Waking the Moon (28 page)

She did, too: wearing a long-sleeved cobalt blue dress of champagne velvet, with a shirred bodice and silver embroidery and silver tassels hanging from the cuffs and hem. She had on the same half-moon earrings she’d worn the first time I met her. Against her throat hung the lunula. Every now and then she’d touch it, as though for reassurance.

“What? This old thing?” Angelica laughed, but her voice sounded odd: as though she were acting at being Angelica, pretending to be more self-assured than she really felt. “He should be here any minute—”

“I
think,”
Annie broke in, her eyes widening, “I
think
he’s here now.”

We all turned as a shadow filled the doorway—a shadow in stained tuxedo shirt and moth-eaten trousers and dirty black wing tips with filthy laces trailing behind them. The bare foot shoved into one of them was so swollen and bruised it looked black.

“Oh, Oliver,” whispered Angelica.

It was Oliver, all right; but his hair was gone. All that beautiful long hair, sheared away until there was nothing left but coarse black stubble. He must have tried to shave his skull—there were bald patches, and angry-looking cuts left by a razor.

I have never seen anyone so appallingly changed. His face was still beautiful, and with his shorn head, the high cheekbones and shadowed eyes gave him a monkish look. But his eyes were wild, and all Oliver’s sweetness, all his sly humor and intelligence were gone from them. He looked sinister and frighteningly out of place, like the victim of some terrible accident who has crawled for miles and miles, finally to collapse on the lawn at a wedding.

For a minute we were all silent. Then Hasel started to clap.

“Way to go, man!” Hasel crossed to the door and drew Oliver into the room, laughing. “‘Bout time you got rid of that hippie hair!”

“Oliver,”
cried Angelica. I thought she was going to burst into tears. “How
could
you?”

Still Oliver said nothing. He looked dazed, and let Hasel lead him to where the rest of us watched in awkward silence. Beside me Baby Joe cringed, and Annie for once was speechless.

“Hope you brought a hat, man,” Hasel went on heedlessly. “It’s
cold
out there—”

Oliver lifted his shorn head and stared at me, his eyes black and huge.

“Sweeney,” he whispered. “Save me, Sweeney.”

Hasel laughed.
“Shave
you? Man, there’s nothing left to shave—”

I walked over to him. “Oliver,” I murmured, and touched his poor ravished scalp. I thought it would feel prickly and rough, but it was soft, the little hairs like velvet. “Jesus. Looks like you got a haircut the hard way.”

Oliver tilted his head. Unexpectedly he flashed one of his crazy smiles, then grabbed me and hugged me to him, held me so tight I couldn’t breathe, so tight I could feel his heart slamming against his chest as though it would fly out and into my body like a bird seeking shelter. I could smell the drugs seeping from his pores, a falsely sweet smell like vitamins, the fresh scents of lavender soap and shaving cream and beneath it all a meaty odor that I knew must come from his swollen foot.

“Sweeney?”

The smell filled my nostrils until I couldn’t breathe, he was dragging me underwater and I was drowning, drowning. I tried to move, I needed to get away, though at the same time I wanted to stay there in his embrace, could feel how he was
willing
me to stay—

Save me, Sweeney …

Abruptly he let go. I fell back, gasping. When I looked up Angelica stood beside him, frowning as she ran her fingers across his head.

“Oh, Oliver. What a mess.” She made a face. “Well, you’re definitely making a
statement.”
She peered behind her, looking for the rest of us. “Should we meet you guys outside?”

Baby Joe shrugged. “I guess we’re ready.” He and Hasel headed for the door. I started after them, then paused.

“Annie?”

Annie shook her head. “I—I don’t think I’m in for this one,” she said slowly, adding in a low voice, “This is starting to look too weird, Sweeney. I’m going back downstairs.”

“You sure?” I said anxiously. Because it
was
looking a little too weird, even for me. There was Hasel, eerily oblivious to Oliver’s misery, and beer-sodden Baby Joe in his ragged suit, ashes trailing him like a bad reputation. And me in my old cowboy boots and Oliver’s shirt; and finally Angelica and Oliver. Angelica radiant as ever; Oliver in his skewed formal wear. We really did look like some deranged wedding party; though whether Oliver was lunatic preacher or runaway groom, I couldn’t guess.

“I’m sure.” Annie squeezed my arm. “And Sweeney—if things get too out of hand, promise you’ll come back inside, okay? Promise you’ll come get me?”

I nodded and watched her leave, then went to help Baby Joe with the beer.

“Okay,” said Hasel. “We’re on the buddy system: everybody got a beer? Let’s go—”

Hasel had discovered a set of ancient rusted fire stairs that cascaded down the outside of the lodge. Probably we could have just gone right out the front door and no one would have bothered us, or even noticed, but something made us furtive. One by one we went down the zigzag steps until we reached the lawn. A faint wind stirred the upper branches of the trees and sent a few dead leaves spinning drunkenly to the ground. I sat down for a few minutes, and tried to calm myself by looking at the stars. The chill air magnified them until they seemed huge, brittle flowers waiting to be torn apart by the wind. Finally I stood.

A few yards downhill waited Hasel and Baby Joe, their heads craned to stare at the sky. We were on the far side of the lodge, facing the woods. Without a sound, Angelica appeared beside me.

“Let’s go that way—” Her voice rang out as she pointed to where the silvery grey lawn flowed into darkness. “Someone told me there’s a pond there.”

“Kinda cold for skinny-dipping,” called Hasel. “But I’ll keep you company!”

He laughed and gave Baby Joe a shove. The two of them loped on down the hill. Angelica nudged me and I looked back to see Oliver. I started to call out to him, but he hurried after Hasel and Baby Joe.

Angelica gave an angry sigh. “I
hate
the way he looks. Why’d he
do
that to his beautiful hair?” She spun on her heel and started down the hill. “Sometimes I really think he’s crazy.”

It was a cold, nearly windless night. What breeze there was smelled of rain-washed stone and mud. When it shifted it brought with it the tang of woodsmoke from the lodge, the harsh scent of marijuana smoke. There was still no moon. I understood nothing of lunar phases, else I would have known it was the darkest quarter, the fourth of four nights when the moon is absent from the sky. But that only meant the stars shone all the brighter.

We turned before we reached the trees. We were in rank pasture now, bordered by a tumbledown stone wall covered with matted clumps of kudzu and wild grapevines.

I slowed my steps, wondering how Angelica could walk so surely and quickly among the stones and clumps of burdock. But she merely lifted her long skirt and went on. Occasionally Hasel’s slow stoned laugh floated back to us, or Baby Joe’s. Angelica walked alone, mad at Oliver, I thought, or maybe she just wanted to be by herself.

Suddenly she stopped. She lifted her arms and let go of the ends of her skirt. A few yards away Oliver and Hasel and Baby Joe halted and stared at her. Angelica turned to me, smiling.

“Here we are, Sweeney.”

We were at the top of a wide shallow depression, a sort of bowl in the surrounding meadowland. The ground was covered with very short dry grass, as though it had been mowed or heavily grazed. Everywhere myriad tiny stones were strewn like the stones in a gravel pit, and the fragile stalks of burdock and milkweed rustled softly where we walked.

At the center of the hollow was a small perfectly round man-made pond, what in farm country they call a tank. It was like a hole cut in the fabric of the night, and so black that I was surprised to see stars floating in it, innocent as lilies. Certainly it had been put there for watering cattle, though there were no cows anywhere that I could see, and the Euclidean symmetry of the pool gave it a strange, almost supernatural appearance. It seemed unlikely that it would be spring-fed, and I saw no streams running into it. But it didn’t have that neglected-fishbowl smell I associated with small ponds. Instead the water smelled sweet, wonderfully sweet: like spring rain and apple blossom and oranges, charged like a storm ready to break. It smelled so insanely wonderful that I jumped back from its edge as though I’d seen moray eels there waiting to tear me into ribbons.

“Sweeney? What’s the matter?”

Angelica stood on the bank and watched me. She had removed her sandals and was probing the black water with a toe. The sweet fragrance was so strong that my hair stood on end—not just the hair on my scalp or neck but
everywhere
—every filament of my being a wick ready to burst into flame.

“Sweeney?”

About her head runnels of violet light streamed like water. I stared at her, as frightened by her matter-of-fact tone as by everything else. “What’s wrong, Sweeney?”

“Hey, ladies. Wait for us!”

Behind me I heard shuffling footsteps, Hasel’s soft drawling laugh. Out of nowhere rose a strong wind. The cropped grass at my feet rippled, and dust rose and wheeled in grey clouds.

“Sweeney—could you help me with this?”

In front of me Angelica stood with her back to the pool. She was pulling up her dress, but it had caught on a spike of dried milkweed. “Sweeney—?”

She was only inches away from me, her arms upraised, hair a long tangle of dark gold. In the starlight her skin was so pale it was as though her body was a rift in the night.

“Sweeney: please. Take the dress.”

Her voice was a whisper but also a command. I gathered her hem between my fingers and raised it. Warm velvet spilled over my knuckles like foam, and with it her scent, sweet oranges and sandalwood rushing into me like a drug. I fell to my knees, leaned forward until my lips brushed the skin just below her thigh. I kissed her, pressed my mouth against her flesh, until I could taste sweet salt and oranges, the soft pressure of her skin giving way beneath my teeth and the velvet of her skin softer than anything. The folds of her dress slipped from my fingers and I started to fall forward, pulling her down with me. But then her voice rang out sharply.

“Sweeney.”

I stumbled to my feet, cringing as though I had been struck.

“My dress.”

This time I pulled it up and over her—thighs, groin, belly, breasts, chin—all in one swift motion. Before I could drop it Angelica snatched the dress from me and tossed it aside.

“There now,” she murmured.

I crouched at her feet, my hands clutching at dead grass. Above me Angelica cast no shadow in the pale starlight. She was naked, her skin smooth as molten silver, nothing to show that she’d ever worn any clothes at all. Save only this:

A crescent like the sleeping moon above her breasts, its spars reaching toward her shoulders and the whole thing glowing as though it had just been drawn from the flame. I heard a sharp intake of breath and Baby Joe’s nervous giggle, then Hasel’s awed voice.

“Fucking A. A fucking
goddess,
man—”

But from Oliver, nothing. Not a sound, not a breath. I wanted to look back at them, to reassure myself I wasn’t alone; but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but stare up at Angelica, my hands crushing the dead grass against my palms.

For a long time she stood, utterly silent, her slanted green eyes glowing. It was as though the rest of us weren’t even there. As if, like Magda Kurtz, she had walked or been pushed through some gap in the world and now breathed a different air than we did, finer, rarer, infinitely more precious. About her face her long hair lifted and flowed in dark coils. Her eyes were serene, her lips parted so that I could glimpse her even white teeth. Upon her breast the lunula sent shafts of pure white light streaming into the darkness.

Without a word she turned from us, the slope of her hips and buttocks catching a glint of starlight before they faded into shadow again. Very slowly she paced to the water’s edge, and, as we watched, she walked right into it, not even hesitating at its brink, walked straight and slow as though drawn by an invisible rope toward the center of the pool. With each step the water rose higher and higher, lapping at her ankles, then her thighs and flanks, finally sliding up across her rib cage to touch her breasts with shadow. Her body was swallowed by black water like the moon in eclipse, until at last only her head remained, her hair flowing ‘round her. I had a glimpse of her eyes, hard and cold and shining, and a softly glowing core of light where the lunula lay upon her breast.

Then she was gone. Ripples spread from the center of the pool, expanded until they touched its shallow banks and disappeared, one by one; and all was still again.

I heard a whimper, tentative footsteps. I turned and saw Baby Joe and Hasel huddled together, their awestruck gaze fixed on the placid water. A few paces behind them stood Oliver. His face was utterly implacable. I could have read anything I wanted in his staring eyes—terror, relief, amazement, even complete indifference.

“Oliver,” I called hoarsely, not caring that he’d hear how scared I was. I stood, my feet scrabbling against pebbles and dead grass. “Oliver, let’s go—”

His expression changed. Like water flowing into a glass, some of the old Oliver seemed to fill him. He blinked and, for the first time, noticed me.

“Sweeney.” His voice was frail and tremulous, an old woman’s voice. “Thanks for coming.” He stepped toward me, and there was something ghastly about his smile, as though it, too, had been stolen from someone else. “I didn’t think they’d let you come, I didn’t know you were here—”

He reached for me, and when his hand closed about mine, I cried out: the flesh was so dry and loose it was like bark shifting beneath my touch.

“Don’t fear me, Sweeney.” His voice rose as I pulled away from him. “It’s still me, Sweeney, it’s still me,
please don’t leave me
—”