Waking the Moon

“Dark of the moon, they come out at the dark of the moon. Black angels,” she added ominously. “Fucking cultists.”

Patrick raised an eyebrow, gazing at her over the fragrant cloud of blossoms he still held. “I would have thought you’d be into all that stuff, Annie,” he said in surprise. “You know, women’s spirituality, awakening the goddess within, that kind of thing.”

Annie scowled. She grabbed a towel from Helen and mopped her face.

“Annie went to college with Angelica Furiano,” Helen explained. “They were roommates.”

“No lie?” Patrick’s eyes widened. “Was this in Italy or something?”

“D.C.,” said Annie brusquely. “It was only a semester. I haven’t seen her since.”

She crossed the cramped room to gather her bag and a plastic quart bottle of Diet Pepsi, looked back at Helen. “I’ve got to go to the hotel; I forgot my filofax and I’d like to take a shower. Martha’s supposed to meet us at the inn at eleven-thirty. Please don’t make us late again.”

Patrick and Helen watched as she swept out of the dressing room, the little swaggering figure shoving open the fire door and disappearing into a small crowd of fans waiting in the street.

“She doesn’t like to talk about Angelica,” Helen explained.

“Duh,” said Patrick. He rubbed his earcuff gingerly. “So they were really roommates?”

Helen nodded. She was slender and dark, her hair braided into elaborate patterns spliced with red and yellow beads and brighdy colored strands of kente cloth. “Yeah. Supposedly even back then, Angelica was really something.”

“She and Annie have a thing?”

Helen shrugged. “Who knows? It’s ancient history now. I know Angelica was involved with some friend of theirs, this guy who killed himself after she dumped him. I guess Annie must have taken it pretty hard. She doesn’t like to talk about her at all.”

Patrick regarded the flowers thoughtfully. “Well, I guess I can relate to that. You want to take these back to the hotel?”

Helen grabbed the bouquet, sniffed it tentatively. “Nice. Hey, these are pretty exotic. What are they?”

Patrick touched one delicately crumpled scarlet blossom. “Well, that looks like some kind of poppy, and these—”

He breathed on a handful of soft pale blue petals, “—these are anemones.”

“And that’s a jonquil.” Helen’s pinkie brushed a tiny pale orange flute surrounded by flaring white petals. “We used to grow them in Vermont.”

“Narcissus, I think little ones like that are called narcissus, and this looks like some kind of hybrid hyacinth.”

Helen breathed in deeply. “God, they really do smell wonderful, don’t they? All these fragrant things. But what a bizarre arrangement—I’ve never even seen some of these before. Who’d you say brought them?”

Patrick shrugged. “I don’t know. Some woman. She had on this cowled dress, tres mysterieuse. She just kind of blew in and out before I could say anything. But wait—you know what, there was a card with them, let me look—”

He shuffled through the crumpled newspapers and plastic containers from the take-out Thai place next door, triumphantly held up a piece of paper.

“Ta da!”

“Let me see.” Helen took it, a small white rectangle, expensive cotton rag paper with tiny letters written on it in black ink. A cryptic but very careful hand—the script looked as though it had been typed. Patrick stood behind her to read over her shoulder.

Utcunque placurit Dea vents
For Annie, with much love

Helen shook her head. “How bizarre. Dea, that means goddess, I bet. Well, that makes sense, there were a bunch of those girls out there tonight. But the rest’s in Latin. You were an altar boy, what’s it mean?”

Patrick took the note and puzzled over it. “‘Utcunque placurit.’ I think that’s something like, As it pleases you or May it please you. And verus, that means truth. So this would mean, As it pleases the true Goddess. Weird with a beard.”

“Weird with a merkin.” Helen dropped the card onto the table and handed the flowers back to Patrick. “Here, go find some nice young man and give these to him.”

“You don’t think Annie wants them?”

“I think Annie would be a little freaked, Patrick. Those girls give her the creeps. Me too. Look, I gotta fly; if I’m late again, she’ll have a fit.”

“Yup. See you later. I’ll clean up—”

He poured the rest of the Evian water into a jar and set the flowers in it, then went to meet the club manager to discuss the evening’s take.

They met Martha in the bar at the Tides Inn, a small, pleasantly dim room cooled by several softly whirring ceiling fans. Air-conditioning would have been more useful—it was seventy-nine degrees outside, at midnight—but Annie had to admit the fans looked nice, big old brass-bladed things slicing through the darkness and making a gentle whick-whick sound. For once Helen hadn’t been late. But Martha was, and so Annie and her lover sat alone at a small table by the window, silently holding hands. There was no one else in the place. The owner served them, a taciturn man with long white hair in a braid down his back. Helen got a Hurricane, Annie a club soda with lime. Through an open window wafted the brisk salt smell of the ocean, the reek of patchouli and joss sticks from the crystal emporium next door. They sipped their drinks and stared outside, watching the twinkling lights of boats bobbing in the water, the steady parade of sunburned couples on Commercial Street—men and men, women and women, women and men—laughing and talking, relishing the night.

Annie stared at them enviously. Everyone looked so bouncy and cheerful, as though they’d all just come out of the same Frank Capra movie. She always felt slightly dazed and suspicious when she visited P-town, just as she did in Key West and Palm Springs and the Berkshires, any place where gay couples could act just like everybody else. Any place, really, where people made being happy look so easy.

Face it: you’d feel like this in Disneyland, she thought. Too many years in Nebraska, too many years singing and starving; too much time spent being afraid, remembering Lisa and Oliver and Angelica and now Hasel—

She stiffened, and her fingers tightened around Helen’s.

“Those girls tonight?” asked Helen softly. Annie looked up at her, shaking her head as though awakening from a dream.

“How’d you know?”

Helen smiled. “I have magical powers and the gift of sarcasm.”

“That’s my line, girlfriend. But yeah, I was thinking about them.”

“It’s not such a terrible thing.” Helen twisted one of her braids around a finger, playing with the rows of striped trade beads. “How bad can it be, for women to learn how to stick up for themselves, to be assertive and all that stuff? I think your friend Angelica is onto something—I mean, there really is this dark aspect to goddess-worship that everyone has ignored for all these centuries. It’s like being a Christian and refusing to acknowledge the Inquisition.”

“She’s not my friend.”

Helen smiled wryly. “Boy, you must have had it bad, to still get so worked up over her.”

“I’m not worked up over her, this has nothing to do