SHADOWS

by Jonathan Nasaw

  Unfortunately, it was of eating a grilled cheese sandwich at the Ludman Diner. American cheese. Quarter inch of orange goo, tiny beads of buttery moisture sweating up from the toast. Vivid enough—she could hear the scritch-scratchy sound of the toast when she bit into the sandwich—but fuck-all to do with Whistler, she realized as she awoke.

  Fuck all. Second time she'd used that expression since midnight. It had been one of Jamey's; he'd used it the very first time he'd spoken to her. The inaptness of her grilled cheese dream made her smile: somehow her subconscious had managed to select one of the few images floating around her universe that did not remind her of Jamey Whistler.

  Selene closed her eyes again, and let her thoughts wander back to that first meeting. 1967. The Summer of Love. No, not the Summer of Love—they'd met at the Sabbat of the autumnal equinox. The Fall of Love, rather.

  * * *

  Yes, the Fall of Love. That would do nicely for a description of the whole Haight-Ashbury scene by September of '67. Selene's own situation was illustrative: She and two other witches, one of whom was dating an abusive speed freak, and the other who was an abusive speed freak, were sharing a basement apartment at the corner of Page and Central, but their landlady, anticipating that the recent appreciation of Haight property values would continue in-definitely (innocents and predators were still being drawn to the deteriorating scene like flies to a corpse) had announced her intention to raise the rent on the two-room flat.

  Of the three roomies, only Selene had regular employment, and her job—cocktail waitress at the Hipper Than Thou in North Beach—was in considerable jeopardy. She got it through Moll's sister Connie, with whom she'd stayed when she first arrived in San Francisco. Connie would have had to give up the job soon anyway, because she and her new husband, Don, were about to move to Bolinas, so she was happy to recommend her sister's friend to the boss, a fabled North Beach character.

  Unfortunately, he was also a fabled North Beach asshole. Selene had been working for him nearly two years by the fall of '67, but when she asked him if she could have Friday night off he had removed his cigar from his fat red lips just long enough to inform her that better-looking chicks than her were kneeling in line to suck his dick for her job.

  On the other hand, it hadn't been a definite no, and given the choice between telling Morgana, the high priestess, that she would be unable to attend the Lesser Sabbat, or losing her job and possibly her apartment and starving to death on the street, she would take the latter every time. Less trouble.

  And if she did return to work Saturday night to find her job had gone to a hippie chick with knee pads, then both her replacement and the fabled North Beach character were going to have a nice crimson surprise in store for them at the climax of one of their next backroom blow jobs.

  Sometimes being a witch was inconvenient, but it was never without its compensations.

  CHAPTER 8

  « ^ »

  "Bad news and good news." On the evening of the autumnal equinox of 1967, High Priestess Morgana greeted Selene at the door of the Broadway House, a handsome old prequake black-trimmed gray Victorian on San Francisco's outer Broadway. It had been converted to a bordello in the twenties, and the floor plan had proved convenient for a covenstead. "Mr. Flood has sent his regrets—he will be unable to attend either the sperming or the Sabbat orgy this evening."

  "Is that the good news or the bad news?" Selene was not particularly fond of Mr. Flood. Knowing this, Morgana had selected him as Selene's orgy partner for the last two Sabbats in a row.

  "Depends upon how you feel about his replacement, I suppose. English fellow, comes with quite a recommendation from High Priestess Aphrodite in London. Here, take a peek."

  Morgana, a robust-looking woman in her mid-fifties with upswept hair dyed midnight black, pulled Selene into the coat closet in the hall, where a one-way mirror looked onto the parlor. Lots of peepholes and one-way mirrors in the Broadway house. The property had cost the priestess a fortune. Providentially, she had two: Morgana had been widowed twice, each time by wealthy older men who had died of natural causes. ("All-natural causes," she used to joke in the privacy of the coven. "No artificial coloring or preservatives.") "Well, what do you think?"

  Selene, who couldn't take her eyes off the young man in the parlor, feigned indifference. "As the high priestess wills."

  Morgana chuckled. "Don't bullshit an old bullshitter, sweetie. You've been dreamy-eyed since you caught sight of him."

  Selene didn't bother to deny it—she'd all but fogged up her side of the mirror—but she did blush prettily when Morgana told her it would be her job to brief the handsome young man in the parlor (he seemed to be young, though his boyishly cut hair was a becoming shade of gray) on what would be expected of him this evening. Freshman orientation always embarrassed the hell out of Selene, who still found it easier to have sex than to talk about it.

  Robed and hooded, Selene waited for the grandfather clock in the parlor to finish striking nine before entering.

  He stood up—he was a lean six-footer; she was a lean five-footer—and held out his hand, his wrist cocked at a donnish angle, as if he were wearing an academic's gown instead of a soft-collared periwinkle polo shirt and tailored wheat jeans. "Jamey Whistler."

  "Hi. I'm Selene." Her hand slipped easily into his.

  "The Goddess of the Moon?"

  "Just a namesake." Her hand still in his.

  He smiled down at her. "Not as far as I'm concerned."

  She looked up, met his wide-set gray eyes, and felt a flutter from her heart to her womb that was not lust, but included it. It was like a foreknowing; she ducked her head, hiding her blush under her hood. "Let's get down to business, shall we? How much do you know about Wicca?"

  "Fuck-all," he replied pleasantly. "And despite having attended several orgies at your sister house in London, I have steadfastly resisted all attempts to improve my knowledge."

  Selene sat down on the loveseat and smoothed the lap of her robe. "At least you're honest."

  "At least?" Unbidden, he sat beside her on the yellow silk, his knee only millimeters from hers. "Honesty is one of my chiefest virtues. Born of not giving a shit, of course, but it's still a beautiful thing, if truth is beauty, and beauty truth."

  "Actually, it's the other way around." She couldn't help it—there was something challenging in his manner. Even if she did have a crush on him the size of the moon. " 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty.' Keats. 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.' "

  "I see. And how much is owed on a Grecian urn?"

  Selene laughed in spite of herself—apparently freshman English jokes were the same on either side of the pond. "About three, four drachma."

  "Sounds right." Then he did something quite unexpected—he reached out a long-fingered hand and gently pushed her hood back. "If beauty is truth, you must be the most honest woman in San Francisco," he said, with his gray eyes locked to hers. Not a color she'd seen before—metallic gray, but soft metal: solder, not steel.

  "Don't bullshit a bullshitter," she retorted confidently, though she'd heard the phrase for the first time only a few minutes before. She liked the way it sounded coming out of her mouth.

  But he hadn't bought it. "Firstly, you're no bullshitter. Though if you'd like to become one, I'm reasonably sure I can help you." He replaced her hood, as gently as if he were bonneting a baby. "Secondly, we've already established that I'm an honest man." His fingers brushed her dark, unruly hair tenderly. "And the truth, lovely witch, is that you possess the sort of delicate beauty best described as pre-Raphaelite. It may be uncommon in these rough parts, but a hundred years ago your lovers would have been queuing up to have miniaturists carve your likeness in cameo, for lockets to be worn close to their hearts."

  If it is bullshit, thought Selene, don't ever let it stop. And then stopped it dead in its tracks, with another Morgana-ism she'd once overheard the high priestess use upon an importunate sperm donor. "That hand that's touching me without my permission—did tha
t used to be yours?"

  "Sorry." And suddenly the hand was gone, back at his side with inhuman speed, too fast even for a blur.

  Somewhat rattled now, Selene struggled for control—if not of him, at least of herself. "Thank you for the flattery—"

  "Compliments."

  "All right, compliments. Now can we get down to business?"

  "At your service."

  "Okay. First: the sperming. I'll get you a robe, and show you up to your room. You're to put it on, nothing underneath, and wait there until someone comes for you. You'll be led to a room, and be allowed to provide sperm for the Sabbat. You're not to peek, nor to touch anyone, nor to address anyone. Afterwards, you'll be led back to your room, and when it's time for the orgy, you'll be summoned."

  He hadn't said a word, nor could she read his expression. She went on: "Have you ever been to an autumnal Sabbat?" He shook his head. "No? Well you'll be representing the God of the Corn returning from the Underworld to claim his bride, and—"

  He interrupted her. "May I claim you?"

  If he was jiving, he was a master: the simple question had pierced her to the heart. You must, she thought, but said nothing. She didn't think her voice could handle the nuances.

  Selene hurried through the rest of the instructions, then led Jamey up the back stairs to the attic. "It's the smallest room in the house," she explained in a whisper, opening the door, "but it's worth it for the view—whoops, watch your head."

  Low slanted ceiling; a dormer window faced the west. Far out over the unseen ocean, the stars were struggling bravely; later that night there would be a moon for sex magick.

  And a bed for it: king-size, with a stout brass head rail. Goose-down comforters, satin sheets, and all sorts of pillows, soft, hard, round, angled, cut-out. He tossed his overnight bag on the bed; she handed him the hooded crimson robe she'd selected from the linen closet on the second floor. "Here, put this on—hood up, arms in, penis out. I'll be back for you in about twenty minutes. Any questions?"

  "Just one." He inspected the robe (wide sleeves, placketed crotch, executioner-style hood, but no eyeslits), shrugged, and started to pull his polo shirt over his head. "Do you want me hard or soft when you arrive?"

  Selene, blushing under her own hood, fought back a grin. "Whichever you feel is to your best advantage." It was not a question that had ever come up before.

  The customary practice was to dispatch a single witch to accompany each sperm donor from his room to the Circle Room, but when Selene told them about Whistler's question and her ad-libbed response, they immediately began laying bets—hard or soft, big or small, various parlays—and it was an entire delegation of green-robed witches that arrived at Whistler's door: Morgana, who'd wagered a full-body massage on hard against Selene's soft; Vivienne, an angular-featured blonde from Marseilles, who'd bet Sidonia, a former Las Vegas call girl, that any man who'd even dare pose such a question had to be hung like a baguette; Sidonia herself, who had no personal knowledge of Whistler, but had done enough gambling in her time, and seen enough penises, to know where the odds lay; and of course Selene, who had only bet on soft as a knee-jerk response to Whistler's arrogance, and was beginning to think she'd backed the wrong horse even before they'd knocked thrice and opened the door.

  When the hooded, crimson-robed figure turned blindly to meet them, Selene, the youngest and least experienced of the four witches, had to stifle a gasp. Sidonia, whose bet with Vivienne involved the loser Easy-Offing the winner's oven, spread her hands wide, shrugged, and made a you-never-know face, while Morgana and Vivienne applauded each other—and Whistler—in mime.

  Selene didn't care about losing her bet. What really galled her was the feeling, as she stepped forward to seize him by his protruding member and lead him down to the circle room, that under that crimson hood he was almost certainly grinning that infuriating, cocksure grin of his.

  A ripple ran around the circle of witches when Selene led Whistler into the room. He was the third sperm donor of the evening; she positioned him in front of the cast-iron kettle, and expertly began masturbating him. She tried to keep her breathing steady and her mind on witchly matters—this was part of the Sabbat, and not part of the orgy—but was not entirely successful. It wasn't the act that had her nonplussed—in four years as a witch, she'd milked dozens of men—or the size of his penis, but rather it was the way this most detached of sexual connections was starting to feel intensely personal. She struggled to remain dispassionate, but through her hand, and the receptive powers of her psyche, powers she had barely learned to understand, much less control, she found her knees going weak and her sex going wet and soft, and her breasts going tender, as if they were making love face-to-face, staring into each other's eyes.

  And when he finally came, when his penis swelled another improbable few centimeters in diameter, the veins distended like blue worms and the skin shiny and white and hard as ivory, when he moaned deep in his throat and began spurting gobs of thick white ejaculate so forcefully that she barely had time to adjust the angle of the shaft so that the arc of precious fluids splashed against the far side of the kettle instead of shooting over it, she found herself sinking to her knees in a near faint. For at that moment, impossible as it may have been, considering his penis was still throbbing in her hand, she could have sworn she felt him inside her, filling her.

  It was a phenomenon she had read of—spirit filling spirit, was how the Book of Sex Magick phrased it—but Selene had never experienced it herself, nor met a witch who claimed to. She moaned involuntarily as the ghost of an orgasm, sort of like pins and needles as opposed to full sensation, seized her. Even kneeling, she could scarcely keep her balance; she found herself clutching his still erect penis as tightly as if it were a spar she'd grasped to save herself from drowning.

  That must have been painful for him, Selene realized, but he hadn't uttered a sound. She loosed her hold and his penis sprang free, giving no sign of softening despite the orgasm. Selene climbed unsteadily to her feet; as she led him back through the circle of witches she realized she wasn't the only one who'd been affected—she could all but smell the pheromones bubbling out from under the green robes.

  * * *

  Morgana, never a speed demon, went through the ritual even more deliberately than usual that night. The opening form, which involved each of the witches kissing the high priestess's robed behind, then receiving upon their pentacle points daubs of Sabbath Oil (wolfbane, cinquefoil, mandrake, moonwort, poppy, saffron, and tobacco, ground into powder and mixed with the sperm of thirteen men), seemed to take forever. And then after the invocation Morgana insisted on narrating the long version of the story of the return of the Corn God, now Lord of the Underworld—as if they didn't all know it by heart.

  But finally it ended, and the witches were dispatched to summon their Gods for the evening. This time Selene went alone. When she opened the door, Whistler was standing at the window, still in his robe, but with the hood thrown back and his gray hair catching the moonlight.

  "Nice effect," said Selene.

  "Beg pardon?" He turned around—no protrusions, no protuberances at the front of the robe.

  "The moonlight. On the hair."

  "I wasn't posing." Not quite pouting, but clearly his feelings were hurt. It made him look a lot younger. She began to suspect that he was nearer her age—twenty-two—than not. It also made him a lot more likable.

  "Of course you weren't. Ready for the orgy?"

  "I need to freshen up. Is there a bathroom nearby?"

  "Right down the hall."

  He took his overnight bag with him; his manner, languid when he left, was entirely assured again when he returned, his step more certain, and his color higher. After living for two years with Moll in the Village, and then another two in the heart of the Haight, Selene understood full well that he'd taken some drug or other in the bathroom, but which drug she couldn't imagine. If it were pot, she'd have smelled it; coke or smack or speed she'd have picked up on r
eadily enough from his vibe alone. She was also a little puzzled that he hadn't offered her any of whatever it was. Perhaps customs were different in England; she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  * * *

  The Circle Room was ready for the orgy, the gently curved, double-wide armless leather chaise set up in the center, and cushions and pillows strewn around the circumference of the high-ceilinged round chamber. Morgana clapped her hands sharply three times when Selene and Whistler appeared in the doorway. "Lords of the Underworld, that side of the room; Goddesses, this side."

  Selene gathered with the other green robes. Her roommate Brisen, the one who was dating the abusive speed freak, seized her hand excitedly. "Oh my god, Sel—he's good-looking, too! You have all the luck," said Brisen, as Morgana returned from the red team's huddle on the other side of the room. She had assigned the men numbers from one to thirteen; now she gave the women numbers corresponding to the partners she'd selected for them. "Selene, you're one. Brisen, two; Sidonia, three…"

  When she was done the women formed a circle around Selene, undressed her, and fastened the stiff, gold-embroidered white Goddess mask over the upper half of her face. Across the room, the men disrobed Whistler and helped him don his half mask—it was leather, with stumpy horns and oval brass grommets around the eyeholes. Then, as the women pushed Selene toward the center of the room, the men did the same for Whistler; the naked couple approached each other slowly, one measured step at a time.

  The walk always made Selene self-conscious about her body—boyish forms had been no more treasured where she grew up than were pre-Raphaelite faces. She wondered if the gorgeous man approaching her, his remarkable erection bobbing at each step, was disappointed. But he gave no sign of being dissatisfied. Certainly his penis seemed enthusiastic enough, and he was concentrating fiercely on her body, his wide gray eyes round with desire under the mask, the pupils glittering blackly, filled with wondering lust. His body was lean and rangy, with long smooth swimmer's muscles, his pallor striking—not papery white like an old man but polished like ivory, chest hairless as a statue's.