The Book of Joby (93 page)

When the building was clearly beyond saving, two of the volunteer firemen had come to sit with Joby, sadly explaining that they’d been fighting other fires before anyone had noticed smoke at the top of the hill as well.

“We’ll find the bastard who did this,” one of the men had said at last.

“Okay,” Joby had murmured without looking up from Ben’s unconscious form.

Now Ben lay before him under heavy doses of morphine for the pain and
sedatives to keep him from twisting off the stretcher. With such burns, they hadn’t wanted to strap him down. The paramedic and the nurse hung back politely, quietly monitoring Ben’s condition, occasionally checking his IV drip, but not otherwise intruding on Joby’s helpless vigil.

Besides the burns, they’d told him, there were head injuries from the explosion and severe respiratory damage. It was amazing, they’d said, that Ben had managed to remain conscious at all, much less get himself and Crombie out the window as he had. “He must be in pretty awesome shape,” the paramedic had said encouragingly to Joby shortly after their takeoff. “He was,” Joby had replied, then quickly amended, “is,” recalling Ben’s radiant face earlier that night, after drinking from the Cup. Joby was glad now that Ben had been the one to drink. Perhaps it would help him live.

“Arthur,” Ben moaned without opening his eyes.
“Arthur!”
His voice was a saw blade drawn through chalk.

Joby didn’t know what to make of the call at first. Then remembering that Arthur was Hawk’s real name, he leaned closer to be heard above the muffled throb of rotors, and asked, “You mean Hawk, Ben? Hawk will see you at the hospital.”

“Arthur!” Ben rasped again. Then his eyes opened, and a kind of clarity seemed to resolve behind the ruin of his face. “Joby?” he croaked.

“Hey, Ben,” Joby said, managing to smile, longing to take Ben’s hand but not daring to touch the burns. “Were you asking for Hawk?”

“You look . . . like shit,” Ben wheezed, an attempted smile cracking the seeping wreckage of his mouth.

Joby shoved a fresh upwelling of grief and revulsion aside and said, “Been a rough night, but we’re almost there, Ben. You’re doing great.”

“Crombie?” Ben asked.

“He’s okay now,” Joby dissembled.

Ben nodded slightly, exhaling like a chorus of whispered violins. For a moment after that he just stared into space, then croaked, “You made my life . . . all the magic in my life, Joby.” Ben closed his eyes again “I love you both. . . . I always have.”

Frightened by what he heard, Joby leaned closer still, and said, “Laura’s going to meet us there, Ben. They called her. She’s driving to the hospital.”

“She’s yours,” Ben wheezed. “She always was.” He opened his eyes again and stared hard at Joby. “Why won’t you ever let her love you?”

Joby struggled just to hold himself together, until Ben looked away, trying to smile again. “I held it, Arthur,” Ben exhaled with a look of joy that
seemed utterly impossible on that face. “It let me drink. After all this time . . . all I’ve done. I never thought—” Suddenly, he gasped in pain, the sound like milkshake slurping through a straw. Ben’s eyes flew wide as he struggled to draw in another breath that sounded worse. He began to writhe again, and gasped,
“I can’t . . .”

The nurse and paramedic rushed forward, pushing Joby back.

“Intubation,” the nurse ordered with quiet urgency.

At that moment, Ben’s heart monitor began to shriek, a loud, steady tone, and Joby heard the paramedic mutter, “Shit.”

“Ben?” Joby said, his chest constricting in fear and grief.

The nurse was rushing to ready a syringe while the paramedic jammed a tube down Ben’s throat. Ben began to thrash, and the nurse lunged forward to restrain him.

“Ben! Don’t!” Joby yelled.

“Please stay back,” the nurse insisted over her shoulder. Finished with the tube, the paramedic took over Ben’s restraint as the nurse thrust her syringe into Ben’s IV tube, and injected its contents. While the monitor’s alarm continued unabated, the paramedic let go of Ben to prepare a set of the defibrillator disks Joby had seen on countless TV shows. Only then did Joby understand that Ben’s heart had stopped.

“Ben!”
Joby sobbed.
“Oh God! Don’t! Don’t!”

No one heeded him as the disks were pressed to Ben’s chest. “Clear,” said the paramedic. There was a thump, but Ben continued to lie motionless, and the monitor’s monotonous alarm resumed.

“Try again,” said the nurse.

“Oh no,”
Joby wept.
“Oh, Ben, please, God, please don’t let me lose him now.”

Laura’s sobs grew softer and finally ceased again. They’d cried themselves into a state of muffled exhaustion that now left them side by side in silence for long stretches.

By the time the helicopter had landed on the hospital roof, Joby’s grief had already started hardening around his heart. Watching them unload the mangled, lifeless shell of his best and oldest friend, it had seemed possible that he would never feel anything again, until Laura had arrived. Then all illusions of emptiness had been swept aside as they’d collapsed onto a bench in the hallway, crying themselves hoarse in each other’s arms before going in search of some more private place.

Now they sat alone in the hospital chapel, numbly suspended between all they’d lost and whatever would come after it. For Joby, that space was full of drifting fragments. What needed to be done when someone died? Who had to be notified? . . . Where was Ben now? . . . Had he been a coward to let Ben and Crombie go in alone? . . . Ben had sent him for the hose—given him his task outside the church. . . . No one had thought they’d die. . . . Where was Ben now? . . .
Why won’t you ever let her love you?

“Laura, we need . . . I need to . . .” He turned to face her, reaching down to take her hands in his.

Her face was blotched and puffy, her eyes bee-stung, her lips and chin still moist with tears and snot. And she was more beautiful to him than she had ever been before, because her grief was so much like his own, because he didn’t have to tell her anything about the friend he’d lost, because at the darkest moment of a life that had known so much darkness, he was not alone, as he had been so many times before. She was right there beside him, there to touch and hold, and, for the first time he could remember, he wasn’t wondering whether he should let her or whether he could be there for her too.

“I love you, Laura,” he said as everything he’d ever felt or tried to feel welled up, desperate to get out before the moment passed. “I love you so
much it hurts. And heals me all at once. I’m so sorry that I haven’t been there like I should. I know I haven’t. But I’m going to now.” He began to cry again, but he didn’t care. “I’m going to be there for you every second we’re together. And every second we’re apart, I’ll be waiting to be back with you again. I’ve always loved you. I wanted to marry you way back in high school. I told Ben that the morning . . . I told him I was going to ask you. And then I let you go, and everything’s been broken ever since. Everything.” He was crying so hard now that he could barely talk, and she was crying too, but the words kept rushing out of him and he wasn’t sure they’d stop now if he wished them to. “And when I found you again in Taubolt, I didn’t know how to put so many broken things back together. I didn’t want to give you broken things. I was afraid you’d see what I’d become while you were gone, and I felt . . . I felt like I should be so many other things for you I’d never been at all—things that had just never even been there anywhere inside me. I never should have let you go. I swear, I’ve never—”

Laura freed her hands, and pressed her fingers to his lips to stem the flow at last. “There are broken things inside me too,” she wept. “Everybody has them, Joby. Ben had them. Arthur has them too, and most of his are my fault. It breaks my heart to know that, but broken hearts are all any of us has to give. All I’ve ever wanted was you, Joby. All of you. The bright parts and the broken ones, whatever’s inside you. I don’t care, as long as it’s just really you! Ben told me months ago that I should say this to you.” Her face began to twist around an effort not to cry. “But I was too afraid. I was afraid you’d leave again.” She looked down, too wracked with sobs to speak, and Joby pulled her into his arms. “You’re not the only one who hides,” Laura sobbed. “But don’t hide from me anymore. I see all kinds of good things in you, Joby. Beautiful things. They’ve always been there, but even if all you can see is darkness, then I’d rather have you love me with your darkness than keep hiding from me. I love you too. I always—”

Joby bent to kiss her mouth, wrapping her more tightly in his arms. She kissed him back, pressing hard against him. He pressed back, wanting her to feel the wound of love inside, the luminescent pain that surged through him healing every other pain he’d ever known. Minutes passed before they finally pulled apart.

“Oh, Joby,” Laura wept, throwing herself back into his arms. “That’s the first time that you’ve ever
kissed
me!”

“I’ll never hurt you again, Laura,” Joby said. “I know I have, but I never will again. I promise that with all my heart.”

“I’ll hold you to that promise,” she murmured into his sodden collar. “Until the day I die.”

The Triangle were not the only ones getting fidgety in Hell’s conference room as everyone awaited Lucifer’s new instructions. Even Kallaystra was wondering why he should keep them all here twiddling their thumbs at such a moment. Lucifer, however, just kept perusing Joby’s dossier, which was stuffed with facsimiles of every piece of correspondence between Joby and his parents, or anyone else, for the past three years; transcripts of every phone call, lists of gleaned names, opinions, and anecdotes about himself or others inside the once inaccessible refuge.

“You seem upset, Tique,” Lucifer observed without looking up from the document he was scanning. “Something on your mind?”

Tique’s fingers ceased to drum upon the conference table, but he made no reply.

“I should think you’d feel quite good about the fact that your life may be worth a plug nickel after all, now that the ball is back in play,” said Lucifer, looking up at him at last. “Why the long face then?”

“Bright One,” Tique said nervously. “The boy is
outside
of Taubolt. Right now.”

Good move,
thought Kallaystra.
Start dictating to Lucifer. What a numbskull!

“An astute observation,” Lucifer drawled. “Your point?”

“Shouldn’t we . . . be doing something?” Tique shrugged uncomfortably.

“Like what?” Lucifer asked, as if genuinely curious.

“Well . . . that would be for you to say, of course,” Tique mumbled, looking everywhere except at Lucifer, “but, I just thought that, maybe—”

“Speak up,” said Lucifer. “I want everyone to hear this bright idea that you’re spiraling so concisely toward.”

“Sir,” Tique said desperately. “In Taubolt, we’ll have to work confined to flesh! We’ll be next to powerless! If we struck now, we could do anything we liked!”

“Another stunning insight,” said Lucifer. “And again, doing what, precisely?”

“You know,” Tique grimaced. “Just . . . get him somehow.”

“You mean kill him?” Lucifer asked lightly. “And just scrap the wager altogether? I’d just kill you then, to begin with. What good would that do anyone? Or did you mean cripple him perhaps, just to limit his capacity to do anything that matters later on, good or evil? No? What
did
you have in mind? I’m all ears.”

“Not
him,
” Tique said. “I know we’re not supposed to do that. But what about the woman? I mean he loves her, and she’s right out in the open. There must be some—”

“So,” Lucifer cut him off, “after three decades of
wasted
time, we’re back to willy-nilly potshots, is that it, Tique?”

Just shut up, Tique!
Kallaystra thought, braced for his imminent demise. Her team was small enough already. She couldn’t spare even such an idiot with all there’d be to do once Lucifer declared an end to
nap time.
Was even Lucifer unable to think of some way to deal with Taubolt’s unexpected defense? Was that what all this delaying was about?

“If I may kibitz, Tique,” said Lucifer with unsettling politeness, “as gratifying as it may be to cause Joby grief, our experience to date suggests that grief alone is not enough. What we need is anger. Without anger, he won’t learn to hate. And hate is what we’re after in the end. Lots of it. And rather quickly . . . thanks to you and your friends.”