The Delusionist Read Online Free Page A

Something about them.”
    â€œAn answer and a question,” said Cyril without thinking, and it occurred to him to draw locks and keys, that you could do a whole series of locks and keys.
    This arrested her attention. She extended the key toward his chest and making a single click with her tongue gave the key a twist as if opening him up.
    Connie entered her room. Cyril hesitated: he’d fantasized about her room: the look, the smell, the very air, convinced it must be a dimension beyond his most erotic visions, a boudoir of silks and oils and incense. The first thing he saw was himself in a full length mirror, the second thing was a sword at his neck.
    â€œEn garde, English pig dog.” Connie’s left hand gripped the sword and her right perched on her hip. Her chin was high, her left knee bent. “Cool, eh.” She lowered the blade and leaned on it like a cane.
    Cyril felt his neck for blood. “Where’d you get that?”
    â€œIt’s an épée.” She sliced the air making the blade sing.
    â€œIt’s dangerous.”
    â€œElle est très dangerous,” she corrected him.
    On the wall half a dozen swords lay in a rack. Broad blade, narrow blade, curved blade, scimitar.
    Connie stood before the mirror making faces at herself. Left eyebrow up, left eyebrow down. Right eyebrow up, right eyebrow down. Sad face. Happy face. She screamed silently, then let her head fall back and laughed silently. Finally she gave her cheeks a vigorous rub between her palms then clapped her hands together. “Come on.” She slid the window up and climbed onto the roof. Cyril leaned on the sill and looked out and discovered that it was a long way down, with the jutting pickets of a fence waiting like fangs.
    â€œHey.” She was straddling the ridge above him, wiggling her toes. Letting her head fall back she emitted a yowl like a newly escaped soul.
    He groped his way up onto a roof mountainous with ridges and slopes, and found Connie lying in a valley and staring at the sky. He stretched out next to her, their shoulders touching, the asphalt shingles hot beneath their backs and the rest of the world far away.
    She said, “The Big Bang happened but didn’t happen anywhere, space was born with the Big Bang. Something can happen nowhere.”
    Cyril tried grasping that.
    â€œWe have to free ourselves from the restraints of three dimensional space.”
    Cyril stared into the boundless blue and felt his brain straining to comprehend the concept. The restraints of three dimensional space  . . . He wondered if God set off the Big Bang the way he and Gilbert set off firecrackers at Halloween, for the hell of it, for the noise and the light and the plain old fun of seeing what would happen. Maybe God was a bored old guy looking for a diversion from the monotony of eternity. His hand was only inches from Connie’s hip. What would happen if he put it on her thigh, or—and here the world reeled—undid her zipper? The very thought made his pants tighter. He slid his hand closer.
    â€œSometimes I come up here at night.”
    His hand crept closer still.
    â€œI’d sleep up here but I sleepwalk.”
    He imagined her walking in her sleep, arms out like a zombie. “Do you wear pyjamas?”
    â€œCyril,” she said, mock appalled. “Now and again. I suppose you’re going to tell Gilbert.”
    â€œI don’t tell Gilbert anything,” he lied, even as he vowed never to tell him this. Then he told her how Gilbert was looking for a way to commit suicide.
    She considered this a long time, which caused Cyril a spasm of angst thinking Connie might approve, that it might make Gilbert interesting. She said, “He asked me out last week.”
    It was as if the air had been sucked from his lungs. His fingertips clutched at the gritty shingles to keep from plunging off the roof into the sky.
    She patted his knee. “Hey, don’t worry.