By Dusk

by T Thorn Coyle

  Moss parked on a side street near one of the swank restaurants across from the river on the edges of downtown.

  He’d been driving all morning and needed a break. Taking a deep drink of water, he wished his steel thermos was filled with coffee instead. Oh, he knew the water was more important, and his body needed it, and yadda yadda, but the reality was that he’d gotten only three hours of sleep. The cup of coffee he’d made at home felt long gone, having barely penetrated his system.

  He and Shaggy had talked for a couple of hours, closing out a late night café. It was great to see her. To smell her. She clearly felt troubled by something—skirting around a big topic, it felt like—and getting her to laugh a couple of times had felt like victory. Once they’d been kicked out by a sleepy barista, Moss walked her to her place, a condo complex further north in the Pearl. She didn’t invite him up, but the place looked as high end as her glamping tent.

  After an awkward hug goodbye, Moss walked back to his car and drove across the bridge toward home, completely amped up and had stayed that way until he finally nodded off in the middle of an old Bruce Lee movie at around three-thirty in the morning.

  He still couldn’t believe he’d actually run into Shaggy after resigning himself to never seeing her again. A woman who…yeah. A woman who did him in. Who might just be someone special.

  He glanced at his phone, which was plugged into the dash. The battery had been draining itself lately, and he didn’t know why. The thing just wasn’t that old. He also hadn’t made the time to take it in. The phone was practically brand new, no way it should be draining that way. He’d been getting weird spam texts and a higher than usual level of robot calls, too. Should he check with Alejandro or Jack to see if someone was messing with it? Or was that too paranoid?

  Moss sighed and unplugged the phone. The battery was at fifty percent and would have to do.

  Shoving open the door to his second-hand Prius, he groaned. He really felt like hell.

  Count your blessings, man.

  The ginkgo trees that lined the street were beautiful, the sky was blue, and he’d had a great time the night before. An amazing night, actually. Better than expected. And he wasn’t stuck in an office cubicle, which made life even better.

  And right this minute? One of his blessings was the fact that he could take a break, get some more coffee, and take a walk along the Willamette. The Prius beeped as he locked it. Moss had bought the used car with a little help from his parents. He felt bourgeois and weird driving the thing, but his dad pointed out that if he was going to drive for a living, he might as well pollute as little as possible. As an environmentalist, Moss couldn’t disagree.

  Someday, he’d like to do something that felt more righteous for work, but for now? Driving paid the rent on a big bedroom in his shared St. John’s household, and left him time to do tree sits, blockades, and other actions.

  Shoving his key fob into the pocket of his jeans, Moss strolled up the sidewalk toward the coffee cart at the corner. Just up ahead, beneath one of the trees, a houseless man stuffed a big, black coat into a collapsible shopping trolley. It was his old friend, Henry. The man had the long, tapered fingers people usually associated with pianists or basketball players. Moss happened to know he’d been the former, and still played when he could in community centers or the occasional bar that actually let him through the doors.

  That was how Moss had met him. Henry was playing for tips in a dive bar in Moss’s neighborhood one night. He’d still had a room indoors then, at a single room occupancy hotel, so it was easier for him to get the occasional gig. His playing was sublime, and Moss had thrown some money in his jar and then ended up talking with him for an hour once his sets were done.

  “Hey, Henry!”

  “Moss! It’s good to see you, my friend!”

  “How you doing?” Moss asked. Henry looked okay today. Just a little worn out around the edges, like his coat, but relatively clean, and clear-eyed, too.

  “I’m alive, my friend. It’s another beautiful Portland morning!”

  “I was heading for a coffee. Can I get you something?” Moss nodded toward the cart one block up, toward the river.

  “A black coffee and a banana wouldn’t go amiss.”

  “You got it,” Moss said. “Come on down once you’re packed up.”

  Moss really liked the man, but running into him also hadn’t been part of the morning’s plan. He really wanted some alone time at the river, and now it seemed like he might not get it.

  The universe doesn’t always give us what we want or need, but sometimes it does, and we just aren’t paying attention. Raquel’s words echoed inside Moss’s head. His mentor was pretty wise sometimes, and she was right. This was probably one of those moments Moss needed to pay attention to.

  He paused under a ginkgo tree for the space of one long inhalation. Hello, tree, he thought, then softly clapped his hands three times. The greeting and hand claps were ingrained habit—it was just polite to greet the kami of a tree you were standing under—and he didn’t wait for a response before closing his eyes and sending his next thought further out into the cosmos. May I be open to what this moment has to teach me.

  A diffuse sort of prayer, it was more of a reminder to himself than an entreaty to anything else that might happen to be listening.

  He heard Henry’s cart trundle up behind him and snapped his eyes open again, smiling and feeling a little more centered and less grumpy than he had when he’d parked his car. Worked like a charm.

  “You doing your witchy business?” Henry asked when he reached Moss.

  “Something like that. Let’s go get that coffee.”

  Moss placed their order at the little red kiosk, paid, and then turned to Henry.

  “Hey Henry, how has the city felt to you lately?”

  He wouldn’t ask just anyone a question like that, but Moss knew Henry kept his ear to the ground and would understand what he meant. Even in his worst drinking bouts, Henry generally kept his wits about him. He was also one of the most perceptive people Moss had ever met, outside of his coven mates.

  Henry ran a hand across his stubbled chin, thinking.

  “Moss!” the cart owner called. Moss returned to the window and retrieved two cardboard coffee cups and two bright yellow bananas.

  He joined Henry on a piece of low wall that edged a restaurant parking lot and faced across Naito Parkway toward the river. It wasn’t as good as being directly next to the river, but the view was gorgeous nonetheless.

  The span of the Burnside Bridge gleamed to his left, its low white observation turrets looking down on the river. On the water itself, past the greensward of Tom McCall park, sailboats tacked under the morning sun. The air was warm, but not hot, and the coffee had a delicious, nutty taste to it.

  Henry carefully unpeeled his banana and took a big bite. This gave Moss a pang. The guy was clearly hungry, and had probably been packing up to head over to Sisters of the Road for lunch.

  “I’m not keeping you from something, am I?”

  Henry shook his head and chewed. “Nope. I need to head out soon, but I’ve got a little time. You wanted to know if I noticed something strange lately? About the city?”

  “Yeah. You know, like people being more agitated than usual, or more fights breaking out…or the opposite, even. More people in a good mood. Like that. Or the crows or geese acting differently, even. I know you spend a lot of time on the streets and around the river here, so I figured you would notice.”

  Henry finished his banana and carefully set the peel on the wall before picking up his coffee cup and taking an appreciative sip.

  “Abdul makes the best coffee,” he said. “To answer you, yes. I think I have noticed some things lately. It feels like there’s more pain in the air than usual, if I can put it that way.”

  Moss sipped at his own coffee, thinking. As he drank the nutty brew, he centered himself again. Dropping his attention deep into his center of gravity on a breath, he focused.
Then, on his second exhalation, he imagined the edges of his aura softening, and let his attention expand all around him. It was hard to do, because he felt so tired, but it was a technique that Brenda and Raquel had drilled him in. Clearly he needed to practice more but…Henry was right. There was something there.

  “It makes sense to me, Henry. I feel it, too.”

  The city felt…disturbed. And what was worse? So did the river. Damn it. He really needed to get another hour’s worth of driving in before his lunch date with Alejandro.

  Whatever was bothering the spirits of the city and the Willamette would have to wait. And Shaggy? He just hoped she’d see him again.

  4

  Shaggy

  Shaggy found it very hard to focus, which was bad, because the class wasn’t all that large and there was no place to hide. She was one of only twenty people in the bright room, and despite the lights being off and the roller blinds all at half mast so they could watch the examples Professor Logan clicked through on the white screen, the mid-September sun still streamed through the windows.

  It was early fall in Portland, Oregon, and here she was, in school again. She loved school. She’d been totally looking forward to getting her MFA in creative design, with an emphasis on costumery, even if it meant she had told her mother she would also take some UX classes. As if she wanted to work for some corporate user experience department. But she did it to keep the peace. And to get a break from the family dynamic without cutting herself off so much that the money dried up.

  Professor Logan was an older white guy in a faded denim shirt and black jeans. With bright green rectangular glasses perched on his nose, he looked like some Boomer hipster. His hair was a short white shock that contrasted with his salt-and-pepper goatee. The snatches of lecture penetrating Shaggy’s swirl of thought and emotion were actually interesting. His hands swept through the air as he explained the history of designing furniture that combined both form and function, whether it was making patterns for large, industrial produced mass-market chairs or hand-building a single sofa.

  But she couldn’t pay attention. Couldn’t get the pregnancy thing off her mind. That damn Kygo song from the club still bounced through her head, reminding her that she should be overjoyed to be pregnant, instead of angry, annoyed, and confused.

  Gah. This was the last thing Shaggy needed. She’d gone to the club hoping to escape her news for a few hours, not have “you’re pregnant” thrown in her face. And then Moss. She’d forgotten he lived in Portland, if she’d ever even known. Seeing him felt like a punch in the chest. Her body still wanted him. Badly. And the longer they talked over their late night tea, the more Shaggy had to admit that her heart wanted him, too.

  But she still had no clue how to navigate the situation. She’d moved up here hoping to have a chance to actually live the life of the free spirit she pretended to be. The raver rich girl with the weird name, whose mom, Bianca, paid for fancy electronics and VIP passes to all the big festivals. Bianca hated Shaggy’s world, including her “little hobby” of making clothes, but she paid for it all the same.

  No one ever saw the cost, or the grief that had almost ripped Shaggy to shreds a year ago. No one knew that Shaggy had basically cared for her once-famous father all during high school after Bianca had abandoned him to alcohol and depression.

  Bianca paid both for his condo and his basic monthly bills, of course. “I’m not heartless,” she would say. But she wouldn’t see him. The divorce was finalized by the time Shaggy turned sixteen.

  So Shaggy had become his only confidant as his hands—which once wielded the sculptor’s tools that gave him worldwide recognition, now ruined by rheumatoid arthritis—only held a constant glass of gin.

  A few days before the massive heart attack that killed him, Shaggy stopped by his condo. “My heart is broken, little girl,” he’d said to her. And one week later, they’d found out that was true. He’d left Shaggy to Bianca, who indulged Shaggy’s grief by letting her club her brain out as long as she went to university and got some sort of degree.

  Well, Shaggy had done that, studying art history and fiber arts, then trying her hand at figure drawing, before settling on huge, abstract paintings done while high on ecstasy or smoke and making festival costumes for herself and her friends.

  But she needed to get away, from Bianca and from all the places she’d known only with her dad. So she had applied to the Portland School of Design, figuring it was both just far enough away to escape, and close enough for Bianca to not complain.

  And now she was pregnant.

  And Moss…

  Professor Logan switched his slide to something so perfect, Shaggy gave a small gasp. It was just a chair, and clearly an assembly line chair, at that. But Shaggy could still feel the artist in it. She could see their vision in the graceful curve of the back, and the way it fitted just so into the rounded seat. And the legs…arcs of wood so slender, she wasn’t even sure how they supported anything, let alone a human body.

  But there it was. Possibility. Creation.

  She realized her hands had crept over her still-flat stomach muscles. Damn it.

  Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.

  What the hell was she going to do with…all of this? It hardly seemed fair. She was twenty-two years old, finally free of emotional responsibility, or so she had thought.

  And then, class was over. The blinds snapped all the way up, flooding the room with sun. Shaggy blinked. Professor Logan shut down his computer, and Laura, the nice Brazilian woman close to Shaggy’s age, was headed up the aisle toward her, a big smile on her deep brown face. She wore orange overalls over a white T-shirt, and looked absolutely gorgeous. Laura swung a backpack over one shoulder, and paused by Shaggy’s table.

  “Shaggy! You look as if you’ve seen a ghost! Are you going to yoga today?”

  “Oh! Um…maybe. I hadn’t thought about it.” She fumbled her tablet case closed, and shoved her things into an oversized teal leather shoulder bag.

  Shaggy paused, then looked up at Laura’s expectant face.

  “Actually, do you have time for lunch or something? Or dinner after yoga class?”

  Laura looked pleased. “Yes. I would like that. Dinner after yoga, I mean. I have another class after this. Meet at the yoga shala, then?”

  Shaggy wondered if she’d kept herself way too distant from people for too long. She’d just gotten used to hiding while taking care of her dad. Who would ever believe the poor little rich girl who had all the money and drugs a person could ever want had troubles of her own?

  Maybe it was time to let her guard down. Her intuition, a thing she paid attention to only when it grew frantic enough to scream—like when it told her she had to move the fuck away from Marin County—was telling her yes, to let Laura in.

  Or at least to try.

  “Yeah. That’d be great! I…really need to talk to someone and I don’t have friends here yet.”

  Shaggy didn’t really have friends anywhere, she realized. And she hadn’t for a long time.

  “I’m always happy to listen,” Laura replied, giving Shaggy’s arm a slight squeeze.

  “See you at the studio then,” Shaggy replied. The other woman smiled, and began to walk away. Shaggy looked around, at the empty tables and chairs. Professor Logan and the other students had already left the room.

  She was alone again. But maybe, just maybe, she didn’t have to be.

  5

  Moss

  Moss opened the door onto the lunch rush at Raquel’s café. The place buzzed with conversation, the milk steamer going, cups clattering, and over the speakers, Janet Jackson was joining the rhythm nation. Dang. He should’ve gotten here sooner to snag a table, but had gotten pinged for one last drive that he couldn’t resist. Under capitalism, money was money, and a guy had to eat. He crossed the black-and-white-tiled floor and got in line. Most of the tables in the center of the room and all of the booths against the wall were full, plus the café was clearly doing takeout for folks on
a break from work. They lined up and down the center aisle, waiting for coffee, pastries, and grilled panini.

  The place smelled of coffee and toasted cheese sandwiches.

  “Hey Moss!” Raquel said with a harried smile as she rang up the person in front of him. The line had moved forward while Moss wasn’t paying attention. A gorgeous Black woman a decade older than him, Raquel wore her dreadlocks tied back in a red scarf. “Your latte will be right up, Cherise.”

  The woman moved to the side, making way for Moss at the counter.

  “Hi Moss!” said Cassiel. A white woman around Moss’s age, with a ponytail that kept a riot of red hair off her face as she expertly foamed milk and poured espresso shots. She and Raquel both wore red aprons over T-shirts and jeans. The aprons picked up the red in Raquel’s signature coffee cups.

  “What’s up, witches?” he asked. Raquel was co-founder of Arrow and Crescent Coven, and both he and Cassiel were members. “I’m meeting Alejandro. He asked me to order. So, two panini specials and I want a large coffee and whatever Alejandro gets. He said you’d know his poison.”

  “That would be a double cappuccino, oat milk,” Raquel said, ringing him up. She leveled her dark, all-seeing eyes at Moss. “You make sure he pays for this. Man makes five times what you do.”

  “At least.” Moss fished for his wallet and slid his card into the chip reader. “How’s Zion, he doing okay?”

  “Happy to be back in school, though not as happy as I am!” Raquel replied. “And yeah. He’s doing okay. The kids who were bullying him transferred out, and he’s got more backup now.”

  “That must be a relief. It’s good to have a little victory now and then.”

  “You’re right about that. I gotta get back to it.”

  Moss nodded and turned to look for a table. Three people were exiting one of the booths. He slid onto a padded bench beneath a cool watercolor of two red-winged blackbirds. The art in Raquel’s was always shifting, done by local artists trying to sell their work to folks who would never see it otherwise. Moss appreciated that about Raquel. She always supported community in as many ways as she could.