“So thinking about going away forever… I lost it. I just went… I didn’t know what I was doing. And then talking to Lukas kicked the old feelings in, and when I heard the footsteps, I freaked-out and went up to the roof. I thought it was him, and I had to get away.”
She’d tangled one finger in her hair, turning it, yanking as she talked. “He tried everything on me. Three minutes on the phone and it was like I was back there with him locked in my room. He said that he needed me and so it was wrong for me to go away. Every minute I was gone was killing him. After all we’d had together, how could I do this to him? And for anybody who helped me, it would end up really bad. Did I want you to get hurt, really bad hurt? He kept saying your name, Davi, saying it slow and quiet like he was trying to decide what to do to you when he caught us. And when I didn’t answer, he said he knew what I was thinking. That’s when I hung up. It was like I was a little kid again, and he was reading my mind. I could almost feel him in there, looking around in my thoughts. It must’ve been you coming down the hall that I heard and I lost it. I had to run. I’m sorry, Davi. I’m really sorry.”
SIXTY-EIGHT
Holding her close, I told her it was okay. All I cared about was that she hadn’t gone away. Calling her brother didn’t matter much now because we had to get out of there as soon as we could. I explained what had happened in my room. And I said that I didn’t even know if Carlos was still alive. “Probably the Guardia are already here at the hotel. Hermann will keep them from making a big scene. There won’t be any sirens or squads of uniformed men rushing around. But for sure they’ve been called in by now.”
At last, I let her go and said we had to get moving. With a heavy sigh, she agreed. We gathered up the cash and made two rolls now, one for each of us. After wrapping up a little food and brushing away our footprints from the dusty carpets, we were gone. I took the TV and fan mags with me to dump in the first storeroom that was open. If Hermann or the Guardia thought to look in the suite, they’d know it had been used recently. But if they weren’t positive it had been us, it might help.
I’d lost my invisibility. By then the word had surely gone out to the staff that the detectives were looking for me. Our plan now was to find the maid’s uniform Anna Z had worn before and a big laundry cart. She would change back into the frumpy dress and cap. I’d get into the cart and she’d cover me with towels and sheets and push me into one of the service elevators. In the lowest basement, I thought, we could take a detour away from the laundry rooms and leave the Angelus through one of the delivery tunnels. We’d go to the train station and spend the night there in some secluded corner of a waiting room.
None of our plans had worked out exactly. I suppose they never do. This one shifted quickly, twisted, and then broke. When I’d asked Maria-Claire for a loan, I must’ve said something about leaving the city. Or she’d figured it out from the way I was acting. In any case, there she was in the stairway, looking for us.
“Were you really the one, Davi?” She reached out and brushed the hair away from my eyes. “Did you do it?” She seemed more sad than surprised. “You gave it to Carlos on the head?”
“Is he dead?”
“No, I don’t think so. They took him off to the hospital. Hermann is keeping the whole thing hush-hush. It’s going to be a lot safer,” Maria-Claire said, “for you to stay here than to wander the streets all night. I’ll come and get you when the way is clear.”
Maria-Claire had always taken good care of me and I trusted her. The kitchen was mostly where we saw each other. But over the years she’d hidden me when my tutor was hunting me out for more tedious lessons. She’d sworn to my father, once, that I wasn’t the one who’d tracked canal mud on a newly cleaned red carpet. And she’d even taken the blame for an oriental vase that got broken in one of my fights with Sabina. This was obviously a hundred times more serious, but I got the same feeling from her as before. I, we, could count on her.
“Be careful, Davi. You hear me? Take care of yourself.” She smiled at Anna Z. “And her too. Keep her safe.”
I told Anna Z that we’d be all right one more night there and headed back to the secret suite.
SIXTY-NINE
“In Frankenstein, there’s another reason why the creature said to the doctor, ‘I shall be with you on your wedding night.’ It wasn’t just because he was furious and crazy with loneliness and wanted his revenge. Like I said before, he wanted a bride for himself, and the doctor told him ‘no.’ He wouldn’t make another creature. But there was something else going on. Doctor Frankenstein was going to marry Elizabeth Lavenza. And you know who she was, Davi? His sister. That’s in the book. Right there in black and white. She wasn’t his real biological sister with the same genes. She was an orphan. His parents took her in, and they lived together as kids in the same house. They grew up together, and they were going to get married and spend the rest of their lives that way. He calls her ‘My more than sister—the beautiful and adored companion—mine—mine—to protect, love and cherish.’ This is right out of the book. I’m not making any of this up. I read it so many times I have it all by heart.
“I thought it was so romantic when I was a kid. Beautiful and adored. To protect and love and cherish. What girl wouldn’t want that? Living with my brother, that kind of thing was exactly what I wanted to hear. You understand me, Davi? ‘My more than sister.’ I picked the book up the first time because of the creature. I was little and thought he was great in the movies. Growling and stomping around and killing. But the book is really different. It’s all about deep feelings. Page after page of it. That’s what kept me going back. Beautiful and adored. To protect and love and cherish. That’s what it was like for Lukas and me. At least some of the time.
“So when the creature says he’ll come to the doctor’s house on the night of his wedding, it’s not just about revenge. He’s the hand of Fate, and you know what Fate does to guys who want to marry their sisters? Even if there’s none of the same genes or chromosomes or any kind of real family connection, once you use the words ‘sister’ and ‘marry’ together, you’re calling in Fate’s avenger. And what he does is real simple, Davi. He kills the girl and leaves the doctor crazy with grief for the rest of his life.”
SEVENTY
We’d spent a couple of hours sitting in the main room of the suite, not saying much. After Maria-Claire had left, I’d brought the TV back and we flipped through the channels for a while. Of course nothing on TV could push away our thoughts and feelings. Game shows, political news, sports, idiot comedies about idiotic families. None of these seemed real. I shut it off, and we made some small talk about Django and the concert, how great it was going to be and how free we’d feel. But that petered out to nothing. As the sun was going down, we stood at the glass doors to the balcony. There it was, the glow of electrum light. There they came, the spectral words pouring out of Anna Z.
It didn’t make me afraid to hear her talk about Frankenstein and her brother, or sad or angry or even confused now. It seemed like I understood. Her brother had gotten inside her. Into her mind, her thoughts, her dreams, into the secret place where dreams come from. Down, down deep. Beautiful and adored. To protect and love and cherish.
Since they were little kids, they’d been together in their own secret world. Just the two of them. Anna Z and Lukas and no one else. For years, right or wrong, they’d been together in their own private, hidden place. I almost envied her. No, not almost—I really did wish I’d had her life. No one had ever cared that much about me, even if that caring was all wrong. He’d been together with her in a way I’d never really understand. But one day it was just too much. She knew it had to end. And so she called up Frankenstein—the creature—to be her knight in shining armor, to come and save the day. I know that’s twisted around. How could killing Elizabeth the sister-bride save her? How could a creature made out of dead body parts be the big hero? What did a book written centuries ago have to do with Anna Z, with her and me?
Stand
ing at the windows as the metallic light claimed the skies, I got a glimpse of who and what Anna Z really was. She’d told me the whole truth about herself. I’d told her the truth too. I’d never lied to her, not once. That was the reason, more even than loving Django, that the two of us had to stay together. We never lied. She made up stories. Her ideas went skidding and skating all over the place. But that’s different, totally different, than telling me a lie. Frankenstein was just a book, all of it made up. But it wasn’t a lie. There was something true in the book, something deep and real, just like her talk-talk-talking was true.
SEVENTY-ONE
Darkness came. The city changed before us as we stood there. Buildings blurred, then disappeared. Lights, hundreds and thousands, emerged like the constellations looming out of the night sky. Anna Z said, “I found a way up to the roof from the balcony. You want to go up there? It’s pretty amazing.”
“Together?”
“Of course. You and me.”
“Sure.”
She grabbed a blanket and a pillow off the bed. I opened the balcony door and the sounds of the city were suddenly much more distinct. Church bells, double iron wheels on the cobblestone street, a man singing with a voice like a wooden flute, night birds, a train whistle. We slid over the low stone balcony wall, inched along a ledge, and went up an iron fire escape ladder. She stopped suddenly, and I thought for a second that we’d been found out. But she pulled me close and kissed me on the cheek. Her laugh, then, was like a special gift, something she’d offer only to me. She’d fled from Lukas and their secret world. And now it was just her and me.
Tugging on my hand, she led me across the lumpy, tarred surface of a roof. There was one more above that. Another iron ladder, this one wobbling as we climbed. Half the bolts that fastened it to the wall had rusted free. She went first, with the blanket wrapped around her like a billowing cloak. I had the pillow, tucked under one arm. She went over the edge. I followed and there was our private rooftop.
The Angelus was more than a hundred years old. Over that time, towers, wings, buttresses, skylights, a chapel, and a penthouse had been added. So around and below us the hotel looked more like a small city than a single, huge building. Beyond that, the city proper extended as far as we could see. Still, this rooftop was a hidden place where no one could see us.
The moon was up, the sun’s secret mirror. Anna Z said something about the solar rays going out gold, hitting the moon, and coming back to us converted into lunar silver. I was listening as best I could. But as she spoke about celestial light, she was taking off her clothes. She told me about getting a moon-tan, how good it felt to be open and free in the glow of the night sky. I tried to listen and understand. But what I saw standing there before me was making my head spin and my heart slam. I don’t mean there was anything wrong about it. Or that I hadn’t looked at pictures in the galleries and at the white marble statues of beautiful girls wearing almost nothing. I couldn’t go ten feet into a museum without seeing nude goddesses, naked mermaids, nymphs clothed in nothing but moonbeams. But Anna Z was real, alive, warm, and only for me.
SEVENTY-TWO
Totally open to the sky and to my eyes, she took my hand and said, “I’m a virgin. There it is, Davi. I said it. I really am still a virgin.” Her voice was like the private roar of a seashell pressed to my ear.
“There’s power in that, real power. You know the statues in the churches, Mary with the blue dress and the halo and that look on her face like she’s totally lost it? Emptied out and filled back up again. I hardly ever go to church, but whenever I’ve been there, what really gets me are those statues of the Virgin Mary. I know exactly what she was feeling now when she became the Mother of God. Still a virgin but totally changed. I think that’s what you saw in my face at the Maxima. It happened when Django looked out at the crowd, and his eyes met mine. I mean that for real. He looked right at me when Rudy was doing his solo on ‘She’s the Hype,’ and he knew all about me. What I was and what I wasn’t. What I had been and what I could be. What I was, now that the change had happened.
“I didn’t lie to you before, and I’m not going to now. I’m a virgin. Running off those other times was real. I wasn’t making that up. I really did and it totally freaked Lukas out because he thought that when he found me I wouldn’t be a virgin anymore. And if I’m not a virgin, then I’m nothing. That’s what he thinks. And if I’m nothing, then so is he. But that wasn’t why I ran. I kept thinking about Mary Shelley and how she ran off and what came of that: Frankenstein. If she could do it then so could I. That’s why I went the first two times. Because of Frankenstein and making the creature. But the third time was about Django and being a creature.
“I loved the story since I was a little kid. I got a hold of everything Frankenstein: comic books, records, coloring books, posters, stickers, movies. I had green makeup, fake scars, and neck bolts for Christmas and All Saints. There’s something amazing about the creature. He’s horrible and beautiful at the same time. You know what I mean? You can’t look at him, and you can’t look away.
“Then I found out about Mary Shelley and how brave and wild and free she made herself. Think about that. A seventeen-year-old virgin and she ran away from home forever. She was just a teenager when she created the man who made the creature. There’s a line in the book that hit me, and I’ve never forgotten it. Mary says ‘a sudden light broke in upon me—a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple.’ Light! You understand what I’m talking about, Davi? She saw the light too. She saw the specters and maybe even the Alien Drift. Sometimes I think it comes and goes, like a tide. You know what I mean? In and out.
“And later on in the book she says, ‘It had then filled me with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the soul and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy.’ That’s us. That’s you and me.” She took my hand, tugging me closer. “Souls with wings. Soaring. Light and joy. That’s what I ran away to find, and you were there, at the show, when I found it.
“Mary Shelley was a virgin when she wrote the book. Later on, she had kids and got married, and she never wrote anything good after that. Only one book that mattered and she wrote it when she was like me. Don’t you see? She had to be a virgin to make the creature. Not because of keeping her body pure, or right and wrong, like the priests say in church. This isn’t about rules and your body being the temple of the Holy Spirit. It’s not about being untouched. The creature was born in her mind, or in her heart maybe. From thought and feeling, not from her body like ordinary people. Look, I know this is a lot, probably too much, for you to get. But you’re the first person I ever met who was willing to listen and understand. Or at least try to understand.”
SEVENTY-THREE
I looked at her body and then inside my own thoughts. I tried to tell her what I was feeling. Fear, longing, hope and hopelessness, and maybe something like love. But it came out all garbled, my words just as stammering as my thoughts. She shrugged, I think, and told me that I should do it too. Take off my clothes and feel the moon’s rays on my skin.
“Me too,” I told her after a while. “I’m a virgin too.” Saying it felt good, not bragging or making apologies but just saying what was true. She nodded and said she knew that already and that she didn’t mind. It was something good about me, something that set me apart from all the others.
The only thing she left on were her glasses, two moonpale circles, framed by the wildness of her black hair. She was no goddess. I know that. She was just a girl who was willing to let everything go. That was what I found so powerful, so wonderful about her. Her body wasn’t perfect, I suppose. But I didn’t care at all about gorgeous goddesses or movie stars. All that mattered was right there in front of me. She’d let go and was truly herself, not questioning or fighting it. And she wanted me to be the same.
I should’ve been embarrassed. I wasn’t. I should’ve turned away or looked out at the city instead of at Anna Z. I didn’t. She stood there, white as polished marble. I
looked and I looked some more, and when she told me again to take off my clothes, that’s what I did. Then she took the pillow from me, spread the blanket on the rough tarred roof, and said I should lie down with her. This was our time and our place, and nobody in the whole world could take it away from us. The air was warm and the moon’s rays cool, like a breeze, on my bare skin. So I did it. I joined her there on the blanket. We lay together, barely touching. Just a few strands of her hair on my shoulder, fingertip to fingertip, and her hip hardly grazing mine. And as I relaxed, I felt the heat, or the energy of her body radiating into me.
We lay there a long time, saying nothing. The moon watched us, or at least that was how it felt. Was there a Man in the Moon in the Man staring down? I’d never really understood that song. With Anna Z, though, lying close together, it seemed like I got a better glimpse of what Django had meant.
What’s in is out.
What’s far is near.
What feels so real
and crystal clear
are pictures which
Meet Me in the Strange Page 10