China Lake (8 page)

She turned and walked back toward me. ‘‘Evan, the end of days doesn’t mean the demolition of Earth—it means the overthrow of the world order. The New Jerusalem, that’s a synonym for Up the Revolution, baby. We’re talking about the dawning of an age where justice rules, and where there’s no poverty, no suffering, no death. And that, you’d better believe, is one powerful idea.’’

I waited a beat. ‘‘Presuming you’re a true believer.’’

‘‘When it’s your apocalypse, you’re always the true believer. That’s the point. And everybody you hate is gone, toasted in the cleansing fire.’’

Water licked her ankles and retreated. ‘‘But the Apocalypse isn’t about payback; it’s about hope. It says no matter how rotten things get, God’s gonna win in the end. Good is stronger than evil.’’ She paused, holding her hands out. ‘‘So, what are you afraid of?’’

She had me. But to drive home the point she set hands on hips and said with comic exaggeration, ‘‘Don’t you love Jesus, girl?’’

Her brown eyes pinned me. She expected a serious answer. All my snappy comebacks wilted unsaid, and I looked down at the sand.

After a few seconds she waved a hand dismissively and started walking again. ‘‘Aw, you just can’t see the bright side because you spent so much time creating catastrophes for your book.’’

My novel
Lithium Sunset
was set in a bleak future after a world war. A totalitarian army had conquered the heroine’s people. Survivors on both sides had suffered flash burns and genetic damage in the thermonuclear exchange. Mutation and ritual suicide were commonplace.

‘‘Mass destruction without purpose—that’s a pop culture apocalypse, Ev.’’

‘‘Oh, cut me to the bone.’’

‘‘Your radioactive prairie has survivors, though. Your novel isn’t about annihilation; it’s about tenacity. Yeah, the characters are screwed up, they drink too much and listen to goddamned Patsy Cline music, but they hang in and keep on fighting. You like to write about people who have their back up against it. Nine hundred megatons of bomb craters across the landscape, that’s just backstory.’’

I smiled. It was good to hear spirit in her voice.

‘‘Face it, woman—sci-fi lets you imagine whole new worlds, and that’s the buzz. ‘In the beginning, God thought—
Hot shit! What’ll I cook up today
?’ Quite a kick, huh? You love possibility and creation. You’re just too dark-minded to realize it.’’

‘‘So, I’m the Gloomy Gus here, and the Remnant are the real optimists?’’

‘‘Ironic, isn’t it.’’

I put an arm around her shoulders.

She said, ‘‘Of course, Pop’s favorite quote was from Pascal—‘Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.’ Watch out for the event that convinces the Remnant it’s
now.
They’ll be joyful when they pull the trigger.’’

And, like that, she took a juddering breath and started crying. After a minute she said, ‘‘Mom should be here, tossing in some choice comments.’’ She rubbed her eyes roughly with the back of her hand. ‘‘God sure lets the dog turds fly against the fan sometimes.’’

We rounded a point. To our stupefaction, ahead on the sand, surrounded by beachcombers, civil engineers, and a television news crew, was the whale. It dominated the beach, rising like a cartilaginous gray pudding, ringed by kelp and barking dogs.

A moment later the wind shifted. The stench hit, pungent and greasy, and the next thing I knew Nikki was bent over, throwing up. When she straightened again she said, ‘‘The Apocalypse is upon Santa Barbara. Live at five, on CNN.’’

At three I walked Luke home from school. Back home we sat on the lawn eating a snack, with sunlight speckling our shoulders through the greenery, and I broke the news.

‘‘I have to tell you something important. Your mom has moved back to Santa Barbara.’’

He stopped sipping from his juice box and looked at me, brown eyes huge.

‘‘She’s living at your grandma’s old house, up in the mountains.’’

He sat as still as glass, his colt’s legs sticking out from his baggy shorts, looking as if he had heard something growling in the bushes. ‘‘Is Dad going to live there too?’’

‘‘No, he’s still moving to China Lake. They aren’t getting back together, bud.’’

Seeing a thousand-yard stare on a six-year-old is deeply disconcerting. I rubbed his shoulder, trying to bring him back. Slowly his lips parted and he said, ‘‘But she won’t let me bring Teddy. I can’t go there.’’

‘‘What?’’

The juice box dropped from his hands and dribbled onto the grass. He began kneading his fingers together. ‘‘She doesn’t like my bear because he has Dad’s patch sewed on him. The skull makes her mad.’’

It was true; Tabitha hated Brian’s squadron patch, a death’s-head with red eyes and a dagger clenched in its teeth. But I didn’t understand what Luke was saying. His neck and shoulders were rigid, his fingers working painfully. His mind was grinding at an idea I couldn’t reach.

‘‘She won’t let Teddy come, and I can’t leave him here by himself. Don’t make me stay at her house.’’

‘‘No, Luke—oh, sweetheart, no.’’ I pulled him into my arms. ‘‘You aren’t going to her house. You’re staying with me until I take you to your dad’s.’’

Evan, you dumb ass. I held him, feeling his fingers continue to writhe, wanting to kick myself.

He said, ‘‘Promise?’’

‘‘Cross my heart.’’

But he had trouble believing it. He made me repeat the promise, insisting that I add ‘‘hope to die’’ and ‘‘stick a needle in my eye.’’ And a while later, when I looked out the kitchen window, I saw him heading for the flower beds, carrying a handful of LEGO astronauts and a croquet mallet.

I phoned my brother again, this time reaching him at the base airfield. He answered the phone smartly. ‘‘Delaney.’’

‘‘Hi, bro.’’

‘‘Ev! Is my little man ready to move to China Lake?’’

He started describing his new house, Luke’s room, the school, and telling me how the town had grown. We had lived in China Lake as teenagers, when our father was stationed at the naval base doing weapons research.

‘‘It’s cosmopolitan,’’ he said. ‘‘It has traffic lights. Bet you can’t wait to get back.’’

‘‘Don’t need to; I relive high school every time I open the oven.’’

I would rather have pounded tacks into my tongue than tell him. But some things I do straight: drink, sex, bad news.

‘‘Brian—Tabitha’s in Santa Barbara. I’ve seen her, and she as much as said she wants Luke.’’

Flat quiet on the line. ‘‘Not gonna happen. Next.’’ Another pause. ‘‘What else? You’re tweaked—I can hear it. Something’s squirrelly.’’

‘‘She’s got religion, and I mean in the worst way.’’

Five seconds of silence. ‘‘Fuck me.’’

I could hear men’s voices in the background, and the scratch of aircraft engines. ‘‘I’ll have to talk about this later. I have a briefing,’’ he said. ‘‘Listen. She doesn’t see him, she doesn’t speak to him, she doesn’t touch him. Understand?’’

‘‘Absolutely.’’

‘‘And, Evan . . .’’

‘‘Yeah?’’

Loud talk behind him, as a jet took off. ‘‘How does she look?’’

What could I expect? He had loved her a long time. I said, ‘‘She looks reborn.’’

The book festival kicked off that Wednesday, under harlequin-bright banners fluttering on lampposts along State Street. The city cooed about it with restrained zest. Enthusiasm would have seemed crass to Santa Barbarans, who cultivate casualness as exactingly as the Japanese cultivate bonsai trees. Still, I expected the festival to be an antidote to my anxieties, a glass of emotional champagne. I was scheduled to read and sign copies of my novel at Beowulf’s Books, and let me tell you, applause makes me feel like a goddess. A mini Festival of Evan—bring it on.

Beowulf’s lacked chain-store slickness. The staff favored berets and clogs, and the front counter was plastered with flyers promoting candlelight marches to save various outcast groups. ‘‘Liberate California’s Ferrets,’’ notably. The front window contained a crop of science-fiction titles, with a sign saying, MEET AUTHORS HERE.

Inside the door, a table displayed copies of my book,
Lithium Sunset
. I stood admiring it. The cover showed the heroine’s strong face, a shattered landscape, and my name. I breathed in and felt famous.

At the back of the store I saw Beowulf’s coffee bar, scene of the showdown between the ferrets and Priscilla Gaul. Observing me, an elderly woman approached. It was Anita Krebs, the owner.

‘‘The security firm wanted to install TV cameras to catch the thief. Orwellians. Completely unnecessary— Pip and Oliver caught that sneak red-handed. So to speak,’’ she said. ‘‘How are you, dear girl?’’

Anita had a reputation as a peppery iconoclast. A leathery woman with a skullcap of white hair, she wore pendulous turquoise jewelry and an extravagance of fuchsia lipstick. She took my arm and led me toward some chairs set up for the reading.

‘‘I delved into your novel again last night. It really is marvelous. Your concept so intrigues me, that tyranny forces its opponents toward both tactical ingenuity and aesthetic rigidity.’’

That sounded ostentatious, but I was pleased that she had looked beyond the plot, about the girl warrior who fights bug-eyed mutants.

‘‘And the male character’s eroticism—well! I quite fancied him.’’ She gestured to the chairs. ‘‘Good luck. Sell a lot of books.’’

I was pumped, ready to go, and after she introduced me I read the scene where heroine meets hero. They’re in a seedy tavern; she’s a disillusioned guerrilla, he’s a member of the resistance. She rebuffs him. He suffers brutal injury saving her life. The scene had heat, in the form of sexual tension and homicide, and I gave it all I had.

The audience liked it. Bookworms, fans of the genre, and my neighbors, they clustered afterward at a table where I sat to sign their copies. I acted charming and witty, and as other purchasers came along I floated through the afternoon in an expanding bubble of self-regard. When Nikki walked in, I thought it was the exclamation point on the day. She had on chartreuse maternity overalls, bright camouflage for her grief, yet she raised a camera and started snapping flash photos, saying, ‘‘Lord, oh, Lord, it’s really you. Evan Delaney. I want to have your baby. After this one, I mean—this one belongs to Stephen King.’’

I felt
cool
.

It was just after she left, however, that the line formed. A young woman wearing fatigue shorts, a tank top, and a daisy in her hair—Lara Croft meets Joan Baez—came forward clutching
Lithium Sunset
to her breast.

She said, ‘‘I don’t know how you did it. It’s like Rowan’’—the heroine—‘‘is me. It’s like you know my heart and my entire life.’’

This far exceeded the praise I’d been getting. I hoped she meant the heroine’s can-do spirit, not her psychokinetic powers or her training in explosives. ‘‘Thanks.’’

She said, ‘‘I mean, I’m freaking. I totally, totally love this book. You’re writing a sequel, right? Because Rowan rescues her lover, I know it. She
has
to.’’

The woman behind her, wearing shorts and a rude sunburn, said, ‘‘I want to know what planet the story takes place on.’’

‘‘Kansas,’’ I said.

Daisy-hair turned to the woman. ‘‘What
planet
? Do you even know what the novel is about?’’

‘‘The back cover says, right here,’’ Sunburn said. ‘‘ ‘For Rowan Larkin, surrender couldn’t end the war.’ ’’

‘‘No, it’s
about
the ways society punishes people who don’t conform. Why do you think Rowan gets banished for refusing to become a collaborator?’’

A man in a Dodgers cap said, ‘‘Hey. Some of us haven’t read the book yet.’’

‘‘Come on, let me sign that for you.’’ I agreed with her comments but wanted her to quiet down. ‘‘What’s your name?’’

‘‘It’s Glory.’’ To the sunburned woman she said, ‘‘I mean, why else do you think Rowan kills the rebel commander?’’

The man threw up his hands and walked away. ‘‘That’s it. I want a refund.’’

I said, ‘‘No!’’ He kept walking.

A new voice said, ‘‘It’s about staying true to your cause in the face of temptation. Right?’’

Her cowboy hat was baby blue. Her small gray eyes were expressionless. Her analysis was off-kilter, and I knew, staring at the clay-colored braid hanging down her back, that she wasn’t going to shut up about it. It was Chenille Wyoming.

To the crowd in general I said, ‘‘I’m glad you all liked the novel. But if you give away the ending I won’t sign your books.’’

‘‘I ain’t giving nothing away. I’m letting everyone know you all got it wrong.’’

I had signed Glory’s copy, and Chenille put her hand on the book to keep me from handing it to the girl. She told her, ‘‘Truck’s out back. Go on.’’ Without a word, Glory walked away. Others followed, Remnant members who had quietly positioned themselves around the bookstore. Chenille remained in front of me. Above the hanging moon of her double chin, her expression was placid. Her eyes were the lusterless gray of slate, small and stony.

My anger rose more quickly than my guard, and I took the bait. ‘‘Wrong. How’s that?’’

‘‘Well.’’ She whipped open a little spiral-bound notebook. ‘‘Let’s start with that book on the best-seller table,
Cyber-Fables
. It’s about hacker warlocks with magic only works over the Internet. Ha. Like Satan ain’t been wireless since day one.’’

She pointed to the front window. ‘‘This book up there, it has people that change sex, shape-shifters. Now, you tell me where in scripture that’s at. Another one has aliens from a place where they don’t
die
. That is purely ridiculous. Death, that’s the Lord’s choosing time—else why do they say, ‘Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out?’ ’’

My head was pounding. I said, ‘‘I can’t remember, is that from Ecclesiastes, or
Full Metal Jacket
?’’ She colored. I handed her my book. ‘‘Thanks for stopping by. It’s been a treat.’’