Free Julia by Peter Straub

afternoons in America, at home or at Smith, afternoons of Nat Cole on the radio, boys appearing to sprawl on the grass. In this mood of nostalgic, sun-drugged leisure, Julia passed the afternoon, reading steadily through
Herzog
.
    At four, struck by an idea, she went into the house through the dining room and telephoned Mark.
    “It’s probably totally crazy,” she said, feeling a little dishonest. “Lily practically insisted that I join her gang of devil-worshipers or whatever they are, and now that they’re meeting here I feel sort of swamped by them. Could you come over to hold my hand?”
    “Lily won’t like that,” said Mark.
    “Bugger Lily. I haven’t even mentioned to her that she broke her promise to me by telephoning Magnus. I know she couldn’t help it. Besides, I don’t know that she wouldn’t like it if you were here. Aren’t you two friends these days? I thought you and Lily were getting on?”
    “She’s got some peculiar ideas about me,” Mark laughed. “I think Lily fancies herself my warden.”
    “As mine too,” she said. “Please come. We’re all meeting at nine, but you could come over earlier.”
    “Done. Do you want me to bring anything?”
    “Bring yourself,” Julia said.
    Lily and a squat, red-faced woman in a flowered dress covered by a shapeless, ancient gray tweed overcoat straining at one large button arrived at eight-fifty. As a pair they were unavoidably comic: Lily like some aging, silky moth accompanied by this little bulldog of a woman who needed only a carthorse’s straw hat to complete her ensemble. And Julia could not keep from smiling at the two of them when she had opened her door. Of all the women who looked like Lily, she thought, only Lily would appear in public with this person. They looked like a vaudeville team—Lily would be the “aristocrat” who is doused with water and slapped with cream pies.
    “Mrs. Fludd and I had a lovely walk through the last of the sun,” Lily said. “Julia Lofting, Mrs. Fludd.”
    “How do you do?” Julia said. “Please come in. Did you walk through the park?”
    “Holland Park is locked at sunset,” said Lily. “It’s tight as a drum. Mrs. Fludd wanted to see the neighborhood.”
    “It ain’t half hot,” said Mrs. Fludd. “It’s tropical, I call it. Still, it’s nearer than Shepherd’s Bush. Not exactly cool in here either, is it?”
    Julia apologized, explaining about the heaters.
    “You want to go to a nice air-conditioned bingo,” said Mrs. Fludd.
    She bumped to a halt following Lily into the living room. Mark rose from the couch, grinning. “Nice to see you again, Lily,” he said. “And you must be the wonderful Mrs. Fludd I’ve heard so much about.”
    Lily glanced at him, and then at Julia; her disapprovalclear, she turned to attend to Mrs. Fludd, who appeared to have become even redder and more squat in shock.
    “There’s two new ones,” she complained. “You said one. You never said two new ones. I come all this way for nothing. Too much interference with two new ones.”
    “This is my brother, Mark Berkeley,” Lily quickly said. “He’s a friend of Mrs. Lofting’s. Mrs. Fludd, please don’t say it’s impossible. All the others will be arriving soon. And I wanted Mrs. Lofting to witness our transcendences.”
    “No transcendences with two new ones,” Mrs. Fludd said firmly. “No transformations, no interpenetrations, and no consummations neither. This one”—she pointed at Julia with a stubby finger—“is skeptic. All the vibrations will be muddled. Aren’t you skeptic, dear?”
    Julia looked at Lily, not sure what to say. Lily was no help. She was still upset by Mark’s presence. “I suppose I am,” she finally said.
    “Of course you are. Your aura’s dark—dark as pitch. Confusion and despair in the seventh plane. That’s the plane of domesticity. Right, dear?”
    “Well.…”
    “Right, then. And there’s another cloudy aura,” nodding to Mark. “Dirty as an old