Miss Subways: A Novel

by David Duchovny

  “That’s fine,” said Anansi, recoiling as an alligator snapped at her foot. “But what happens when you resurface, Miss Subways? Are you sure your newfound influence extends to the up-top world?”

  Emer hadn’t thought this through. She knew about “fight or flight.” She knew she was running toward something more than she was running from something. She hoped that fine distinction would save her, but of course, she wasn’t sure. With Anansi stalled, ringed by snapping alligators and powerful golems, her Medusa snakes turning on and biting at one another, Emer backed away and ran down the dark tunnel. She was fleeing to the next station, and from there to where, she didn’t know.

  REVENGE OF THE DEATHLINGS

  WHEN EMER, WALKING UPTOWN she figured, got to the next live station, she climbed up on the platform, and stood and waited in the light for the train. She did not want to go aboveground; she was in her element. She felt deputized by Golem, and at least part goddess-like. She could hear Anansi screaming like a banshee down the tunnel from where she had come. But then suddenly all went unnaturally silent from that direction.

  A train moving downtown pulled in at the platform across the tracks from Emer, and then moved on. When it had cleared, two men and a woman were standing on the platform. Con and Sidney, or this must be Sidhe, as he had the doorman’s livery on again. Sidhe stood a step behind Con, in the classic old-movie pose of one man surreptitiously holding a gun to the small of another man’s back. But Sidhe didn’t need a gun; he had the power of the ages in his tiny hands. May Wong stood with the two men.

  “We make deals,” May Wong crowed, grimacing while trying to remove a wad of gum from a stiletto.

  “Emer!” Con, his voice tight, rattled out.

  Before Emer could say anything, she saw Con look back uptown on the tracks. Emer followed his eyes, but could only make out a large shadow moving inhumanly toward them, as if floating, or scuttling without ambulatory gait, low to the ground. With a surprising speed that seemed to ignore gravity, the shadow scampered up the platform and into the light—a man-sized spider.

  Emer felt the revulsion rise up in her throat as the giant spider, followed by a repulsive retinue of New York’s finest plump and nasty gray rats, slid to within a few feet of Con and Sidhe. When the spider came to a stop, though it wasn’t quite a full stop, as appendages and hairy antennae-seeming protrusions kept pulsating and wiggling, Emer could see blood dripping from its saber-like, mammalian-thick fangs, bits of albino alligator flesh stuck between, spraying out. The rats, like the remora fish that tag along beneath sharks, fought over scraps of bloody flesh and clay.

  Emer looked north and south, uptown and downtown, but there were no signs of more trains coming or going. There would be none for a while, she figured. By pulling the emergency brake, she had brought the system to a temporary standstill. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers, above, below, and on all sides of her were, at this very moment, though they had no idea who she was, cursing her quite creatively.

  The giant spider advanced slowly on Con, oozing some sort of sticky web-making matter from her belly as she dragged along. Anansi’s voice was altered through her new physiognomy, sounding still human enough to be understood, but also mealymouthed and underwater, as though her vocal cords were located in her wet and bloody guts.

  “Connie,” she said, “you can’t leave me. You know what happens if you do.”

  “Yes, I know the threats.”

  “You call this a threat, Deathling!?”

  The spider rose up vertically on two of her eight spiked legs, her hourglass figure now looming over Con, her serrated back teeth exposed and gnashing. Veering suddenly toward May Wong, the spider unleashed a torrent from her abdomen that covered the mistress-dispeller from head to toe in a web cocoon, wrapping her with articulate legs like a butcher wraps a cut of meat in brown paper. She stuck a fang in the white bundle; blood oozed. Emer heard a muffled, moaned terrified curse escape from within the web.

  Con found the nerve to insert himself between May and the spider. As the rats began to nibble at the squirming, screaming cocoon that had been May moments before, Emer watched the spider turn back to Con and release from that red mark on her abdomen another stream of what looked to Emer to be cotton candy. Even from across the tracks, Emer could smell the rancid earthiness of this ejaculate. The spider slung a few strands jauntily about Con’s midsection.

  Sidhe had backed away and remained apart, seemingly unperturbed. He looked admiringly at Anansi the spider in much the same way one god might admire the special powers of another, like Zeus contemplating Neptune’s special way with water.

  Emer called out to Con from across the tracks. “If you reject her love, she has to obey you.”

  Con took that in, clearly frightened into near paralysis, and called back to Emer, “Are you sure?”

  “Not at all!”

  “What?”

  “Try it!”

  Con turned to Anansi and pleaded, “Mama, please stop.”

  “No!” Emer shouted. “Reject her love, goddammit! Man up!” The spider kept wrapping sticky strands around Con’s legs. It seemed to Emer that Anansi was all spider now. The webbing reached Con’s knees; he turned back to the mammoth spider busy entombing him to eat later.

  “I reject you!” he managed, choking in fear. The spider paused for a moment, then went back to wrapping him.

  “Louder!” Emer yelled. “Say it again! Reject her love! Be a king!”

  Con spoke up this time. “I reject your love!”

  The spider stopped in mid-stranding, its awful belly opening-closing anxiously, like the nostril of a winded beast. For Emer, Con had found an ancient reserve of power, and he doubled down. “Remove this web!” he commanded. “Now!”

  Dutifully, like a dog, the spider began unwrapping the web from Con, inhaling the sticky substance in reverse.

  Con had to hide his disbelief and pleasure. Emboldened, he turned back to address Emer across the tracks. “What you did for me, the sacrifices you made. I understand now. Sid told me everything. Told me what you did before, in other times.”

  The spider seemed to find something new to be angry about, turning her attention from Con and advancing upon Sidhe, flashing fangs, spraying bloody alligator flesh. “You! You Irish meddler. You’ve been messing with me from the start, for centuries. I may not kill Cuchulain, but I will relish a small meal, a fucking appetizer, like you.” She sprayed Sidhe with her web material, but he nimbly avoided most of it, light on his toes like a river dancer.

  “Whoa, whoa, hey now—the Deathlings have a point. You have not been true to your word, the deal you offered him.”

  “No one here has been true! Dwarf! If she has contact with him, are you not supposed to collect her life? Are your powers so diminished?”

  “I may not be the demon I was, but mark me, Spider, I will still give you fifteen seconds of hell.”

  “So you say,” Anansi continued, extending one of her eight legs to point at Emer across the tracks. “But if she were dead, Cuchulain would love me again.”

  “Ah, that is so, Spider. That is so. Emer…” Sidhe called over to Emer. “That is so. But you and I…” He turned back to Anansi. “We are defined by where we came from and our ancient loves and hatreds, yes, but are we not also defined by our adaptability, by our uncanny knack for survival?”

  Sidhe reached out and grabbed a handful of the web that clung to him, then he put it in his mouth like the cotton candy it resembled. If spiders could blush, perhaps Anansi did, or so it seemed to Emer, from where she stood.

  “You Irish, little Irish thing, think you can consort with me?”

  “Why not?” answered Sidhe, his mouth half full of web. “I know it sounds disgusting to you, and perhaps we’d make a laughable couple walking down the street, but I have to say, lass, you are a beautiful thing yourself, and maybe it’s time, after all these years in the New World, to lay down our arms—in your case, all eight of them—and embrace. I am for you what you
are for me—your way out, and your way in.”

  The spider grew still, six of those eight legs motionless, and looked across at Emer, then she looked at Con. Sidhe continued, “I believe we are talking about pride now, not love. Believe me, I know of injured pride. I’ve had to swallow mine and take Jesuit orders for the past hundred years! Me, a proud natural son of pagan Ireland—a fecking priest!” Sidhe’s pain and humiliation were real, and the spider saw it.

  “Isn’t it just that you need someone to worship you? What matter if it’s this handsome Gancanagh, a king, or a demon like myself? Is it not more epic to have conquered a miraculous thing like me?”

  Sidhe managed, high on his own deal-making sprezzatura, to shoot a wink at Emer. Anansi nodded.

  “Would you like to approach me?” the spider asked/threatened Sidhe.

  “Oh, very much so. I think.”

  Emer didn’t like this, she feared for more bloodshed. She warned, “Careful, Sid.”

  Still, Sidhe walked to the spider. He reached her red navel.

  “You’re repulsive,” the spider told the demon.

  “I’m repulsive?” He laughed. “Have you looked in a mirror recently? Ah well, even through that hairy skin, I can see you. You’re beautiful.”

  The little man kissed the spider’s hideous, fanged mouth. Sidhe pulled back and looked out at Emer, stage whispering, “Not great. I’m not gonna lie, that wasn’t great, but not terrible either. As first kisses go, I’ve had worse. Once in County Galway, after a long night drinking … well, that’s a story for another time.” He rose up on his tiptoes and kissed the drooling maw again.

  Instantly, miraculously, Anansi was transformed into her stunning self again, with her perfect skin and piercing yellow-green parrot eyes.

  “I am beautiful, thigh-high.”

  “You’ve been beautiful for centuries.”

  “Centuries?”

  “From the first time I laid eyes on you, the real you under that Harryhausen disguise, when you came to this country four hundred years ago.”

  “Came? You mean kidnapped. Enslaved. Not by love, but by greed.”

  Sidhe kept talking, like the snake charmer, like the spider charmer, he was. Though Anansi was a beautiful woman once again, he still came only to her waist. Sid kept at her, though, drowning her in waves of words, like waves that wear down rock. “We’ve both been abandoned by people. We’re both lonely. I’m crossing that ancient street, my dear, my spider—this Irish demon knows you as woman, goddess, spider, trickster, all your names—all that you are, and he loves you as you really are, as you always were.”

  Sidhe, on tiptoe, reached up and put his hand gently, but firmly, behind Anansi’s neck, pulling her face down to meet his, and kissed her a third time. This time with her full acquiescence. In the middle of this long embrace, he was lengthened out as if in a fun house mirror, but still handsome, transformed to her height.

  Sidhe smiled and took a step back so they both could take in his full measure, saying, “Love makes a man grow.” Anansi tilted her head to the side coyly, her green eyes fluttering—

  “This whole wager with the Deathlings was for me? To get to me?”

  “Would you like me to say yes?”

  “Yes, Changeling. That pleases me.”

  “Then, yes. All for you. It has all been for you. We must be changelings, goddess. Adapt or die. And love is the agent of change; love is a changeling. You must admit—Sid and Anansi has a ring to it. We will have beautiful, powerful children with unknown powers,” Sid boasted.

  Anansi smiled. “Don’t get too far ahead of yourself there, big guy.”

  Emer believed everything now, like a child. She smiled, like a child. She was free. And Con was free.

  During the confrontation between Sidhe and Anansi, Emer had pretty much forgotten about Con. He had moved away down the platform from the supernatural couple, and now he yelled back, “We also need another start, Emer.”

  “What do you mean?” Emer had a bad feeling again.

  “Too much history, there’s such a thing as too much history. We’ve fucked it all up. I fucked it up. It’s me. We need a clean slate. I can never repay your bravery and sacrifice. I’ll always be in arrears with you, like I was with Anansi. That will doom us. That won’t work. I want to be with you, but not like this, not as the man I am. You were right about me, Emer, I’ve been lazy and asleep.”

  Emer felt the ground rumble, and that rumble building. The subway must be up and running again. A 1 train was coming.

  “You’ve proved your love for me, but I’ve never proved anything for you.”

  “That’s not true!” Emer protested. “You just did!”

  The train moved closer. Emer craned to look down the opposite tracks and saw the headlights pointing their way.

  “A deal’s a deal,” Con said.

  “Wait,” Emer called to Sidhe. “You’re still telling me I can’t see him?”

  Sidney echoed Con, “A deal’s a deal, and a man’s greatest treasure is his word, but maybe we can work something out. Anansi, my dear, do you think you might unwrap the Chinese woman? She is quite the deal maker.”

  Anansi looked at the bleeding cocoon as if for the first time. “Oh Lord, I’m sorry. I go into a funk when I change.”

  “No need for apologies, my arachnid,” Sidhe said.

  Anansi and Sidhe began to unwrap the still-breathing May Wong. When her mouth was clear, May threw some legit shade at Anansi. “You a bitch, bitch.”

  “You hear that, Con?” Emer called out hopefully. “Maybe we can work something out. All of us.”

  “No,” Con said darkly. “No more deals. No more shortcuts, no more half measures, no more lies.”

  Sidhe moaned, “Oh Jesus Christ, a romantic,” and then took out his phone to film the action.

  “Emer!” Con called out, and locked his eyes on her. Emer locked back. He announced: “I am coming for you.”

  As the train barreled forward, Emer watched Con take another step toward her, as calmly as a man walking in the park. His feet were now on the pebbled bright yellow that forms a type of warning track on the edge of the platform.

  “Con!” Emer screamed. “No!”

  “See you soon,” Con promised as he took one more step toward the tracks and the oncoming train, his eyes never leaving Emer, and for a moment hung in the air like a man flying, like a man free.

  Then he disappeared with a sickening thump.

  And the world went black.

  PART

  3

  Well the danger on the rocks is surely past

  Still I remain tied to the mast

  Could it be that I have found my home at last

  Home at last

  —STEELY DAN, “Home At Last”

  “GODSFORSAKEN”

  EMER CLOSED HER EYES and did her best to shut out the nervous noises. She allowed stray sounds to swirl into an undefined oceanic swell, an ear trick that was the aural equivalent of letting her eyes unfocus. The blackness and blankness calmed her. The dark—nothing—nothing is nothing to be feared, her father always said. This was the nothing before the something. The nothing before and after the something. The nothing was there before there was something and would be waiting when the something was done. From nothing to nothing we come and go. She breathed it in.

  She found nothing comforting. So comforting that she opened her eyes.

  Good evening. My name is Emer Gunnels and I want to read to you tonight from a new work of mine called Godsforsaken. I don’t want to be prejudicial, but as a historian turned novelist, I do want to give you a context, share my frame of mind as I sat down to write this book. It was during that horrible election year, and there was all this talk of men being afraid of women, and the changing of the guard, and real vitriol about immigration and terrorism and building that stupid wall. I was thinking deeply about the immigration of people and the immigration of those people’s god or gods from whatever countries they were coming from—Mex
ico, Syria, Niger—wherever. And how our xenophobic response to them was twofold—both as physical beings who would use up our precious resources and as spiritual/religious beings who would undermine our monotheistic Judeo-Christian resource—and it got me thinking about all the waves of spiritual immigration that we have undergone as an immigrant nation and whether our response now would be a contraction out of some neurotic need for purity and order, or an expansion and embrace.

  My mom loved dogs. But she loved mutts most of all. She said they were inherently grateful, and that gratitude was the “queen of all feeling.” But most of all, Mom said that mixed breeds had “mongrel vigor”—you know, the crazy expansion of the canine gene pool. And I started to think, in the time of the first incarnation of the Orange Julius, shouldn’t ideas and gods and spiritual health adhere to the same law of mongrel vigor? You know, let the best woman win. Let the best ideas fight, fuck, and win. Let the fittest gods survive, and by fittest, I don’t mean most powerful, I mean the ones that help us live best and attain our full and contradictory human potential. This struggle is a moral good. As John Milton put it centuries ago in Areopagitica: “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary.” Ideas should be engaged in the same Darwinian struggle as all the rest of life. Everybody in the pool!

  But this sounds like a lecture, and what I set out to do was create a thing of pleasure for y’all—a story. Part history, part shaggy-dog story or fisherman’s tale—Fishtory, if you will. Beyond any moralizing, you see, I wanted to write a nouveau New York docu-noir, that went from black and white to Technicolor when you blinked your eyes.

  Emer inhaled deeply, opened the book in front of her. She began to read from her sovereign work.

  HOME AT LAST

  SHE WAS AT THE AFTER-PARTY for her reading, a glass of wine in her hand, and Izzy by her side. “It’s your best work yet,” Izzy said, already half in her cups. “Before, you were good, but I felt, ’cause I know you, you were writing like twenty percent dumber than you are, but now you’re writing like fifteen percent smarter than you are, somehow, which is a full fifty percent smarter than me so I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about—’cause some old Russian Jew lady poured me a bunch of Manischewitz from a Gucci flask, I shit you not, I’m wasted big-time, like Passover wasted, like Yael Horowitz’s bat mitzvah wasted, oooh, there’s someone I want you to meet that wanted to meet you. Did that make sense? Let me find him again.” Izzy peeled off mid-monologue in search of her prey.