The Polka Dot Girl

by Darragh McManus

“Do you have to make me feel like this?”

  I finally looked at her. Goddamn, she was beautiful. What a hideous cliché but there you have it: I couldn’t make myself find her unattractive, could I? I couldn’t make my eyes not see what was before them, shining, luminescent, breathtaking.

  “You look amazing. There. Feel better?”

  Virginia smiled—against her own wishes, I felt—and looked away. A long pause. She mumbled, “Thank you”, then looked at me and frowned. “You look… What happened? You look like you were in a fight with a rabid cat. And you lost.”

  “You’re actually not too far off. But I won the fight.”

  Silence again. I was almost getting used to this, our conversa- tions more filled with the absence of words than the words themselves.

  “But you do, though,” I said. “You look fabulous. Let’s talk about that, shall we? I’ll tell you that coat really suits you, you can compliment my hair. You know, nice stuff like that.”

  “Genie, please. This is more important than you and I.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Cassandra. You’ve got that gift of foresight after all, don’t you?”

  “Goddamn it, will you stop! This is more important. Madeleine is. So put your fucking bruised ego away for ten minutes, can’t you?”

  Alright. That was the slap in the face I needed. My hurt, offended, childish side slinked away to some punishment cell in the darkest recesses of my mind; the adult Genie came forward again.

  “You’re right,” I said. “You’re absolutely right. I apologize. Let’s talk.”

  Virginia sighed deeply. “Just so you know, I’m not looking for forgiveness. That’s not why I came here. I mean, I want you to forgive me, of course. But that’s not…”

  I said gently, “I thought we were talking about Madeleine.” “Right. We are. Okay. Will you need a notebook for this?” “Depends on what you have to tell me.”

  “A lot, I think. …Alright, let’s start at the end: I was with Madeleine the day she died.”

  “I know you were. Her mother told me. She met you two that morning. You arrived in a Porsche to pick her up, to pick up Madeleine.”

  “I was with her for most of the day, Genie.”

  I sat up straighter, silently snapped to attention. “Go on.” “We hung out for the day. Had lunch, went to see a movie.

  She was acting strangely all day, very edgy. I mean even more edgy than usual. I wondered if she was using again. You know she took heroin sometimes?”

  “Only sometimes?”

  “She’d sworn to me that that was all over. She was never chronic, really. Just—dabbled. Which, I know, that’s still a stupid thing to do. It started about four months ago. I don’t know who turned her onto it or where she got the drugs. But we’d talked about it and Madeleine had promised to quit. But then, that day… She didn’t seem high. But she was acting oddly.”

  “Okay. Hold on a second.”

  Coat or no coat, I was starting to get cold. I walked briskly to the central heating unit beside the front door, kicking that closed along the way. Virginia waited until I’d resumed my seat before resuming her story.

  “We went out early for a few drinks. More than a few drinks. We’d had some food beforehand, a sandwich, but Madeleine was drunk pretty quickly. This wasn’t unusual—I didn’t think much about it. …Anyway, we fought. Had a blazing row in this bar, I can’t remember the name of it. One of those new ones on Pasiphaë Prospect, you know, all chrome fittings and blue strobe lights. Not my cup of tea but that’s where she wanted to go. That’s where we fought. Christ, we’d never argued like that before. I mean, it was vicious. I said some things…” She smiled to herself. “Things I can’t take back now. But that’s how it goes, I suppose.”

  “What did you argue about, Virginia?”

  “Her. Her life, what she was doing. Where it was all going to end… I mean, I’ve had some wild times myself, I don’t deny it, but within limits. Always within limits. But Maddy… She was out of control. Even by Madeleine standards, she was on the fast- track to oblivion. The last few weeks, she’d just gone… I was worried about her. Afraid she’d do something crazy.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.” She said vaguely, “Is there…?”

  “Yes there is. Tell me, Virginia. I can help you.”

  Virginia lit another menthol, its fresh odor cutting through the room like a cool breeze. She shivered. I shivered too.

  “We argued about Azura LaVey,” she said. “Madeleine was in too deep. I told her this, told her to tell her mom about it, tell somebody. That thing, it was poison, it was death for her…” A long pause. “Don’t quote me on this, Genie, please. You can’t protect me from this so for the love of God please don’t quote me. But I’m going to tell you anyway: Azura runs a cult, this far-out weird religious thing, and Maddy was involved. Deeply. They stuck their talons into her and wouldn’t let her go. That’s what killed her.”

  I hopped to my feet. “Jesus Christ. Why didn’t you say something about this before? Those times we talked. Or, or, report it to someone else. Another officer.”

  “Please, don’t… Just listen, alright? I’m telling you now. They call it The Goddess Rising. This—movement, this cult. It’s based around worship of the moon. Because that rises each month, is born and passes through its life and then dies and is born again. So it ties into a theme of spiritual rebirth. That’s their mantra: you can be reborn through the Risen Goddess, like the moon itself is reborn. And all this, the monthly event, ties in to our menstrual cycles as well. The moon, for them, is the Divine Mother, and of course, LaVey is her representative on earth. Because you can’t have a god without a priest, right?” She shook her head, annoyed. “But forget all that. It’s bullshit, the whole thing. It’s a hotch-potch of mythology, New Ageism, other, older religions… Cynical crap. I don’t know if I believe in something else, you know, out there. But this is—rubbish. Fairy stories, invented nonsense. And yet people buy it.”

  “How many people?”

  “More than you’d think, but less than LaVey would like. She’s maniacal, she’s obsessed. Wants to bring more and more women into her ‘family’, as she calls it. It’s disgusting. She’s raping the very meaning of that word. That’s something else you need to know: they brainwash their recruits, try to make them reject their own families, I mean their real moms and sisters. It’s all about the Divine Mother and her anointed ‘mother ’, quote-unquote, in this realm… It works, too. I’ve met some of the women involved. All very conformist, fanatical, mindless. Like zombies.”

  Like zombies. Like my weirdo empty-headed songbirds.

  I said, “Tell me if you recognize any of these names: Nora Hofton. Alejandra Villegas. Dinah Spaulding. Liz or Elizabeth Arendt. Anneka Klosterman.”

  “Yeah…they’re Risen Women. Sorry, that’s what they call themselves. Risen through the Divine, et cetera et cetera. Hofton and Spaulding, I’ve met them. Two idiots. Not ten brain-cells to rub together between them. Villegas, I think I’ve met her. Arendt I don’t know personally, but I’ve heard LaVey talk about her.

  …What was the other name?”

  “Klosterman. Anneka. A terrifying blonde giant.”

  Virginia thought for a moment. “Mm…I’m not sure. She sounds familiar. I mean, your description. I’d probably know her if I saw her.” She turned to me. “Genie, you should know now: there are some pretty important Hera women involved in this thing. Not just flakes like Dinah Spaulding. I mean powerful.”

  “Such as?”

  “You want actual names?”

  I nodded. She hesitated for an instant, then pressed on: “Alright. In for a penny… Do you know Professor Orianne Queneau? She teaches Metaphysics at Hera U?”

  “I’ve had the pleasure.”

  “She’s one. She’s high up, a high-level initiate. There are others: Councillor Gurney. Councilor Hulman. Assistant City Prosecutor Walkup. Uh, who else? Colette Unser, the property developer. Nicola Go
ldstone, she owns a chain of expensive restaurants. Dee-Ann Lehrman, you know, the singer?”

  Know her? I actually liked her. Dee-Ann, with her silk- throated voice, her atmospheric torch-songs about night and the city, the perils and pleasures of love. Dee-Ann goddamn Lehrman.

  I was smiling to myself—probably to break the tension—and when you’re smiling, you tend to assume that everyone else is smiling too. Like the world shares your good vibrations; like they all park their worries and problems, just for a few seconds, so as not to spoil your mood. But Virginia wasn’t smiling: she looked ashen, grief-stricken, like some spirit of ill-intent had just whispered in her beautiful ear the worst news she was ever going to hear.

  Then she started crying. I subconsciously took a step back, giving her some privacy, giving her time. Fat tears rolled down her pale cheeks; her eyes reddened and became angry, scalded, as ugly as it’s possible for her eyes to ever get. Virginia reached for a tissue and wiped her nose.

  Finally she said, still sobbing, “I want you to find her killer, Genie. I swear to God, if nothing else ever happens in my life, I want that. It’s my fault she’s dead. Madeleine would still be here if it wasn’t for me. Why did I let her go off alone that last night? I saw the state she was in, she was a mess… So we fought. So big deal, we’d fought before. I shouldn’t have let her out of my sight. I should have… You know what my last words to her were? The very last fucking words I would ever speak to my best friend?

  ‘Fine, Madeleine—see if I care.’ Jesus. ‘See if I care.’ That’s the last thing she heard me tell her: that I didn’t care about her.”

  She started crying harder, deeper, her shoulders lifting and her back trembling. I said softly, “I wouldn’t blame yourself, Virginia. Madeleine was on a downward slide. She had a self- destructive streak, deep inside her. You knew that, her mother knew it, everybody did…she probably knew it herself. You’re not to blame.”

  Virginia looked up at me, anger flashing in her eyes but I knew it wasn’t directed at me. “You don’t understand. You don’t know. I’m the one who brought her into it in the first place. That fucking cult. I got her involved and now she’s dead because of me.”

  She lit another cigarette; I didn’t point out that her previous one was still smoldering in the ashtray, unsmoked.

  “We met in college. She was wild, I was wild, we liked each other, so…we were wild together. And that was fine, until Azura goddamn LaVey… I only got into all that wacky alternative stuff for a laugh. For kicks, you know? It amused me, to go along with their mumbo-jumbo and mysticism, their goddesses and priests and stupid cycles of the moon. And God, they were so self- important about it. It was laughable. They took it all so seriously. So, of course, I didn’t take it seriously at all. I was a kid, it was all a big joke to me. LaVey ‘initiated’ me—her word—into the ‘mysteries’—also her word—of The Goddess Rising. I didn’t give a shit. I saw it as a way to make money, selling them junk and trinkets… I still do it with the shop. They’ll buy anything if they think it’s special or blessed, or has some mystical powers. Anyway… I brought in Madeleine too. Azura was always going on about spreading out, growing, recruiting more women, more souls needing to be risen… Whatever. The usual spiel. So I thought sure, why not? Madeleine will find this as funny as I do. Which she did—she never believed any of LaVey’s crap for a second. But she didn’t…Madeleine didn’t…”

  More space, more time. Patience and silence. I waited. Virginia continued: “I got out in time. Madeleine didn’t. She

  couldn’t—she’d gone in too far. LaVey had her hooks in tight and wasn’t letting go. She’s a seductive sort of person, you know, she always knows exactly what to say, how to persuade people, how to make them do what she wants… And Maddy, she was weak- willed. Let’s face it, she was a fuck-up. Prime target for someone as unscrupulous as LaVey.” She stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and said, “And they were using her for money. I’m sure of it. Madeleine wouldn’t admit it, but I know. She was an easy mark. They leeched off her for two years. And then, when she was all used up…”

  I sat back down, digesting what she’d said. This was all great information, with one not-insignificant caveat: it was unusable as evidence. Legally this meant less than nothing. It was the wild accusation of one young woman of “questionable” reputation, against a revered educator and pillar of society. Still—remember all this, Genie. What was it Etienne had said? “Store it away for future access.”

  “I think that’s why she was killed, over the money,” Virginia said. “I don’t know how or why exactly, but I really believe that. I’m positive.”

  I had a question that I didn’t want to ask but felt I had to: “Why did you seduce me, Virginia? I’m not starting a fight, I don’t care anymore, I just want the truth in all this. If you hate LaVey so much. Why did you do her bidding?”

  She shrugged. “I’m scared of her. There, I’ve admitted it. She frightens the living daylights out of me. You don’t know what… Azura LaVey gets what she wants, and I was scared to turn her down. …I also wanted to know where the investigation was going. For myself, I needed to know. Genuinely. But that was only secondary. I did it because I hadn’t the nerve not to.”

  How weird to see this beautiful, self-possessed creature, this earth-dwelling goddess, so beset by worries and doubts. Laid low by a guilty conscience. I guess she was as much Virginia as Cassandra after all.

  She stood and hugged her coat tight to her chest. The tears had stopped but the sorrow lingered on, in her face, the way her shoulders slumped. Virginia walked to the door and muttered, “I truly am sorry, Genie. For all of it.”

  She looked back at me. I looked at the floor. She made a slight movement towards me but checked herself, held her body back. She sighed deeply and nodded and said, “Best of luck with everything, sweetheart. You’ll be in my thoughts.”

  Then she was gone. No grandiose exit, no movie star strut and sweep of perfume in her trail; she just slinked away, quiet and defeated. I shut the door and locked it, sitting down again in my broken armchair, trying to think, trying to drown out the conflicting voices roaring across my mind—two opposing forces, vying for supremacy. My brain was screeching “steer clear.” But my heart and guts and loins: they were saying something quite different.

  Chapter 24

  Misericordiae

  MY eyes fell on a photograph of my mother, a small print in an unpainted wooden frame that I kept on top of the TV. My only physical reminder of her. There was other stuff belonging to her still in the apartment, tons of it, but I couldn’t bear to have it around me. I couldn’t bear to remember her all the time. One memento mori was enough. I needed to forget the pain sometimes. I still missed her something fierce, almost like a physical ache during the worst moments: lying awake at night, mildly insomniac, cold and jittery, her absence a ghost coming in and filling the room, chilling the room, making me shake like a junkie doing cold turkey. But always an absence: if ghosts really did exist, my mom hadn’t turned into one yet. I never felt her presence in the room, just that terrible, all-encompassing, world- destroying absence. She was gone from me forever.

  My mother was a lovely woman in life—I know everyone says that about their mom, but everyone who knew her said it, too. She was small, though not as small as me, but made up for it through the enormous warmth of her personality, her boundless generosity and capacity for love. She was sweet and sincere and didn’t get irony or most of the wisecracks I made. She was physi- cally affectionate, helped her neighbors without being asked, got nervous about the economy and my future professional prospects. She disapproved of swearing and cohabitation, she told me to stop smoking and asked when I’d settle down with a nice girl. She made bad jokes that you laughed in spite of, not because of. You laughed because she had made them and you wanted to see her smile: the way her mouth curled upwards and her eyes crinkled so cutely, like a wise old crone in a child’s fairy story. Someone you could trust, implicitly. Someone I
would always love, wholly and unconditionally. Her name was Vivienne Auf der Maur, she was my mother and I love her.

  She did used to worry about me. I wonder what she would have thought of my current predicament? Obviously I wouldn’t have told her about Erika Baton and the attempts on my life, about getting my ass kicked and my face clawed. I might have told her about Virginia: the nice parts, anyway. Some vague excuse to explain why we didn’t see each other anymore. She’d probably see through the lies and obfuscation and still worry.

  It had started to snow outside, fat white flakes falling softly like feathers from a torn pillow. Just moseying on down to earth, being gently buffeted by the breeze, beginning to settle in their plump layers on cars, rooftops, the roads, the pavements. I lit a Dark Nine and settled back into reflection, allowing the memories their moment in the spotlight, a warm glow heating my head, running down through my body, tingling my toes. I remembered the first time I’d arrested a serious felon, this fucking lunatic who was pimping out teenagers from a bizarrely upmarket hotel on Bolo. We hammered in there and I wrestled her to the ground, younger then, gung-ho and heedless, using my martial arts training and her narcotic incapacitation to gain the advantage. And then telling my mom about it afterwards, flushed with pride, bursting with it, my chest puffed out and a smile on my face you couldn’t have removed with an industrial sanding machine.

  I was so happy that evening, happy and cocky and dumb: I was a big girl now, I was tougher than the rest, I’d proved I had the stuff for this job. My mother popped my balloon pretty quickly with her queries and worries and tutting and fretting, her eyes almost shining with anxiety, and I resented her for it at the time. It felt like she was spoiling my moment, being a killjoy, just for the sake of it. I realize now that she wasn’t, it was all genuine. It was her job to worry about me.

  I’d brushed her off by saying flippantly, “Hey, take it easy. I know what I’m doing. I’m with a good bunch of girls, we look out for each other. There’s nothing to worry about.”