Moonburn (30 page)

For a moment, Malachy looked as though he was going to say something. Then he gave me a mocking little inclination of his head and said, “Lunch it is, then.”

I had always suspected that one of the key ingredients in Malachy’s little pills would be carbamazepine, a mood stabilizer often used to prevent seizures. Instead, he turned out to be relying on the older concoction of phenobarbital laced with diazepam, along with potassium bromide, which explained why he usually had no appetite. As a vet, Mal explained, the phenobarb was easier to acquire. Besides, keeping himself so thin that his body had to break down muscle for glucose was actually part of his seizure-control plan. There was something else in there, however, that Malachy refused to explain. He ran it through the centrifuge, calling it his “secret ingedient” and telling me that it needed to be mixed after nightfall, naked, with only candles for light.

And no, he added, he wasn’t joking. Yes, of course he had tried it the other way. Five times.

Half an hour later, unbidden images of Malachy as a naked witch doctor were still popping into my head and making me snicker. Mal looked as though he would have thumped me, if he’d had the strength. But as it was, he barely had the energy to walk the two blocks to the Belle Savage Cafe.

“Hey, Abra. Hello, Malachy,” Penny called as we hung up our coats on the coatrack. Coming in from the cold and gray, the cafe felt wonderfully warm and bright and
homey. There was a good smell of freshly baked bread permeating the room, and a faint scent of some delicious spice. An old Andrews Sisters song was playing in the background, something about rum and Coca-Cola.

“Here you go,” Penny said, as she set a big bowl of beef stew in front of a young man sitting in the corner.

The young man looked up from his laptop. As he pushed his wire-rimmed glasses farther up his nose, he seemed a little startled by Penny’s appearance. The youngest of the three Grey sisters, Penny clearly hadn’t adjusted to the fact that she was pushing eighty. Her head seemed too large for her shriveled frame, and she wore her hair in a sleek platinum blond bob, the bangs emphasizing her blue saucer-sized eyes, the swinging sides apostrophes to the gleaming white dentures revealed by her oversized grin. All done up in a periwinkle blue dress and ruffled white apron that matched the curtains, she looked like a ghastly version of the actress Carol Channing.

It took some getting used to.

The young man cleared his throat. “But I didn’t order yet.”

“Smell.” Penny indicated the stew, and the young man sniffed. “So? Do you want it, or not?”

“I guess I want it,” said the young man, sounding befuddled. Only weekenders tried to order from the small blackboard that listed the cafe’s daily specials. Regulars knew that Penny and her sisters would tell you what you really wanted, and that they would invariably be correct, even if you had an initial pang of doubt.

I glanced around the cafe. Now the young man was alternately working his way through his stew and tapping away on a laptop. The other customer was a young, expensively highlighted mother dressed in the yummy mummy weekend uniform of tank top worn over long sleeved tee and tight, faded lowrider jeans. Her toddler,
who was sporting matching highlights and a Princeton sweatshirt, was refusing to eat his lovely sandwich. I knew it was lovely because the mother kept telling us all so in a carrying voice.

“But Winston, it’s a lovely sandwich,” she said coaxingly.

Winston turned his pout to the side, avoiding the bread. “The lady said soft bubbled egg! I wanted the bubbled egg!”

“Boiled, not bubbled, sweetheart, and it’s not safe to eat soft boiled, you can get nasty salmonella germs. This is cheddar, and you always like cheddar.”

Winston responded by shrieking no, no, no and trying to tip over the high chair. I looked away, trying to hide my smile. It didn’t pay to ignore the sisters’ advice.

“Let’s sit over here, shall we?” Malachy steered me toward a table across the room from the young mother. The room was too small for us to be out of earshot, however, and even with the music playing Mal and I would have to keep our voices down. As if on cue, the Andrews Sisters began singing “Bei Mir Bist du Schon.”

“All right,” I said, “I think we need to talk about Pia.”

Before I could say another word, however, Mal burst in with a wild laugh. “We need to talk about Pia? What is this, a soap opera? In a short time, I’m going to degenerate into a bestial state. There’s an epidemic of therianism transforming dogs into wolves, and our office cat may well be prowling town in the form of a tiger.” Malachy raked his hands through his woolly hair and gave another broken laugh. “And Christ, mustn’t forget there’s the manitou problem. And with all this going on, we need to talk about Pia?”

“Actually, I have another couple of problems to add to your list,” I admitted, thinking of Magda’s brothers
and Lilliana’s dirt-streaked note. “But I think we need to discuss Pia.”

Malachy looked at me with third-degree disdain. “I have no interest in discussing Pia. She has this absurd notion that she loves me, because she has transferred her doglike devotion from Jackie to myself. This is not a matter for analysis.”

“Actually, I had meant that we should talk about whether or not the mutated strain of the virus you infected her with could be affecting the other dogs.”

Malachy looked chastened. “Oh. Well. Yes, that does seem a likely scenario.”

Before I could follow up with another question, Penny bustled up to the table. “Well, now,” she said, filling our glasses with water from a pitcher. “What will it be today, folks? I know you’ll want a pot of tea, Malachy, and maybe something light—goat cheese and tomato quiche?”

Mal inclined his head, and Penny turned her attention to me.

“Coffee and … no, not coffee, how about some lovely fresh ginger beer for you? And I know something you’re going to love: cheese fondue! Is that perfect, or what?”

“It sounds wonderful,” I said, and Penny beamed at me and hurried back to the kitchen.

“So,” I continued as Malachy reflexively checked his pocket for his pills, “we need to get Pia back and take a blood sample. Unless you’ve tested her recently.”

Malachy shook his head. “No. Recently she has refused to let me monitor her condition. I have no idea what’s gotten into her lately.”

“She wants to be more than a medical experiment to you.” And, I did not add, I know how she feels. My feelings for Malachy weren’t romantic, but like Pia, I longed to have him acknowledge that our connection was more
than professional. He had been my mentor, and it was only natural that now I wanted him to acknowledge me as a peer. No, more than that: I wanted him to recognize me as a kindred spirit.

Malachy looked down his long nose at me. “I sense a lecture coming on. Some treacly bromide about medical ethics and respect for individuals, no doubt.”

“You did treat her like a guinea pig, you know.”

“I beg your pardon. When she was a dog, I treated her like an experimental subject. When she was human, I gave her a job. What more do you want from me?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Me? Not a thing. She, however, seems to have wanted something else—love, I suppose.” Thinking about Red, I reached into my handbag, feeling around for my cell phone.

Malachy looked appalled, as if I’d suggested he try French kissing the Pekingese. “But she’s barely human … and she’s an infant.”

“She’s as human as you made her,” I said. “And even if she’s inexperienced in our culture, biologically speaking, she’s an adult female. She was what, three years old last October? That’s around twenty-eight for a person. Unless she’s aging in dog years, of course. Is she?”

“No, of course she’s not,” snapped Malachy. “So what are you saying: I made her, so now she’s my responsibility?”

I raised my eyebrows.

“I didn’t mean I wouldn’t take care of her … as is perfectly apparent.” Malachy held up his left hand and began counting the ways on his fingers. “One, I have given her training. Two, I supervise her. Three, I feed her. Four, I pay her.” Putting his hand down, Malachy said, “The only thing I do not do, in point of fact, is allow her into my bedroom.”

I sat up straighter, startled by this piece of information.
“She’s actually told you she wants to sleep in your bedroom?”

“She’s told me that she wants to sleep in my bed, but she insists she would be happy to lie curled up on the floor. Don’t look at me like that, of course I refuse.” Malachy reached in his pocket, remembered the pills weren’t there, and then rubbed his hand over his face. “In any case, I couldn’t have sexual relations with the foolish girl, even if I wanted to.” Malachy pulled his hand away and said, very matter-of-factly, “The medication that controls the progress of my disease also inhibits sexual functioning.”

I glanced over to see if the mother and toddler had overheard, but luckily, they were preoccupied with crust removal. “I didn’t realize,” I said, awkwardly, remembering our interlude in front of the cabin. Without thinking, I touched the moonstone under my shirt, and for a moment, I saw the outline of another man around Malachy; a larger, stronger, darker figure, ruled by passion instead of reason. “Did you explain the, ah, problem to Pia?”

“Of course I did,” said Malachy, making no attempt to hide his growing irritation. “I thought perhaps bluntness would solve the problem, but it only made it worse. Now Pia’s been after me to stop taking the meds.”

I tried not to smile. “Oh.”

Malachy rotated his shoulders, gazing over my shoulder at an abstract painting of circles within squares within circles. “I was going to tell her that even if I were physically capable, I would be disinclined to embroil myself in all the hellish complications of sex in the workplace.”

“Maybe using simpler language,” I suggested.

Malachy met my eyes, and for a moment, I saw a flare of bright green light them from within. “Although, hypothetically speaking, if I were so inclined, I would at
least choose a woman with whom I could have an intelligent conversation.” There was a moment of silence while I tried to think what to say, and then Malachy added, “Like yourself.”

I was mated. According to Red’s traditions, I was married. And up until that moment, I had been coasting on a sea of contentment. But in the long moment that Malachy held my gaze, my heartbeat quickened and my blood surged. He wanted me. I told myself that it was the surprise of hearing him say the words that was warming me. That, and the fact that I had always wanted my brilliant former teacher to recognize my intelligence and grant me special status by his acceptance of me. But despite that odd moment earlier this month, I wasn’t physically attracted to Malachy. And in any case, it was a hypothetical declaration of desire.

“Thank you,” I said at last. “I’m flattered that you would think of me that way. I mean, if it weren’t for the medication,” I continued, floundering and sinking more deeply into the mudpit of awkwardness.

“Oh, I think of you that way, even when I’m on the medication. It doesn’t remove desire, just the means of satisfying it.” Malachy smiled, a thin, wry smile filled with a very masculine knowledge. “But I’m not telling you anything new, although on the previous occasion, we didn’t use words.”

And there it was: The acknowledgment that what had passed between us that day had not been an aberration due to hormones and stress.

I cleared my throat. “But of course, I’m with Red,” I said, suddenly aware of a faint burning sensation on my left arm.

“Yes, so you are,” said Malachy evenly, as though I’d brought up a useful observation in class. “And in any case, I will have a very small window between becoming fully functional and losing all ability to discriminate.
Now that I’m off the meds, I have about …” Mal checked his watch, “six to eight hours, I estimate, until I become a danger to you or any other woman between the ages of sixteen and sixty.”

I couldn’t suppress a little choke of laughter. “You mean you’re going to go from celibate to sex machine?”

Malachy reached for his pocket, then stopped. “There will be nothing mechanical about me. I will be a creature of impulse and aggression and lust. And from what I can ascertain, I won’t be pretty, either.” Closing his eyes for a moment, he said, “And I’m going to require your assistance to restrain myself.”

I didn’t have time to ask him to elaborate, because Penny’s older sister, Dana, had come by with Mal’s tea and my ginger beer. “And how are you folks doing today?” Unlike her skinny sister, Dana was a tank of a woman in a seventies-style maroon pantsuit, with the kind of breasts that keep others at a respectful distance. Her hair had the distinctive artichoke-shape that requires sleeping with rollers and liberal application of hairspray to achieve, but for some reason, she wasn’t wearing her dentures today, and her mouth looked like a wrinkled, half-empty purse.

With a speed and efficiency that belied her age, Dana set out Mal’s pot of tea and my ginger beer, and then set up the little burner for the fondue pot. When she was done, Dana paused and stared at me for a moment, her hands on her ample hips. “I don’t know what Penny was thinking. You don’t want fondue today, do you? Fiddling with bread and cheese. A nice big hamburger, that’s what you need. And as for you,” she told Malachy, “you don’t want quiche, you want bangers and mash.” Whisking away the fondue burner, she headed back into the kitchen.