Black Ambrosia

by Elizabeth Engstrom

LEWIS GREGORY: “My mother died just before Christmas. December, uh, fifteenth, I think it was. Angelina and I already had a tree up. Dad called while we were having breakfast. I called the store, packed, and left. My dad was in pretty bad shape. I helped him with the arrangements, then we buried her. He and I went out a couple of nights together; I just hated to leave him, you know, Mom was all he had. Mom and me.

  “Anyway, I was gone for five days. I got back on the twentieth. I called Angelina every day, and she seemed to be doing all right. I think she even missed me. She was never big on affection or emotions, but I think she missed me while I was gone.

  “She left a few weeks after I got back, you know. I tell myself that my going to the funeral without her had nothing to do with her leaving, but I just can’t quite believe it. It was a real bitch, you know. Losing my mom and then Angelina, both right there together. It was a real bitch.

  “But I do know what it was, really, that made Angelina leave. When I got home, she was different. There’d been those murders, you remember, those awful murders? And Angelina was alone, and didn’t know anybody in town, and I know she was afraid; she must have been really afraid. So I got overly protective, and she couldn’t live with that. I didn’t know what else to do; I didn’t know how else to act. She was so important to me, I couldn’t have her out on the streets alone, at least until they’d caught whoever did those . . . I didn’t handle it very well. I’d just lost Mom, and then Angelina was different. I didn’t know what else to do.

  “I tried to hold on tight and she slipped away, like soap.

  “Like lavender soap.”

  7

  My stomach jittered as if with cold, and even my teeth chattered a bit as I stood, arms crossed, leaning one shoulder against the door jamb as Lewis packed for his trip. He was quiet at first, wiping down the suitcases and shaking out his clothes. I could see him making a mental checklist of what he would take, and I watched silently, thinking it odd that grief-­stricken men should weigh so heavily in my life.

  Then Lewis began to talk. He reminisced and spoke of the special things his mother used to do when he was a child. He said, “She put pickles on sand­wiches instead of lettuce.” Then, “One time, I re­member, she hit me. I was about fifteen. We were standing in the kitchen, and I said something stupid, something teenage, and she walked right over to me and slapped me. And then she cried and went into her bedroom. She was always just right there, just steady, nothing extravagant, just . . . Mom. That was the only time she ever hit me, and the only time I ever saw her cry. It almost killed me.” His eyes glazed over with memory and tears.

  I could do nothing for him, neither in support of his grief nor assistance with his packing. I had tried adjusting the mood, the way I had in so many cars. I tried lightening the air, I tried to lift my spirits at least enough that Lewis’s soul wouldn’t weigh so much. But I couldn’t. Grief spread over the floor like a layer of molten lead. So I just watched him, and wondered at how different he was in the way he missed his mother—different from the way Rolf missed Alice, different from the way I missed her.

  And then my thoughts strayed again to my free­dom this coming night and my insides shivered with anticipation.

  He fastened his suitcases, tucked a number of twenty-­dollar bills into my jeans pocket, and hugged me. He loaded the suitcases into the trunk while I watched from the front door, and just before he got into the car, an odd expression crossed his face. He shut the door and came back to me, held me at the waist and looked at me with a fierce intensity, his green eyes cool and gentle despite the tremor in his hands. “You’ll be here when I get back, won’t you? I mean, I don’t know how long I’ll be gone—just a few days, I’m sure, but I don’t really know. Please, Angelina, please promise me. I couldn’t stand it if I lost you too . . . not now . . .” His voice failed and his eyes, moist in the corners, flashed with fear and longing.

  I smiled what I thought to be an appropriate smile under the circumstances, sympathetic yet not pitying, and I touched his cheek. “I’ll be here,” I said.

  And so he left. He got into the car and drove away.

  I closed the door and looked around at the empty house. It was just beginning to feel like home—the little personal effects we’d added during the past few months had warmed it. But suddenly it was empty and impersonal. It was cheap and echoing and dusty. I was quite surprised. Lewis made the house sing. I cleared the breakfast dishes and sat at the kitchen table to think about him.

  But all I could think of was the night ahead. My fantasy had grown to such tremendous proportions that a part of me wanted to hold back, afraid that what I would find might not live up to my expecta­tions.

  But that was silly; I had no expectations, really. I had only curiosity. Overwhelming curiosity. And it was only a bus station, I told myself. A bus station that I knew very well. It was merely a different aspect that I would see this night, like looking at an oil painting in the natural light instead of a fluorescent light. In the bus station, I would be seeing the night people in their natural light.

  I went to draw a bath.

  HAROLD WATERTON: “Sure, I remember her. She’s one a them whatchacallits. You know the kind. They’re weird about watching people. This one, I remember her. Tiny. Teeny-­tiny little girl, right?

  “Yep. I remember her. Used to come in about eleven, eleven-­thirty, every day, stay until three. Just sit, pretend she’s reading, but she’s just watching.

  “I been selling tickets in train and bus terminals for twenty-­seven years now. And you see all kinds. I seen her kind before, too. They’re getting something weird out of it, know what I mean? It ain’t exactly natural to be sittin’ in a bus terminal for four hours a day, just sittin’, now is it? For months, now, we’re talking months. I kept an eye on her, though, just waiting for her to do something. The weirdos always end up doing something. So I just waited for her to pull her stunt so’s I could throw her out. I even had the maid follow her into the john, in case she’s doing something in there, y’know? But nothin’. She never did nothin’.

  “Then she stopped coming. I missed her, you know? You spend four hours a day looking at a pervert, watchin’ them watch others, and you kind of get friendly with ’em a little bit, in your mind. So, I missed her, and went to wondering a little about where she went to get her jollies that was better than the bus station. Westwater ain’t got a train station or an airport.

  “Then, oh, three weeks, a month later, she shows up and buys a ticket to New Mexico. This was the best part. Them kind of people don’t like to be called on their stuff, you know what I mean? They don’t like other people to recognize how they get their jollies, know what I mean? So here she is, standing on tiptoes, barely able to see into the window, and I’m sitting on my stool, looking down on her, heh, and I said, get this, I said to her, ‘Where you been—hidin’ out from someone?’ These perverts, they always is hiding from somebody, somebody who found them out. Heh. Well, she flashed them eyes at me and then backed off, real scared like. Hell, I really think she was hiding. I mean I really think she was. But you know, when she flashed them eyes at me, I almost fell backward off my stool, cuz for a second . . . well, hell.

  “You know them photographs you sometimes get back and the eyes are all red? ’Specially if you take a picture of your dog? Well, her eyes were like that, almost. I don’t mean almost, I mean they were, but only for a second.

  “Hell, I don’t know what I mean.”

  8

  I left the house at two-­thirty, wanting to arrive at the station by three in order to witness the changeover from light to dark. The sky cast messages of late afternoon, a brisk wind was blowing through my hair, so I turned up the collar on my coat and only pulled my hand out of my deep pocket to wave my thumb when a car approached. I soon got a ride that took me right to the bus station.

  I pushed open the huge doors and walked in.

 
; Something was in the air, and it felt like adventure.

  The building heat was on, and people were com­fortable in their shirt sleeves, coats piled up on the wooden seats. The seldom-­used heaters gave off a distinct odor, an old smell, a musty, slightly moldy fragrance that was just elusive enough to be pleasant. Someone with a little Christmas spirit had hung a silver garland around the ticket seller’s cage, and it looked trite amid the old, authentic, run-­down condi­tion of the building.

  Some patrons were apparently waiting to meet the bus from Salt Lake City; others were waiting to depart on that bus or another. Two young homosexu­als furtively shared a cigarette by the water fountain. A cowboy sitting in the corner strummed a guitar and softly sang a love song. When he finished, the citizens of the bus station clapped for him, which he acknowl­edged with a nod of his Stetson and a faint blush. I smiled as I found a seat with an excellent view, next to the old-­fashioned coffee machine that had a yellowed “Out of Order” sign on it. This was going to be a good night, complete with free entertainment.

  The clientele changed—a slow, steady turnover.

  Drunks came in out of the cold to curl up next to the heaters. Women and children came in just in time to buy their tickets and board buses, and not a single one tarried. Old alcoholics, young people on drugs, homosexuals, social outcasts, the deformed and de­prived, dirty codgers reminiscent of Earl Foster—they all came in, some stayed, some left. Police came every hour to look in and trade nods with the ticket seller. The old ticket seller was replaced by a younger, huskier man, obviously well equipped to deal with any problems that should arise among his clientele, and ever-­so-­slowly, the complexion of the bus station changed.

  At eleven o’clock, five greasy-­haired, leather­-jacketed young men came in and began to berate and deride the station’s deni­zens. Within fifteen minutes, the ticket seller had spoken with them twice, but the damage had been done. All the people, save a very few, had left, scattered to their second choice of hangouts, I assumed, leaving the station relatively empty. Then, as if they knew the schedule of police rounds, the quintet fired up their motorcycles and were gone, just before the police arrived for their next routine check. The result was pitiful: Three drunks slept in the back corner near the restrooms, one passionate couple huddled in mysterious posture under a plaid blanket, and I sat next to the coffee machine, feeling as if I had just been robbed.

  I knew the night was not finished. Something told me that action would yet take place. I stretched my legs, had a drink of water, checked the schedule, and noted that there were to be no more arrivals until one-­thirty, when three buses were due within ten minutes.

  I reflected for a few moments on Lewis. He would have arrived at his parents’ home by now, and was sleeping, prob­ably, or sitting up talking and drinking with his father. He would have been crying, and his eyes would be puffed and his hair uncombed. I could see him, in his green-­plaid wool shirt, trying to face his loss like a man, sitting next to his father, who, no doubt, made him feel like a little boy.

  I looked through the artificial light, through the artificial heat of the bus station, and noticed the difference in the color of the wood at night. I noticed the outside lights had a different aura about them when seen through the old wavy-­glass windows. Soft snoring came from the corner, moans of gratification came from the other side, and the ticket seller turned the pages of his paperback.

  Suddenly I was starved. Ravenous.

  Next to the bus station was that cafe, that truck stop, an all-­night diner.

  It was time.

  I stood and pulled on the heavy plaid coat that Lewis had bought me and repressed the absurd notion that I ought to tell the heavy man behind the cage bars that I would return presently. I buttoned the coat, stuck my hands deep into its pockets, and leaned open the big doors.

  It was absolutely frigid outside. With this cold, this close to Christmas, there should be snow. I flipped up my collar and danced for a quick moment; my breath condensed in the air. I could see the neon sign across the parking lot, high atop a pole to catch the attention of long-­distance truckers. The sign, in pink neon, said, “Plain Jane’s Kitchen.” Under that, in flashing blue letters, it said, “Plain good cookin’.” The place had always seemed right next door in the daylight, but in the nighttime distortion of reality, the cafe was clear across the parking lot, beyond the tractor-­trailer rigs that were parked in remarkably orderly alignment.

  I started toward it, walking briskly, head down, grateful to Lewis for the money he’d left me. I put the cold out of my mind and thought instead about what I would order to go with the cup of hot chocolate I could already taste.

  I kicked a few pebbles out of my way as I walked, and decided to go out to the street, around the parking lot and the trucks that blocked my way, rather than walk between them, through the alleys they created by parking so close together. But the wind was so cold and so unpleasant that at the last minute I reconsidered, knowing the trucks would make a perfect windbreak, and I trotted between two of the rigs.

  The walls created a blind maze. I could see no lights at all, save that which trickled down from Jane’s neon silliness. The wheels were almost as tall as I. I felt powerless, dwarfed among all that mammoth machinery.

  I threaded through, then heard a noise that stopped me dead in my tracks. Adrenaline pumped false courage and excitement through my brain and I listened for a moment longer. I heard metal on metal, a wrenching.

  I watched with horror as my feet began to move toward the sound. Ears attuned to the silence, I heard more sounds; someone was trying to break open one of the containers. I approached, my feet instinctively silent. I edged around the massive end of one of the trailers and saw, under the belly of the container, three pairs of Levi-­clad legs. If any of the boys bent over, to pick something up or to tie a shoe, they would see me and I would surely be dead. One walked toward the back of the truck, whispering to the others. More whisperings, then another set of footsteps ech­oed off toward the cab of the truck. I followed the sound, keeping the truck between us.

  The footsteps turned away from me, toward the bus station. I hid as I followed, stalking, and then he stopped and unzipped his pants and I heard the splash of urine against a tire.

  It was one of the leather-­jacketed hoodlums who had stormed the bus station earlier in the evening. Three of them were intent on robbing the container and this one had momentarily split off from the pack.

  I watched the strong stream of urine splash, steaming, as he wet the entire tire, then I could smell it, and it fired the frenzy that had already begun in my mind. Suddenly I was overcome with hunger; I felt an ancient, innate, dormant hunger awakening within. I felt my saliva glands ache with the promise of sweet­ness. Spittle overproduced and I wiped a corner of my mouth on my coat sleeve. I was flushed with excite­ment; my coat was too hot.

  My nervous system tensed as the stream of urine weakened. I took two slight steps forward, balancing my weight, crouching a bit, and he shook his penis and put it back into his pants, zipping up as he turned around.

  I leaped and caught his throat before he even saw me.

  He went over backward, and his arms were too busy trying to do too many things—trying to break his fall, trying to pull me from his chest, trying to free my bite, trying to gouge my eyes. All were ineffective. I noted each of his slight defense attempts with as much attention as I noted the noise we made as we landed on the ground. These were things to learn from, nothing more. What was of importance at the time was my starvation, my insatiability that was only aggravated by the first swallow. Then the blood pumped hot and sweet, and my lips found the straw and tugged gently, drinking quickly, milking, staving off the final rush, the release, toying, playing, dancing around it, until I could wait no longer, and an explosion of nerve endings sparked my body, and I shuddered, quivered, and was full.

  I felt faint from the exert
ion. I lay with my cheek against his, regaining my breath, feeling once again the cold night air. I slowly pulled back and looked down on him, on his face so pale in the muted light. He looked somewhat like Lewis, with dark curly hair hanging over his forehead. I pulled my legs under me and knelt on his chest. The terribly messy wound on his neck oozed as I watched, and I caught one drip with my finger and licked it, then caught another and wiped it gently on the side of his nose. He was beautiful.

  My eyelids drooped. I heard some familiar music. I wanted to rest and slide into it, where I would be tended and cared for. I needed to lie down, snuggled up to this beautiful person, this wonderful Adonis with the fragile face, and sleep the restful sleep with him. I felt warm and cozy and loved. Complete.

  But the ground was hard, and the air was cold, and there were two men waiting for my fair and handsome prince to return to them. They would come here, looking for him.

  With a mighty effort, I shook the webs of sleep from me, kissed the beautiful one on the lips and stood, looking down on him. His lips were red where I had kissed him; with his pale cheeks and dark hair, he looked as an English schoolboy ought to look.

  I loved him.

  I don’t recall getting home, but home I was, when I awoke with the music in my ears, surrounded by the loving feeling of being enwombed, tended, nourished, fed. I awoke and arose as if I were floating, gliding across the garish orange carpet of Lewis’s home, which was somehow less objectionable today. I could recall every event of the evening before, all but my transportation home, and it was all an unbelievable adventure.

  Wait until Lewis hears about this, I thought to myself, and then I realized I could never tell Lewis, or anyone else. It was a secret. This idea of such a wonderful game being such furtive stuff made me giggle into my hand, and I noticed the clock said two o’clock in the afternoon, so I went to bathe and make ready for the coming night.

  Friday night.