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“But what if all of them are thinking the same as us? What if none of them are bamboozled and are just offering their moral support to others, who similarly aren’t bamboozled?”
“It’s a matter of degree. Even I’m bamboozled, as you say, a little. Even you are, if not in church, then when you’re listening to music, and even more when you’re writing your own. What’s the difference, ultimately, between Bu
“The chief difference is that Bach’s is immeasurably greater music. But I should say another difference is that my tongue is firmly in my cheek concerning the philosophic views of honeybu
“Your tongue isn’t entirely in your cheek, though, and perhaps Bach’s isn’t completely out of his. He has ambiguous moments.”
“But he knows, he says, that his Redeemer liveth. ‘Ich weiss,’ sagt Bach, ‘dass mein Erloser lebt.’ And I know that mine doesn’t.”
“So you say.”
“And what do you say, Daniel Weinreb?”
“More or less the same as you, I suppose. But I sing something else.”
It was the night before Christmas, and the night before the night before Daniel was to appear in the Off-Broadway première of Honeybu
“Boa,” he said, touching one of the nylon wings. But he didn’t know where to go from there. To talk to her at all was an admission of faith, and he didn’t want to believe, anymore, that she might be alive, and listening, and biding her time. If she were, it was cruel of her not to return. If she weren’t, if she’d left this world forever, as she’d left this husk of herself, this disposable container, then there could be no harm in his ceasing to care for it as well. “Boa, I’m not giving up another fifteen years. And I’m not going to peddle my ass again. I suppose I could ask Freddie Carshalton to loan me something, but I’m not going to. Or Shelly Gaines, who probably doesn’t have it to spare. What I am going to do is I’m going to call your father. If that’s wrong, then I’ll just have to bear the guilt. Okay?”
The halo glinted.
“If you want to come back later, you’ll have to come back to him. Maybe that’s what you’ve been waiting for. Am I right?”
He leaned forward, careful not to touch the tube that snaked into her left nostril, and kissed the lips that were legally dead. Then he got up and went out into the hall and down the hall to Mrs. Schiff’s office, where the telephone was.
In all these years he’d never forgotten the phone number for Worry.
An operator answered at the third ring. He said he wanted to speak to Grandison Whiting. The operator asked his name. He said only that it was a personal call. The operator said she would give him Mr. Whiting’s secretary.
Then a new voice said, “Miss Weinreb speaking.”
Daniel was too taken aback to reply.
“Hello?”
“Hello,” he echoed, forgetting to use the deeper voice with which he’d addressed the operator. “Miss Weinreb?”
Which Miss Weinreb? he wondered. His secretary!
“I’m afraid Mr. Whiting isn’t available at the moment. I’m his secretary. Can I take a message?”
In the other room Daniel could hear the telephone ringing. But it couldn’t be the telephone. It must be the doorbell. In which case Mrs. Schiff would answer it.
“Which Miss Weinreb would that be?” he asked cautiously. “Cecelia Weinreb?”
“This is Aurelia.” She sounded miffed. “Who is this, please?”
“It’s a personal call. For Mr. Whiting. It concerns his daughter.”
There was a long silence. Then Aurelia said, “Which daughter?” Hearing her dawning surmise, he became uneasy.
At that moment Mrs. Schiff burst into the office. In one hand she held the halo from Boa’s head. He knew, just by looking, what she was going to tell him. He replaced the phone in its cradle.
It hadn’t been the doorbell.
“It’s Boa,” he said. “She’s come back.”
Mrs. Schiff nodded.
Boa was alive.
Mrs. Schiff put the halo down on top of the desk, where it rocked unsteadily. Her hands were shaking. “You’d better go see her, Daniel. And I’ll phone for a doctor.”
19
A week after it opened at the Cherry Lane, Honeybu
It was not his doing. Or perhaps it was. The phonecall to Worry had been automatically recorded and traced by Whiting’s security system. At his sister’s suggestion, the voice-prints of the call were compared with those of tapes Daniel had made with Boa in days gone by.
The police appeared at the door of Mrs. Schiff’s apartment at the very moment the curtain was going up on Honeybu
Daniel was furious, but also, secretly, delighted. Even so, he determined, for form’s sake, to be angry with Mrs. Schiff for having so profitably violated his confidences. Of course, it had only been a matter of time, once his phonecall to Worry had been traced, before Daniel was apotheosized; a matter of hours, probably, as Mrs. Schiff tried, through Irwin, to explain. And to do her credit, her version of the past three years was as skillful a whitewash as any press agent could have contrived. According to Mrs. Schiff Daniel’s relationship with Rey had been based on mutual esteem and a shared devotion to the glory of the human voice. Her story dwelt mainly on Daniel’s undying love for his wife, his struggles against manifold adversities (she included his recipe for bread pudding), the discovery of his buried talent and (this last being intended, surely, as a private poke in the ribs) his Christian faith. Nowhere did she state anything that wasn’t strictly true, but it was scarcely the whole truth; nor — such were her powers as a storyteller — did the whole truth ever make much headway, once it did begin to leak out, via Lee Rappacini and a few other old friends. The media doesn’t like to waste its heroes, and that’s what Daniel had become.