The Obsidian Chamber

64

Constance gazed at Diogenes a long time. She watched as perspiration beaded his face, and she absorbed the desperate yearning in his eyes. She saw the last, faint glimmer of hope in him, like the final coal in a dying fire.

Time to step on that coal.

“Proof?” she said. “You’ve given me all the proof I need of your love.” She spoke this last word with heavy irony. “Please do set the timer. I would take great pleasure in seeing all this blown up.”

“I’ll do it. For you.”

“I’m not convinced you could bear to have your precious mementos destroyed. You see now,” she murmured, in a voice full of feigned warmth, “how well we understand each other? It is true — we are alike, so very alike. I understand you. And you, Diogenes — you understand me.”

Diogenes went pale. She could see that he did indeed recall: these were the very words he had spoken to her at the moment of her seduction at his hands, four years before.

And then she recited, in Italian, the lines of poetry he had whispered in her ear as he’d eased her down onto the velvet cushions of the couch:

With the recitation of these words, his bicolored eyes seemed to drain of color. She had stepped on that last spark of hope, and she felt the metaphorical crunch of it under her heel.

His face now began to change, his features slowly twisting into a horrible grimace of mirth. A dry, dusty, dreary laugh issued from his lips; it went on and on, a whispery, throbbing thing.

“So it is not to be,” he finally said, wiping his mouth. “I was duped. I, Diogenes, was completely taken in. It appears I am still searching for an honest man — or woman, as the case may be. Brava, Constance. What a performance. Your genius for cruelty exceeds my own. You have left me with nothing. Nothing.”

Now she smiled in turn. “But I do leave you with something.”

“And what is that?”

“The arcanum. Take it: and may you live a long, long life.”

A silence ensued as they looked at each other.

“We’re finished here,” said Constance, turning away. “Take me to the boat, if you please.”

“I’ll meet you at the boat,” Diogenes said, in a hoarse voice. “I have something to take care of first. In that—” and he laughed suddenly, giddily— “in that vast perpetual torture-house. Let thine eyes stare… Let thine eyes stare…”

Shutting her ears to this, Constance turned and walked around the edge of the cistern and up the stairs into the dusk.

He did not follow. She had no fear of turning her back on him — despite everything, his love for her was still too great to allow him to do her harm. Besides, her own life held little value for her.

She hoped he was setting the charges. A museum like that, the physical embodiment of mental sickness the likes of which the world had rarely seen, should not be allowed to exist. She had destroyed his future; and now he himself would destroy his past. If in the end he had the intestinal fortitude to do it: that was still an open question.

She walked the trail through the buttonwoods and mangroves to the long beach. At its far end, the pier ran out into evening water, dark blue in the twilight. Now that it was over, she felt a deep catharsis — but at the same time an emptiness. Her burning hatred, her thirst for revenge, was over, and it left behind a yawning hole. What would be her life now? Where would she go? What would she do? She could never return to Riverside Drive; with Aloysius dead, that was out of the question. She was utterly alone in the world.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sound of crashing vegetation. She turned and out of the mangroves came — inexplicably — the figure of a young woman, small, wiry, with streaming blond hair, coming straight at her, silent and focused, knife in one hand and gun in the other, face swollen with bloodlust.

Taken utterly by surprise, Constance tried to dodge the charge as the woman rushed into her, but it was too late and the knife came flashing through the evening light, catching her dress and cutting across her ribs like the scoring of a hot poker. Constance cried out and pivoted, raking her hand across her assailant’s face as the girl skidded in the sand and came back at her, gun raised.