Black Ambrosia

by Elizabeth Engstrom

  I knew, then, that She was threatening me, testing me. This was Her ultimate checkmate to squelch any rebellious thoughts that might remain. She wanted me to have no friends, no companions. She wanted Her hold to be absolute. She wanted all of me, all the time.

  She controlled these meetings with Boyd. She kept him foremost in my mind. And now She was threatening to reveal my location to him, as easily as letting him read the name of the local newspaper.

  Well, it would not work.

  She would not have me. She would not have me.

  I took a series of deep breaths and tried to calm my trembling. I knew I had to renounce Her, had to fight Her, and I could win, I would win, because I had something that I don’t think She counted on. I had my free will. And it was strong. I would defeat Her.

  I intuitively knew my next step. I dressed quickly, kissed each cat, assured them all that I would return, then left my apartment. I stepped into the comfortable summer night of the deserted industrial area. In the garage at the end of the street, the night crew provided maintenance to buses and trucks, but the other buildings were nighttime-­deserted; only ghostly security lights were brave enough to show their bea­cons through the darkness, through deadeye windows and down ragged alleys.

  I knew right where to go.

  I avoided the lighted places, dodging down side streets, not wishing to be seen, stopped, or ques­tioned. I found a pile of trash by the curb waiting to be picked up. Leaning against it was a beautiful plank. I ripped another from a boarded-­up window on a recently vacated building, and found some small plywood scraps blown up next to a fence by the airstrip. I made a small pile of all of these finds just two blocks from my home, and as a pack rat scurries along the gutters at night finding shiny objects, so I looked for lumber to build my defense.

  I had to return to my apartment for my hammer, and with it removed some molding from empty doorways, and at last I thought I had what I needed. It took seven trips to take it all into my basement, but once there, I began to work in a fever, the plans coming to me automatically, the tools feeling like old friends. My tool box consisted of only a hammer, a bent handsaw, a couple of screwdrivers, and some nails. They would have to do, and they worked. My frustration reached frenzied proportions at times, and as I perspired in my work and the sweat began to turn sour in my clothes, I stripped down and preferred the sawdust covering to the cotton.

  My measurements proved right, my intuition flawless. I dared not think that I was being guided in this endeavor. This was my act of rebellion, one so strong She could not ignore it or deny it. I knew She would at least take note of the drastic measures I was taking to avoid Her contact, the dedication with which I was putting Her from my life. Once She realized how important this was to me, I knew She would leave me alone, to rediscover the daylight and find my way among people again—someday to meet Boyd face-­to-­face in the flesh again, in the light, eye-­to-­eye.

  And then it was finished. I dragged the kitchen table into the bedroom and placed the box atop it.

  Unaccustomed to manual work of this magni­tude, I felt as if lead flowed in my veins. I returned to the kitchen to find the kittens all sleeping in a pile next to the stove, and I saw the light begin to come in through the windows. Dawn. I had worked the night through, and She had not touched me. I had beaten Her this night, and I would again the next night and the next. I would no longer be Her puppet, Her pawn. Her ideas for me were not wholesome and I would have no part of them ever again.

  Ever again.

  I looked down at myself, covered completely with a sawdust-­and-­sweat paste, gritty and distasteful. I saw my ribs and my hip bones protruding, and I knew that my health would return, and my apartment would be cleaned, and I would get another job and return to normal. Soon. Very soon.

  I leaned against the stove for support. The dawn was breaking and I was becoming faint. I took a long drink of water from the tap, and then, without taking the time or energy to shower, I crawled into my box and brought the lid down. The fit was perfect.

  She will see what I have done to keep Her from me, and She will leave me alone.

  And I will miss Her.

  “I thought I was going insane. God, my flesh crawls whenever I think about it. I began to understand what real evil is. I mean, I saw it. When these things happened, when I punched through and met her on . . . on what is that place, a different plane? Any­way, it was like there were always two Angelinas. One the victim, the essentially good girl, the one that I knew here in Westwater, and then there was the other one, the evil one, the one that lived inside the dark place and pulled the strings to make her dance.

  “God, I don’t know. Maybe that other one wasn’t Angelina. Maybe it was something else altogether. I guess I’m just afraid to let my imagination dwell on what it might be. But one thing’s for certain: There were two of them there, and together they were awful.

  “I began to get a sense of where she was, though. Every time I broke through, I kind of felt mountains. I knew she was up in the mountains, somewhere. I looked at maps all day long, subscribed to more newspapers. I knew that it wouldn’t be long. She’d make a mistake and I’d have her.

  “Then, of course, that big story broke, and I was on my way.”

  21

  One night went by and She didn’t contact me. Then another night, then a whole week. My emotions were so intense they were physical. I ached to see Her again; I wanted with all my being to be with Her, to laugh and watch Her, to feel Her next to me, with me, inside me, around me. I missed Her so much that I felt like hurting myself in order to outdo the pain, I felt like curling up in the corner and rocking back and forth with the ache of it.

  Simultaneously, I shivered with the excitement of being free of Her. My teeth chattered and I wore heavy sweaters and bulky socks, even during the warm summer nights, and my arms and legs were always cold. I could hardly believe that I had really done it, that I had beaten that which threatened to destroy my soul.

  In the back of my mind I didn’t think She would give up that easily, I thought that She had just withdrawn and was watching me, that I was fooling myself into thinking that I had even a modicum of power over Her vast personality. But I refused to dwell on those thoughts. I just wrapped the blanket of my resolve a little tighter and made yet another set of plans for my life.

  Eventually the shivering stopped. My internal thermostat seemed to return to normal; I did without the blankets and sweaters. Still, my schedule was nocturnal, but that was fine—one thing at a time, and I knew that eventually this too would change.

  I ventured out now and again to the convenience market for supplies, and I tried my hand at baking breads and things in my little oven. The nights stretched long before me, and I bought extra lamps to chase the darkness away from my apartment. I avoided the warping influence of the night as best I could, and each dawn, when exhausted from the effort of it, I would crawl into my box and congratulate myself on another successful night.

  After several weeks had gone by and still I hadn’t heard from Her, I began to feel much better about myself; my boldness grew and I began to leave the house in the early evening and spend some time with Cap before the crowd accumulated at the Yacht Club.

  He was always genuinely delighted to see me; his enthusiasm I found hard to believe at first, but I grew fond of it over time. He seemed concerned over my appearance, always discussing vitamins and the bene­fits of rare meat, and it was an odd occasion indeed when I escaped the Yacht Club without something to eat in my stomach, or at least in my pocket. My appetite was poor, there was no doubt. I baked and cooked, but one or two bites would sate me. Most of the food went to the cats, or in the case of the baked goods, to the family of rats that had moved into the spare bedroom.

  I begged off explanations by telling Cap that I’d been down with the flu, and was having a hard time regaining my weight. He would boom his laughter
to the rafters and polish tables and talk about how much he could eat at a real family-­type Thanksgiving din­ner. Cap loved food. His eyes glazed over when he talked about brown roasted turkeys and crunchy nutty cranberry relish, and I helped him sweep the floor and laughed at his preoccupation with that which would most likely prove to be his downfall. Heart trouble was no stranger to Cap, and he knew he was digging his own grave with his fork.

  And when the locals would start coming in for their evening drinks, I would kiss Cap on the cheek and slip out the door to go for a walk.

  I began to roam the little town each night, think­ing at every corner about returning home to try to sleep, to try to break the routine, sleep a little bit each night to regain a normal schedule, to be awake a little bit each day. But eventually, as the weeks passed and the nights grew longer, the darkness seeped back in through my pores, and I gave up on the idea; became content, instead, to leave the majority of the shops to the daylight personnel, to leave the average, normal life to the nine-­to-­fivers.

  I roamed the streets every night, speaking in night language to the other regulars I met.

  And the nights turned chill, and Spartacus and her daughters each had a litter, and I no longer turned the lights on at home. I roamed from sundown to sunup, restlessly, relentlessly, searching for some­thing, anything, that would give me peace, that would fill the nameless void that screamed with emptiness, hollowness.

  I knew She waited for me, and I desperately sought a diversion, an alternate path, a way to out­wait Her, though I knew Her patience was eternal. I could see it as clearly as I could see the face of the full moon.

  In November, the snow began to fly, the visitors flocked back, and the Yacht Club was packed from opening to closing. I avoided it entirely.

  I felt brittle, as if my bones had bleached, and my coats and warm clothes were no longer enough to keep the cold out as I wandered through the night and the snow. Even my apartment was cold. The broken window the cats used for a door was always breathing cold air on us.

  One evening, I drew my cape from the closet and unfolded it. It felt heavy, heavier than I remembered it. A weird thrill of dreaded anticipation zinged through me as I fingered the material. It had been a long time. I swung it about my shoulders and tied it at the throat.

  For warmth, I said, for warmth, and I put my down coat over it and went out into the night, into the winter, and hated the fact that the darkness outside had begun to feel more like home.

  I shoved my hands deep into the pockets, my fingers automatically closing on the pocket toys, and I unconsciously rubbed them as I strode along the darkened warehouse street. It was barely ten o’clock at night, but the evening was wickedly cold and my nose was red and running before I had gone three blocks. Snow hung unfallen and heavy in the air, muffling the sounds, distorting them so that the crunch of ice beneath my boot heels had a fourth­-dimension sound, and the yellow lights on the white snow, and the freezing cold all added to a surrealistic aura in the town. It felt deserted.

  I felt deserted.

  The restaurants and bars were filled to overflow­ing in town, so I avoided the main street, not wanting to deal with drunks or happy talk. I didn’t feel like being lured into the coziness of a fire and brightly colored sweaters worn by people with fresh hair and rosy cheeks.

  I scuffled my boots against the packed snow of the sidewalk on the street that paralleled Main.

  As I came to the corner of Jack and Poplar streets, I saw Joshua’s little shop, lit up all warm and inviting. In a couple more strides, I saw Joshua, sitting in his customary posture behind the cash register, hefting a paper bag to his lips, then wiping the overflow onto the filthy, ragged cuff of his army jacket.

  Visiting with Joshua was an irregular occurrence, but not necessarily an unpleasant one. I pushed the door open and almost gagged in the warm, humid air that smelled like cheap wine and Joshua.

  “Hey, Angelina! How are you on this raw night?”

  “Cold, Joshua, thank you. And you?”

  “Mindin’ the store. Mindin’ the store. Come by for some reading material, or just to jaw?”

  “Just some company, if you don’t mind.”

  “Mind? Gets lonesome here. Listen. Look around. I gotta go in the back a minute. Help any customers out if they come in, okay?” He cackled and grabbed his steel crutches from where they leaned against the wall, then made his crippled way through the striped curtain that separated the front of the newsstand from the back room.

  The back room, I knew from previous visits, consisted of a filthy toilet, singular washbasin, and stacks and stacks of old magazines and newspapers. The front of the shop was similar—only the magazines and newspapers were somewhat fresher, more current, and the cash register was new. Joshua had told me that the merchants’ association came in every now and then and cleaned up the front for him, washed the floor, painted it up a bit, but they never bothered with the back.

  Behind the counter were candy, gum, and ciga­rettes, to the left and right were big magazine stands. Four freestanding paperback-­book racks, heavy on war novels, stood about, and the picture-­window display area was piled high with comic books. News­papers were stacked on the floor around the front counter, so in order to make a purchase, one had to stand several feet from the counter and lean over. Joshua liked that, putting people off balance.

  He had all the local trade. This tidy, pretty little town supported its local embarrassment, its local war hero, its token broken Vietnam vet that it fed and cared for like a pet. Joshua slopped up its charity like gravy with a big, chewy crust of scorn.

  And it had made him old.

  I had stacked two bundles of newspapers and was sitting on them, loosening my coat, when I heard Joshua finish on the toilet, heard the clank of his metal crutches, and soon he swung back through the curtain.

  “Did you take care of that run of customers for me?” He smiled. I felt somehow as if I were the only one in town whom Joshua didn’t make fun of. He threw me a paper bag, which I caught in surprise reflex. “Eat something, willya?”

  I opened the bag and found two hardening doughnuts.

  “Oh, thank you, Joshua. I’m not hungry.”

  “Wasting away. What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway?”

  “I’ve been ill lately, I think, but I’m over it now.”

  “Well, that’s good. Don’t know anyone else who’d come sit with me at night.” There was a long pause while Joshua focused his attention on the bottle in the paper bag. He never drank while I was with him, but he stared at his liquor as if it were his only reference point. “Why do you?”

  “I like you.”

  “Bullshit. Nobody likes me. I’m crude.”

  “I like you.”

  “Yeah?” I almost saw the flicker of a smile in the corners of his mouth, but he wouldn’t allow himself that. “What do you like about me?”

  “What’s on the other side of your crude front. What you could be if you took off that face and put on one that’s more human.”

  “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. You lose both your legs and your balls and then let’s talk again about being human.” The expression on his face never changed. This, too, was a part of his front.

  “Does nothing touch you? Have you sealed your­self so tightly that nothing can touch you?” Suddenly I felt as if Joshua were me, and I was confronting myself, a strange, inconceivable part of myself.

  “Maybe you better go.”

  “I’ve touched you, then, haven’t I?”

  “Get outta here, Angelina. You’re boring to­night.”

  I took off my coat. “I care about you, Joshua. I care that you sit here night after night and drink and moan to yourself.” This, too, was a part of myself. “I’d like to touch you . . . in a different way.”

  His look never wavered. I felt a flicker of
interest flash across the back of his eyes, felt it, as if it were my own, my own wish to change, to merge with a better portion of myself, but on Joshua, it was a hope too radical to be real, the hope that a girl, a real girl, would ever look at him, ever touch him in a loving way again. He continued to stare at me, and I realized that I did care for him. I cared for Joshua, and I cared for myself, my own well-­being. His face was suddenly young and innocent, my own superimposed upon it, as in some accidental photograph, both wrapped up in the ravages of disappointment.

  A shudder ran through my body and I rubbed my arms. When I looked back at him, he was again Joshua, dirty, nasty, bitter Joshua. I had closed the door on the frightening face of affection.

  He groped for his crutches and stood up, coming toward me. His face showed the ache of longing. The soft touch of a woman’s hands on his skin would be enough to change his life. I had this power, and had to use it this moment. I stood, knocked the stacks of comic books into red and blue rivers of slick covers, and spread my coat atop them in the display window, smoothing them out and rearranging their sliding mass.

  I separated from myself at this point. I felt powerless over what I was doing, not understanding my motives, not understanding what I was about to do, even. I knew only that Joshua needed hope; he had lived too long with fear. I dissuaded him from locking the door with a touch of my hand on his arm. He turned off the lights, and a moment later, I turned them on again, feeling a weird, agitated excitement growing in my stomach.

  He sat on my coat, on the edge of the display, stood his crutches against the wall, and as I reached for the ribbon that tied the cape around my neck, my saliva glands began to flow. It was then that I knew my purpose, and the hunger that had been growing in me all these months; the ravenous, starving ache had been for Joshua, not for Her, not for anything else but him. Him.