won’t actually do this... while my legs climbed and framed Snow family photos went by, one by one bearing witness to this thing that I wasn’t, actually, going to do, because if I could resist this then surely, surely with my own... and then the bathroom’s whiff of steam and damp towels and coconut body butter and Jennifer’s young wet skin as it used to be only minutes ago, and then the pale pink room with its smell of diapers and talc and laundered clothes and the thing that I wasn’t, actually, going to do.
Delilah Jane Snow. Two months old, quiet and awake in her cot. Jennifer’s dark hair (as dark as mine, as dark as my baby’s would surely be) and a neat, round, cleanly detailed face that made me think of God using a very fine sculpting tool. She was absurdly unique, involved in her own schemes, which required occasional punches, swipes and kicks, as if an invisible bluebottle was testing her patience.
I wasn’t, actually, going to do this, as I slipped one hand under her and lifted her out. I wasn’t, actually, going to do this, when I turned her to the window, where the delighted full moon made a silhouette of her downy head. I wasn’t, actually, going to do this, because there must be some things I couldn’t do. There must be some things I couldn’t do.
For a moment it was fascinating, this thought, as small and vivid as a lone swimmer in a tidal wave’s thousand-foot wall of water. Everything depended on it. There must be some things I couldn’t do.
•
You want to not know what you’re doing. You want the swoon, the fall into darkness, the obliteration of all that isn’t the beast. I was drugged and an obscene act was performed on me . No such luck. Nor are you helplessly looking on while the monster runs amok. The Curse insists on full fusion. You and the wolf won’t do. Only the werewolf, single and indivisible. And who is the werewolf if not you?
•
She’d be dead in five seconds. I’d feel her sternum go and my biggest canine puncture her heart while its opposite neighbour went through one of her lungs with a poignantly audible gasp. Something would break in me, too, a tiny bone in the soul that when it snapped let the whole godless universe in. Her blood would be warm and sweet-sour and empty and would go into me with innocence, too young to understand it was being shed. In the old human life meaninglessness was an idea, a hunch, a philosophy. Here, now, looking through the vision of Delilah’s five-second death, it was a fact. No one was watching. No one was keeping score. There was nothing. Just a vast mathematical silence. There was nothing and so there was nothing I couldn’t do. Even the worst thing. Especially the worst thing.
And we knew, Delilah, my unborn child and me, that soon there would only be one thing the worst thing could possibly be.
I held her up at the level of my snout, my big hands a dark cradle. She didn’t object. Just gurgled slightly, kicked her right leg, the fat little foot like a lump of Turkish delight. Jennifer screamed in me, the faintest neural tickle.
At which moment a car pulled into the drive and tipped the balance (the only perfect balance I’d ever achieved) and saved Delilah Snow’s life.
PART THREE
LOVE BITES
‘In this city a woman needs two cunts, one for business and one for pleasure.’
Jerzy Kosinski – The Devil Tree
15
The night before our bogus meeting with plummy Althea Gordon was scheduled to take place I sat with Cloquet in a hired Corolla parked around the corner from Vincent Merryn’s large detached house in Royal Oak, West London. It was raining. The city’s first leaves had fallen.
•
Vast mathematical silence and impenetrable darkness. Yes. For a while. But some perverse gravity had forced me back, to the hotel room’s details, to the rolling boil of full awareness. Returning to myself that night in the Anchorage Grand had felt like being born into a death sentence. I’d opened my eyes with
Delilah Jane Snow. Two months old, quiet and awake in her cot. Jennifer’s dark hair (as dark as mine, as dark as my baby’s would surely be) and a neat, round, cleanly detailed face that made me think of God using a very fine sculpting tool. She was absurdly unique, involved in her own schemes, which required occasional punches, swipes and kicks, as if an invisible bluebottle was testing her patience.
I wasn’t, actually, going to do this, as I slipped one hand under her and lifted her out. I wasn’t, actually, going to do this, when I turned her to the window, where the delighted full moon made a silhouette of her downy head. I wasn’t, actually, going to do this, because there must be some things I couldn’t do. There must be some things I couldn’t do.
For a moment it was fascinating, this thought, as small and vivid as a lone swimmer in a tidal wave’s thousand-foot wall of water. Everything depended on it. There must be some things I couldn’t do.
•
You want to not know what you’re doing. You want the swoon, the fall into darkness, the obliteration of all that isn’t the beast. I was drugged and an obscene act was performed on me . No such luck. Nor are you helplessly looking on while the monster runs amok. The Curse insists on full fusion. You and the wolf won’t do. Only the werewolf, single and indivisible. And who is the werewolf if not you?
•
She’d be dead in five seconds. I’d feel her sternum go and my biggest canine puncture her heart while its opposite neighbour went through one of her lungs with a poignantly audible gasp. Something would break in me, too, a tiny bone in the soul that when it snapped let the whole godless universe in. Her blood would be warm and sweet-sour and empty and would go into me with innocence, too young to understand it was being shed. In the old human life meaninglessness was an idea, a hunch, a philosophy. Here, now, looking through the vision of Delilah’s five-second death, it was a fact. No one was watching. No one was keeping score. There was nothing. Just a vast mathematical silence. There was nothing and so there was nothing I couldn’t do. Even the worst thing. Especially the worst thing.
And we knew, Delilah, my unborn child and me, that soon there would only be one thing the worst thing could possibly be.
I held her up at the level of my snout, my big hands a dark cradle. She didn’t object. Just gurgled slightly, kicked her right leg, the fat little foot like a lump of Turkish delight. Jennifer screamed in me, the faintest neural tickle.
At which moment a car pulled into the drive and tipped the balance (the only perfect balance I’d ever achieved) and saved Delilah Snow’s life.
PART THREE
LOVE BITES
‘In this city a woman needs two cunts, one for business and one for pleasure.’
Jerzy Kosinski – The Devil Tree
15
The night before our bogus meeting with plummy Althea Gordon was scheduled to take place I sat with Cloquet in a hired Corolla parked around the corner from Vincent Merryn’s large detached house in Royal Oak, West London. It was raining. The city’s first leaves had fallen.
•
Vast mathematical silence and impenetrable darkness. Yes. For a while. But some perverse gravity had forced me back, to the hotel room’s details, to the rolling boil of full awareness. Returning to myself that night in the Anchorage Grand had felt like being born into a death sentence. I’d opened my eyes with
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