The Heavens Rise

the creature rose up through the jungle exhibit’s shattered ceiling. And then there was a soft, radiating glow, beating like a heartbeat within the chaos. And Ben recognized the twirling knots of flame blossoming throughout his consciousness. He could hear the music, he could smell the spilt beer. He could feel the memory of a long-ago Mardi Gras parade coursing through him, and that’s when he realized Anthem Landry was moving through him too.

VII MARISSA

33

How ’bout you fuck yourself?” Marissa finally said to the lawyer. “How’s that sound?”

Hilda Lane’s lackey and henchman had been lecturing her for a good fifteen minutes on how her actions had violated the standards clause in her contract, giving the Lanes grounds to fire her as editor in chief of Kingfisher without severance.

The man hadn’t even bothered to inquire after her physical condition when he’d forced his way into her room, even though she’d just been moved out of post-op recovery two days before after running a high fever for the three days. He’d been droning on about how even though there were no witnesses to her shooting, the simple fact that an officer of the law had seen fit to put a bullet in her—God rest his soul; the poor man hadn’t survived his injuries—combined with the slanderous allegations she made against Hilda Lane during their last phone call gave Kingfisher’s owner ample cause to—and then she told him to go fuck himself and things got real quiet all of a sudden. She’d said it brightly and casually, as if she were suggesting he try adding a little Tabasco to his scrambled eggs every morning.

“I take it this is your way of saying you don’t intend to—”

“I’m real tired and I don’t feel that well and you’re a jerk. So no, it’s my way of saying you should go fuck yourself is what it is.” Maybe it was fatigue that kept her tone breathy and casual. Or maybe she really thought it was good idea for the beady-eyed prick to use some blunt object on one of his orifices. She’d lost track of which pain meds they were giving her. “Seriously, take that contract in your hand, roll it up real narrowlike and see how far up it’ll go. I’ll wait right here till you’re through. And I’ve got some pills lying around if it starts to hurt too bad.”

“Okay,” the lawyer muttered. He sprang to his feet, placed the contract in question back in his briefcase and closed it with a punctilious snap. “Ms. Lane asked me to inform you that she appreciates the time you gave to her—”

“Her? Her newspaper? Is that what you were going to say? Well, you tell Ms. Lane I was working at that paper when she was doing PTA. And I’d rather mop floors before I go back to being her house negro. She’s not getting any fight out of me. Don’t you worry your bald little head.”

“I wish you a speedy recovery, Ms. Powell.”

“Then get outta here and let me get back to it.”

And then she was alone again with rebroadcasts of that morning’s WWL Eyewitness News and the endless photos of Anthem Landry that kept rolling across the screen, along with the now familiar helicopter shots of the giant grain ship he’d allegedly been at the helm of when it speared the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas. There were more tearful interviews with Landry’s relatives, some of whom looked vaguely familiar to her from birthday dinners and crawfish boils where she’d been the token black lady over the years. And she prayed that whatever had happened with that damn ship, whatever had caused Anthem to go missing, was the real reason Ben hadn’t come to visit her.

Indeed, her only visitors over the past five days had been Mr. Suit and a bunch of police officers who were desperate to find out why one of their own had put a bullet in her, even though she insisted to kingdom come, and despite the influence of all manner of tongue-loosing medications, that she couldn’t remember a damn thing that happened out there on that river after the corpse of Danny Stevens had bobbed to the surface. She’d gone from being included in their collective head-scratching sessions to being flat-out accused of all manner of crimes; all of which only served to convince her the cops didn’t have a damn clue what had happened out there either. Not with the murder of Danny Stevens and his wife, not with the explosion at the house, and not with the bullet some cop had seen fit to put in her. But she was a lot more willing to put up with their nonsense than she was some prick Uptown lawyer who’d been dispatched by a boss too cowardly to fire her in person.

The doctors came about an hour later, told her she would be free to go in the morning, and she put on her best game face, tried to look grateful over the news, and then they were gone and she was back alone with the news. She dreamed fitfully that night, dreams with Anthem Landry’s face in them and corpses tumbling through green water.

The map was there when she woke up, folded neatly and resting on the tray table she’d been eating her meals on.

When she opened it, she saw a thick red line that went from the hospital she was in, across Lake Pontchartrain, then west on I-10 before meeting up with 310 Freeway just past Louis Armstrong International Airport. She traced the line with her finger, past Destrehan, over the Mississippi River on the Luling–Destrehan Bridge, and then on some crazy unfamiliar spur that appeared to lead right into the swamp, to a fat red dot. And right next to the dot, Ben’s handwriting: As soon as you can.

Then she saw her own car keys, tucked underneath the map.

She’d pocketed both by the time she was ready to leave a few hours later. A silent assemblage of most of the cops who had questioned her during her stay were waiting next to the nurses’ station as she walked past, and she wasn’t quite sure how to read their brusque nods and penetrating stares. But there was no sliding out from under the terrible weight of the feeling it left her with. An accomplished journalist and writer, a graduate of one of the best universities in the country, one of the hardest-working girls ever to come out of her neighborhood, and now what was she? A black lady with no job, nursing a gunshot wound in her left side, leaving a hospital under a cloud of criminal suspicion.

Once she was in the open-air parking lot, she hit the button on her remote and the headlights of her Prius flashed several rows away.

This better be good, Uptown Girl. Please, Lord. Make this good.

•   •   •

Fifteen minutes after she turned off the highway, Marissa came to a ruined chain-link fence surrounding what looked like an abandoned zoo. The Keep Out signs along the fence were as stained and perforated as the chain link itself, and in the center of the concrete courtyard, a ridiculous statue of a smiling, humanoid alligator with a plumed hat welcomed her with open arms, even though the fountain basin around its feet was dry and choked with vines. Past the old ticket booth, with its shattered front windows, there were three one-story wooden buildings around the courtyard, each with a steeply pitched roof, and signage that was no longer legible.

The door to the center building was standing open, and when she entered, she found herself staring at the glass wall of a giant aquarium tank, filled with cloudy green water. The tank’s glass panel had once been bordered by carved wooden alligators and snakes, but the paint had faded away entirely, leaving behind a jumble of dark wood that looked more like the outline of a dark lava flow.

She kept walking, waiting for Ben to show himself at any moment, too exhausted and too dispirited to marshal anything close to fear. So often in her life fear had taken the form not of self-regard, but of concern for those who’d first receive the news of her car accident or stabbing or immolation in a house fire. But now her mother, the same mother she’d returned to New Orleans for, had been in the ground for years. There’d been no real man (or woman, for that matter) in her life for some time. (Unless you counted Ben.) This realization felt strangely liberating, but it also left her feeling hollowed out.

She passed the aquarium and stepped into the room at the end of the hallway. Once, long ago, it had been