by Todd Grimson
“Really?” he said, challenging her. “It doesn’t change you?”
“Who am I to say exactly howl Of course there are changes taking place, some good, some bad … some chemical, some—I don’t know—mystical What, you think I’m made of stone?”
At this outburst, Isabel said something Lisa guessed to be, “Don’t upset her, Tavinho,” in Portuguese—but Tavinho seemed unmoved by this, getting a reaction had pleased him, Lisa could tell, and she said, “It’s OK if he bugs me, Isabel, meu madre”—she didn’t know if she got that right, but went ahead anyway—”que bom.”
Everyone thought she was being ironic here except Tavinho, who was looking at her seriously, ready for anything, surprised by nothing now, asking her, “Do you have magical powers?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. Some. Maybe I have some that I don’t understand yet; I need time to find out what they are, get them under control.”
Isabel was looking at her like she was out of her mind, or maybe not. Lisa felt embarrassed, but then, all she had to do was look down at her fingers to remember how she had X’d out Wendy Right.
Tavinho understood, she saw. Or he had the capacity to understand. Errol would, too, in a different way, but Errol wasn’t here. She was aware suddenly, unaccountably it made her blush, that Tavinho could see her nipples through the fabric of the T-shirt. It was still raining outside, tirelessly, in the shimmering dark.
“Lisa Supernova,” said Tavinho, teasing, in a low voice no one else could hear, and Lisa knew they had to fuck, and soon; she smiled at him and he probably understood the message, at least approximately. If it would take Tavinho climbing in her window like a suitor from a few hundred years ago, then that’s what it would take. A dessert was served then that reminded Lisa of flan, she tasted it thinking of Boro and his taste buds, his tongue on the sweetness of the rich flan the afternoon he’d told her about the white jaguar and his ancient life. There was a prefuck aura in the room, a sweet taste in their mouths, melting saliva, and hidden places and caves.
SIXTEEN
Did this mean her left hand was now dangerous, the right one safe, like the Islamic belief in sacred and profane, the Latin dextra and sinistra? Lisa thought she should avoid grasping Tavinho’s penis in her left hand, there was no telling what mischief she might spare him. The tryst turned out to be easily arranged. It was cold, so they got under the covers, kissing. She was glad it was dark, she didn’t want to ponder all the marks on her body and what they were supposed to mean. The heart tattoo was on her left buttock—but that’s the side of the body the heart is on, and one couldn’t assume that Boro was designing all this as hieroglyphics to be decoded with care, it could as easily be sort of random. The jaguar and the cross were significant, but that was all she’d be willing to assume.
Now, in the dark, Tavinho’s fervent kisses were a distraction, the warmth they generated diverted her from fruitless contemplation of her doom. Tavinho must truly imagine himself to be in love with her to have followed her up here, knowing, as he surely did, about Mwangi. From his demeanor it wouldn’t seem to matter, but still, maybe he was saving his jealousy for sometime later, once he thought he had enough power to risk it. At the moment he was non-possessive, fighting the Brazilian stereotype. She didn’t know, couldn’t guess, how much was for her benefit, how much was sincere. She was willing to accept his caresses, his tongue, his penis … tonight, in this old colonial town, a few blocks from the slave-trading headquarters. Up from the beach where the ceremony had failed, or been redirected. Tomorrow, early, they would get out of town. Before Lisa had to endure too many more people crossing themselves against her, fingering their amulets, their charms, against the witch. Hide your children’s eyes.
SEVENTEEN
Lisa’s hair was getting a little longer these days, and she liked it this way. Barefoot, wearing a simple cotton dress, she hung out with Caitlin on the wooden porch, both of them waiting for it to rain. They were at the experimental compound, somewhere in the vicinity of Boa Vista. In the northern Amazon, where the jungle still held full sway.
Caitlin’s conversation wandered. Lisa wasn’t perhaps fully paying attention, for the term “blocked energies” caught her without any idea at all of what it meant or where it fit in. She looked at Caitlin, and Caitlin seemed to accept the gaze as intelligently interrogative, for she went on.
A cerise bird landed in the branches of a tree, brilliant plumage disappearing in green leaves. There were seemingly infinite gradations of the color green, from blue-green through bronze- and yellow- and gold-green, green turning to silver, or purplish, greens that changed drastically when moistened or dry.
Now it started, more or less on schedule, raining like hell. Just a vertical, intense, silver-white yet somehow brownish downpour. Loudly beating the buildings, turning the earth temporarily into sepia mud.
There wasn’t much here to do, but it seemed safe, she was with her father. She spent afternoons in a hammock, listening to her Walkman. (Tavinho had very thoughtfully, on his own initiative, sent her some tapes. Errol Mwangi, on the other hand, had made himself scarce.) She read books on the history of the region, mostly stuff about conquistadors, the search for El Dorado, Lope de Aguirre, all of that. It was very vivid at times to her, in her imaginings.
There was no TV. There was an old Bell and Howell projector, and her father had given her two metal canisters of film, totaling about ninety minutes, supposedly a classic documentary about Amazonian ants. Somehow she hadn’t yet gotten around to watching it. It was funny how her father, benignly, had always assumed she was interested in ants.
Lisa yawned. She was hungry. Caitlin had gone “to sort samples.” Lisa wondered sometimes what would happen if she came into close proximity to a jaguar. Was there some special affinity, via the jaguar tattoo or Boro’s powers, originating as they had, at least according to his story, with this magic white jaguar?
She had certain powers, she felt strangely sure of this, though she didn’t know what they were yet. Two days ago she had gone for a walk, not venturing too far away, and she began watching a large palmetto bug, bigger than any cockroach she’d ever seen in New York … and she suddenly had a wicked impulse, she wished she had a magnifying glass, she’d set it on fire using the sun. This was a fairly idle thought, but she had nothing else on her mind … the palmetto bug began to singe, to brown, and then it popped—its exoskeleton exploded, leaving nothing but a fine swirling poof of black dust, swirling like miniature, insignificant shrapnel.
She had found she could repeat this, once also focusing her “evil” attention on a pretty butterfly gliding by, which burst into flames and crashed into some leaves. She had begun to have a headache, and she was a little bit freaked out, she was scared. She didn’t know what else she could do.
Maybe she wasn’t strictly human anymore. No—human plus spell. The parameters of this remained as yet unknown.
A bird flew by. A snake crawled on the ground. Lisa tried to knock the bird down out of the sky, but she could not. Nothing happened. It was an unpleasant, creepy feeling to try when you didn’t know what you were doing. It was like trying to control the beat of your heart.
She wondered what Boro thought, she tried to see things through his eyes. Lying in her hammock, such was her exercise. Dark eyes dilated just out of the hot sun, in the shade, like an animal waiting for unwary prey.
EIGHTEEN
When Lisa had been in art school, her big brother occasionally would playfully quiz her about art history, it was the kind of elaborate tease Track enjoyed. Lisa took it as a sign of affection, and thus it became a long-running private joke.
He asked her things like, Who is considered to be the greatest painter of horses of all time? What different methods of suicide were employed by Arshile Gorky and Mark Rothko? Sometimes Track might throw in an especially silly one, like, What color is a box of Wheaties? Kellogg’s Corn Flakes? Or an unanswerable one: How many Frenchmen can’t be wrong?
The
game also perhaps obviously demonstrated Track’s wish to be in control. He had always liked to teach her things, and Lisa had been an eager, rapt pupil from the time she was very young.
Stubbs turned out to be the greatest painter of horses, and his name itself became a joke for them. Arshile Gorky hung himself. Rothko, clad in long underwear and black socks, took an overdose of barbiturates and then sliced through the veins in both elbows with a razor. A box of Wheaties is orange. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, disregarding the rooster, comes in a box that is white.
So now this whole voodoo business, or evidence of rococo wild-ness, whatever was going on with his little sister, Track couldn’t grasp it, it rubbed in just how far she was beyond his advice and impervious to it, and he didn’t like any of it one bit.
He was in Los Angeles, attending to his own affairs, but after a phone call to Brazil he insisted on meeting with the Brazilian detective, who had ended up here after Mexico City, Houston, and Santa Fe. Lisa sounded like she was eating a banana or something, she didn’t seem to care much one way or another if Track involved himself, and he found this infuriating, ungrateful as well.
“Somebody ought to check on this guy, see what he’s doing, what his plan of attack is at this point.”
“Yeah, well, sure, theoretically, but Daddy knows how to manage these things, and he told the guy he was giving him a long leash. Leash isn’t the right word….”
“If you don’t want me to, I’ll leave well enough alone. I don’t have any great desire to meet him if you think it’s unnecessary.”
“Just a second, Track. My hands are all sticky.” Then, when she came back: “Look, you’ve already contacted him, right? Then meet with him, see what you think.”
Track met Ariel Mendoza at a restaurant close to his hotel, and they had dinner together. Mendoza explained how he had come this far.
“The couch was sold four years ago to a Houston man who owns an antique store and art gallery. He sold it to a man named Lacroix who lives in Santa Fe. Six months ago this guy’s house was robbed. All kinds of what you call ‘curios,’ I think, were stolen. Gold masks, jade figurines, carved mahogany and ironwood pieces, and yes, the jaguar couch.” Mendoza thirstily finished his rum and Coke.
“So-o-o,” Track said, “how do you know it’s here in L.A.?”
“Exactly Some of the other items turned up when a Senor Osvaldo Perez was arrested here for receiving stolen goods. His warehouse was, um … there was an inventory made.”
“No couch?”
“No.”
Track said, “Well, what about this Osvaldo Perez? Maybe he’s just in the phone book.”
Mendoza shook his head. “No.” Then, after a moment, he said, “If it is true that he was arrested, it should be possible to find him. But I don’t know the system here.”
Disappointed, Track thought this over. He was self-conscious at having butted in, and now, having met him, Mendoza seemed competent and bright. Track was afraid he might have appeared to be yet another asshole Yankee big shot, and now all he sought was to dispel this impression, charm Mendoza if he could, and gracefully exit the scene.
“What course of action do you suggest?” he finally said.
Mendoza appeared to consider it, but of course he had reached his conclusion some time ago, it was plain. He was very polite.
“Hire a local investigator. Not from a big agency, but someone who can, for instance, talk to the police. If I go and have to introduce myself, show identification, tell them I’m from Brazil … they may become inconveniently interested in the matter. They may refer me to U.S. Customs or the Drug Enforcement Agency A local investigator won’t be so intriguing to them.”
Track nodded. He didn’t want to look foolish, but he asked what seemed a reasonable question in the circumstance: “How do you find someone who’s good?”
“I’ll make some calls tomorrow. My acquaintances in Mexico may know someone.”
Ariel Mendoza himself was thinking, at this point, that he had really no idea why he was on this particular quest. Clients always lied, lawyers lied, weeping relatives lied…. He had never seriously entertained the thought that there might be, say, a lost shipment of cocaine or something of that nature hidden in the antique couch, but maybe he’d been too quick to leave that area of speculation behind. Dr. Nova was a scientist. There might be some new substance nobody’d ever heard of yet.
The problem with this scenario, on the face of it, was that the couch did not seem ever to have been anywhere near Dr. Nova— though who really knew? Not all that long ago, it had been in Guadalajara and then Mexico City … how it passed over the border into Texas was very murky very hard to pin down.
They always lied.
NINETEEN
There were many reasons not to swim in the river, just as there were reasons not to go for a walk in the jungle—somebody had been bitten by a particularly venomous snake not too long ago. When a snake bites you, it can control how much venom it injects, you can be bitten by a fer-de-lance and not even be poisoned, the snake prefers to use as little of its reservoir of venom as it can manage, only if you really scare it and it feels cornered will it give you enough poison to readily kill…. Lisa heard about how one of the corpsevine volunteers had been badly bitten a few months ago, a young Swedish guy, he’d been hospitalized for some time, the decision was nearly made to amputate his leg.
Isabel and Alfredo showed Lisa photos of the site where the vine grew in particular abundance, a clearing where many bones and other remains had been found, old swords and armor, spear points and arrowheads, pieces of jade, even some gold.
“I don’t know how much more there’ll ever be,” her father said after talking about the special properties of the alkaloid they’d extracted. Recent samples seemed diminished in strength. “It might just be one of those anomalies. We may have had a brief chance, never to be repeated, to see into the past. I don’t know, maybe if we’d had some Indian volunteers—but the only ones who were talked to had no interest, who can blame them, I’m sure they don’t trust us at all.”
“How many are going to take it this time?” Isabel asked, sipping coffee. It was 5:30 A.M.
Lisa sat with them, eating slices of mango, wiping her mouth after maybe every other bite.
“Three,” Alfredo replied. “Two males, one female. We have enough extract for more … but it won’t keep for more than twenty-four hours. I’m almost tempted myself—”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“My own view,” he said, “is that after a certain age, there are too
many memories of one’s own life, the circuits become overloaded if you add something this potentially extreme. No, don’t worry, I’m not willing to take that kind of a risk.” He smiled, though, as if imagining it for a moment. Lisa, drawn now, imagined it too.
Caitlin walked into view, waved, and continued on her way, meeting Hiroshi, who looked to be vehemently declaiming—in a friendly manner, half teasing, because he liked her. (In Lisa’s mind, certainly, they were an item.)
Dogs were barking. A rooster continued to crow once in a while. The air was moist. More coffee. The titrated extract would be administered to the subjects in about an hour; Dr. Nova of course would be there.
Only now did she begin to wonder about the volunteers. Would any of them freak out or die? She was curious—she’d have to go over and see. It would be a case of maybe, officially, she shouldn’t be there, but because she was a Nova no one would keep her out, and her father, these days, could not deny her anything … he felt inexplicably guilty, she could see it in him, it was awful for him that Boro’s spell was beyond his control.
When she came into the lab, she saw that each session was being recorded, by fixed camera, on videotape. Lisa went and stood by Caitlin, who said to her, quietly, “There won’t be much to see.”
“That’s OK. Have they taken it yet?”
“Yes. A few minutes ago.”
Lisa nodded, trying to match Caitlin�
�s scientific manner. Her father was in one of the rooms with the young Japanese woman; she didn’t speak much English, and Lisa didn’t know her name. The other two experimental subjects were male, in their twenties: one a blond American so good-looking he could be a model, who had arrived maybe three days ago—Tim. The other one was a friendly Brazilian—Patricio. He looked the most nervous of the three, in their separate glassed-in rooms. Every effort was made to make them comfortable and relaxed, reassured … no harsh lights, no obtrusive blood pressure cuffs or glued-on wires to measure brain waves, as in previous tests these wires had been particularly unpopular, and no interesting data, in any case, was ever gleaned.
It was easy to imagine a science fiction movie, or indeed a documentary with a serene, ultracivilized voice-over.
Patricio, Tim, the Japanese (her name was Toshi, Caitlin informed Lisa, when asked) all held their eyes closed. They did look out of it. At one point Tim bent over to the side and vomited, then drank some water, repeating, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” as Toshi suddenly broke out in expostulations that did not sound Oriental in the least.
After Lisa determined that no one seemed to be in pain, that in fact their eyes were now open, glistening, as if seeing visions, private movies, she felt jealous, like she was missing something, she should be the center of attention rather than one of these. It struck her that this extract might affect her differently than the others, she might see more than they would, understand it better, coming back with unknowable new compositions in her eyes. She went outside. The light now was glaring, ordinary, loud.
She went back to her hammock, restless, irritable, aroused. She had the feeling she was missing out on something important, something necessary, an experience she needed, whether it was good or bad. She got back up and walked around.