town in which I live or to St. Louis, as she preferred. I would give her my address and telephone number, with twenty dollars, perhaps, or even thirty. And I would tell her in a friendly fashion that if she could find no better place to stay she could stay with me whenever she chose, on tonight’s terms. I speculated upon a relationship (casual and even promiscuous, if you like) that would not so much spring into being as grow by the accretion of familiarity and small kindnesses. At no time have I been the sort of man women prefer, and I am whole decades past the time in life in which love is found if it is found at all, overcautious and overintellectual, little known to the world and certainly not rich.

Yet I dreamed, alone in that dark, high-ceilinged bedroom. In men such as I, the foolish fancies of boyhood are superseded only by those of manhood, unsought visions less gaudy, perhaps, but more foolish still.

Even in these the demon’s shadow fell between us; I felt certain then that she had escaped, and that he had come to take her back. I heard the flushing of the toilet, heard water run in the tub, and compelled myself to listen no more.

Though it was a cold night, the room we would share was warm. I went to the window most remote from the bathroom door, raised the shade, and stood for a time staring up at the frosty stars, then stretched myself quite naked upon the bed, thinking of many things.