“Okay.” I felt relieved. I needed to be alone for a few hours, if nothing else just to sleep and take a cold shower. “Hey—”
I linked my hands behind his neck and kissed his chin. “You haven’t changed your mind, have you? I mean about last night?”
He frowned. “Last night? Last night?—oh, you mean that.” He grinned. “Hell no. Have you?”
“Hell no.” I pulled his face closer to mine and kissed him, his skin rough and hot where he hadn’t shaved. “Never…”
Dylan half turned and reached for the door, closed and locked it. He turned back and gently pushed me until I was sitting on my desk. We made love with most of our clothes on, until the whole room smelled like sex and afterhours. When he came he bit my shoulder to keep from crying out, so hard he left a small bruise there beneath the silk. For a long time we sat on my desk curled in each other’s arms, our hearts pounding, and when I drew away from him I knew that somehow things had changed. I knew that this was it: that there was no turning back now, for myself or Dylan. His skin and blood and memory were branded into me as surely as that little bruise on my shoulder, but I knew that none of those things would ever fade. He was mine now, he had always been mine, and nothing on earth would ever take him away from me.
“Sweeney,” he whispered. “I love you so much. I always have.”
“I know,” I said, and gently pushed the long damp hair from his face. “I love you too, Dylan.”
I left, not caring that my blouse was soaked with sweat as I walked unsteadily down the long curving marble stairs; not caring that I looked dazed and maybe even a little nuts, like someone who’s survived a terrible accident; someone who had just watched everything she owned in the whole world go up in flames except what she loved most; someone who had seen all that, and just walked away with bruises.
I went home and took a cold shower and slept naked on our bed with the fan turned on me. When I woke it was after six o’clock—I could hear Dylan downstairs in the kitchen, watching the local news—and I felt much better. I had decided I’d call the Beacon again next week, after Dylan’s birthday, to get the whole story I could try to contact Annie Harmon, but that might be difficult. She was an up-and-coming star of sorts, and it seemed tacky to get in touch now, after such a long hiatus. Still, I figured if I got my nerve up, I could get her number from whoever had taken over Baby Joe’s column.
And then there was Angelica, of course. The next day was Dylan’s birthday, and while we’d made our own plans, he seemed to take it for granted that his mother was going to show up sometime. Maybe a few days late.
“But she’ll call over at Dvorkin’s,” he’d assured me. “She gets caught up in her work, but she’ll call.”
“I hope so,” I said. He still refused to let me buy him anything, and his wardrobe was looking pretty shabby. “You need some new clothes.”
He rolled his eyes. “Clothes. Like you ever see me in clothes.”
“Good point.” I left it at that.
Now I was hungry. I yawned and threw on a T-shirt and a pair of Dylan’s cutoffs, then padded downstairs.
“Sweeney! Come here!”
“What?” I walked into the kitchen, to find him perched in a chair staring at the tiny Sony on the counter. “Is that news?” I asked darkly. “You know I hate news—”
“Just listen!”
He turned up the volume, so I could hear a correspondent in L.A. talking about how a previously unknown fungus had apparently been released from somewhere within the ground during the previous spring’s earthquake. People all over southern California were getting sick, their symptoms alarmingly similar to those caused by biological warfare in Southeast Asia in the sixties.
“Isn’t this great? First rats, now fungus!” Dylan shook his head and reached for an opened bag of tortilla chips. “My mother is right—we are going to hell in a clutch purse! Here—” He pushed the bag at me. “I got some salsa.”
I grimaced. A list of symptoms was scrolling across the postcard-sized screen, along with information numbers for the Center for Disease Control and NIH. “Thanks, Dylan. Maybe later.”
“Wait—don’t go, there’s supposed to be something about that man who boiled his kids in Trenton—”
“Dylan!”
I had started for the living room, when the screen switched from the L.A. correspondent to a woman standing in front of a huge sand-colored building.
“Hey,” I said. “I know that—”
“This morning, officials at the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine in Washington, D.C., confirmed that they had reached an agreement to transfer a collection of over three hundred ancient artifacts to the radical feminist group Potnia.”
“That’s the Divine!” I grabbed Dylan’s shoulder. “That’s where—”
“Shh—I can’t hear!”
“—as ongoing investigations continue at several museums in this country and abroad, amid rumors of a secret society from which women are barred, and even stranger allegations made by Potnia. We spoke to Professor Balthazar Warnick, Professor Emeritus at the University’s Thaddeus College.”
“Holy cow,” I breathed. “I don’t believe this—”
The screen showed a slight man in a three-piece suit, standing in a cavernous space. He was so thin as to appear almost wasted, but his hair was still dark, and his eyes were the same piercing eyes I had last seen years before at the Orphic Lodge.
“There has been absolutely no wrongdoing on the part of the University or any individuals associated with the institution,” he said. At the sound of his voice—silken as ever it had been, with that same ironic undertone of menace and laughter—I hugged myself; as though someone had opened a window onto winter. “We have held these items—and numerous others of greater value, I should add—for many, many years. Centuries, some of them.” He swept his hand upward to indicate the vaulted recesses of a ceiling high overhead, and I realized he was being taped somewhere in the recesses of the Shrine.
“No one, absolutely no one, at the University has ever gained any sort of financial benefit from these objects,” he went on. For an instant I saw a glint of fire in his eyes. “I should also say that, considering the political climate in many of the countries where these artifacts have their origin, the University has done an excellent job of safekeeping—”
Abruptly the camera cut to an elegantly dressed young woman sitting behind an important-looking desk. She was even more diminutive than Professor Warnick, with straight jet black hair and white skin and black eyes. Her almost childlike beauty was belied by her suit, which probably cost what I made in a month, and the delicately drawn tattoo on her cheek.
The newscaster intoned, “Rosanne Minerva, attorney and spokeswoman for Potnia, disagrees.”
“Some of these figurines, including the so-called ‘Tahor Venus,’ are literally tens of thousands of years old,” Rosanne Minerva said. Her tone was utterly self-assured. “For centuries this relatively small group of men—primarily American and European businessmen and scholars—has been hiding these treasures—these priceless religious artifacts that belong to women, and men, everywhere!”
When she said the word men it was with the sort of pity usually reserved for speaking of the terminally ill. The camera drew in for a close-up of her poised, aquiline face, and I got a better look at her tattoo. Without meaning to I gasped.
“What?” demanded Dylan.
The little cusp drawn so carefully upon her cheek was a perfect half-moon, incised with tiny swirled lines and meanders. The same lunar crescent that Angelica had worn: a lunula.
“What these men have done is nothing short of profanation,” Rosanne Minerva said. Her hand rested lightly upon a stack of papers, but I could see how her fingers tensed. “It is a sin, and a crime, and it will be—it has been—stopped.”
I continued to stare in disbelief even after the screen cut back to the newsroom.
“She’s just a lawyer,” Dylan said, reaching for anot
her handful of chips. “I know who she is.”
“You do?”
“Sure. Potnia—they’re with my mother.” He turned to look at me, a curtain of dark hair flopping over his eyes. “Haven’t you ever heard of them?”
“Well, sort of. I read something about them. What—”
At that moment the door buzzer rang. Dylan stopped eating in mid-bite. I froze with one hand on the wall. Nobody rang that buzzer, except for UPS men and Seventh-Day Adventists.
“My mother!” whispered Dylan. He glanced nervously down at his shirt, then at me. “Uh-oh.”
“You stay here,” I commanded.
“Why?”
“I don’t know!” I said, flustered. “It’s my place, that’s why, I’ll open the door—”
“I live here too!” Dylan called after me plaintively, but he stayed in the kitchen.
I walked to the door in my bare feet, running a hand through my hair and cursing myself for not putting on makeup. Give it to Angelica to pull off something like this. After all these years, here she was coasting in with a little fanfare of related media coverage and not even a phone call to warn me. I could just make out a figure through the window, someone nearly hidden by wisteria. I stopped in front of the door, took a deep breath, and opened it. “Surprise,” someone rasped. It was Annie Harmon.
I was so stunned I could only gape. She had the same dun-colored hair, trimmed to a messy crew cut; the same recalcitrant cowlick, dusted now with grey; the same brown violet-tinged eyes and wanton voice. She was thinner than she had been, and it showed mostly in her face—puckish Annie had cheekbones now, and a small cleft in her chin, that obviously hadn’t just been put there for her music video. She had lines too, around her eyes and mouth; her arms were thin and muscled, her hands worn and raw-looking. Her tiny feet were shoved into red tennis shoes—expensive red tennis shoes. She wore torn fatigues, a blue flannel shirt with the sleeves ripped out, a gold wedding band on her right hand. She looked absolutely beautiful.
“Annie.” I fell back as she pushed past me into the room. “Uh—jeez, it’s uh—it’s great to see you.”
“I’m underwhelmed,” she said, and grabbed me in a hug. “Remember me? The girl least likely to succeed in a long-term heterosexual relationship?”
I laughed. “I dunno, Annie. I think I was in the running there for a while.”
She dropped her knapsack to the floor. “So: you happy to see me, or is that a roll of pennies in your pocket?” She grinned, but her voice sounded strained. As though she was putting on an act for me, as though if she gave me the chance to think, I’d change my mind and push her right back out the door.
“Of course! Here—sit, sit,” I urged, pointing her to the couch. “You want something to drink? No kidding, Annie, it really is great to see you. I mean it.”
I hesitated, went on in a rush, “This is so weird. There was just something on the news about the Divine, and I’ve been thinking of calling you, but I didn’t know how to find you. Did you hear about Baby Joe?”
She nodded, her expression guarded. “Yeah. I meant to call you when it happened.” She sank onto the couch, tugging at her cowlick. “I know this is totally nutso, me just showing up like this—”
“No—I’m glad, Annie, really, I’m so happy you—”
“Well, you might not be so happy when you hear why I came.” She sighed and leaned back into the couch. “God, I’m so exhausted. Can I crash here tonight?”
“Tonight? Sure, Annie, of course—” A little warning beeper went off in my head, reminding me that tomorrow was Dylan’s birthday: I’d have to find some polite way of kicking Annie out by then. “You look beat. Don’t you want something? I think there’s some orange juice—”
“Orange juice sounds great. You know, I had some of that stuff on the train the other night—that Pernod shit you used to drink in school.” Annie shook her head. “Now I know why you were always so nuts.”
I hopped into the kitchen and got the juice. Dylan was finishing off the chips and salsa; before I could say anything he started into the other room. I hurried after him.
“Dylan—uh, wait a sec—”
Annie looked up just as the two of us came through the doorway. The blood drained from her face. For a moment I thought she was going to scream.
“Annie! This is Dylan—Dylan Furiano.” I gestured weakly at Dylan with the glass of orange juice. “He’s—he’s Angelica’s son,” I went on breathlessly. “Annie is a friend of mine. We all went to college together. Your mom and Annie and I. Dylan’s father was Angelica’s husband in Italy,” I ended, willing Annie not to bring up Oliver’s name.
“Hi,” said Dylan politely. He smiled at Annie. She nodded—too fast, as though someone in a dark alley had just asked for her wallet.
“Yeah,” she replied in a hoarse whisper. “I—Angelica? Angelica di Rienzi?”
“She’s my mother.” He peered more closely at Annie. ‘You look kind of familiar…”
I slapped my forehead: I was not handling this well at all. “Dylan, this is Annie Harmon—Annie Harmony, I guess you are now, huh?” I gave Annie an anxious look. I had the uneasy feeling that everyone in the room was covering for someone else, except for me. I was standing all alone out in the field, waiting to be plowed down.
“Annie Harmony?” Dylan tilted his head, suddenly exclaimed, “The singer?”
“Dylan,” Annie was saying, her voice carefully modulated. “Angelica’s son Dylan. And—”
I coughed loudly; I would have kicked her if I’d been a few inches closer. Annie whistled and gave me a sideways glance, her dark eyes narrowed so that she looked like an animal that’s just been poked with a stick.
“Sweeney Cassidy and Angelica’s son Dylan,” she said. “Dylan and Sweeney. Now I must have missed the pilot for this show, because I am very surprised to—”
Dylan stepped around Annie to stand awkwardly beside me. “I bet you girls have hair and fingernails to discuss, so maybe I’ll go pick up something for dinner. Is that okay, Sweeney?”
“That’d be great, Dylan. Thanks.”
He leaned down to brush his lips against my cheek. “See you later, Sweeney. Annie—”
Annie nodded, forced a smile so false I was glad Dylan was out the door before he could see it. I watched him go, then turned to Annie and said, “Well, hey, how about that orange juice.”
Annie glared at me. Her face was dead white except for a fiery red spot on each cheek. “Yeah? Well hey, how about telling me who the fuck that is?”
I bit my lip. “Well, actually, Dylan is—”
“I know who he is! Anyone with half a brain can see who he is! The hell with Angie—that’s Oliver’s kid!”
She began to pace furiously across the room, punching the air with her fist. “Jesus Christ, Sweeney! I almost had a heart attack—I thought he was Oliver. What is he doing here? What are you doing—”
I shoved my hands into my cutoffs and glared back at her. “What am I doing? I live here—”
“What is he doing here?”
“He lives here! What are you doing here?”
Annie stopped and stared down at the harvest table. She reached for the sea urchin lamp, moving her fingers across its tiny raised nodes as though she were reading braille. Suddenly her expression changed. “I remember this,” she said softly. “This was Angie’s…”
I nodded. “She—she sent me that for Christmas, that first year…”
“That only year,” Annie said, but there was no malice in her voice. “It always sort of gave me the creeps, this lamp. But it looks pretty in here.” She sighed and turned, leaning against the table. “Man, it’s hot. Where’s that orange juice?”
I handed it to her, went and got the rest of the pitcher. “Here—” I poured her another glass. “Why don’t you sit, Annie? It’s too hot, and we don’t have air-conditioning.”
I could see her flinch when I said we, but she said nothing, just flopped onto the sofa and rested the glass a
gainst her forehead for a few minutes.
“Okay,” she said at last. “I feel better now. At least I don’t feel like I’m gonna run screaming out into the street and have fits.”
I laughed. “Why not? Everyone on Capitol Hill has fits.”
Annie sighed. “Right—Capitol Hill. Baby Joe said you lived on Capitol Hill.”
I hesitated, then asked, “Is that—is that why you came here? To tell me about Baby Joe?”
Annie shook her head. “No. Not really. I mean, if I just wanted to tell you about Baby Joe, I would’ve called, probably. No, this is—well, this is a little more than that.” She fixed me with a sharp glance. “A lot more.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Annie,” I settled next to her on the couch, reached over to give her a tentative hug. “Try me. I’m more open-minded than I used to be.”
She snorted. “No kidding. Open-minded Sweeney Cassidy, the girl with a hole in her head. I’m sorry—it’s just a shock, you know? I haven’t seen you in—what? Nineteen years?”
“Twenty, almost.”
“Twenty years! And here I walk in and it’s like a fucking time warp, you and Oliver…”
“Yeah, well, imagine how I felt.”
Annie rested her elbows on her knees and looked at me, head cocked. “All right, girl. Shoot. Tell me how it felt.”
I told her about Dylan. Everything about Dylan, up to and including about how the night before at Kelly’s he’d asked me to marry him.
Annie cupped her chin in her hand. “And you said you’d wait for him to grow up, no matter how long it takes. How romantic.”
“Fuck you, Harmon. I told him I’d marry him in a New York second.”
“Wow.” Annie looked at me with wide eyes. “Really? You said yes?”
“Of course I said yes! I’m in love with him, Annie.” I tried to keep my voice from sounding desperate. “He’s—he’s everything I never thought I’d find. He’s everything in the world to me,” I said softly. “Everything.”
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