Andromeda Klein

by Frank Portman

  Then Andromeda said, out loud, it looked like, because everybody turned around and stared at her: “You know, it isn’t actually as cool as you seem to think it is to say that all the time.”

  This was because Huggy had said Bingo. Okay, It added, how about: You are correct, Miss I Think I’m So Much Cooler Than My Own Holy Guardian Angel.

  Andromeda didn’t even wait for Ms. Kendall-Hauptmann to kick her out formally. She just wordlessly gathered her stuff, left the classroom, and headed for the café, grateful for the unexpected free period. She saw a couple of Empress’s friends in the distance and waited around a corner, just in case Rosalie was right, or not joking, that they were actively seeking her destruction rather than just passively approving of the idea in general as usual. The last thing she needed was to hear them coming up behind her telling her she dropped something or asking if they could ask her a question. That never, ever ended well.

  In the café, with her latte and her Daisy deck and Language Arts journal spread out before her, she reviewed the GAAP and AMY situation. For all her ridicule of MacGregor Mathers and Daisy and Byron with his foolhardy Simonomicon gate-walking, she had done the same thing herself, and for nothing more than a tiny portion of a grade in a class where no one ever got lower than a B anyway. It had only been a little over a week ago, but the Andromeda of today would never have simply drawn those sigils in such a casual, playful manner. Huggy and the King of Sacramento had changed things quite a lot, without her even quite realizing it. So, GAAP and AMY, if they were around and causing mischief, would have to be banished, and not just casually play banished. Really and truly banished, like Solomon would do it.

  She texted Byron: “I need a sword.”

  Rosalie’s estimate of a “line around the block” of people wanting tarot readings had proved to be a bit of an exaggeration, but there were plenty of people interested. The commotion at the lunch table attracted the attention of staff monitors and prompted them to call the school cop, worried about drugs or candy or forbidden electronic items, but as there wasn’t any specific rule against fortune-telling during lunchtime they did not attempt to break it up.

  Andromeda, especially as this was a Right Ring Day, was a bit disappointed when the district cop allowed the proceedings to continue.

  She did the best she could with the sincere querents, humored the joke questions, and couldn’t resist dazzling a little here and there with arcane-sounding technical knowledge and specific predictions that included possible parts of names and dates (which people universally found to be the most impressive predictions, probably because any who had ever had any experience with divination were used to cover-your-bets vagueness). She sent Huggy on a mission to apologize sincerely on her behalf to the memory of A. E. Waite and to Thoth Hermes Trismegistus for her flagrant charlatanism. But Huggy was quite a help in such readings, producing and feeding her correspondences and variant readings that would have previously taken her days to look up in the library.

  By far the most common question was “Is my boyfriend or girlfriend cheating on me?” And she didn’t even have to consult the cards on that one. The answer was yes, now or in the future. It was something no one wanted to hear, but they were always interested in the names and dates, that was certain. She had to admit to slightly enjoying the attention and feeling like a big shot. And a lot of them did give her money, once Rosalie got the ball rolling by saying: “Cross her palm with silver or curses will be upon your children’s children!”

  But it was exhausting, and once Andromeda realized that Rosalie was video-capturing much of the scene with her digital camera, anxiety about her appearance set in as well. Halfway through the lunch period Andromeda couldn’t take it anymore and excused herself to go to the bathroom as an escape.

  To Andromeda’s amazement, the impromptu fortune-telling event had even sparked a protest. On her way to the vacuum she passed the Thing with Two Heads and other assorted Christian students standing outside looking on dolefully and disapprovingly, refusing to enter the tainted cafeteria.

  “You should come to our church sometime,” said one of the Thing’s heads. “We have DDR.”

  Dance Dance Revolution was, however, no enticement whatsoever to one who had tasted the delights of the King of Sacramento’s shadowed chamber.

  It always felt safer, more comfortable, less crazy at the International House of Bookcakes than anywhere else. Marlyne touching up her makeup in the reflective chrome parts of the checkout machine. Darren Hedge rolling his squeaky chair from spot to spot behind the reference desk that no one ever visited. Elderly patrons sleepwalking toward death, outnumbered by paid and volunteer staff by a factor of nearly three to one. Even Weird Gordon leering at her spindly legs and singing his little song about “wheeling the cart to the bin, and then wheeling it back again” had a comforting, familiar charm. And, of course, the satisfyingly diminishing Sylvester Mouse list—all the books saved by the tireless efforts of the Endangered Books Project, which was to say the pooled library cards of Den, Byron, and Daisy. Fifteen books at a time, times three, could really add up to quite a lot once there was a system in place. The “Friends” of the Library weren’t going to know what hit them.

  The IHOB had five decrepit check-out-able cassette players for books on tape, pretty much the only place outside of a car where anyone ever saw those machines. She selected the most functional-looking one and settled in the back of the Children’s Annex with her headphones to listen to the ZOS cassette, not knowing what to expect.

  It was music. And it was weird. She had pressed Play without rewinding, as rewinding can be hard on old tapes (she knew this from years of cassette surgery on the library’s books on tape collection). It was hard to tell where the beat began, or to know how you’d dance to it if you were to try. On top of that, there was a woman screaming—no, more like screeching—about how she was looking for a bridge. Well, that was interesting, anyway; maybe a synch, because the King of Sacramento had mentioned the Empress being a bridge between Chokmah and Binah, hadn’t he? And then right at the end, another voice, a man’s English-accented voice, sounding exactly like she had always imagined A. E. Waite would sound, said: “Where’s that confounded bridge?”

  “It’s the Empress, A.E.,” she said, nearly aloud, “and you’ll find it linking Chokmah and Binah, between the Veil and the Abyss!”

  The next song sounded like snakes swimming in thick, hot liquid. Then the tape got eaten and the machine stopped. And just when she was almost enjoying it. She stood up to get her tape surgery box from the back room, but on her way Den came in, so she went back to the Annex to give him his stack of fifteen new titles.

  “Do I have to pay this?” he said peevishly. He was holding an overdue notice postcard, addressed to Daisy Wasserstrom, for The Magical Battle of Britain.

  “Fuck,” said Andromeda, instinctively covering her mouth, because somehow it seemed wrong to say “fuck” in the library. That must have been one she had checked out on Daisy’s card and forgot to scan back in. “Did your mom see this?”

  Den said she hadn’t seen it. He always tried to get to the mail before her, he said, because you never know what might set her off and it was better safe than very, very, very sorry. Andromeda didn’t think any others had slipped by, and she would have to look into her records, but she made Den promise to be especially on the lookout in the coming week. A wake-up call. Mizmac mischief could potentially really destroy the entire Endangered Books Project.

  “This may be the last one for a while,” said Andromeda, discreetly passing him the bagel worm agony wrapped in an old Chronicle, and Den looked very, very sad.

  She was about to try to comfort him when into the Children’s Annex walked Byron, carrying in his hands an enormous sword.

  “Sword delivery,” he said.

  She could have kissed him.

  xviii.

  His grandpa had been in the Knights of Columbus, he said as Den looked on, wide-eyed. It was a great, great sword, over
half Byron’s height when he stood it up.

  “They let you walk in with that?” she said, impressed.

  “They did. I think the lady at the front desk might have been asleep. Sorry. I know it has Christianity all over it,” he said apologetically, pointing to the crosses on the pommel and the Latin motto containing the word Christus.

  “There is nothing wrong with a little Christianity,” she said. Huggy then fed her the following lines: “Some of the best magicians in the history of the world worked in the Christian tradition. A lot of them were monks. A good magician uses whatever works, not what accords with his vanity.” Huggy was going to be a big help not only on the SATs, but also in the composition of Liber K, when the time came.

  Once again, it was easier for her to think of them both following Huggy’s lead, rather than to have the full responsibility of figuring out a way to explain every single thing to Byron. On the other hand, it was rather nice to be listened to so intently. She couldn’t remember anyone paying nearly as much attention to what she said as Byron did, not even St. Steve.

  She handed Byron his ring (which she had got from the parrot vending machine at Savers on the way over), a new Moleskine book, and her kitten pin.

  “Come on, you’re not going to pin me for that!” he protested. “Okay, Christianity rules. I was just trying to help.”

  “No, the pin is so you can pin yourself; the book is so you can keep track of when you need to be pinned; and the ring is so you know who you are. It goes on your index finger, by the way,” she added. And his fingers were tiny enough that the little toy ring actually did fit.

  “So,” said Byron, lifting the sword and raising his eyebrows at Den. “Who are we going to stab?” Den looked like he was about to run from the room.

  “Shh,” she said. “His mom is a scary knife lady.”

  “That’s okay, chief,” said Byron to Den. “Mine is too.”

  When Den had (reluctantly) gathered his books so he could be out of there and back home before the mail arrived, Andromeda turned to Byron and said:

  “But the answer to your question about who we are going to stab is, the Goetic demons GAAP and AMY.”

  “Well, of course we have to hope it won’t come to that,” she said. She tried to explain: “See, basically, it looks like I may have accidentally summoned these two relatively high-level demons with my homework, and last night when the King of Sacramento was locking me in my box he suggested that they may still be hanging around making mischief for me and that they really should be banished and dealt with properly. We need the sword because demons are afraid of iron, and it has to be a big long one so you can stick it outside the circle to threaten them, if necessary.” She paused. “Oh, and Huggy just told me, we should probably try to do it tonight. I think It did the planetary calculations already.” Then she added: “Huggy is my Holy Guardian Angel.”

  That was, perhaps, the longest single sustained uninterrupted speech she had ever delivered in her whole life. Byron was staring at her.

  “Is this LARP?” Then, in answer to her quizzical look, he said: “Live Action Role Playing?” She shook her head.

  If you run from the room screaming, she said quietly to herself in the form of a prayer, please leave the sword.

  The time had come to explain what was going on. It had only been a little over a week since the Daisy dream, but telling him about it, in a hurried whisper, took ages, all the way up to the beginning of her shift at six. She was going to leave the most embarrassing stuff out, and not mention St. Steve, but in the end she couldn’t figure out how to explain her sigil activities, tantoons, and current worries properly without spilling it all. And once she started telling him, she started to feel like she really wanted him to know. Of course, it wasn’t only the past nine days she was telling him about. It stretched back to the beginning of her life, to Daisy’s witch club, the mom, the dad, and, because he knew nothing about history and philosophy, all the way back to ancient Egypt and Sumeria, to the Sea and Star Cults of primordial man. She even told him about Bethany and Katherine Mansfield, the full story of Huggy, her osteogenesis imperfecta, Bryce and his lack of interest in her aerodynamic body, and how when she had broken up with him he had tried to kill himself by swallowing a bottle of aspirin. And how she spent every day hating herself for not being able to be a better sport about having lost the genetic lottery so spectacularly.

  And somehow, it seemed, at the bottom of everything, was Daisy, and the Two of Swords reversed.

  No one person had ever known all that stuff about her, and some of it was not known to anyone else. Once again, she almost felt like kissing Byron, kind of; not romantically, she assured herself, more like how she would kiss Dave on the top of the head. Don’t kid yourself, sister, said Huggy.

  She was completely drained. Finally Byron said: “So, Goetic demons tonight. Your place or mine?” And something about that made her smile.

  “Oh, I think we’ll do it here,” she said. “In the basement temple.” They agreed to meet in the parking lot at ten-thirty, a safe hour and a half after the library closed, and she gave him a list of things to collect and purchase, everything she could think of.

  “After hours? Is that … allowed?”

  “It is completely one hundred percent the opposite of allowed,” replied Andromeda. She had keys and the alarm codes, because she opened up on weekends. “You’ll be living on the edge.”

  “I’ve never felt so alive,” said Byron.

  Just before six, as Andromeda was getting ready to clock in and Byron to leave, a text vibrated in from St. Steve. Her own reaction to it, and her reaction to Byron’s reaction to it, were curious. For the first time ever in her life, she had no reason to hide or cover up or divert attention, because Byron already knew everything. He picked up the phone and read it first and she found she didn’t care that much. And that felt amazing, just to decide not to worry, to let things be and not even try to cover anything. His expression told her it was a weird message, and when he held it up it was: “take off your panties.”

  “So that’s Mr. Sensitive,” he said. Then, matter-of-factly, “You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”

  Andromeda nodded and didn’t even blush. Byron made a “be my guest” motion.

  “It’s a kind of a game,” she said, rather too casually. But she loved Byron’s response more than she loved even getting a message from St. Steve, because it meant she could really be herself. He was going to let her get away with it, and she wouldn’t have to lie about St. Steve or her box or Bethany or anything if she didn’t feel like it. This time she really did kiss him, quickly, on the side of the head as she tripped off to the bathroom. She was actually sorry to see that he had already left when she returned, because even with two pairs of tights on, library shift commando felt pretty dangerous.

  The euphoric feeling of total freedom lasted about twenty minutes before panic began to set in. Of course. That feeling of freedom wasn’t her being herself. This was. Terror, remorse, self-loathing, embarrassment. What the hell had she been thinking?

  “Help me, Huggy,” she said, trying to pick up Its voice in the whirring of the ceiling fan. But Huggy was silent. It would probably be better if Byron were to die, taking himself and all her secrets with him, or just move away and never return. Was there a ceremonial operation for that? There probably was, in Agrippa. Or she could go away. Or die. Agrippa probably had that covered as well.

  It was the song that had invited her candor, she theorized ruefully to herself, sleepwalking through her shift. A song, even if it wasn’t the best of songs, was an unfair move. It still made her feel like weeping, just the thought of it. She didn’t even like the song very much. It was more what it represented, the first time anyone had done anything just for her without her having had to work and work and work for their conditional approval. When someone listens to you seriously and doesn’t shun you as soon as you mention your box, it can be like a drug, addictive, and maybe a little scary.

>   “operation commando: roger that!” she texted back to UNAVAILABLE, the exclamation point making it look just a little more enthusiastic than she felt. Now, that was a joke she probably shouldn’t tell the dad. After two hours and no response, she realized she was definitely not having fun with this like she supposed she was supposed to, so she texted: “wtf are you doing?” though she couldn’t, just couldn’t in the end, resist adding “<3” to mitigate things in case the “wtf” made him mad.

  A lot of the tape had been eaten in the machine, but she managed to fix the ZOS cassette without losing too much of the tape that remained by fitting the spools into a new, white, noncorroded State of California-issued institutional cassette casing. The corroded ZOS something something 666 label came off easily in two pieces, and she glued it to the new case. You’re good, Klein, she told herself. Sadly, most of the bridge song and the A. E. Waite ending was now missing. There was only one other bit where the A.E. voice appeared, chanting a count-in. The screamy lady was all over it, though. It took Andromeda two listens to decide she liked it. It put images in her head like Guillaume de Machaut and ars subtilior but like no other rock music—certainly not Rosalie’s crowd’s “oh oh oh” Burger King music or Byron’s Cthulhu rock—ever had. Not even close. It placed mathematical, angular images in her head, some delicate and twirly, and some hot and bright, and some dim and obscure. By the fourth time through she had decided it was maybe the best thing she’d ever heard in her life. Even Huggy seemed to like it, because she could sometimes see Its silvery shape twirling and vibrating and spinning around on the edge of her field of vision, especially with the “four already” one that painted triangular sigils and maybe even an I Ching hexagram image in her head.