Quake could move fast when he wanted. Roslyn struggled to keep up, taking little jumpy run-steps every few paces.
“What are you going to do?” she had asked as they left the apartment.
“I’m going to make it clear to Mr. Heydale that he’s no longer welcome in your life.”
“But I already did that.”
“Needs doing again.”
Seven blocks had passed and they hadn’t spoken since. Quake gained further ground. There were now twenty yards at least between them. Roslyn didn’t want to be near Barton. Why had she insisted on coming along? To stop Quake from what she feared he might try to do?
Or because she wanted him to do it, and she wanted to see it done? She felt ashamed of herself and was about to say as much to Quake, to try to turn them both back, when suddenly she felt a vision coming on.
Not now, she thought, more irritated than afraid.
But fear did come. In front of her eyes, a city block jolted by an explosion. An inferno tumbling from the bowels of tall buildings, rushing up brick facades and wooden staircases. Black smoke encasing the people inside, many of them children. Then it wasn’t just one block, but the same scene over and over like dominoes. All up and down hilly, crowded streets. A vast city trembling and burning.
Roslyn felt her chest tighten and her throat ache, as if she too were inside this smoke. She stopped to catch her breath, dropped her hands to her knees, and found her eyes clouded as though she might pass out. She’d never had a vision like this before—so gruesome, so sweeping. There was no marker she could pin to it; she recognized no one and nothing. The street wasn’t in Portland. It wasn’t in Spokane Falls. It was a city of hills. But those weren’t her words, they were Quake’s. As quickly as the vision had appeared, it was gone, just like always. Roslyn felt herself wanting to hold this one, to piece it together. It was too terrible to be ignored.
But as her eyes cleared, she became aware of something perhaps also terrible taking place right in front her. Quake had stopped at a house up the street and was ringing the bell. She ran to catch him. By the time she got there, he was already speaking to someone inside, a housekeeper maybe, asking after Barton. His hands were jammed into his vest pocket like he was holding on to something.
“Quake!” Roslyn called to him as she jogged the path to the house. “Quake, let’s just go. There’s no need, really. Let’s just—”
She was beside him then, her palm on his back, his muscles tense through his clothes, which were damp with sweat. The person he was speaking to was no housekeeper after all. It was Barton himself.
“Roslyn?” Barton said, his voice deep and cool like back when he was the banker, coming to her apartment twice a week to exchange money for sex. “What’s the matter? Has this man done something to upset you?”
This man. Roslyn watched Barton’s eyes track from her to Quake. He had no idea who Quake was, had not placed him as the person who’d ruined him once and for all in Spokane Falls, though he’d vowed vengeance less than two months prior. Maybe none of it had ever really happened, each man only a hallucination to the other. There was something unsteady in all this, the world tipped askew.
“It’s okay, Ros,” Quake said. “We’re only talking. Having a nice chat about Mr. Heydale’s behavior as of late. That’s all.”
“Quake, there’s no need,” Roslyn said. “Let’s leave now.”
“No. I believe there is a need. A great need. I feel I need very much to clarify something for all of us.”
There was in Quake’s voice a tremor. A quiver. It made her wish for him a different name, something that did not conjure the image of shifting and wobbling in times of uncertainty. Could this be the same person who had convinced Spokane Falls to give him thousands of dollars from their bank vault on the strength of his words alone? No wonder Barton didn’t recognize him.
“We know what you’re up to, Heydale,” Quake continued. “Following us. You’re scheming something. I’m here to put a stop to that.”
“Roslyn,” Barton said again. “I think you should get away from this fellow. He seems agitated. I am concerned for your safety.”
“Jesus, man,” Quake snapped. “Don’t worry about her. Be concerned for your own safety. Don’t you get what I’m saying to you?”
Now Barton’s eyes seemed to narrow with recognition and Roslyn thought he was finally catching on. But when he spoke, it still wasn’t to Quake.
“Roslyn,” he said softly, “it was you the whole time, wasn’t it? You are the devil woman from my dream. You’re the devil, who came to my house and made me do bad things.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Quake barked, still trembling.
“Yes, it was me,” Roslyn said, and somewhere behind her she heard the roaring inferno of her most recent vision, the sound of fire pulled by oxygen to new strength.
“I knew it,” Barton said. “You bitch.”
“Hey now!” Quake said, and made as if to lunge for Barton, but Barton was faster. He reached with his hand and slapped Quake across the cheek. Then he stepped back into the house and closed the door.
Quake grabbed at his face and whined. It was such a pitiful little whimper that Roslyn couldn’t help but laugh, even as Quake recovered himself and pounded on the door, shouting, “Open it, you sick fuck! We aren’t done!”
The door did reopen, but it wasn’t Barton behind it this time. Instead, it was a shrunken woman with gray hair who resembled Barton’s mother so closely that Roslyn wondered if it was her they’d seen in the park with him.
“Quiet, please,” she said, pressing a finger to her lips. “This is a home for convalescents. Mr. Heydale has retired to his room for a rest.”
Then Roslyn and Quake were alone on the stoop.
“Please stop laughing,” Quake said.
“I’m sorry,” Roslyn said for the second time that day without meaning it.
“At least I said my piece. I made my point known.”
“Did you?” Roslyn asked.
“What would you have had me do?”
“Nothing,” she said. “That’s what I was trying to tell you when I got to the door.”
“Honestly? You wanted me to kill him. Admit it.”
“Not kill, no.”
“Well, I guess you were right about me, then. I’m not capable.”
She could tell he wanted her to correct him. But the thought of having to coddle him in that moment was exhausting.
They walked back to Quake’s apartment building. Roslyn intended to leave on her own, but instead he did what he always did, which was to hail her a carriage and ride with her to her hotel. He didn’t speak as they rode; he kept his face turned toward the window, his shoulders slumped. But once they were downtown, he said he was hungry and asked if she’d like to get something to eat with him. He led her to a dim basement café. They ordered and ate in silence.
“If you’re angry, just say so,” Roslyn said finally. “What’s the point of riding around with me and buying me dinner if you aren’t going to talk?”
“I suppose the point is so you don’t take up with another man in my absence simply because he’s bold enough to lie to you.”
“Don’t be cruel,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I’m just hurt.”
“Well, that’s not exactly an exclusive club tonight,” she said. Then, “You never did sense anything magical about me, did you? You were just parroting what Barton had told you.”
“Barton told me a lot of things, not all of them worth repeating. I had the good judgment to know this was something he was right about.”
“Speaking of men telling lies. You really are a liar to your core, aren’t you?”
“I thought you liked that about me. I thought we were in agreement. Two peas in a pod.”
“What, exactly, did Barton tell you about me?”
“That you put bad ideas in his head and made him do things.”
“Nope.”
“And that you were the devil. Which you strangely agreed to today.”
To this, Roslyn said nothing.
“I’ll help you out. Finish this sentence. I worry I might be the actual, literal devil because . . .”
“Guilt, I suppose. I sometimes have terrible visions of the future. I saw the fire in one of them. But I didn’t do anything to stop it. Then I saw Barton’s death in another and that’s why I brought him to Portland, to try and save him, but I don’t know if I have.”
“Visions. That is quite the power,” Quake said, softening now.
“It would be a power if I could stop them from coming true. But I never could.”
“Maybe you aren’t supposed to stop them. Maybe you are supposed to know they are going to happen so you can do something afterward.”
It was an idea so simple Roslyn wondered why she hadn’t thought of it in all her years of premonitions. What freedom it held, what possibility.
“And what should I do after Barton dies?” she asked.
“Throw a fucking party.” He was smiling when he said this, but then he turned his face to his food and did not look back up. Still sore.
“Portland is also a city of hills,” Roslyn said. “What’s the difference between Portland’s hills and San Francisco’s?”
Now he did return her gaze.
“Steeper,” he said. “And the buildings are all close together like teeth in a mouth. It’s a bigger city in a smaller space. They’ve got to be economical.”
Then he added, “You’ll like it. It’s nice.”
“Is it?” she asked.
“No. But it’s our kind of place, I think. Plenty of work to be done.”