“An old saying. Ulune set all of it up, a trap, and he fell into it. Anyway, you probably noticed some weird stuff going on.”
“Um, yeah, there were some, um, unusual phenomena, I would grant you that. What was it, some kind of drug?”
He saw several expressions flit over her face. Irritation, then resignation, then the strong features relaxing into what looked like compassion. He noticed that she was beautiful in an unfamiliar way, like the statues of the orishas in the little Cuban shops.
“Yeah. Some kind of drug. That, or the nature of reality you’ve accepted for your entire life is wrong. You choose.”
“Drugs,” said Paz. “And so, what? He’s dead so that means it’s all over?”
“For the moment. I’m going to bury him in Sionnet.” She wiped her eyes. “He was a lovely man.”
“Yeah, well, you could have fooled me.”
“Oh, that wasn’t Witt. That was some chunks of him, the worst chunks, the fear and the hatred, assembled into a kind of robot. Like a zombie but more capable. People do that to themselves all the time, I mean, really, look at the people who run for office. But this was done to him by an Olo witch. He let it be done to him, the poor man.”
“But anyway, we’re out of danger?” Paz had limited sympathy for the deceased.
“You all are. Me, I’m … what’s the word? Or’ashnet in Olo. Deodand, touched by a god, spiritually unstable. Part of me is stuck in m’doli, and I’m sort of vulnerable to beings who live there. I have to escape by water, to fulfill the prophecy.”
The day went on, life cranked up again, as if nothing had happened to time, again there were sixty seconds to be lived in each precious minute. Mrs. Paz went back to her restaurant. Dawn’s husband came home and took her away. Paz and Jane slipped away with Luz to Providence, where they watched the yellow bird in the Noah play. They went to the Grove for ice cream, and to the park. Oddly enough, no one recognized them. Magic, or their fifteen minutes were over? Paz didn’t know and didn’t care. He lay back on Jane’s blanket, with his cheek close to her thigh, and felt as happy as he had ever been.
That evening, Paz gave a long interview to Doris Taylor as he had promised, telling the whole invented story, and casting Jane Doe as a hapless victim, not worth an interview, a very dull bird. Doris bought it and went away happy. Then they ate again from the institutional-quantity load of chicken, rice, and beans that Mrs. Paz had brought, and Paz drank a couple of Coronas while Jane put Luz to bed upstairs. When she came down again, as she walked by the sling chair where he sat, he reached out and pulled her down onto his lap, and kissed her. She kissed him back, then pulled away. “Um, Paz? There’s some stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“Yeah, stop that or I won’t be able to.” She sat up on his lap. “About my sister.”
“If you were an accessory, I don’t want to hear it.”
Her face stiffened. “What do you know?”
“Nothing for sure. But you didn’t blow the whistle on him. I mean afterward. The house is full of guns and you didn’t even try to shoot him. I mean, could he read your mind?”
“Not as such. But he knows me pretty well. Better than I thought. It was like Barlow. There was something in me, from way back, a grel, we might as well say. Insane jealousy. That’s the real dirty secret. I should have told you out on the boat. You have no idea what it was like growing up with her in the house. I mean as a little kid. Nobody ever looked at me. Invisible, like him. Our sick bond, and didn’t he make me pay for it? Except my dad saw me, sometimes, when I was a boy for him.
“Oh, shit, Paz!” She pressed her face into his shoulder. “I saw him,” she said into his shirt. “That afternoon. I knew he wasn’t at the car show with them. He walked right past me and waved and smiled, and I knew what he was going to do. I just sat there. And part of me was glad. Not seeing people is the worst thing you can do.”
“He witched you.”
“No,” she said. “He didn’t have to. God forgive me. And I didn’t have the guts to really kill myself. I just pretended to be Dolores Touey, a woman whose sandals I am unworthy to tie.” She cried for what seemed like a long time, heaving against him, making odd, dry croaking sounds. Then, without a significant transition, she began to kiss him again, and after a mouth-bruising clutch of minutes, she pulled away. Sparks seemed to be flying from her eyes.
“I had to tell you that,” she said, “and also I have to tell you that while I am unbelievably hot for you, we are not going to jump into bed right now.”
“No?”
“No. I was serious about being still a little stuck in the unseen world. It wouldn’t be healthy for either of us. Real sorcerers are usually chaste.”
“Uh-huh. And when do you think you’ll get unstuck?”
“When I’m home in Sionnet, after having escaped by water. The prophecy.”
“But the thing’s over. Dingdong the witch is dead.”
“Oh, right, so now we can just forget what happened? You’ve seen Ifa. Do you think he’s someone you want to fuck around with?” He had nothing to say to that. An involuntary shudder ran up his spine. She rose from his lap, grabbed a straight chair, and straddled it.
“A little distance, I think,” she said. “Look, you’re feeling sexual, right? Attracted to me?”
“Majorly.”
“Right, and I’m attracted to you. You’re exactly my type, as you probably figured out already. You don’t have his brilliance, but you’re more solid. You love your mother and she loves you. You really are un hombre sincero de donde crecen la palma. There isn’t a big fat hole in you for the grelet to crawl into. Besides that, I’m unbelievably horny. The escape from danger, and it’s been years for me …” She laughed. “Always a deadly combo. I’m throwing out gallons of pheromones and so are you. If we’re not careful, we’ll have a romance.”
“This would be bad?”
“Well, yeah. Do you want to spend more time in drugged hallucination? I don’t.”
Paz didn’t like the way the conversation was going. “What do you want, then?” he asked.
“I want to take Luz back to my family and glue her into it. I want to ask forgiveness from them, and forgive them, too. I might be able to help my mom, and even if not, I can be there for her as a person, not a cranky child. She doesn’t love me, but I can love her. I want to sail around the Sound with Josey and teach Luz the water. That seems like enough for starters. Later, I’ll take up my work again. I need to get back in touch with Marcel Vierchau, too, speaking of forgiveness. You know, I saw him once a couple of years ago in the Atlanta airport. I spotted him coming down the corridor and I ducked into the ladies’ so I wouldn’t have to confront him. The point is, I want to live actual life now, not hallucination, so …”
“I get it.” He stood up. “Well, I guess I’ll be going then.”
“Oh, sit down! We just defeated the powers of darkness together and now you’re ditching me because I won’t fuck you?”
Surprising himself, he sat down again. She said, “You want some advice?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Sure. If your life is perfect you don’t need any advice. That’s a Yoruba saying.”
He thought about that for a while. “All right. What is it?” Grumpily.
“Do the same as me. Stop acting like a baby with your mom. See her. Love her for what she is. And your father, too.”
“What? That bastard?”
“He’s still your father, and you’re not a little kid anymore. You’re a big, strong cop. A heroic cop. You’ve been on TV, on national TV. Your pal Doris is going to write a bestselling completely fallacious but plausible book about this whole thing, and you’re going to be the star of it. There’ll be a movie. The Cuban community’s going to be falling all over themselves to thank the guy who caught the fiend who killed Teresa Vargas. Don’t you think the whole thing about your dad is going to come out?”
Paz had not considered this. He felt fear sweat prickle on his forehead. She went on: “You have to look him in the eye and forgive him. If he rejects you then, it’s on him, you don’t have to drag his shit around for the rest of your life. You’ve got a couple of half siblings, too. And a stepmother. They might have something to say about it.”
