by Tim Pratt
“Good,” Ray said. “If you hadn’t really believed it, she wouldn’t have.”
“God,” Lindsay said. “I miss her.”
“I know,” Marzi said.
Jonathan dropped his guns, and they vanished, too. “Now what? Are we done?”
“Almost. We should bury the Outlaw.”
Denis stood up unsteadily and kicked the Outlaw in the head. Marzi winced. Denis wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot the Outlaw in the face. “Don’t bury him,” Denis said. “Let the animals have him.”
“No,” Ray said. “Better to bury him. I’m sure his meat’s poison, anyway. Do we have anything to dig with?”
“I’ve got a bucket in my car,” Lindsay said.
“We could probably dig a grave in that heap of mud over there,” Jonathan said. “It looks pretty soft.”
“No!” Denis shouted. “Leave the mud alone!” He snatched up the butcher knife and brandished it at them.
They all stared at him, and he lowered the knife. “Shit.” He looked away. “Do what you want. You could at least thank me. I saved your lives.”
Marzi thought about it. Maybe she hadn’t made Denis stab the Outlaw with the force of her narrative will. Maybe he’d done it on his own. She’d never know for sure. “Thanks,” she said.
Denis grunted.
They dug into the drying mud, everyone taking turns except Denis, who sat by Jane’s car, staring at the dirt. Lindsay, Marzi, and Jonathan were all sitting together on the ground, not talking, while Ray took his turn digging with the bucket.
“Uh, guys?” Ray said. “There’s already somebody buried here. A woman.”
Denis said “Fuck,” loudly, distinctly, and nine times in a row.
Wallow in Velvet
* * *
“So Denis is in jail,” Lindsay said, shaking her head. “Think he’ll wind up in prison?” She sat on the couch beneath the bay window in Genius Loci, a week after the Outlaw’s death. Bobby-O was behind the counter, trying to look cool, though Marzi knew he was terrified about his new position as night manager. The café owners had called from Florida and offered Marzi the job of day manager, and she’d accepted, deciding it might be nice to have her nights free for a while. Once Bobby-O was more secure in his position, they could trade off, if Marzi found that she missed nights. On her first day in Hendrix’s old job, Marzi had blasted death metal all day long. It wasn’t much of a memorial, but it was the best she could do.
“Maybe they’ll put him in a mental hospital,” Marzi said. Denis had confessed to burying Jane in a pile of mud, though the cops couldn’t make much sense of his story, which involved ghosts and gods. He’d also confessed to the murder of an unidentified elderly cowboy, but he denied having killed Hendrix, claiming his friend Beej had done that. The police were looking for Beej anyway, since he’d escaped from jail on the same day that half a dozen cops were murdered and a group of mostly unknown terrorists blew up the clock tower and did significant damage to other local landmarks. The police understandably suspected Beej, and they knew Denis was involved—there were witnesses who’d seen him lob a firebomb. Marzi was worried about the investigation, of course, but she thought it would be okay. When the police did an autopsy on the Outlaw, he would be as human inside as anyone. She’d imagined him well enough for that. And if Denis had said anything about Marzi and her friends, the cops hadn’t taken it seriously enough to follow up—Lindsay’s friend Joey had enough inside information to let them know that. The police had questioned Marzi again about the night Denis and Beej and Jane tried to break into the café, but that was all the contact they’d had. Marzi wondered what story the cops would make up to explain everything. It would have to be pretty baroque, but she had faith in their ability to rationalize chaos.
Things had been ugly. Downtown and much of West Cliff Drive were wrecked, but it could have been much worse, and the townspeople were already rebuilding.
Everything was over, now. The door to the medicine lands was gone as if it had never been, and Ray’s original mural was back. Marzi’s cap gun was just a toy again, and she’d hung it up on the wall behind the counter in the café. Yesterday Marzi found the old man who’d sold her the gun in the first place, and she told him he could have free coffee at Genius Loci for the rest of his life. He’d nodded, as if such things were offered to him every day, and thanked her. Marzi hadn’t heard from the scorpion oracle, but thought she wasn’t the kind of creature that would bother with thanks—she’d expected Marzi to do her job, and Marzi had, and that was the end of their association.
Marzi sat snuggled deep in a velvet chair, a pint of Guinness in her hands. Ray sat at the far end of the couch, holding forth to Jonathan about his days in New York. Jonathan was taking notes.
“You and Jonathan have a nice time last night?” Lindsay waggled her eyebrows. She was back to normal, too, though there was a streak of melancholy in her still. Alice hadn’t returned from wherever she’d gone.
The first few nights after the Outlaw’s death, Lindsay, Marzi, and Jonathan had all stayed together, hesitant to be by themselves. Last night Lindsay had left them alone, saying she needed some time by herself to feel blue without bringing anyone else down. Marzi and Jonathan had finally had time together, to talk. His memories of his experiences beyond the Western Door were fading, and losing their horrible potency, and the distance between them was beginning to shrink. Things were still fragile, but after their time together talking last night she had hopes that, by the end of the summer, she and Jonathan could at least get back to the place they’d been when all this began—with possibilities stretched out ahead of them.
Ray, meanwhile, had spent every night with the avowed intention of “getting laid or getting drunk trying.” Marzi didn’t know if he’d succeeded in the former, but supposed he’d managed the latter. He even had some speaking engagements scheduled, and was honing a story about “travels in the desert” to explain his long absence. Ray was enjoying the real world—and after The Oasis, who wouldn’t?
Lindsay nudged her. “Hello? Earth to Marzipan? Where are my sordid details?”
“Sorry,” Marzi said. “My thoughts have been getting away with me lately. Yeah, last night was nice. He’s still a little freaked out by the fact that we’ve been inside his soul . . .” She shook her head.
“He’ll get past that,” Lindsay said seriously, lowering her voice. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it was a weird and not very pleasant experience, but I think it’s also partly an excuse for him to keep his distance. We’ve been through a lot these past few days. We all need some time to unwind.”
“We’ll see what happens,” Marzi said. “And we might have more time. Jonathan is thinking about moving out here for a while, after he finishes his thesis defense. He wants to write a book about Ray, and Ray’s agreed to let him.”
Lindsay nodded. “You see? It’s not all collapsing buildings and scorpion bites.”
“Scorpions sting, they don’t bite,” Marzi said. “I don’t even think they have teeth.”
“Then how do they chew their food?” Lindsay asked. She grinned.
A motorcycle roared up outside, hardly an uncommon sound; bikers liked Genius Loci. Then a familiar voice said, “Lindsay?”
Alice Belle stood by the door, dressed in riding leathers, holding her helmet in one hand.
Lindsay looked at her for a long moment. “Are you real?” she said.
Alice cocked her head. “Last time I checked, yeah.” Her eyes darted to Jonathan and Ray, back to Lindsay. “You know that . . . problem I was having? It cleared up. I’m not having those, ah, urges anymore. I don’t want to do anything right now except sit and have a beer with you. I’m afraid that feeling will come back, but—”
“Don’t,” Lindsay said, springing from her chair. “Don’t worry. It won’t. I have a lot to tell you. Let’s get you a beer. You’ll need it.” She led Alice toward the counter, shooting Marzi a grin over her shoulder.
Marzi settled back m
ore deeply into the chair. Yes. It could have been worse. That was hardly an inspiring sentiment, but sometimes harsh optimism was the best you could do in the desert.
She’d decided to keep Rangergirl going—at the very least, the character deserved a good ending, rather than an abrupt termination. Marzi’s best work was probably ahead of her anyway. In a year or two, she could do a different comic, something about connections rather than lonely wandering, something about love, and getting through the long nights. Ray had suggested they collaborate, which was an intriguing notion—associating her name with his would be a good career move, too, with publicity swirling around him because of his reappearance. He’d only been a minor figure in the art scene, but it was amazing what a miraculous resurrection could do for your image.
Marzi didn’t know what was going to happen, but there were doors opening before her, and none of them led into the dead heart of the desert. Compared to the lonely desolation of her life before, every step she took now seemed to lead along a path strewn with flowers.
Marzi moved to the couch and settled down beside Jonathan, and listened to Ray talk about punching Andy Warhol in the face in Manhattan in the seventies.
It was probably bullshit, but it was a good story.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* * *
It would be remiss of me to omit mention of the coffee shops that had a part in the creation of this novel. First and foremost, Caffe Pergolesi in Santa Cruz, which served (very loosely) as the model for Genius Loci; Café Au Coquelet in Berkeley, where I completed much of the major revision; and Café DiBartolo in Oakland, where I did most of the line-editing.
I listened to a lot of great bluegrass, insurgent country, and cowpunk while writing this, notably Ryan Adams, Caitlin Cary, the Old 97s, Paul Thorn, Son Volt, Todd Snider, the Two Dollar Pistols, Uncle Tupelo, Whiskeytown, Wilco, and, of course, all the good stuff they play on KPIG radio out of Freedom, California.
A lot of people made my life better during the course of writing this book. Thanks to Scott Seagroves and Lynne Raschke for their generous hospitality in Santa Cruz, when I first moved there and after I moved away; to Megan Parker, for listening early on, and to Marissa Lingen, for encouraging me when I wanted to stop; to the readers who gave me feedback on the raw first draft: Christopher Barzak, Jennifer A. Hall, Melinda R. Himel, Michael J. Jasper, Jay Lake, David Moles, Jenn Reese, and Greg van Eekhout; to my coworkers at Locus, for giving me the best day job a writer could have; to my agent Ginger Clark, for taking a chance; and to my edi-tor Juliet Ulman, for making this a far better book than it would have been otherwise. And finally, thanks to Heather Shaw, for everything.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
* * *
TIM PRATT has been nominated for the Nebula Award and for the Campbell Best New Writer Award, and his fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. He lives in Oakland, California, where he co-edits a literary ’zine, Flytrap, with his fiancée Heather Shaw.
THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF RANGERGIRL
A Bantam Spectra Book / December 2005
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2005 by Tim Pratt
* * *
Bantam Books, the rooster colophon, Spectra, and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
* * *
Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pratt, Tim, 1976–
The strange adventures of Rangergirl/Tim Pratt
p. cm.
I. Title.
PS3616.R385 S73 2005 2005048227
813/.6 22
eISBN: 978-0-553-90215-0
v3.0
