Black Ambrosia

by Elizabeth Engstrom

  “She knew when I started looking for her, too. At first she was pretty crafty about it, but as time went on, she warped right out of control. She got careless and began to leave a trail.”

  19

  I returned to the Yacht Club several mornings in a row after I finished working, but I was not able to keep up with Cap, who was always bright-­eyed and well rested. My jaw hurt continually from keeping such a drasti­cally tight rein on myself. I was not pleasant company. After about a week, my anxieties got the better of me, and I began going straight home. I never merely arrived home from work; I felt as though I barely escaped with my life every day. When the door at the top of the stairs was bolted, I was almost safe. When the door at the bottom of the stairs was bolted, I heaved a sigh of relief. I could relax.

  Home. My apartment was my refuge. It was comfortable and mine. It had its own peculiar scent: basement, bordering on damp. The odor was pleas­ant, it was distinctive, it was familiar; it smelled like home. The apartment had my personality, all furnishings I had made or scrounged or bought. Lighting was kept low, soft and soothing. I could be myself within those cool walls; I needed no pretenses. I came to view it almost as a friend, a protector, a companion.

  The first thing I did when I got home was think about Sarah. I would feel the scant meat on my arms and think about her, round, muscular, healthy, glow­ing. I would set my jaw again and vow to behave the way I needed to behave to get on a straight course to a lifestyle as healthy as Sarah’s.

  I thought at times that I was on the verge of a breakdown, that my personality might be unstable enough to crack. The thought was vague but ever-­present, lurking in the back of my mind. I felt at all times I was under tremendous pressure. I had no idea what the pressure was from, nor what I was to do about it, nor did I closely examine the feeling. The possibility of going completely berserk had always been with me—indeed, I knew I had occasionally been insane—and the possibility increased in my mind when I had bizarre flashes that related to nothing in my experience.

  I would be eating breakfast, for example, and wondering if Mary Lou ever finished her college degree after she divorced Al, and I would have warm feelings toward her, and then realize that I knew no Mary Lou; I knew no Al. These, to me, seemed like symptoms of a breakdown. I had no idea what a breakdown meant or what I might do should that happen. I wasn’t sure I would recognize one if I had it, but I did know that I could at least do it in privacy, if not safety, if it happened at home. As a result, I rushed home after work and never invited guests.

  And then She began to woo me.

  This was a private matter, and one I was not anxious to share, or even admit. I wasn’t sure who She was or what Her powers or interests in me were, but Her attention was so flattering, so sensual, so particu­lar, that I was quite drawn to Her. Quite attracted. Quite infatuated. I began to let my defenses down, despite my better judgment.

  My first glimpse of Her had been at Lewis’s house. Up until this time She rarely let me remember our conversations, much less see Her face. I knew Her only as the ethereal essence that appeared in the depths of my meditations. The One that lives within the music. And now, after Fred, She came after me, She wanted me, She desired me, and I was . . .

  I was young. Very young. And the young know no danger.

  I found myself acting for Her approval. Eventual­ly, thoughts of becoming well enough for Sarah fled. This was too flattering, too encouraging, too much fun. I searched for the witty thing to say, and discov­ered that I did so for Her entertainment. I knew, somehow, that She was watching me all the time. I knew that anyone who loved me as much as She did would want to be with me all the time. I began to live with Her thought as closely as I lived with the color of my hair.

  And I knew what pleased Her.

  She was pleased when I made dates with the people who called the answering service in the middle of the night, and when I left the office unmanned to go meet them.

  She was the one who told me about the pond, and the old shack where I took them, and then took them, and buried their remains in the snow for spring to find if the hungry small animals did not discover them first.

  She directed me to the areas most populated with eligible tourists. She helped me pick out attractive clothes, say clever, attractive things to those people She chose for me—when before I had been a tongue-­tied simp.

  And while She was directing me, I took great pride in showing Her that I was learning from Her, that Her teachings were not wasted, that I was intelli­gent and eager to please, and soon my imagination took over and I began inventing creative ways to show off my newly acquired skills at seduction.

  I made a cape of dark blue terrycloth, machine washable, to wear under my coat and keep my work neat, and She delighted in this. I said and did outra­geous things, basking in her approval. I carried on lustful conversations with clients, complete with base innuendos, in front of the other morning-­shift girls, much to their shock and Her enthusiasm. I became more outgoing, more enthusiastic.

  And then I would go home and lock the door and feed the cat, eat if I was hungry, delaying the time, the moment, teasing myself.

  And then the time would come when I had no other obligations, and I would lie on my mattress on the floor and slide into meditation. The lips would speak into my ear—the full, red, glistening lips—and She spoke with clarity and purpose, gently, and told me of the pleasure I had given Her that night.

  And She proceeded to give me pleasure in return.

  She appeared to me always in one of two forms. When I was awake, meditating, the lips would speak to me, and while I saw them only in my mind’s eye, I knew each crease, each wrinkle, in her lip, each curve of white tooth, each glistening dot on the tip of her tongue.

  And when we scampered through the void togeth­er, listening to music, She was merely a whisper of fog, mutable fog that danced and swirled and tickled as gleefully as any playmate.

  Sometimes in the void we would just listen to the music, and I would calmly sit while She acted out the sounds, as if She, the fog, was the very substance of the tones. She changed as the music soared; She swirled as a delicate mist; She expanded to great mounds of rolling fog and obscured my sight as She fell on me and wrapped about me, tickling, teasing. The music must have been of Her creation; no one else could possibly have imagined something so beau­tiful, so perfect, so essentially suited to our relation­ship, our experiences, our personalities, our togetherness and love.

  Other times we would just talk, Her wit, experi­ence, and lightning-­quick anecdotes a joy to be around. But mostly Her essence was that of love, and when I was with Her, I was loved, totally and com­pletely.

  It seems incomprehensible now, but it was a long, long time before I realized that I had no name for Her, nor did I really know Her. My loneliness and longing to touch another’s soul became confused in the light of this brilliant and loving personality, and I thought I had found what I had been looking for.

  Maybe I had, indeed.

  She, certainly, had found what She had been looking for when She found me, and She milked my devotion as completely as I milked the lifeblood from Her victims.

  In the name of love.

  The days lengthened, Easter came and went, the belching buses ceased to bring tourists, and brown patches began to appear on the mountainsides. I came out of the winter as if arising from a deep sleep, awakening from a slumber so fraught with night terrors and strange sounds that reality held little but suspicion.

  Melted snow ran in the streets, down the hills, and great floods and mud slides were the plight of those who lived below us.

  Spring brought to me a sense of renewal. I saw the grass turn green, the leaves sprout on the trees. I walked along the streets at twilight, both morning and evening, and, inspired by it all, wished for a life in the daylight—to come into the sunshine and laugh in the warmth of it.


  But I slept through the day instead. And from sundown to sunup, I let the darkness enter my mind. I was continually busy, puzzling over my strangeness, aching over my loneliness, wanting so much, but afraid. I searched for friendship, camaraderie. I found, instead, only victims.

  My health began to fail. I was afraid I would not survive the nights and the toll they were taking on my body. I barely recognized myself in the mirror any­more. I needed to make some changes.

  The first thing I did was to leave the answering service. Permanently. I didn’t need the job. It was too . . . too . . . confining. Leaving felt like a great relief. I could now do exactly as I pleased, with no time constraints, no guilt. I could spend my time as I pleased. I could live on my savings and the account in Pennsylvania for a long, long time.

  But that first night, instead of sleeping and begin­ning to re­arrange my odd schedule to coincide more with normal waking hours, I was up with Spartacus, the cat that had adopted me when I was so eager for adulthood and responsibility, petting her as she gave birth to a litter of four kittens, two yellow-­striped toms, one calico, and one tiger female just like her mother. I held the newborn babies in my hand, still wet from their birthing juices, and I petted them and talked to them, smelling them, and feeling them. They were so pure, the little ones. They had never eaten, they had never meowed, they had never really even thought. How clean. How nice. How tasty. I licked one’s face, tasting its wetness—salty, like tears—tasting its life. Then I put it in the box with its family.

  But then there was also Her, and at first I was afraid of Her reaction to my leaving the answering service. I was afraid that She would no longer find me humorous, or exciting, or attractive, when in fact, those fears lived only in my mind. Her affection was uninterrupted and con­sistent.

  My petty insecurities, my fears and wishes for a different life, in fact, paled before the immensity of Her affection, Her consistency, Her solidly based strength.

  There was something every night that kept me entertained, kept me awake, kept me from adjusting my schedule. My struggle against it was little more than wishful thinking, for always She had the final say, and when I was bunched up in my bedclothes, fists clenched against my eyes, She would come and whis­per in my ear and my touch-­starved body responded. I was lost. Again, lost.

  As the night paled and the blackness of my little basement windows turned milky, exhaustion over­took me and I could no longer hold my head up. Sleep would finally come, dreamless sleep that held no rest.

  REBECCA DEL ROSARIO: “I didn’t really want to bust Angelina, but she was really getting out of control. I look my time before turning her in, because I didn’t want it to sound like sour grapes, you know? I mean I really wanted my shift back—my boyfriend works midnights, too, so it’s just perfect, and it’s a total waste when I have to work days, I mean total.

  “But Angelina was really getting out there. I mean, at first I thought she was just not doing her work, logging in the calls and that. I figured she was sleeping. Girls always used to sleep on the midnight shift, that’s one of the problems Mrs. Gardener has always had.

  “So we covered her a little, I mean, we all cover for each other sometimes, and then the morning-­shift girls started telling me these weird stories about the way Angelina was acting. She must have been on some drugs or something. They said she’d talk real loud. You know with the headphones we wear, a whisper gets the point across real well, but they said she’d pace back and forth behind them, her phone cord hooked up to the board, and she’d answer calls and yell at the people and talk real loud and say terrible things.

  “Once she told a customer that she would never date him because he was Italian, and everybody knows Italians eat garlic and she can’t stand to taste garlic on a man. God. Can you imagine? I mean, she was totally out of control.

  “And when I found out she’d been leaving at night, well, that was it. I just had to tell Mrs. Gardener. I mean, Mrs. Gardener could lose a lot of clients, and that would be everybody’s job, right? Angelina had no right to rip us off like that.

  “I saw her the day Mrs. Gardener fired her. I showed up early, because I knew that Mrs. Gardener would have to come in early to see Angelina before she went home, and I had all the evidence. I was surprised at how she looked. In fact, I hardly recognized her. She’d been on midnights just over six months, and boy, it had really taken its toll on her. She was as skinny as a bag of bones; her eyes seemed dark and sunken; her blonde hair didn’t even look blonde anymore, it looked kind of gray. She seemed anxious to get away, and when Mrs. Gardener fired her, she just took the check and left. Didn’t say anything. In fact, I thought she was having a hard time keeping her eyes open. Getting fired would wake me up, that’s for sure. But not Angelina. I don’t know what drugs she was taking, but she was really strung out. I mean, I’ve seen strung-­out people before, and she was, like, totally done.

  “I kind of worried about her a little bit, you know? I mean, she lived in a basement under a warehouse down in the light-­industrial side of town, kind of a spooky place. I went by to talk to her, to see if she was all right, but she never answered the door. That was okay, though, really, because I didn’t really want to go in that place, it was too creepy. I just wanted to check on her, you know? I never really wanted to be her friend.”

  20

  As a compromise between Her vigorous demands of me and my own desperate need for companionship, I developed a sort of system as I picked over the town for suitable company. I spent a certain amount of time at Alcoholics Anony­mous meetings, PTA meet­ings, Parents Without Partners, high-­school dances, and other such gatherings. Occasionally I’d find a loner, preferably a visitor, and we would pair up, providing his nutritional habits were suit­able. Public­ity and town security made this difficult at times; the local residents seemed a bit hysterical over the miss­ing-­persons scandal, but my persistence always won out.

  The spring floods tidily disposed of the little shack by the pond, flushed out my little amusement park, cleansing the entire area in general. I heard rumors of officials conducting investigations in town, but I was not worried because the general consensus assumed the disappearances were drug-­related. In addition, I was pleasing Her, and surrounded by the protection of Her powerful influence, I felt safe.

  For the summer months, She had shown me a small cave, just a short hike from up behind the Snowson Hotel. It seemed to excite them, my friends, my lovers, to be led by the hand up through waist-­high grass by moonlight to a cave in the mountains. Many times the talk turned to the famed Seven Slopes murderer. The idea of meeting up with him in the hills added excitement, added tang. The walk gave us both time to savor the anticipation, to feel the exhila­ration of the physical exertion in the hike, heightening the senses, honing the appreciation, keening the edge between pleasure and pain.

  Indeed, I received an extra bonus, as the taste of adrenaline is much like tart honey. I became as a sorcerer, who controls his realm so totally that he need merely raise his arms and the tides leap to his command. I controlled the tides of fear, and my sweet tooth savored the taste of it.

  The cave was always clean when I got there; I assumed the wildlife in the area was well fed, a fortunate by-­product of my habits. I enjoyed being merely another convenient link in the food chain.

  In one of my more lucid moments, however, when the odor of plasma was not throbbing in my nostrils, when my mind was not crazed with the thought of the hunt, or of the kill, or of the reward beyond, when I was not sleeping the drugged sleep of the sated beast, when I was not reveling in Her wallowsome pleasures, I had an occasional thought that I was the last to be seen with too many missing persons.

  I knew I would soon be leaving Seven Slopes.

  I pushed these thoughts away. They were cumber­some and unpleasant.

  The time came, however, when they would not be pushed away.

  The night was
young, the kittens had grown to gangly adolescent cats, and they frolicked with each other around my feet, wide-­eyed and hunter-­wary, as I sat at the table, reading.

  I perused the newspaper once each week to discern the popular gathering places, events, socials, and the like—anywhere I could meet new people, find new friends. I had before me a steaming cup of tea, my cape soaked in the sink, and my world was at peace.

  I turned the page, feeling the little smile on my face, my body remembering the intense flooding of pleasure from the night before, when I felt the eleva­tor feeling in my stomach again. It lurched, as if one floor, then stopped.

  I knew that feeling. It was the dropping through, it was the fall into the void that could not be con­trolled. It was meeting Boyd face-­to-­face and shame-­to-­shame.

  But I only dropped one story and then things focused again. I took a deep breath and folded the newspaper, looked at it again in horror. Boyd could never see the name of the newspaper! I turned it upside down, and as I did, my mind fell through, and there he was, and She was with him.

  She hovered behind him, fog spread out behind him as an umbrella, or more like wings, like a giant bat. He did not see Her, did not know Her, would not know Her. But I did, and I knew that She had warned me to hide the newspaper, which meant that She controlled these meetings.

  For a second, I saw Boyd look through my eyes, around the apartment, felt the cat licking my hand, and then I was in his truck, headlights careening as it rolled slowly off the side of the road onto the shoul­der, wheels humping over clumps of weeds in the gravel, and then we were face-­to-­face again, and I saw that he knew of my nocturnal activities, and that all he felt was scorn. Fury burned up my chest. Then it was over, and I was again calmly seated at the kitchen table.