“What’s that?” asked Gary.
“It’s a—” He stopped. “It’s just a feather. You’re right. It’s only rubbish.” He dropped the feather in the gutter at the curb, and did not look back.
Gary hesitated. Then he said, picking his words with care, “Have you thought about seeing somebody?”
“See somebody? Look, I’m not crazy, Gary.”
“Are you sure about that?” A taxi came toward them, yellow for-hire light burning.
“No,” said Richard, honestly. “Here’s a taxi. You take it. I’ll take the next one.”
“Thanks.” Gary waved down the taxi and climbed into the back before telling the driver that he wished to go to Battersea. He pulled down the window, and, as the taxi pulled out, he said, “Richard—this is reality. Get used to it. It’s all there is. See you on Monday.”
Richard waved at him and watched the taxi drive away. Then he turned around and walked slowly away from the lights of Piccadilly, back up toward Brewer Street. There was no longer a feather by the curb. Richard paused beside an old woman, fast asleep in a shop doorway. She was covered with a ripped old blanket, and her few possessions—two small junk-filled cardboard boxes and a dirty, once-white umbrella—were tied together with string beside her, and the string was tied around her wrist, to keep anyone from stealing them while she slept. She wore a wool hat, of no particular color.
He pulled out his wallet, found a ten-pound note, and bent down to slide the folded note into the woman’s hand. Her eyes opened, and she jerked awake. She blinked at the money with old eyes. “What’s this?” she said, sleepily, displeased at having been woken. “Keep it,” said Richard.
She unfolded the money, then pushed it up her sleeve. “Whatchyouwant?” she asked Richard, suspiciously.
“Nothing,” said Richard. “I really don’t want anything. Nothing at all.” And then he realized how true that was; and how dreadful a thing it had become. “Have you ever got everything you ever wanted? And then realized it wasn’t what you wanted at all?”
“Can’t say that I have,” she said, picking the sleep from the corner of her eyes.
“I thought I wanted this,” said Richard. “I thought I wanted a nice, normal life. I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don’t want to be sane. You know?” She shook her head. He reached into his inside pocket. “You see this?” he said. He held up the knife. “Hunter gave this to me as she died,” he told her.
“Don’t hurt me,” said the old lady. “I ain’t done nuffing.”
He heard a strange intensity in his own voice. “I wiped her blood from the blade. A hunter looks after her weapons. The earl knighted me with it. He gave me the freedom of the Underside.”
“I don’t know anyfing about that,” she said. “Please. Put it away. That’s a good lad.”
Richard hefted the knife. Then he lunged toward the brick wall, next to the doorway in which the woman had been sleeping. He slashed three times, once horizontally, twice vertically. “What you doin’?” asked the woman, warily.
“Making a door,” he told her.
She sniffed. “You ought to put that thing away. If the police see you they’ll run you in for offensive weapons.”
Richard looked at the outline of a doorway he had scratched on the wall. He put his knife back into his pocket, and he began to hammer on the wall with his fists. “Hey! Is there anyone there? Can you hear me? It’s me—Richard. Door? Someone?” He hurt his hands, but he kept banging and flailing at the brickwork.
And then the madness left him, and he stopped.
“Sorry,” he said to the old lady.
She did not answer. She had either gone back to sleep or, more probably, pretended to go back to sleep. Elderly snores, real or feigned, came from the doorway. Richard sat down on the pavement, and wondered how someone could make such a mess of their life as he had made of his. Then he looked back at the doorway he had scratched on the wall.
There was a door-shaped hole in the wall, where he had scratched his outline. There was a man standing in the doorway, with his arms folded theatrically. He stood there until he was certain that Richard had seen him. And then he yawned hugely, covering his mouth with a dark hand.
The marquis de Carabas raised an eyebrow. “Well?” he said, irritably. “Are you coming?”
Richard stared at him for a heartbeat.
Then Richard nodded, without trusting himself to speak, and stood up. And they walked away together through the hole in the wall, back into the darkness, leaving nothing behind them; not even the doorway.