"I've been a damned fool," he mumbled. "If this place could make Clifford forget everything he ever cared about in two days, how could I have gone along with this? You lot have been here two weeks!”
"What did you say?" Constance asked.
"Something Clifford Ashton told me just after we found him in the garden, after he disappeared for, well, the first time." Lamont pulled away from the padded wall just long enough to sit with his back to it, pushing a hand through his damp hair.
Constance crouched down next to him. "I recall that he told Miss Anna about the cloud of witnesses, about—what was it?—She who listens."
Lamont nodded. "And after that, as we were leaving, he said that the purpose of the garden is to make people receptive so that they'll join the chorus."
"To awaken the Sleeper," Constance finished.
"And he said that the only purpose Westward ever had was to bring us here, that nothing that's happened before this matters."
Lamont could see in Beckett's expression that something he had said affected her. Her water-beaded brow furrowed. "What are you thinking?" He asked.
"You go first," Constance countered.
Lamont felt his jaw grinding. He began to fumble in his pocket for a cigarette. "I've been a damned fool," he mumbled. "If this place could make Clifford forget everything he ever cared about in two days, how could I have gone along with this? You lot have been here two weeks! If whatever's up there can make whatever's down here into whatever it wants, we're as good as helpless. We might still be in the garden now, for all we know."
Constance reached into Lamont's breast pocket and pulled out his cigarette case and lighter. She flipped it open and held it for him. "Not whatever it wants, Lamont. Whatever we want."
Lamont hesitated and then retrieved a cigarette from the nickel case before plucking it from her fingers and turning it in her direction. "What do you mean?"
"Before we ever got here, they knew what we wanted," Constance explained, withdrawing a cigarette for herself. "They knew what we would see as paradise."
"They? The cloud of witnesses?"
Constance nodded. "They can get inside our heads. See our thoughts and memories. What I'm trying to get an inkling of is how much they can see. How deep they can go."
Lamont put the case back in his pocket and placed the cigarette between his lips. "What have you found?"
Constance activated the lighter, igniting the end of her own cigarette and then his, leaning closer to him. "Suppose you decided to forget everything that came before, like Clifford did. Suppose you decided to leave everything and everyone you knew back on Earth behind. Suppose, for example, you decided you wanted me instead." She placed the lighter back in his hand, at the same time smoothing her thumb over the silver ring on his finger. "Would you still be wearing this?"