The Best of Lucius Shepard (93 page)

—Oh?
What did you think?

—I
think you’re damn sexy for a woman’s gotta be in her fifties.

—Sixty-one,
she said. I’m sixty-one.

—Okay.
A woman in her sixties. And Carl, how old is he?

—Carl.
Her smile had a fond quality. Carl’s ageless.

—Squire,
too. He ageless?

—In
a way.

She
crossed to the bed with a three-step stroll and laid herself out, back against
the headboard, arms spread on the pillows. Her pubic hair was trimmed to a neat
strip and she had a long waist to go with her trophy chest. She reminded me of
this naked woman in a painting one of my high school teachers had prattled on
about, some rich horny bitch from another century lying on a couch and looking
at you with a similar scornful, seductive attitude.

—If
you want to come over here with me, it’s all right, she said.

—I’m
fine where I am.

—Leeli
won’t mind, that’s what’s worrying you.

—You
don’t know nothing about that, believe me.

She
shrugged, smiled.

—Why
would you even want me to come over there? I asked. We ain’t got nothing going
on.

—I
like sex.

—So
do I, but....

—Oh
I see! You have to like the girl first. You require an emotional attachment.

I
didn’t care for her mocking me and I was tempted to fuck her knock-kneed, but
that would have been playing with her deck. I don’t have to like her all that
much, I said. Helps if I like her some, though.

Her
smile cut itself a wider curve. You don’t like me a tiny bit?

—I
ain’t even sure what the fuck you are. Whyn’t you clear that up for me?

The
rain came harder, spitting through the window screen, drops darkening a wedge
of floor beneath it. Some giant’s stomach grumbled and the light dimmed.

—You
gonna shoot me if I don’t tell you?

—That
wasn’t my intention.

—No?
Yet you come in here with my gun on display.

—Just
making a point.

—The
point being, you might be prepared to shoot me.

—You
want me to shoot you? You keep pissing me off, maybe I will. Don’t seem like it
would affect you that much, anyway. Or is it just the boys who’s good at taking
bullets?

This
was the first real conversation I’d had with Ava. I’d seen that on the outside
she was a cool, collected sort. Now I was coming to think coolness ran deep in
her, that instead of a heart, a little refrigeration unit was humming in her
chest, pumping out frosty air. She seemed like a lotta women I’d known who’d
survived bar fights that passed for marriages. Women who felt you couldn’t do
nothing more to them than had been done already. Yet I didn’t accept that
picture of her. She was too steady, too unconcerned. I had a notion that her
steadiness came from a perception of my weaknesses. Like she was X-raying me,
reading all my flaws.

—You’d
like me to tell you a story, she said. Is that it?

—A
true story. I don’t want no fairy tales.

—All
right.

She
proceeded to whip one off about how she and Carl had been dating back in the
60s while she was in high school and he was in college, and they had gone down
to State Road 44 to look at the flying saucers and have sex, and a saucer had
abducted them, worked some weird change on them both, and set them back on
earth for God knows what purpose, maybe just as test subjects, and they were
prodded this way and that by alien agencies—powerful ones that penetrated every
layer of society, even the FBI—and they were always being put in strange
situations, and this was why they had been at the house in the dunes when Leeli
and I showed up.

I
was about to ask if Squire was an alien agent, one who was doing the prodding,
when she launched into a second story, saying Carl and Squire had been hybrid
clone babies, grown from human eggs and alien juice extracted from a dead UFO
pilot, and she’d been in charge of them when the government decided the
experiment wasn’t producing any valuable result and decided to kill the two
boys, so Ava, with the help of highly placed friends, had run off with them,
and they’d been pursued for a time, but then the government changed their minds
and thought the thing to do was let the boys run, acquire life experiences, and
see if they developed into a crop worth harvesting. They lived in constant fear
of judgment, she said. Never knowing if the government would change their minds
again. She was worried that Carl shooting the Hojo’s manager might be the last
straw and the government would send their killers.

I
wondered if she could’ve tapped into my thoughts of the night before and
devised these stories to suit my tabloid fantasies. Why’d you tell two stories?
I asked. You told me just the one, I might’ve believed it.

—You’re
not a believer, Ava said. You’re a doubter. Don’t matter what I say, you’re
gonna pick at it.

The
rain had ceased and you could hear everything dripping. A bluejay began
jattering and a dog started going crazy at the sound. Four-legged somethings,
probably squirrels, skittered across the roof. All those noises, it was like
the world was surfacing to snatch a breath before the rain went to drowning it
again.

—Carl’s
my son, Ava said. He’s the spitting image of his daddy. He’s dead...Carl
Senior. He was killed in a car wreck right before we was about to marry. I was
already pregnant. Carl was born retarded and he’s got lotta other problems.
There’s this disease makes his nerves not work right. He can’t hardly feel a
thing. It’s killing him. I don’t know how much longer he’s got. Not long, I
expect. Squire, he’s just this fella I met in a bar over in Boynton Beach. He
keeps me happy and he’s simple enough to relate to Carl. Carl Senior’s daddy
worked for NASA. One of the directors. Even though I never married his son, he
was kind to us. When he died he left a trust for me and Carl. The house where
you met us? He had it built for us. Pulled some strings so we could have
access. The government don’t care about the land no more and his friends make
sure people leave us be when we’re there. Ava crossed her legs and clasped her
hands behind her head. That fly any higher for you?

—You’re
a piece of fucking work, I’ll give you that, I said.

Ava
grinned. You’ll never know ‘til you cut you a slice.

—What
the hell you hanging around with us for, you got all this money?

—I
like Leeli. I like you, too. Different, though. I was enjoying myself with
y’all until yesterday.

—The
thing gets me, I said after studying on things a patch, is how come you don’t
seem so worried about your son or your old boyfriend or your experimental
subject, whichever he is...about him committing murder.

—Oh
we’ll be all right. I got confidence in you.

—Now
that’s a lie.

—You
got us outa Ocala, didn’t you? With your experience in these matters and my
money, we’re gonna do fine. I was thinking about Mexico.

—Mexico?

—Uh-huh.
I was thinking I’d charter a plane and we’d lay low for a few and then jump on
over. After Leeli finishes her time with me, the two of you can skedaddle.
Twenty thousand’ll go a long way in Mexico.

—Whyn’t
you just call your bigwig friends to haul your ass outa this?

—Maybe
I will, things don’t go well. But you know how it is, Maceo. You got a favor in
the bank, you want to hold back from using it long as you can.

My
thoughts skipped back and forth from story to story. I didn’t believe any of
them, but I kind of believed them all. I suspected there was a spoonful of
truth in each, or that each was a stand-in double for a truth she hadn’t
spoken.

—It
don’t matter who I am, who Carl and Squire are, she said. We still hafta deal
with the problem.

Trying
to decide what to believe and what to do about it tied knots in my thought
strings. Ava lay grinning at me, looking from the neck down like a dessert
tray. I gave myself a nudge toward the bed, pretending to buy the proposition
that if I tore one off with her, I’d have a better feel for the situation. Old
hayseed philosophers gathered in the boiler room of my brain, swapped round a
bottle, and spewed dipshit wisdoms: You can’t say how a peach tastes ‘til the
juice runs down your chin. Staring at the groceries don’t tell you who the cook
is. Video footage of a naked, sucked-dry corpse, its mouth wrenched open in a
final agony, was playing in the den, with graphics reading ALIEN EMBRACE KILLS
REDNECK LOVER. I stayed where I was, speculating pro and con upon what I might
be missing.

The
door shrieked as someone shoved against it. Squire squeezed on in, followed by
Carl. Squire glared at Ava, at me, and Carl beamed. His bandage was soaking
wet, smudged with dirty finger marks.

—Hi,
honey, Ava said.

—That
man went for food’s coming down the drive, Squire said.

—That’s
nice. Soon we can have us a feast! She patted the bed, an invitation, and
Squire, good dog that he was, laid down beside her. Carl gazed at the chair I
was on for a second, then plunked himself down on the floor next to the bed.
Squire began toying with Ava’s nipples, kissing her neck. The rain swept back
in. I heard a clattering from the front of the lodge, a door slamming, but I
didn’t turn from watching Squire and Ava. The rainy noise seemed to be
tightening the space around us, compressing and heating the air. I told myself
the minute Squire started taking off his clothes, I was gone, but there was
something mesmerizing about Ava, about the lush, lazy strain of her belly, the
slow surges of her hips, and the way her eyes would graze me every so often. I
felt the cold pull of her. The sexy warmth of her surface was a dream and
beneath lay an undertow that sucked all the swimmers who’d strayed out past the
bar into whatever deep lightless place her story really sprung from. I had a
glimmering of how it would be to go with the flow, to stroke hard and arrow
down into her dark, to reach the great secret at the bottom, whether toothy maw
or golden kingdom, it wasn’t much important, because you were bound to be part
of it, and as Squire’s fingers traipsed between her thighs and her hips lifted,
I thought what I was feeling now was closer to the truth than anything she’d
said, and knew that she was willful and careless and irresistibly strong. The
instant I understood this, however, I declared bullshit on it. I was watching a
dirty movie, I told myself, and not falling down no rabbit hole.

—Fuck
y’all doing? Rickey had popped his head in and was gawking at the bed, where
Squire and Ava hadn’t missed a beat.

—Notice
how the entire school turns as one, Carl said happily.

—Hallelujah!
I said. The single mind’s directing.

Rickey
slid himself in past the stuck door. I could see he was hoping to get in on the
act, but was all puffed up and ready to be outraged in case he couldn’t.
Goddamn it! he said, and stepped over to the window,getting a side angle on the
center ring. I don’t want no weird shit going on in my house!

—God,
no! I said. There’s never been no weird shit like people fucking and people
watching going on out here. Not in this holy temple.

Rickey
might have said something back, but his mouth stopped working, because right
then Ava opened her legs and Squire started wrestling off his jeans.

—That’s
Ava there showing her rosy, I said to Rickey. Squire, he’s the boy ‘bout to
have some fun. Down there in the front row, that’s Carl.

—In
concert, said Carl. In simple harmony and balance.