DIRTY LAUNDRY!
*previews of upcoming books, sneak peeks at unpublished manuscripts, and various other rarities.
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UPCOMING BOOKS
These are books that you'll be seeing at your local bookstore in the near future.
The Paragon of Animals: An Inspector Devlin Mystery
(*"Paragon" is the second book in the Devlin series, a sequel to the very successful A Cold-Blooded Scoundrel. )
Sir Neville Alcock, for all his bad humour and his astonishing, blubbery girth, had been on Devlin's side. Devlin wasn't so sure about Sir George Endicott, except he knew that he disliked the man on sight. "Sir - you wanted to see me?" He fought to keep a note of quavery subservience from creeping into his voice: something about Sir George made you want to approach him on your knees. Devlin was grateful that Endicott was seated, rather than looming over him.
"I've been hearing things about you, Devlin." Endicott leaned back in his chair and rested his feet on his desk - his shoes were absolutely gleaming, polished to a blinding, military sheen. "Things that don't impress me one bit, sir." He plucked a thick file folder from the desk and held it aloft before him; Devlin half expected it to come flying at his head, but he held his ground. "Things not done according to protocol." He opened the folder. "This Whittaker fellow - apprehended and dispatched without benefit of jurisprudence. What the devil is that? Eh?"
Devlin didn't know what 'jurisprudence' meant but he didn't like the sound of it one bit. "That was out of my hands, sir."
Endicott riffled through the folder, pausing now and then to mumble to himself. It sounded to Devlin as though he were speaking through a mouthful of cotton batting. "And this Freddie Collins - Constable Collins. I suppose he's yours?"
Devlin went very still. "Freddie...er, Constable Collins is assigned to me, yes."
"Got a real father and son relationship, eh? Is that it?"
Devlin didn't know what Endicott was getting at - or rather, he knew precisely what Endicott was getting at and wanted to make sure there wasn't a hope in hell that Endicott might succeed. 'Above reproach' - Sir Neville had always impressed on Devlin that a policeman must be forever above reproach. Devlin found his thoughts strangely drawn to the lyrics of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan, and wondered if a policeman's lot was truly not a happy one. "Constable Collins is a fine police officer, sir."
Endicott grunted in a vaguely military fashion. "Don't bloody well like him," he barked, "he's a damned nuisance."
Devlin drew himself up. "Constable Collins was instrumental in the Whittaker case. If I may point out - "
"Yes - Sir Neville took you off that case - gross incompetence, eh?" His sandy, impeccably waxed moustaches quivered with righteous indignation.
Devlin felt hot colour mount into his cheeks. "Sir Neville was a man of great competence, sir - "
"Damn you, man! I won't let you stand there and mock me in this fashion!" Endicott laid his hands on the desk and rose; Devlin fell back a pace or two, terrified of the full deployment of such a colossus. He was something less than impressed when Sir George's head barely reached the knot of Devlin's necktie. Devlin wondered if there wasn't some trick to it - perhaps Endicott was actually kneeling on a box or standing in some hidden trough beneath his desk...Too late, Devlin realised that he was staring.
Come To Dust: An Inspector Devlin Mystery
*Come to Dust is the third in the Devlin series, and picks up where Paragon leaves off.
One.
"There, there...the darling baby mustn't carry on so...only three more, there's a good girl." The old woman gathered the fingernail parings and swept them into an envelope, which she then sealed with one or two broad swipes of her equally broad tongue, while the girl shivered and wept behind her. It was nearly noon, and full daylight outside, but the room itself was dingy, the windows carefully painted over to obscure the view of Harley Street, below. The old woman went muttering down the stairs, leaving the girl alone. The girl of course said nothing; the half-yard of dark fustian effectively stopped her mouth, just as the metal bracelets kept her hands and feet securely tethered to the chair. She watched the old woman go, and struggled against the bonds noiselessly. The heels of her shoes drummed on the floor in frustration, and she started up, soiled herself and fainted. When the bright light of the midday sun had faded, the old woman came back, wrinkled her nose against the stink. "You've been a very naughty girl, haven't you?" She grabbed a fistful of the girl's blonde hair. "Shitting in your clothes. You'd think you were a whore, a shitty little whore." She slammed her knuckles into the girl's face. Alice - for that was the girl's name - screamed behind the gag, choking on the musty fabric and the smell of her own filth.
It could have been worse, Devlin supposed, and he ought to be grateful and not complain. Taken for all in all (here he congratulated himself on having retained at least a fragment of his Shakespeare) the work wasn't hard, and the hours certainly weren't long, and the customers were a fair sight friendlier than the habitués of his old job. He was grateful to Violet for finding him employment, and especially on such short notice and given the circumstances of his arrival. 'You could try the police department,' she'd said. 'They'd take you on in an instant, I know.' But Devlin wanted nothing to do with it; as he told Violet, his days as a policeman were well and truly behind him. Besides, he was determined to make his own way in the new world, without the kind interventions of friends, and if he left his future happiness up to Violet and Phoebe...well, suffice it to say he'd rather strangle himself in one of his own neckties. No, it was far better that he stay where he was, safely ensconced in a shop and pleased enough to fulfil his clerk-like duties at the counter.
Devlin was on his way home from the shop when he was met by the Misses Roseberry, two old maids (in their presence Devlin referred to them kindly as "maiden ladies") whose habit it was to fuss over him, whether he wanted it or not. They had an unhealthy habit of dropping off pies and bottles of jam, and once, a hand-knit cardigan that seemed to have one sleeve too many. The younger Miss Roseberry (a withered old cow of sixty) caught hold of Devlin's sleeve between two pincer-like fingers and tugged at it. "You must come at once, sir. It's dreadful."
Devlin had no idea what they were talking about; moreover, he had no desire to know. It could be something intimate and terrible, something to do with unmentionables and fancy lace edging. (Devlin was reminded of his former landlady, whose wont it was to talk about bodily functions while serving breakfast.) "I'm terribly sorry, but I'm late for dinner."
"Oh no, you must help." The elder Miss Roseberry (eighty if she was a day) stood quivering in front of him, a veritable omnibus of a woman. "The little boy's gone missing, and they said that you could find him. They said you were good at that sort of thing."
Devlin's face began to prickle. "What sort of thing?" he asked. "I work in a shop." Unbidden, the streets of the old city rose in his mind's eye: Waterloo Station and Westminster Bridge, the Embankment and Charing Cross. Perhaps his office was just as he'd left it back in London, with the sticky teacups and the biscuit tin underneath the chair. Was some other man sitting at his desk, riffling through his files and looking out his window? "Yes, but - " The younger Miss Roseberry quailed, looked to her sister for guidance or perhaps encouragement. "They said you used to be a policeman, once upon a time. They said - "
Devlin discourteously cut her off. "I'm sorry," he said crisply, "but you've mistaken me for someone else." With manners hardly fitting for a gentleman, he pushed past them and down the street, his pulse pounding in his ears like a military drum. He made the journey to Violet's house on Beacon Hill in what was for him record time, and banged through the front door like a disgruntled fishwife at teatime.
"I beg your pardon!" Violet was just coming down the stairs with a book in her hand. "Bee in your bonnet?"
"Where's Phoebe?" Devlin tossed his coat in the general direction of the coat tree, not caring where it landed. "I suppose the two of you were in it together, is that it?"
Violet's smooth brow creased with what was (for her) considerable irritation. "What are you talking about?"
"The Misses Roseberry!" It escaped him as a tortured squeak - hardly fitting for a purveyor of dry goods, or the assistant thereof. "They accosted me in the street."
Phoebe appeared from the kitchen, clutching a half-eaten bun. "Oh dear," she said, trying not to smile, "another three-armed cardigan, was it?"
"Which one of you told them? Hm? Because those two repellent old cows have put it round that I'm a policeman." He looked from one to the other. "Does that dredge up any memories for either of you?"
"Why would the Misses Roseberry - " Phoebe saw Violet's look and immediately fell silent.
"Brian Dunbar has gone missing," Violet said coolly, "and I should think that a policeman of your skill - "
"Former policeman." Devlin felt compelled to point that out. He wanted nothing more to do with the Yard, and he'd be damned if Violet and Phoebe were going to make him feel guilty about it.
```
The Impetus of Water: I wrote this book one winter, when the weather was too dreadful to go outside. I'd had my summer holiday in Central Newfoundland, around Eastport/Traytown/Salvage, and the landscape inspired a novel about a woman with a deformed face who is a deep-sea diver.
The old fellow taught me how to dive - right after Dad died, when there was only me and the old fellow left in Connor's Cove. He used to take me down the beach and wade right out into the water with me and show me how to do it. It took a long while before I could hold my breath, but the old fellow said that if I kept on working at it, my lungs would get right big, like the bladders inside a fish, and I could stay down as long as anybody wanted. The cold don't seem to bother me - I guess it must be something in my blood - and it's not like I got a lot of fat on me, either. I suppose I got that off of Mom, because I'm that bony that you could squat me between two sheets of paper and never know the difference. The old fellow would go right out in the water with me, right up to his waist, like the Mission crowd used to do up the harbour when they were baptizing people. He can't swim a stroke, the old fellow, but none of the fishermen do. He'd go out in the water with me, though, as bold as brass, and not think nothing of it. 'Push yourself right down into it,' he'd say, 'even though you might seem like you'm floating. You can make yourself sink right down low and never know the difference.'
I was scared to death at first, and then I got the hang of it, and now I do it all year round, winter and summer, no matter what. I love it that much that I'd cut a hole for myself in the ice and go down underneath like a seal, if that's what I had to do. You never seen the like of what's down there: all kinds of fish what you never sees on the shore and old bottles and bits of plate and things. My favourite is the shells and rocks - I go down once a week to get those, because that's important for my work. I get the big canvas boards in to St. John's every now and again, and sometimes Rick might bring me one or two out on the taxi, when he's on his way to Corner Brook. No matter what I get, I always paint a picture of it, and sell it in St. John's. The missus in there buys it from me and puts it up in her art gallery, so people can come and see it. Last year a fellow from the university came out with a tape recorder and spoke to me about it and after that it was in the paper. I sell the pictures for a lot of money, and most of it I got put in the bank, if I ever need it for the old fellow or myself.
It's not a lonely life. I likes it well enough, and if the old fellow takes it in his head to go down Grand Falls for a visit with his brother, that's alright by me. I can do whatever needs doing, for him or myself. I got no problem doing it. It's not like there's much cooking because there's only certain things that I can eat, soft things like fruit and porridge, cheese and ice cream, things like that. But there's benefit in it, too, especially when I'm down there in the water - I never have a problem with my ears or the pressure in my skull. I'm made different than that. I can feel the salt water racing past the holes inside my face. Of course Mom and Dad took me in St. John's when I was a little girl, but there wasn't much they could do about it, not unless they took me up to Toronto the hospital, and Mom never had no money for that. I don't keep to myself, either - them that knows me don't mind, and after you been looking at it for awhile, sure, it's no more than a pimple. And the old fellow don't care - he sits there all day long at the table in the kitchen cutting bits of stuff out of the paper and the magazines that Gin brings him from the shop. He cuts out articles about this and that, and sometimes pictures, and pastes the whole works into these scrapbooks that I get for him through the mail. He likes being at that - it gives him something to do when I'm upstairs working, or when I'm down there in the water. Of course, all that was before the old fellow went away. Cissie Blake up to the home in Point Hendaye thinks the old fellow made away with himself, but I know that's not the case. I saw the whole thing - I was right here, at the kitchen window, washing a few dishes, and I heard the door bang shut. I figured it was the wind, because the latch don't quite catch properly, and it's always blowing open. Dad used to say, every time the door blew open, that it was someone dead who was coming back to visit, so whenever it happened, he'd call out, 'Come in, come in and sit down!' It used to drive me off my head, because I swear to God I could see something coming in, whenever he said that. I think he used to do it, just to get on my nerves. Like when Uncle Mike died, there a few years ago, and everyone in the house for the wake, and the door blows open and Dad saying for whoever it was to come in and have a drink. Used to give me the willies, I'm telling you. The old fellow went on out in the water, like there was nothing to it, easy as you please, with not a stitch of clothes on him. It's not like it was real cold for September, but that water is never warm, not even in July. Here he went on out, bald as a baby, walked on out until I couldn't see him.~~~
The Summer People
(*the main character in this novel is a mortician. For some reason, I find that fascinating.)
Lydia Spear is luckier than most: she sees the dead. The people she works on, they come and visit her as she does the embalming and the makeup, as she puts them in their best Sunday bib and tucker. Secretly she envies them, envies the quiet clarity that death has left upon their faces, and she wants to be like they are, but she hasn't the courage. When she's alone at night in the embalming room, working late, she sings to them. She sings Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and Abide With Me and The Battle Hymn of the Republic, even though she doesn't believe in God and never has. She could never believe in a benign and righteous God; she's not a fool, she knows that this world is a brutal place, with little justice and no mercy. She believes in the people who come to her, while she's alone at night and all the lights are dimmed down low, leaving the dead to their well-earned rest. She likes to slip into the visiting rooms and contemplate her handiwork: Mrs. Edgecombe's cheeks are beginning to sink a little bit, so she will have to be buried soon. Mrs. Edgecombe is sitting beside her casket, peering at herself curiously, and then she peers at Lydia.
"Who's that?" She reaches deep into the satin lining and tries to touch her own cheek, but her hand goes through it. "Whose face is that?"
Lydia's husband Mike died in his sleep early Christmas morning; it's now the first of May, and he has been dead for nearly five months. While Rita Bugden was dressing Mike's body, Lydia sat in Rita's office and read the poems of John Keats, and marvelled at his intimate concern with death. She tried several times to gain entry to the embalming room, was always rebuffed. It isn't your business, Rita said. But it is her business. Death is Lydia Spear's business. Her sister Janet ran away from home when Lydia was just a child, and now Lydia runs the Holy Rest Mortuary Chapel with her father's best friend Barry. Lydia's father Gerald has been dead for years, and Janet is never heard from. There is talk that she went to South America and teaches English to a missionary's children in the jungles of the Amazon, but no one knows for sure. Every year on Janet's birthday, Lydia's mother Mabel says the Rosary. She never says it any other time. She never goes to church, never bothers with confession; she does nothing but sit beside the stove and rock, and therefore has no sins that need confessing.
Aunt Josephine is a believer in charms, and she knows that names are power; for fifteen years she worked at a shoe store down on Harvey Road, and told everyone her name was Blanche. She's an expert in deception, and she was five when the Nazis rounded up her entire tribe and put them on boxcars headed for Treblinka. There were no illusions in that place; your name was all you had and if you were wise, you kept it to yourself. They gave you another name, Zigeuner, and tattooed numbers up your arm. Magda carved her initials into the wooden bunk because she knew. "She could see it, just as you and I can," Josephine tells Lydia. "The death moth, hovering around her like a cloud, with its wings out." She knew it was coming for her. The next morning, she was taken to the showers and exterminated. How did Josephine escape? She was in the toilets; she was a very small girl and easily overlooked. She hid in the cracks between the floorboards like a beetle or a mouse. Every time Aunt Josephine tells it, the child Josephine is as small as a beetle. She remembers the curve of her mother's shaved head, and the sound the rifle butts made, crashing into her ribs: a hollow noise, like hands clapping in the darkness.
Moses, Get Your Gun
*One of the main characters (there are three or four interlapping sub-plots) in this novel is a fledging English rock star who's come up through the pubs, playing in his father's band. He reminds me of this kid I saw on Canadian Idol once. I decided to put in a fairly lengthy excerpt because I really love this book.
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Simon will never forget what his best friend Shirley said to him when he was twelve: "When mummies and daddies fight, they always get a divorce. And then the children have to go into a home." Long after Simon should have been in bed, he'd sit on the pantry stairs (the configuration of the narrow downstairs passage amplified any sounds coming from the front room) and listen to his parents fighting. Usually they'd fight about Roger's job, or the state of the house, or the things that Nina cooked for tea; sometimes they'd fight about Simon. Roger didn't think that Simon needed the expensive piano lessons that Nina insisted on; Nina thought that Simon had the makings of a musical genius. "It's not fair, making him give up his music. You'll break his heart."
"What about me?" Roger shouted. "What about my music? Oh no, I'd to get a job up at the bloody gas company!" The day before Simon's thirteenth birthday, he came home from school to find Roger gone and Nina sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette. When Simon asked where his dad had gone, Nina told him they were getting a divorce, and his father would be moving up to Glasgow at the weekend.
"It'll just be the two of us from now on," Nina said, "just you and me. Think you can manage to look out for your old mum?" She seemed inordinately cheerful, as though she'd been relieved of a great burden.
"I don't want to stay with you - I'm going with me dad." Simon followed his father to the train station and clung to him. "I'll be a good boy this time," he said. "You'll see, you won't have to leave and Mum won't get angry any more. If I'm good, will you stay with us?" There was no time for explanations: the whistle blew and Roger had to get on the train.
"You can come and visit Daddy at the weekends, and on school holidays. You can even come for Christmas if you like." Roger gave him twenty pounds, told him to spend it on some record albums. "Get some of that music that you like."
"I want you to stay." Simon planted himself on the platform and refused to move.
"Simon, I have to go." Roger untangled Simon's fingers from his sleeve. "Honestly - now there's the whistle. I've got to get on the train." He pulled Simon into his arms and hugged him. "Come and see me soon, there's a good lad."
He sat down in a forward-facing compartment, and steeled himself not to look behind. He couldn't bear the sight of it. He couldn't bear the sight of Simon's tear-stained face, or the forlorn slump of his shoulders as he stood on the platform. He held the image of Simon in his mind as the train pulled out: a fat thirteen year old boy with thick specs, standing with twenty quid clutched in his pudgy fist. He'll never amount to anything, Roger thought. He can't possibly amount to anything. He wondered what would become of Simon, now that his dad had gone.
When Nina goes to Majorca at the Christmas holidays, Simon goes up to Glasgow on the train to stay with his dad. Since the divorce, Roger had taken up his music again, and he has a whole new circle friends - rough men who like to drink a lot and who generally play at some of Glasgow's nastier pubs. Simon's only thirteen; it isn't right, but he pesters Roger so much to let him sit a set or two that Roger agrees to it. It's a mistake - of course it is - and the punters on this particular night are partway mental, fighting amongst themselves and lobbing empty bottles at the stage. Roger's friends play a brand of rock and roll that Simon's not familiar with, and he struggles to keep up, struggles to spread his pudgy hands on the piano keys. When the landlord calls a fifteen-minute break, Simon escapes into the lavs to take a piss. His dad's friend Gus is in there, stood in front of a urinal like he's straddling a pig. Simon hates taking a piss in front of everyone, but he's been nipping beer behind Roger's back all night and he's really got to go now. He tries for nonchalance: he nods at Gus and unzips his fly, pretends he's back at home. If he squints he can imagine the frosted window in his mother's bathroom, just above the toilet.
"Eah, watch out for the splash, now."
Simon is nonplussed. "Splash?"
Gus is laughing. "When you get your dick out - it'll be a big one. Watch the splash, by the way!"
Simon struggles to ignore him. He wishes Gus would finish what he's doing and go away. But Gus, sensitive to an acquired target, isn't going anywhere. He trips the flush handle of the urinal and stands against the wall, arms folded. "I bet you've got all kinds of girlfriends, don't you? Young lad your age."
"I haven't actually." Simon's done this a million times, and yet he can't manage to piss now for love nor money. Whatever possessed him to come here? He'd be better off at home, alone, or in Majorca with his mother and Maureen. He zips his fly, decides to forget about it.
"Where are you going?" Gus grabs his arm and spins him around. "Not leaving, are you?"
"Fuck off out of it!" Simon tries to wrench his arm away, but Gus is strong. To his mature adult strength Simon is nothing. "I'll tell me dad!"
"Tell your dad, will you?" Gus slams him into the bathroom wall, and Simon is crying. Simon is begging to be left alone; Simon is begging for his life. He thinks Gus only intends to kill him.
He has never felt such horrible pain. He has never been violated in this manner. His cheek is pressed into the filthy bathroom floor, and he can taste the sticky afterlife of spilled lager, the spent acidity of old cigarettes. His spectacles have shattered, crushed against his nose, the shards of broken glass cutting into him. His neck is bent so that he can see the tip of his shoe, with the dark sock incongruous against his pale flesh. His trousers are gone. His underpants are around his knees, binding him in place. Outside, in the pub, the landlord is shouting at the punters over the microphone, telling them to shut the fuck up, that the band are coming back. Gus is on top of him and around him and somehow in him, and the weight of Gus is driving all the air from his lungs. Gus is doing this in utter silence, but Simon can hear his own breath rasping in his throat. Gus pushes into him and there is a flood of sticky moisture, then the dank air paints horror against his naked back. He lies very still for a long time. He can't allow himself to move. He hasn't heard Gus leave, and yet he must certainly be alone here in this filthy bathroom.
He's afraid that Gus has done something to his insides. His belly hurts like he's been punched. He can hear the music starting and he knows Roger will come looking for him, but he can't face his father. In the mirror, he witnesses the damage: his glasses are destroyed, dangling from one earpiece, and there are bits of glass embedded in the skin of his face. His mouth is bleeding and he has a black eye, rapidly swelling shut. He looks like someone who’s done a turn inside a meat grinder. He looks like he's been run down by a lorry.
Back at Roger's house he packs his suitcase, calls a taxi to take him to the station. All the way down to London he counts objects outside the window: telegraph poles, nuclear reactors, pigs in a field, and finally, a flock of wild swans lifting from the surface of a mill pond. When the train pulls into Euston Station, he is wide awake and trembling with the residue of countless cups of railway coffee. He goes straight into the bathroom of his mother's house and runs the bath as hot as he can stand it. He can never tell, he knows this, and so he goes about the place locking all the doors and windows, shutting himself inside. He is hardly aware of his own weeping; it seems he's been crying all the way from Glasgow. He gets into the bath and scrubs himself , trying to rub Gus away. The hot water creeps into the savaged places of his body, hurting him, making him clench his teeth against the pain.
There is a full bottle of aspirin tablets in his mother's medicine chest, and a bottle of sleeping pills that his mother got from the doctor after she and Ralph first separated. Simon's hand wraps around the aspirin, but he stands still for a moment and reads the label on the sleeping pills. He reads it over, sounding out the phrases of it in his mind. It's like lurid old stories, like Marilyn Monroe taking too many pills and drinking too much booze and waking up dead. Waking up dead! That's funny; that's an amusing anecdote. He must try to remember it, goodbye Norma Jean.
UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS
These are all early manuscripts that, for one reason or another, were never published.
Excerpt from The Boys of Summer:
*This was the very first novel I ever wrote - a romance novel about a woman doctor who goes to work for a baseball team! At the time - circa 1994 - I was writing fanfiction for a Usenet newsgroup, and someone suggested I should try a novel. Thinking that romance novels were probably the 'easiest' to write (SO not true!) I decided to write one.
~~~
Dr. Elysia Carter had dreamed of this opportunity, when she had long ago entered medical school: the chance to not only work in sports medicine, but to be the team doctor for the baseball club currently ranked first in league standings. For Elysia, an inveterate lover of the game, this was a plum too juicy to resist.
When the offer came, she had accepted eagerly, and prepared to leave her current job at the clinic for the greener pastures--or more correctly, the greener outfield. She ought to be ecstatic, she supposed, but there was something missing from her joy: in the five years that she'd worked here in the clinic, she'd grown so close to her colleagues (especially Rowan) that they'd become a kind of surrogate family for her. She was finding the impending separation unexpectedly difficult.
Rowan moved from the filing cabinet to where Elysia stood at the window. "Come on! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you: attending physician to the boys of summer!"
"I know." Elysia finally turned from the window in acknowledgement, and offered Rowan a weak smile. "This is the best career move I could make, Rowan..." She swallowed down the rising fear that she felt every time she pondered the impending move, reassuring herself with vague platitudes that she was doing the correct thing.
"But you aren't exactly thrilled to the core now, are you?" Rowan's watchful eye had again singled out the source of Elysia's trouble, that being her keen and merciless conscience, her unerring sense of loyalty. "You have to move on, kid!" The blond woman wrapped an arm around Elysia's shoulders, squeezed affectionately. "And as much as we've enjoyed your company around here, this offer is too good to pass up."
Excerpt from The Eye of Heaven:
*This grew out of my fascination with Anne Rice's vampire novels - I decided that if Anne could do it, so could I. This was lots of fun to write but unfortunately went absolutely nowhere. I keep a copy on diskette for 'sentimental reasons.' Part of me regrets that it never saw publication, since I really love these characters!
October, 1347
Florence, Italy (Firenze)
I was in service to my master Salvatore when Lilith came.
I had just passed my twentieth year, well into my majority, an adult now. You will remember that the span of time to make a life was much shorter then; at twenty I was as mature as ever I would be. I had reached the fullness of my height, my shoulders broad and strong, my muscles hardened from years of carrying and fetching, working with Salvatore's cavaliere in the courtyard. I was folding cloth for Ludmilla the night that I first saw her: a woman, tall and thin, with an unearthly countenance and eyes of blue that glittered. I shrank from her, my voice withered in my throat and died, and I knew nothing but this horrible, heart-pounding terror. Fear rose and filled my head, a wordless shriek, as she moved, one hand outstretched in front of her, the long nails gleaming in the dimness, eerily illuminated by my candle. I knew she was something unholy. Yet I was powerless to flee; it was as if my feet had fallen off my legs.
"Dante..." Her lips moved to shape my name; she uttered it, a whisper like dried leaves, a murmur that died away like wind. She drifted, grew in height, hovered over me like some great, winged shadow. Her hair was long and tangled, and reached nearly to the floor, a dark sheet, a shroud. Her mind pressed against me like a mouth, a great beckoning presence that insisted, that insinuated itself into my soul. And I sagged against the wall, drained of life, held pinioned by the terror I felt because of her. I was in a great, shrieking, mindless agony of fear, that horror that erupts when the mind can hold no other thought, no other impulse. As if from a distance, I heard the thudding cadence of my heart, the dark interior swishing of my blood as it slowed by degrees, like a timepiece running down. I felt her bend over me, felt the tendrils of her hair against my face, my neck. Fingers probed my face, my mouth, slipped into my nostrils, examined the insides of my ears. Fingers slipped into my opened shirt, sliced my nipple with a fingernail, a pain as keen as ecstasy. "You are mine. I have marked you for my own."
Mystery, Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots.
The Best Hotel on Skid Row: this was during my F. Scott Fitzgerald phase, and I wanted to write something dark and brooding - Southern gothic, you might say - with a Zelda-like figure as the centrepiece of the tale. The character of Leila is based on a real person, by the way.
The Unquiet Dead
"I always like to think of them as the unquiet dead." She unfolded herself from a tombstone, a discrete motion, like fingers unfurling from a fist. "Lyin' all in rows and hunkered down under the earth, waiting for the Trump of God."
I could barely see her - she was just a disembodied voice, murmuring to me in the darkness, a ripple of sound riding other waves above the crickets and the whippoorwills, the mourning doves roosting in the tops of the tall pines. Her hands flickered white into dark, white into dark, disappearing suddenly and then reappearing just as quickly, with the unnerving temerity of a strobe light. She had long red hair that fell unbound to her waist in extravagant ripples and waves, veiling her features and her eyes. She wasn't pretty, but there was something sharp and vivid in her face that reminded you of small caged monkeys or patients in an insane asylum. I imagined if I bit her, she would taste tart and slightly green, like new-mown grass or fresh apples.
"Y'look like you seen a ghost." And then, without so much as a momentary pause, "Scott Fitzgerald's buried over thataway. Reckon he done drunk himself to death."
"You were supposed to meet me at the airport." It was hard to keep the note of resentment out of my voice: the cab fare alone had nearly exhausted my meagre savings. Add to that the fact that I was in unfamiliar territory here, having flown far from my home to visit her, even though I barely knew her beyond a nodding electronic acquaintance. Something about her compelled me to fly to her side, even as everything within me protested it as the most profound foolishness.
"Guess I forgot." She pronounced it as foh-got, a lilting accent that I couldn't place...Southern Maryland or Virginia, perhaps.
"I told you I was coming. And what the hell are you doing in here, anyway?" This place terrified me; I had no head for death, no desire to explore the dark labyrinth beneath the ground. My people had all been cremated, very sensibly placed in urns and stacked behind glass in someone's air-conditioned vault. The thought of rot, of such necessary degradation, terrified and sickened me. It was musty down here, far south of where I'd come from - musty with secrets and darkness and the gracious acceptance of death - Leila, strolling through the cemetery, peering into the factual mortality of others with her keen and unrelenting vision.
"Can't be afraid of Death. Death comes for everybody, even you." She moved closer, and I could see her eyes in the dimness of the watery moon: a curious grey-green, cat's eyes, or the eyes of a predatory hawk. "Every one of us gotta die sometime. You gonna die, and me too."
"Leila."
"That's right." She reached to touch my sleeve, fingered the cotton of my shirt. A whippoorwill whooped behind us, thumping its fluted song into the night, and I realised that I was shivering, despite the heat. "You didn't really expect me to come get you at the airport, didja sugar?" Ayeh-poht, sugah. My head felt as if it were whirling off my shoulders, the pines and oaks and sycamores bending low to brush my brow with their leafy fronds. The night itself was pure madness, surreal and still, pulsing with potentials. I suddenly remembered why I'd come: because she'd asked me.
