He backed into the kitchen and set his groceries down on the counter. A frozen lasagne, a large bag of cheese Nachos, a dozen Washington Red apples, some cinnamon-flavoured dental floss, a TV Guide, and a bottle of chianti. Now was that living, or was that a Loneliness Set in a brown paper sack?
He tore open the lasagne box and slid the lasagne into the microwave oven to defrost. He could still smell that strange overheated smell. Maybe the Nips had accidentally left one of their woks over a hot flame for too long. Maybe it was diesel oil wafting over from the naval station, or airplane fuel from the airport.
Rattling open his kitchen drawer, he scrabbled through shoals of ill-assorted cutlery until he found a waiter’s friend. He opened up the bottle of chianti, and poured himself a large glass with his right hand while he adjusted the microwave with his left. He hummed the Humming Song from Madame Butterfly.
He was still humming it when he went through to the studio room, and switched on the lamps in there.
He dropped his glass of wine on to the rug. He heard it fall, a dull ringing noise, but he didn’t make any attempt to catch it, didn’t look down.
Sitting on the end of his bed, quite upright, her hands held loosely in her lap, was Marianna. Against the jazzy red-and-yellow gaiety of the Mexican throwover that covered his bed, she looked monochromatic and severe. Her hair was tucked up into a black beret. She wore black sunglasses and a black belted raincoat and black stockings. Her face was as grey as clay.
‘Jesus,’ said Joe. ‘I’m seeing things. Jesus, I’m seeing things.’
He turned around, and went directly back to the kitchen, and stared at the top half of his face in the mirror that was propped on top of his Smiling Sashimi calendar. The top half of his face stared back at him like a Venetian carnival mask. Blank, festive, and cruelly uncommunicative.
He told his eyes, ‘I saw Marianna sitting on the bed.’ His eyes stared back at him and didn’t blink.
‘Marianna’s dead and I just went into the studio and there she was sitting on the end of the bed, wearing these shades and staring at me.’
He was trembling. He hadn’t trembled as wildly as this since he had caught the Asian ‘flu, his second year at the San Diego Opera, and almost died.
‘She was there!’ he yelled at the mirror, pounding his fist on the kitchen counter so hard that his box of dental floss jumped on to the floor. ‘I walked into the studio and she was there!’
He covered his face with his hands. Marianna’s death had shocked him, disoriented him badly. Even though he and Marianna hadn’t always got along too well, he had always known that she was there, that he could call her, that he could surprise her, even if she told him to take a hike. It was only when she had completely disappeared from the world that he had been able to assess the size of his affection for her, the same way that you don’t know how much you’re going to miss a tooth until the dentist pulls it and you’re left with this huge gaping Grand Canyon cavity in your mouth and you can’t eat pizza for a month.
A soft voice said, ‘You weren’t dreaming, Joe.’
‘See, now I’m hearing things,’ Joe told himself, lowering his hands. ‘It’s the shock, right? I’ve been suppressing the shock. But now that I’ve talked to Lloyd about it, the dam’s broken. I’m not shocked any more. Just seeing things, and hearing things.’
‘Joe,’ said the voice, amused.
He turned his neck stiffly sideways. Marianna was standing in the doorway, in that tilted black beret and those impenetrable black sunglasses, her hands thrust into her raincoat pockets.
‘You’re real,’ he told her.
She smiled, and stepped into the kitchen. He smelled heat again, that dry metallic heat. ‘Of course I’m real, Joe. I’m more real now than I was before.’
‘Well—hanh—good! What’s that supposed to mean? More real?’
‘Didn’t you ever love me?’ asked Marianna. ‘Don’t you remember those times we went to Mexico? Dancing at Tijuana Tilly’s? Eating ourselves sick on mixiote? Laughing, getting drunk? Remember that night at Popotla?’
‘You died on that bus,’ Joe told her.
She turned her head away. ‘I was burned, Joe, but I didn’t die.’
‘Everybody died on that bus, Marianna. You included. I’m experiencing some kind of hallucination here, caused by delayed shock. You hear that, Joe? You’re hallucinating.’
‘No, Joe,’ Marianna told him. ‘I’m here, I’m here for real, and I’m here for ever.’
He stared at her. In spite of his natural scepticism, he was beginning to believe that no, she wasn’t dead, and that yes, she was real. He slowly reached out his hand and touched her arm.
‘I can feel you,’ he said, but more to himself than to her.
‘Yes, you can feel me. I’m real.’
‘And for ever?’
‘Yes.’
‘So Otto was telling the truth all along?’
‘Yes, Joe. Otto was telling us the truth all along.’
Joe covered his mouth with his hand, and leaned against the kitchen counter as if he couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘Did you tell Lloyd about Otto?’ asked Marianna. He could still feel her heat. Heat, heat, heat. It was like standing next to an electric fire.
‘I don’t believe this,’ Joe protested. ‘You can’t be real. It isn’t possible.’
‘Joe, it was easy, once I’d made that leap. Once I had that faith. I’m pure now, Joe, purified. Nothing but smoke and soul.’
Joe said, ‘I’m going crazy. Listen—I’m going to leave now. Okay? I’m going to walk out of this apartment for a while and if you’re real you’ll still be here when I get back. But if you’re not . . . well, I don’t know. I’m going to have to think about that. Kirsty McLaren said that her shrink was pretty good.’
‘Joe,’ said Marianna, ‘I’m real.’
‘Sure you are. Sure you’re real. Just like Daffy Duck’s real and Batman’s real and Roadrunner’s real. They must be real, you can see them on TV.’
‘Joe . . .’ Marianna began, stepping forward.
Joe bunched up his fists and roared at her like an angry two-year-old. ‘Damn it, Marianna! I’m scared! You scare me! You’re dead, but here you are!’
‘Joe, shush, it’s okay. Everything’s fine. I’m smoke and I’m soul and I’m absolutely fine.’
‘I’m going to call Lloyd.’
‘No, Joe, don’t call Lloyd.’
‘Jesus, Marianna, this is insane. I’m going to have to call Lloyd.’
‘Did you tell Lloyd about Otto?’
‘Of course I told Lloyd about Otto. What do you think?’
The smell of heat grew even stronger. Joe was so hot that he was sweating, and the sweat stung his eyes. All the time he was backing away from Marianna but Marianna kept circling around and edging nearer, circling and edging, until Joe began to feel that he would never get away from her.
Marianna said, ‘When you left the group, Joe, Otto made you promise that you would never tell. Don’t you remember? You took an oath.’
‘That wasn’t any oath.’
‘You laid your hand on the Book of the Salamander and you swore not to tell.’
Joe let out a half-broken laugh. ‘Hey, come on. The Book of the Salamander isn’t exactly the Holy Bible.’
‘No, it isn’t. It’s greater than the Holy Bible. It doesn’t just tell you that life has its miracles, it tells you what the miracles are and how they can be achieved.’
‘It’s bullshit.’
Marianna shook her head. ‘Don’t blaspheme, Joe. You’ve already broken your solemn oath. Don’t blaspheme, too.’
‘It may be blasphemy to you, but it’s bullshit to me.’
He reached out for the telephone, but Marianna seized his wrist to stop him. There was a sharp sizzle of burned hair and
seared skin, and Joe let out a bellow of pain. ‘Aaaahhh! Christ! Aaaahhh!’ He wrenched his arm away and held it up. Marianna’s fingers had burned five scarlet stripes around his wrist, and his skin was already bubbling up into a mass of blisters.
Shocked, he stalked stiffly into the kitchen, and turned the cold tap on full. He held his wrist under the running water until the agonizing burning was reduced to a thick, numb ache. Marianna came and stood beside him, watching him. Her grey face was impassive. There was no telling if she was pleased or sorry.
‘You can get the fuck out of here,’ Joe told her, his voice shaking.
‘You have to keep your oath, Joe. You can’t tell anyone. Otherwise we’re all at risk.’
‘Risk? What risk? Christ, how did you burn me like that?’
Marianna reached out for him again, but he backed away. ‘Just keep off, okay? Just stay away.’
But Marianna continued to edge closer, and now she slowly twisted open the top button of her raincoat. Joe retreated to the opposite side of the kitchen, keeping his eyes on her all the time. He felt behind him for the counter, then for the drawer handle. As Marianna released the second button of her raincoat, and then the third, he tugged open the drawer and rooted around inside it for his carving-knife.
‘Joe . . . so long as you swear to keep your oath . . . everything’s going to be fine. But you have to swear.’
She unbuttoned the last button, and with a twist of her shoulders, the raincoat dropped on to the kitchen floor. Underneath, she was naked, her skin shining pearly-grey. Her small dark-nippled breasts were just the same as Joe remembered, her rounded stomach, her heavy thighs. But she had a dull subcutaneous glow that reminded him of nothing but death. As a boy, Joe had seen a drowned man dragged out of the Cahokia Canal in East St Louis, and his skin had glowed with the same dim putrescence.
Around her waist, Marianna wore a wide black belt that was buckled so tight that it made her flesh bulge out, top and bottom. The belt’s clasp was in the shape of a lizard, inside a circle.
‘Joe, don’t you want to kiss me, Joe, the way we used to? Don’t you want to hold me?’
‘You just keep your fucking distance,’ Joe warned her. His fingers closed around the blade of his sharpest vegetable-knife, and he felt it slice through flesh. He turned the knife around, and picked it up, and brandished it in front of Marianna’s face. Blood was running down his fingers and dripping from his burned wrist.
‘Don’t you want to make love to me, Joe?’ Marianna coaxed him, coming closer. She reached her hand down between her legs, and started rubbing herself sensually, and purring. ‘Remember those nights in Tijuana,Joe? Not a wink of sleep. Make love to me, Joe, come on, make love to me.’
Joe stared in horrified fascination as she plunged her hand deeper and deeper between her legs. She opened the lips of her vagina with one hand and slid the index finger of her other hand right inside, right up to the knuckle, and stirred it around and around. She closed her eyes, and threw back her head, and cooed, ‘Come on, Joe, I need you so much . . . come on, Joe, I love you.’
Joe hesitated for only a second. Then he dodged to the right, colliding with the edge of the icebox, and threw himself out of the kitchen door, into the hallway.
Marianna’s reaction was instantaneous. She clawed for his shoulder as he hit the icebox, then jumped on to his back as he made his way to the front door. Immediately, Joe felt as if his back had been doused in blazing petrol. He screamed in pain, and staggered sideways under the weight. His shirt scorched, then burst into flames. He twisted and grunted, and tried to swing Marianna against the wall, but she was clinging on too tight, and her legs were burning into his sides, into his jeans, into his skin, into his flesh, and her arms were branding his shoulders like meat.
Reaching behind him, he stabbed at her frantically with his vegetable knife. But there didn’t seem to be anything there to stab. In spite of her heat, in spite of her weight, she appeared to be completely insubstantial. Like smoke. Like someone’s soul. Like nothing at all.
‘Marianna!’ he roared, with his clothes on fire and his hair shrivelling.
But Marianna shrieked, ‘It’s a game! It’s a game! You have to guess who I am!’
‘Oh God!’ cried Joe, dropping to his knees. ‘Oh God, Marianna, you’re burning me!’
‘It’s a game, Joe! Who am I? Who am I?’ and she clapped her hands over his eyes, so that he wouldn’t be able to see her.
Smoke poured out from between Marianna’s fingers as she burned her way through Joe’s upper cheeks and eyelids, and then fried his eyes. Through all of that pain, Joe felt his eyeballs burst, and heard the sharp sizzle of optic jelly. He was beyond screaming. The pain was too much. The horror of being blinded was more than his brain could accept. All his brain was interested in right now was survival.
He stabbed at her wildly, stabbed again. But she forced him down and rolled him over on to his back and forced him flat on to the floor.
All he could think of was pain. It flooded over him, as if he had been washed over by a tidal wave of concentrated hydrochloric acid. He shuddered and shuddered and windmilled wildly at her with his fists, but she pressed down on him more and more heavily, and there came a moment when he understood that it was futile, that he was going to die.
It was at that moment that he felt no pain at all. His brain had plainly decided that he didn’t need any further warnings that his body was under attack. He had accepted death, pain was no longer necessary.
He lay still, not dead yet, but remarkably calm; as calm as the dead; as calm as anyone for whom there are no alternatives left.
He didn’t even flinch when Marianna reached down and opened his jeans with fingers that scorched the denim.
‘You broke your oath, Joe,’ she sang. ‘You broke your oath.’
With burning-hot hands she prized his penis out of his jeans, and stretched it upwards. The skin shrivelled and blistered. The spongy tissue crackled, and smoke poured out of the meatus. All around it, Joe’s pubic hairs burned like scores of tiny fuses. Then Marianna was holding what looked like a flaring candle, the last fiery moments of Joe’s manhood.
Sometime after that, Joe thought he heard someone singing. It was ‘Bei Mir Bist Du Schön’. ‘Please let me explain, bei mir bist du schön, means that you’re grand . . . again I’ll explain . . . it means you’re the fairest in the land . . .’
Marianna took off her dark glasses and stared down at him with empty eyes. Then she kissed him, and his mouth caught fire, and he died.
Thirteen
Kathleen lived in Escondido. On the night of her husband’s death, her older sister Lucy had flown in from Tucson, Arizona, to stay with her. But Lloyd persuaded her to come back with him to La Jolla that evening, and to have dinner with him at the Original Fish Depot.
‘You can’t say that we don’t have something in common,’ Lloyd told her.
‘But I don’t have anything to wear.’
He smiled, shook his head. ‘The Fish Depot isn’t formal. Not unless you want it to be. And, besides, you look great as you are.’
Waldo was delighted to see Lloyd, and shook his hand up and down as if he were priming a reluctant pump. ‘You want dinner, Mr Denman? Yes, of course! Look how busy we are! Full up to bursting! And every night this week!’
‘Maybe I should stay away more often,’ Lloyd suggested, as Waldo fussily piloted them over to the special guest table by the window, overlooking the Cove, and lit the candles.
‘Mr Denman, we miss you,’ Waldo told him. ‘We work hard, we fill up the restaurant. But the restaurant is yours. Your dream, yes? Your inspiration. You know what my grandfather always used to say, when we walked on the beach? You can take everything away from a man. His family, his money, his clothes, his dignification. But you can never take away his ideas.’ His voice dropped grimly. ‘Not unless you are prepared to kill him.�
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Lloyd clapped Waldo on the back. ‘After Plato, this man is the world’s greatest philosopher,’ he told Kathleen. ‘He’s also the world’s worst flatterer. Beware! That’s how he gets whatever he wants.’
They sat facing each other over the dipping candlelight. Kathleen looked tired but very pretty. She had strong cheekbones, wide brown eyes. A mixture of determination and vulnerability that Lloyd found very appealing. The kind of woman who would cry when things went wrong; but who would wipe away the tears and promise herself that nothing would ever upset her so badly again.
Nil illegitimae carborundum. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.
‘When you’ve been married for so long, you forget what it’s like, being alone,’ Kathleen told him.
Lloyd nodded. ‘Celia and I weren’t officially married, but I guess you could say that we were married in the eyes of God. I never expected to spend my life with anyone else.’
‘Tom misses him so much,’ said Kathleen.
‘Tom?’
‘Our son. Our one and only.’
‘I’m real sorry,’ said Lloyd. ‘Look—here’s the starter.’
They began with coquilles St Jacques with a light mornay glaze. While they were eating, Louis came out from the kitchen and asked them how they liked it. He was a thin, diminutive Frenchman from Marseilles, by way of New Orleans, with a concave chest and a pale waxy face, and a limited grasp of English. But he could cook with verve and delicacy, and flavour his creations as precisely as a pianist hitting the right note; and he was a living denial of Paul Prudhomme’s notion that any chef lighter than eighteen stone can’t cook shit.
‘Louis, this is brilliant,’ said Lloyd.
Louis modestly shook his head. ‘Not brilliant, monsieur. But just as it should be.’
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