"Forget about the book."
He took a swallow of wine, swished it in his mouth, swallowed; then he set the bottle on the rickety hall table covered with magazines and phone books, and squeezed her.
"So where did you hide her?" she asked. "And why did you bother?"
"What do you mean?"
"Your sex slave. You know I don't mind."
"Oh—no. It's those assholes from Club Mandala again. They're messing with my computer now. You wouldn't believe what they did."
She looked disappointed, biting her lip. "Oh, really? No girl?" Pulling away, she walked into the apartment and threw her coat over the couch. "I think I saw them today."
"Who?"
"Them. Coming out of the shop as I went in. I didn't recognize them at the time, but then I saw a poster for the club on the bulletin board, and Norman said a weird couple had put it up just before my shift. It was the pair I saw. Norman described them to a T. You know how he's always writing police reports in his head—everyone's a suspect in some crime they might commit."
"He let them put up a poster?"
"It's business, Derek."
"Why don't you tell him I'll pull copies of the book if he doesn't tear it down? That's business too. I'll start a boycott against Hecate's Haven."
"Lovely. Last month we had fundamentalist Boy Scouts picketing us for Jehovah's merit points. And now you."
Derek dropped on the couch, steaming.
"Besides," she said, wrapping an arm around him, waving the bottle under his nose, "we probably sell more copies of The Mandala Rites than any other shop in San Francisco. You'd be cutting your own throat."
"Signed copies," he said. "I don't have to do Norman any favors. He makes his profit too."
"You can't battle Club Mandala in Norman's shop."
"I don't intend to," he said. "That's what the courts are for. I've got an interview with a reporter from the Bayrometer next week, and I'm going to let those club assholes have it with both bores. If they want publicity. ..."
"That's the Derek Crowe I know."
He took her face in his hands. "And love?"
"I didn't say that."
"You came pretty close."
"Derek, everyone who ever met you loved you at first sight. Unfortunately, they mistook their first impression for disgust."
He shoved her away lightly, laughing. "So why do you keep coming back?"
"I've told you, my dear. I'm perverted."
"I only wish you were, Lilith. Underneath your satanic exterior, you're the embodiment of white bread."
She shuddered and sat away from him. "Satanic? That's stale bread. The only real Satanist is a disillusioned Christian."
"All right, all right, don't give me that lecture again. Are you hungry?"
"Not that there's anything in your kitchen worth offering me, but no." She rose from the couch, walking toward the bedroom which doubled as his office. "Not for earthly fare, anyway. A little of your blood would suit me fine, though. Let's get to it."
He followed her somewhat sheepishly, though his skin prickled with anticipation. He shut the door behind him, as if someone in the living room might be watching. He enjoyed the slight claustrophobia that came with reducing his world to this one small cell. He and Lilith, alone. She wore a black one-piece suit, zippered from throat to crotch.
"Speaking of lectures," she said, her fingers toying with the zipper ring at her neck. "You're off to where tomorrow?"
"Cinderton, North Carolina."
"That's it? That's your grand tour?"
He shrugged. "I follow the money."
"You don't seem too excited."
He sat down beside her. "I dread having to talk about the mandalas for the rest of my life. In a way, if they're too successful it will just be a pain in the ass. I want to be anonymous and get on with my next book."
"And all this time I thought you were just trying to hit the jackpot so you could lie back and do nothing for the rest of your life."
"Ah ... I can't fool a psychic. But I don't think this book is going to be the one. That's why I've got to get the next tome started. I might even work on it tonight. Research."
"Tonight? What's it called?"
"The Big Book of Sex Magick, " he said.
Lilith's laughter merged with the sound of the zipper. "Oh, really?" she said.
"It's dedicated to you."
One candle burned, and that was the only light in the room. It wavered as the flame bent, dipped. Lilith's hand trembled, and Derek bit his lips, hissing as molten wax scalded his nipple. The plaster wall was cold and clammy against his back and buttocks, arms, and calves. The wax cooled swiftly, but not before the candle darted elsewhere and the next tongue of fire licked his belly. Her hands caressed his inner thighs, her nails traced the cartilege spans that strained from his skin as he flinched and shivered. The handcuffs were cold, and so was the bare floor under his bare feet. The room was drafty and he felt perfectly vulnerable as Lilith whispered the words of some sinister-sounding spell that was probably nothing but a psalm recited in Hebrew. Of course, he didn't believe in her spells, but that wasn't the source of the thrilling fear he sometimes felt. The truth was, he didn't completely trust Lilith. If he had, this game would have held little appeal.
"The demon is with us," she said. "Arise, demon."
Her hand cupped his balls. The candle dripped. Derek clenched. Her teeth on his belly, biting sharply, letting go before the cry was even out of his mouth. Her hair brushed his pubes.
"Lilith," he said, tensing. Her breath on his groin. "Lilith, no."
She rocked back on her heels, looking up at him, the candle held between her fingers. "You cannot order me about, demon master. For you are in my circle now, and all your familiars are mine to command." She opened her mouth, making a ring. She set the candle down.
"No, Lilith. No."
He shut his eyes. He could feel her mouth closing around him.
"Please!" he said, writhing away violently, clenching down so hard that the plaster gave way and one of the hooks tore from the wall. The handcuff flew as he coiled into himself, and the curve of bright metal struck her in the cheek. She tumbled sideways on the floor. His fist, he realized, had also hit her. He hunched against the wall, one hand still pinned high in the air, but no longer angry or frightened enough to rip the second hook free. No longer out of control.
Lilith looked up at him, feeling her jaw. A slash below her eye bled slightly.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "God, I'm so sorry."
She drew her bare knees close to her and started to rise.
"Lilith," he said, "I warned you ..."
"That's all right," she said, sullen. "We've always skated on the edge of it. I thought I'd take you out on the ice tonight—see how thin it is."
"Really, I didn't mean to hurt you."
"That's what happens when you play at pain, Derek."
"I just ... I just ..."
"Wait a minute." She found the key and freed him. He was shivering, so she pushed him toward the bed. "Get in," she said. She covered him with blankets.
"What about you?"
She looked toward the door. "I'm going to take off."
"What? Why?" He started to climb out, but she stopped him.
"Derek, it's nothing. I think you need to be alone."
"Alone? I'm always alone. What do you mean?"
"Something happened, Derek. We need to process it."
"What the fuck do you mean? I'm extremely ticklish, that's what happened."
She was already in the doorway, gathering her clothes to her, tugging at her zipper.
"It's more than that," she said. "Maybe I see it more clearly than you."
"You and your fucking third eye!" he called. "All right, Lilith, go ahead. I'm sorry I hurt you, but get the fuck out. And stop looking at my aura like that!"
She picked up her raincoat and looked back at him, sadly. "Have a lovely time in North Carolina, dear. Maybe things will be di
fferent when you come back."
The outer door closed a moment later. He knew he had to get out of bed eventually to lock and double-lock it, but he couldn't make himself move. He kept wondering exactly what had happened, what screwed-up ominous thing Lilith thought it all meant.
Sometimes he thought the little he saw of her was still too much.
She had weird notions; she steeped herself in them. She didn't mind him laughing at them either. She was tougher than that. Sometimes he thought she was his exact opposite and if they ever truly came together they would explode, like matter and antimatter in bad science fiction. The very idea that one night in North Carolina could somehow change things ... now that was even sillier than her demonic invocations.
He sat peeling candle wax from his chest, shaking his head.
My little demon.
"Fucking Lilith," he said, and laughed.
2
That night it was so cold that Lenore and Michael Renzler sat at their kitchen table with the oven door open. Lenore picked at a congealing pool of creamed chipped beef. Her plate was cold so the glop had chilled instantly. Michael sat across from her, nothing on his plate but a piece of dry toast. He had taken one bite and otherwise ignored his "meal," too busy flipping through one of his occult books, making notes on a yellow pad and mumbling to himself. Watching her husband read was the highlight of too many of Lenore's evenings. He hadn't said one word to her since they'd sat down together. She was getting more pissed by the second.
"You want any shit on that shingle?" she finally asked.
"I'm fasting," he said without looking up.
"Fasting?"
"For tomorrow night."
"You're fasting for a lecture?"
"Not just for the lecture. I'm planning a ritual too."
He threw her a smile. Lately his rituals were the only thing he got excited about, but for the last two weeks it had been even worse. Michael was in ecstacies, obsessed; he couldn't talk about anything else. He kept reading and rereading the same book, making notes in it, trying out pronunciations that sounded like gibberish. Derek Crowe was coming to Cinderton. The mandala man. Michael couldn't contain himself.
"You'll be so weak you'll pass out in the middle of the talk," she said.
"No, by the second day I'm usually flying—I'll feel great. Today's just water and bread, but tomorrow I get bread, milk, and wine. It's my own version of a black fast."
"Whatever that is," she said.
"It's how you get ready for the really important ceremonies."
"It's not a ceremony, Michael, it's just a talk!"
"But I'm doing rituals. One tonight, one tomorrow night, maybe one the next day. Three major rites from his book. It's hard to memorize them." This comment sounded like a rebuke. In other words: Shut up.
"Especially when you haven't eaten all day."
"No—that sharpens the senses, makes my mind clearer."
"You look pale," she said, but he didn't answer. He had gone back to his book, making it clear that he didn't have energy to waste on talking to his wife.
She cut a big square of dripping toast and shoved it in her mouth. It was like eating a sponge dipped in glue; she could hardly swallow.
She got up from the table, went down the hall into the living room, shivering even in her sweater since the front of the house was drafty thanks to the badly hung front door and the cardboard stuck in one of the broken windows. Tucker Doakes, their upstairs landlord, was a lousy carpenter, and he did all his own work.
Her textbooks were stacked on the coffee table. She picked up a few of them and tromped back into the kitchen, throwing them down with a thud next to her plate. Michael glanced up.
"What are you doing?" he said.
"Math."
He pursed his lips, nodded. "It's so great you're back in school."
It wasn't the reaction she'd been hoping for. She threw her plate in the sink and sat down to a calculus text. The exercises looked far simpler than those in the books Michael read, his John Dee and Aleister Crowley and Anton Szandor LaVey. But his books were nonsense, endlessly confusing and arbitrary. Mathematics, on the other hand, was like a glittering crystal-clear landscape for the mind; an infinite path where she could lose herself forever. She had always been good at math, even while failing everything else in school. No matter how bad things got, she could find pleasure in puzzles and logic games. At least they fed the brain, developed her intelligence, unlike Michael's medieval bullshit, which rotted the mind as far as she could tell.
But tonight the books were opaque to her. The figures lay like insects flattened between the pages, making her feel weary and stupid after five minutes of desultory study. This was not going to work. And tonight Michael was poorer company than usual.
She slammed the book shut. "I'm going out."
He didn't look up. "I'll be in the temple for a while, so don't, you know, worry about me."
Don't bother me, you mean, she thought. He didn't ask anything else.
Lenore found her heaviest coat in the living room. She couldn't stand to be in the house another minute. It was horrible to be so cold indoors, where the chill oozed out of every surface and even the floor sucked the heat from your body. At least she expected to be cold outside.
The porch was littered with beer bottles, Cheer Wine cans, and motorcycle parts. A soggy broken-down couch, covered with a greasy sheet, was occupied by Tucker's automotive tools and a busted color TV set. Tucker had taken fifteen bucks a month off the original rent after Michael complained about the mess. Sometimes in warm weather Tucker came down, pushed the mess aside, and sat on the couch smoking grass and drinking beer, so they had to watch him pacing past their front window and hear him coughing and hacking and spitting over the rails. He was that kind of guy. His rust-eaten pickup truck was pulled up on the dead brown lawn, although he could have pulled it up behind the house or left it in the driveway, which he specifically hadn't rented to them. An older T-Bird in worse condition sat decomposing at the edge of the yard, half overgrown by brambles. Michael's crazed VW was parked on the lawn just off the driveway, and Lenore's dying hulk, a Cutlass Supreme, was on the road out front, beyond the bare hedges. She had the keys in her pocket, but the thought of driving didn't thrill her. The Cutlass had died too many times, leaving her stranded; she'd never yet been stuck on the roads outside of town, but she wasn't willing to take the risk tonight. A storm was headed toward the mountains; with her luck it would hit if she went out. Not that there was anywhere she felt like going. Even the nearest video store was a three-mile drive. She wanted to be happy where she was, but that would take some doing.
Music thumped down from upstairs. Even in the cold, Tucker's windows were open. Shoving her hands in her pockets, she went around the side of the house, down the driveway. As she passed the door to her own kitchen, she saw that Michael was already gone. She tiptoed up the flight of creaking, rotten steps to Tucker's flat.
The door was unlocked, so she went in. He'd never hear her knocking, but Michael might. Michael didn't approve of her upstairs visits, since there was only one reason she ever hung out with Tucker.
Tucker's kitchen was a shabbier version of their own: dishes piled in the sink, pie pans full of crusted cat food on the floor, an algae-colored stream running across the linoleum from beneath the fridge. Scabby, a calico with skin problems, jumped off the sink when she came in and followed her down the hall to the front of the house, until the music grew so loud that the cat refused to go any farther. Since the Renzlers' stereo was defunct, Tucker's music was about all they ever heard. Obligingly, he played it loud enough for both homes.
She saw Tucker's motorcycle boots propped on the foot-locker that served him as a coffee table, among a clutter of ashtrays, lighters, pipes and screens, and a massive, three-chambered red-white-and-blue acrylic bong. After taking a hit from the Patriot, you were required to stand and salute as you exhaled. A nearly full bottle of red wine sat on the floor next to the trunk; her mou
th went dry and prickly at the sight of it.
Tucker lay back on the couch, eyes closed. The window above the couch was open; there were no curtains to move in the breeze, but she could feel it. Tucker thrived on the chill. He was almost too tall for the couch. Balding, with long curly hair and a scraggly beard, his beer gut peeping out from under a Harley-Davidson T-shirt, he looked oddly vulnerable. "Tuck!" she said.
He sat up as if a gun had gone off, his eyes bulging and crazed; but instantly, seeing her, relaxed and slumped down again, as if descending straight back into a trance. "Hey, girl," he said.
"Thought I heard Scarlet up here. Where is she?"
"Scarlet? Naw, she's not coming tonight."
"Shit, that's too bad. I was going to hang out with you guys for a while."
He opened one eye. "Well, sit yourself down anyway. I'm not doing anything. Where's your old man?" He reached for the remote control and turned down the volume on the CD player.
Lenore shrugged and sat down in a big broken armchair, folding her legs up close for warmth. Tucker had scrounged up most of the furniture for their downstairs flat when they'd moved in with nothing but a couple bags of clothes and a truckload of books. And their furniture, bad as it was, was in better condition than the stuff Tucker lived with. In his weird way, he was the best landlord she'd ever had.
"You want some smoke?" he offered.
Lenore shrugged. "Wouldn't turn it down."
He started loading a small ceramic bong. "Been pretty dry lately, and we're a long way from summer. You run out of that last bag I give you?"
"Days ago," she said.
"Wow, girl, you been holding out a good long time. Shoulda come see me before now."
"Hey, Tucker, I'm not a junkie or nothing. I can do without."
"Sure you can, babe. Sure you can. Here, taste this."
He finished tamping something green into the pipe of the bong and passed it to her along with his Harley-Davidson lighter. She burned it down in one deep breath; the stuff was hot and resinous, and immediately expanded in her lungs. She hacked it out in one violent burst, and then the coughing fit began.
"Whoa, girl, you're aiming high tonight!"
The 37th mandala : a novel Page 3