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“This is not the guest bathroom!” The maid Olivia tapped irritably at the door. “This the help bathroom?”

Vale ignored her. The hypodermic kit lay open on the green-tile floor. He slumped on the toilet. He had cranked open the pebbled window; a chill rain came in. The chain of the water closet tapped restlessly against the damp white wall.

He had taken off his jacket, rolled up his sleeve. He slapped the crotch of his left arm until a vein came up. Fuck them all, Vale thought primly.

The first shot was easeful, a still calm that enveloped him like a child’s blanket. The bathroom looked suddenly vague, as if wrapped in glassine.

But I am immortal, Vale thought.

He remembered Crane driving the knife through the back of his hand. Crane, it turned out, had a perverse fondness for self-mutilation. Liked to pierce himself with knives, cut himself with blades, prick himself with needles.

Well, I am no stranger to needles myself. Vale preferred the morphine even to Kentucky whiskey. The oblivion was more certain, somehow more comprehensive. He wanted more of it.

“Mr. Vale! That you in there?”

“Go away, Olivia, thank you.”

He reached for the syringe again. I am, after all, immortal. I cannot die. The implications of that fact had grown somewhat unnerving.

This time his skin resisted the needle. Vale pushed harder. It was like probing cheddar cheese. He thought he had found the vein at last, but when he pushed the plunger the skin beneath began to discolor, a massive, fluid bruise.

“Shit,” he said.

“You have to come out or I’ll tell Mrs. Sanders-Moss, she’ll have somebody break down this door!”

“Only a little longer, Olivia dear. Be nice and go away.”

“This is not the guest bathroom! You been in there an hour already!”

Had he? If so, it was only because she wouldn’t let him concentrate on the task at hand. He refilled the syringe.

But now the needle wouldn’t pierce his skin at all.

Had he dulled the point? The tip looked as lethally sharp as ever.

He pushed harder.

He winced. There was pain, remarkably. The soft skin dimpled and cratered and reddened. But it didn’t break.

He tried the flesh on his wrist. It was the same, like trying to cut leather with a spoon. He lowered his pants to his ankles and tried the inside of a thigh.

Nothing.

Finally, in angry desperation, Vale jabbed the weeping needle against his throat where he imagined an artery might be.

The tip snapped off. The syringe drooled its contents uselessly down his open collar.

“Shit!” Vale exclaimed again, frustrated almost to tears.

The door burst open. Here was Olivia, gaping at him, and the upstart junior congressman behind her, and wide-eyed Eleanor, and even Timothy Crane, frowning officiously.

“Huh!” Olivia said. “Well, that figures.”


“A shot of morphine in the niggers’ toilet? Uncouth, Elias, to say the least.”

“Shut up,” Vale said wearily. The initial effect of the morphine, if any, had worn off. His body felt dry as dust, his mind maddeningly lucid. He had allowed Crane to take him to his car, after Eleanor made it clear that he would not be welcome on the property again and that she would call the police if he tried to return. Her exact words had been less diplomatic.

“They’re generous employers,” Crane said.

“Who?”

“The gods. They don’t care what you do on your own time. Morphine, cocaine, women, sodomy, murder, backgammon — it’s all the same to them. But you can’t stupefy yourself when they want your attention, and you certainly can’t inject a lethal overdose into your arm, if that was what you were attempting to do. Stupid thing to try, Elias, if I may say so.”

The car turned a corner. Dismal day was passing into dismal evening.

“This is business now, Elias.”

“Where are we going?” Not that he particularly cared, though he felt the queasy presence of the god inside him, ramping up his pulse, straightening his spine.

“To visit Eugene Randall.”

“I wasn’t told.”

“I’m telling you now.”

Vale looked listlessly at the upholstery of Crane’s brand-new Ford. “What’s in the bag?”

“Have a look.”

It was a leather doctor’s bag, and it contained just three articles: a surgical knife, a bottle of methyl alcohol, and a box of safety matches.

Alcohol and matches — to sterilize the knife? The knife to -

“Oh, no,” Vale said.

“Don’t be priggish, Elias.”

“Randall isn’t important enough for… whatever you have in mind.”

“It’s not what I have in mind. We don’t make these decisions. You know that.”

Vale stared at the blithe young man. “It doesn’t bother you?”

“No. Not that it matters.”

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

“Elias, that’s privileged information. I’m sorry if you’re shocked. But really, who do you think we’re working for? Not some Sunday school god, not the proverbial loving shepherd. The shoving leopard, more like.”

“You mean to kill Eugene Randall?”

“Certainly.”

“But why?”

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