The Mona Lisa Sacrifice

by Peter Roman

  “Or so I’ve heard,” I added.

  Penelope went back to making up stories about her encounters with strange and mythical beasts, and I went back to drinking brandy and keeping my mouth shut. I won’t bore you with the details. Rest assured there were more photos and more exotic dishes and more excitement and lingering of hands where there shouldn’t have been lingering of hands.

  We only stayed a few hours, and then Penelope said we had to be going. She said she had a lead to track down regarding my identity. She put all the photos back in the envelopes before handing them to the monocle man. He gave her an envelope in return when he saw us to the door.

  “My dear, it always a delight to see you,” he told her. “Hopefully there won’t be such a long delay next time.”

  “I’ll do my best to return soon,” she said. “But you know I can’t predict where the mysteries of the world will lead.”

  “Indeed,” he said and turned to me. “And I wish you well finding your people,” he said, in a way that indicated he hoped I’d never mingle with his people again.

  I thought about tearing out his throat but settled for shaking his hand. I made it as painful a grip as I could without breaking anything, and I was happy to see him wince and quickly pull his hand away. Then I turned his monocle into plain glass. We left him at his front door, blinking in confusion, and drove back to the hotel.

  I looked in the envelope he’d given her. It was full of money.

  “Why didn’t you just tell them the truth?” I asked.

  “They wouldn’t understand,” she said. “They’re not like us. They wouldn’t believe the truth. I give them the fantasies that I know they want.”

  “Us?” I said.

  “So where are we going to look for the angels?” she said, changing the subject in her usual subtle way.

  “There aren’t any here,” I said. “I can’t feel them.” Which was probably true enough, although I hadn’t been looking that hard on account of enjoying the baths and the clean sheets and all that.

  “Where do we go then?” she asked.

  I didn’t have to think that over too long.

  “Paris,” I said.

  “Why Paris?” she asked.

  “There are always angels in Paris,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t have thought angels the romantic type,” she said.

  “They’re not,” I said. “They like all the catacombs and cemeteries there. I think it makes them feel at home.”

  “It’s just been liberated from the Nazis,” she pointed out. “There’s probably still fighting going on.”

  “Even better,” I said. “The angels like blood.”

  She sold the car to the front-desk clerk at the hotel at a bargain price and we took the train across the country to New York. We threw decorum to the wind and rented a sleeper cabin. We’d shared the same shack in the woods, after all. For once in my many lives I managed to be a gentleman and didn’t touch her. I could barely sleep though. I was too busy wondering why I’d been so overcome with jealousy back at that mansion. Also, I kept thinking about her naked body underneath the pyjamas as she lay beside me, covered by the sheets. I was a man, after all, and not Christ.

  We passed through long forests as dark as night and wound our way along the bottoms of mountains where men must have died by the dozens to lay the tracks for the train. We crossed empty, dead farmers’ fields, where the houses and broken farm equipment lay half-buried after countless dust storms. Penelope took photos of them with her portable camera. We passed other fields where men and women bent with age were tending rows of wheat shoots just barely out of the ground. Penelope took photos of them too.

  “I thought you only took photos of supernatural things,” I said.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” she said.

  “Like what you meant when you said Miss Cassandra’s friends back in San Francisco weren’t like us,” I said. “What do you mean, us?”

  She smiled and took a photo of me with the camera. She didn’t say anything, so I didn’t speak again either. I wanted some answers before we actually got close to any angels. I needed to know what I was dealing with when it came to Penelope.

  The train slowed as we passed a camp of homeless people living by the tracks. They huddled by their fires and watched us. People from the train leaned out the windows and tossed them chocolate bars, packages of cigarettes and matches, even a few cans of food.

  The homeless people left their fires and tents to gather up the things on the ground and lifted their hands in thanks. A few of them bowed their heads in silent prayer, and I turned away from them.

  We sped up again and continued on, through more empty fields and then villages and towns. After a time, the night sky began to glow in the distance. New York. When we disembarked from the train and walked out into the city, the moon was red.

  We found a hotel and rented two rooms again. I lay in my bed and thought about Penelope on the other side of the wall between us. I wondered if she was lying awake thinking about me.

  The next day we flew to Paris. I paid for the flights with money I’d lifted here and there from people on the train. Penelope had never been to the city before—she’d never even been to Europe—so I spent the morning showing her around the sights. Some of them were marked with bullet holes now, and others had been blown up, either by the Nazis or the resistance, but most of the ones that counted were still there. And there was something in the air, something special even for Paris. A sense of freedom and exhilaration. The sort of feeling you always find in cities after a siege has been lifted. I couldn’t help but point out all the sights to her because of that. We stopped in patisseries and ate croissants and sweets. The last time I’d been in Paris, I’d been drunk on absinthe and on the run from . . . well, I couldn’t remember who I’d been running from that time. I preferred this way of travelling.

  In the afternoon, we wandered the River Seine. We stopped on a bridge and watched boats drift underneath, all of them bearing multiple French flags. I remember my breath was visible in the air. I remember my skin was cold but I was warm inside. A few lines of Baudelaire came to me.

  “Soon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows,” I said, “and all of summer’s stunning afternoons will be gone.”

  “It was summer yesterday,” Penelope said, looking up at the grey sky overhead. “Now it’s autumn.”

  I looked at her. “A poetry lover,” I said. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “My mother used to read to me,” she said.

  I could tell from the way she said it that her mother was past tense.

  “What happened to her?” I asked.

  “She fell from a bridge,” Penelope said.

  I considered the water once more. “Interesting choice of verb,” I said.

  Penelope wrapped her arms around herself and huddled in her coat to stay warm. “I don’t know if she jumped or was pushed,” she said. “Or was thrown.”

  I took off my coat and put it around her. “Who would have thrown her from a bridge?” I asked.

  “The angel,” she said, still looking at the sky.

  “The same one you’re looking for,” I said, which was more of a conclusion than a question. She nodded her agreement as she shuffled in closer to me and turned away from the wind.

  “Why would an angel want to kill your mother?” I asked.

  “You’ll have to take my word for it when I say I don’t know,” Penelope said.

  “Which angel do you think it was?” I asked.

  Now she looked at me. “I don’t know that either,” she said. She was so close I could feel her breath on my lips.

  “Then why do you think an angel was involved?” I asked.

  “Because it was involved with her entire life,” she said. “So I’d be surprised to learn it wasn’t involved in her death.”

  “You’re going to
have to explain that,” I said, but Penelope just smiled at me.

  “I don’t have to do anything,” she said, and kissed me.

  LIFE AFTER DEATH

  All right, I need another break.

  I don’t want to talk about that right now.

  Let’s talk about what I did after I managed to kill White’s body instead of exorcising the demon inside it and bringing it back to White.

  I went back to White’s gallery. The door was open, so I let myself in. White was sitting at his desk in the back, with the bottle of whiskey. Two glasses, one for him and one for me. I sat down across from him and didn’t say anything. The plant seemed to be doing well. That was something, at least.

  Judging by how much whiskey was left in the bottle, White had been drinking for a while. I figured I didn’t have to break the bad news to him—he must have felt it somehow.

  “Sorry,” I said. There’s not really a standard expression of condolence for moments like this.

  White shook his head. “Don’t be,” he said. “You’ve freed me.”

  “I killed you,” I pointed out.

  White shrugged. “I’ve been dead for a while,” he said. “At least now I can get on with it.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked. It was a worthy question. Ghosts aren’t like normal souls, which leave the physical realm when their bodies die. They’ve got a few more options available to them. Call it a tradeoff for being severed from their bodies prematurely, although most don’t see it that way.

  White finished off his glass and smiled at me. “I’ve always wanted to travel,” he said.

  I poured myself a generous shot of whiskey—three fingers, if you must know—and glanced around the gallery.

  “What about this place?” I asked.

  “Make me an offer,” White said, and I toasted him with my glass.

  “I’m not really the type to settle down,” I told him.

  He nodded and looked at the gallery himself, like he was seeing the place for the first time.

  “I think I’ll just leave the door open for someone else,” he said.

  “Whoever it is may just come in and steal all the paintings,” I pointed out.

  White nodded. “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe the person who needs this place will find it. Either way, I’m sure everything in here will find a good home.”

  I downed half my glass in a single swallow. “While you’re feeling charitable . . .” I said.

  White smiled. “Ah yes, our bargain. I was wondering if you would remember.”

  I smiled back at him and waited to see if he’d been bluffing me all along.

  He hadn’t been bluffing.

  “There’s an art auction once a year for special collectors,” he told me. “It has no name, and it’s held in a different location each time. You can only find it if you’re supposed to be there.”

  “Please tell me they’re not special collectors like you,” I said. “I don’t think I can survive any more deals.”

  “This year’s meeting is in Detroit tomorrow night at eight,” he said and told me an address. I won’t tell you what it is because I don’t want anyone finding it. Not yet. You’ll understand my reasons for that shortly.

  “The collector who currently has Mona Lisa in his possession will be sending a representative to the auction,” White said.

  “How do you know for certain?” I asked.

  “Because he always has and always will,” White said. “He’s one of the founding members.”

  “Who is he?” I asked, but White just smiled at me.

  “I’ve given you enough,” he said. “I’m not going to risk what little life I have left by telling you his name.”

  “So how am I supposed to know who to talk to about Mona Lisa?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry about it,” White said. “His agent will want to talk to you.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “You’re exactly the sort of thing he likes to collect,” White said.

  And with that he got up and went out the door of his gallery and vanished into the night.

  I sat at the desk a while longer, considering what he’d told me. An ache in my hand reminded me about my lost finger, so I grew it back and then finished the rest of the bottle on the cab ride to the airport.

  A MESSAGE AMONG THE DEAD

  OK.

  I just needed a drink before I could carry on.

  Penelope and I got a single hotel room in Paris instead of two separate ones. We locked ourselves inside it and made love for days. At the beginning she asked me about protection, but I explained to her the body I inherited seemed to be sterile. Some sort of cosmic joke, no doubt. She just smiled and said we may as well enjoy the joke. Then she pulled me to her.

  We only opened the door for room service. We kept the doors to the balcony ajar and listened to the sounds of Paris outside, the car horns and the music and the laughter of people passing below. We breathed deep of the smell of baking bread and coffee, of cigarettes and cooking meat. Of the stuff of life.

  The whole thing was a surprise to both of us, but it also had the sense of inevitability about it. And something else for me. I’d slept with, well, hundreds of women in my time. Maybe more. I’d lost count, if I’d ever been counting at all. I couldn’t even remember most of them. Maybe Alice took them from my memory, or maybe I just wanted to forget them, the way they wanted to forget me when they caught a glimpse of my true nature. But Penelope was different. Penelope was the first lover who came to me after she found out what I was.

  But, of course, it was much more complicated than that.

  We finally went out for lunch one sunny afternoon. Who knew what day it was? We sat on the patio of a café for hours. Penelope read a newspaper article about Amelia Earhart, who’d disappeared years earlier and who was still missing. I sipped my coffee and watched the world go by without us. Life was as perfect as I could imagine. I knew it wouldn’t last. The perfect moments never last. That’s what makes them perfect.

  “I met her once,” Penelope said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Amelia Earhart,” she said. “She came to the meeting of an association I belonged to once in Boston.”

  “You belonged to it?” I asked. “Or Miss Cassandra belonged to it?”

  She smiled. “Lady Hippolyta belonged to it,” she said. “But Amelia didn’t. She just came because she wanted to know what sorts of spirits might live in the sky.” She glanced up at the clouds drifting overhead. “I told her there were a lot of people who would like to know the answer to that question.”

  I looked over at the newspaper and scanned the other headlines. A story about American troops storming some island or another in the Pacific. A column urging a world court to try the Nazis once Berlin finally fell. Another column warning us all to keep an eye on the Russians after this was all over, for fear we’d all become Russians. I could see the way things were going. The way history always went.

  “She’ll turn up eventually,” I said. “They always do.”

  “Do they?” she said.

  I finished the last of the coffee and tried to decide whether I should order another or move on to wine. Sometimes the simplest decisions are the hardest ones.

  “You still haven’t told me the name of the angel,” I said.

  “That’s because I don’t know its name,” she said.

  “Your mother never told you?” I said.

  Penelope looked at me. “Why would she know its name?” she asked.

  I considered how to answer that. Sometimes angels and humans got together for romance, or out of desperation, or simply out of some personal strategic necessity. It happened. If this were one of those times, Penelope’s mother likely would have been on a first-name basis with the angel. But this didn’t sound like that. This sounded more like the angel was stalking Pene
lope’s mother. Which also happened. But angels didn’t give people that sort of attention randomly. There had to be a reason it was so interested in Penelope’s mother.

  I signaled the waiter for a wine. There. Decision made.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s start with the basics. This mysterious angel harassed your mother her entire life for reasons that aren’t clear to you.” And which may not have been clear to the angel either. They think in mysterious ways and all that. “Now you’re hunting him because he may have killed your mother.”

  Penelope shook her head. “That’s not why I’m trying to find him,” she said.

  The waiter arrived and I took the glass of wine from his hand before he could set it down on the table.

  “Autres, s’il vous plait,” I said, and drank half the wine in one swallow. The waiter raised an eyebrow but went away without saying anything.

  “Tell me then,” I said, “why are you after this angel, and what are you going to do when you find him?”

  Penelope looked away from the clouds, back at the street. “I’m hunting him because he’s my father,” she said.

  Ah.

  I should have ordered the bottle.

  “And when I find him,” she went on, “I’m going to figure out how to kill him.”

  I looked back at the street, at all the people passing by. At everyone who wasn’t the messy afterbirth of Christ or the offspring of an angel. Now I finally understood why it felt like I’d known Penelope all along. I finally understood our attraction to each other. If the mysterious angel was her father, it meant she was half seraphim. She had grace in her. Not enough that I could actively sense, but it explained why I felt so calm and content around her. I couldn’t help but be drawn to her. I wondered how I made her feel.

  I didn’t ask her any more about the angel. I didn’t need to. It was clear what had happened. The angel had raped Penelope’s mother. Maybe the angel kept coming back because of Penelope, its child, maybe for another reason. Maybe it was part of some plan, maybe the angel had gone crazy. It didn’t matter. I’d seen this sort of thing before, although I’d never been so personally involved.