Eclipse One

by Jonathan Strahan

  I was made confident by her praise, infected by her passion for the movie, and a little desperate because I realized this might be my last, best chance to draw her into a deeper involvement. She wasn't startled when I kissed her. She seemed to want it as much as I did. We moved from the sofa to the bed without a word exchanged. She was a fierce lover. She hissed in delight, she whispered Russian endearments, and she came almost at once, her nails pricking my back, heels bruising my calves, holding me tightly while she let out a series of low, shuddering cries. Then she pushed me onto my back and mounted me. Her hips rolled and twisted, teasing one moment and frenzied the next. The sight of her above me, breasts swaying, her hair flying—it was sublimely sexual. Yet when we were done, when she sat on the edge of the bed sipping her martini, I realized I had been taking mental snapshots of her, filing them away under The Most Beautiful Woman I Ever Fucked, and that her ferocity had been technical, part of a design for pleasure. The relationship had not deepened. It was only sex, though I wanted to believe otherwise.

  "You are disappointed," she said, looking down at me.

  "Are you kidding me?"

  "No, you are disappointed. I know." She set down her glass and lay facing me. "You did not hear music. You felt nothing new."

  "No music," I said, giving in to her. "But I maybe felt a couple of new things."

  She laughed and caressed my cheek. "Men tell me I am great at sex, and I think, so what? What do you mean? I enjoy it. I want men to enjoy. I have good energy for sex. It's no big thing." She rested her head in the crook of my shoulder. "Do you remember I'm telling you about the shaman? In the camp?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "We were lovers. It was only way I could get him to tell me things. After we have sex one time, he says, 'You don't have feelings for me.' I say, 'Sure I do,' and he says, 'You want to know what it is to have love feelings for a man?' So I tell him, 'Yes, okay.' I think he'll teach me something if I go along. So he lays me down and rubs oil over my body. And spices, too, maybe. It smells of spices."

  "Sounds like a marinade," I said.

  "Then he starts to sing. Very low, deep in his throat." She demonstrated. "It's very hypnotic, and I'm getting drowsy. So drowsy, I lose track of what is happening. Soon he's making love to me. It was amazing. It's like I hear the music, I'm feeling new things. I'm . . .I don't know the word. In another place."

  "Transported," I suggested.

  Her brow furrowed. "Okay, maybe. Afterward I ask if I can go to that place with some other man. He doesn't know. If he performs the ritual some more, it's possible, but he's very busy, he's got no time. Later, he says. Then the nomads disappear and there's no chance to perform the ritual again."

  "He probably drugged you."

  "Must be hell of a drug," she said. "Because I miss him forever. It takes me a year before I want sex with someone else. You think a drug can make you feel something so strong that you don't really feel?"

  "You don't even need drugs for that," I said.

  I was watching TV the following Sunday, three days before we were to begin shooting, when the police arrived in force. They had a search warrant and asked if I knew where Misha and Larissa might be. I had no idea where Misha was, but I told them Larissa was probably asleep. They didn't appear to believe me and suggested I come down to Valley Division and answer some questions. During the questioning, I learned that Misha and Larissa had last been seen at a bar in Pacific Palisades. Misha's car had been found early that morning in a gully not far from the house and there were signs of foul play, plenty of blood, too much blood to hope for survivors, yet no bodies. They asked about Misha's relationship with Larissa, about my relationship with Larissa, about people with Russian names whom I'd never heard of. After forty-five minutes, they kicked me loose and told me to keep clear of the house until they were done collecting evidence.

  I checked into a hotel and called Echevarrìa and gave him the news. He kept saying, "I knew something would fuck this up." It wasn't the kind of attitude I wanted to hear. I told him I'd contact him when I heard anything new and went down to the bar and drank myself stupid. I shed a few tears for Larissa, but not so many as you might expect, perhaps because I sensed that her tragedy had occurred long before I met her and, like Echevarrìa, I knew something bad was going to happen. I walked around for a week feeling as if a hole had been punched through my chest—I missed being around her, talking to her—and then the police picked me up again, this time conveying me to an interrogation room in the Parker Center with walls the color of carbon paper, where I made the acquaintance of Detectives Jack Trombley and Al Witt, who were attached to the Homicide Special Unit of the LAPD.

  Witt, a cheerful, fit man in his thirties, dressed in jeans and a sport coat, offered me cigarettes, coffee, soda, and then said, "So, did you do it?"

  "Do what?" I asked.

  He looked to his partner, an older, thicker man wearing the same basic uniform, and said, "I don't think he did it. You try."

  "Did you do it?" asked Trombley.

  I glanced back and forth between them. "I didn't do anything."

  "I'm not getting much," Trombley said.

  "Inconclusive?" asked Witt.

  Trombley nodded.

  "If only he hadn't lied, huh?" Witt eyed me sadly. "You said you and the Russian babe were friends, but we got your DNA off her sheets."

  "We had sex one time," I said. "But . . ."

  "One time!" Trombley snorted. "If it was me, you'd have to pry me off her."

  "It was like no good with her or something?" Witt asked.

  "Not really," I said. "It was . . .I don't know how to explain so you'd understand."

  "Yeah, we're pretty dense. We might not get it." Witt thumbed through the case file. "We found an older sample on the sheets. It belonged to Bondarchuk."

  "That must be from the rape."

  "Yeah, you said." Witt fingered the edge of a flimsy. "Makes you wonder how come a woman who's been raped would hang onto the sheets? You'd think she'd throw them away, or at least wash them."

  "What's your point?"

  Witt shrugged. "It's just weird." He played with papers for a second or two, and then asked, "What did you do with the money?"

  "The money?"

  "Boy, he's good!" said Trombley.

  "The fifteen million," Witt said. "The budget for your movie. Where'd it go?"

  "It's not in the bank?"

  "Not in any Wells Fargo bank." Witt made a church-and-steeple with his fingers. "Here's how I read it. Larissa was planning to set you up for Bondarchuk's murder and scoot with the fifteen mil. That's why she was sleeping on dirty sheets when you nailed her—to implicate you. Maybe she talked you into killing Bondarchuk for her. You caught on to her, chilled them both and buried the money in an offshore account."

  "Works for me," Trombley said. "Needs some tailoring, but we can make it fit."

  "I couldn't kill Larissa," I said.

  "Because you loved her? Love's right up there with greed as a motive for murder." Witt made a wry face. "You're not going to tell us you didn't love her, are you?"

  "Yeah. I loved her, but you wouldn't . . .I . . ."

  "I know. We wouldn't understand." Witt leafed through the file and pulled out a sheet of paper. "Larissa Miusov, AKA Larissa Shivets. Suspicion of robbery, suspicion of fraud, suspicion of extortion. Here's a good one. Suspicion of murder. Lots of suspicion hanging around your girlfriend, but she always skated. Is that what you loved about her?"

  They tag-teamed me for hours, trying to wear me down, to find cracks in my story, but I had no story to crack. Finally Witt said, "We like clearing cases around here and you're looking pretty good for this."

  "A guy like Misha," I said. "There must be dozens of people who wanted him dead."

  "More than that. But they've all got alibis and a ton of money. You don't."

  That night I sat in the hotel bar and worried whether the police would charge me; I drank too much and thought about Larissa; then I repeate
d the cycle. She hadn't talked much about the years in Moscow after her father died. I assumed they had been a struggle and, having no means of support, that she had done things she wasn't proud of; but hearing the specifics eroded what I believed to be true and raised unanswerable questions about her crimes. Had she been coerced? If so, by who and by what means? And had she intended to frame me? I wanted to deny it, clinging to the notion that we had been friends. Yet it was as if each new thing I learned rendered her less visible, as if during the entire time I knew her, she had been gradually disappearing behind a smokescreen of facts.

  After a month they let me back into the Topanga house to collect my possessions. I no longer feared that I would be charged with a double homicide. Though the case remained open, Larissa's death was on its way to becoming part of Hollywood lore and I was close to signing a deal that would guarantee production of the Donner Party script and allow me to direct a picture based on a script I would write about the murders. Very little excites America more than does the mysterious death of a beautiful woman, especially a woman who herself poses a mystery. Photographs of Larissa were splashed on tabloid covers and featured on TV. It was said she had done porn in Russia, that she had slept with Gorbachev, that she was a descendant of the Romanoffs. A 20/20 special was in the works. On the advice of counsel, I turned down requests for interviews.

  "Save it for the script," my agent told me.

  I packed quickly, oppressed by the house, but before leaving I asked the real estate agent to give me a minute to look around. I walked along the deck, then down to the hall to Larissa's bedroom. The bed had been stripped, but her clothes were still in the closet, her toiletries in the bathroom, and a trace of her perfume lingered on the air. I sat on the sofa, indulging in nostalgia, remembering moments, things spoken and unspoken. I glanced down at the coffee table.

  Sunlight applied a glaze to the glass surface, making it difficult to see, but when I leaned close I realized she had left me a message. That's how I interpreted the markings on the glass, though I recognize now they may have been the work of idle hours and I understand they were in essence the ultimate mystification of her life, a magical pass made by her disembodied hand that, literally or figuratively, caused her to vanish utterly behind a curtain of rumors and fictions, the final flourish of her disappearing act. At the time, however, I chose to take the hopeful view. I recalled how she had giggled and remarked sarcastically on the act of giving blood, blood she might have used to cover up a murder, and I also recalled things said about Misha, about me, all supporting the thesis that she had escaped, leaving behind evidence to implicate me, to misdirect the police for a while, yet not enough to convict.

  Four wheels resembling Mayan calendars, now defaced by random scratches, were etched into the four corners of the glass. The greater portion of the surface was occupied by marks that appeared to represent the surrounding hills, a crude map of our section of the canyon, and there was a patch of tropical vegetation where the house should have been. I identified palms and banana trees. Inside a circle, dead center of the patch, was the figure of a woman, so carefully incised that I made out breasts and a smiling face and a hand raised in a salute—she was half-turned away from whomever she was signaling, like a beloved and gifted actress waving farewell to her audience, preparing to step through the hole she had opened in the world.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Peter S. Beagle (www.peterbeagle.com) was born in New York in April 1939. He studied at the University of Pittsburgh and graduated with a degree in creative writing in 1959. Beagle won a Seventeen magazine short story contest in his sophomore year, but really began his writing career with his first novel, A Fine and Private Place, in 1960. It was followed by non-fiction travelogue I See by My Outfit in 1961, and by his best-known work, modern fantasy classic The Last Unicorn in 1968. Beagle's other books include novels The Folk of the Air, The Innkeeper's Song, and Tamsin; collections The Fantasy Worlds of Peter S. Beagle, The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche, Giant Bones, The Line Between, and several non-fiction books and a number of screenplays and teleplays. He has a new short novel, I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons, coming later this year.

  Paul Brandon (www.paulbrandon.com) was born in England in 1971. He studied at the British Film Institute and worked in the film industry for a number of years. He moved to Brisbane, Australia, in 1993 where he works as a writer and musician. His first novel, fantasy Swim the Moon, was published in 2001, and was followed by The Wild Reel in 2004. He plays guitar and bodhran in Celtic-influenced band Súnas, and is currently working on a new novel.

  Jack Dann (www.jackdann.com) was born in Binghamton, New York, in February 1945. His first story, "Dark, Dark the Dead Star," appeared in 1970, and was followed by more than seventy books, including the groundbreaking novels Junction, Starhiker, The Man Who Melted, The Memory Cathedral—which is an international bestseller—Civil War novel The Silent, and Bad Medicine. His short fiction, which includes Nebula Award winner "Da Vinci Rising," has been collected in Timetipping, Visitations, and Jubilee. A prolific editor, he has edited several landmark genre anthologies, including Wandering Stars, In the Field of Fire (with Jeanne Van Buren Dann), and World Fantasy Award winner Dreaming Down-Under (with Janeen Webb). Upcoming is a new collection, Promised Land.

  Terry Dowling (www.terrydowling.com) was born in Sydney, New South Wales, in March 1947. A writer, musician, journalist, critic, editor, game designer and reviewer, he has an MA (Hons) in English Literature from the University of Sydney. His Masters thesis discussed J. G. Ballard and Surrealism. He was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Western Australia in 2006 for his mystery/dark fantasy/horror novel, Clowns at Midnight, and accompanying dissertation: "The Interactive Landscape: New Modes of Narrative in Science Fiction," in which he examined the computer adventure game as an important new area of storytelling.

  He is author of the "Tom Tyson" cycle of stories, collected in Rynosseros, Blue Tyson, Twilight Beach, and the forthcoming Rynemonn, science fiction story cycle Wormwood, and horror collections An Intimate Knowledge of the Night and World Fantasy Award nominee Blackwater Days. His work has also been collected in career retrospectives Antique Futures: The Best of Terry Dowling and Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear.

  Andy Duncan (www.angelfire.com/al/andyduncan/) was born in South Carolina in September 1964. He studied journalism at the University of South Carolina and creative writing at North Carolina State University, before working as a journalist for the Greensboro News & Record. He currently is the senior editor of Overdrive, a magazine for truck drivers. Duncan's short fiction, which has won the World Fantasy and Theodore Sturgeon Awards, is collected in World Fantasy Award winner Beluthahatchie and Other Stories. Duncan also co-edited Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic with F. Brett Cox, and edited non-fiction book Alabama Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff. He currently lives with his wife Sydney in Frostburg, Maryland.

  Jeffrey Ford (14theditch.livejournal.com/) was born in West Islip, New York, in 1955. He worked as a machinist and as a clammer, before studying English with John Gardner at the State University of New York. He is the author of six novels, including World Fantasy Award winner The Physiognomy, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, and Edgar Allan Poe Award-winner The Girl in the Glass. His short fiction is collected in World Fantasy Award winning collection The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories and in The Empire of Ice Cream. His short fiction has won the World Fantasy, Nebula, and Fountain Awards. Upcoming is a new novel, The Shadow Year, which will be published next year, and a new collection, The Night Whiskey. Ford lives in southern New Jersey where he teaches writing and literature.

  Kathleen Ann Goonan (www.goonan.com) has been a packer for a moving company, a vagabond, a madrigal singer, a painter of watercolors, and a fiercely omnivorous reader. She has a degree in English and Association Montessori Internationale certification. After teaching for thirteen years, ten of them in her own one
-hundred-student school, she began writing. She has published over twenty short stories in venues such as Omni, Asimov's, F&SF, Interzone, SciFi.com, and a host of others. Her Nanotech Quartet includes Queen City Jazz, Mississippi Blues, Crescent City Rhapsody, and Light Music, Crescent City Rhapsody and Light Music were both shortlisted for the Nebula Award. The Bones of Time, shortlisted for the Clarke Award, is set in Hawaii. Her most recent novel is In War Times, and she is presently working on This Shared Dream Called Earth. Her novels and short stories have been published in France, Poland, Russia, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, and Japan. "Literature, Consciousness, and Science Fiction" recently appeared in the Iowa Review online journal. She speaks frequently at various universities about nanotechnology and literature.

  Eileen Gunn (www.eileengunn.com) was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in June 1945. She grew up near Boston, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in History from Emmanuel College, before working as an advertising copywriter. She moved to California to pursue fiction writing. In 1976 she attended Clarion, then supported herself by working in advertising. She was the 150th employee at Microsoft, where she worked as director of advertising and sales promotion in the 1980s. In 1988 she joined the board of directors for the Clarion West Writers Workshop, and in 2001 began editing online magazine The Infinite Matrix. She currently lives in Seattle with editor John Berry.

  Gunn's first short story, "What Are Friends For?", was followed by a handful of others, including Nebula Award winner "Coming to Terms" and Hugo Award nominees "Stable Strategies for Middle Management" and "Computer Friendly." Her short fiction has been collected in Stable Strategies and Others. She is currently working on a biography of Avram Davidson.

  Gwyneth Jones (www.boldaslove.co.uk) was born in Manchester, England, in February 1952. She went to convent schools and then took an undergraduate degree in the History of Ideas at the University of Sussex, specializing in seventeenth-century Europe, a distant academic background that still resonates in her work.