“Maybe,” she said. She was barely smiling and that was a good thing.
“I swear, Karen. I'm not sure I even understand it myself.”
“This could change your life, you know? You could lose everything.”
“The studio won't back down?”
“I don't know. It does seem crazy, doesn't it?” She shook her head. “This is all happening too quickly. You don't actually think Lutz would hurt Ivena, do you?”
“Of course he would! You don't know the man.”
“Then you should go to the police,” Betty said. “You hurt a man who threatened you. It may not be the act of a saint, but it's not the end of the world.”
“She's right,” Karen agreed. “That may be your only hope now.
Our
only hope; you're not the only one who stands to lose on this.”
“I came here hoping that Roald could pull some strings. Either way, I've already arranged to meet the police in the morning.”
“Good.” Karen stood and Betty followed suit.
“And what if Glenn isn't bluffing?” Jan asked.
Karen walked to the door and shrugged. She faced him. “I think you're doing the right thing, Jan. I want you to know that. Your love for her is a good thing. I see that now.”
“Thank you, Karen.”
She smiled. “We've pulled through some bad times before.”
“None this bad,” he said.
“No, none this bad.”
Then she left.
Betty patted him lightly on the shoulder. “I will pray for you, son. And in the end, you'll see. This will all make sense.”
“Thank you, Betty.”
She too left him, now all alone.
Jan lowered his head to the table and he cried.
“The day of death [is] better than the day of birth. It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting.”
Ecclesiastes 7:1â2
NIV
JAN PULLED the Cadillac onto the overrun driveway leading to Joey's cottage. He drove slowly, listening to the crunch of gravel under the car's tires.
Father, you have abandoned me. You have given me everything only to strip it away.
Joey's Pinto was missing. Perhaps the gardener had gone for supplies.
Jan parked the Cadillac and walked to the house. He'd reached the first step up to the porch when the door flew open. It was Ivena. She stared at him with wide eyes.
“Hello, Ivena.”
Suddenly Joey pushed past her.
“Hello, Joey. Iâ”
A buzz erupted in his mind. He instinctively turned to where the Pinto should have been. But of course it was not there.
“Where's Helen?”
“Janjic. Janjic, please come in. We were worried.”
He spun to her. “Where is Helen?” he shouted.
“We think she took the car,” Joey said.
Jan closed his mouth and swallowed. He stared at Ivena and she looked back, her eyes misted with anguish. He wanted to ask her how long Helen had been gone, but that didn't matter, did it?
No, nothing really mattered. Not anymore. She had gone back. His bride had gone back.
Jan suddenly felt such a shame that he thought he might break into a wail right there on the front step. He whirled from them and fled down the path leading into the garden. Overhead, thunder boomed and he stumbled forward, through the hedge, and now a growling sound escaped his throat. It was a moan that he felt powerless to stop. His chest was exploding and he could not contain himself.
He plunged through the garden without thinking of where his feet carried him; he only wanted to leave this place. It was a place of treachery and mockery and the worst kind of pain. It was not what he wanted. Now he only wanted death.
“SHOULD WE go after him?” Joey asked.
“No. It is something he must face on his own,” Ivena said. Tears glistened on her cheeks.
“Are you sure he'll be okay?”
“He is walking through hell, my friend. He is dying inside. I don't know what will happen. All I know is that we are witnessing something the world has rarely seen in such a plain way. It makes you want to throw yourself at the foot of the cross and beg for forgiveness.”
Joey looked at her, a puzzled look on his face.
She turned to him and smiled. “You will understand soon enough. Now we should pray that our Father will visit Janjic.” Then she walked into the cottage.
HELEN TOLD herself that her decision to go was for Jan's sake. She told herself that a hundred times.
As a matter of fact, it had been her first thought. That first seed that had taken root in her mind.
Maybe you can talk some sense into him. Maybe Glenn will listen to you.
That had been around noon, before she really had time to mull the possibilities through her mind.
By midafternoon her thoughts had become as stormy as the skies rumbling overhead. No matter how strenuously she tried to convince herself otherwise, she knew then that she actually wanted to go back. That she
had
to go back. And not just to tell Glenn that he was being a baby about this whole mess, but because butterflies were flapping wildly in her stomach and her throat was craving a taste.
By late afternoon a perpetual tremor rode her bones. The possibility of pleasure had taken up residence and was growing at an obscene rate. Her reason began to leave her at four. Questions like,
How could you even think of doing this again?
or
Who in God's name would stoop so low?
became vague oddities, worth noting, but hardly worth considering. At five her reason was totally gone. She stopped trying to convince herself of anything and began planning her escape.
The fact that Joey left the keys in the yellow Pinto made leaving that much easier. She would have the car back before they knew it was missing. Ivena was off talking to Joey in the garden about some new species of rose; they wouldn't know if a meteor struck the house.
By the time Helen pulled into the underground parking structure at the Towers, she was sweating. She very nearly turned the car around then in a last-minute flash of sense. But she didn't. She stepped onto the concrete and suddenly she was desperate to be upstairs, high on the thirtieth floor.
To tell Glenn what a baby he was being about this whole mess, of course.
Just that. Just to step in for Jan and call the pig off Ivena and save the day. And to take a tiny snort. Or maybe two snorts.
JAN CLIPPED his foot on a small shrub rounding a corner and sprawled face first to the cool sod. He lay there numb for a few moments. Then it all gushed out of him in uncontrollable sobs. He lay there and shook and wet the grass with his tears.
Time seemed to lose itself, but at some point Jan hauled himself from the ground and settled into a heavily flowered gazebo. Thunder continued to rumble, but farther away now.
Jan slumped on the gazebo bench and stared at the black shapes of bushes lining the lawn before him like tombstones. Slowly his mind pieced together his predicament. He was hiding from the police, but that was the least of it. The price his imprudence would extract from him would be relatively small compared to what he'd lost with Helen's leaving.
The rug was being pulled from beneath his feet, he thought.
The Dance of the Dead
was finding its death. And not mercifully, but with savage brutality. Karen was right: Everything would change if they canceled the movie. The ministry, his notoriety, the castle he was building for his bride. It would all be snatched awayâ leaving him with what?
His bride.
Ha!
His bride! Jan trembled with fury in the small shelter. For the first time since entering the garden he spoke aloud.
“Father, I want you to take this from me. I cannot live with this!” His voice came in a soft growl and then grew in volume. “You hear me? I hate this! Take her from me. I beg you. You have given me a curse. She's a curse.”
“Good evening.”
Jan jerked upright at the voice. A man stood in the moonlight, leaning against the gazebo's arch.
“Beautiful night, isn't it?”
Jan ran a hand across his eyes to clear his vision. Here was a man, tall and blond, smiling as if meeting another person after dark in this garden was an everyday occurrence.
“Who . . . who are you?” Jan asked. “The garden's closed.”
“No. I mean yes, the garden is closed. But I'm not anyone to be afraid of. And if you don't mind my asking, how did you get in?”
“My friend is the gardener. He let me in.”
“Joey?” The man chuckled. “Good old Joey. So what brings you here so late at night? And looking so forlorn.”
Jan stood. Who did this man think he was, questioning him like this? “I guess I could ask the same of you. Do you have permission to be here?”
“But of course. I have come to speak with you.”
“You have?”
“Do you still love her, Jan?”
Jan's heart quickened. “How do you know my name? Who sent you?”
“Please. Who I am isn't important. My question is, Do you still love her?”
“Who?”
“Helen.”
There it was then. Helen. “And what do you know about Helen?”
“I know that she is no more extraordinary and no less ordinary than every man. Every woman,” the man said.
The answer sounded absurd and it made Jan wonder again who he could be, knowing Helen and Joey and speaking so craftily. “Then you don't know Helen. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”
“Tell me why she is so different.”
“Why should I tell you anything?” Jan paused. Then he gave the man his answer. “She's stolen my heart.”
The man smiled. “Well, then that would make her extraordinary. And what makes her less?”
“She has broken my heart.”
“Does she love you?”
“Well, now that's the big question, isn't it? Yes, she loves me. No, she hates me. Which side of her mouth would you like the answer to come from? The side that whispers in my ear late at night or the side that licks from Glenn's hand?”
The man suddenly grew very still. The smile that had curved his lips flattened. “Yes, it hurts, doesn't it?” He swallowedâJan saw it because the moon had broken through the clouds and now lighted one side of a chiseled face. His Adam's apple bobbed. The man turned to face the shadows, and lifted a finger to his chin. The anger in Jan's heart faded.
The stranger cleared his throat. “It does hurt. I won't dispute you.” He faced Jan again and spoke with some force. “That doesn't make her more or less extraordinary, my friend. She is predictably common in her treachery. So utterly predictable.”
Jan blinked, unable to respond.
“But how you respond to her, now that could be far less common.” The man's words hung on a delicate string. “You could love her.”
“I do love her.”
“You do love her, do you? Really love her?”
“Yes. You have no idea how I have loved her.”
“No? She is desperate for your love.”
“She cannot even
accept
my love!”
“No, she can't. Not yet. And that's why she's so desperate for it.”
Jan paused, removing his gaze from the man. “This is absurd, I don't even know you. Now you expect to engage me about this madness without telling me who you are? What gives you that right?”
“Ivena once said that God has grafted his love for Helen into your heart. Do you believe that?”
“And how do you know what Ivena has told me?”
“I know Ivena well. Do you believe what she said?”
“I don't know, honestly. I no longer know.”
“Still, you must have an opinion on the matter. Was Ivena mistaken?”
“No. No, she was not mistaken. It started that way, but it doesn't mean I still have any part of God's heart. A man can only live with so much.”
“A man can only
live
with so much. True enough. At some point he will have to
die
for something. If not now, then for an eternity.”
Jan stilled at the words, surprised. How much truth was in those few words?
At some point he will have to die for something
. They could easily be from his own book, and yet spoken here by this stranger they sounded . . . magical.
“I love her, yes,” Jan said, and a lump rose to his throat. “But she does not love me. And I'm afraid she will never love me. It's too much. Now I feel nothing but regret.”
The stranger did not move. “Do you know that even the Creator was filled with regret? It's not such an unusual sentiment. He was sorry he'd ever made man, and in fact he sent a flood to destroy them. A million men and women and children suffocated under water. Your frustration is not so unique. Perhaps you are feeling what he felt.”
“You're saying that God felt this anger? It certainly doesn't seem to fit with this love he gave me.”
“You are made in his image, aren't you? You think he's beyond anger? The emotions of rejection are a powerful sentiment, Jan. God or man. And yet still he died willingly, despite the rejection. As did the priest and Nadia. As will others. So perhaps it's time for you to die.”
“Die? How would I die?”
“Forgive. Love her without condition. Climb up on your cross, my friend. Unless a seed fall to the ground and die, it cannot bear fruit. Somehow the church has forgotten the Master's teachings.”
A buzz droned through Jan's mind. They were his own words thrown back into his face. “The teaching's figurative,” he argued.
“Is the death of the will any less painful than the death of the body? Call it figurative if it makes you comfortable, but in reality the death of the will is far more traumatic than the death of the body.”
“Yes. Yes, you are right. In the death of the body the nerve endings soon stop feeling. In the death of the will the heart doesn't stop its bleeding so quickly. Those were my own words.”
“Perhaps you've forgotten,” the man said. “Now you're tasting that same death.”