Green Eyes

by Lucius Shepard

  ‘That’s him,’ said Donnell.

  A long maroon car was slowing; it pulled over on the shoulder and honked. They walked toward it without speaking. There were bouquet vases in the back windows, a white monogrammed R on the door. Jocundra reached out to open the rear door, but Papa Salvatino, his puffy face warped by a scowl, punched down the lock.

  ‘Get in front!’ he snapped. ‘I ain’t your damn chauffeur!’

  ‘You’re late,’ said Donnell as he slid in. Jocundra scrunched close to him, away from Papa.

  ‘Listen, brother. Don’t you be tellin’ me I’m late!’ Papa engaged the gears; the car shot forward. ‘Right now, right this second, you already at Otille’s.’ He shifted again, and they were pressed together by the acceleration. ‘We got us a peckin’ order at Maravillosa,’ Papa shouted over the wind. ‘And it’s somethin’ you better keep in mind, brother, ‘cause you the littlest chicken!’

  He lit a cigarette, and the wind showered sparks over the front seat. Jocundra coughed as a plume of smoke enveloped her.

  ‘I just can’t sit behind the wheel ‘less I got a smoke,’ said Papa. ‘Sorry.’ He winked at Jocundra, then gave her an appraising stare. ‘My goodness, sister. I been so busy scoutin’ out Brother Harrison, I never noticed what a fine, fine-lookin’ woman you are. You get tired of shar-penin’ his pencil, give ‘ol Papa a shout.’

  Jocundra edged farther away; Papa laughed and lead-footed the gas. The light crumbled, the grasses marshaled into ranks of shadows against the leaden dusk. They drove on in silence.

  The house was painted black.

  On first sight, a brief glimpse through a wild tangle of vines and trees, Donnell hadn’t been certain. By the time they arrived at the estate, clouds had swept across the moon and he could not even make out the roofline against the sky. A number of lighted windows hovered unsupported in the night, testifying to the great size of the place, and as they passed along the drive, the headlights revealed a hallucinatory vegetable decay: oleanders with nodding white blooms, shattered trunks enwebbed by vines, violet orchids drooling off a crooked branch, bright spears of bamboo, shrubs towering as high as trees, all crammed and woven together. Peeping between the leaves at the end of the drive was the pale androgynous face of a statue. Things crunched underfoot on the flagstone path, and nearing the porch Donnell saw that the boards were a dull black except for four silver-painted symbols which seemed to have fallen at random upon the house, adjusting their shapes to its contours like strange unmelting snowflakes: an Egyptian cross floating sideways on the wall, a swastika overlapping the lower half of the door and the floorboards, a crescent moon, a star. He assumed there were others hidden by the darkness.

  Papa led them down a foul-smelling, unlit corridor reverberating with loud rock and roll. Several people ran past them, giggling. At the end of the corridor was a small room furnished as an office: metal desk, easy chairs, typewriter, file cabinets. The walls were of unadorned black wood.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said, switching on the desk lamp. ‘Don’t you go pokin’ around ‘til Otille gives you the say-so.’

  The instant he left, Jocundra slumped into a chair. ‘God,’ she said; she opened her mouth to say something else, but let it pass.

  Shrieks of laughter from the corridor, the tangy smell of cat shit and marijuana. Oppressed by the atmosphere himself, Donnell had no consolation to offer.

  ‘The ends of the earth,’ she said, and laughed despondently. ‘My high school yearbook said I’d travel to the ends of the earth to find adventure. This must be it.’

  ‘The ends of the earth are but the beginning of another world,’ someone intoned behind them.

  The gray-haired usher from Papa Salvatino’s revival stood in the door; neither his beatific smile nor his shabby suit had changed. At his side was a crewcut, hawk-faced young man holding a guitar, and lounging beside him was a teenage girl, whose costume of a curly red wig and beige negligee did not disguise her mousiness.

  ‘This here’s Downey and Clea,’ said the usher. ‘I’m Simpkins. Delighted to have you back in the congregation.’

  Downey laughed, whispered in Clea’s ear, and she grinned.

  Jocundra was speechless, and Donnell, struck by a suspicion, shifted his visual field. Three black figures bloomed in the silver-limned door; the prismatic fires within them columned their legs, delineated the patterns of their musculature and nerves, and glowed at their fingertips. Simpkins and one of the other two, then, along with Papa, must have been the three figures Donnell had seen in Salt Harvest, and he thought he knew what their complex patterns indicated. He shifted back to normal sight and studied their faces. Clea and Downey were toadies and boot-lickers, but each with a secret, a trick, an ounce of distinction. Simpkins was hard to read.

  ‘So you’re Otille’s little band of mutants,’ said Donnell, walking over to stand behind Jocundra.

  ‘How’d you know that?’ asked Clea, her voice a nasal twang. ‘I bet Papa told you.’

  ‘Lucky guess,’ said Donnell. ‘Where’s the other one? There’s one more besides Papa, isn’t there?’

  Simpkins maintained his God-conscious smile. ‘Right on all counts, brother,’ he said. ‘But if half what we been hearin’s true, we can’t hold a candle to you. Now Downey here’ - he gave Downey’s head a friendly rub - ‘he can move things around with his mind. Not big things. Ping-pong balls, feathers. And then only when he ain’t stoned, which ain’t too often. And Sister Clea…’

  ‘I sing,’ said Clea defiantly.

  Downey snickered.

  ‘And when I do,’ she said, and stuck out her tongue at Downey, ‘strange things happen.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Downey. ‘Most times you just clear the room. Sounds like someone squeezin’ a rat.’

  ‘It’s true,’ said Simpkins. ‘Sister Clea’s talent is erratic, but wondrous things do happen when she lifts her voice in song. A gentle breeze will blow where none has blown before, insects will drop dead in midnight…’

  ‘She oughta hire out to Orkin,’ said Downey.

  ‘And,’ Simpkins continued, ‘only last week a canary fell from its perch, never more to charm the morning air.’

  ‘That was just a coincidence,’ said Downey sullenly.

  ‘You’re just jealous ‘cause Otille kicked you outta bed,’ said Clea.

  ‘Coincidence or not,’ said Simpkins, ‘Sister Clea’s stock has risen sharply since the death of poor Pavarotti.’

  ‘And what’s your speciality, Simpkins?’ asked Donnell.

  ‘I suppose you’d classify me as a telepath.’ Simpkins folded his arms, thoughtful. ‘Though it never seemed I was pickin’ up real thoughts, more like dreams behind thoughts…’

  ‘Simpkins once had a rather exotic vision which he said derived from my thoughts,’ said a musical voice. A diminutive, black-haired woman swept into the room, Papa and a heavy-set black man at her heels. ‘It was a pretty vision,’ she said. ‘I incorporated it into my decorating scheme. But his talent failed him shortly thereafter, and we never did learn what it meant.’ She walked over to Donnell; she was wearing a cocktail dress of a silky red material that seemed to touch every part of her body when she moved. ‘I’m Otille Rigaud.’ She gave her name the full French treatment, as if it were a rare vintage. ‘I see you’ve been getting to know my pets.’ Then she frowned. ‘Baron!’ she snapped. ‘Where’s Dularde?’

  ‘Beats me,’ said the black man.

  ‘Find him,’ she said, shooing them off with flicks of her fingers. ‘All of you. Go on!’

  She gestured for Donnell to sit beside Jocundra, and after he had taken a chair, she perched on the desk in front of him. Her dress slid up over her knees, and he found that if he did not meet her stare or turn his head at a drastic angle, he would be looking directly at the shadowy division between her thighs. She was a remarkably beautiful woman, and though according to Papa’s story she must be nearly forty, Donnell would have guessed her age at a decade less. Her hair fell to her s
houlders in serpentine curls; her upper lip was shorter and fuller than the lower, giving her a permanently dissatisfied expression; her skin was pale, translucent, a tracery of blue veins showing at the throat. Delicate bones, black eyes aswim with lights that did not appear to be reflections. A cameo face, one which bespoke subtle understandings and passions. But her overall delicacy, not any single feature of it, was Otille’s most striking aspect. Against the backdrop of her pets, she had seemed fashioned by a more skillful hand, and when she had entered the office, Donnell had felt that an invisible finger had nudged her from the ranks of pawns into an attacking position: the tiny ivory queen of a priceless chess set.

  ‘You have a wonderful presence, Donnell,’ she said after a long silence.’Wonderful.’

  ‘Compared to what?’ he said, annoyed at being judged. ‘The rest of your remaindered freaks?’

  ‘Oh, no. You’re quite incomparable. Don’t you think so, Ms Verret? Jocundra.’ She smiled chummily at Jocundra. ‘What an awful name to saddle a child with! So large and cumbersome. But you have grown into it.’

  Jocundra registered surprise on being addressed, but she was not caught without a reply. ‘I’m really not interested in trading insults,’ she said. She opened her purse and pulled out a manila folder. ‘These are our cost estimates. Shouldn’t we get down to business?’

  Otille laughed, but took the folder. She carried it back to the desk, sat, and began to examine it.

  A tap on the door, and Papa leaned in. ‘Otille? They spotted Dularde in the ballroom, but there’s so damn many people, we can’t catch up with him.’

  ‘All right. Don’t do anything. I’ll be down in a minute.’ She waved him away. ‘These don’t seem out of line,’ she said, closing the folder. ‘And I’m quite impressed with you, Donnell. But I think we should both sleep on it and see how we feel in the morning. Then we can talk. Agreed?’

  ‘Fine by me,’ he said. ‘Jocundra?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I apologize for getting off on the wrong foot,’ said Otille, scraping back her chair and standing. ‘I have to deal with so much falsity, I end up being false myself. And I suppose my theatrical background has affected me badly.’ She tipped her head to one side, considering an idea. ‘Would you like to hear something from my play? Danse Calinda?’

  Donnell shrugged; Jocundra said nothing.

  Otille adopted a distracted pose behind her chair. ‘I’ll do a brief passage,’ she said, ‘and then we’ll find Dularde.’ As she spoke the lines, she darted about the room, her hands fidgeting with her dress, papers on the desk, straightening furniture, and all her movements had the electrified inconsistency of someone prone to flashes of otherworldly vision.

  ’”… And then coming back from Brooklyn Heights, the cabbie was talking, looking at me in the rear view mirror, winking. He was very friendly, you know how they are when they think you’re from out of town. But anyway as he was talking, the skin started dissolving around his eye, melting, rotting away, until there was just this huge globe surrounded by shreds of green flesh staring at me in the mirror. And I was afraid! Anyone in their right mind would have been, but all down Broadway I was mostly afraid that if he didn’t keep his eye on the road we were going to crash. Isn’t that peculiar? I’m terribly hot. Are you hot?’” She walked over to the wall and pretended to open a window. ‘“There. That’s better.’” She fanned herself. ‘“I know you must think I’m foolish running on like this, but I talk to so few people and I have… I was going to say I have so many thoughts to express, so many tragic thoughts. So many tragic things have happened. But my thoughts aren’t really tragic, or maybe they are, they’re just not nobly tragic. The only thing noble I ever saw was a golden anvil shining up in the clouds over Bayou Goula, and that was the day before I came down with chicken pox. No, my thoughts are like the radio playing in the background, pumping out jingles and hit tunes and commercials and the news bulletins. Flash. A tragic thing occurred today, ten thousand people lost their lives, then nervous music, typewriters clicking, and moving right along, on the last leg of her European tour the First Lady presided over a combined luncheon and fashion show for the wives of the foreign press. Ten thousand people! Corpses, agony, death. All that breath and energy flying out of the world. You’d think there’d be a change in the air or something, a sign, maybe a special dark cloud passing overhead. You’d think you would feel something…”’

  Donnell had been absorbed by the performance, and when Otille relaxed from the manic intensity she had conjured up, he felt cut off from a source of energy. ‘That was pretty good,’ he said grudgingly.

  ‘Pretty good!’ Otille scoffed. ‘It was a hell of a play, but the trouble was I tended to lose myself in the part.’

  Otille’s pets and the black man she had called Baron were waiting by the doors of the ballroom. Though the doors were shut, the music was deafening and she had to raise her voice to be heard. ‘I really hate to interrupt things on account of Dularde,’ she said, looking aggrieved.

  Downey and Clea and Papa put on expressions of concern, displaying their sympathetic understanding of Otille’s position, but Simpkins’ smile never wavered, apparently feeling no need to cozy up. The black man stared at Jocundra, who hung back from the group, ducking her eyes, lines of strain bracketing her mouth.

  ‘Is this important?’ asked Donnell. ‘We’re tired. We can meet him in the morning.’

  ‘I won’t be awake in the morning,’ said Otille angrily; she turned to the others. ‘Please try to find him once more. I’ll wait here.’ She gestured to the Baron, and he flung open the doors.

  Music, smoky air and flashing nights gusted out, and Donnell’s immediate impression was that they had pierced the hollow of a black carcass and stumbled onto an infestation of beetles halfway through a transformation into the human. Hundreds of people were dancing, shoving and mauling each other, and they were dressed in what appeared to be the overflow of a flea market: feathered boas, ripped dinner jackets, sequined gowns, high school band uniforms. Orange spotlights swept across them, coils of smoke writhing in the beams. As his eyes adjusted to the alternating brilliance and dimness, he saw that the ceiling had been knocked out and ragged peninsulas of planking left jutting from the walls at the height of about twenty feet; these served as makeshift balconies, each holding half a dozen or more people, and as mounts for the spotlights and speakers, which were angled down beneath them. Ropes trailed off their sides, and at the far end of the room someone was swinging back and forth over the heads of the crowd.

  ‘… party!’ shouted Otille, as her pets infiltrated the dancers, pushing their way through.

  ‘What?’ Donnell leaned close.

  ‘It’s Downey’s party! He just released…’ Otille pointed to her ear and drew him along the hall to where the din was more bearable. Jocundra followed behind.

  ‘He’s just released his first record,’ said Otille. ‘We have our own label. That’s him playing.’

  Donnell cocked an ear to listen. Beneath the distortion, the music was slick and heavily synthesized, and Downey’s lyrics were surprisingly romantic, his voice strong and melodic.

  ‘… Just like a queen upon a playin’ card,

  A little cheatin’ never hurt your heart,

  You just smile and let the deal go on

  ‘Til the deck’s run through…

  See how they’ve fallen for you.’

  ‘It’s one of the benefits of living here,’ said Otille. ‘I enjoy sponsoring creative enterprise.’ She strolled back down to the doorway, beckoning them to follow.

  The shining blades of the spotlights skewed wildly across the bobbing heads, stopping to illuminate an island of ecstatic faces, then slicing away. Some of the dancers -both men and women - were naked to the waist, and others wore rags, yet they gave evidence of being well-to-do. Expensive haircuts, jewelry, and many of the rags were of good material, suggesting they had been ripped just for the occasion. Five minutes passed, ten. Jocundra stood
with her hand to her mouth, pale, and when he asked her what was wrong, she replied, ‘The smoke,’ and leaned against the wall. Finally Downey and Papa returned, Simpkins behind them.

  ‘I think I saw him,’ said Downey. ‘But I couldn’t get close. It’s like the goddamn stockyards out there.’

  ‘Somebody said he was headed this way,’ said Papa; he was huffing and puffing, and it was clear to Donnell that he was exaggerating his winded condition, making sure Otille noticed how diligently he had exerted himself on her behalf.

  ‘I guess we’ll have to stop the dancing,’ said Otille. ‘I’m sorry, Downey.’

  Downey waved it off as inconsequential.

  ‘Now, hold up,’ said Papa, earnestly addressing the problem. ‘I bet if all of us, maybe Brother Harrison here as well, if we all got out there and kinda formed a chain, you know, about five or six feet apart, and went from one end to the other, well, I bet we could flush him that way.’

  Otille glanced shyly up at Donnell. ‘Would you mind?’

  What he read from Otille’s face angered Donnell and convinced him that this was to be his induction into petdom, the first move in a petty power play which, if he were nice, would bring him treats, and if he weren’t, would earn him abusive treatment. When he had met Otille, her face had held a depth of understanding, intimations of a vivid character, but now it had changed into a porcelain dish beset with candied lips and painted eyes, the face of a precious little girlwho would hold her breath forever if thwarted. And as for the rest, they would go on happily all night trying to tree their kennelmate, delighting in this crummy game of hide-and-seek, woofing, wagging their tails, licking her hand. Except for Simpkins; his smile in place, Simpkins was unreadable.

  ‘Christ!’ said Donnell, not hiding his disgust. ‘Let me try.’