Velocity

Despair can be the nadir of one life and the starting point of an ascent into another, better one.”
    Billy didn’t turn away from the collection in fear or revulsion. He assumed that he was being watched by closed-circuit cameras. His reaction seemed to be important to Valis.
    Besides, as despair-inspiring as this display might be, it had a hideous elegance, and exerted a certain fascination.
    The collector had not been so coarse as to include genitalia or breasts.
    Billy suspected that Valis did not kill for any kind of sexual gratification, did not rape his female victims, perhaps because to do so would be to acknowledge at least that single aspect of shared humanity. He seemed to want to think of himself as a creature apart.
    Neither did the artist deform his collection with the gaudy and grotesque. No eyeballs, no internal organs.
    Faces and hands, faces and hands.
    Staring at the illuminated jars, Billy thought of mimes dressed all in black with white-powdered faces and white-gloved hands.
    Although perverse, here was an aesthetic mind at work.
    “A sense of balance,” Billy said, describing the vivid display, “a harmony of line, a sensitivity to form. Perhaps most important, a restraint that is chaste but not fastidious.”
    Valis said nothing.
    Curiously, by standing face to face with Death and not letting fear control, Billy was at last no longer evading life to any degree, but embracing it.
    “I have read your book of short stories,” Valis said.
    “In critiquing your work,” Billy told him, “I wasn’t inviting criticism of my own.”
    A short surprised laugh escaped Valis, a warm laugh as the speakers translated it. “Actually, I found your fiction to be fascinating, and strong.”
    Billy did not reply.
    “They are the stories of a seeker,” Valis said. “You know the truth of life, but you circle around that fruit, circle and circle, reluctant to admit it, to taste it.”
    Turning from the collection, Billy moved to the nearest Meiji bronzes, a pair of fish, sinuous, simply but exquisitely detailed, the bronze meticulously finished to mimic the tone and texture of rusted iron.
    “Power,” Billy said. “Power is part of the truth of life.”
    Behind the locked door, Valis waited.
    “And emptiness,” Billy said. “The void. The abyss.”
    He moved to another bronze: a robed scholar and a deer sitting side by side, the scholar bearded and smiling, his robe embroidered with gold inlay.
    “The choice,” Billy said, “is chaos or control. With power, we can create. With power and chaste intent, we create art. And art is the only answer to chaos and the void.”
    After a silence, Valis said, “Only one thing holds you to the past. I can release you from it.”
    “By one more murder?” Billy asked.
    “No. She can live, and you can move on to a new life… when you know.”
    “And what is it you know that I don’t?”
    “Barbara,” Valis said, “lives in Dickens.”
    Billy heard a sharp intake of breath, his own, an expression of surprise and recognition.
    “While in your house, Billy, I reviewed the pocket notebooks you’ve filled with things she said in coma.”
    “Have you?”
    “Certain phrases, certain constructions resonated with me. On your living-room shelves, the complete set of Dickens—that belonged to her.”
    “Yes.”
    “She had a passion for Dickens.”
    “She’d read all the novels, several times each.”
    “But not you.”
    “Two or three,” Billy said. “Dickens never clicked with me.”
    “Too full of life, I suspect,” Valis said. “Too full of faith and exuberance for you.”
    “Perhaps.”
    “She knows those stories so well, she’s living them in dreams. The words she speaks in coma come sequentially in certain chapters.”
    “Mrs. Joe,” Billy said, recalling his most recent visit to Barbara. “I’ve read that one. Joe Gargery’s wife, Pip’s sister, the bullying shrew. Pip calls her ‘Mrs. Joe.’”
    “Great Expectations,” Valis confirmed. “Barbara lives all the books, but more often the lighter adventures, seldom the horrors of A Tale of Two Cities.”
    “I didn’t realize…”
    “She’s more likely to dream A Christmas Carol than the bloodiest moments of the French Revolution,” Valis assured him.
    “I didn’t realize, but you did.”
    “In any case, she knows no fear or pain because each adventure is a well-known road, a pleasure and a comfort.”
    Billy moved through the living room, to another bronze, then past