Was this perhaps one of the most well-developed bodies I'd ever had?
The cold woman looked at me uncomfortably and shifted, and then only reluctantly went away. Rachel ignored all this.
I couldn't take my eyes off her, vivid and somber in the dim light of this sanctuary, this plane, and I desired her. I wanted to touch the inner flesh of her thighs, and see whether the fleece-covered flower there was as well preserved as everything else.
This was disconcerting and shameful. Another realization came to me. Diseased things can be so beautiful. Perhaps a flame is a diseased thing, if you think about it, a flame dancing on its wick, eating up the wax beneath it, the way this disease was eating up her body from around her soul. She made a dazzling heat in her fever and the keenness of her mind.
"And so we fly in this," I said, "we go up, and we travel faster than we can on the ground, like a javelin hurled through space, only we have the means of directing ourselves."
"Yes," she said. "It's going to take us to the southern tip of this country in less than two hours," she said. "We'll be in my home, my little home which all these years has been mine alone, and there I'll die. And I know it." "You want to?"
"Yes," she said. "My head's clearing even now. I can feel pain. I can feel his poison clearing from my system. Yes, I want to know it. I want to be a witness to what happens to me."
I wanted to say that I didn't think death was like that for most human beings, but I didn't want to say anything I wasn't sure of, and certainly nothing to bring her more pain.
She gestured to the woman, who must have been lingering somewhere behind me. The plane had begun to roll, presumably on its tiny wheels. It didn't roll easily.
"Something to drink," Rachel said. "What would you like?" And suddenly she smiled. She wanted to make a joke. "What do ghosts like to drink?"
I said, "Water. I'm so relieved that you asked me. I'm parched with thirst. This body is dense and delicately put together. I think it's growing true parts!"
She laughed out loud. "I wonder what parts those could be!" she said.
This water had come. Lots of it. Glorious water. The clear bottle was nestled in a huge bucket of ice, and the ice was beautiful. Ripping my eyes off the water itself, I stared at the ice. Of everything I had seen in this modern age, nothing, simply nothing, compared to the simple beauty of this ice, glittering and sparkling around this strangely dull container of water.
The young woman who had just set down this bucket of wondrous ice now drew the bottle of water out of it, so that the ice fell and crunched and made a gorgeous twinkling in the light. I could see that the bottle was made of something soft, not glass at all; it didn't have the shimmer or the strength of glass; it was plastic. You could squash the bottle flat when it was empty. It was the lightest container for this water, like a bladder filled with milk strapped to a donkey, the thinnest, finest bladder you could find.
The woman poured the water into two glass goblets. Ritchie appeared. He bent down and whispered something in Rachel's ear. It had to do with Gregory and his rage.
"We're on schedule," he said. He pointed to the magazines, "There's something-"
"Leave all that alone, I don't care, I've read it all, what does it matter? It comforts me that her picture is on every magazine cover. Why not?"
He tried to protest but she told him firmly to go. The plane was taking off. Someone called him. He had to buckle up.
I drank the water, greedily, the way you've seen me drink. She was amused. The plane was leaving the ground.
"Drink it all," she said, "there's plenty of it."
I took her at her word and drained the entire plastic bottle. My body absorbed all of this and was still thirsty, its strongest indicator of growing strength.
So what was Gregory doing? Fuming over the bones? Didn't matter! Or did it?
It suddenly occurred to me that almost every delicate maneuver I had ever performed had been under the direction of a magician. Even taking a woman, I'd done with their grudging leave. I could rise, I could kill, then dissolve. Yes. That is not delicate, but the direct arousal of passion I felt for this woman-the strengthening that came to me from this water-this was new.
It struck me with total clarity that I had to find out just how strong I was on my own, and I hadn't taken any serious steps to do so. I felt as strong in the presence of this woman's carnal attraction to me as I had in Gregory's fascination.
As I put the bottle down, I realized I had let drops of water fall on the papers and magazines. I looked at them.
Then I saw what had so concerned the others about these magazines. The pictures on them were of Esther at the worst moment.
There were pictures of Esther almost dead!
Yes, there on the cover of one newsmagazine was the picture of Esther on her stretcher, and the crowds around her.
Someone said we were on course for Miami and cleared for an immediate landing when we got there.
"Miami." The sound made me laugh. "Miami." It was like a joke word you say to little children to make them laugh. "Miami."
The plane was bouncing along. But the pale-eyed girl came with another bottle of water. It was cold. It didn't need the ice. I took it and drank it in easy patient swallows.
I sat back, filling with the water. Oh, this was the most divine moment, a moment almost on a par with kissing Rachel, to feel this water move down my throat and through the coils inside of me made by will and by magic. I breathed deep.
I opened my eyes, and saw that Rachel was watching me. The girl was gone. The glasses were gone. The only water that remained was the bottle I clutched in my hands.
A great pressure bore down on me, fondling me, pushing me against the leather, and teasing me almost with a sweet strength that was mysterious.
The plane was rising fast into the sky, very fast. The pressure increased and my head suddenly ached, but this I sent away from me. I looked at her. She sat still as if praying, as if this were a ceremonial moment, and she did not speak or move until the plane had found some comfortable height and ceased to rise.
I knew the moment by the way she relaxed, and by the sounds of the engines. I didn't much like this plane. Yet the experience was thrilling.
You're alive, Azriel, you are alive! I must have laughed. Or maybe I wept. I needed more water. No, I would have liked to have more water. I needed nothing.
But I had to know what Gregory was doing with my bones. Was he trying at this very moment to call me back? He had to be doing something, though I felt no reverberations. I wanted to know. And I also wanted to know if, strong as this body was, I could at will dissolve it and recall it. I wanted badly to know.