The Great Night

by Chris Adrian

  The movie ended, and people applauded. Will and Carolina had switched positions; now her head was in his lap, and she had fallen asleep. He sat watching her while everyone around them shook out their blankets and gathered up their bottles, while they let the air out of the blow-up movie screen and it wilted away, and the audience—everyone but a few scattered snoring homeless people—was gone from the park by the time he woke her to tell her that he loved her.

  12

  Titania had always had a habit of taking a mortal lover after an argument with her husband. He did the same thing. It was soothing and distracting, a response to sadness or strife that was as natural as tears. So she ought to have taken one after he left her, and because it was the most terrible argument they had ever had, she ought to have taken a terribly good lover, or a terribly large number of lovers, or a lover who manifested a terribly extreme sort of mortality—an old man on his deathbed or a consumptive youth. When she imagined Oberon rutting his way through the city, forgetting her and their Boy in thrusting increments, she wanted to do it, too. She wanted to sweep down the hill in a rage and capture the first man she saw, and use him up, as she had done a thousand times before, leaving remnants that were more or less ruined, depending on the intensity of her rage and the intensity of the argument with her husband. So this time she considered, sulking and ruminating on her throne, that she could become a sickness among the men of this city, and take them by the dozen every night, until she had burned them all out, leaving them useless for life, if not dead, and still not exhaust her anger at Oberon or her grief for their Boy.

  All her courtiers thought it was a good idea, too. It would reassure them for her to ride out on a horse made of fog and bring back a mortal to use, and the faeries tasked to carry away the man’s trembling bones would sigh complacently at one another and say, “At last she’s behaving normally again.” This was before she cloistered herself on the hill for fear of encountering a child in the street. A few faeries went ahead and tried to set her up, taking it upon themselves to forage among the houses and apartments that surrounded their hill for someone interesting or pretty. Some foraged for the sake of an anticipated reward, and some just out of fondness and concern for their afflicted Lady. They brought back images caught in water, which they held cupped in their hands for her to see, or caught on silk, to make waving flags for their cause. Oak came hopping up the hill with a stolen tennis shoe, which he held up for her to sniff. “His feet smell like peanut butter,” he said. “He is distinguished!”

  The mortals all looked equally boring to her, equally plain, and looked to be equal wastes of her time. She had never thought before of anything as a waste of time; she had an eternity of time to spend and could afford to be profligate with it. But she went down the hill anyway, on three different nights, to meet three different men. The first was the youngest, a boy in his twenties. She found him on her own, passing down the sidewalk near the corner of Noe and Henry streets. He was about to go into his apartment. It was early in the evening, but the moon was high and full. Its light caught in his hair just so, and that was enough. She revealed herself to him.

  “Come here,” she said, after he had stared for a while. He came down the steps, abandoning his key in the lock, and stood on his toes to kiss her. He tasted like sugar and ashes—the flavor of mortality common to all men which she usually found deeply arousing—but this time her tongue felt wooden in his mouth. What’s his name? she wondered, and then she asked him.

  “Ralph,” he said breathily, speaking it against her lips and then against her neck and her chest. “Ralph, Ralph, Ralph.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said, because it was a ridiculous sound, a cough, a hairball, a bit of puking. Why did she care what his name was, or whether there was someone waiting for him in his apartment, or if he had a child, or had been a child himself once? She had never cared about any of these things. Mortal men, never to be told, asked her name, begged her name, died to know one letter of her name. She did not ask for anyone’s name.

  She left him there to make a solitary spectacle of himself, laid out on his stoop and coming in his pants. He was barely ruined at all. He would recover, and forget about her, and be satisfied with mortal women, and never be troubled by her again except in deep dreams.

  The second was older, a man in a suit. Lyon said it was a nice suit, though it was not made of smoke or dew or spider legs, and that he had picked the man for her largely on account of its quality. “Fine suit,” he said. “Fine man.” He was taller and darker than the blond boy, and he talked too much. She allowed him to talk; she had decided, reflecting on the experience with the blond boy, that it would be best to take her fill of his story before she took her fill of his body. And maybe, she thought, if she heard enough, if she drained his story out of him, she could enjoy his body without wondering about which portions of his life were given over to joy or to sadness, whether he had cried today, or whether he had a mother who had loved him when he was a child. “Your name is Minna,” said Lyon, who had taken it upon himself, rather boldly, to orchestrate the whole thing, and made the introduction through a computer, sending fake pictures over the wire in an internet café on the corner of Seventeenth and Sanchez. It was a proper date: Titania met him at a restaurant in his neighborhood, the Marina, and sat at an outside table.

  “I’m the youngest person ever to head up my department,” he said. “In the whole history of the company, which has been around for like fifty-five years.” He paused to let her comment.

  “My name is Minna,” she said. That was all she said to him all evening long, but he heard in it whatever he needed to. Maintaining this little glamour was easier than actually having to talk to him, and left her attention free to wander a little while he emptied himself out. She was considering how flat and treeless this neighborhood was. It ought to be one big beach, she thought.

  “It’s hard work,” he said. “It comes home with me a lot, which is okay. There’s still time for fun. And when I have fun, I have fun. You know what I mean?”

  “My name is Minna,” she said.

  “Exactly!” he said, and started to tell her about his boat. She picked up a pea from her plate and breathed upon it to turn it into an acorn. She shook the acorn in her hand, and it divided with every shake, until she had a handful of them, which she tossed over her shoulder. They rolled away down the sidewalk, still dividing, in search of someplace to plant themselves. It cheered her a little, to think that there would be an improvement in the neighborhood. She sighed and watched her date. He had the rib of a pig in his hand. He wasn’t talking about what he was supposed to be talking about. She didn’t know anything about his previous experience of love, or if he had ever killed anyone, or if he liked sometimes to be cruel. He hadn’t mentioned his mother even once: it was possible that he didn’t even have one, and she thought for some reason that that would make him entirely useless to her. She could make him talk about those things. She could take away the nasal quality in his voice and make it more pleasing to hear. She could change the shape of his face, or grow him a beard as thick and luxurious as Oberon’s, and scent his hair like flowers, or even turn his hair into flowers. She could improve him, but she declined to improve him, though she had experimented on mortal men and women in the past, changing them, for their own good or to their detriment, but always to her amusement. Sitting there, watching his lips, glistening with pig fat, flap away in the gentle golden light of the early evening, she conceived the spell to change him but then let it go, because her Boy came to mind, the way the color of his hair changed from light to dark as he grew, and the way she could never tell which word he would learn next, and even the way she could never, in his last days, predict what new pain or trouble he would have—all his surprises ruined any satisfaction she might take in making someone to delight her, because those sorts of surprises were beyond the reach of her craft.

  She was enormously patient with the man. She listened (or at least half listened) all
through dinner, waiting and waiting for him to say something of substance, and then walked with him down Union Street while he looked into shopwindows and told her about the things that he owned that were similar or dissimilar but always superior to the things on display, and she even walked with him down to the end of Scott Street to have a look at his boat. She felt progressively weary as they walked down toward the marina; by the time they arrived she was exhausted. That seemed curious to her, since she had exerted practically no physical or magical effort all evening, until she realized that it was her little-exercised faculty of patience that was wearing her out. Just for a moment she was proud of herself, and then she was angry for thinking that nostalgia for her Boy’s lost delights compelled her to suffer the prattling of a mortal fool. “There is nothing in you,” she said to him as they stood on the boat slip, interrupting his discourse on the Volvo Penta engine. “No grief, no sadness, no rage. Shame! Shameful excuse for a mortal! Where are your tears?” She stood up higher as she talked—she had been hunching under the disguise all evening long—and he goggled. His stupid uncomprehending eyes were round and black; they looked like a crab’s eyes. “What do you have to say?” she asked him. “What do you have to say to me?” His mouthparts bubbled but he didn’t make any words. She turned him into a crab, because of those eyes, and when he scrabbled out of his fine suit, she kicked him into the water. She made herself into a bird, and took his tie in her beak before she flew away, taking the long way home, so people marveled at the snow-white crane with a bloodred tie in her mouth as she winged her way over Crissy Field and the Presidio and Seacliff. Back home, she handed the tie wordlessly to Lyon, who knew, from the look she gave him with it, to hang it with barbs and flagellate himself until dawn.

  She tried one more time, with Oak’s peanut-butter-footed gentleman. She waited for him on a bench in Duboce Park. It was dusk, and the fog had followed her down the hill to muffle the barking of the dogs at play. They ran aimlessly and brought back toys and balls not thrown for them. A dog approached her, a black Lab with a collar of silver spikes, and sat down at her feet.

  “Milady goes a-whorin’,” it said. She kicked at it, and it wagged its tail.

  “If I showed you what was in my heart,” she said, “it would burn you to a cinder.”

  “I’ve tried to burn you similarly,” it said, “but you never even noticed when I opened up my chest.”

  “Go sniff out your Master.”

  “I’ve searched all day,” he said. “He’s not—”

  “Fetch,” she said, picking up a stray ball and throwing it, because she was in no mood to listen to Puck’s litany of failure, which was to say she was in a relatively good mood, her recent romantic misadventures, for whatever reason, not weighing heavily on her just then. She threw the ball clear over the city; it bounced once outside the Ferry building and splashed in the bay. Puck barked once and trotted after it, and not long after that Oak came along, leading a dazed-looking man by the hand. He sat him down on the bench, gave him a hug, then bowed to his Mistress and hopped away.

  “Goodbye, Arthur,” said the man.

  “Goodbye, darling!” said Oak.

  “That was my nephew,” the man said. “I think.”

  “A charming boy,” said Titania, shaking her head because Oak had brought her a homosexual again. Not that it ultimately mattered; the man would see someone he wanted, but she sighed over it nonetheless. The man sighed as well, which made her laugh.

  “Are you laughing at me?” he asked, tilting his head. He was confused, still charmed by whatever song Oak had used to draw him down from his apartment, and she could tell that his desire had not yet cast her into a definite form.

  “Yes,” she said. “Shall we go to dinner?”

  “I know a little place,” he said, and then sucked in his breath when her image settled. “But are you sure you want to go there with me?” She examined his perception of her: a stocky bearded youth whose handsome legs were shown to lovely effect by his soccer shorts.

  “Of course,” she said, taking his hand. The little place he knew was a sushi restaurant across the street from the blond boy’s apartment: Titania half expected to see him still coming on his stoop. The staff in the restaurant let out an insincere cheer when they walked in, but the waitress, a middle-aged woman who reeked of death, seemed genuinely happy to see Titania’s date.

  “A friend!” she said. “You have a friend! No lonely sushi combo tonight!”

  “This is …” her date began. “This is …”

  “Joe,” said Titania. “My name is Joe.” The lady pumped Titania’s hand. Titania raised her nose at her, the better to smell her. The odor of death was interesting, and not all that unpleasant, but a deeper sniff told her a cancer death was in store for this lady, and she was transported back to the ruined little room in the hospital.

  “I’m sorry,” said her date when the woman went to fetch them tea. “She’s … enthusiastic. I live around the corner, and I come here all the time. I got food poisoning here once, but I still come here all the time. She’s my sushi aunt. She makes fun of me and she always offers to set me up and asks if I’m lonely. Which I’m not. Alone is not lonely. I can say that in Japanese.” He barked the phrase at her. “Are you all right? Did she upset you?”

  “My name is Joe,” she said, and he smiled, and leaned back in his chair. He shifted his leg under the table, and their knees collided. Neither of them drew away. Their tea came, and the waitress withdrew again with a giggle, and he looked at her coyly from over the steaming cup. His eyes were round and bulged a little, but not unpleasantly, and they sparkled as he looked her up and down.

  “What shall we order?” he asked.

  “Whatever you desire,” she said, settling her chin in her hand to look at him. She barely moved again for the rest of dinner, though the sushi came in an increasingly exotic procession, as the waitress tried ever harder to surprise them, and the chefs and all the other staff, intoxicated by her presence, shed their fake sushi cheer and became genuinely delighted with their patrons and showered them all with fine fish. Titania didn’t eat a thing but drank the sake, impressing her date when she lifted the brimming box to her lips without spilling a drop. The strongest mortal liquor was weak compared to faerie wine, but she thought it might be affecting her because she was feeling very well disposed toward the situation. Though there was no delight for her in the mortal art of arranging fish cleverly upon a plate, and the great common happiness in the room—the very good time being had by all—seemed as futile and hopeless as any mortal happiness, Titania was happy to be there.

  That was different, of course, from being happy. She was as unhappy as ever, in the pervading absence of her husband and her Boy, but there was something about her present situation that deferred the pain of it, made the unhappiness temporarily acceptable. This was a rather mysterious surprise, the felicitous blame for which she laid upon the shoulders of her date. She didn’t know why exactly this was, and it did not bother her particularly not to know. As wise as she was, as many mysteries as she kept, there were many things she didn’t know or understand because she was not interested enough in them to bother to understand them. But here was something she was keenly interested in, and yet she did not get it. What was so special about this middle-aged homosexual that he had captivated her over a meal of dead fish served by a dying woman?

  She considered this question through the remainder of their evening together. It wasn’t his sparkling googly eyes, or his rounded biceps, or the stark veins standing out in his forearms, or the little cowlick of gray and white hair that curved down over his forehead. It was nothing about his physical presence, but neither was it the nervous way he flitted from topic to topic in the one-sided conversation he was having with her. They went dancing, but it was not the way he danced, shuffling in place and boxing with unseen enemies in a crowded upstairs club on the corner of Eleventh and Folsom. She didn’t exactly choose to intoxicate the already drunken drag queens
and hipsters and costumed freaks, but neither did she withhold intoxication from them. It was a by-product of her mysterious temporary contentment, how the fake beehives hung from the ceiling became real beehives, and the fake stars set on the ceiling brightened and the ceiling became a night sky, how the chubby hipster in a fuzzy bear-eared hat became an actual bear, hopping on his hind legs and stuffing his paws in his mouth for joy. She naturally presided over any dance; the whole club circled them round and round, and a few of the weaker ones swooned into attitudes of frank worship upon the floor. Her date had stopped talking, so she knew it wasn’t his words that kept her suspended between being heartbroken and being heartbroken.

  They walked back to his place silently, hand in hand. Actively looking forward to the sex, she conjured a wind to hurry them along, and lift them here and there over a busy intersection. She was sure the fucking would reveal the source of her engagement with him, and though she anticipated that orgasm would put an end to her transient satisfaction and return her to the gloomy depths of her brooding nostalgia, she wanted to get there, so she started kissing him as soon as they got in his door.

  “Are you sure you want to—?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said.

  “But I’m—” She didn’t let him finish. It wasn’t the words, or the stories he told, or his oddly shaped little body, or the clumsy motion of his tongue inside her mouth. It wasn’t his round little arms, or his firm belly, or even the heft of his penis in her hand, though at last she discovered what it was when they were standing naked before his bed. She left him then, absent an orgasm, and went home to the hill. She let him watch her depart unobscured, a gift, because she was fond of him despite his being the occasion for another terrible discovery. She went up the hill in the skin of a lion, with antlers on her head and a single floppy wing on her back and a heavy blunt dragging tail. She had been gone long enough that her courtiers presumed the evening must have been a success, and they prepared a feast, chocolate cocks and marshmallow pussies set upon a table on the top of the hill. They started to sing as she approached, ignoring her defeated form, until she grabbed one of the smallest of them and, ignoring its cries, reshaped it, molding its head into a pair of lips a little larger than human-sized and pulling its body into a hollow tube. She made it a pair of wings and, cradling it in her palm, said, “You are made to a purpose.” Then she breathed on it, and set it winging back down the hill. She sat down at the head of the table, and said nothing else to anyone for the rest of the night.