Chapter Eleven
At sunrise, he looked out over the falls, and while he wondered how he was supposed to actually get down into Tartarus, he absentmindedly worked one of the North Stars in his hand. He facetiously imagined a carriage made out of the mist rising from the falls, with a team of four unicorns hitched to it.
And there it stood before him, floating on a cushion of rainbows and glitter. He willed it to be gone, and it vanished.
Did he dare create what he really wanted? Oh, yes…
There before him stood Bucephalus, the horse of Alexander the Great; a giant, black, snorting stallion, pawing the ground, tearing up huge clods of turf. Vincent smiled and mounted, and charged off toward the edge of the falls.
He found himself walking down a crowded urban street, very reminiscent of Times Square. He saw Catherine's image on a billboard, extolling the accomplishments of the Public Defender's Office. He noticed that the sharp angles of her hips and ribs had softened; he marveled at her beauty.
Below that, a breaking news report was playing on the display. "…more problems in the Public Defender's Office, yet another new arrival having a hard time making the transition into the demands of the job. We don't know her name yet, but she's ninety-three stories up, out on the ledge and threatening to jump…" Vincent got a queasy feeling in his stomach, and gripped the North Stars.
"Cath-rine!" yelled Persephone in her clearly enunciated, too-loud British pronunciation. She was leaning out the window, flanked on both sides by the rest of the staff. "Cath-rine, do be reasonable now, and come in!"
"No!"
Persephone sighed in exasperation. "Cath-rine, you're already dead! If you jump, we mop you up, and you work from inside a jug! Is that what you want?"
"Leave me alone!" she howled.
"Well, I tried," shrugged Persephone. "Better start looking for a receptacle. I wonder if there's an empty wine box in the dust bin?"
Vincent came bounding through the office, and shouldered his way through to the window sill. He climbed up and out, onto the ledge.
Catherine was standing, leaning back on the building wall. When she saw Vincent, she turned away. "No! Vincent, don't look at me! Don't look!"
He froze where he was. "Catherine, my love, what is it? What's wrong?"
"No, Vincent, please don't look! I'm hideous! Hideous!"
He almost fell off the ledge, himself. "Catherine, no, how can you say such a thing?"
"It's true! I'm fat, my face is broken out, my clothes are ugly and they're too tight!"
"Catherine—" he started, and stopped. It hit him then, just how she must have felt for two years, trying to convince him of his own self-worth. And he knew then, you can't be sold on your own self-worth; it's something you have to fight to hang on to everyday. No one can give it to you; you have to make a decision to take it, and hang on.
"And I'm stupid, and incompetent, and I'll never be any better than what I am right now. I want to be dead…I want to be dead, Vincent, I want to stay dead. Leave me here, please. Just leave me."
"No," he said. This was not going to be pretty, so he just went for it. He lunged, grabbed her around the waist, and dragged her back in through the window.
His heart was breaking. She was so despondent that she wasn't even fighting, just shielding her face from his view. This should have been a happy reunion, but because of her self-hate, it was just more agony.
"She really is very fat," sniggered Tisiphone, and the entire staff burst out into derisive laughter.
"She's leaving. You are all damned to misery for eternity. Laugh about that," snarled Vincent. They were silenced.
"Okay, that felt good," Catherine mumbled from under her hands.