SHADOWS

by Jonathan Nasaw

  "You'd have done the same for me—hell, you did do the same for me, back in sixty-three."

  "Whatever. But in a way that made it harder. I'd attend the Sabbats, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing—or crying. Meaningless ritual—dumb show—I'd be lying there at an orgy, bodies all around me, dead from the neck down, with that stupid Patti Page song running through my head—"

  " 'How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?' "

  "No. The one about is that all there is?"

  "That was Peggy Lee."

  "Well excuse me. You're forty-eight and it's Peggy Lee. Now if you'll let me finish…"

  Selene ran a finger across her lips. "Zzzzip."

  "Thank you. Anyway, I'm thinking Is this all there is? and the answer's coming back At best, but what's left if I give up Wicca? My waitressing job at the Trident? So I do the same dumb thing women have been doing since the dawn of time when they're feeling lost and empty—I get myself knocked up. Won't feel empty any more. I thought I was being so clever. I waited until you were out of town and seduced Jamey—oh, I was shameless—cut my finger carving my runes—Silly me, look what I've done. And of course it didn't work—I hated being pregnant. You and the ladies fluttering around me—oh, let me feel it kicking, oh the miracle of life—and it's like, What miracle? A cockroach can reproduce. A dog does it six at a time."

  "But you never let on, we never had the slightest idea—"

  "It wasn't as if any of you really wanted to hear it, you know. I cried through half the pregnancy and everybody said it was only hormones. I don't know, maybe it was. And I figured it would all change once the baby was born, that I'd look down into that little face and feel that serenity and that sense of meaning and accomplishment I always associated with new moms… Hell, I was going to be the fucking Madonna—the real one, not the singer.

  "Only of course it didn't happen like that. Fourteen hours of agony, then I'm holding this little wizened, bloody, hairy, crusty thing and everybody's going ooh and ah, and I'm thinking It might as well be a monkey. We might as well be monkeys.

  "So I'm living at the Broadway house on your charity, I can't even waitress anymore, I haven't had a full night's sleep in a month, and I'm praying to the Goddess, whom I no longer believe in, for something, anything to take away this dead feeling and on top of everything else Martha gets the colic and I'm up pacing the floor with her for the third night in a row and she's screaming her lungs out and there comes a point where I'm holding her over my head and I swear to you I was this close to smothering her with a pillow.

  "Instead I call Connie. She hops on the Sportster; in an hour she's sitting on the edge of my bed rocking Martha in her arms and looking down at her with so much love and longing—you remember she and Don couldn't have any kids, and with his prison record nobody was going to let them adopt—and I feel like a color-blind woman watching a sunset.

  "Next morning Don brings the pickup and me and Martha move into the shed behind the 'frame. Time passes—soon Martha's spending most of her time in the house and Connie on her worst day is doing a better job of nurturing than I am on my best, and within a couple of weeks Nanny the goat has taken over my only remaining function. It was sort of a defining moment in my career as a mother: replaced by a goat.

  "But when I try to tell Connie what's going on, what I hear is still, 'Hormones and postpartum depression and what you really need is just a little time to yourself and why don't we take Martha off with us on the spring run to Mendocino?' and in the back of my mind all I'm thinking about is that belladonna bush you planted up the hill behind Jamey's A-frame, and it wasn't so much a matter of caring whether I would fly as it was not caring if I died.

  "They left on Saturday morning. When I went up to the herb garden the black cherries were shriveled up like raisins. I didn't know whether this would make them more or less potent. I followed the directions in the Herbalis, but instead of a tart shell, I used the base of an ice cream cone."

  Selene's professional interest was piqued. "Cake or sugar?"

  "Cake. Sugar soaks through and leaks. Didn't help, though; to this day the thought of that godawful glop still gives me the shudders. I ate my cone at sunset, in the woods behind Don and Connie's—a decision so flawed it is now enthroned in the Bad Idea Hall of Fame. An hour later I was lurching around the gazebo buck naked with the staggers and jags. That's when I separated. I remember floating through the gazebo dome and looking back down at my body lying where it had fallen, scratched and scraped from wandering through the woods. Then that terrifying sense of flying through nothingness—what did you call it? Oakland?—and the fear came down on me like a two-ton fly swatter.

  "I was sure I was going to die, and all I could think about—not in words, mind you, but on a deeper level, I'd say middle to lower chakras, only I didn't have a body—all I had time to think about, was that I'd never fuck again."

  Selene started to snicker, tried to turn it into a cough. Moll wasn't fooled; she nudged Selene lightly in the ribs. "I know, I know: it's the spiritual equivalent of walking out of the ladies' room trailing toilet paper from your panty hose. And it was even odder, because like I told you before, I'd been feeling dead to sex for a good year before I even got pregnant."

  "So? What happened next?"

  "So? I flew. But I didn't see the people I cared about, the way you did, Selene. I didn't even see any people I knew, or very many places I recognized. Bedrooms, mostly, and hotel rooms and motel rooms, and in every room there were strangers… I don't want to say fucking, or making love, or having sex, because that doesn't begin to describe what was going on, what I was seeing.

  "At first, I have to admit, once I had decided that I wasn't dead, but flying, just the way all the ancient witchlore had described it, there was more than a little element of pure voyeurism to it. I started off by playing around: I'd think about a mommy/daddy type couple, look down, and there they'd be in the missionary position, pajamas and all. I'd think about men together, and whoosh—off I'd go to the Castro, looking down through the roof of a bathhouse. Or I'd think about a threesome, say, or an S and M orgy in a private club, or a twenty-dollar hooker giving a guy a backseat blow job. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

  "Then, as I gained confidence, I got a little more imaginative. I'd think about transvestites, and whoosh, I'd be looking down on a drag queen stripping at the foot of a bed. Bestiality—whoosh. Kids, virgins, wedding nights—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

  "Then, after I'd gone through every variety of sex I could think of, I really went baroque, seeking out variations on variations. Old folks in threesomes. Pubescent boys—a dormitory circle-jerk. Women with women, but this time diesel dykes having rough sex, then a couple of preteen girls practicing kissing, getting hot, pretending one of them is a boy. Transsexuals—man-to-woman with man, man-to-woman with woman, woman-to—Anyway, you get the idea. But the most peculiar part—"

  "Oh please don't get any more peculiar," whispered Selene. "I'm about peculiared out."

  "Ironic, then—that's a better word. What I mean is, it wasn't until after I'd thoroughly exhausted my entire life experience and my imagination, and was just sort of floating around, looking down when the spirit moved me, that I finally saw what I think the Fair Lady wanted me to see all along.

  "It started off, I was looking down on a woman gliding along a linoleum corridor in an electric wheelchair, steering one-handed with a joystick. I couldn't tell her age because of the way all the muscles of her face were working continually, like pudding coming to a boil—my best guess'd be late twenties. My other best guess is some severe form of cerebral palsy. It's late at night. Some kind of hospital or long-term care facility. At the end of the corridor she pushes a door open with one foot and rolls inside; I float over the top. Inside, in the dark, a man in a bed says something—I can't make it out—his voice is slow, slurred, distorted, kind of like a forty-five rpm record played at thirty-three and a third.

  "She says something back—she's not any easier to
understand than he is."

  Selene shifted uncomfortably on the couch. "I think I see where this is going," she whispered, feeling a little like Scrooge pleading with the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come. "And I really don't think I want to go there with you."

  Moll clenched her fists as tightly as she could without impaling her palms. "If I could only make you see," she whispered passionately. "Please, Selene, let me try. I promise you, it wasn't grotesque at all—a little funny maybe, but what sex isn't?"

  Selene put a finger to her own lips. "Not talking, me."

  "She rolled her chair up to the side of his bed. With his hand controls he lowered the bed to wheelchair height, and she transferred over. They did the oddest thing before kissing—put their hands up in front of their faces as they brought their heads together. Like bumpers, I figured out, watching them lock lips and chow down: at any moment, the head of either one might jerk forward uncontrollably. If they hadn't worked out this thing with their hands they'd have continually been butting each other.

  "They kissed long and slow and pretty sweet, considering all the spittle flying around. It took them forever to undress; having only two good working hands between the two of them—her left, his right—they had to work together to get her bathrobe off and her nightgown over her head. She was glowing with perspiration by the time they finished. And he got his nightshirt stuck over his head with his good arm trapped in it, and she tugged it the rest of the way off with her hand and her teeth. But they weren't impatient about it—they'd done it before—they showed each other a thousand little kindnesses. It was sweet, and moving, and if I'd had a body it might even have made me hot. She had cute little dangly breasts that brushed his chest when she leaned against him to help him out of his shirt, and he had a respectable hard-on.

  "But oh, what they had to go through to actually get him inside her. She had to help prop him up and keep him from slipping over sideways; he had to help her get her leg over him so she was sitting on his lap; she had to close her fist over his dick so as not to bend it in half until they got it properly situated and aligned.

  "As for the actual fucking, that's what I mean by funny. See, she couldn't exactly raise and lower herself, and he sure couldn't pump her, but between the two of them, their tics and jerks, all the spazz moves we used to make fun of when we were kids"—Moll mimed the old joke of the spastic boy rewarding himself with an ice cream cone to the forehead—"they had more moves than a sack of Mexican jumping beans."

  "I get the idea," said Selene.

  "Hush. I'm about done. When they came, I left, and the next thing I knew I was hovering over a body lying on the hard floor of the gazebo. As soon as I recognized it for mine, I was back in it—and oh was it sore.

  "But by then I'd seen what the Fair Lady wanted me to see, and I knew what my task was going to be. Find out about sex magick. Whatever it was that was the difference between being dead like I'd been for a year, and being alive the way those two poor lucky souls were, it had something to do with sex. Of course, I had no idea what that meant, choosing sex magick for my life's work—or having it chosen for me. About all I had figured out was that it was like gravity—the only way you even know it exists is by the effect it has on passing bodies.

  "Not that I was phrasing it—or anything—all that elegantly back then. In fact, there was very little difference between the frame of mind I was in and a flat-out psychotic breakdown. Those first weeks when everybody was looking for me, I was hanging out in bars in San Francisco—straight bars, lesbian bars, even gay bars—and taking on all comers. It was a steep slide to a deep bottom—two or three years spiraling down, two or three years in the Underworld like Persephone, two or three years climbing back to the light. Talk about a long strange trip—doesn't get much stranger than that road from the Tenderloin to Winnemucca to Vegas to that fancy office of mine. I keep telling myself that someday I'm going to write a book about it. I will, too, after a few gentlemen of respect whose names end in vowels have passed through the veil." Moll bent the tip of her nose sideways with her forefinger, the traditional sign for wise guys.

  Selene had to interrupt again. "And in all that time—I'm sorry for sounding like a Jewish mother—but in all those years it never occurred to you to get in touch with the people who loved you? Never mind me, never mind your sister—what about Martha?"

  "I thought about her. Of course I thought about her. That's why I sent you that letter, so that I knew she'd be taken care of no matter what happened. But as for getting in touch, it didn't occur to me those first few years that there was a soul on earth who wanted or needed me. I was way past low self-esteem by then: I had no esteem whatsoever, and very little self."

  "When did you find out about Connie?"

  "A year or so after she died. I was running a legit house in Nye County, and one of the fringe bikers—remember Hank the Crank?—just happened to show up. I comped him to keep his mouth shut, and sent Don a letter. Told him if Martha needed me, I'd come back. I also told him you knew who Martha's father was, if money was needed. I didn't want him to know what I was doing, so I used a P.O. box in Vegas as a return address. He never answered."

  "You don't know, then?"

  "Know what?"

  "Don's dying, Moll. The doctors give him another couple of months at best."

  "Oh shit."

  "My sentiments exactly. But there's something else we have to consider here. I don't know how the actuaries work out the tables for people being stalked by murderous arsonists, but when you factor in the belladonna, curare, and distachya, I imagine it's somewhere in the don't-buy-green-bananas category."

  "All the more reason for you to disappear."

  "But either way it works out exactly the same for Martha—she's fast running out of surrogate parents. And she's seventeen years old and not a virgin and if I had to predict how she'd react to hearing your life story, my guess would be a range somewhere between yuck and cool, which is how all teenagers feel about their parents anyway."

  "So you think she'd want to hear from me?"

  "I don't know. She might tell you to fuck off. But I've read a lot on the subject, and one of the few things all the so-called experts agree on is that there's not a kid in the world who was abandoned—sorry, dearie, but that's the word, Fair Lady or no Fair Lady—who doesn't on some level think it's their own fault. So whether she wants to hear from you or not, I'm pretty sure she needs to hear from you. You owe her that much, Moll. And if anything happens to me, I want you to promise me you'll get in touch with her—no, that you'll go to her. You owe me that much, for taking care of her all these years."

  "You're going back then." It was hardly a question.

  "Of course."

  "Want company?"

  Selene shook her head. "I just want to know you'll be there for Martha."

  "I'll be there. Witch's Word. When did you want to leave?"

  "Soon as possible. Which reminds me, I was going to ask you, have you got a good travel agent? I'm thinking about heading home by way of Santa Luz."

  "How come?"

  "I want to pick up a few items from Granny Weed before I run into Aldo or Jonas again."

  Moll seemed to be resigning herself to Selene's leaving. "Good idea," she said brightly. "I can have my secretary make the arrangements for you in the morning. But there's something you can do for me in the meantime."

  "And what might that be?" asked Selene.

  Moll, grinning: "Rub my back the way you used to."

  "You got it. Lie down and roll over."

  "I love it when you talk dirty," joked Moll. "Let me draw the shades first. Half the apartments in New York have telescopes and the rest have binoculars."

  "What do you care?" retorted Selene. Then, hastily: "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that to sound—"

  "No offense taken." Moll reached for the Lucite rod to close the blinds. "And Goddess knows I don't mind a little exhibitionism—exhibitionism been bery bery good to me. But I don't like to encourage Peepin
g Toms. It's not only immoral, in my case it's theft of services. If somebody wants to get their jollies seeing me naked, they have to pay A-Mature Productions fifty-nine ninety-five for the privilege."

  CHAPTER 3

  « ^ »

  The lights were on in the A-frame when Martha returned home from her not-a-date with just-a-friend-who-happened-to-be-a-boy Friday night. When she saw the strange Toyota in the driveway her breath caught in her throat—Daddy Don! She tried to calm her fears. It couldn't be a doctor's car, she told herself, because all the doctors drove Beemers or Benzes or at least four-wheel drives. But neither would any self-respecting biker have been caught dead in a beigey-tan Corolla.

  So she was pleasantly surprised when she opened the front door to see Daddy Don propped into a sitting position, conversing woozily with a man she'd never seen before. Neatly spruced brown hair and mustache, black pullover, black slacks, ankle-high black boots. His head was a little too large for his body, but otherwise he was okay looking. "Martha!" he cried unexpectedly, jumping to his feet as she entered the room. "Thank God."

  She couldn't think of a reply. He crossed the room with an athletic stride, took her hand almost before she could extend it, and shook it warmly. She threw Daddy Don a questioning glance over the stranger's shoulder; Baechler gave her a loopy morphine smile. "Honey, this is… this is…"

  "Len. Len Patch." He let go of her hand, peered earnestly into her eyes. "Did you have any trouble tonight? Anyone approach you, anyone seem to be following you?"

  "Not that I noticed." She hurried across the room to Daddy Don. "What's this all about, Daddy? Is something wrong?" His pupils were absolutely pinned. "Wait a minute, where's Dirtbag?"

  The old biker struggled for focus. "Something… something happened?" He looked past her to Patch for confirmation.

  "Everything's fine," said the stranger soothingly. "And I'm here to see that everything stays that way." He waited while Martha fussed over Daddy Don for a moment, fluffing his pillows and tidying the covers. When she straightened up, the man caught her eye. "Is there somewhere we can talk?" he whispered.