Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories (20 page)

I shrugged. “I guess. You forget. All you remember afterwards is how intense it was. And then you have these—”

I ran my hand down my arm, turned to sit up. “This is what I did last night.” I flexed my leg, pulled up the edge of my shorts to better expose the new tattoo. “See?”

He sat up, ran a hand through his black hair, then leaned forward to examine it. His hair spilled down from his forehead; he had one hand on my upper thigh, the other on his own knee. His broad back was to me, olive skin, a paler crescent just above his shoulders where his neck was bent: a scar. There were others, jagged smooth lines, some deep enough to hide a fingertip. Shrapnel, or glass thrown off by the explosion. His long hair grazed my leg, hanging down like a dark waterfall.

I swallowed, my gaze flicking from his back to what I could glimpse of my tattoo, a small square of flesh framed between his arms, his hair, the ragged blue line of my cut-offs. A tall man, leaning forward so that his hair fell to cover his face. A waterfall. A curtain. Christopher lifted his head to stare at me.

A veil, torn away.

“Shit,” I whispered. “Shit, shit—”

I pushed away from him and scrambled to my feet. “What? What is it?” He looked around as though expecting to see someone else in the room with us. “Ivy—”

He tried to grasp me but I pulled away, grabbing my T-shirt from the couch and pulling it on. “Ivy! What happened?” His voice rose, desperate; I shook my head, then pointed at the tattoo.

“This—” He looked at the tattoo, then at me, not comprehending.
“That image? I just found it yesterday. On a card. This sort of tarot card, this deck. I got it at a rummage sale—”

I turned and ran into my studio. Christopher followed.

“Here!” I darted to my work table and yanked off the protective blue covering. The table was empty. “It was here—”

I whirled, went to my light table. Acetates and sheets of rag paper
were still strewn across it, my pencils and inks were where I’d left them.
A dozen pages with failed versions of the card were scattered across the desk, and on the floor. I grabbed them, holding up each sheet and shaking it as though it were an envelope, as though something might fall out. I picked up the pages from the floor, emptied the stainless steel wastebasket and sifted through torn papers and empty ink capsules. Nothing.

The card was gone.

“Ivy?”

I ignored him and ran back into the living room. “Here!” I yanked the paisley-wrapped deck from my purse. “It was like this, it was one of these—”

I tore the scarf open. The deck was still there. I let the scarf fall and fanned the cards out, face-down, a rainbow arc of labyrinthine wheels; then twisted my hand to show the other side.

“They’re blank,” said Christopher.

I nodded. “That’s right. They’re all blank. Only there was one—last night—”

I pointed at the tattoo. “That design. There was one card with that design. I copied it. It was with me in the studio, I had it on my drafting table. I ended up tracing it for the stencil.”

“And now you can’t find it.”

I shook my head. “No. It’s gone.” I let my breath out in a long
low whoosh. I felt sick at my stomach, but it was more like sea-sick
ness than panic, a nausea I could override if I wanted to. “It’s— I won’t find it. It’s just gone.”

My eyes teared. Christopher stood beside me, his face dark with concern. After a minute he said, “May I?”

He held out his hand, and I nodded and gave him the cards. He riffled through them, frowning. “Are they all like this?”

“All except two. There’s another one—” I gestured at my purse. “I put it aside. I got them at the rummage sale at St. Bruno’s yesterday. They were—”

I stopped. Christopher was still examining the cards, holding them up to the light as though that might reveal some hidden pattern. I said, “You read Walter Burden Fox, right?”

He glanced up at me. “Sure.
Five Windows One Door
? You gave it to me, remember? That first summer I stayed with you down at that place you had by the water. I loved those books.” His tone softened; he smiled, a sweet, sad half-smile, and held the cards up as though to show a winning hand. “That really changed my life, you know. After I read them; when I met you. That’s when I decided to become an archaeologist. Because they were—well, I don’t know how to explain it—”

He tapped the cards thoughtfully against his chin. “I loved those books so much. I couldn’t believe it, when I got to the end? That he never finished them. I used to think, if I had only one wish, it would be that somehow he finished that last book. Like maybe if his son hadn’t died, or something. Those books just amazed me!”

He shook his head, still marveling. “They made me think how the world might be different than what it is; what we think it is. That there might be things we still don’t know, even though we think we’ve discovered everything. Like the work I do? We scan all these satellite images of the desert, and we can see where ancient sites were, under the sand; under the hills. Places so changed by wind erosion you would never think anything else was ever there—but there were temples and villages, entire cities! Empires! Like in the third book, when you read it and find out there’s this whole other history to everything that happened in the first two. The entire world is changed.”

The entire world is changed
. I stared at him, then nodded. “Christopher—these cards are from his books. The last one. ‘The least trumps.’ When I got them, there was a little piece of paper—”

My gaze dropped to the floor. The scrap was there, by Christopher’s
bare foot. I picked up the scrap and handed it to him. “‘The least trumps.’ It’s in the very first chapter of the last book, the one he never finished. Mabel’s in bed with Tarquin and he takes out this deck of cards. He holds them in front of her, and when she breathes on them it somehow makes them come alive. There’s an implication that everything that happened before has to maybe do with the cards. But he died before he ever got to that part.”

Christopher stared at the fragment of paper. “I don’t remember,” he said at last. He looked at me. “You said there’s one other card. Can I see it?”

I hesitated, then went to get my bag. “It’s in here.”

I took out my wallet. Everything around me froze; my hand was so numb I couldn’t feel it when I slid my finger behind my license. I couldn’t feel it, it wasn’t there at all—

But it was. The wallet fell to the floor. I stood and held the card in both hands. The last one: the least trump. The room around me was grey, the air motionless. In my hands a lozenge of spectral color glimmered and seemed to move. There were airships and flaming birds, two old women dancing on a beach, an exploding star above a high-rise building. The tiny figure of a man wasn’t being carried in a litter, I saw now, but lying in a bed borne by red-clad women. Above them all a lash-fringed eye stared down.

I blinked and rubbed my eye; then gave the card to Christopher. When I spoke my voice was thick. “I—I forgot it was so beautiful. That’s it. The last one.”

He walked over to the window, leaned against the wall and angled the card to catch the light. “Wow. This is amazing. Was the other one like it? All this detail—”

“No. It was much simpler. But it was still beautiful. It makes you realize how hard it is, drawing something that simple.”

I looked down at my leg and smiled wryly. “But you know, I think I got it right.”

For some minutes he remained by the window, silent. Suddenly he looked up. “Could you do this, Ivy? On me?”

I stared at him. “You mean a tattoo?” He nodded, but I shook my head. “No. It’s far too intricate. It would take days, something like that. Days
,
just to make a decent stencil. The tattoo would probably take a week, if you were going to do it right.”

“This, then.” He strode over to me, pointing to the sun that was an eye. “Just that part, there—could you do just that? Like maybe on my arm?”

He flexed his arm, a dark sheen where the bicep rose, like a wave. “Right there—”

I ran my hand across the skin appraisingly. There was a scar, a small one; I could work around it, make it part of the design. “You should think about it. But yeah, I could do it.”

“I have thought about it. I want you to do it. Now.”

“Now?” I looked at the window. It was getting late; light was leaking from the sky, everything was fading to lavender-grey, twilight. The fog was coming in again, pennons of mist trailing above Green Pond. I could no longer see the far shore. “It’s kind of late
. . .
”

“Please.” He stood above me; I could feel the heat radiating from him, see the card glinting in his hand like a shard of glass. “Ivy—”

His deep voice dropped, a whisper I felt more than heard. “I’m not my sister. I’m not Julia. Please.”

He touched the outer corner of my eye, where it was still damp. “Your eyes are so blue,” he said. “I forgot how blue they are.”

We went into the studio. I set the card on the light table, with the deck beside it, used a loupe to get a better look at the image he wanted. It would not be so hard to do, really, just that one thing. I sketched it a few times on paper, finally turned to where Christopher sat waiting in the chair beside my work table.

“I’m going to do it freehand. I usually don’t, but this is pretty straightforward, and I think I can do it. You sure about this?”

He nodded. He looked a little pale, there beneath the bright lights I work under, but when I walked over to him he smiled. “I’m sure.”

I prepped him, swabbing the skin then shaving his upper arm twice, to make sure it was smooth enough. I made sure my machine was thoroughly cleaned, and set up my inks. Black; cerulean and cobalt; Spaulding and Rogers Bright Yellow.

“Ready?”

He nodded, and I set to.

It took about four hours, though I pretty much lost track of the time. I did the outline first, a circle. I wanted it to look very slightly uneven, like this drawing by Odilon Redon I liked—you can see how the paper absorbed his ink, it made the lines look powerful, like black lightning. After the circle was done I did the eye inside it, a half-circle of white, because in the card the eye is looking down, at the world beneath it. Then I did the flattened ovoid of the pupil. Then the flickering lashes all around it. Christopher didn’t talk. Sweat ran in long lines from beneath his arms; he swallowed a lot, and sometimes closed his eyes. There was so much muscle beneath his skin that it was difficult to keep it taut—no fat, and the skin wasn’t loose enough—so I had to keep pulling it tight. I knew it hurt.

“That’s it, take a deep breath. I can stop, if you need to take a break. I need to take a break, anyway.”

But I didn’t. My hand didn’t cramp up; there was none of that fuzzy feeling that comes after holding a vibrating machine for hours at a stretch. Now and then Christopher would shift in his chair, never very much. Once I moved to get a better purchase on his arm, sliding my knee between his legs: I could feel his cock, rigid beneath his corduroys, and hear his breath catch.

He didn’t bleed much. His olive skin made the inks seem to glow, the blue-and-gold eye within its rayed penumbra, wriggling lines like cilia. At the center of the pupil was the scar. You could hardly see it now, it looked like a shadow, the eye’s dark heart.

“There.” I drew back, shut the machine off and nestled it in my lap. “It’s finished. What do you think?”

He pulled his arm towards him, craning his head to look. “Wow. It’s gorgeous.” He looked at me and grinned ecstatically. “It’s fucking gorgeous.”

“All right then.” I stood and put the machine over by the sink, turned to get some bandages. “I’ll just clean it up, and then—”

“Not yet. Wait, just a minute. Ivy.”

He towered above me, his long hair lank and skin sticky with
sweat, pink fluid weeping from beneath the radiant eye.
When he kissed
me I could feel hi
s
coc
k
against me, heat arcing above my groin. His leg moved, it rubbed against my tattoo and I moaned but it didn’t hurt, I couldn’t feel it, anything at all, just heat everywhere now, hi
s
hand
s
tuggin
g
m
y
shir
t
of
f
the
n
drawin
g
m
e
int
o
th
e
bedroom.

Not like Julia. His mouth was bigger, his hand; when I put my arms around him my fingers scarcely met, his back was so broad. The scars felt smooth and glossy; I thought they would hurt if I touched them but he said no, he liked my fingernails against them, he liked to press my mouth against his chest, hard, as I took his nipple between my lips, tongued it then held it gently between my teeth, the aureole with its small hairs radiating beneath my mouth. He went down on me and that was different too, his beard against the inside of my thighs, his tongue probing deeper; my fingers tangled in his hair and I felt his breath on me, his tongue still inside me when I came. He kissed me and I tasted myself, held his head between my hands, his beard wet. He was laughing. When he came inside me he laughed again, almost shouted; then collapsed alongside me.

“Ivy. Ivy—”

“Shhh.” I lay my palm against his face and kissed him. The sheet between us bore the image of a blurred red sun. “Christopher.”

“Don’t go.” His warm hand covered my breast. “Don’t go anywhere.”

I laughed softly. “Me? I never go anywhere.”

We slept. He breathed heavily, but I was so exhausted I passed out before I could shift towards my own side of the bed. If I dreamed, I don’t remember; only knew when I woke that everything was different, because there was a man in bed beside me.

“Huh.” I stared at him, his face pressed heavily into the pillow. Then I got up, as quietly as I could. I tiptoed into the bathroom, peed, washed my face and cleaned my teeth. I thought of making coffee, and peered into the living room. Outside all was still fog, dark-grey, shredded with white to mark the wind’s passing. The clock read six thirty. I turned and crept back to the bedroom.