“So soon?”
She stopped by the door. “I come here most days about this time,” she said. “A little earlier, actually.” Then, after a pause, she added, “It’s nice having someone to wear clothes for.”
We started meeting every day in that room. It was plain that she was flirting with me, and I imagine it was equally plain that I was interested, but it went on for over a month and neither one of us made a move. For my part, the fear of rejection didn’t enter in. I was used to the man-woman thing being a simple negotiation—you either did the deed or you took a pass—but I thought if I did make a move, I might frighten her off, that she needed to feel in control. If I had been free of constraint, my own agent, I might have given up on her…or maybe I wouldn’t have. She was the kind of woman who required a period of courtship, who enjoyed the dance as much as the feast, and she caused you to enjoy it as well. Basically an unhappy soul, she gave the impression of being someone who had been toughened by trouble in her life; but whenever she was happy, there was something so frail and girlish about the mood, I believed the least disturbance could shatter it. I grew more entranced by her and more frustrated day-by-day, but I told myself that not getting involved was for the best—I needed to keep clear of emotional entanglements and concentrate on how to stay alive once Billy came back into the picture. That didn’t prevent me, however, from exploring certain of her fantasies.
I knew that she had been married when she was a teenager and one morning while we sat on the bed, her cross-legged at the head and me sort of side-saddle at the foot, I asked her about it. She ran a finger along a newel post, tracing the pattern carved into it, and said, “It was just…foolishness. We thought it would be romantic to get married.”
“I take it, it wasn’t.”
She gave a wan laugh. “No.”
“Would you ever do it again?”
“Marry? I don’t know. Maybe.” She smiled. “Why? Are you asking?”
“Maybe. Tell me what type of man it is you’d marry. Let’s see if I fit the bill.”
She lay down on her side, her legs drawn up, and considered the question.
“Yeah?” I said.
“You’re serious? You want me to do this?”
“Let’s hear it, chère. Your ideal man.”
“Well…” She sat up, fluffed the pillow, and lay down again. “I’d want him to have lots of money, so maybe a financier. Not a banker or anything boring like that. A corporate tiger. Someone who would take over a failing company and reshape it into something vital.”
“Money’s the most important qualification?”
“Not really, but you asked for my ideal and money makes things easier.”
She had on a blouse with a high collar and, as often happened when thinking, she tucked in her chin and nibbled the edge of the collar. I found the habit sexy and, whenever she did it, I wanted to touch her face.
“He’d be a philanthropist,” she said. “And not just as a tax dodge. He’d have to be devoted to it. And he’d have an introspective side. I’d want him to know himself. To understand himself.”
“A corporate raider with soul. Isn’t that a contradiction?”
“It can happen. Wallace Stevens was an insurance executive and a great poet.”
“I like to think of myself as an entrepreneur when I’m feeling spunky. That’s like a financier, but I’m getting that we’re talking about two different animals.”
“You’ve got possibilities,” she said, and smiled. “You just need molding.”
“How about in the looks department?” I asked. “Something George Clooney-ish? Or Brad Pitt?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Movie stars are too short. Looks aren’t important, anyway.”
“Women all say that, but it’s bullshit.”
“It’s true! Women have the same kind of daydreams as men, but when it comes to choosing a man they often base their choices on different criteria.”
“Like money.”
“No! Like how someone makes you feel. It’s not quantifiable. I would never have thought I could…”
She broke off, thinning her lips.
“You would never have thought what?”
“This is silly,” she said. “I should check on Josey.”
“You never would have thought you could be attracted to someone you met at gunpoint?”
She sat up, swung her legs off the side of the bed, but said nothing.
“You might as well confess, chère,” I said. “You won’t be giving away any secrets.”
She stiffened, as if she were going to lash out at me, but the tension drained from her body. “It’s the Stockholm Syndrome,” she said.
“You reckon that’s it? We are for sure stuck on this damn island, and there’s not a whole lot to distract us. And technically I am an accomplice in your kidnapping. But there’s more to it than that.”
“You’re probably right,” she said, coming to her feet. “If we’d met on our own in New Orleans, I’d probably have been attracted to you. But that’s neither here nor there.”
“Why not? Because Pellerin’s your priority?”
She shrugged as if to say, yes.
“Duty won’t keep you warm at night,” I said.
“Keeping warm has never been my biggest goal in life,” she said with brittle precision. “But should that change, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
I didn’t go outside much. The guards made me nervous. When I did it was usually to have a swim, but some nights I went along the shore through a fringe of shrubs and palms to the west end, the crosspiece of the T, a place from which, if the weather was clear, I could make out the lights on a nearby Key. And on one such night, emerging from dense undergrowth onto a shingle of crushed coral and sand, littered with vegetable debris, I spotted a shadow kneeling on the beach. Wavelets slapping against the shingle covered the sound of my approach and I saw it was Pellerin. I hadn’t realized he could walk this far without help. He was holding a hand out above the water, flexing his fingers. It looked as if he were about to snatch something up. Beneath his hand the water seethed and little waves rolled away from shore. It was such a mediocre miracle, I scarcely registered it at first; but then I realized that he must be causing this phenomenon, generating a force that pushed the waves in a contrary direction. He turned his head toward me. The green flickers in his eyes stood out sharply in the darkness. A tendril of fear uncoiled in my backbrain.
“What’s shaking, Small Time?” he said.
“Don’t call me that. I’m sick of it.”
He made a soft, coughing noise that I took for a laugh. “Want me to do like Jocundra and call you Jackie boy?”
“Just don’t call me Small Time.”
“But it suits you so well.”
“You been through a rough time,” I said. “And I can appreciate that. But that doesn’t give you the right to act like an asshole.”
“It doesn’t? I could have sworn it did.”
He came to his feet, lost his balance. I caught him by the shirtfront and hauled him erect. He tried to break my grip, but he was still weak and I held firm. He had a soapy smell. I wondered if Jo had to help him bathe.
“Let me go,” he said.
“I don’t believe I will.”
“Give me another month or two, I promise I’ll tear you down to your shoelaces, boy.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“Let me go!”
He pawed at my hand and I let loose of the shirt. That electric green danced in his eyes again.
“‘Pears you growing a pair. Love must be making you bold.” He hitched up his belt. “Yeah, I been catching you looking at Jocundra. She looks at you the same. If I wasn’t around, the two of you be going at it. But I am around.”
“Maybe not for too long,” I said.
“I might surprise you, boy. But whatever. As long as I’m here, Jocundra not going to stray. She’s just dying for me to tell her about every new thing I see. She finds it fascinating
.”
“What do you see?”
“I’m not telling you, pal. I’m saving all of my secrets for sweet cheeks.” He took a faltering step toward the house. “How’s about we make a little side bet? Bet I nail her before you.”
I gave him a shove and he went over onto his back, crying out in shock. A guard stepped from the shadow of the trees—I told him to be cool, I had things covered. I reached down and seized hold of Pellerin’s arm, but he wrenched free.
“You want to lie there, fine by me,” I said, and started back along the shore.
He called to me, but I kept walking.
“Know what I see in your future, Small Time?” he shouted as I passed into the trees. “I see lilies and a cardboard casket. I see a black dog taking a piss on your grave.”
What he said didn’t trouble me, but I was troubled nonetheless. When I had reached for his arm, I had brushed the fingers of his right hand, the same hand that he’d been holding above the water. I wouldn’t have sworn to it, but it seemed that his fingertips had been hot. Not just warm. Burning hot. As if they’d been dipped into a bowl of fire.
If pressed to do so, I might have acknowledged Jo’s right to value her duties, but I was unreasonably angry at her. Angry and petulant. I kept to my room for a day and a half after that night on the beach, lying around in my boxers and doing some serious drinking, contemplating the notion that I was involved in a romantic triangle with a member of the undead. On the morning of the second day, I realized that I was only hurting myself and had a shower, changed my shorts. Still a little drunk, I was debating whether or not to see what was up in the rest of the house, when someone knocked on my door. Without thinking, I said, “Yeah, come in,” and Jo walked into the room. I thought about making a grab for my trousers, but I was unsteady on my feet and feared that I’d stumble and fall on my ass; so I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to act nonchalant.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Peachy,” I said.
She hesitated, then shut the door and took a seat in a carved wooden chair that likely had been some dead king’s throne. “You don’t look peachy,” she said.
I’d cracked the drapes to check on the weather and light fell directly on her—she was the only bright thing in a room full of shadow. “I had a few drinks,” I told her. “Drowning my sorrows. But I’m pulling it together.”
She nodded, familiar with the condition.
“How come you didn’t tell me your boy could do tricks?” I asked.
“Josey? What are you talking about?”
I told her what Pellerin had been doing with the ocean water and she said she hadn’t realized he had reached that stage. She hopped up from the chair, saying she had to talk to him.
“Stay,” I said. “Come on. You got all day to do with him. Just stay a while, okay?”
Reluctantly, she sat back down.
“So,” I said. “You want to tell me what that is he was doing.”
“My previous patient developed the ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields. He did some remarkable things. It sounds as if Josey’s doing the same.”
“You keep saying that. Remarkable how? Give me an example.”
“He cured the sick, for one.”
“Did he, now?”
“I swear, it’s the truth. There was a man with terminal cancer. He cured him. It took him three days and cost him a lot of effort, but afterward the man was cancer-free.”
“He cured a guy of cancer by…what? Working his electromagnetic fields?”
“I think so. I don’t know for sure. Whatever he did, it produced a lot of heat.” She crossed her legs, yielding up a sigh. “I wish it had stopped with that.”
I asked what had happened.
“It’s too long a story to tell, but the upshot was, he built a veve…Do you know what a veve is?”
“The things they draw on the floors of voodoo temples? Little patterns?”
“That’s them. They relate to the voodoo gods, the loas.” She flicked a speck of something off her knee. “Donnell…my patient. He built the veve of Ogoun Badagris out of copper. Several tons of copper. It was immense. He said it enabled him to focus energy. He used to walk around on top of it and…one day there was an explosion.” She made a helpless gesture. “I don’t understand what happened.”
Neither did I understand. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea that Pellerin might be some kind of green-eyed Jesus; yet I didn’t believe she was lying.
“What do you think was going on with him?” I asked. “With Pellerin. I mean, what’s your theory? You must have a theory.”
“You want to hear? I’ve been told it’s pretty out there.”
“Yeah, and nothing about this is out there, so your theory’s got to be way off base.”
She laughed. “Okay. The bacteria we injected into Josey was the same strain we used at Tulane. All the slow-burners have reproduced those designs in one way or another. It’s as if they’re expressing the various aspects of Ogoun. Doctor Crain’s theory was that because the bacteria eventually infested the entire brain, the patients used more of their brains than normal people—this resulted in what seemed to be miraculous powers. And since the bacterial strain was the same, it prevailed upon the host brain to acquire similar characteristics. That makes a certain amount of sense as far as it goes, but Crain was trying to explain voodoo in terms of science, and some of it can’t be explained except in voodoo terms.”
She paused, as if to gather her thoughts. “Someday we may discover a biochemical factor that makes the patients prone to seeing the veve patterns. But we’ll never be able to explain away all the mystery surrounding Ezawa’s work. I think he discovered the microbiological analogue of possession. In a voodoo ceremony, a possession occurs quickly. The god takes over your body while you’re dancing or having a drink. You jerk around as the god acclimates to the flesh, and then you begin acting like that god. With the bacteria, it takes longer and the transition’s smoother. You notice a growing awareness in the patients that they’re different. Not just because they’ve come back from the dead. The real difference lies in the things they see and feel. They sense there’s something qualitatively different about themselves. They recognize that they have their own agendas. They grow beyond their life stories the way Jesus and Buddha outgrew the parameters of their lives. Things Donnell said…they led me to believe that the bacteria allowed them to access their gro bon ange. Do you know the term? The immortal portion of the soul? According to voodoo, anyway. And that in turn opened them to the divine. As the bacterial infestation increased, they became more open. The slow-burners all demonstrated behavioral arcs that fit the theory. I guess it sounds crazy, but no one’s come up with anything better.”
She seemed to be waiting for me to speak.
“You’re right,” I said. “That’s out there.”
“Donnell was seeing these peculiar shadows before he died. I think he was seeing peoples’ souls. I can’t come close to proving it, of course, but there were things he told me…” She sighed in exasperation. “I begged Crain to let me work with Josey my way. I thought if I started from a position of intimacy, we could forge a bond strong enough to endure until the end. We’d see the maturation of the new personality. If my theory’s right, we’d have a captive god fully integrated with a human personality. Whatever a god is. That might be something we could determine. Who knows what’s possible?” The energy drained from her voice and her tone softened. “As things stand I doubt we’ll ever get any further than I got with Donnell. He should have been given the space to evolve, but all they did was harass him.”
“I’m getting you liked this Donnell,” I said.
Her face sharpened. “Yes.”
“How about Pellerin?”
“He’s not very likeable. Part of it is, he’s afraid of everything. Confused. He doesn’t know yet who or what he is. He may never know. So he tends to be angry at everyone. That said, he’s coarse, he’s trucule
nt and difficult to be around.” She made a sad face and pushed up from her throne. “I wish I didn’t have to go, but I should get back to him.”
“Jo?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Remember when you asked if you could count on me as a friend? For what it’s worth…”
“I know,” she said, coming toward me.
“We’ve been forced onto the same side, but…”
She embraced me, pulling my head down onto her shoulder. I breathed in her warm, clean smell, and kissed her neck. She tensed, but I nuzzled her neck, her throat, and she let her head fall back. When I kissed her on the mouth, she kissed me back, fully complicit, and, before long, we were rolling around on the bed. I worked her T-shirt up around her neck and had disengaged the catch of her bra, a hook located under a flare of white lace between the cups, when I realized that, although she was not resisting, neither was she helping out as she had a moment earlier. I slid my hand under the bra, but she remained motionless, reactionless, and I asked what was the matter.
“I can’t cope with this. You’re the first man I’ve been attracted to in a long time. A very long time.” She adopted an injured expression, like the one a child might display on running up against a rule that denied it a treat. “I want to make love with you, but I can’t.”
My hand was still on her breast and desire crowded all coherent thought from my head.
“Say something.” She shifted, turning on her side, and my hand was no longer happy.
“Does this have anything to do with Pellerin?”
“Partly.”
“You’re sleeping with him?”
“No, but I might have to. It may be the only way to control him.”
“Is that how you controlled Donnell?”
“It wasn’t like that! I was in love with him.”
“You loved him.”
“I know it sounds strange, but I was…”
I experienced a flash of anger. “It sounds twisted.”
She froze.
“You ever think,” I said, “you might have a kink for dead guys?”
The Best of Lucius Shepard Page 68