My client continued talking about her problems and I nodded, frowned, smiled, and said, “Oh,” “Right,” and “Really” at the proper times. We both hesitated a long time when the waitress asked us if we wanted dessert. Finally neither yielded. My client gave the waitress a credit card.
To me she handed an envelope. “Before I run off and forget,” she said. Through the tissue I could see that the check was marked “for professional consultation.” I put it in my handbag.
“Well…” said my client, carefully folding the charge card flimsy. “I’ve got to pick up my youngest at her violin lesson.”
“I’m going to stay here a little while longer,” I said. “I need to rest, think a little. Thank you for lunch.”
I don’t think my client realized how tightly she was clutching the portfolio. “Thank you for this.”
“Let me know,” I said. “All right?”
She nodded and left. I settled back and waited in the cool gloom. The ghost got up from his table and slowly approached me. As he got closer, I was sure. Obviously older, hair thinning, slight paunch, eyes the same. I had loved his eyes. More romantic then, I’d told him his eyes were cold mountain lakes I could dive into. Cold, yes. Yes, I was sure.
“Excuse me,” he said. “You look like someone I used to know.”
“You do too.”
“Angie?” he said. “Angie Black?”
I nodded slightly. “Jerry.”
“My God,” he said. “It must be fifteen years.”
“Twenty.”
“Twenty,” he repeated. He smiled foolishly. “My God.” He was obviously waiting for an invitation.
“Sit down,” I said. I could not believe the banality of this all. I could not believe I was talking to the man. I could not believe I was not picking up my salad fork and castrating the son of a bitch.
Jerry pulled out the chair opposite and sat down. “You live here now?”
“Colorado Springs?” I shook my head. “Denver. I’m down here on business.”
“Me too,” he said. “I mean here on business. I travel. I sell medical instruments. Specialize in gynecological supplies.”
I can believe that, I thought. Son of a bitch.
“You said you’re here on business?”
“I’m self-employed,” I said.
He waited for me to elaborate. I didn’t. Twenty years wasn’t that long. I could see the wheels turn. His smile widened, became very confident. “Yes, self-employed.”
I shrugged. “Girl has to make a living.” Maybe I was laying it on a little thick. Jerry’s smile never wavered. I doubted two decades had significantly altered his IQ. The son of a bitch.
“This is really incredible,” he said. “Running into you like this. I’m here for a regional meeting. Staying at a motel out on East Platte.” I watched him without comment.
“Maybe I’m out of line for suggesting this,” he said, “but I’d really like to take you to dinner tonight. I mean, if you’re free.”
“Well, Jerry,” I said. “I really ought to go back to Denver tonight. Business and all. But…” He was still not much for eye contact. I saw him staring at my breasts. “I expect I could go back late. After all… it’s been a long, long time.”
“Right,” he said. “Where can I pick you up?”
“I’ll come to you. You don’t mind? Which motel is it?” He told me. We set the time, and then he excused himself to pay his bill and leave because the afternoon session of his conference was about to begin. He paused at the door of the Cerberus and waved back to me. His smile never faltered. I returned him a genteel little wave I hoped was ironic.
He left and I stayed. Story of our lives. I signaled the waitress and asked her to bring me a glass of club soda from the bar. Things were conspiring to make me feel a little rocky. Ovulation definitely is not my favorite time of the month. There are times when I’d like to forget enlightenment and not be so in touch with my body. Feeling something like a mild case of appendicitis twelve times a year is an experience I can do without. Damn mittelschmerz! I felt better than I had earlier, but there was still an abdominal ache.
So I sat and rested and sipped my club soda. And thought about Jerry. And wondered why in hell I was doing what apparently I was doing. Why in hell indeed. That was precisely why. Blood debts die slowly, and hard. And only in blood. Twenty years had changed nothing.
At first the afternoon lull in the Cerberus comforted me. The peace and the darkness soothed. But it gave me time to think and remember. “Is it worth it?” I thought I heard my father say.
****
I was impressed with the liberal arts division of the Colorado College library. The facsimile translation of Cyranus’s The Magick of Kirani, King of Persia, London: 1685, hadn’t been pulled off the shelf in ages. I literally had to blow the dust off the rough-trimmed pages.
I’d used Cyranus before for a chancier client than myself, so I was fairly confident. I just didn’t trust my memory. I took notes: “If therefore you would have conception to be strong and infallible… satyrion seed 4 oz.; all the liquor of a roe’s gall, honey 3 oz.; mix it up and put it up into a glass vessel. And when there is occasion, give it to a young woman, when it is dry, and let her use coition.” The passage added the obvious: to conceive a male, use the gall of a male roe; to conceive a female, use the gall of a female.
I folded my scrap of paper, asked the circulation desk for change, and went to the pay phone. Tracing male exotic deer in Colorado was not so difficult as I’d expected. I could have used the domestic model, but I wanted to be sure. One of my friends and occasional clients spent his summers working for the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. He owed me a big favor. I hoped he wouldn’t ask me questions.
I was slowly realizing soberly, willingly, that I could kill.
As usual, my errands took longer than I’d expected. I called Jerry’s motel and left an apologetic message saying I’d be an hour later than planned. I had the feeling Jerry would not cancel our dinner in a fit of pique.
I arrived at the motel shortly after dusk when the neons were still soft against my eyes. Jerry’s room was number seven. I wondered if he was superstitious.
Jerry answered the door on the first knock. He’d changed into a tailored blue suit that complemented his eyes. “Want a drink first?” he said. He stepped back and surveyed me. It was the first time in two years I’d worn a dress. I’d bought it this afternoon.
I stood in the doorway. Keen-eyed children stared back at me from the painting above the king-size bed. “Thanks,” I said. “Let’s wait.”
“All right,” he said. “Let me get my coat.”
He insisted we ride in his Avis Ford. At my suggestion, we drove to the Czech Café in Manitou Springs. “You’ll love the roast duckling,” I said.
“There’s a lot of fat in duck,” Jerry answered.
“Makes the flavor.”
And that was the general level and tenor of dinner conversation. He seemed to be a little nervous. I realized increasingly that I was. Finally I asked him about his family. I wanted to know about his life. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“Come on,” I said.
He looked past my left ear. “It would be—coming up on our fourteenth anniversary,” he said. “Linda—my wife—is back in Vegas. She doesn’t travel with me.”
“Children?”
He shook his head and said nothing.
“Good marriage?”
I hoped he’d tell me it was none of my business. He only hesitated and lit a new cigarette. “Linda doesn’t understand me.” I must have looked quizzical. He rushed on. “No, really. I know you’ve probably heard that line a thousand times; but it’s true. She doesn’t know me. It’s just no good.”
I leaned back and concentrated on calm. “So why don’t you get out of it?”
He looked serious. “There are obligations.”
I said, “I’m sure there are.”
No one said anything for at least a minute. T
hen Jerry said, “Does it bother you? I mean, my being married?”
My turn to look away. “No.”
More silence.
“What is it that’s bothering you?” he said.
“Twenty years.”
“What is it?” he said again.
At that moment it took every bit of strength, every resource I possessed, to keep my voice calm, steady, dispassionate. “This is almost a twentieth anniversary,” I said. Jerry looked as if he didn’t know what expression to adopt. “Not of us first going to bed; not of us breaking up,” I said. “Something later on. Twenty years ago I was a seventeen-year-old girl standing in a telephone booth on the main street of her home town. It was past midnight and the city cop car kept circling the block because they couldn’t figure out what the hell I was up to. I stood there with twenty dollars in change feeding quarters into the slot. I was calling Stockholm.”
Jerry’s mouth had dropped open slightly.
“I was calling Sweden because I’d read about the leading columnist for the Stockholm newspaper Espressen. He’d traveled around America speaking on legalizing abortion. Drew a lot of fire. I thought maybe he could help me.”
Jerry’s mouth opened farther.
“He couldn’t. I don’t know what time it was there, but he was very kind. He apologized and wished me good fortune, but finally said he couldn’t help. He could do nothing. I stood in the booth for an hour after that, listening to a dead line. Then I went home and cried.
“Do you know what this state was like then? I was too young and too helpless. I couldn’t even get an illegal abortion. Even the bad girls in town couldn’t help me. Can you believe that?
“I read things, tried to do things to myself. Nothing happened. A little minor mutilation—some blood. Nothing worked.
“Finally I decided to keep the baby. My parents sent me to a home in Wichita. The cover story was that I had a job as a receptionist in an aircraft factory. Do you know what happened then?”
Jerry looked at me transfixed like a rabbit in front of a cobra. He shook his head slowly from side to side. His mouth was still slightly open. He reacted as though he were in an orchestra seat in a live theater.
“The final irony. The baby was born dead. And she almost killed me in dying. As it is, my cervix is damaged. I won’t ever be delivering any more children.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice was little more than a whisper. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t know. You were gone. You left after I told you I was pregnant.”
His hands made an ineffectual gesture. “It was different then; for both of us. We would have gotten married. I wanted to go to school. I wanted a career. It wouldn’t have worked.”
I looked at him levelly. “Bullshit. All I wanted was for you to be there.” I looked for any sign in his face, any evidence at all to deny the truths of twenty years. Nothing. I felt ice all through my belly.
“I just didn’t know,” he said.
“You already said that.”
“I know how you feel,” he said.
“Do you?”
Jerry looked away silently. He capitulated so easily and I felt cheated. God damn it! He just sat there. Fight me, I thought. Don’t let it be one-sided. Prove me wrong if you can. It’s on the line. But he only sat staring, saying nothing.
I scooted my chair back. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“Back to your motel.”
He got up slowly and moved away from the table. The waiter looked agitated.
“Jerry?”
“What.”
“Pay the bill.”
****
Jerry seemed to recover his composure in the car; lightly he laid his hand on my left thigh. I had the feeling that while he wasn’t sure what was happening, he was now determined to regain control of the situation. Fine. Neither of us spoke all the way down the mountain and back to the motel.
Nor did we speak at first in the room. Jerry silently unlocked the door and switched on a lamp. Equally silently I crossed to the head of the bed and waited for him to close and latch the door. He switched on the Muzak channel on the television. I turned it off.
Standing a foot away from him, I drew the dress over my head. Beneath it, I wore nothing. Then I reached out and undressed him. I knelt to unlace his shoes and felt him shaking slightly. Slowly I stood and moved closer. For a man caught off-balance, he seemed to be recovering nicely.
I kissed him lightly on the lips. Then I moved to the bed, drew down the spread and sheet, lay back against the pillows. He stood over me and I thought I saw the beginning of a smile. His lips and rough hands and body were on me.
He hurried. I was dry, and it hurt. I made him use spittle.
I heard his breath quicken as he massaged my breasts. My nipples were tender, a little sore. “That hurts,” I said. He faltered. I waited long enough and said, “I like it. I wouldn’t tell that to just any man. Sometimes I enjoy it.” His rhythm picked up.
When he climaxed, I watched from a hundred light-years away.
****
He lay alone in the bed with the sheet drawn up to his waist. He watched me put on the dress and heels. “I wish you’d stay.”
“No.”
“We have a lot to talk about.”
I said patiently, “No, we don’t.”
“Will I see you again?”
“I doubt it.”
He lit a cigarette. “Twenty years ago... That was a mistake. A terrible mistake.”
“Yes, it was.” I wished to God I had a toothbrush. I was not going to ask to borrow his.
“There ought to be some leeway for a mistake.”
“Perhaps.” In my memory I felt tissue tear.
“I think we could try it.”
“Try what?” I said. I smelled the heavy odor of blood from the past.
“To do something about… the mistake.”
“No,” I said. “Too late.” I walked toward the door. “It’s after midnight, I’ve got a long drive, and I feel filthy.”
His voice was confused and angry. “Was it worth it?”
****
I didn’t return to Denver. Instead I buckled myself into the Audi and drove east out of the Springs on Colorado 24. Beyond the city the street changed to the two-lane blacktop I knew was rarely patrolled. Even if it were, it didn’t matter. With the windows down, I floor-boarded it across the plains. It was the time of the new moon and overcast hid the stars. I was alone with the raw wind until Kansas loomed ahead and I braked to a stop at the state line.
It probably wasn’t worth it. I pulled off on the shoulder and screamed at the stars. I cried myself to sleep still upright in the bucket seat. I awakened shortly before dawn with my mouth tasting like gray cotton. The sun looked swollen, gravid. When I drove back to Denver, I held the car at the speed limit.
****
I knew the deer-bile potion would insure fertilization.
It was no surprise when I missed my next period, and the one after.
****
The only suspense was waiting, and allowing my body to work out certain of its own processes without outside influence. While I waited, I worked. Clients came to me with problems and I devised strategies and solutions. My client from the Cerberus confirmed her suspicions about her strayed spouse and returned to me for support and further advice. My friend from the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo came through again marvelously, this time supplying the required private parts of a wolf. As it happened, one of the timber wolves had died of old age, so no one felt ethical qualms. Acquiring desired materials from endangered species is increasingly difficult. Dragons are the worst. Even Cheyenne Mountain can’t help.
Between two and three months along, my body decided. I paid with a night of the worst pain I’ve endured. I paid with fever and blood. In the morning, I scraped a piece of bloody tissue from the soiled towel and sealed it in a bottle. Then I gulped painkillers and slept.
Sleeping and eating and heali
ng took nine days. I was then strong enough for the task. I took a handful of clay from the refrigerator. The best clay for my purposes comes from the red river banks around Ely, Nevada. At room temperature, the consistency feels like flesh.
It took only a short time to mold the doll—legs, arms, head, genitals. For eyes, I pressed two tiny, intense sapphires into the face. I had none of the traditional materials; no hair, no clothing, no nail parings. I possessed something more powerful. For long minutes I held the doll in my hands without moving. Then, with one of my few remaining unbroken fingernails, I slit a neat incision in the belly of the doll.
Next I retrieved the stoppered bottle from the refrigerator. The blood had long since clotted and the tissue was stuck to the bottom. I scraped it loose with a grapefruit spoon. I hated the touch of it, but I took the scrap of flesh between thumb and forefinger and inserted it into the doll’s belly. Then I pressed the sides of the incision together and smoothed the scar until the belly was unmarked.
I fasted; I had cleansed myself. In the morning, after my shower, I had sprinkled my body with crushed mandrake root. There was no excuse to delay, no reason to wait longer. A bit unwillingly I realized that events had arranged themselves. The digital watch dial flashed
11:45 p.m. It was Thursday. I drew open the apartment curtains and the full moon shone in.
Naked, I unlocked the wardrobe and drew out the black linen surplice and belt. I daubed saffron perfume on my throat. The carved teak chest provided a jar of ointment with a touch of damiana and some ground clove. I drew the proper pentacle.
The clock in the living room below me began to chime midnight. I set the doll before me and began the words: “Calicio seou vas dexti fatera crucis patena ante set ad quam! Extersi adsit siti vas seu copula pamini consecrando!”
I felt something twist within me like a fist made of broken glass.
Dark Forces Page 5