by Baxter Clare
"Laugh now, but still, watch your back. Let's go to bed."
"Wait a sec. You're a medical doctor. A rational, twentieth-century woman trained in scientific method and you're telling me you believe in the Psychic Hotline?"
In a fairly decent Jamaican accent Frank imitated the TV commercial, saying, "Call now, fuh yuh free readin'."
Gail scowled. "All I'm saying is that if someone's truly intent on hurting you, they can. That's all."
"How do you figure? Mother Love's going to make a doll with blonde hair, dress it in a miniature Armani suit and stick pins in it?"
"Who knows? Not that the pins in the doll would work but the intent she harnesses might."
"I'm not tracking."
"All I'm saying is don't be too cocky. There's energy in the world —some of it's positive, some of it's negative—and I think it can be channeled for good or bad purposes."
"So you think she can put a spell on me? Turn me into a toad?"
"Don't be silly. I just think she can tap into negative energy and apply it with mal intent. Good God, don't we see enough of that every day?"
"I don't think what I see on the street is evil. I think it's stupidity. People get carried away by greed and jealousy. Anger. They're not evil, just ignorant. Or chemically imbalanced." She shrugged.
"What about a guy like Delamore?"
Frank flinched at the name, but quickly rationalized, "He's not evil. He's sick. He didn't develop normally. At some point kids learn compassion, but if they're never taught it, then they grow up to be quote/unquote evil. I think what you call evil is a profound developmental and/or physiological failure. The Delamores never learn how to relate to anyone other than themselves."
"Do you deny that evil exists?"
"Why do I feel like I'm being cross-examined?"
"Do you?"
Concealing her exasperation Frank answered, "Yeah. I don't believe Satan's sitting in a fiery cave at the center of the earth eating lost souls any more than he's hangin' out at the corner of Florence and Normandie."
"Do you deny the existence of good?"
"Yeah. Good is just like evil. If a child is treated well, and taught goodness, then he or she grows up to do good things. They get perks and rewards and feedback that encourages the positive behavior just like a neglected child creates the sick perks and feedbacks that keep him in his loop. It's all they know. Nice, not nice, it's all learned behavior."
Gail swung her feet off the lounge chair to turn and face Frank.
"What about kids like that eleven-year-old who disemboweled his baby sister? By all accounts he came from a wonderful, loving home."
"Organic," Frank explained, tapping her temple. "Something didn't come out right as he was developing. The right gene didn't get turned on. Or off."
"What about luck? You're always saying you need some luck on a case. How do you explain that?"
"Luck is just. .. circumstance and timing. A chain of events that can turn out well or badly. Besides, how'd we get off on this theosophical debate? I thought you wanted to go to bed."
"I do," Gail answered, "but humor me. I'm curious to know where you stand on all this."
"I stand deeply, madly, head-over-heels, insanely crazy about you. That's where I stand," Frank declared emphatically. She tried pulling Gail up, but the doc wouldn't budge.
"No really. I want to know."
"Know what?" Frank weaseled.
"You really don't believe there's any sort of force or power in the universe, do you?"
"No. I don't."
"You can't even admit it's a possibility?"
"I suppose it could be. Just seems that if there is something somebody would have proved it or seen it by now."
"What would God look like to you?"
"God? He's a guy in a white bathrobe with a long beard who sits around with his feet up reading Playboys all day. Every now and then he looks down and laughs at all the tiny people scurrying around beneath him, blowing each other up in his name. He gets a good chuckle out of that then goes back to his Playboy. Tells a curvaceous angel to bring him another beer and a fresh cigar."
Gail smirked. "It sounds like your god's Hugh Hefner."
"Not my god," Frank countered. "That's the dude you all believe in."
"And you have no dude?" Gail persisted.
" 'Fraid not. There's just what I touch and feel today. And right now I'm feeling you and I'd like to go fall asleep with my arms around you."
"You really don't believe in anything?"
"Just you," Frank said. She tried to kiss the top of Gail's head, but the doc reared back.
"I find that so sad. That you don't believe in something."
"I believe in hard work and trying to make a difference while we're here."
"But then what? What happens when you die?"
"Then I'm dead. End of story. Cleared case."
"What about your soul?"
"Haven't you noticed?" Frank joked. "Ain't got no soul. That's why I can't dance."
"Tell me you believe you have a soul."
"I believe I have a soul," Frank dutifully repeated.
Gail studied her lover.
"You don't, do you?"
"Nope. I'm just blood and guts and when my heart stops pumping"—Frank spread her hands—"Game over."
"That's the saddest thing I've ever heard," Gail said.
"Aw, Gay, don't get all melodramatic on me."
"I'm not. I mean I know people don't believe in God, but it just seems .. . lonely. So disconnected from everything else around you. So unrelated."
"We're all the same species, with the same problems," Frank offered. "We all have that in common."
"That's human." Gail waved her off. "Human concerns are so insignificant in light of the bigger picture."
"And what's the bigger picture? The World According to Gail," Frank disparaged.
"Look at the stars," the doc retorted. "They've seen centuries come and go. They've witnessed billions of us coming and going, yet they persist. How can you look at a star and not believe in God? Or oak trees. The ones on your street were there when Cortez came through. He and his men are all dead now but the trees are still there. You can touch them and touch a tree Cortez might have sat under while he charted his course. Where do those stars, those trees, where do they come from? Who made them?"
"UAW?" Frank guessed. "Should I go look for the union label?"
"You're serious, aren't you?"
"About the label?"
Gail kept studying Frank.
"I don't see you hopping out of bed on Sundays to get to church."
"You don't have to go to a church to believe. And when I need a church I head out of this god-forsaken city and into the mountains. That's where my church is. Where I can see what God's made. Not what people have made."
"All right. You win. Can we drop this?" Frank cajoled, her hand out to the doc. Gail took it, but not happily.
"If it'll make you feel better, I'll believe in something. Tell me what you want me to believe in and I will."
Gail squawked, "I can't make you believe! That's got to come from inside you. It has nothing to do with me."
"So how do kids learn to be good Methodists or Jews? Don't they get taught? Don't they go to Sunday school or temple or whatever? You want me to be a tree-hugger, show me how. I'm a quick learner."
"That's different, Frank. They're children. You're a grown adult. I can't foist a belief on you. You should have your own values, your own beliefs."
Frank followed Gail inside, countering, "I do and you don't like them."
"Working hard and making a difference isn't a faith, it's an ethic. There's a big difference."
"Does that make me any less of a person?"
"No," Gail admitted. "I just... I don't know. I know you claim to be an agnostic, but I always thought underneath it all, bottom line, that you'd have something to cling to greater than yourself."
"So why's that so sad?"
"I
t seems lonely. And it makes it impossible to share what I believe in."
Locking the patio door, Frank answered, "Not at all. I love it when you talk about the trees and stars. And that grove in Berkeley that you used to hike to when you were a kid. You light up when you talk about that stuff. You're beautiful. Just because I don't believe in it doesn't mean I can't respect that you do."
"It's just such a comfort to have faith in something greater than myself and my fellow stumbling, bumbling human beings. It's a wonderful sense of tranquility to believe I belong in the world; that I'm part of a design, even though I don't know what that design is. I don't know how to express it. You'd have to feel it yourself and that's the part that makes me sad. That we can't share that tranquility. It's not an option for you."
Frank kissed the top of Gail's head.
"I'm tranquil when I'm with you. That's all I have right now and it'll have to do."
"But I'm only human, Frank. I'll fail you."
"And God hasn't?"
"No," Gail said, twisting out of Frank's arms. "Never. Things might happen that you don't like but they happen for a reason. Fate, God, Karma, call it what you like, everything happens for a reason."
"Ah. The Divine Plan."
"Exactly. Just because you don't know what it is doesn't mean there isn't a reason."
"There was a reason you got cancer," Frank argued.
"Yes! I believe that every time we're faced with a choice we can make a good one, a bad one, or a mediocre one. How you choose affects the results. If we keep making poor choices, ones that concentrate on our lower, more base instincts, then we keep getting the same poor situations until we learn to respond to diem with love and move beyond them. So for me the breast cancer was God's way of shaking me and getting me to take a look at how I was living my life.
"I worked from six in the morning until eight at night. I ate shitty food, got no exercise and slept horribly. All I had was work and the cats. Then when I had to face the very real possibility that I might die, I realized how much I was missing. How much time I've wasted in my life, how much love I've missed. It was so wonderful to be around my mom and sisters and to just appreciate how much they loved me. And how much I loved them. I'd never realized it, never really felt the depth of my passion for them until I was so close to losing them. And you know what? I might not die today or tomorrow, hell, I might live another fifty years, but the point is, I am going to die. Someday. Yet I've lived like I had all the time in the world to waste. The cancer showed me I don't have that time to waste. It was a gift in that it opened my eyes to all the goodness that I can have in my life."
"So now that you realize all that you'll never get cancer again?"
Gail sighed.
"Now that I realize all that it doesn't matter that I get cancer again. I have the best life imaginable. The best work, the best family, the best lover, the best friends. I finally feel like I'm not missing something."
"I'm still not sure how God figures into all this bliss."
"Because my body will be gone, but my soul won't. The core of me, the essence, the energy I have created—either good or bad— will go on without a corporeal vehicle. I don't know if it's reincarnation or angels or what, but I will take the lessons I've learned and apply them elsewhere. The fundamental goodness of me will persist. Just like the stars. I don't know what shape I'll take but I believe there are realities we can't sense, that we're not supposed to sense because our poor little pea brains couldn't comprehend their magnitudes. There's a joy in the mystery, in the not knowing. It's exciting. When I die I'm going on a huge adventure, like a cosmic Disneyland. I don't know what the adventure is—I don't have to know—all I do know is that it's out there."
Frank didn't say anything. God meant nothing to her and dead was dead. If there was a god, she'd reasoned when she was still a child, he wouldn't have taken her father and left her to care for a woman with one foot wedged in the nuthouse door. When Maggie died, she had irrefutable proof that there wasn't a god. She allowed people their beliefs like an indulgent parent allowed their child an invisible friend. Besides, she had so many of her own crutches she couldn't very well kick others' out from under them.
Still, she found it amusingly human that people persisted in believing in soft and warm and fuzzy. It was so much easier than admitting there was nothing out there, nothing waiting when your ticket finally got punched but oblivion. Frank didn't really think oblivion would be all that bad. Some days she felt it would be her reward for the hell she walked through now. So if Gail wanted to believe in trees and stars, and Mother Love Jones wanted to believe in chickens and hexes, then who was Frank to judge? It was still a free country.
"Look," Frank said, trying to put an end to the interrogation. "My dad was Catholic and he went to church once a year. My mom tried on religions like they were shoes. I had an aunt who was a devout Catholic and I've never seen a more pious, more bitter woman. My uncle hated the church and slammed it every chance he got, usually in front of my aunt just to drive her crazy. I didn't have any good role models for organized religion. Or unorganized religion for that matter. I learned that at the end of the day, all I could count on was me. And I haven't seen anything in forty years to change that."
"How do you explain miracles?"
Frank frowned. "Random circumstance."
"I don't believe this," Gail marveled, "I'm in love with a raving atheist."
"Ah, ah," Frank corrected, shaking one finger. "Agnostic, I don't believe in a god but I don't care if you believe in one. For all I know there might even be one and then won't I be in trouble. Now, can we drop this and go to bed?"
Gail followed Frank into the bedroom, grumbling, "A drunken agnostic. How can I ever take you home to meet my mother?"
"You'll just have to play up my other attributes."
"Remind me what they are."
"Brilliant detective, superior commander. Exquisite lover. Gourmet chef and chief bottle-washer."
"Not to mention smooth talker."
"Not to mention," Frank agreed, pulling Gail to her and hugging her oh-so-tightly. Tight enough that if there was a god, he couldn't take this woman too.
16
All Frank could see was the mouth gaping wide, with rows and rows of teeth. Sharp, glistening teeth. And laughter. The Mothers laughter, pealing like bells. And behind the laughter, bells did ring. The war was over. But Frank knew that couldn't be right. This war would never be over. Not between these two. Not now. Not ever.
The Mother was still laughing, but farther away. She stood against a red sunset, trailing black and red and white gauze. The wind flapped her wrappings, unraveling her like a mummy. The Mother held a bloody sword above her head and a hand stretched to Frank. Blood dripped from the sword into pools at the Mothers feet. She laughed, beckoning Frank.
Behind her, a soldier stood amid the rubble of a ruined city. Around him, singly and in heaps, dead men stretched to the horizon, their artifacts strewn carelessly by the eternal desert wind.
Lip-smudged photographs and letters torn at their folds blew restlessly from corpse to corpse.
Vultures flapped indifferently among the abandoned relics, feasting easily from gaping wounds.
Ragged beggars and women in chadors scurried to collect gold fillings and wedding rings.
An ancient crone knelt at a body. She stared at the soldier, her eyes milky blue, like Aegean shoals after a storm. She wrenched the dead man s neck, then dangled a crucifix, cackling.
The soldier turned away, his helmet under his arm. Sand filled his hair and blew over his boots. Still he stood. He had been here before. He had never been gone. He had always been a soldier. He scanned the desolate horizon. It was silent, empty but for the rising moon.
He listened to the steady snick and crunch of jackals feeding. They ate without snarling. No need of that tonight. There was plenty for all.
The moon cleared the earth. It lit the dead sleeping in their shadows. The dogs slipped stealthily be
tween them.
She woke slowly, floating up from the dream into the solidity of her bed. Canceling the alarm, Frank rolled into Gail. She kissed her shoulder, pressing into the doc's flank, wanting to wake her and get lost in the sweet, ephemeral refuge of desire. But Gail didn't stir.
Frank resigned herself to a scalding shower, then dressed in the clothes she'd laid out the night before. When she flipped the light on in the kitchen, the coffee was hot in the pot. She poured it into her travel mug while the twin gods of Routine and Order maintained harmony in her world.
Frank sipped her coffee at the sink. Bobby was probably going to be in court all day, and Darcy would be on his own. They were next up on rotation so if a call came in she'd send Darcy out with Diego. Noah and Lewis would—
Frank whirled, her eye catching a flash of white. She instinctively dropped her mug, reaching for the Beretta she hadn't strapped on yet.
"Jesus fucking Christ!"
Gail stood wide-eyed and startled in a long T-shirt. Frank swore again, ripping off a handful of paper towels and swabbing the spilled coffee.
"'Jesus. Give me some warning next time you sneak up on me."
"I wasn't sneaking up. I just woke up to pee and figured I'd say goodbye. Fuck you too."
Frank threw the soggy paper into the trash can, snatching Gail's elbow before she could leave the kitchen. She apologized.
"I'm just a little edgy."
"A little? Christ, I'd hate to see a lot."
"I wasn't expecting you to be up traipsing around. You were sleeping like one of your customers a minute ago."
"Well, I think I'll just traipse on back to bed."
"Come on," Frank said, shifting Gail toward her. "You just surprised me. Guess I'm still jumpy. Had a weird dream."
"What about?" Gail asked.
"Can't tell you 'til I get a kiss."
Gail gave her a sulky one.
"I was a soldier, and there were dead bodies all around me. It must have been World War II because there were letters and black and white pictures blowing around. And the uniforms looked like they were from then. And the helmet under my arm, too. It all looked like World War II, but it felt like it could have been any time. It was weird. I was dressed like a GI, and so were the corpses, but I felt like I'd been there before. Like I could have just as easily been a Roman soldier standing there with a leather helmet instead of a metal one. And beggars were looting the corpses. Women in robes . . . veiled, like in the middle east. They were scurrying from body to body like cockroaches. It all felt like it could have been centuries ago or yesterday. It was ... eerie, but real familiar too. And the wind was blowing, getting sand all over everything. Covering the dead men's faces. And it smelled like blood. Fresh blood. Lots of it. It was sad, but at the same time it felt. ..."