Andromeda Klein

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Andromeda Klein Page 23

by Frank Portman


  “No, it’s a, uh, surprise party. But they’re going to be there and so are we, so how could that not be worth your while? Isn’t there a thing where you can start a car without the key if you roll it down a hill?”

  “Probably a bad idea,” said Andromeda Klein. “I’m still not feeling—”

  “Ask your dad, maybe,” said Rosalie, interrupting. “And don’t die.”

  Andromeda had no intention of surprising the gas-station guys with Rosalie in a hot-wired parental Volvo. She had more weedgie things on her agenda.

  She shoved her phone in her sweatshirt pocket, narrowly avoiding a disaster as the mom came in saying “Who was that, what did they want?”

  The blue phone no longer worked, so Andromeda had had to adopt a new phone strategy till she figured out something better. She kept the red phone’s SIM card in her right jeans pocket and the blue phone’s SIM card in her left pocket when it wasn’t in the phone. That was so she wouldn’t get confused when she switched them; obviously the blue phone’s card stayed in the still-functioning red phone till it needed to be switched. But if the mom spotted the red phone, there was no telling what might happen, so she had to keep it hidden. This scheme required that she wear jeans and a sweatshirt with big pockets in which to hide the phone suddenly when necessary. Andromeda found that the pockets of Daisy’s vinyl coat were good for that purpose. Possibly it might require being seen pretending to talk into the dead blue phone from time to time. In a way, having only one handset to carry around was more convenient, though she would have to find some of those tiny jewelry bags to keep the SIM cards dry on those days when they turned the heat too high and she ended up sweating like a pig. Which was pretty much all the time in Clearview.

  “Who’s this Darren?” said the mom. Andromeda held up a finger, as though to say “Hang on a second,” and deftly slipped out the kitchen door and down the stairs.

  The dad was out in his van with the door open and his headphones on.

  “Cupcake!” he said with an enormous smile, stopping the tape and cranking down the window when he noticed her standing there watching him. “So you escaped too? Good good good. There’s plenty of room if you want to hide out with me. Your mother will have to content herself with yelling at the fridge. Meanwhile, we will tunnel our way to freedom and build a new world on the other side.” He had to get out and let Andromeda slide in because the passenger-side door didn’t open.

  “You’re in a good mood,” Andromeda said.

  “I know! I know!” he said. “Isn’t it grand? The new meds are supposed to level me off, but here’s the beauty part: they don’t work! Not even a little.” He gave her an exaggerated crazy-eye look. “Not to worry, though. Soon I’ll crash and you will have your customary demoralized parental unit who failed in life back again. But what’s the use of having two balls if you can’t swing on one of them sometimes?”

  “Good one,” she said after a brief, faintly disturbed pause during which Huggy whispered that he was making a bipolar disorder joke and had meant to say “poles.”

  “I got a million of them,” he said, “but technically you’re only allowed two.” There were probably many pretty good pole jokes that could have been made here by someone who wasn’t his daughter.

  The dad explained that he was “nuts about” this band he was recording later in the week, and that he was listening to their demo. He took out the CD and Andromeda nearly fell over with surprise when she read the label.

  “Choronzon?” she said. “You’re recording them?”

  “Yeah, you know them?” he said incredulously. It was well known that Andromeda had little familiarity with, and still less interest in, rock music of any kind. And it seemed a pretty good bet that it was an obscure outfit anyway.

  “I have a friend who does,” she said, bracing herself for skepticism on this point. It was true, too. She did have a friend who liked Choronzon the rock group. As ridiculous as it sounded, it was rather neat, like how regular people probably are all the time, having friends who are into all sorts of things, and you know about it. Because they tell you. And on occasion you are called upon to describe these interests, and doing so amounts to a public announcement that you are in their confidence.

  “They’re Cthulhu rock,” she added, trying to sound knowledgeable, but the term didn’t seem to register.

  Byron had talked about it as though they were a real, legitimate band, but they couldn’t be that big if they were recording at the dad’s little hole-in-the-wall studio. She waved away the headphones when he held them out to her.

  “Can you make me a CD?” she asked, knowing exactly what he was going to say in response, and knowing that he would know that she would know.

  “Sure,” said the dad. He wiggled his fingers at her. “Poof: you’re a CD!”

  The dad had tried to explain to her how to start a car by pulling down some wires under the dash and connecting them to each other. He seemed a little confused by it himself.

  “It’s better,” he finally said, holding up his screwdriver, “if you have a key.”

  It didn’t matter: Andromeda had no intention of being Rosalie’s enabler at car theft and vandalism, especially if all that was in it for her was a trip up to the gas station to watch Rosalie flirt with Darren What’s-his-dick. Then she laughed on the way inside, because she realized he and her boss had the same name and had an image of Rosalie kissing and grinding on Darren Hedge at the reference desk.

  You should talk, jailbait, came another short burst from Huggy. Did all HGAs talk like that? How on earth had she ended up with such an obnoxious one? She’d have preferred a more weedgie-sounding vocabulary, too.

  “What’s going on out there?” said the mom suspiciously—the kind of question that did not deserve an answer. Andromeda just stared at her, but Huggy said Hatching a plan to tunnel to freedom and start anew and Andromeda snickered.

  “Yes,” said the mom, “yes, that is just so amusing that I would want to know what’s going on in my own house. Hardy-har-har. And here’s another great big huge joke: that van Genuchten girl was here yesterday.”

  Rosalie hadn’t mentioned that on the phone, but true to form she had left some random items for Andromeda: a half-full packet of Empress’s tearjerkers, two paper clips, and a pencil. The mom also handed her a new pack of disposable contacts in her approximate prescription and size that she had swiped for Andromeda from the mall optometrist where she worked, and accused Andromeda of trying to hack into her e-mail, stealing and hiding the TV remote, eating all the baloney, and just being a difficult child who couldn’t look anyone in the eye. Andromeda had to acknowledge the last of these, and to thank her for the first, because her last pair of contacts was getting pretty crusty.

  “So you’re spending the rest of the day in virtuality?” said Andromeda as she headed for her room, but the mom was already on the computer with her headphones on, typing furiously and saying “Goddamn network …”

  Once back in her room, Andromeda got out her notebook and compass and straightedge and drew her own Tree of Life, as carefully as she could. She had never thought of doing this before, nor had she really considered it as an actual map. In a sense, she realized, the Tree of Life diagram itself is a glyph, a kind of sigil, and the very act of trying to envision its workings, how it related to the reality it diagrammed, could cause her state of mind to shift ever so slightly. Perhaps more intensive work with it as a sigil was in order. It was obvious once you thought of it, but she had certainly never considered trying such a simple technique.

  Andromeda’s many attempts to meditate on tarot cards and use them as gateways to astral realms as taught by the Golden Dawn had never worked, but that was before Huggy and the flashing, spinning, undulating Universe-gem. She retrieved her liquor-damaged deck and sorted through the cards, once again looking for the World. She couldn’t find it. It wasn’t there. She was usually so careful with her cards, but she had been a little trashed that night. She had probably dropped it. It
was still at Rosalie’s house, no doubt, under the sofa or somewhere.

  Obviously, this was another, perhaps crucial, element of the Huggy Tantoon Working: the tarot deck resting on the tantoon desk—that is, on the altar or Table of Art—must be missing Key XXI, the World. If you took it far enough, you could say that the card would have to be clear across town, at the same location where the previous divinatory operation had been conducted the previous evening, with the six unwitting celebrants. Would the two who left before the divination begins have to be a Christian Thing both of whose heads objected to the ouijanesse? Perhaps they could simply be adepts playing that role, maybe even sewn into a single garment with two neck holes. They would probably have to make out, though. When she got a chance she would have to check the star map of those particular days and hours, too. That undoubtedly had had an effect as well.

  Perhaps the message of the missing card was that the World was the correct path, or perhaps it was to suggest alternate routes instead, Judgement and the Sun through Hod, or the Moon and the Star through Netzach. At any rate, having an incomplete deck made Andromeda feel a little incomplete herself.

  She had done a terrific, precise, even artful job of drawing her Tree of Life glyph, but no amount of staring at it would cause it to come alive and spin into the flashing jewel. Her desire to glimpse it again was something like lust, something she felt with her entire body.

  She was about to give up and put the diagram away when the city recycling truck pulled up and idled in front of Casa Klein, and in the midst of the sputtering rumble of its engine and the shouts of the men, Andromeda detected Huggy’s voice.

  Have you ever noticed, It said, how much better you were in her presence?

  “Daisy, you mean,” said Andromeda after thinking a moment.

  No, Eleanor Roosevelt, said Huggy. Yes, of course I mean the one you call Twice Holy, you ninny. She was a gifted natural medium. Spirits loved her. You, on the other hand: not so much. Some spirits, however, are notorious for their lack of attention to detail. SALLOS once mistook Monsieur for Solomon the Great just because he was gnawing on Henry Cornelius’s wand.

  Monsieur was Agrippa’s big black dog. Andromeda laughed, because it sounded like it was supposed to be funny. But it was true enough. Traditional magicians sometimes dressed like Solomon, wearing lion-skin belts in hopes of fooling the spiritual creatures into believing they were actually Solomon.

  “You’re saying I should wear Daisy’s, er, cow-skin belt?”

  I’m saying, said Huggy, that any anchoress can portray the Popess. With the proper hat.

  Andromeda reached up to her owl statue, retrieved Daisy’s wig, and put it on her head.

  The sound of the recycling truck was fading as it headed down the road, and Huggy’s Bingo was a little hard to catch.

  “You know,” said Andromeda, “it would save a lot of time if you guys could just, like, say: ‘Hey, Andromeda, wear Daisy’s wig more.’”

  Thanks for the tip, said Huggy dryly. I’ll be as plain as I can. You have in your possession a whole bag of equipment-

  But the truck was gone and so was Huggy.

  Just to see what would happen, Andromeda gathered all the Daisy materials—the ones from the original Daisy bag, along with the items added to it from Den’s subsequent excavations. She put on everything that could be worn in addition to the wig: belt, knitted gauntlets, China flats, vinyl coat. As before, she put the strange goggles on top of her be-wigged head, and wrapped the cord around it like a headband. She put the Little One in the coat pocket with just its head peeping out. What else? She hesitated at the bottle of antidepressants, but then abruptly popped one in her mouth: one probably wouldn’t do much harm, and they had made Daisy’s dreams more vivid. She spread the rest of the stuff out, the books, the papers, the headless Barbie and the Barbies with heads, the crystal ball, Jenny the horse. The weird little music-player thing …

  All of a sudden she knew what to do with that. The cord from the goggles fit perfectly in one of its jacks, and with the metallic locking sound it made she thought she could just hear another Bingo from Huggy. She had to get her headphones and plug them in too as the ones that had been attached and wrapped around the unit originally were broken. Then she put the goggles and headphones on and pressed Play, changing no other settings.

  It was not music in her ears but pulses and toneless, gentle white noise. Lights pulsed in front of her eyes as well, but soon she felt floaty and detached and distant from her senses. She had slipped into another world. Huggy’s voice was crystal clear in the tones in her ears, though all It said was: Bingo. Then Andromeda saw the Universe jewel, spinning and turning endlessly inside out, even more vivid and beautiful than before. She couldn’t see the King of Sacramento but she felt him there with her somehow, and at one moment she had the distinct impression of his hands on her shoulders.

  The unit’s batteries ran down soon enough and Andromeda slipped back into the mundane. She felt wonderful. So that was Daisy’s secret. She was going to have to get more batteries for that thing.

  Dave had emerged from the closet and was sitting on top of Byron’s Simonomicon purring. So much for Simon, thought Andromeda. Even less powerful than a vacuum cleaner, in the end.

  “Or maybe it’s just not turned on?” she said to Dave, who returned her stare coldly. There was still something faintly weedgie about the book, but it was a bit of a relief that its ouijanesse could no longer be regarded as proven by objective animal experiment: there were many, more reputable tomes whose ouijanesse was far more legitimate and established. Dave seemed calm, serene, like a Buddha in compact form, like a big furry egg with a Batman head.

  A text from UNAVAILABLE vibrated in. She was suddenly tingly and out of breath and nervous. Earlier that morning she had texted him a request for a photo.

  It had been a daring request. St. Steve hated the very idea of her having photos of him, and she had dutifully deleted the few reluctant pictures he had sent her way back in the beginning of their—what was the word for what it was? Relationship sounded wrong, though accurate in the sense that any two objects had some sort of relationship to each other. Association, perhaps, was better. Affair sounded grown-up and rather marvelous, and The St. Steve Affair would have made a terrific title for a spy novel, but that overstated things. The shadowy picture she had secretly taken of him at the Old Folks Home with her old digital camera had melted down with the camera, and even in that one, he’d had his hand in front of his face. She had loved looking at that hand, however, and she could still see it vividly, if not clearly, in her mind.

  She knew there was a good chance he would be mad, and was bracing for a blow. So she held her breath and made a wincing teeth-clenched face when she pressed Yes to view the message.

  “You first,” it said.

  She spent the next two hours trying to take a sexy-enough phone picture to send him that she didn’t look too dumb in. It sure wasn’t easy. Finally, as the sun began to sink past her window and seep through the blinds, and turned the room slightly reddish, she was able to capture an image in which her skin looked less horrible than in real life, and to frame it so her hair wasn’t terribly involved. She would have loved to smile at him in the photo, but her smiles all looked stupid and dorky, so she pursed her lips in a kiss, and tried to make her eyes dreamy. It didn’t look too bad, unless she was kidding herself. In fact, it didn’t really look much like her at all, thank goddess.

  She had imagined, but never dared, doing something like this before, and now she had done it. Instantly she felt like she shouldn’t have. But it was too late, and anyway, he had asked, something he had never, ever asked before. Perhaps it was the jewel that made it happen. Or maybe the St. Steve sigils were finally working; he was doing everything she had prayed for, even if he was still a continent away. Perhaps one of the sigils would eventually bring him back to Clearview.

  It had been quite an effort, and Andromeda had had practically no real sleep the previous two
nights owing to Huggy’s chatter. Imagining St. Steve receiving her picture and fantasizing about her—it felt wonderful despite her fear that maybe it wasn’t quite the right thing to do. Almost suddenly, she crashed into deep sleep.

  xv.

  Andromeda’s phone was vibrating in her hand, but it didn’t say “UNAVAILABLE.” It said “R & E.”

  “First you say hello, then I say hello, and so on and so on,” said Rosalie when Andromeda pressed Answer but couldn’t manage to say anything. She was still in her photo position with her knees tucked under her and her arms outstretched and her face on the floor.

  “What?” she finally managed to say.

  “Get it together, Klein. Look, can you be ready in fifteen? I need to pick you up like right now. I’m afraid to turn the engine off now that I got it going.” Apparently she had managed to hot-wire the Volvo.

  “What?” said Andromeda, still disoriented. “Where are we going?”

  “To the station, An-dumb-eda. I will pause to let it sink in,” Rosalie said. But she didn’t pause. “Remember, we agreed ages ago, and I don’t have time to go over it again. Party at the station. Big surprise. Dress cute.”

  “What?” said Andromeda, but Rosalie had already hung up.

  Dave, still sitting on the Simonomicon, gave her a silent meow, as though he understood it all.

  “Stop looking like a person, Dave,” she said. “This instant.”

  Andromeda’s arms and legs were all pins and needles, as though they had really been bound with silk and rope. The room was dim, near dark. Eight-thirty. She had been asleep for four hours, and she was still half asleep now.

  There was no way she could get ready in fifteen minutes. Her hair was hopeless, matted and flat on one side, curled and wispy on the other, like waving strands of seaweed. So, of course, she put on Daisy’s wig. Besides its Huggy-approved weedgie-ness, it was better than her real hair, and actually, if she held her head a certain way and unfocused her eyes a little, she looked okay as a blonde in the mirror. She was emboldened by the wig to try one of Daisy’s tight, sheer, long-sleeved shirts; it didn’t look as good on her as it had on Daisy, but St. Steve had seemed to like it and it wasn’t all that bad on her, really. Though of course, she hid it with her large black hooded sweatshirt zipped up all the way.

 

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