Prayers For Rain Part 68

"Where I provided aid and sustenance to my clinically depressed sister? Is that what you're talking about?"

I finished frisking him and stepped back. He was right. I had nothing on him.

He looked back over his shoulder at me. "Oh," he said, "you're done?"

He unlaced his fingers and stood, brushed at the dark ovals on each knee, the oily, sunbaked tar permanently imprinted in the linen.

"I'll send you the bill," he said.

"Do that."

He leaned back against the wall, studied me, and I again felt the irrational urge to push him over. Just to hear his scream.

Up close for the first time, I could feel the casual combination of power and cruelty that he wore like a cloak draped over his shoulders. His face was a strange mix of hard angles and ripeness-hard jawline under fleshy red lips, a doughy, pudding softness to his ivory skin interrupted by jutting cheekbones and eyebrows. His hair was blond again, and combined with those fleshy lips and eyes so blue and vibrant and mean, the total effect of his face was defiantly Aryan.

As I studied him, he studied me, c.o.c.king his head ever so slightly to the right, his blue eyes narrowing, the hint of a knowing grin curling the corners of his ample mouth.

"That partner of yours," he said, "is a real babe. You f.u.c.k her, too?"

It was as if he wanted me to throw him off the roof.

"I bet you have," he said, and glanced over his shoulder at the city below. "You bang Vanessa Moore-who by the way I caught in court the other day, quite good-and you're banging your hot little partner and G.o.d knows who else. You're quite the swordsman, Pat."

He turned his head back to me and I placed my gun in its holster at the small of my back for fear I'd use it.

"Wes."

"Yeah, Pat?"

"Don't call me Pat."

"Oh." He nodded. "Found a sore spot. Always interesting. People, you know, you can never be sure where their weaknesses lie until you prod a bit."

"It's not a weakness, it's a preference."

"Sure." His eyes glittered. "You keep telling yourself that, Pat, er, rick."

I chuckled in spite of myself. The guy didn't quit.

A traffic helicopter from one of the news stations flew over us and then made an arc over the expressway as the crush of rush hour began to swell on the elevated girders to my left.

"I really hate women," Wesley said evenly, his eyes following the path of the helicopter. "As a species, intellectually, I find them..." He shrugged "...silly. But physically"-he smiled, rolled his eyes-"Christ, it's all I can do to keep from genuflecting when a really gorgeous one walks by. Interesting paradox, don't you think?"

"No," I said. "You're a misogynist, Wesley."

He chuckled. "You mean like Cody Falk?" He clucked his tongue. "You couldn't get me out of bed for rape. It's pedestrian."

"You'd prefer to reduce people to sh.e.l.ls, that it?"

He raised an eyebrow.

"Like your stepsister. Reduce her to nothing, so that the only way she can express her horror is s.e.xually."

He raised the eyebrow another notch. "She loved it. Are you kidding? Christ, Pat-whatever the f.u.c.k your name is-isn't that what s.e.x is all about? Oblivion. And don't give me this PC rhetoric about spiritual commingling and making love. s.e.x is about f.u.c.king. s.e.x is about regressing to our most animalistic state. Caveman. Private. Pre-Ur. We slurp and scratch and bite and groan like animals. All the drugs and marital aids and whips and chains and variances we add to the stew are all just extras meant to heighten-no, accomplish-the same thing. Oblivion. A regressive state that transports us back centuries and de-evolves us. It's f.u.c.king, Pat. It's oblivion."

I clapped. "Terrific speech."

He took a bow. "You like that?"

"You've practiced it."

"It's been tweaked over the years, sure."

"Thing is, Wes-"

"What's 'the thing,' Pat? Tell me."

"You can't explain poetry to a computer. You can teach it rhyme or meter, but it doesn't understand beauty. Nuance. Essence. You don't understand making love. That doesn't mean a higher state-beyond f.u.c.king-doesn't exist."

"Is that what you're shooting for with Vanessa Moore? A higher s.e.xual state? The spirituality inherent in making love?"

"No," I said, "we're just f.u.c.k buddies."

He chuckled. "You ever felt love, Pat? For a woman?"

"Sure."

"Ever achieved that spiritual state you speak of?"

"Yup."

He nodded. "So where is she now? Or were there more than one? Where are they now? I mean, if it was so great, so f.u.c.king spiritual, why aren't you with one of them instead of talking to me and occasionally dipping your wick in Vanessa Moore?"

I didn't have an answer. At least not one I felt like attempting to explain to Wesley.

It was a h.e.l.l of a point, though. If love dies, if relationships deteriorate, if what was making love reverts back to having s.e.x, then was it ever love to begin with? Or just something we sell ourselves on to distance ourselves from the beasts?

"When I came in my own stepsister," Wesley said, "it purified her. It was voluntary, consensual s.e.x, Pat, I a.s.sure you. And she loved it. And thereby found her essence, her true self." He turned his back to me, looked out as the helicopter made a wide circle over the Broadway Bridge and headed back toward us. "By facing her true self, all the illusions she'd used to prop herself up shattered. And she shattered. It broke her. It could have built her, if she'd been strong enough, brave enough, but it broke her." He turned back to me.

"Or you did," I said. "Some would say Karen was destroyed by you, Wes."

He shrugged. "We all have points we reach where either we break or we build. Karen found hers."

"With your help."

"Possibly. And if she'd built from there, who's to say she wouldn't be a happier person? What's your breaking point, Pat? Have you ever wondered just which elements of your current version of happiness you could stand to lose before you were reduced to a glimmer of yourself? Which elements, eh? Your family? Your partner? Your car? Your friends? Your home? How soon before you'd be natal again? Stripped of embroidery? And then-then, Pat-who would you be? What would you do?"

"After I killed you, or before?"