“What’s shaking, Small Time?” he said.
“Don’t call me that. I’m sick of it.”
He made a soft, coughing noise that I took for a laugh. “Want me to do like Jocundra and call you Jackie boy?”
“Just don’t call me Small Time.”
“But it suits you so well.”
“You been through a rough time,” I said. “And I can appreciate that. But that doesn’t give you the right to act like an asshole.”
“It doesn’t? I could have sworn it did.”
He came to his feet, lost his balance. I caught him by the shirtfront and hauled him erect. He tried to break my grip, but he was still weak and I held firm. He had a soapy smell. I wondered if Jo had to help him bathe.
“Let me go,” he said.
“I don’t believe I will.”
“Give me another month or two, I promise I’ll tear you down to your shoelaces, boy.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“Let me go!”
He pawed at my hand and I let loose of the shirt. That electric green danced in his eyes again.
“’Pears you growing a pair. Love must be making you bold.” He hitched up his belt. “Yeah, I been catching you looking at Jocundra. She looks at you the same. If I wasn’t around, the two of you be going at it like. But I am around.”
“Maybe not for too long,” I said.
“I might surprise you, boy. But whatever. As long as I’m here, Jocundra not going to stray. She’s just dying for me to tell her about every new thing I see. She finds it fascinating.”
“What do you see?”
“I’m not telling you, pal. I’m saving all of my secrets for sweet cheeks.” He took a faltering step toward the house. “How’s about we make a little side bet? Bet I nail her before you.”
I gave him a shove and he went over onto his back, crying out in shock. A guard stepped from the shadow of the trees—I told him to be cool, I had things covered. I reached down and seized hold of Pellerin’s arm, but he wrenched free.
“You want to lie there, fine by me,” I said, and started back along the shore.
He called to me, but I kept walking.
“Know what I see in your future, Small Time?” he shouted as I passed into the trees. “I see lilies and a cardboard casket. I see a black dog taking a piss on your grave.”
What he said didn’t trouble me, but I was troubled nonetheless. When I had reached for his arm, I had brushed the fingers of his right hand, the same hand that he’d been holding above the water. I wouldn’t have sworn to it, but it seemed that his fingertips had been hot. Not just warm. Burning hot. As if they’d been dipped into a bowl of fire.
If pressed to do so, I might have acknowledged Jo’s right to value her duties, but I was unreasonably angry at her. Angry and petulant. I kept to my room for a day and a half after that night on the beach, lying around in my boxers and doing some serious drinking, contemplating the notion that I was involved in a romantic triangle with a member of the undead. On the morning of the second day, I realized that I was only hurting myself and had a shower, changed my shorts. Still a little drunk, I was debating whether or not to see what was up in the rest of the house, when someone knocked on my door. Without thinking, I said, “Yeah, come in,” and Jo walked into the room. I thought about making a grab for my trousers, but I was unsteady on my feet and feared that I’d stumble and fall on my ass; so I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to act nonchalant.
“How are you feeling,” she asked.
“Peachy,” I said.
She hesitated, then shut the door and took a seat in a carved wooden chair that likely had been some dead king’s throne. “You don’t look peachy,” she said.
I’d cracked the drapes to check on the weather and light fell directly on her—she was the only bright thing in a room full of shadow. “I had a few drinks,” I told her. “Drowning my sorrows. But I’m pulling it together.”
She nodded, familiar with the condition.
“How come you didn’t tell me your boy could do tricks?” I asked.
“Josey? What are you talking about?”
I told her what Pellerin had been doing with the ocean water and she said she hadn’t realized he had reached that stage. She hopped up from the chair, saying she had to talk to him.
“Stay,” I said. “Come on. You got all day to do with him. Just stay a while, okay?”
Reluctantly, she sat back down.
“So,” I said. “You want to tell me what that is he was doing.”
“My previous patient developed the ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields. He did some remarkable things. It sounds as if Josey’s doing the same.”
“You keep saying that. Remarkable how? Give me an example.”
“He cured the sick, for one.”
“Did he, now?”
“I swear, it’s the truth. There was a man with terminal cancer. He cured him. It took him three days and cost him a lot of effort, but afterward the man was cancer-free.”
“He cured a guy of cancer by…what? Working his electromagnetic fields?”
“I think so. I don’t know for sure. Whatever he did, it produced a lot of heat.” She crossed her legs, yielding up a sigh. “I wish it had stopped with that.”
I asked what had happened.
“It’s too long a story to tell, but the upshot was, he built a veve…Do you know what a veve is?”
“The things they draw on the floors of voodoo temples? Little patterns?”
“That’s them. They relate to the voodoo gods, the loas.” She flicked a speck of something off her knee. “Donnell…my patient. He built the veve of Ogoun Badagris out of copper. Several tons of copper. It was immense. He said it enabled him to focus energy. He used to walk around on top of it and…one day there was an explosion.” She made a helpless gesture. “I don’t understand what happened.”
Neither did I understand. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea that Pellerin might be some kind of green-eyed Jesus; yet I didn’t believe she was lying.
“What do think was going on with him?” I asked. “With Pellerin. I mean, what’s your theory? You must have a theory”
“You want to hear? I’ve been told it’s pretty out there.”
“Yeah, and nothing about this is out there, so your theory’s got to be way off base.”
She laughed. “Okay. The bacteria we injected into Josey was the same strain we used at Tulane. All the slow-burners have reproduced those designs in one way or another. It’s as if they’re expressing the various aspects of Ogoun. Doctor Crain’s theory was that because the bacteria eventually infested the entire brain, the patients used more of their brains than normal people—this resulted in what seemed to be miraculous powers. And since the bacterial strain was the same, it prevailed upon the host brain to acquire similar characteristics. That makes a certain amount of sense as far as it goes, but Crain was trying to explain voodoo in terms of science, and some of it can’t be explained except in voodoo terms.”
She paused, as if to gather her thoughts. “Someday we may discover a biochemical factor that makes the patients prone to seeing the veve patterns. But we’ll never be able to explain away all the mystery surrounding Ezawa’s work. I think he discovered the microbiological analogue of possession. In a voodoo ceremony, a possession occurs quickly. The god takes over your body while you’re dancing or having a drink. You jerk around as the god acclimates to the flesh, and then you begin acting like that god. With the bacteria, it takes longer and the transition’s smoother. You notice a growing awareness in the patients that they’re different. Not just because they’ve come back from the dead. The real difference lies in the things they see and feel. They sense there’s something qualitatively different about themselves. They recognize that they have their own agendas. They grow beyond their life stories the way Jesus and Buddha outgrew the parameters of their lives. Things Donnell said…they led me to believe that the bacteria allowed them to acc
ess their gro bon ange. Do you know the term? The immortal portion of the soul? According to voodoo, anyway. And that in turn opened them to the divine. As the bacterial infestation increased, they became more open. The slow-burners all demonstrated behavioral arcs that fit the theory. I guess it sounds crazy, but no one’s come up with anything better.”
She seemed to be waiting for me to speak.
“You’re right,” I said. “That’s out there.”
“Donnell was seeing these peculiar shadows before he died. I think he was seeing peoples’ souls. I can’t come close to proving it, of course, but there were things he told me…” She sighed in exasperation. “I begged Crain to let me work with Josey my way. I thought if I started from a position of intimacy, we could forge a bond strong enough to endure until the end. We’d see the maturation of the new personality. If my theory’s right, we’d have a captive god fully integrated with a human personality. Whatever a god is. That might be something we could determine. Who knows what’s possible?” The energy drained from her voice and her tone softened. “As things stand I doubt we’ll ever get any further than I got with Donnell. He should have been given the space to evolve, but all they did was harass him.”
“I’m getting you liked this Donnell,” I said.
Her face sharpened. “Yes.”
“How about Pellerin?”
“He’s not very likeable. Part of it is, he’s afraid of everything. Confused. He doesn’t know yet who or what he is. He may never know. So he tends to be angry at everyone. That said, he’s coarse, he’s truculent and difficult to be around.” She made a sad face and pushed up from her throne. “I wish I didn’t have to go, but I should get back to him.”
“Jo?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Remember when you asked if you could count on me as a friend? For what it’s worth…”
“I know,” she said, coming toward me.
“We’ve been forced onto the same side, but…”
She embraced me, pulling my head down onto her shoulder. I breathed in her warm, clean smell, and kissed her neck. She tensed, but I nuzzled her neck, her throat, and she let her head fall back. When I kissed her on the mouth, she kissed me back, fully complicit, and, before long, we were rolling around on the bed. I worked her T-shirt up around her neck and had disengaged the catch of her bra, a hook located under a flare of white lace between the cups, when I realized that, although she was not resisting, neither was she helping out as she had a moment earlier. I slid my hand under the bra, but she remained motionless, reactionless, and I asked what was the matter.
“I can’t cope with this. You’re the first man I’ve been attracted to in a long time. A very long time.” She adopted an injured expression, like the one a child might display on running up against a rule that denied it a treat. “I want to make love with you, but I can’t.”
My hand was still on her breast and desire crowded all coherent thought from my head.
“Say something.” She shifted, turning on her side, and my hand was no longer happy.
“Does this have anything to do with Pellerin?”
“Partly.”
“You’re sleeping with him?”
“No, but I might have to. It may be the only way to control him.”
“Is that how you controlled Donnell?”
“It wasn’t like that! I was in love with him.”
“You loved him.”
“I know it sounds strange, but I was…”
I experienced a flash of anger. “It sounds twisted.”
She froze.
“You ever think,” I said, “you might have a kink for dead guys?”
She held my eyes for a second, then sat up, rehooked her bra and tugged down her T-shirt.
“Maybe I do,” she said. “Maybe I find them a vast improvement.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that. I was just…”
“What did you mean?”
“It was frustration talking.”
“Don’t you think I’m frustrated, too? I could probably find an insult to toss at you if I wanted.”
I could have pointed out that she was the cause of her own frustration, but I’d already dug myself a hole and saw no good reason to pull the dirt down on top of me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I truly am.”
“It’s not important,” she said icily. “I’ve heard it before.”
She flung herself off the bed.
“Jo,” I said despairingly.
“Oh,” she said, stopping in the doorway. “I nearly forgot. Your employer has a message for you. He’ll be arriving in three days. Maybe you’ll find his company less perverse than mine.”
I wasn’t accustomed to viewing myself as an employee, and it took me a hiccup to translate the term “your employer” into the name Billy Pitch. I’d been anticipating his arrival, but the news was a shock nonetheless. My dalliance with Jo, brief and unsatisfying as it was, had placed our time on the island in the context of a courtship, and I needed to reorder my priorities. I knew I had to tell Billy everything—he had likely already heard it and our first conversation would be a test of my loyalty—and I would have to put some distance between Jo and me. You might have thought this would be an easy chore, given the state of the relationship, yet I was down the rabbit hole with her, past the point where longing and desire could be disciplined. Even my most self-involved thoughts were tinged with her colors.
Like advance men for pharaoh, Billy Pitch’s retinue arrived before him. Security people, chef, barber, bed fluffer, and various other functionaries filtered into the compound over the next day and a half. A seaplane brought in Billy the following morning and, after freshening up, accompanied by an enormous bodyguard with the coarse features of an acromegalic giant, he swept into the foyer of the main wing, the most grotesquely decorated room of all, dominated by a fountain transplanted from 19th century Italy, with floors covered by pink and purple linoleum and vinyl furniture to match. It had been over a year since I had seen Billy in the flesh, but I had known him for almost a decade and he had always seemed ageless in a measly, unprepossessing way—I was thus pleased to note a pair of bifocals hanging about his neck and that his fringe of hair was turning gray. He wore a garish cabana set that left his bony knees and skinny forearms bare. The outfit looked ridiculous, but amplified his air of insectile menace. He directed a cursory glance toward Pellerin, sitting on a plum-colored sofa, but his gaze lingered on Jo, who stood behind him.
“My, my! Aren’t you the sweet thing?” Billy wagged a forefinger at her. “Who’s she remind me of, Clayton?”
The bodyguard, a mighty android in a blue silk T-shirt and white linen jacket, rumbled that he couldn’t say, but she did look familiar.
“It’ll come to me.” He tipped his head pertly to one side and said to me, “Let’s talk.”
He led me into a room containing a functional modern desk and chairs and one of the ubiquitous flat screens, where I delivered my report. When I had done, he said, “Good job. Very good job.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “Do you believe her? You think that boy is a miracle worker? Or you think maybe that girl in there’s gone crazy.”
“It sounds crazy,” I said. “But everything I’ve seen so far backs her up.”
He nodded like he wasn’t so much agreeing with me, but rather was mulling something over. “Let me show you a piece of tape I landed. Part of the Ezawa project at Tulane. The sound’s no good, but the picture speaks volumes.”
He switched on the TV and the tape began to play. The original of the tape had been a piece of film. It had an old-fashioned countdown—10, 9, 8, etc.—and then the tape went white, flickered, and settled into a grainy color shot of an orderly removing electrodes from the chest of a man wearing a hospital gown. He appeared to be semi-conscious and was sitting in a wheelchair. Rail-thin, with scraggly dark hair and rawboned hillbilly face. A woman in a nurse’s uniform came into view, her back to the camera, and there was a bl
urt of sound. The legend “Tucker Mayhew” was briefly superimposed over the picture. Another blurt of sound, the woman speaking to the orderly, who left the room. Then the woman moved behind the wheelchair and I saw it was a younger, less buxom Jo, her make-up so liberally applied as to seem almost grotesque.
Billy asked why the heavy make-up and I replied, “She said they don’t see very well at first. Must be to help with that.”
Jo began to touch the man’s shoulders and neck. Initially he was unresponsive, but soon the touches came to act like shocks on him, though he was still out of it. He twitched and stiffened as if being jabbed with needles. His eyelids fluttered open and his eyes showed green flashes, already brighter than Pellerin’s.
“The part where she’s touching him went on longer,” Billy said. “I had it edited down.”
The man’s eyes opened. Jo left off touching him and moved away. He gaped, glanced around, his face a parody of loss. Jo spoke to him and he located her again. The change in his expression, from woebegone to gratified, was so abrupt as to be laughable. The sound came and went in spurts, and what I could hear was garbled, but I caught enough to know she was teasing out his life story, one he was inventing in order to please her, one that fit the absence in his mind. His eyes tracked her as she performed movements that in their grace and ritual elegance reminded me of Balinese dancers, yet had something as well of the blatant sexuality of bartop strippers you see in clubs on the edge of the Quarter. She passed behind the wheelchair and again touched him on the back of the neck.
Dagger Key and Other Stories Page 31
