Then the john reaches out his hand and taps on the tinted glass.
The car slows, and before it has stopped moving Bilquis has pushed open the door and she half-jumps, half-falls out onto the blacktop. She’s on a hillside road. To the left of her is a steep hill, to the right is a sheer drop. She starts to run down the road.
The limo sits there, unmoving.
It starts to rain, and her high heels slip and twist beneath her. She kicks them off and runs, soaked to the skin, looking for somewhere she can get off the road. She’s scared. She has power, true, but it’s hunger-magic, cunt-magic. It has kept her alive in this land for so long, true, but for everything else that’s not simply living she uses her sharp eyes and her mind, her height and her presence.
There’s a metal guard-rail at knee-height on her right, to stop cars from tumbling over the side of the hill, and now the rain is running down the hill-road turning it into a river, and the soles of her feet have started to bleed.
The lights of L.A. are spread out in front of her, a twinkling electrical map of an imaginary kingdom, the heavens laid out right here on earth, and she knows that all she needs to be safe is to get off the road.
I am black but comely, she mouths to the night and the rain. I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
A fork of lightning burns greenly across the night sky. She loses her footing, slides several feet, skinning her leg and elbow, and she is getting to her feet when she sees the lights of the car descending the hill toward her. It’s coming down too fast for safety and she wonders whether to throw herself to the right, where it could crush her against the hillside, or the left, where she might tumble down the gully, and she runs across the road, intending to push herself up the wet earth, to climb, when the white stretch limo comes fishtailing down the slick hillside road, hell it must be doing eighty, maybe even aquaplaning on the surface of the road, and she’s pushing her hands into a handful of weeds and earth, and she’s going to get up and away, she knows, when the wet earth crumbles and she tumbles back down onto the road.
The car hits her with an impact that crumples the grille and tosses her into the air like a glove puppet. She lands on the road behind the limo, and the impact shatters her pelvis, fractures her skull. Cold rainwater runs over her face.
She begins to curse her killer: curse him silently, as she cannot move her lips. She curses him in waking and in sleeping, in living and in death. She curses him as only someone who is half-demon on her father’s side can curse.
A car door opens. Someone approaches her. “You were an analog girl,” he sings again, tunelessly, “living in a digital world.” And then he says, “You fucking madonnas. All you fucking madonnas.” He walks away.
The car door slams.
The limo reverses, and runs back over her, slowly, for the first time. Her bones crunch beneath the wheels. Then the limo comes back down the hill toward her.
When, finally, it drives away, down the hill, all it leaves behind on the road is the smeared red meat of roadkill, barely recognizable as human, and soon even that will be washed away by the rain.
INTERLUDE 2
“Hi, Samantha.”
“Mags? Is that you?”
“Who else? Leon said that Auntie Sammy called when I was in the shower.”
“We had a good talk. He’s such a sweet kid.”
“Yeah. I think I’ll keep him.”
A moment of discomfort for both of them, barely a crackle of a whisper over the telephone lines. Then, “Sammy, how’s school?”
“They’re giving us a week off. Problem with the furnaces. How are things in your neck of the Northwoods?”
“Well, I’ve got a new next-door neighbor. He does coin tricks. The Lakeside News letter column currently features a blistering debate on the potential rezoning of the town land down by the old cemetery on the southeast shore of the lake and yours truly has to write a strident editorial summarizing the paper’s position on this without offending anybody or in fact giving anyone any idea what our position is.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“It’s not. Alison McGovern vanished last week—Jilly and Stan McGovern’s oldest. I don’t think you met them. Nice kid. She babysat for Leon a few times.”
A mouth opens to say something, and it closes again, leaving whatever it was to say unsaid, and instead it says, “That’s awful.”
“Yes.”
“So…” And there’s nothing to follow that with that isn’t going to hurt, so she says, “Is he cute?”
“Who?”
“The neighbor.”
“His name’s Ainsel. Mike Ainsel. He’s okay. Too young for me. Big guy, looks…what’s the word. Begins with an M.”
“Mean? Moody? Magnificent? Married?”
A short laugh, then, “Yes, I guess he does look married. I mean, if there’s a look that married men have, he kind of has it. But the word I was thinking of was melancholy. He looks melancholy.”
“And mysterious?”
“Not particularly. When he moved in he seemed kinda helpless—he didn’t even know to heat-seal the windows. These days he still looks like he doesn’t know what he’s doing here. When he’s here—he’s here, then he’s gone again. I’ve seen him out walking from time to time. He’s no trouble.”
“Maybe he’s a bank robber.”
“Uh-huh. Just what I was thinking.”
“You were not. That was my idea. Listen, Mags, how are you? Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
“No.”
A long pause then. “I’m coming up to see you.”
“Sammy, no.”
“It’ll be after the weekend before the furnaces are working and school starts again. It’ll be fun. You can make up a bed on the couch for me. And invite the mysterious neighbor over for dinner one night.”
“Sam, you’re matchmaking.”
“Who’s matchmaking? After Claudine-the-bitch-from-hell, maybe I’m ready to go back to boys for a while. I met a nice strange boy when I hitchhiked down to El Paso for Christmas.”
“Oh. Look, Sam, you’ve got to stop hitchhiking.”
“How do you think I’m going to get to Lakeside?”
“Alison McGovern was hitchhiking. Even in a town like this, it’s not safe. I’ll wire you the money. You can take the bus.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Sammy.”
“Okay, Mags. Wire me the money if it’ll let you sleep easier.”
“You know it will.”
“Okay, bossy big sister. Give Leon a hug and tell him Auntie Sammy’s coming up and he’s not to hide his toys in her bed this time.”
“I’ll tell him. I don’t promise it’ll do any good. So when should I expect you?”
“Tomorrow night. You don’t have to meet me at the bus station—I’ll ask Hinzelmann to run me over in Tessie.”
“Too late. Tessie’s in mothballs for the winter. But Hinzelmann will give you a ride anyway. He likes you. You listen to his stories.”