by Matt Ruff
Stephen Titus George had finally lucked out.
II.
Home before midnight, George found himself contemplating, not surprisingly, lust, and more specifically the difficulties involved in writing about it. He had pushed all thoughts about the “Fevre Dream woman” to the back of his mind—but not really—deciding that it would be best to wait until she sought him out again. As he rooted around in his cupboards and refrigerator for a snack, he concentrated instead on the inadequacies of the English language. The particular problem he had in mind, which had cropped up in the first draft of an aborted novel called Venus Envy, was epitomized by the word fuck—bumpy, arrogant little four-letter bastard, impossible to use with any degree of subtlety or elegance (and the phrase make love came with its own problems, implying an emotion that was not always there). Things got even worse if you wanted to describe in detail what went on between two partners, for English also had a glut of stupid words for the sexual anatomy. Breasts was sort of OK-sounding, but just about everything else was either coldly scientific—penis, clitoris, buttocks—or straight out of a Brooklyn cab driver’s mouth. Like cock; George had never understood how any author could write the word cock with a straight face. “But it’s supposed to sound silly, didn’t you know that?” Aphrodite had explained to him once. “It’s one of the most ridiculous-looking things on God’s earth.” All fine and true, that, but George hadn’t bothered to point out to her that there were about six million equally silly euphemisms for the female genitalia.
“Yes,” George said to himself, cramming two cherry Pop-Tarts into the toaster, “yes, right, but I wonder what her name is.”
Of course it’s impossible to forget about a beautiful woman who has just recently kissed you in the dark, especially when she happens to be the most beautiful woman in the world. Calliope came crowding back to the fore of George’s thoughts, despite all efforts. Anyway, who really cared if you couldn’t write seriously about sex? Venus Envy had been laid aside unfinished, but he still had his other projects, no need to even think about Venus, and what the hell was her name? George was aching to find out, and not just about that.
He had taken a carton of milk out of the fridge and set it on the table. Nice half-gallon carton, with a grinning cow on the side. “I don’t know what it is,” George told the cow. “It’s like I won the lottery somehow, only I don’t remember signing up for it, and I never checked to see if my numbers took the jackpot, and I’m not even sure what’s in the jackpot. All I know is that it’s on its way.”
He got himself a glass and filled it halfway with milk. Sipping anxiously, he began to pace up and down, and that was when he noticed the draft from the living room. He stopped pacing. Through the living room door, he could make out a figure standing in the dark by an open window, a window he had closed and locked not ten minutes ago.
George did not bother asking who was there, despite an enormous temptation; he knew well enough who it was. Hadn’t he been expecting her? She began to move forward into the light, looking just as alluring as she had in the Fevre Dream, more so, because now she wore nothing except a funny silver whistle that hung between her breasts. Beautiful breasts, beautiful face. The other stuff was beautiful too.
With a click, the Pop-Tarts peeped up out of the toaster to see what was going on. George, his eyes riveted on Calliope, reached out to set his glass back on the table. He set it on thin air instead, and it fell to the floor and shattered, spraying milk everywhere; George didn’t notice.
“So,” he said (the last words out of his mouth before his tongue found other employment), “this is kind of interesting.”
Then they were drawing together again, and once more George found himself wondering if they would ever reach each other, and also whether she would evaporate after the first kiss as she had in the Fevre Dream (for it had happened). And lastly he wondered what would come after the first kiss, if anything did.
They did reach each other.
Calliope remained solid in his arms.
What came after that was more magic.
III.
Puck lived in the high rafters of Barton Hall, in a connected series of hanging birdhouses that he and Cobweb had set in place some years earlier. A trapdoor no bigger than a playing card gave access to a concealed hangar on the roof. It was here that Zephyr found him, sitting in the moonlight at the edge of a narrow runway, staring off in the general direction of the Plantations. She landed her glider most carefully—other than the runway the roof was set at a treacherous slant—and having secured it in the hangar came out to sit beside Puck. For a long while they did not speak.
“The funerals were well done,” Puck finally said, breaking the silence. “I liked Hobart’s eulogy for Cobweb.”
“He’s given a lot of eulogies in his time,” was all Zephyr could think to reply. “During the War against Rasferret, sprites were dying by the hundreds.”
“But that was over a century ago.” Puck spoke tonelessly, looking always into the distance. “He hasn’t lost his touch.”
Because sprites leave no body when they die, there is of course no burial, and funerals are solemn gatherings of the bereaved without the open or closed coffin found at human funerals. Custom also holds that except in time of great emergency, when other matters press for attention—such as during the War—each of the departed must be given an individual ceremony. Thus the gatherings in memory of Cobweb, Mustardseed, and Saffron Dey had been held consecutively rather than jointly, and by the end of the third funeral the nerves of all involved were frazzled. And when, as a parting remark, Saffron Dey’s brother Laertes had commented insultingly about Puck’s relationship to her, a duel had sprung up before anyone could intervene. Puck now had a scar on his cheek where Laertes’ sword point had grazed it; Laertes himself would be limping for some time to come.
“You still mad at me?” Puck asked now. “About Saffron?”
Zephyr nodded, regretfully. “I don’t want to be, especially after . . . after all that’s happened, but I am. What you did to me hasn’t changed.”
Puck also nodded, still not looking at her. “I guess I can’t blame you for that. But why are you here, then? Shouldn’t you be following that George guy around or something?”
“George isn’t any of my business anymore.” It was Zephyr’s turn to gaze into the distance. “He’s kind of occupied tonight.”
“Finally found himself a human lover, eh?”
“Maybe. There’s something . . . something strange there. I haven’t actually seen her.”
“Then how do you know about it?”
“The wind. The wind’s been whispering the news all night.” She sniffed. “Something strange in the wind, too.”
Silence descended and began to draw out again. Zephyr forced herself to go on with the business she had come here for.
“I’ve been talking to Hobart,” she said.
“Really? What about?”
“Things. He told me a story, a story about what he and Grandma Zee did one time when they had their worst fight ever. This thing they did, it saved their marriage.”
Puck nodded. “Tell me.”
“Suppose,” said Zephyr, “that there were these two sprites. Suppose that one of them was very angry at the other for something he’d done, and at the same time he was very depressed, upset, maybe a little angry in his own right. Not a very romantic couple, right?”
“No. Not very.”
“But there might be a second couple, almost exactly like the first, really the same, only strangers.”
At last he did look at her. “Strangers?”
“Strangers. Never met. And one of these strangers, she might decide to take a trip some night, climb into her glider, say, and fly someplace private—like one of the river banks down in Fall Creek Gorge. Now if the other stranger happened to go there too, purely by coincidence, and they bumped into each other, that could turn out to be romantic, don’t you think? I mean, if they didn’t know each other beforeha
nd, she wouldn’t have anything to be mad about. And if he was depressed, she might be able to cheer him up. They might even fall in love.”
Puck digested this.
“It might work,” he finally said.
“Oh, but there’s one other thing,” Zephyr added. “These two strangers—they’d have to be very careful to be faithful to one another. Not like those others. If one of them were to start cheating, it could be very bad luck.”
“Bad luck,” Puck repeated. “Right. But I don’t think there’d be any problem with cheating.”
“Of course not. Why would there be?”
“So.” Puck finally glanced at her. “Fall Creek Gorge, did you say?”
Zephyr shook her head. “I didn’t say anything. But those strangers . . .”
“Right. Those strangers . . . they’d better get flying.”
A moment later they were both preparing for takeoff.
IV.
“So what do you say, Luther?” Skippy prodded. “You gonna come down and chase bitches with us? Huh? Huh?”
“Good times, Luther,” Joshua added. “Don’t want to miss it.”
Luther lifted his hind leg and scratched his ear. “Maybe this time I’ll stay behind,” he said. “Thanks for the invitation, though.”
Six of them stood at the crest of Libe Slope—Luther, Joshua, Skippy, a mongrel named Ellison, a Bull Terrier named Highpoint, and a black Puli—looking down on West Campus. The Puli was a strange dog, with hair that grew out corded like hanks of dark yarn. They called him Rover Too-Bad.
“I an’ I t’ink you ought be comin’ with us, Luther,” Rover nudged him. “Lady Babylon, she be waitin’ down below. She one rude sister, that Lady.”
Lady Babylon had the most active heat cycle of any bitch in Ithaca. Nights she roamed outside the West Campus dorms, accompanied by others of her litter. On occasion their combined heat scent was strong enough to attract studs from a mile away; tonight the wind was blowing the wrong way to catch it on the Slope, but rumors alone were enough to send Skippy, for one, into a leaping frenzy.
“It’s tempting . . .” Luther admitted.
“You know what Rover really be t’inkin’, Luther? This ‘Heaven’ you want so bad—I an’ I be t’inkin’ maybe you find it. Down below. Lady Babylon, she show you Heaven.”
“Not that kind of Heaven. Rover. Besides, it would be over too quickly to make me feel much better.”
“Really?” said Highpoint. “I’d heard your kind can—”
He cut off abruptly as Luther turned on him, eyes narrowing. “My kind? What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing,” the Bull Terrier replied, nervous. “I just . . . I . . .”
Luther looked to Joshua and Ellison for some kind of support, but they had already started down the Slope, led by an impatient Skippy. Highpoint began to follow them.
“Wait a minute!” Luther cried. “Wait a minute! What did you mean by that?"
“Nothing! Nothing at all!”
“Babylon’s no Terrier, you know! You understand me? If you get her pregnant, the litter will be all mongrels! Understand? You’re not so far from me! Understand?”
“I didn’t mean anything like that!” Highpoint called back, a final protest. He broke and made for the bottom of the Slope at top speed.
“No,” Luther said, whining “No, it can’t be . . .”
“What?” asked Rover, the only one to stay behind with him. “What ‘can’t?’”
“This is Heaven,” Luther insisted, for perhaps the last time. “There can’t be mange-thoughts here. We left all that behind when we got away from Dragon. So Highpoint can’t have been thinking that . . . not even the littlest bit . . .”
He growled deep in his throat, angry at something beyond his reach, and began to snap at his own tail.
“Luther! Luther, you stop that an’ listen to Rover! You want I an’ I go get Blackjack for you?”
With an effort, Luther brought his rage under control. Disappointment rushed in to replace it.
“Blackjack’s busy,” he said. “Busy with Sable. Could you just leave me alone, Rover? Go down and visit Lady Babylon with the others. I’ll be all right eventually.”
“You sure, dahg?”
“I’m sure. Go on, now.”
“OK fine good, Luther. But I an’ I be checkin’ you up after Babylon time. You be better.”
“I’ll try. Just get going.”
“Jus’ so. Jah love, Luther.”
Rover moved off down the Slope. Luther waited until he had vanished beneath the arch between Lyon and McFaddin Halls, then set to grapple with the terrible realization that was at last forcing itself on him.
We left all that behind . . . with Dragon.
And so they had. But if Raaq’s evil could even be here, in this place, no matter how much Luther wished to deny it . . .
The possibility was too much for him. He raised his head and howled, oldest of canine traditions, howling at the moon, though of course what you were really doing was howling at the sky. It was quite sensible; wherever you might be, there was always a lot of space in the sky, space enough for the loudest, most anguished howl to go up into. And of course it was very, very important for your anger and pain to have enough room as it was released outwards.
Otherwise it might fall back, and smother you.
V.
Elsewhere:
In one of the high bedrooms in Risley’s central tower, Lion-Heart and Myoko made perfect love to each other. Their coupling was echoed in some form or other in almost every room in the dorm. The building, as a point of information, was constructed of steel-reinforced concrete, one of the first
such structures ever designed, and triply sturdy; yet still, it vibrated that night—ever so slightly—from the energy contained within its walls. This vibration was picked up by the crickets and night creepers in the area, sending them into a frenzy of chirping that was deafening to hear.
It was a night for first times, as well as old times. In the early morning hours after last call at the Fevre Dream, Aphrodite at last consented to Panhandle, and the two of them coupled with no small gymnastic prowess in the lower branches of a maple behind Rockefeller Hall. The tree barely survived.
Blackjack and Sable mated in a tussle of claws and fur; Nattie Hollister of the Ithaca Police Force made love to her husband and then collapsed from exhaustion; back on The Hill, Fraternity Row bumped and ground. Everywhere the same, everywhere different, and it was not until very late indeed that the last bit of energy had been expended and an aura of peace settled over the town.
Even then, not everyone slept.
VI
George stood naked at his bedroom window peering out into the dark, heedless of any passerby who might see him from the street. He had little ego as far as his body was concerned, and it never would have occurred to him that a peeping Tom (or Tom-ette) might be interested. Besides which, precious few peeping Toms were still out and about at this hour; the moon was almost down, dawn could be no more than an hour away, and most activity worth peeping on had ceased.
The house was a shambles. George and Calliope’s lovemaking session—which would have set the readership of the Penthouse Forum on its collective ear, if written up and published—had ranged through every room in the place, leaving a trail of disorder and outright destruction. Furniture was moved or overturned; the love seat in the living room had collapsed on all four of its legs like a dead camel. The bathroom was awash in water, and the showerhead was still spraying full blast; in the hallway outside, a spiderweb of toilet paper hung from the overhead light. In the kitchen the refrigerator door hung open, various foodstuffs having been used for various interesting purposes; likewise the doors to the cupboards were thrown wide, and the bottle of Crisco Oil was empty. About the only thing undisturbed was George’s typewriter, a casual observer in the eye of the storm.
How long? George wondered to himself. How long were we at it?
At best guess he could o
nly say that it had been a very long time, longer than he could ever credit to his own natural stamina, even should he want to be vain about it. It was as if some outside force had lent support to him, allowing him to go on and on with her for hours without pause. George remembered the old expression, I'll jump your bones. He had not just jumped Calliope’s bones; he had partied on them, and she on his.
He looked at her, stretched out on the bed, apparently asleep. At last. And though love was done for the night, she still appeared as beautiful as when he had first laid eyes on her.
No, not beautiful. Perfect.
Yes, perfect. And that was what frightened him. For didn’t everyone, in some not-so-secret corner of their minds, have a fantasy of what the perfect physical type would look like? The fantasy was apt to change over time—before meeting his first Grey Lady, George’s idea of the ultimate had been a pale redhead—and was not nearly so reliable a criterion as personality when judging a lover. But was there anyone who didn’t quietly wish for both, good personality and the perfect type?
There was very little moonlight left, but George could see Calliope quite clearly. Every line, every detail, from the tone of her skin to the set of her mouth, was just right. Who had read his mind?
“Don’t worry about it,” Calliope advised him. By some strange trick she was no longer asleep on the bed, but behind him with her arms wrapped around his waist. “Just enjoy it.”
George shook his head, and leaned heavily against the windowsill. “This isn’t real.”
“What isn’t? Me?” She pressed tight against his back. “Tell me you don’t feel that.”