THE IMAGINATION THIEF (mini-chapters 99-120)

120 A ring, two spires and a wedding gift

My gaze alights again on the silver wedding-ring Pippa has dressed him in, which buries itself just a fraction into the non-humanly smooth matt finger where I can make out a thin scratch indented into the wax surface, like a scratch on a candle: if I remember when we reach New York, once I'm no longer trapped here in my seat by a sleeping Alaia, then perhaps I shall take a moment to smooth that scratch carefully into its unscratched wax surroundings, for Pippa's sake. What artistry she has brought to bear, first in modelling the pale-brown wax hand and then in painting its five nails a deep, luscious crimson. The nail on the ring-finger, in particular, is so uncannily lifelike that I would almost expect to see this finger stir and start tapping slowly up and down on his bare knee...

My gaze wanders upwards and through the window beyond Angel. Ah yes, truly, I feel the warmest of glows inside me, to contemplate the promise of such a brand-new chapter back at home in New York, and on such a brand-new basis with Alaia!

My gaze wanders back downwards.

Beneath the thin, even, smooth coat of crimson on its very shiny, smooth surface, that fingernail protrudes from its wax ring-finger with an awesome perfection of modelling, especially as seen from the side here...

My gaze flicks up again sharply, and lodges on the points of the spires of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, which are scratching their way slowly up into the sky, as the van shoots ever closer to them—my gaze clinging first to the nail-point of the one spire, then flicking across to cling to the nail-point of the second spire, then flicking back to cling tightly to the first.

My eyes narrow, as images of Pippa flash like strobe-lights in my head...

Her rare smile—and her eternal black silk gloves.

Her love of angel ornaments—and the filigree of old dry bloodstains at the left edge of her note from Angel, doubtless from the fresh, gaping gunshot wound on her right.

The sad light in those green and slightly protuberant eyes that always looked as if she had just bottled up the remaining half of a violent bout of weeping—and the red stains on the wax of the Laughing Cow cheese after she placed it onto her plate, smiling about the cow on the label.

Those singing pussy-cats she may or may not have heard—and that black pit behind the narrow door in the hallway, where ... an eternal wedding gift from her, harvested for her most deeply beloved, whom she knew that she would never, ever have.

The van gives a jolt and the sheet falls all the way off Angel's shoulder onto his lap, covering his left hand and at the same time revealing where his right hand is hidden from view, pushed in between his skinny pale-brown torso and his left upper arm, in that self-defensive pose so acutely observed by his loving modeller as being so characteristic of Angel himself: a gesture born of a lifetime of physical and emotional attack from every side, first throughout years of childhood and then throughout years of Lucan. I wonder if this hand too, although hidden ... but I wrench my mind away from this, never to know the answer.

Angel is still secure in his seat but has swung slightly to his right, so he now stares through the van's right window ahead of him, as if eager to reach the city. I wish I could pull the sheet back up to cover the entirety of him, as it did until its unfortunate slippage a few minutes ago; but if I move then I shall wake Alaia, whose cheek rests against my right shoulder.

Still clutching Angel's note, and filled with powerless compassion and vertigo at the depths of pain in her whose lips smudged its author's signature with such hopeless frequency, I honour that smudging in the only way I can think of: I turn and place a slow, gentle kiss on Alaia's warm temple.

I feel my eyes staring widely at the Manhattan skyline, then somewhat narrowing again as they return to flicking between the tips of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building—the nail-points of these two spires scraping their way up the dusk as we approach them, both now stained blood-red from the sunset on my left, and both glinting against the deepening ultramarine of the eastern sky with a hard, cold beauty.

  

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For some nice reviews and interviews about The Imagination Thief, in The Guardian and elsewhere, see http://www.rohanquine.com/press-media/the-imagination-thief-reviews-media/

For a quick synopsis of it, see http://www.rohanquine.com/home-the-imagination-thief-novel/synopsis-and-characters-list-the-imagination-thief/

For the 12 Films in The Imagination Thief, see http://www.rohanquine.com/video-books-films/12-films/

For the Audio-book version and the Video-book version of each of its 120 mini-chapters, see http://www.rohanquine.com/home-the-imagination-thief-novel/audiobook-tumblr-wattpad/

For links to the retailers, see http://www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-imagination-thief-novel-ebook/ and http://www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-imagination-thief-novel-paperback/

And for its Amazon pages, see http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Imagination-Thief/dp/0992754909 and http://www.amazon.com/The-Imagination-Thief/dp/0992754909

The Imagination Thief is about a web of secrets, triggered by the stealing and copying of people's imaginations and memories. It's about the magic that can be conjured up by images of people, in imagination or on film; the split between beauty and happiness in the world; and the allure of various kinds of power. It celebrates some of the most extreme possibilities of human imagination, personality and language, exploring the darkest and brightest flavours of beauty living in our minds.