The screaming stopped.
I took my hands away from my head and saw Toypurina nod. Vibiana loosened her grip and let Annie sink down into her lap, still stroking her hair, but smiling at the no-longer dead girl. She looked up and grinned broadly at me, nodding all the while.
“I knowed you was the right one, Medicine Man,” she said. She looked like she wanted to kiss me. It’s not a look I see that often.
Toypurina laughed. Roseanne again.
And then something like awareness took hold of Annie’s face. I could see it in her eyes and the way she licked her lips. She tried to sit up – I heard something crack and thought about rigor mortis – and Vibiana helped her. She started to tumble over and Vibiana caught her, supporting her back and neck as you would an infant. Annie turned her head and her neck creaked. She looked all around – at the shack, at Toypurina, at me; even Guy had stuck his snout back inside the door – and tears welled in her eyes.
“Not again,” she cried out. “Oh, god, not again.”
XI
We were heading back toward the river. Incredibly, Annie was able to walk under her own power, though she stumbled every so often, like an old woman who’d gone out without her cane. One of us was always there to catch her – Vibiana on her left, me on her right. Guy went on ahead of us sniffing at the trees and curbs. We proceeded largely in silence, broken only by the occasional tinkle of Guy marking his territory.
“Will you seek the Cat People, too?” Toypurina had asked back in the shack. I assumed she was talking to Vibiana, but saw she was looking at me.
“Beats me,” I said. “I am in way over my head here. Again.”
“You did very well. Truly you could be a shaman.”
“If tractor-trailer school doesn’t pan out, I’ll think about it,” I said. Then asked: “What were those things?”
My arms were covered with tiny red welts where the fish had sicced onto me. I rolled up my trousers and saw marks on my legs as well.
“Soul fish,” Toypurina said.
“I’ve eaten a lot of flounder in my time,” I said, “and even allowing for the pan, they never looked like that.”
She had to spell it for me before I caught on.
“I tolds you he was Medicine Man,” Vibiana practically shouted. She beamed at me like the proud mama at a bar mitzvah.
Toypurina offered a half-nod, half-shake of her head. And puffed on her cigar.
“The boy?” I said. I wasn’t sure how to ask her about him.
“My son,” Toypurina flatly stated. “His name will be . . .” – she paused as if translating something in her head – “. . . Light-in-the-Dark-Heart.”
“Nicer than Howie,” I said. Then I pointed at her impossibly swollen abdomen. “So, uh, how far along are you?”
Toypurina again looked up into the air, performing some mental calculation.
“A little over three hundred years,” she said.
Ask a stupid question . . .
“The Cat People await,” Toypurina said.
We took the hint.
Vibiana bowed to the shamaness and sputtered her thanks, but Toypurina interrupted her. “This shall be the last time, Vibiana of Above. You won’t find me here again.”
“Hopesfully, we won’t has to look,” Vibiana told her.
“You,” Toypurina said, pointing her cigar at Guy. He had been nibbling at his fur in the corner, anxious to get a move on. He looked up at her and she told him blankly: “You are not a dog.”
Guy started to whine.
“You may return when you want to know your spirit self truly,” she told him.
He ran out the door as if she’d announced it was bath time.
“And you,” she said to me. “You may know now if you choose.”
I thought about it for a minute, wondered what insight she might be able to impart to me, if there was some vital piece of information about the essence of my spirit or soul she could give me which might lead to knowing, enlightenment, self-contentment.
I scratched the back of my head, thought about the situation.
“I’m cool,” I said.
She gave me a big thumb’s up in reply. Then she turned to Annie and said: “It is your choice, too, you know. It always has been and it still is.”
Annie, still ashen and shaky – as you would be just coming back from the dead and all – looked up tearfully at Toypurina. “I know,” she croaked. “Don’t you think I know?”
More clouds were drifting across the early morning sky as we approached the edge of the dry river up near Spring Street. There was no one else around, on the concrete banks or down in the dirty culvert. The breeze had kicked up to approximate a proper wind and there was just a hint of something wet in the air. The moon, I thought, was beginning its slow surrender to the day. Hurry sun-up, thought I.
We walked down another set of zig-zagging stairs, returning to the floor of the river. There wasn’t a whole lot to see in either direction.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Gots to still go upriver,” Vibiana said, looking up at the sky. She must have been thinking as I had. She took a longing glance at Annie, then at the stretch of river snaking off to the north and west, through Chavez Ravine and the hills beyond. “I’ll be backs in a tick.”
She ran off into the darkness.
I turned to Annie, who’d been quiet since emerging from Toypurina’s shack. Not to mention wherever else she’d been. She stood staring down at the damp river floor, shivering in the wind’s chill. For the second time that night, I took off my jacket and placed it around her shoulders.
“Hey,” I said. “You there?”
“Yeah,” she coughed. She almost managed a smile back at me.
“Quite a night,” I said.
“Vibiana definitely takes me places. Oh, yeah.”
“Couldn’t she just book a weekend in Santa Barbara like everyone else?”
Annie shook her head. Shivered some more.
“What is this all about, Annie? What is Vibiana to you? What is she, period?”
“She’s my lover, Marty,” Annie said deadly. “She’s my lover and my killer.”
“You know, I’m a pretty open-minded type,” I said, “but I’m having a little trouble with all this.”
She looked up at the moon, then over at Guy sniffing an old bicycle seat. “Get in line,” she said.
“When you . . . came to, in the shack. The first words you said were ‘not again.’ Or something like that. What did you mean?”
“I’ve been here before. We’ve been here before, Vib and me. Here and . . . there.”
“Where I found you. In the red water with the soul fish?”
“Yeah. Thanks, by the way. For bringing me back. I understand why Gabbo lets you call him Danny.”
She said all this the way you might read out the phone number of a dry cleaner from the yellow pages. I wondered exactly how much of her had come back with me from that strange place.
“I’ve been married three times, Annie. Four depending on the strictness of your definitions and the lawyers involved. I’ve seen a lot and been a lot of places. The one thing I’ve learned in all the years is never judge or think you can figure out what goes on between two people who think they’re in love. There’s nothing too normal or too weird between people. Because it can only ever be between them and for them to understand. But I’ve got to say this to you, Annie, and I think I’ve maybe earned the right tonight: what the hell are you doing with her?”
Annie laughed then and it should have been nice to know she could still do it. But it was a hollow and bitter thing that passed through and twisted her lips. Guy retreated at the sound of it. I’d have liked to do the same. But I wanted to hear the answer.
“She saved me, once. Saved me from a very terrible thing. I loved her for it. I still do.”
“So that gives her the right to . . . do what it is she’s doing to you? What is she doing to you? What could she have saved you from more
terrible than this?”
Annie peeked up at the waning moon and stuck out her tongue.
“She’s remaking me,” she said.
“Into what?”
“Something . . .” – she stifled a chuckle – “. . . someone who can still love her. Who she can still love. Love dies hard, you know. Harder than the monsters in those stupid horror movies. Freddy. Jason. Love.”
I heard a squeaking noise coming at us from the dark in the direction Vibiana had disappeared. I had a feeling we didn’t have much longer to talk in private.
“But why do you do it, Annie? Why are you putting yourself through this? That’s what I don’t understand.”
She did smile at me now, and it was for real.
“Somewhere, inside, buried deep maybe, I still love her, too,” she said.
“Jesus,” I muttered. I saw something coming toward us now, some peculiar vehicle squeaking its way down the river. Someone, it had to be Vibiana, was flapping away on top of it.
“How many times?” I asked hurriedly. “How many times have you been through this?”
Annie looked up at the sky again. “Every moon. Every goddamn moon.”
“So why not stop it. Right now, right this minute. Just stop and let’s go. Not back to Long Beach, either.”
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“You can if you want to,” I said.
“I can’t.”
And she turned so that the fullness of the moon lit up her face and she pulled down on the collar of her shirt.
There was a gaping hole in her chest where her heart should be. Just a big wet hole, glistening in the moonlight.
“I really can’t,” she said. “The Cat People will complete me. Complete us.”
I felt my gorge rise and had to fight off being sick. Before I could say any more – or go mad over the impossibility of it all – Vibiana came screeching in on her new set of wheels. I’d never seen anything like it. Or rather, the last time I’d seen anything like it was an episode of Green Acres. It was a railroad handcar. The kind with the big handle that you pump up and down to move along the tracks. But this one had fat rubber wheels for transit along the river bed.
“Criminy,” I said. “Where did you find that?”
Vibiana cackled. “The moon provides. Climbs aboard, my special ones.”
I tendered a long look at Annie. Vibiana hissed.
“You know,” she said, eyeing me angrily again.
I nodded. I thought about decking her, couldn’t think how that would help. I just stood there.
“Let’s us all finish the journey, then. One big happy family.”
Annie and Guy sat down on the middle of the car. Vibiana and I each took one side of the handle. We began to pump.
Upriver we went.
XII
We moved at a surprisingly fast pace up the concrete river bed, even through the thin stream of running water that dribbled beneath us as we made our way into the Valley. Annie stared silently into the night and Guy looked troubled, but I was panting like the proverbial dog from pumping the handcar. Vibiana wore a sheen of sweat – it somehow made her look even crazier; you’d have thought there’d be a limit – but otherwise appeared untroubled by the effort of moving us up the now slick river bed. Every so often, usually when a passing cloud obscured the moon, she would cast a worried look skyward. There was moisture in the air up here and the first scent of morning, too. Perhaps they were the same thing.
I had a feeling we didn’t have far to go.
“What do you think love is?” I said, between gasps.
Guy and Annie both looked at me, but my eyes were locked on Vibiana’s. She showed me her crooked teeth.
“It’s most specials,” she said.
“That’s not an answer,” I said. “That’s a Valentine’s Day card.”
“You tells me then,” she said.
“But I’m asking you. It’s your show. I mean, love is what this is all about, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you say?”
“I hasn’t said nothing,” Vibiana growled. I’d clearly touched a nerve.
“No you hasn’t. Most curious, I thinks.”
“You making fun of me?”
“Probably. It’s a cheap shot. Sorry.”
She grunted.
“But about love,” I continued.
“What?”
“I’ve been around Hollywood a lot of years. Everybody says they love each other all the time. No one ever means it, so the word is useless. I love ya, babe. I’d love to have lunch with you. I love my agent. I’d love to suck your cock. It’s all the same, all said the same.”
“Trash mouth!” Vibiana yelled.
“But it’s not just words, is it? And not just sex. If it was, Annie here would be bursting with love. It would be dribbling down her thighs and chin every night and she could collect it in buckets and sell it on a street corner stand like lemonade.”
I forced myself not to look at Annie, but even in peripheral vision, in the dark, I saw tears on her cheeks. Guy began to whine.
“So what is love then?” I asked again.
“It’s together forever,” Vibiana yelled at me. “It’s giving to the other. It’s making you happy and making two into one.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s a little bit better. I can maybe buy into some of that. Though it still reeks a little bit of Hallmark to these ears.”
“Speaks then, Medicine Man. You tells me.”
“I live alone, so what do I know? Or maybe, I live alone because I do know. I think love is about courage. I think love is about lack of fear. Love is being brave enough to give to someone else the bit of you that you most want to keep for yourself. That’s why love is about the heart, because the heart is always the centre of a thing. And love is about not being afraid to know yourself. How else can you ever hope to know another person? And there is nothing more scary than knowing yourself. People spasmodically say that the opposite of love is hate, because that’s the simple and easy way we all like to skip through our lives. But the opposite of love – the enemy of love – is fear. And that’s why love is always so Valentine’s Day special and genuinely magical when it’s real: because it means, even if only for hours or seconds at a time, the banishment of fear. And ain’t that a thing?”
Vibiana didn’t reply; she was looking past me at something in the distance.
“Annie, here, seems like someone who has a lot to fear, yet she seethes with courage. How else could she endure what she does? For you, Vibiana.”
“She loves me,” Vibiana whispered.
“I do believe that,” I said. “But do you love her? Really?”
“Medicine Man . . .” she warned.
“Or are you just too afraid? It can’t be both.”
Vibiana unexpectedly let go of the pump handle and I nearly went flying off the edge of the car. We had arrived at a huge bend in the river. The concrete bed had given way to sand and gravel here and what had been a trickle of water along the floor was now deep enough to slosh around in. Set into the walls of the curved bank – it formed a kind of semi-circle or natural amphitheatre – were a series of drainage pipes with steel covers at least 6 feet across. On each of the massive covers was painted the face of a cat. Some were cute and cartoony, others dark and menacing. They appeared to have been painted by different hands in different styles at different times, from ’60s psychedelia to ’90s gangbanger. They all had pointy ears and big eyes that seemed, uncannily, to follow you. All but one – so vicious in rendering that it must have scared off even the most vandalic of taggers – had been defaced to greater or lesser degrees with graffiti. Of course, to the Department of Water and Power, the cats themselves were probably no more than graffiti. I thought they were beautiful.
These had to be the Cat People.
Vibiana must have read my mind. “We is arrivened,” she announced.
XIII
We all hopped off the handcar. Vibiana gave it a shove and it rolled toward the far
side of the river, coming to a lurching stop when one wheel tumbled into a waist-deep pothole. Guy most definitely did not like the look of the cats, though there was something distinctly less canine about him since the encounter with Toypurina. He was standing upright on his hind legs . . . his legs, for one thing. And he was starting to look more sheepish than mutt-like about his nakedness. A little bit chilly, too, judging from the key shrinkage. He still sniffed at the air and whined a bit in the back of his throat, but there was a lack of conviction to it. Trans-specied, my ass!
Vibiana had a broad grin on her face, arms raised high, as she danced slow circles in front of the cats. She curtsied to each one as she whirled by and the wind kicked up behind her as she went round and round. She was speaking or singing, but it might as well have been in tongues for all I was able to understand.
She was entirely mad.
Annie stood beside me, shoulders hunched, hands pressed against the hole in her chest where her heart should be. She stared down at the river-bed, the water deep enough in this semi-circular enclosure to lap over her exposed toes. I reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, but she shrugged me off.
“You might not want to watch this,” she said. She took off my jacket and returned it to me. Then she walked over to Vibiana and laid herself down in the water.
Vibiana froze mid-step in her mad dervish. She leaned over Annie and her face lit up with glee, like a kid descending on a pile of presents under the tree on Christmas morning. She reached out and tore off Annie’s shirt, exposing her hollowed chest. I felt sick again at the sight of the wet hole, but found I couldn’t look away. I bet old Gabbo wouldn’t Wugga-Wugga her just now. I heard the wet sploshes of Guy running off behind me, but didn’t so much as blink.
Vibiana raised up her arms and beseeched the moon, still playing hide and seek with the clouds. Seemingly at her imploring its light burst through again and she shrieked in ecstasy. She tore off her own black top and the undergarments beneath. She had a broad stomach that obscured the existence of hips, and flabby, lozenge-shaped breasts that nearly touched her navel. She reached into the water and lifted Annie up like a baby, pressing her beloved’s face to her massive chest and forcing a plum coloured nipple into her mouth.
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