I held on for a couple more weeks.
But then day got as bad as night. The dirt filled my nose and the lack of color glazed my eyes. The open, sun-bleached days wore away at me. Wes sensed the noose tightening, I guess. He took me out a couple times. I got to drink vodka in the saloons and honky-tonks. But all I heard was the whining slide guitar, or the crying pedal steel. Stetson hats and snakeskin boots were the dress clothes. Bolero ties. Big belt buckles. Everything was made of wood, which I just didn’t understand. There weren’t many damn trees around. I’d feel like a moron when my spike heels caught between the slats of the floor when we’d dance. I looked around at the other women. Sequined T-shirts and permed hair – with bangs and scrunchies to tie it back. Hats and boots.
A few other nights, we’d play poker with some of the guys, alternating between stud and hold-’em games. The only illumination was the nearby crackling glow of a bonfire, citronella candles, and the lonely neon of a bug zapper. But I always won, and I didn’t take much joy or pride in it. Winning Ben’s paycheck or Walt’s drinking money didn’t particularly hold a lot of satisfaction.
So, on a moonless night when I was having trouble breathing from the dirt clogged up in my sinuses, I sat up listening to the howls closing in and looked down at Wes stretched out next to me. I couldn’t take those devilish howls any more. I pushed him ’til he woke up. He was not annoyed. Instead, he reached up and started soothing me. But I’d had enough of that, so I pushed him off and said, “I’m leaving, Wes.”
Reedy-voiced, he went, “I figured that was comin’.”
“I mean, I’m leaving now. Right now.”
“All right then,” was all he said.
“Don’t you even wanna know why?” I was a little miffed he was so cavalier about this.
“I know why, Rita. Do what you need.”
“You do not know why,” I snapped. “If you knew why, you’d be more upset.”
“So go on then, tell me why if you want.”
“I’m leaving you,” I explained, “because I have inner demons.”
Wes laughed pretty good at that. I shit you not, I was furious. “The hell you laughin’ at, Wes?”
“Horseshit,” is all he said, still laughing.
“ ’Scuse me? You’re saying my deep and tragic personal inner demons are horseshit?”
“No, Rita. I’m saying you’re too full o’ horseshit to have any room left for inner demons.”
Well. I never. Honestly. “You used to say I was full of spirit, Wes. Now that things aren’t going your way, I’m full of horseshit.”
“That’s right,” he answered, still sort of laughing. “It’s the same thing, darlin’. It’s spirit when I find it appealing. Other times, when it’s not so attractive, it’s just plain horseshit.”
In retrospect, I suppose I’m woman enough to admit that I was so furious because I knew he was right. Nevertheless, I left in quite a huff.
So I’m back in the city.
The clatter of coins in trays and hard-edged music and fast-walking people are all around. Exhaust fumes waft through the air, and Calvin Klein perfume as a woman brushes my arm as she clicks by in her Jimmy Choos. Hai Karate cologne – yes, really – on the valet. But at least there are valets. Valets and waiters and chefs and bartenders and dealers and other hustlers. The lights are bright and the buildings are big. Imported marble and polished brass, and so many different colors of lights to keep track of. But, within minutes, I have the total nailed at fifty-six. Now, somehow, these manufactured monoliths seem dwarfed.
They’re not as big.
And they’re even closer. Pushing in and pushing down all around. And all they want is money.
After a couple weeks, I start to notice other things. That’s a lie. I’m not noticing, I’m hyper-aware.
The drinks are watered, the chips are plastic, and people crowd very close even as they rush by in their frenzied state of hopeful inebriation. People talk fast and talk a lot, but now I realize that they rarely say anything.
I try. Lord, in my confusion I try. And I curse for doing this to myself.
A man I meet tells me I have a lovely little drawl in my voice, and it makes me want to punch him. I say, “Horseshit, I do not.” So I let the guy fuck me, I suppose to prove everyone wrong. But he goes too fast, comes too quick, and I don’t get any enjoyment out of it at all. I recall this wasn’t uncommon.
I could lie again and say it’s guilt that drives me back to Wes. But I know damn well why suddenly this illusion seems so much less illustrious.
On the drive back out to the ranch, the air gets thinner. The honey sand mixes and changes – soft butter in direct sunlight, bleeding to a rich mocha as the sun goes down. The sky above catches fire, streaky fuchsia fades and settles in the twilight, eventually yielding to the deep, comforting sapphire that’ll reveal millions of glittering diamond stars. Way too many of them to count.
There’s a distant, familiar howl as I walk up the path. Wes is alone, his lanky frame stretched out on a single chair outside. He’s slugging tequila harder than I’ve ever seen him do. Not even a beer chaser in sight. “What’re you doin’ up?” I ask him.
He squints up at me. “Couldn’t sleep through all the howling.”
“Thought it didn’t bother you.”
“Never said that,” he looks away. “I said I tolerate it, that’s all.”
He lets me pull the bottle from his hand and I take a long pull off it. I ease down on the ground, lean my back against his shins and take another pull.
Above me, he says, “Loki missed you.”
“Yeah? He mope around?”
“Little bit, yeah.”
Looking up to the sky, the last trace of blue has bled away, the infinite inky black has settled all around. I take a deep breath, then another hit off the bottle. “Wes,” I say, “You better decide now, because I’m not like Loki. You will never tame me.”
He reaches around and takes back the bottle. I expect him to laugh and call me on my horseshit. Instead, steely voiced, he answers me. “Well, Rita, my darlin’. Just so’s you know. You won’t ever break me.”
In the close distance, a coyote unleashes a long, mournful howl.
Virgin of the Sands
Holly Phillips
Graham came out of the desert leaving most of his men dead behind him. He debriefed, he bathed, he dressed in a borrowed uniform, and without food, without rest, though he needed both, he went to see the girl.
The army had found her rooms in a shambling mud-brick compound shaded by palms. She was young, God knew, too young, but powerful: her rooms had a private entrance, and there was no guard to watch who came and went. Graham left the motor-pool driver at the east side of the market and walked through the labyrinth of goats, cotton, chickens, dates, and oranges to her door. The afternoon was amber with heat, the air a stinking resin caught with flies. Nothing like the dry furnace blast of the wadi where his squad had been ambushed and killed. He knocked, stupid with thirst, and wondered if she was home.
She was.
Tentative, always, their first touch: her fingertips on his bare arm, her mouth as heavy with grief as with desire. She knew, then. He bent his face to hers and felt the dampness of a recent bath. She smelled of well water and ancient spice. They hung a moment, barely touching, only their breath mingling and her fingers brushing his skin, and then he took her mouth, and drank.
“I’m sorry,” she said, after.
He lay across her bed, bound to exhaustion, awaiting release. “We walked right into them,” he said, eyes closed. “Walked right into their guns.”
“I’m sorry.”
She sounded so unhappy. He reached for her with a blind hand. “Not your fault. The dead can’t tell you everything.”
She laid her palm across his, her touch still cool despite the sweat that soaked her sheets. “I know.”
“They expect too much of you.” By they he meant the generals.
When she said nothing
he turned his head and looked at her. She knelt beside him on the bed, barred with light from the rattan blind. Her dark hair was loose around her face, her dark eyes shadowed with worry. So young she broke his heart. He said, “You expect too much of yourself.”
She covered his eyes with her free hand. “Sleep.”
“You can only work with what we bring you. If we don’t bring you the men who know . . . who knew . . .” The darkness of her touch seeped through him.
“Sleep.”
“Will you still be here?”
“Yes. Now sleep.”
Three times told, he slept.
She had to be pure to work her craft, a virgin in the heart of army intelligence. He never knew if this loving would compromise her with her superiors. She swore it would not touch her power, and he did not ask her more. He just took her with his hands, his tongue, his skin, and if sometimes the forbidden depth of her had him aching with need, that only made the moment when she slid her mouth around him more potent, explosive as a shell bursting in the bore of a gun. And he laughed sometimes when she twisted against him, growling, her teeth sharp on his neck: virgin. He laughed – and forgot for a time the smell of long-dead men.
“Finest military intelligence in the world,” Colonel Tibbit-Noyse said, “and we can’t find their blasted army from one day to the next.” His black moustache was crisp in the wilting heat of the briefing room.
Graham sat with half a dozen officers scribbling in notebooks balanced on their knees. Like the others, he let his pencil rest when the colonel began his familiar tirade.
“We know the führer’s entrail-readers are prone to inaccuracy and internal strife. We know who his spies are and have been feeding them tripe for months.” (There was a dutiful chuckle.) “We know the desert tribesmen who have been guiding his armoured divisions are weary almost to death with the Superior Man. For God’s sake, our desert johnnies have been meeting them for tea among the dunes! So why the hell –” the colonel’s hand slashed at a passing fly “– can’t we find them before they drop their bloody shells into our bloody laps?”
Two captains and three lieutenants, all the company officers not in the field, tapped pencil ends on their notebooks and thumbed the sweat from their brows. Major Healy, sitting behind the map table, coughed into his hand. Graham, eyes fixed on the wall over the major’s shoulder, heard again the rattle of gunfire, saw again the carnage shaded by vulture wings. His notebook slid through his fingers to the floor. The small sound in the colonel’s silence made everyone jump. He bent to pick it up.
“Now, I have dared to suggest,” Tibbit-Noyse continued, “that the fault may not lie with our intel at all, but rather with the use to which it has been put. This little notion of mine has not been greeted with enthusiasm.” (Again, a dry chuckle from the men.) “In fact, I’m afraid the general got rather testy about the quantity and quality of fodder we’ve scavenged for his necromancer in recent weeks. Therefore –” The colonel sighed. His voice was subdued when he continued. “Therefore, all squads will henceforth make it their sole mission to find and retrieve enemy dead, be they abandoned or buried, with an urgent priority on those of officer rank. I’m afraid this will entail a fair bit of dodging about on the wrong side of the battle line, but you’ll be delighted to know that the general has agreed to an increase in leave time between missions from two days to four.” He looked at Graham. “Beginning immediately, captain, so you have another three days’ rest coming to you.”
“I’m fit to go tomorrow, sir,” Graham said.
Tibbit-Noyse gave him a bleak smile. “Take your time, captain. There’s plenty of death to go ’round.”
There was another moment of silence, this one long enough for the men to start fidgeting. Healy coughed. Graham sketched the outlines of birds. Then the colonel went on with his briefing.
She had duties during the day, and in any event he could not spend all his leave in her company. He had learned from the nomads not to drink until he must. So he found a café not too near headquarters, one with an awning and a boy to whisk the flies, and drank small cups of syrupy coffee until his heart raced and sleep no longer tempted him.
A large body dropped into the seat opposite him. “Christ. How can you drink coffee in this heat?”
Graham blinked the other’s face into focus: Montrose, a second-string journalist with beefy cheeks and a bloodhound’s eyes. The boy brought the reporter a bottle of lemon squash, half of which he poured down his throat without seeming to swallow. “Whew!”
“We have orders,” Graham said, his voice neutral, “not to speak with the press.”
“Look at you, you bastard. Not even sweating.” Montrose had a flat Australian accent and salt-rimmed patches of sweat underneath his arms. “Or have you just had the juice scared out of you?”
Graham gave a thin smile and brushed flies away from the rim of his cup.
“Listen.” Montrose hunkered over the table. “There’ve been rumours of a major cock-up. Somebody let some secrets slip into the wrong ears. Somebody in intelligence. Somebody high up. Ring any bells?”
Graham covered a yawn. He didn’t have to fake one. The coastal heat was a blanket that could smother even the caffeine. He drank the last swallow, leaving a sludge of sugar in the bottom of the cup, and flagged the boy.
“According to this rumour,” Montrose said, undaunted, “at least one of the secrets had to do with the field manoeuvres of the Dead Squad – pardon me – the Special Desert Reconnaissance Group. Which, come to think of it, is your outfit, isn’t it, Graham?” Montrose blinked with false concern. “Didn’t have any trouble your last time out, did you, mate? No unpleasant surprises? No nasty Jerries hiding among the dunes?”
The boy came back, set a fresh coffee down by Graham’s elbow, gave him a fleeting glance from thickly-lashed eyes. Graham dropped a couple of coins on the tray.
“How’s your wife?” Graham said.
Montrose sighed and leaned back to finish his lemonade. “God knows. Jerries went and sank the mail ship, didn’t they? She could be dead, and I’d never even know.”
“You could be dead,” Graham said, “and she would never know. Isn’t that a bit more likely given your relative circumstances?”
Montrose grunted in morose agreement and whistled for the boy.
He stalled as long as he could, through the afternoon and into the cookfire haze of dusk, and even so he waited nearly an hour. When she came home, limp and pale, she gave him a weary smile and unlocked her door. He knew better than to touch her before she’d had a chance to bathe. He followed her through the stuffy entrance hall to the airier gloom of her room. She stepped out of her shoes on her way into the bathroom. He heard water splat in the empty tub. Then she came back and began to take off her clothes.
He said, “I have three more days’ leave.”
She unbuttoned her blouse and peeled it off. “I heard.” She tossed the blouse into a hamper by the bathroom door. “I’m glad.”
He sat in a creaking wicker chair, set his cap on the floor. “There’s a rumour going around about some misplaced intel.”
She frowned slightly as she unfastened her skirt. “I haven’t heard about that.”
“I had it from a reporter. Not the most reliable source.”
The skirt followed the blouse, then her slip, her brassiere, her underpants. Naked, she lifted her arms to take down her hair. Shadows defined her ribs, her taut belly, the divide of her loins. She walked over to drop hairpins into his hand.
“Who is supposed to have said what to whom?”
“There were no characters in the drama,” he said. “But if it’s true . . .”
“If it’s true, then your men never had a chance.”
This close she smelled of woman-sweat and death. His throat tightened. “They had no chance, regardless. Neither do the men in the field now. They’ve sent the whole damn company out chasing dead men.” He dropped his head against the chair and closed his eyes. “This bloody war.�
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“It’s probably just a rumour,” she said, and he heard her move away. The rumble from the bathroom tap stopped. Water sloshed as she stepped into the tub. Graham rolled her hairpins against his palm.
Her scent faded with the last of the light.
He wished she had a name he could call her by. Like her intact hymen, her namelessness was meant to protect her from the forces she wrestled in her work, but it seemed a grievous thing. She was so specific a woman, so unique, so much herself; he knew so intimately her looks, her textures, her voice; he could even guess, sometimes, at her thoughts; and yet she was anonymous. The general’s necromancer. The witch. The girl. His endearments came unravelled in the empty space where her name should be, so he took refuge in silence, wishing, as much for his sake as for hers, that she had not been born and raised to her grisly vocation. From childhood she had known nothing other than death.
“How can you bear it?” he asked her once.
“How can you?” A glance of mockery. “But maybe no one told you. We all live with death.”
He had a vision of himself dead and in her hands, and understood it for a strange desire. He did not put it into words, but he knew her intimacy with the dead, with death, went beyond this mere closeness of flesh. Skin slick with sweat-salt, speechless tongues and hands that sought the vulnerable centre of being, touch dangerous and tender and never allowed inside the heart, the womb. He pressed her in the darkness, strove against her as if they fought, as if one or both might be consumed in this act without hope of consummation. She clung to him, spilled over with the liquor of desire, and still he drank, his thirst for her unslaked, unslakeable until she, wet and limber as an eel, turned in his arms, turned to him, turned against him, and swallowed him into sleep.
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