UT WHEN I WOKE UP IT WAS THERE. EL MIEDO. More real and physical seeming than I’d ever known it to be, except long ago.
It was standing by my kitchen table, as if it had been there for a while, peeking around the corner into the bedroom, watching me in my sleep. And watching over me too, I sensed.
I’d never thought of it before as anything but an insidious, malicious spirit before I met Genevieve. But now something—everything had changed—and I saw that while I’d resented it and had been petrified by it over all the stupid staggering years—arresting and detaining people, examining the ID tags on cold stiff toes—stalking nocturnal wildlife behind the obscene mask of the crime city—it had been something known and constant. Always there in the background. Someone on the inside. The ultimate informant.
A source of fear, yes, but also a way of dealing with Fear—the way a dealer comes to be both a figure that you hate and need.
Now that addiction had been cured. I’d moved on to some harder drug—I’d moved beyond drugs and all the human fears too. And so, I at last saw El Miedo as I first had back at the beginning of the black fairytale of my first wasted life.
No cloud of dust now. No footsteps echoing down a stairwell just below me or behind. No flicker in the eyes that stared at me from the bottom of a coffee cup or a snifter of cheap brandy. No halogen fog forming in the midnight of debauchery and crystal meth insects. It was just as it had been then.
Horrifying. Atrocious to look at. But mournful and downcast, isolated—impotent before me now. A ghost of my ghosts, but without a badge of authority over more me anymore.
It took the form of a man—a man the size of my father, or the way I first imagined him when it seemed he could, if he wanted to, reach up and touch the tops of the trees along the shack-lined orchard road. Only it was made entirely of crimson tinted Vaseline. Petroleum jelly coagulated with rectal bleed, which goes a sickly green under artificial light. It stood there, oozing, exuding and consuming itself to retain its shape. Tools would erupt out of the unguent flesh. Screwdrivers, claw hammers, saw blades and faucet handles. It had no head to speak of—only a corroded chef’s hat ventilator, barely spinning. But it had an immense oily organ that hung down between the shining grease of its thick legs—with the squeezed stunted expression of a small boy—the mouth that spoke. That had whispered, shouted, threatened and cajoled.
It was a terrible and revolting specter from the past—but something protective too I understood at last. And now it had nothing more to say. Only a silent permanent goodbye.
It was as far removed from me as my forfeited job, the habits and misfortunes I’d so carefully cultivated, all the time pretending they were imposed—hands dealt me as I tried to stay on the lam. Always running out of time and faces.
Now I knew I would never see it again. Not in dreams or nightmares—or on crooked streets of perfume and fugitives from themselves.
Rock, paper, scissors … living darkness trumps even the longest, most flexible shadow.
Whoever or whatever I was, I was on my own now.
I did the respectful thing and turned away—not wanting to see how such a thing would disappear finally.
Besides, I had a battle to plan. A fight for the life of my miraculous entranced cancer. Maybe even a contest for my soul. I had to get right in my new head.
The past was gone in the time it took me to turn around.
I don’t need to tell you who the man was Genevieve sent me.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise—but it hit me like a ton of bricks. Chris Padgett in a Hugo Boss suit and glamor boy aviator sunglasses. He was puzzled to find me there—wondered who I was. He was worried about his buddy. He played the earnest investigator for a few minutes, and I could see that I’d been right about him being a smart, promising cop—just young and cocky. And I could see he really was a friend. He truly cared for Ritter and would’ve taken a bullet for him. Yet the moment I asked, “¿En qué puedo servirle?” I knew he’d take off his pants. Genevieve was right about the power women have over men. I hadn’t seen it so cruelly simple before—how it actually played out. His cell phone kept going off, just as mine had, but it didn’t matter. The more I let him have what he wanted, the more he showed me how stiff a price he was willing to pay. I learned just what his rich wife saw in him. His guilt afterward was like a delicious dessert for us both.
But I didn’t send him along to Eyrie Street. I didn’t give him Genevieve’s card or raise any suspicions in his mind about her. I couldn’t do it.
Part of the old Birch had been a kind of an older brother to him. The new me knew he couldn’t handle the Mistress. I’d already given her Pico. I couldn’t let her put Chris in the snake cage—because that’s what it would’ve been like. Plus another part of me, and you know exactly which part, just wanted him all to myself. That white boy had no soul in him whatsoever—except one bit—and it was a good big bit. Heaven on a stick.
I learned more about sex in the first 25 minutes with him than I had in a lifetime before. And it was exactly as Genevieve had said. The more I degraded myself, the more I mastered him. The more I gave it up, the more he lost control. Over the course of two hours, he took me—hard and long and in more positions than there are on a football team. And yet I owned him. Not just his fat cock that stayed so amazingly firm and full—I put a lien on his inner man. All the sparkle and the sprinkle fueled me. I sucked up his being and left him wanting more. And more. It was easy. So easy.
Did he respect me after?
What world do you live in? Of course he didn’t. But he’d have committed a major felony to be with me again. His old self was doomed—and yet he was saved—because I knew he’d glimpsed the truth of himself. Straight lines don’t exist in nature and he was no Cub Scout.
That gave me a little respect for him that I hadn’t had as Birch Ritter, tough guy buddy partner.
I can’t be sure if it was some old feeling for him or a new one, or if I wanted her to punish me—if the rush I extracted gave me more courage than sense. I only know that after he was gone I took the scarf and my old Explorer’s knife—and my mini fire extinguisher, which just fit into my purse. And I braced myself for impact with yet another crisis of the unthinkable.
Still, I kept thinking. I had murder in mind.
No, not just murder. Liberation. Revenge and release.
But I knew my scheme had little chance of success. Not for lack of courage. I actually think as Sunny, I had more balls than Birch, who was really always afraid, even when his fists were swinging or his gun was drawn.
No, my plot failed for a more essential reason. Genevieve was once again one step ahead of me. She’d seen through my deception. I’d never towed the line in my other life. Maybe she knew there were parts of me I couldn’t change—that even she couldn’t change.
When I arrived, she was already gone. I’d been so worked up for an all-in brawl on some level I could scarcely conceive, the shock drained me. Infinite relief and absolute agony of disappointment. Betrayal. Swindle. Everything all at once. Torture and salvation both. It was like an orgasm of the spirit—and crapping in my expensive silk panties.
Before … before violence had always come so naturally to me. I’d never had to prepare for it. But now—now I could see a different kind of violence was in order. I’d have to learn the game from scratch. She’d really done me over. Made me over.
A large unmarked moving van was pulling out of the drive, followed by another long white vehicle that looked like a mobile hospital unit. Mutza was closing up the house. The wild spring was over and the Mistress had moved on to other hunting grounds. Cape Cod. Mustique. The Amalfi Coast. He didn’t say and I got the impression he genuinely didn’t know.
Without her now, he seemed to be operating on automatic pilot. But he gave me a letter from her. It was written in her own hand on thick cream-colored rag paper with a sumptuous yellow scarf frilled out around the top. Just like the one I carried with me. The sympathetic magic weapo
n I was going to use to assassinate the shapeshifter in her, and now pressed deeply to my face to catch her lingering fragrance—my last trace of the woman with a dragon in her heart who played with masks and puppets and led men through mirrors, enlightening and emasculating them in the same lightning flash of climax and revelation.
I sat down on the steps of 4 Eyrie Street listening to the cry of the gulls, the sun grating through the skeleton of the Funland Scenic Railway, and I read her letter to me.
Dear Sunny,
Don’t be upset that I’m not here to greet you. And don’t think that I was afraid of a showdown with you. My only concern in that regard would be that in my anger at your rebelliousness I might damage what I’ve tried so hard to nurture and protect. It will be a long time before you can do me harm, and when that midnight comes, I doubt you will want to. And if you do, I accept the consequences. I love violence, just as you always have.
For now my beauty, I have other devotees to look after, new conquests in sight, and more than a few investments around the country, and indeed the world, that require my attention. My intention had always been to leave you as I’ve left you. Padgett was my parting gift. Now you must fly and forage on your own.
I gave you the name Sunny, not only because it was a nickname from your childhood, but more because it reminded me of the name of a street hooker—which for a time at least is more or less what you’ll be. But one of the things that I admire about you is your ability to improvise. Take your own new name when you’re ready.
I knew that you would disobey me. You still have a streak of maverick, and I didn’t, for all my care for you, feel you deserve the bounty I can offer. Not yet. There are some things—the most important things—we must learn for ourselves. Besides, Mr. or rather Ms. Padgett will no doubt look after you. His wife’s family is loaded, so make sure she pays you well. There is nothing more scrumptious than stealing someone away from another person except stealing them away from themselves and giving them someone new to be—someone they’ve always been, far back in the shadows.
I think you know now who Stacy really was—and what became of her. So, I must bid adieu. Who knows where we shall meet again. Tuscany? London? Rio? I will always be on your mind, and more than you think you will be on mine. I loved consuming you. I loved the taste of your infirmities—the aged-meat flavor of your manhood and all your little boy P.F. Flyer dreams and fears. So much fight and hope. Like all those ladybugs you used to catch in Skippy Peanut Butter jars with the lids you punctured with your father’s Phillips head screwdriver. You have been given a new birth, Sunny.
But speaking of births … something I must warn you about, and I am sorry not to have passed on this instruction in person, concerns your reproductive power. I regret to inform you that this is the one way in which you are not fully a woman. You will not menstruate normally and you cannot conceive a child in the conventional manner. You can try, and knowing your character, you will. Perhaps repeatedly. Very likely nothing at all will happen until you grow much stronger. Later though, if the temptation still persists and your system seems obliging, be warned—only monsters and deformities will result. The creatures you saw in my specimen jars? I think you understand my meaning. I wish it were not so. But be cheered by what you can do through other means—the transformations you will trigger. The Darkness is gone—because you can see in the dark.
And now I pass on to you this last piece of unnatural wisdom. Those men in positions of authority we spoke of before? Who do you think some of the most authoritative have been—and how did they get there? I’ve taught many a whore to fight on his feet and in court instead of in bed and on her back. Those that remember the tricks of the harem become formidable indeed in their new flesh. And many women of power? Need I tell you?
We sort the men from the boys, my dear, and make them Mata Haris and Oprah Winfreys. We create both the Machiavellis and the Martin Luther Kings of the world. That is our penumbral calling. We come from beyond the Wild to maintain a secret balance. To do this, we must prey. But many might pray that we never stop.
Once you gain your full powers, only those rare few that you decide through profound devotion to infect with your innermost being will defy normal human mortality. But through those you merely contaminate with the wonder and inspiration of change, you can still have great influence. To do what I have done for you will cost you. Dearly. Remember that.
You see my love, I have actually submitted to you, weakening myself to bring forth your new life and make you stronger. That is my bright, enduring gift. That one day the shadow of your wings will stretch farther than you can imagine. If, at some moment in the future, you choose to use my gift to challenge me, so be it. I will always be waiting. Ready for a duel or deeper conspiracy. Until then … All my love … and violence (for passion, like hope, is always violent).
Sincerely, Genevieve.
After I read the letter I had a cry, but then the weakness of tears at such a time infuriated me and I wiped my pretty face and had sex with Mutza in the back of her Rolls Silver Shadow.
I knew my powers were increasing because Mutza gave in, coupling like a randy mandrill with me on the puckered leather seat. He refused to take me into the house, however—that was a sacred threshold I wasn’t allowed to cross with the Mistress gone. So I had no idea which pets and playthings remained behind or how many masks and amulets had been removed. Had she taken Gilberto the Silkworm in his little glass coffin or some specially made suitcase? And Sal, the young hermaphrodite—another traveling companion? Was Mr. Dover still in position—or had he been relocated to some home for aged elevator boys? I knew I’d get no answers. So I asked no more questions.
I went back to the apartment and retrieved the rest of Jimmie’s money—I hadn’t even thought of my last paycheck. Then I drove Ritter’s old Electra down to the parking lot of Funland and abandoned it. I could see in the rearview mirror that my face with its sensual heart-shaped mouth looked washed clean, like a bottle with the label peeled off. I was hot—and as cold as murder.
And so, I’d been sucked through the drain of her mystery. Like dirty floodwater in the floodlights off the seawall. Not just like an easy mark played by a pro. Like prey taken. And yet I was still alive, more alive than I’d ever been. Cursed. Saved. Damned. Freed. It was all the same and like nothing I’d ever known or imagined. Just as she’d promised that first night, when she no doubt saw the whole dark ritual opening its scaled wings as clearly as I thought I found my way back to my car, back to my life before her. Before I realized I was already gone, my shadows falling behind me as I became a brighter ghost. Luminous, hungry—but soon to be ready to hunt for myself.
I never went back to the old apartment. Straight up, I hit a dirty lawyer I knew from the past for a new name and solid ID. He had connections with the U.S. Marshals’ office. I chose the name Serena Baker. Nice and honest sounding.
Soon I had a corpulent accountant helping me get the other things I had to have—a bank account, a credit card and a car loan. He was good with numbers and dodgy business—afflicted with a very small penis and absolutely committed to cheating on his wife. Plus he had a reasonable pain threshold. Liked jalapeños traced around his nipples and a good sack massage with an Emory board. One step away from the Birthing Harness and some teppanyaki knives. Meanwhile I hooked up with Padgett again the day after we’d played in Ritter’s place.
As soon as I had his total obsession I told him a tale to lay Ritter to rest. I said I’d been attacked in a jealous rage. I confessed I accidentally killed Ritter. Self-defense. Crying. Hysterical. By that point, he’d heard all about Ritter’s mixed up history. He bought my story like he’d shoved the blade home himself. I said the body had been dumped in the harbor like countless ones before. It was never going to be found. Big Chris opened and closed the case as easily as he unzipped his pants—so he’d be free to play and cover me like a stallion, not understanding that he’s really being slowly gelded, welded, melded into something new.
Something better.
Thanks to him and my obedient accountant, I moved quickly from a weekly hotel in Wetworld to a roof garden flat overlooking BayFair, with a new living room suite, flatscreen TV, Jacuzzi and a king-sized bed with some “customized” equipment. Crass? Brutal? Like the Mistress said, I’m a survivor.
So, I’ve indulged in a lavish collection of temptation wear: virgin white corsets, starlight lace mesh and embroidered bead bustiers, sheer stockings and French maid garters—bras and panties in all colors—honeydew, cyan, papaya whip, viridian. And each week I treat myself to a new toy … like a soldering iron or a cat o’ nine tails. Then of course, there’s my assortment of Wartenberg Wheels. A girl can’t make do with just one.
But all these are nothing—nothing to what can be done with the power of the wyvern mind. Genevieve was right about creatures like us. How naked all the others are. Wet and timid in their soft glass, hoping for the darkness to hide them, not knowing the Darkness sees all.
And when you begin to learn to paint with other people’s shadows … reality itself changes. The question is what pictures you choose to make and bring to life. There she and I differ.
I actually miss police work more than being a man. The smell of shell casings and that feeling in the air coming out of a long interrogation to find the fog had rolled in. I have to remind myself about the hassles. No more forced entries or blunt force trauma. No more exsanguinations and red tape. But I still feel the pull of Wetworld. I think something inside me will always vibrate to the viper urgency of those streets. But the place is getting cleaned up. No sign now of the curbside girls from the old days … Pop Rock, Rodeo Drive and Lane Change. Like the lo-ball parlors and the Danish Blue bookstore, they’ve been taken with the tide.
Last week I was cruising the more respectable Chinatown end and I spotted Polly with a date coming out of the Dragon Garden. You never know who you’ll meet. She was all over him like tactical nylon. Maybe she’d had one too many daiquiris before the plum duck. Or maybe she really cared. Either way I was sorry for her. He was a conceded powder blue leisure suit. He didn’t even see me at first—he just sensed me. Then he gave me the look—and with her bazooms rubbed up against him too. She shot me one of her old tagalong penny smiles, because she knew how he stared at my ass. Don’t worry, Pol, I thought. I’ll remember him. I’ll find him and fix his wagon. For good.
Private Midnight Page 30