The Waning Age

by S. E. Grove

  I dropped to the floor while he was struggling to get the machete out of the countertop. Then my lipstick made the acquaintance of his bare navel. One second, two, three, and he sank to the floor with the machete still embedded inch-deep in wood. But by then the cowboy had recovered. Before I realized how, his whip wrapped itself around my waist. I went limp. It was enough to throw him just a little off balance. Then I reached out and yanked the whip from his hands. He wasn’t prepared for that, either, and the momentum brought him toward me fast. I put my feet up like a bug to try to catch him and fling him off, but my legs were sore and I wasn’t quick enough. He landed on my bent knees just as two shots rang out from the girl’s gun. I held his neck and he wrestled against me for a moment and then abruptly stopped. When I pushed him off I realized why. Bad Lipstick had shot him twice in the back.

  She held me at gunpoint, her other hand pressed against her bleeding side. I was panting.

  “Remind me not to become friends with you,” I said to her. “So tempting but high fatality rate.”

  She didn’t smile at that. I’d finally managed to get under her skin.

  “What?” a feeble voice said.

  “Not you,” I said to Hoffman. “Stay where you are.”

  Something about the way I said it betrayed me. Not emotion, but maybe speed. Bad Lipstick suddenly had her smile back. “He matters to you,” she said, getting carefully to her feet.

  “Yup. I know—it’s weird. I have this quirk, you might have noticed. I like people when they’re alive.”

  She was standing now, and she began stepping slowly toward the island. “Him especially.” From where I sat I couldn’t block her shot to Hoffman, and I wouldn’t be able to dive in front of her in time. I didn’t have any great ideas. The only thing I could do was draw her fire. I threw myself to the side toward the cowboy and she fired twice, and when I came up again I flung the whip toward her. It caught her in the face. I stood up and lunged at her, throwing us both down and smacking her onto the tile floor. Her head hit the ground hard, and her body was suddenly soft beneath me. Soft and warm, and there was blood from her gashed head in my hair.

  Up close, her face was pimply. Reddened eyes painted black at the edges. Her skin was caked white with powder.

  I pushed myself up and turned to Hoffman. He was sitting where I’d left him, his hands on his worn jeans. The two bullets had made red blooms on his work shirt, and his face had a look of startled sadness, as if he’d realized that something he had counted on to be there, always, had never been there at all.

  29

  NATALIA

  OCTOBER 14—AFTERNOON

  I’m not sure how long I stood watching Hoffman’s blood, and with it my chance of saving Cal, oozing onto the tile floor. I heard gunfire, and I could tell by the rapid report and the instant response that the police had arrived. Then I looked at my watch. It had taken them twelve minutes. Twelve minutes was not a lot of time. Only long enough for a few bonneted Puritans to lose their hands. Only long enough for Hoffman to lose his life.

  I walked out of the house and past the barn, swarming with cops, and headed uphill to where I had to hope Cass and Tabby and Joey were still hidden. They were. I told them what had happened and we sat outside the church and waited for the police to process every inch of the site. Tabby put her arm around my shoulders, Joey took my hand, and Cass stood in front of us with her arms crossed, frowning at the officers who climbed toward us up Mordecai’s Hill. It was so useless it was sweet. Like making a warm padded box for a detonated bomb.

  Gao showed up, which was nice of him, because it was quite a drive. I was telling an Officer Petri the story for the third time when Gao hiked up the hill and tapped Petri on the shoulder. “I got this,” he said.

  Petri, who seemed overburdened by the task placed before him, did not complain. “Thanks, man,” he said, wheeling away.

  Gao sat down next to me and looked out over the valley. The fog had cleared. Fire trucks had extinguished the flames at the Victorian house, and it stood in the yellow grass like a charred dollhouse, burnt by some spoilt child who didn’t know the meaning of restraint. Beyond it, the hills were pale orange. As Marlowe said once, I had the feeling that I’d written a very good poem and lost it and would never remember it again.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re welcome.” He considered me briefly. “You don’t look well.”

  “Yeah. Somehow I don’t think I got the worst of it.”

  He nodded in acknowledgment. “Eleven dead. Eight others have serious injuries from mutilations.”

  “Mutilations,” I echoed.

  “Hands, ears, and noses.”

  “How . . . precise.”

  “It seems you stumbled onto a crew that calls itself the Conquistadors.”

  This was news to me. I tried to think of something funny to say about that, just to let Gao know I was okay, but nothing came to mind. Gao and I stared at the hills and listened to Cass, some distance away, giving her statement in a quiet, even voice.

  “Sometimes when the Fish bounties get really high, a site administrator starts what’s called a game. Wherever the target is becomes the center of the game.”

  I could feel Gao glance at me. “So they called a game on my location.”

  “Right.”

  “You got lucky, though.”

  I disagreed. “Oh yeah. Way lucky.”

  “Someone else called another game at the same time in Santa Rosa.” He tapped at his screen decal and showed me a map with two dozen red dots. “Drew more than half the crowd away.” He looked at me sideways. “Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  I shrugged.

  He tapped the screen again and held it up to me.

  “That’s who called the game in Santa Rosa?”

  Gao nodded. “Recognize her?”

  I did, of course, as did Gao. The Fish’s profile photo showed a sea witch with dark pools for eyes and a pile of green mermaid hair. Coral.

  For some reason, I found this the most problematic of all. More problematic than severed hands and conquistadors. More problematic than eleven deaths. It was problematic because she’d done something for me, and if she could do something for me, how could she also disembowel people with oversized forks? It made no sense.

  I thought about what Glout had told me, his theory that Fish were desperate to feel something. Was this Coral trying to act on other instincts? “I don’t understand why she would help me.”

  “Fish aren’t logical.”

  No, they weren’t. Coral or no Coral, the costs had been high all around. “I caused those deaths,” I said. “I caused all of them.”

  Gao did not look at me. “There’s nothing I can say to change that.”

  “I know.”

  “You caused it by saving a woman’s life. By my rules, by our rules, you did the right thing.”

  “The rules don’t seem to add up to the right result in this case.”

  Gao pondered. “There are two Fish in custody down the hill—one with a mustache and another in chaps. I’m betting you know them.” I nodded. “I heard their statements.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You did what you could with the odds, Nat.” He paused. “You did good.”

  “I don’t know.” The hills looked damp and faintly silvery, as if the fog had left its cast-off garments on their undulating sides.

  Gao shifted. “Peña, I know what you’re really worried about, so I’ll just say it. Yes, you can keep training with me.”

  I smiled. I resisted the desire to keel over. My bones felt tired. I wanted to sink back onto the dry grass and be swallowed up by the earth. I wanted to forget everything that had happened that day, and then I wanted to forget everything that had happened before it, and forget who I was, and forget every circumstance familiar enough to remind me.


  Very deliberately, I thought about Cal. I imagined his dark, untidy hair. His pointy teeth when he was laughing. His wide eyes in rapt suspense while I was reading to him. The feel of his arms wrapped around my neck with an outburst of tears, his face sticky and hot, and then the rhythm of his heartbeat slowing to a steady calm, saying to me like it always did, I trust you, I believe in you, I love you.

  I pushed myself up with Gao’s shoulder. “I need to leave,” I said.

  * * *

  —

  In the end it was more than three hours before I got out of there. The cops gave us sandwiches and coffee. I almost did the Fish a favor and chewed my fingers off waiting. I could see the minutes disappearing. They let us go, finally, at four in the afternoon. Gao saw us to the car and told me not to be late to training on Monday evening. I nodded, as if that would happen—as if Monday evening existed.

  On the drive back to Oakland, Cass and Tabby talked continuously with June on speaker about the other legal options that she had been preparing as alternatives, should the approach with Hoffman not come through. They all sounded like long shots. I didn’t say anything. I let them think I was still lost in the morning fog, still wandering through the memories of what had happened to Hoffman. I opened De rerum and sent Troy a note telling him it was too late for the bookstore, asking if he’d had any luck with his dad. As I was writing, Joey’s message appeared and I did not have the temerity to ignore it. What are you planning? Joey asked.

  Going to SF to see Philbrick, I replied.

  Can I come.

  Absolutely not.

  Why.

  I might outfish the Fish.

  Joey paused in the conversation. He did not look at me. He stared out the window. You cannot disappear without us, he typed.

  I promise I won’t.

  I did mean it. I had every intention of telling Joey where we were if, by some miracle, Cal and I were still alive at 6:30 in the morning.

  By the time we got back to Oakland, Troy still hadn’t responded. It surprised me a little. All it meant was that I had to make my own plan, just like I intended to all along. Cass and Tabby wanted to go straight to June’s office, but I insisted they drop me off at home. They left Joey looking after me and sped off. While Joey waited on the tweed sofa, I showered and changed into my best clothes, a twill suit with a double row of horn buttons. I wore the pearl brooch Mom gave me, heeled oxfords, and a sculpted hat of hunter-green felt. When I walked back into the living room, I found Joey, showered and dressed as if to match. I glanced over his combed hair and neatly ironed shirt. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “You’ve kept me out of this every step of the way. I will only half believe it when you say it’s to protect me. It’s also because you don’t want anyone interfering with your methods.”

  “It’s both.”

  He plowed on like I hadn’t spoken. “I know you think I’m useless in a fight, but not everything is about fighting. I’m coming with you.”

  I wanted to hug him and throw a shoe at him. I settled for a sigh. “Fine.”

  He stood, waiting.

  “And I apologize for keeping you out.”

  He nodded. He swung his jacket over his shoulder. “Okay. Apology accepted. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  —

  We took the bus to the BART and rode in silence. The train into the city was quiet at six p.m. on a Sunday. As the doors opened and passengers rolled in and out, I had to admit that having Joey along seemed like a good idea. Some part of me was still wired, even though Gao promised that the bounty posting had been taken down; I expected Fish to pop out of every open doorway. Besides, when our long journey by public transportation concluded in Pac Heights, it looked much better to stroll around holding hands with Joey than to stroll around on my own. There was still no word from Troy.

  As we climbed the sidewalk steps to the corner with the view of the bay, I saw another couple walking downhill across the street. At first I didn’t recognize her, because I hadn’t expected her to be there and because she looked different on the street, not surrounded by friends and easy laughter. I saw a woman small and thin, with the artificial delicacy of someone who has starved herself for many years. Bleached blonde hair, coiffed to Kim Novak circa 1963, and a white dress with silver sequins. A thirty-five-year-old face carefully pruned to look twenty, almost believably so. On it was an expression of deliberate neutrality, a willful containment of troubling synafftic emotions. I realized it was Mrs. Philbrick.

  The man beside her was either Tanner Philbrick or a very confident interloper. He was tall and heavy. Thick blond eyebrows, thick nose, thick neck. Costly suit and shoes. From the look on his tanned face, he didn’t take many troubling emotions or bother much with anyone else’s. I could see both his sons in Philbrick Senior. The attentiveness with which he held his wife’s arm was all Troy. The roving eye looking my way at the moment was all Charlie.

  I lifted my chin and kept climbing. A few steps later I squeezed Joey’s hand and stopped. “That was him,” I said.

  Joey looked over his shoulder. “He’s huge.”

  “Come on,” I said.

  “What’s the approach?”

  “We’ll just watch them for now.”

  We followed at a short distance as they walked down a few blocks and then east toward Fillmore. The Philbricks, with unwitting irony, stopped at a restaurant called the Steakout and took seats outside. One glance at the clothing of the hostess told me we wouldn’t be able to afford it, but almost every spot on Fillmore had outdoor seating. The café next door with Parisian bistro chairs had three empty tables. “Let’s have some coffee,” I said to Joey.

  Joey smiled, pulled out my chair, and gave me a peck on the cheek as I sat down. “You are glaring,” he said, in a singsong voice by my ear, “and it makes you look like an angry rabbit. If you cannot pretend to be out on a happy date with your happy boyfriend, let me sit facing them.”

  I smiled up at him. “Thank you,” I said sweetly.

  “That’s better,” he replied, also smiling, and took his seat. “What would you like?”

  “I would like pancakes,” I said. “But I doubt they serve them.”

  The waitress came up and batted her eyelashes at Joey. She tossed her long hair over her shoulder and drew the notepad from her scalloped apron. Somehow, she made it look like these were preludes to flinging her clothes off. “How can I help you?” she said to Joey. She ignored me.

  “Do you have pancakes?” Joey asked.

  She pouted. “Oh, lo siento. We don’t.”

  “It will have to be tea and macarons, then. Two pots of tea, six of the best macarons.”

  She giggled like this was a witticism. “What kind of tea? We have a menu.” She dipped forward to point out the list.

  While Joey was fending off the waitress, I was watching Tanner and his wife. Separated by the width of a table, the illusion that they belonged together fell apart. She was skittish and vulnerable and brittle, he was two hundred fifty pounds of sangfroid. They looked like a poodle and a gorilla out on a date. Only the money they shared made it seem like they were from the same world.

  Their table was less than ten feet away, but with the street noise and the chatter, it was too far to hear anything. She had already ordered a cocktail, and he was drinking sparkling water. Philbrick took a sip. Then he glanced my way and did a slight double take. He was remembering me from the street, wondering if it was coincidence that we were sitting nearby or if I’d sought out his proximity on purpose. I regarded him noncommittally and then let my eyes drift back to Joey.

  The waitress had finally retreated to plan her next assault. Joey looked around, taking in the other café diners, a man on the sidewalk walking a collie, and two women in heels who trotted daintily past, arm in arm. “Nice neighborhood,” he said quietly.

&nbs
p; “I like Oakland better.”

  “Oakland does have more . . .” He rubbed his thumb against two fingers pensively. “What’s the word I’m looking for? Sweat? Dirt? Grime?”

  “Character. And taste.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know. I don’t mind French cafés and steak houses.”

  I glanced over at Philbrick and found that he was looking directly at me. So was his wife. I blinked once at each of them and then turned to Joey with my best imitation of adoring. “This might proceed very quickly,” I said, smiling tenderly. “It appears I have sparked someone’s interest and someone else’s jealousy.”

  Joey leaned over the table and took my hand. “That doesn’t surprise me.” He lifted his other hand and tucked a stray hair behind my ear. “I’m going to murmur nonsense and you can focus on watching them.” He started off on one of our favorite topics of conversation when things were normal, fantasy time-travel destinations.

  I glanced back at the Philbricks. They were staring hard at their menus. Mrs. Philbrick had a frozen look on her face, and I could see from the immobility of her eyes that she wasn’t reading. Words and thoughts were going through her mind. Mr. Philbrick was tracing a thick finger over the wine list. He put it down and folded his hands together. She imitated him reflexively, placing the menu on the table and taking the folded napkin in her bony fingers. Saying something quietly, she opened the napkin and placed it on her lap. Then a sudden silence around us—a lull in several conversations, a pause in the street traffic—conspired to lift Tanner Philbrick’s voice above the other noise, so that his casual words rang out clearly. “That was before you got fat.” He calmly took a drink of his sparkling water. I watched Mrs. Philbrick accommodate to this. She flinched and her body tightened; she stared at the potted plant next to her. Then she looked down at her lap and put herself back together. It took only a few seconds. A familiar cruelty, then. One she could prepare for, even if she could never entirely protect herself from it. I thought about Troy and Mrs. Frances Peters. These rich people had a lot of practice cutting each other to pieces, I thought. Not so different from the Fish.