“Get out of here, Joey.”
“If only you’d listen to me.”
“Bug off before I call my father and he comes out here with his shotgun and shoots your undiscriminating balls all over the lawn.”
He stepped back. Gus caught the shifting scent of the scene, and growled louder. She put her hand on his back, feeling just how much muscle lay there beneath the shaggy fur.
“Is that how you solve all your troubles all of the time, Jodi? Huh, forever and ever? You let your father make all the moves for you, too?”
“Too?” she repeated. “Make my moves for me? Shut up. You’re so caught up in your father’s money that you think you can do anything.”
Jello Joe didn’t hear. “Just let your old man and your mother take care of all the guys who show some interest in you? Scaring them off so you can stay safe from the world?”
“You’ve really got some set.” Of course, he was turning it around. Somehow she’d forced him to screw Charlene, she’d thrown them together, just begged him to cheat on her. Throwing in the other guys, like he felt sorry for her other boyfriends.
“That’s always been your problem, Jodi.”
“Enough of this shit! My problem!” Jodi bolted out the door without her coat on, the cold cutting up her arms in a good way, accenting the anger. She grabbed Joe by the wrist and twisted him sideways to face her. She knew the game, and had fallen into it, but wouldn’t play this out how he thought they would. Fine, now she’s out here, and he’s supposed to grab her and kiss her against her will, and after a few seconds of struggling she gives in with a moan and falls into his arms, right? “What’s my problem, you conniving bastard!”
“And you can’t speak calmly, either,” he said. “You’re never willing to listen.”
“What is there to listen to? You can’t apologize enough to me!”
“I never meant to apologize, Jodi. I expected an apology from you.”
And there it was, the insolence rising to the top until he smothered in it, like a fog he was trying to hide in. Where was the whine or the charm now? He had a whole list of attitudes he could throw at her at any minute, turning it on high or low like switching a radio dial, everything but an acceptance of responsibility. Jodi stood with her cheeks turning crimson, stuck between a laugh and apoplexy, going “Wha’, wha’, wha’,” until the rest of it broke loose. “What the hell do you mean by that, you lousy shit?”
“Stop calling me names!”
She couldn’t take it; a wall in her chest suddenly broke and a giggle crashed through, followed by a deep breath she didn’t know she needed to take, and then tears were in her eyes. In a moment she felt completely weak and cold, and her teeth chattered as her nose began to run. She looked around and couldn’t quite figure out why she was out here on the lawn at all, why she’d opened the door and chased him.
Joe spun and lifted his hands as if to touch her shoulders, but she shirked backward, repulsed. “I bought dozens of violets for you, because I know they’re your favorite flower, and …”
Getting her into a conversation was bad enough, but she couldn’t seem to stop talking. She tried to keep her teeth from chattering, but words hissed through. “It doesn’t mean anything, Joey, certainly not enough—”
“Would you shut up and listen to me a minute.” Now, finally, his voice was back on terra firma, was no longer pulled out of shape by these dramatics. He groped, looking genuinely lost for an instant. She’d never seen him like that before. “I was wrong, I know, but there was a reason. You don’t listen, you never listen …” A little apoplectic himself, now turning in the wind. “I … look, I took you to go see loveydovey movies because I know they were the type of flicks you wanted to see, because it’s what you saw when you dreamed about what you wanted in your own life. I took you to the finest restaurants …”
“So it’s back to the money.”
“It’s not back to the money, damn it … listen! I took you because you deserved to have the best, and I didn’t want to take you anywhere second-rate. It’s not the money. It’s not my father’s money, you understand? I know you sometimes thought that, like it was easy for me to do these things, and so they didn’t matter so much, as though they didn’t come from the heart. But they did. You shortchanged me.” He drew his hands to himself as if to say, Look at me, look at how I’m dressed. “The cash doesn’t matter to me, it doesn’t make me, I do what I want. I’m not flash.”
He was, but didn’t realize it, simply flash in a different style. “You’re not making any sense.”
“I would be if you’d listen. I wrote letters to you all the time, called every night, I mean … I thought we meant something to each other. I never felt that way about anyone, but then you would only give back so much, Jodi. I didn’t want to rush you, didn’t want to force you, but …” And now he was drained, and standing there looking pale with leaves in his hair, almost sickly as if he hadn’t been sleeping well either. She noticed the bags under his eyes matched her own. “And I’m not talking sex, you’re just going to harp on that, the sex, as if that’s all it mattered. You never said you love me, like the word was too strong for your taste, you never even said that you cared about me …”
“Of course I—”
“No, no, cut that out, there are no of courses, Jodi, there’s nothing like that. You couldn’t look me in the eye half the time, and you returned so little affection that sometimes when we were on the phone together I thought we’d been cut off. You got a kick out of it, me going ‘Hello?’ and you giggling, but it wasn’t funny. Like you weren’t even on the other end anymore. For a while I thought that you weren’t receiving my cards and letters. You so rarely even mentioned them, never really said thank you, hardly returned anything like that.”
Was it possible? Jodi wondered. That he was the romantic, and she’d failed him in that? He’s just worming out of it, another example of letting her shoulder the burden. But what if he was being honest? Her father occasionally complained the same thing about her mother. It was true enough about the letters and cards, she loved them but didn’t return much of those same kind of sentiments. “I didn’t think you cared about that.”
He was working himself up, staring sidelong at her. “You took my love for granted. All right, all right, before you shoot me down with Charlene again, I know I was wrong, I’ve said it. But it wasn’t the sex, it wasn’t to tell stories over beer. It was callous, and rotten, but it came up from where it was real Jodi, from inside. I did it to hurt you, damn it, I wanted to hurt you. Don’t be so stupid. When you and I were in bed together it was like I was annoying you or breaking your arm, embarrassing you somehow, making it all vile and terrible, and how is that supposed to make me feel?”
“So you go off with another woman, in my own car?”
He raised his hands, again seeking to put them on her shoulders. Though she didn’t move this time, he didn’t touch her. “I was in your car waiting for you. You said you’d get off work by nine, and instead you stayed for a double shift without bothering to tell me. I popped your lock with a coat hanger and was waiting for you when I fell asleep. Charlene was going in for a couple of burgers, she spotted me, I started talking, about you, and…”
“Yeah,” Jodi said. Charlene made no effort to hide the fact that she’d always wanted to jump Joey’s bones, either because of his athletic, sleek figure or because of his cash. “And. I know what she is.”
The words wouldn’t come anymore, and the tears were there where they hadn’t been before, and the wind made it much worse. She spun, and he followed her back to the porch. “And now you expect me to apologize to you for being the way I am?”
“No,” Joe said. “I just expected you to love me.”
Gus barked inside now. And again, and then howling, scratching at the base of the door and driving his head against the screen. She said, “Gus, stop it, calm down. It’s over. Quit it.” She opened the latch to step inside, and the dog came barreling out in a heap. Je
llo Joe crossed his arms in case it was true that Gusto might chew his heart out, but instead the dog raced off across the lawn, heading up the street.
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Why are you here, Joey?” she asked, her chin jutting. The rage dwindled, though she couldn’t quite explain why that should be. It still felt as if he was only manipulating her, throwing everything at her. He was a conniver. There were some things she knew about him that she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t aware of, and hadn’t already accepted long ago: She could pretty much tell when he was lying and when he was too distraught to even try bullshitting her—he could put it all on a stage if he had to, but sincerity wasn’t an act, that much was certain. The rest of the relationship might be in the air, but she realized he was honest at this moment.
“Why am I here? You’re really asking that?” But if she believed he loved her, that somehow made the pain worse. “Why are you here?”
She searched his face for that charming grin, and didn’t find it.
He put his hands in his pockets. “I came over to talk to Matt. I wanted to invite him to my dad’s party tonight. And because I love you.”
Jodi rubbed her freezing arms.
Quietly she said, “Oh.”
YHWH.
Blood.
Spirit.
Knowledge.
Witch.
Ritual.
Magik.
Death.
Frenzy.
BAPHOMET.
These words.
The houses rushed by as Jazz drove on.
One by one, whirling past Matthew’s vision like killers falling on victims for the taking.
He knew almost every one of them, or had known them years before in his childhood: the owners, yards, the cats and dogs that lay curled on the welcome mats or roamed freely up and down the blocks, the special way each of those doors clacked shut with its own unique whuff of air, different in the winter than in summer. The thwack of rolled-up papers thumped in his thoughts, on top of patio roofs and stuck in rain gutters, until after time and with greater finesse, the newspapers could be shot whipping like boomerangs right into your mailbox from thirty paces away, or left leaning against the door at the perfect angle so that your dog could grip it in his jaws and bring it to you, or you could reach out with your toes and flip the paper up into your hands, if you were inclined to do so. It was funny to watch some of them try in the winter, wearing fuzzy slippers, sliding their toes under the paper and giving a quick knee jerk, kicking up so the Gazette spun into their grasp and their slippers landed fifteen feet out in the snow on the blizzard-ridden lawn. Such a small common sound, that thwack, and it had become such an uncommonly large part of his life, like the taunting of the scars.
Jazz took one final drag of his cigarette and threw the butt out the window, reached for another, and found the pack empty. He crumpled it into a ball and bounced it off the dashboard. “Man,” he said, making a ridiculously wide turn around the corner. His already erratic driving had grown worse now. “The sheriff sure fucked you up. We’re going to the hospital.”
“I’m okay.”
“There’s a gallon of blood on your shirt, Mattie. We should go. You need attention.”
“No need. I’m fine.”
Jazz shook his head, ponytail bobbing side to side. “I don’t see how he didn’t break your nose. What the hell made you go and touch the body, Ibsen, huh? Why’d you do such a god-awful crazy thing like that?”
Matthew said nothing, staring out the car window.
“I just hope Cindy doesn’t get into any trouble. Hodges made me a promise that he’d chew on my eyeballs if you or I said anything about what we saw back there. He’s got to know she filled me in on the scene. He gets demented like that sometimes.” Jazz clicked the heater’s fan up another notch. “She didn’t tell me what it would be like, though. Jesus, why didn’t she warn me?” He gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his fidgety fingers squealed against it. The car zagged, pulling to the left, and he constantly had to fight for control. “I suppose I imagined there’d be cameras and clues and we could watch the cops go to work and maybe even see them capture the son of a bitch, you know? Christ, I’m so limited. I didn’t stop to think there might be that in front of me. I teach kids her age all day long.” The car crossed the yellow line and the driver of an oncoming pickup swerved and shouted. Jazz gestured obscenely, the car again crossing the line. He reached for a pack of cigarettes he didn’t have. “Shit. I was all set to watch them hang him by his nuts, but now… now, with him still locked up, I’m not sure what the hell is happening. I thought they’d have to release A.G., or at least consider the possibility of him being framed. Too much freakin’ television, I guess. And me, a dramatist. Mattie, you got any ideas?”
“He hasn’t even been formally charged. What they’re doing is already illegal.”
Things would get more insane as the town came out of remission and the cancer attacked once again. Who are the dead? he wondered. Who are the mad? What forms are the daemons taking now? Some of them were fond of animals, others luxuriated in insects, and still more enjoyed the human form. He watched the houses. His feet beat at the floor mats, and he thought of Helen here in this same car way back then, the first time they’d made love. His leg throbbed as if recalling the break.
There were too many people already involved, and more would become entwined. How many had succumbed and still acted normally?… The nosy neighbors and blue-haired biddies and bored housewives, and those with nothing better to do than watch him wherever he went. He had to be careful, especially now that Hodges had come unstuck.
They passed Pond Boulevard, and saw the old house where Judy Ann Culthbert had invited him inside for a fresh piece of apple pie, when he and A.G. had attacked Elemi as the beast had tried to make its love to her. He remembered the familiar voice on the phone.
A few more doors down was the house where Ruth Cahill had lived, her mother’s light always shining on the third floor.
“Who’s Aleister Crowley?” Jazz asked, slowing for a stop sign.
STOP: red octagon with white letters, clouds on blood, a symbol inherent with power from several levels. The pole had been bent awkwardly, face of the sign spray-painted with cutting black lines.
Shaping a swastika.
Crowley had claimed the Nazis stole their idea—not from antiquity, but from him.
“Nobody,” Matthew said. “A bad showman.”
“What, an actor?”
“More like Vaudeville.”
Jazz turned, came as close to sneering as he could, and said, “You want to just answer my goddamn question straight, Mattie?”
And in that instant, Matthew had the feeling that he’d jerked in his seat though he hadn’t moved; the sensation was like spinning through the air and being dumped from a great height before suddenly being stopped short, the way they’d used the strappado on suspected witches, tying their arms behind them and then dropping them from above until their shoulders were yanked out of the sockets. Like when he was drunk and the perfect words to improper spells couldn’t be kept under his tongue any longer. “Why do you ask?”
“A.G. mentioned the name once, before the fans jumped into the shit. I thought it might mean something important, a valid connection. You say an actor, but I was thinking maybe a drug dealer, you know? Somebody like that, or a whole lot worse?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Why do you think he talked about him, then? Who is this guy, for Christ’s sake?”
Checking the rearview, Matthew watched the stop sign dwindling in the distance.
He could tell Jazz some more of the truth, but not all of it, never all of it.
He could tell Jazz that—
—Aleister Crowley, fool, idiot, joker of the troupe yet reputed to be a powerful magician, at least until the end when drugs and syphilis had destroyed his garnered reputation, who referred to himself as the Beast 666, born in 1875 and who be
lieved himself to be the reincarnation of Eliphas Levi, the ex-priest who published Dogma and Ritual in High Magic in 1856, the second volume of which contained the frontispieces of the famed Black Goat, the Baphomet of Mendes—with its cloven hooves, wings, and goat’s head with a pentagram on the brow; the torch of knowledge lying between the horns to represent sin; the twisted twin snakes of the caduceus rising from its lap representing eternal life and sex; and the rounded female breasts representing humanity; Baphomet pointing to two crescent moons at its sides, black and white, one above and the other below, like the sides of two boys’ faces.
In 1898 Crowley became a member of a group of occultists known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, another member of which was the brilliant poet William Butler Yeats, who put lyrics to the witches’ songs, pursuing the study of magiks and mysticism. They used the ancient textbooks, perhaps the same volumes Matthew himself had paged through, the tomes inviting the proper seeker: the Hermetica, Book of Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin, and also the ugliest, perhaps, because it was the most enchanting, Grimoire of Pope Honorius.
In his arrogance, Crowley sought claim to being the wickedest man in the world. Given the new law by Aiwass, having been worshiped by the Egyptians as Set, he had the pomposity to presume, the entire law being, horrifying in its overt simplicity, “Do what you will.” He’d studied the Enochian language, which sounded something like Sanskrit—melodic, nasal, and musical, yet extremely difficult on the throat, disrupting your rhythm of breathing when first making the attempt—and which enabled one to communicate with angels, spirits, and the djinn on the astral planes called Aethyrs. He’d had only nominal success, several daemons had implied to Matthew. Crowley was usually too drunk to focus his chi correctly. Attempting to climb the third-highest mountain in the world, Kanchenjunga of the Himalayas, he’d allowed the rest of his team to be buried in an avalanche without making any attempt to help.
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