Waking the Moon (33 page)

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I went to Rossetti Hall. My key still opened the front door, but when I got upstairs to my own room the lock had been changed. It was so early there was no one in the hall or lounge to ask about it, but I didn’t want to stick around and risk running into Francis Connelly or something worse.

I hurried up another flight to Angelica’s room. I banged on the door, but there was no answer. It was too soon for them to have returned from West Virginia; at least that’s what I hoped. I slunk outside through the back door, feeling like I had a big black X on my forehead.

It was just like my first day at the Divine, that first awful day before I met Oliver and Angelica. The few people I saw paid no attention to me at all. I might have wondered if they even actually
saw
me, except that an immaculately dressed family hurrying past on their way to the Shrine gave me disapproving looks. I must have looked exactly like what they were praying to be delivered from. I dug into my pockets, fished around until I found a few wadded bills and some change, and went to the Shrine to scavenge breakfast.

I ended up spending most of the day there. I was afraid to venture back out onto the Strand. I hid in a corner booth and drank endless cups of coffee, bought a pack of cigarettes and rationed them, one every twenty minutes. I even slept for a little while, my head pillowed on the Formica tabletop, until the clatter of dishes and silverware woke me. When I looked up I saw the old round schoolhouse clock at the end of the room, its red second hand sweeping briskly along. Four o’clock: time for tea. I shoved my cigarettes into my pocket and went in search of Baby Joe.

Dusk was already falling, barren trees throwing long shadows beneath the street-lamps. In Baby Joe’s room a light was on. I was afraid to go to the front door, so I threw pebbles at his window until he peered out. He mimed surprise and relief, raising his hands and shaking his head, then motioned for me to go around to the back of the building. I crept through a hedge of overgrown box trees until I saw Baby Joe leaning against the dorm’s ivy-covered wall, holding open a fire door with one hand. In the other he held my battered knapsack.

“Hey,
hija.
I was starting to worry when I found this in your room but no Sweeney. You in trouble?”

“Something like that.”

I followed him to his room. He shut and locked the door, and I groaned with relief. Baby Joe hugged me awkwardly, his stolid face creased with concern.

“What happened,
hija?
Me and Hasel went looking for you, but you were gone.”

I perched myself on the edge of his bed. Except for the fine layer of ash over everything, Baby Joe’s room was disturbingly neat. A Royal Upright typewriter sat on the old wooden desk, surrounded by carefully arranged stacks of paper and textbooks. Issues of
Punk Magazine
and
New York Rocker
and
The Paris Review
were lined up against one wall, and I knew if I opened one of his bureau drawers I’d see his tired white T-shirts and black nylon socks stored with just as much solicitude. It all made me feel incredibly disgusting.

Baby Joe didn’t notice or didn’t care. He cracked open the window, reached out onto the sill, and withdrew two bottles of Old Bohemian. “Here,
hija.
Where the hell’d you go?”

I told him everything that had happened since we fled back to the Orphic Lodge. Baby Joe leaned against his desk, giggling softly in disbelief and laughing out loud when I told him about the
Benandanti’s
portal.

“No shit? One of their
puertas?
You got
cojones,
Sweeney!”

But when I mentioned Francis Connelly he shook his head.

“Francis X. Connelly. Someday I’m gonna take him out—” He pointed a finger at me and cocked his thumb.
“Bang.
I’d do it now, but they might revoke my scholarship.”

I told him about watching Magda Kurtz being shoved through the door in Garvey Hall, about Angelica’s crescent-shaped necklace and how I wasn’t sure if she was working with Balthazar Warnick and the
Benandanti
or against them.

“Probably against them. Angie, you know Angie is smart but not that kind of smart,” said Baby Joe. “These student
brujos,
they get kind of cocky. I’ve seen it with my brother’s friends; they think because they’re tapped for the
Benandanti
they can do anything. Fly, walk on water, kill a big cow with a charm bracelet. But Warnick? I wouldn’t fuck with Warnick, I tell you that.”

At last I finished. My beer was still half-full, but all of a sudden I couldn’t stomach any more. I buried my face in my hands, and started to cry.

“Hey. It’s okay—” Baby Joe sat on the bed next to me and patted my back. “You can stay here tonight, you can move all your stuff here if you want,
hija,
it’s okay—”

“It’s
not
okay! They’re kicking me out, my parents are gonna kill me, and Christ, Baby Joe, what is going
on
here? Where’s Angelica? Where’s Oliver? What—”

I swallowed, my voice fading to a whisper. “What we saw in the field—what the hell was
that?”

Baby Joe shrugged. “You tell me,” he said softly. “But these
Benandanti,
they do a lot of crazy shit—”

“But
that
didn’t have anything to do with the
Benandanti. That
was something else. Angelica’s gotten all hyped up about some weird goddess cult; she’s been reading all these books and talking about the second coming of Kali or Ishtar, or—”

I punched the mattress furiously. “It’s fucking nuts.”

“Ishtar, huh?” Baby Joe reached for my beer, drank it thoughtfully. “Well, at least she fits the job description.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Who’s laughing?” He finished the beer and leaned back on the bed. “But man, you are right, this is some crazy shit Barbie-girl has gotten herself into. And you don’t know where she is?”

“I don’t think anyone knows where she is. She must have taken off into the woods. And unless she wants to end up with Magda Kurtz, she better stay there.”

For a few minutes we sat in silence. Outside, the Shrine bells tolled five-thirty. It was already full dark. All around us, people would be getting ready for the start of another week. I took a deep breath, then asked the question I’d been waiting to ask.

“What happened to Oliver?”

“Oliver?” Baby Joe regarded me through slitted black eyes. “Oliver’s here.”

“Here?”
I looked around quickly, but Baby Joe went on, “Not here in my room—I mean he’s back here in D.C. They brought him to the ER in West Virginia last night, but I guess he was okay ‘cause they just looked him over and discharged him. He came back with Warnick this morning. Hasel heard them talking, they were supposed to take him to Providence for observation—”

“Providence Hospital?”

He nodded. “To the psychiatric wing.”

“Don’t they have to get the family’s permission before they do that?”

“Hija,
Warnick
is
his family. All the
Benandanti
—they come first, they take care of their own—”

“But Oliver’s not crazy.”

“Normal people don’t try to cut their dicks off with a Swiss Army knife.”

“Okay, okay.”

He lit a cigarette and smoked pensively for a moment before saying, “You know, that’s what they used to do.”

“Who? The
Benandanti?”

“No. Your goddess-worshipers. In Iran or someplace. Turkey, maybe. The priests would go into some kind of ecstatic frenzy and castrate themselves.” He gave a wheezing laugh. “We read about it in Warnick’s class. You can see how church attendance might drop off after a while.”

“But—why would
Oliver
do that? I mean, how would he even know about it. He hasn’t been to Warnick’s class in two months.”

Baby Joe shrugged. “It’s not like it’s a big secret. It’s history, man, anyone can read about it. Maybe he and Angie, you know—she’s playing Ishtar, he’s gonna be Adonis.
Talagang sirang ulo.”

I got to my feet. “I know, I know:
crazy fucking bitch.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “God, I just wish I could have a decent meal and a bath and sleep for a week—”

Baby Joe put a hand on my shoulder. “Stay here, Sweeney. Really—you can have the bed, I’ll crash on the floor—”

“Oh, Baby Joe—thanks, really, thanks a lot. But I can’t. I think—I think I better go see Oliver. How far is Providence?”

“Maybe five, ten minutes on the bus.”

“Okay. Do me a favor, then. Will you call Annie and tell her where I am, and find out if she’s heard from Angelica? She’s got to come back, she can’t be out there running around the woods without her clothes—”

Baby Joe grinned. “Nice for the trees, though, huh? Yeah, I’ll call Annie.”

“Thanks.”

He followed me to the door. “You too, you know. You’re a fucking crazy bitch too, but you’re not
nuts.”

He drew circles in the air beside his temple, then cocked his finger at me. “Be careful,
hija.
It’s the 84 bus, stops at North Cap and goes right to Providence. Five minutes.”

He leaned against the door and watched me go. “Tell Oliver I hope he feels better.” With a soft, nervous giggle he turned away.

Oliver’s room was on the second floor of the hospital. Down the hall a woman wailed in an eerie childish voice. A family composed of father, mother, little girl sat in a dreary waiting area, holding magazines in their laps and staring out the window at the parking lot. When I peered through the door of Room 1141 saw Oliver on the bed, reading
The Ginger Man,
a copy of the
Washington Post Book World
atop his pillow. There were bars on the window behind him but no shades or blinds, no curtain pulls or chains or cords. On one pale green wall an unadorned wooden cross hung above a wooden chair. Oliver was very pale. His right foot had been bandaged and was propped awkwardly before him on the bed, like a superfluous piece of luggage. The bandage and green hospital robe, coupled with his shaved head and blanched face, made him look like someone terribly, perhaps fatally, ill.

Seeing him like that terrified me—how long had he looked like this, why hadn’t I noticed before?

Because you were too fucked up yourself,
I thought.
Too fucked up, too selfish, too fucking stupid to stop him!

Anger and self-loathing flooded me. How could I just have let him go like this? The drugs, of course it was the drugs: he’d been eating acid and mescaline and hashish and god knows what else, eating it like candy for months, maybe years. And this is what it came to—

For one awful moment I thought of turning around and leaving, before he could look up to see me. But then I remembered how he had hugged me the night before, holding me so desperately I almost wept to think of it.

Save
me,
Sweeney. Don’t fear me …

“Oliver.” I forced a smile as I stepped into the room. “What’s shaking?”

He glanced up. When he saw it was me he grinned and tossed his book onto the pillow. “Smelly O’Keefe! What took you so long?”

I plucked at the sleeve of my shirt and made a face. “Stinky Cassidy, more like it. They let you read that stuff in here?”

He pulled me onto the bed next to him. “Ow. Watch the gam.”

I nodded sympathetically. “Looks pretty gross.”

“Septic poisoning. How’d you get up here?”

“Just walked.”

“Did you sign in?”

“Was I supposed to?”

Right on cue a nurse popped his head through the door. “Somebody at the station said you have a visitor? Oh, hi there—did you sign in? No? Well, don’t get up, what’s your name, I’ll do it, I’ve got to give him meds anyway. Right back.”

“That’s Joe,” explained Oliver. “He’s my keeper—”

Before he could finish Joe was back. “All right, six o’clock, time for these.” He handed Oliver a paper cup of water and another little cup containing two tiny red pills. Oliver waved away the water, tapped the pills into his hand, and swallowed them.

“Ugh. How can you do that, I could never do that.” Joe gave me a measured look, checking me out, I guess to determine if I had a hacksaw stuck down my jeans. “More friends,” he said after a moment. “This boy has
more friends.
Oh, and Oliver, another one of your brothers called, he said he’d try again tonight. Do you want dinner, sweetheart?”

This to me. I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

“All right, then. Visiting hours on this floor are
officially
over at seven, but I won’t do a bed check till eight.” He grinned, took the little plastic cup from Oliver’s hand, and left.

When he was gone Oliver got up and crossed the room to the door. He moved slowly, like a gunfighter in an old Western, and I tried not to think about what the hospital robe must be hiding. He closed the door and stayed there for a long moment with his back to me. A moment later I heard him gagging.

“Oliver! Are you okay—”

He turned and nodded, eyes watering, and opened his hand. His palm was wet, streaked with crimson; but before I could cry out he shook his head.

“Thorazine.” He automatically reached for a pocket; then remembered he was wearing a hospital robe. He turned to get a tissue from his nightstand. He wiped his hand and went into the bathroom and flushed the toilet, then walked over to the chair beneath the little wooden cross. “They gave it to me in the ER last night. I was under restraint so I couldn’t do anything about it. It made me hallucinate; I thought I was totally brain damaged. So now I cough them up.”

He kicked absently at the chair, then turned and crossed to the narrow bed, motioning me to join him. “I guess I could save them for you.”

“No thanks.” I smiled. “First time I’ve ever seen you turn down drugs.”

His pale blue eyes were sharp and guileless as he gazed at me. “I’m not crazy, Sweeney.”

“I know you’re not crazy. You don’t
look
crazy,” I lied. “But …”

But normal people don’t try to cut off their dicks with a Swiss Army knife.

“I don’t look crazy because I’m
not
crazy.”

I said nothing. After a moment I raised my head to look at him: the dark stubble covering his skull, the crimson web where he’d cut himself with the razor; his cheeks and chin still smooth as a boy’s though I was certain he hadn’t shaved in days.