Andromeda Klein (27 page)

“That’s where Isaac Newton went wrong,” she said, thinking it might be something Huggy would say or at least appreciate. She imagined Huggy’s “voice” agreeing, and she imagined what It would probably say, which was “Yes, he should have taken off that wig.” But no, that wasn’t right: she
had b
ee
n
wearing a wig, Daisy’s wig. So wigs were back in, Isaac Newton’s judgment reaffirmed.

Andromeda waited for, then imagined, Huggy’s confirming “Bingo.” But imagining it and hearing it were very different. She couldn’t make it happen. It figured that Andromeda would get assigned such a stubborn, disagreeable HGA. It just did.

“Do you know how to hot-wire a car?”

Rosalie van Genuchten was on the phone, and the mom was pretending to take inventory of the refrigerator’s contents while straining to hear every word through the kitchen wall. Andromeda had availed herself of a rare opportunity to use the computer in the dining room to look up
anchoress
on the Internet. Huggy had popped up to tell her the word, which she had forgotten, while she was in the bath, the still-distant voice bubbling up from the sound of the rushing tap. Perhaps this is always what happens when people “remember” things; they’re just not sensitive or knowledgeable enough to realize that Some Thing is bringing it forth. Strangely, the voice she had always thought of as her Alternative Universe self had never been so quiet and elusive as it was now, when she had finally experienced it in its full, uncloaked form.

Still, It had also, in passing, told her that she shouldn’t wash her hair so much because it deprived the scalp of essential oils, and reminded her that she had left the
Simonomicon
out and recommended putting it back in the bag, just to be on the safe side. Huggy could be positively momlike.

“I don’t know anything about cars,” Andromeda told Rosalie, which pretty much went without saying. “My dad uses a screwdriver in his van.”

“What kind of screwdriver?” asked Rosalie, but Andromeda didn’t know, and she said she didn’t suppose it mattered what kind. Rosalie had been caught raiding her mother’s supply of weed and had been “grounded.” Practically, this meant nothing, because her mother was spending the weekend with her boyfriend in Carmichael and anyway Rosalie laughed at such weak-willed attempts at parental discipline, as one does. However, her mother had taken both sets of keys to the Volvo with her.

“Wow, mean,” said Andromeda.

“I did get the door open, but now I’m stuck,” said Rosalie, adding that they needed to be mobile because there was a party at the station that night. “You have to come. Josh wants to hang out with you, and you have to witness the awesome continuing adventures of Rosalie and Darren, the service-station years.”

“Can’t Darren just give you a ride up there?” Andromeda asked. Rosalie loved to bore her with rapturous descriptions of Darren’s car, which was a something-or-other.

“No, it’s a, uh,
surprise
party. But they’re going to be there and so are we, so how could that not be worth your while? Isn’t there a thing where you can start a car without the key if you roll it down a hill?”

“Probably a bad idea,” said Andromeda Klein. “I’m still not feeling—”

“Ask your dad, maybe,” said Rosalie, interrupting. “And don’t die.”

Andromeda had no intention of surprising the gas-station guys with Rosalie in a hot-wired parental Volvo. She had more weedgie things on her agenda.

She shoved her phone in her sweatshirt pocket, narrowly avoiding a disaster as the mom came in saying “Who was that, what did they want?”

The blue phone no longer worked, so Andromeda had had to adopt a new phone strategy till she figured out something better. She kept the red phone’s SIM card in her right jeans pocket and the blue phone’s SIM card in her left pocket when it wasn’t in the phone. That was so she wouldn’t get confused when she switched them; obviously the blue phone’s card stayed in the still-functioning red phone till it needed to be switched. But if the mom spotted the red phone, there was no telling what might happen, so she had to keep it hidden. This scheme required that she wear jeans and a sweatshirt with big pockets in which to hide the phone suddenly when necessary. Andromeda found that the pockets of Daisy’s vinyl coat were good for that purpose. Possibly it might require being seen pretending to talk into the dead blue phone from time to time. In a way, having only one handset to carry around was more convenient, though she would have to find some of those tiny jewelry bags to keep the SIM cards dry on those days when they turned the heat too high and she ended up sweating like a pig. Which was pretty much all the time in Clearview.

“Who’s this Darren?” said the mom. Andromeda held up a finger, as though to say “Hang on a second,” and deftly slipped out the kitchen door and down the stairs.

The dad was out in his van with the door open and his headphones on.

“Cupcake!” he said with an enormous smile, stopping the tape and cranking down the window when he noticed her standing there watching him. “So you escaped too? Good good good. There’s plenty of room if you want to hide out with me. Your mother will have to content herself with yelling at the fridge. Meanwhile, we will tunnel our way to freedom and build a new world on the other side.” He had to get out and let Andromeda slide in because the passenger-side door didn’t open.

“You’re in a good mood,” Andromeda said.

“I know! I know!” he said. “Isn’t it grand? The new meds are supposed to level me off, but here’s the beauty part: they don’t work! Not even a little.” He gave her an exaggerated crazy-eye look. “Not to worry, though. Soon I’ll crash and you will have your customary demoralized parental unit who failed in life back again. But what’s the use of having two balls if you can’t swing on one of them sometimes?”

“Good one,” she said after a brief, faintly disturbed pause during which Huggy whispered that he was making a bipolar disorder joke and had meant to say “poles.”

“I got a million of them,” he said, “but technically you’re only allowed two.” There were probably many pretty good pole jokes that could have been made here by someone who wasn’t his daughter.

The dad explained that he was “nuts about” this band he was recording later in the week, and that he was listening to their demo. He took out the CD and Andromeda nearly fell over with surprise when she read the label.

“Choronzon?” she said. “You’re recording them?”

“Yeah, you know them?” he said incredulously. It was well known that Andromeda had little familiarity with, and still less interest in, rock music of any kind. And it seemed a pretty good bet that it was an obscure outfit anyway.

“I have a friend who does,” she said, bracing herself for skepticism on this point. It was true, too. She did have a friend who liked Choronzon the rock group. As ridiculous as it sounded, it was rather neat, like how regular people probably are all the time, having friends who are into all sorts of things, and you know about it. Because they tell you. And on occasion you are called upon to describe these interests, and doing so amounts to a public announcement that you are in their confidence.

“They’re Cthulhu rock,” she added, trying to sound knowledgeable, but the term didn’t seem to register.

Byron had talked about it as though they were a real, legitimate band, but they couldn’t be that big if they were recording at the dad’s little hole-in-the-wall studio. She waved away the headphones when he held them out to her.

“Can you make me a CD?” she asked, knowing exactly what he was going to say in response, and knowing that he would know that she would know.

“Sure,” said the dad. He wiggled his fingers at her. “Poof: you’re a CD!”

The dad had tried to explain to her how to start a car by pulling down some wires under the dash and connecting them to each other. He seemed a little confused by it himself.

“It’s better,” he finally said, holding up his screwdriver, “if you have a key.”

It didn’t matter: Andromeda had no intention of being Rosalie’s enabler at car theft and vandalism, especially if all that was in it for her was a trip up to the gas station to watch Rosalie flirt with Darren What’s-his-dick. Then she laughed on the way inside, because she realized he and her boss had the same name and had an image of Rosalie kissing and grinding on Darren Hedge at the reference desk.

You should talk, jailbait
, came another short burst from Huggy. Did all HGAs talk like that? How on earth had she ended up with such an obnoxious one? She’d have preferred a more weedgie-sounding vocabulary, too.

“What’s going on out there?” said the mom suspiciously—the kind of question that did not deserve an answer. Andromeda just stared at her, but Huggy said
Hatching a plan to tunnel to freedom and start anew
and Andromeda snickered.

“Yes,” said the mom, “yes, that is just so amusing that I would want to know what’s going on in my own house. Hardy-har-har. And here’s another great big huge joke: that van Genuchten girl was here yesterday.”

Rosalie hadn’t mentioned that on the phone, but true to form she had left some random items for Andromeda: a half-full packet of Empress’s tearjerkers, two paper clips, and a pencil. The mom also handed her a new pack of disposable contacts in her approximate prescription and size that she had swiped for Andromeda from the mall optometrist where she worked, and accused Andromeda of trying to hack into her e-mail, stealing and hiding the TV remote, eating all the baloney, and just being a difficult child who couldn’t look anyone in the eye. Andromeda had to acknowledge the last of these, and to thank her for the first, because her last pair of contacts was getting pretty crusty.

“So you’re spending the rest of the day in virtuality?” said Andromeda as she headed for her room, but the mom was already on the computer with her headphones on, typing furiously and saying “Goddamn network …”

Once back in her room, Andromeda got out her notebook and compass and straightedge and drew her own Tree of Life, as carefully as she could. She had never thought of doing this before, nor had she really considered it as an actual map. In a sense, she realized, the Tree of Life diagram itself is a glyph, a kind of sigil, and the very act of trying to envision its workings, how it related to the reality it diagrammed, could cause her state of mind to shift ever so slightly. Perhaps more intensive work with it as a sigil was in order. It was obvious once you thought of it, but she had certainly never considered trying such a simple technique.

Andromeda’s many attempts to meditate on tarot cards and use them as gateways to astral realms as taught by the Golden Dawn had never worked, but that was before Huggy and the flashing, spinning, undulating Universe-gem. She retrieved her liquor-damaged deck and sorted through the cards, once again looking for the World. She couldn’t find it. It wasn’t there. She was usually so careful with her cards, but she had been a little trashed that night. She had probably dropped it. It was still at Rosalie’s house, no doubt, under the sofa or somewhere.

Obviously, this was another, perhaps crucial, element of the Huggy Tantoon Working: the tarot deck resting on the tantoon desk—that is, on the altar or Table of Art—must be missing Key XXI, the World. If you took it far enough, you could say that the card would have to be clear across town, at the same location where the previous divinatory operation had been conducted the previous evening, with the six unwitting celebrants. Would the two who left before the divination begins have to be a Christian Thing both of whose heads objected to the
ouijanesse?
Perhaps they could simply be adepts playing that role, maybe even sewn into a single garment with two neck holes. They would probably have to make out, though. When she got a chance she would have to check the star map of those particular days and hours, too. That undoubtedly had had an effect as well.