The Shape of Desire

by Sharon Shinn

  He might even phone me while I’m in Springfield, because he has managed to turn human and call me at least briefly every day this week. He sounds tired and discouraged, and he still has not managed to find William, but he is alive and he misses me. Those are the two things I care about most.

  “I’ll be over at Ellen’s till about four or five today,” I tell him Sunday morning when I hear from him. “I’ll have my cell phone if you need me.”

  “All right. But listen. My own cell phone is almost out of juice, and I haven’t had a chance to recharge. So don’t worry if you don’t hear from me.”

  Don’t worry if I don’t hear from you? Are you kidding? But I don’t say it. “Where are you?” I respond instead.

  “Back in Babler. I keep thinking that’s where he’ll go next.”

  “Well—be careful.” I try not to say the words as often as I think them, or our conversation would consist of nothing else.

  “I will. You, too. Love you.”

  And he’s gone again. Before I cradle the phone, I take a deep breath over the receiver, as if some portion of his spirit has wafted through the wires and I can inhale it, internalize it, make it part of my own soul. Then I hang up and return to the job of chopping up lettuce and fruit.

  There are about nine cars in front of Ellen’s house when I arrive a few minutes before noon. I recognize a few as belonging to my coworkers—Grant, Kathleen, Marquez, Frank, and the new girl in creative—but the rest belong to mystery guests. Well, I’m pretty sure the Jeep is owned by Ellen’s boyfriend, Henry, and the blue pickup might belong to one of her ex-husbands. I tuck my head down against an insulting wind and hurry inside.

  Ellen lives in an old two-story farmhouse that she’s slowly rehabbed during the past ten years. Most of the ground level is now one open space—kitchen, dining room, family room all unfolding into each other, delineated by different floor coverings, some half-walls, and a few weight-bearing pillars. The back wall of the family room is primarily weathered gray stone, brightened by a roaring blaze in a huge fireplace and the big flat-screen TV above it. The adjoining sidewall, made entirely of sliding-glass doors and tall windows, overlooks an enormous redwood deck and a wild backyard that quickly gives way to tangled woodland. I see Henry hunched over the gas grill on the deck, cooking burgers outside in the cold. He’s all bundled up and his gloved hands are a little clumsy on the tongs, but he doesn’t look at all unhappy. Ellen says he’ll barbecue in a blizzard, so he certainly won’t be slowed by a little chill.

  The rest of Ellen’s house, like Ellen herself, is brassy, colorful, and charming. The furniture tends to be a little worn and thickly cushioned, chairs and sofas you feel like you could sink into if you wanted to spend a whole day reading. Most pieces are upholstered in red and rust and dark purple, with gaily patterned throws adding spots of vivid color. The living room is covered by rich chocolate carpet, the dining room gleams with honey-colored hardwood, and the kitchen floor is white ceramic tile speckled with black and red. An enormous black Maine coon cat patrols the family room, investigating strangers and their interesting plates of food. I know Ellen has at least two more cats, but they’re nervous or antisocial, since they’re nowhere in evidence.

  There might be ten or twelve people milling about in these three rooms, some standing and talking, some sitting and munching, and I do a quick scan to see who I know and who I don’t. Turns out I’d correctly identified the cars out front. I feel a moment’s disappointment when I realize Grant hasn’t brought Caroline—not that I thought he would, I just figured it would be pretty entertaining if he had. But no, he’s talking to Marquez, gesturing with a little more energy than he usually displays, and I think maybe he’s already started on the beer.

  Then I realize it’s not Grant talking to Marquez, it’s an African-American man I don’t recognize. Huh, I think. I wonder if this is one of the guests Ellen invited from her church or the neighborhood. I wonder if she’s trying to fix Marquez up with somebody she knows. Then I spot another stranger, also black, a pretty young woman sipping a margarita and listening with polite interest to something Frank is telling her. I’d guess she’s five or six years younger than I am, tall and slim, with short springy hair that makes the most adorable cloud of curls around her face. She’s wearing jeans and an old Cardinals jersey with Kurt Warner’s name on it, so I have no doubt that she and Ellen first bonded over football.

  I also have no doubt that Ellen has invited her over to meet Grant. I can hardly hide my smile as I carry my salad over to the kitchen counter where about a dozen side dishes have been lined up in their Crock-Pots and Tupperware containers. Ellen is putting out paper plates and plastic forks, and she gives me a quick harassed look.

  “I don’t suppose you brought any ice, did you?”

  “No, do you want me to go get some?”

  “Nah, I’ll send Henry out when he’s done with the burgers. Or you can drink your soda warm.”

  I nod at the woman patiently listening to Frank, not the world’s most gifted conversationalist. “Even by your standards, this is hardly subtle,” I say.

  Her eyes follow mine and then flick to Marquez. She seems annoyed. “Well, I thought she’d be perfect for Grant, because she loves sports. And she’s funny. And look at her—she’s hot! But he hasn’t even glanced in her direction. But that rat Marquez. He glommed on to her brother the minute they walked in the door, and they haven’t stopped talking since.”

  “See? You are a matchmaking genius. At least someone may get a phone number out of the afternoon.”

  “That’s fine, but that’s not the way it was supposed to work.”

  “People love who they love, Ellen,” I say softly. “Even when they shouldn’t.”

  Now she frowns at me, but her heart isn’t really in it. “Not if I can help it.”

  “That’s the point,” I say. “You can’t.”

  There’s a surge of sound from the living room, and we realize we’ve missed kickoff. “Hell and damnation,” Ellen says. She tosses the last of the paper goods on the counter and pushes through the press of people so she can stand in front of the television. The Cardinals have elected to be the receiving team, but they don’t make it to the twenty-yard line on the return. A few people laugh, and Ellen frowns, then looks around the room for support. “Come on, Jazz!” she calls, waving to the African-American girl. “Someone has to help me cheer them on.”

  I hurry to catch up with her as I head toward Ellen’s side. “Your name is Jazz?” I say. “That’s about the coolest thing ever.”

  She laughs. “It’s Jasmine, actually, but you can see how I got the nickname.”

  “I’m Maria. I work with Ellen.”

  “I think she’s talked about you.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me at all.”

  Fairly quickly, the partygoers separate into two camps, those who love football and those who have no idea why we curse when the Cardinals’ first possession ends at fourth and three. Secretly I am rooting for the Rams, but truthfully, I don’t really care who wins. I touch the cell phone tucked into my back pocket, which I have set to vibrate. Nothing really matters except the news I might learn through this medium. Everything else is just trumpets and timpani, the circus, the parade, the distractions that escort you through the day.

  Henry steps through the sliding-glass doors, bringing in a blast of cold air. “Who wants burgers?” he asks, carrying a platter to the kitchen.

  The groups realign a little as some people fill their plates right away and others wait for the next commercial break. Grant has drifted into the living room with the sports fans and settled on the floor not far from me, but he still doesn’t show any interest in Jazz. Her brother and Marquez, on the other hand, have drawn into a little alcove off the dining room and taken seats in a couple of ladder-back chairs. If anything, they seem more absorbed in each other as the hours go by, and even less interested in the event that ostensibly brought us all together. I think I’ll be really ple
ased if Marquez, and not Grant, is the one who gets a relationship out of this afternoon. But then, I was never particularly outraged by the notion that Grant might be involved with Caroline.

  And I certainly don’t want him to express an opinion about the person I have chosen to love.

  The afternoon filters by pleasantly enough—certainly more pleasantly than it would have if I was at home staring at the clock. I divide my time between the sports enthusiasts and the socializers and eat about seven times my body weight in calories. For a time, I sit at the dining room table with Kathleen and Frank and the new girl, doing a solemn taste test on the five separate desserts that have been supplied. All of us rate the chocolate-dipped strawberries as the best, but opinions are sharply divided when it comes to the chocolate chip brownies, the lemon meringue pie, the raspberry gelato, and the fudge. I have to admit that fudge and raspberry gelato, when consumed simultaneously, almost supersede the strawberries for excellence.

  By halftime, a few people start to trickle out, and when the game ends around three thirty, only Jazz, her brother, and I are left. Even Henry had to go during the third quarter, but since the Cardinals were leading the Rams by twenty points, Ellen couldn’t come up with an argument that would convince him to stay.

  “That was fun—thanks for inviting us,” Jazz says as she stands by the door, buttoning her coat.

  Her brother waits beside her and, for the first time, I get a closer look at him. His features are stronger than hers, not as pretty, but he has an easy smile and a relaxed slouch that give him an agreeable air. He’s wearing what might be a full-carat diamond in his right ear, and it’s a striking mirror-white against his dark skin. He’s about a foot taller than Ellen, and he reaches out to flick her on the nose as if she’s a child. “Next time those Arizona boys won’t have it so easy,” he says.

  She shoves him playfully in the arm. “You just wait,” she says. “Cardinals will be back in the Super Bowl.”

  After a little more joshing, they’re out the door. “I’ll help you clean up,” I say, already beginning to gather plates and cups and napkins.

  “That would make you an angel,” she says, putting her hands on her hips and glancing around. “You’d think I had a bunch of refugees here, instead of civilized folks who know how to use trash cans and bathrooms.”

  I snort with laughter and continue gathering up debris. This is the reason I don’t have parties. Well, this and because I never want people to be hanging around when Dante shows up unexpectedly. I pull out my phone and check it to see if, in all the noise and commotion, I missed a call. But no. No messages.

  Ellen busies herself in the kitchen, organizing the mess in there, while I make a more determined attack on the dining room. Once that’s in order, I’ll move on to the family room, and then break out the broom and the Swiffer. Or the shop vac. I hear the sports commentators dissecting the game and offering predictions on the one that will shortly follow. I’m too lazy to look for the remote control, and I figure Ellen might want to watch the second game anyway, so I don’t bother to turn off the TV.

  I’m kneeling in the living room, trying to retrieve a beer bottle from behind the red sofa, when urgent music from the monitor presages some change in programming, and a dead-serious anchorman’s voice comes on. “We’re here with breaking news from Babler State Park,” he says.

  I whirl around so fast that I slam my hip into Ellen’s metal coffee table and yelp with pain. The television has jumped to the bright hues of the news set, and a generically handsome man is frowning down at me. “Police say there’s been another attack in Babler Park, where there was a death just three weeks ago,” he says. “Investigators determined that the death in that first attack was caused by a wild animal, though they have not yet located the animal in question. And now we learn that there’s been another incident today—less than a half hour ago—although fortunately this time, the victim was merely wounded. Reporter Brody Westerbrook is on the scene at Babler. Brody, what can you tell us?”

  I come slowly to my feet, mesmerized, terrified, as Brody Westerbrook’s features fill the screen. He’s standing outside in the sunny but chilly-looking park, wearing an overcoat and a pair of earmuffs, and holding a microphone.

  “Mike, yes, a forty-six-year-old woman was attacked here in the park around three p.m., but this time the news is good. She’s a lifelong jogger who always brings safety gear with her, so when the animal leapt at her, she was able to shoot pepper spray in its face. She also activated the siren function of her keychain. She said she was surprised when it didn’t run right away—it came after her again, and this time it was successful in grabbing hold of her left arm and giving her a pretty deep wound. But fortunately she was able to snatch up a large stick and fend the animal off until help arrived.”

  “And help did arrive?” the newscaster asks.

  “Yes—there were two marathoners nearby who heard her siren and came to investigate. They also called the police on their cell phones. Not until they arrived, they say, did the creature slink away.”

  “Brody, you keep saying ‘the animal’ and ‘the creature.’ Do we know what kind of animal it was?”

  Brody glances at a sheet of paper in his hands, though I can’t imagine he needs a refresher to answer this question. On any other day, with any other newscast, I would be annoyed by the self-important, overly dramatic quality of the anchorman’s questions and Brody’s answers. But with this story, I am utterly rapt. If I had plates or bottles in my hands, I have dropped them. I am frozen to the carpet in Ellen’s living room, aware of nothing except those faces and the words they are producing.

  “Mike, we don’t,” Brody answers. “The victim was understandably distraught, and police say she couldn’t provide any detailed information about her attacker. The man and the woman who came to her aid offered somewhat conflicting descriptions. One of them said it was a wolf, the other one said it looked more like a bear—”

  “A bear,” Mike repeats incredulously. “I wouldn’t think it would be possible to confuse the two animals.”

  “Right, but you have to understand it was pretty chaotic, with the victim screaming and the rescuers yelling and swinging sticks that they’d gathered along the way.”

  “What’s the status of the woman who was attacked?”

  “Her left arm was pretty badly mauled and she seems to have lost a lot of blood. A paramedic team arrived a few moments ago and she’s being taken to an area hospital. We’ll definitely keep viewers apprised of her condition.”

  “What about this animal?” Mike says. “Wasn’t it a wolf that killed a man there at Babler Park just a few weeks ago?”

  “Yes—at least, that’s what medical examiners ultimately concluded,” Brody replies. “Again—and I admit it seems strange—there seemed to be some confusion over what kind of creature was actually responsible for that death.”

  “I assume police and park rangers are on the scene,” Mike says. “Do they believe that they’ll finally be able to find and contain this animal that’s responsible for so many attacks?”

  I stiffen and put a hand to my mouth. This, after all, is the question that I dread. Or really, the answer.

  “Yes, in fact, there are whole teams of rangers and animal-control specialists fanning out from the attack site even as we speak. There are at least three K9 units on hand, and I saw a dozen other officers, some on foot, some on horseback. I think they’ve got a real chance at catching this creature, whatever it is, this afternoon.”

  I suck in my breath so hard it sounds like I’ve been punched. Dante, Dante, get out of there now, I think, willing my words to fly through the cold, indifferent air and magically fill him with enough unease that he abandons his search for his brother. I think about calling his cell, but he is surely in animal shape by now, and either nowhere near his phone or incapable of answering it if it rings. They are hunting William down, they will find him, they will kill him, and if you are anywhere near him, they will kill you, too.<
br />
  “I assume they’re armed with rifles and other hunting weapons,” the announcer says.

  “Yes—some of the animal-control people are carrying tranquilizer guns, but realistically—” Brody breaks off and turns his head to listen to the barely audible sound of someone else speaking in a rapid voice. When he whips back toward the camera, his face is filled with excitement. “Mike, we just learned that the rangers believe they’ve located the animal a mile or so from here. We’re going to follow in the news helicopter and see if we can bring you live footage of the capture.”

  For a moment, the television goes black, presumably as Brody’s cameraman shuts off his equipment and goes scampering after the reporter. The anchorman’s face snaps back onto the screen a second later.

  “There you have it, Channel 5’s exclusive coverage of the events at Babler State Park, where police and other officials believe they have tracked the wild animal responsible for several area deaths—”

  I must have made a sound. I might have been making sounds for the past ten minutes—choked, desperate noises somewhere between grunts and wails. I am absolutely incapable of gauging what I’m doing, where I’m standing, what else in the world might be happening. All I can focus on, all that exists, is that brightly colored screen hanging on the wall, my portal into hell.

  A hand on my forearm makes me scream aloud and whirl around like a trapped animal. It takes me a second to identify Ellen’s face, to remember I am in Ellen’s house.

  “Maria, what the hell is going on?” she demands. The concern in her voice softens the words.

  I shake my head and try to come up with words. “On the television—they said—”

  She glances at the screen, but it’s gone to a commercial featuring some inane piece of dancing candy. “They said what?” she says.

  “In the park—there’s this woman—Brody is there, Brody Westerbrook—”

  Her face sharpens. She knows that name, and she can put it together from there. “There’s been another attack? And the news guys are there? They’re at Forest Park?”