The Quick & the Dead (42 page)

The emergency vehicles had certainly made a mess of the landscaping out here. On further reflection, Alice concluded it was cactus thieves who had struck. A large columnar cereus was just gone, off to a new decorating role in Palm Springs. Sophisticated burglars taking advantage of an ascendant retro surge had hit the place hard. There were holes everywhere.

Nothing stirred. Life was not obvious. The pack rat’s spiny pile was festooned here and there with bottle caps and the blue plastic rings that
had once ensured the purity of jugged water. The rat had to bear the burden of its incorrect name, for it was not genus
Rattus
at all although often slandered as such. Shy and misunderstood as it was, it must have been immensely pleased with the construction, which even included a tube of lipstick, Mrs. V.’s lipstick so recently enshrined by Annabel. Mrs. V. was stubborn—still being represented in this practically nowhere by this tube she had known, golden without, and within horribly crimson and waxily collapsed. Alice hoped Mr. V. had gone far enough away for happiness. And she hoped he wasn’t eating veal over there, though this was unlikely, given the penchant of the French. They even ate horses. She should send him a little note, something fun, not too didactic:
A HEART ATTACK IS GOD’S REVENGE FOR EATING HIS LITTLE FRIENDS
. She didn’t want to be informed that he’d had a heart attack, of course.

I shouldn’t come out here after today, she thought. She felt a certain misalignment regarding herself and her life. A misalignment could make a big difference.

She had gone to Green Palms on the first of the days, and Nurse Daisy had appeared at the door.

“You look like you’ve got the flu,” she said. “We can’t expose our residents to random bugs that might carry them away sooner rather than later.”

“I don’t have the flu,” Alice said.

“People deny, they conceal, they prevaricate. I’ve heard it all.”

Inside, they were tossing a beach ball around a circle. Singing silly love songs. Getting their diapers changed.

“You’ve got something,” Nurse Daisy said, “and it’s not acceptable here. Go away, now. Shoo. Shoo!”

“I’m looking for Corvus.”

“You always are. That’s not her name anymore. She received a different name. What did you call your first little pets? Tyger? Domino? Don’t you wish you were a little kid again?”

“Not really,” Alice said.

“Your mind developing. You’d be two, then four. What a difference. People who cared would be thrilled at your progress. Those false-belief tests. You’d bring up your scores, eventually.”

“What’s a false-belief test?”

“Sally puts a chocolate in a box, then leaves the room. June comes in, takes the chocolate out of the box, puts it in a basket. Sally comes back. Where will Sally look for her chocolate? A two-year-old, a three-year-old will point at the basket, because that’s where the chocolate
is
, but you won’t. You’ll be four. You’ll point at the box. Theory of mind. Shows you’re capable of simultaneously conceiving of and appreciating two alternative and contradictory models of reality. And it just gets better and better for a time when you’re a little kid. The capacity to change nervous pathways—that is, to learn—seems unlimited. But then the changing slows, even stops. And all that’s left is to get pig sick of things.”

They were playing with their fruit cups on trays locked in place, the syrup too thick for their old throats. They were stroking the wheels of their chairs.

Alice could see them, dimly.

“You never long to be a little child again? Because look at you now, an odd one, one from whom love and participation are not particularly desired.”

“You can’t hold Corvus in here,” Alice had said. “There are rules.”

Nurse Daisy’s jaw dropped. Rules, she mouthed. Alice almost turned to look behind her, for it seemed that the nurse was projecting to a distant, disbelieving audience.

“You must stop trying to impose yourself on that girl,” Nurse Daisy said.
“ ‘Sit in your cell, and your cell will tell you everything.’
That’s something she’s learned and you never will.”

Inside, their names were posited in ink upon the collars of their clothes. Someone, something, was combing their old hair.

“This is not a nunnery,” Alice said.

“It’s a sexless place of contemplation. Don’t pick nits.”

“Corvus doesn’t want to be in a nunnery.”

“You’ll never know. You are not her! Maybe you wouldn’t score that nicely on the false-belief test. Maybe you’d keep going for that basket, much to everyone’s disappointment.”

Alice frowned. “Please,” she said, “I want to see Corvus.”

“Don’t demean yourself with pleading,” Nurse Daisy snapped. “Why do you always have to look at everything twice in order to see it? The short prayer penetrates Heaven, they say, but any fool can see this isn’t
Heaven here. Your friend’s disappointed you. Think of it that way if it will make you feel better.”

“I’m a volunteer,” Alice said. “I can come inside.” Nurse Daisy firmly shut and locked the door.

Vexed, Alice had begun to walk, then run the four miles to the Wildlife Museum, with the vague intent of making a ruckus, of unroutine sabotage. But how could one sabotage death all doubled back upon itself, presenting itself so breathlessly intact? Still, she thought she’d knock some things over, rail at the paying customers, make them reflect on the transaction they were engaged in.

Then she had arrived, baffled, at the immense new wall encircling the place, to which small lettered signs in what looked to be a child’s hand were attached at inconsistent intervals.

The cement smelled fresh. There was a smoldering smell, too. Maybe everything back there was getting an air burial. No, that was something different; pyres were not involved. With an air burial something had to come and get you. Something wild. There was no telling what. But you had to be carrion for air burial to be successful. And these objects weren’t even dead. Rather, they had died but weren’t dead now. It was like a church, this museum, a death dome full of fabrication and comfort and instruction and paradox. She hated it. She threw stones over the wall. Was there a vast pit back there then, tarred and lavender, offering final decease at last? She threw more stones. A limousine moved slowly past on the road above her, paused, and then proceeded on.

Stumpp and Pickless, driving with complacent aimlessness in the blueblack limousine, were each chewing on a piece of licorice. The child was in the front, and in the back there was something breathing in a box. A sweetish smell emanated. There was always something heaving in the rear in their rides together, depleted, partial, clinging to life, trying
to flutter or crawl, still breathing. Something dumb, bewildered, in a weary-unto-death panic, covered in leather jackets or silken scarves, ringed with spilt dishes of water, pans of seed and crumbs. Emily liked driving purposelessly around with her charges; the motion and the little lights inside that looked like stars served to occupy their thoughts, she believed. She had put away the tea things and was gnawing on the licorice for Stumpp’s sake. Stumpp had introduced her to it, both the red and the black. Licorice was very much an acquired taste, she suspected, pretty much like everything that lay ahead.

“Chucking rocks,” Emily noted. A little thrill rose up in her, then subsided. She maintained a soft spot for irrational behavior. She turned to Stumpp and said somewhat fatuously, “I’m glad I’m not her.” She was shocked she’d said such a thing, though it was neither true nor untrue. Lies, on the other hand, were more permissible, being nothing more than secrets.

“How could you be her?” Stumpp had finished his licorice. There was a last gummy node behind his molar. He left it there for the time being. Funny stuff, licorice. The root of the plant had been found packed in tombs in Egyptian lands. Had meant something once. Reduced to a confection now. The past was replete with lost guides.

“You can become something you’re not,” Emily said. She sensed, then, a whispering, a plunge and settle in the box of spilt offerings. She did not turn her head to confirm that for yet another, the intriguing passage had been breached.

Stumpp maneuvered the long car with incremental turnings of the wheel. Half-pint sutra, little Pickless. Unreaped whirlwind. The sun shone like oil upon the limousine’s hood, which had been waxed to the shine of water. A futuristic ark with two unmateable souls within. As it should be. Into the future. Shouldn’t even have a name, the future. Thing had died back there, whatever it was, whatever labors it had undertaken as a pup. Its time transpired. Knew she’d heard it go, little adept. Best
Homo sap
can do is perceive the penumbral. Yet not enough the penumbral. Not good enough for Pickless. Nothing too good for Pickless. Grateful he could see that so clearly. Scales all fallen away. For this was a rare confluence. Confluence to end all confluences, Stumpp
and Pickless. Would never want materially, he’d make sure of that. All means must be put at her disposal. The rest up to her. For she was going to inherit the world. The world once more …

Was the last breath of a thing relevant? Emily wondered. She couldn’t imagine why it would be.

Now this day was passing, the dreaminess of it. Alice Alive, she thought, running. Alice Endurance, Alice Errant, Alice the Dark. Alice the Alone. Dogs barked in the distance. Unseen traffic whined. The desert became pasture, then park. Permanent toilet facilities. Basketball courts. The former site of the Hohokam Drive-In Theatre, so recently torn down, where Corvus had taken Tommy to see the movies. There one day, gone the next, as ephemeral as the ephemerals it had, in its inception, replaced. Cars and trucks, separated by the now-speakerless pipes, still lined the slotted rows, drawn to this seedless waste as to the old memories of stories not their own. The occupant of each had something used for sale. Infants screamed. People were everywhere relaxing.

At the edge of the park, people milled about holding candles, each with a white, wax-catching skirt. There was a big box of candles. A boy was scooping them up and handing them out, a skinny, shirtless boy in brand-new dungarees, his hair white as glare. He reminded Alice of that boy the three of them had tied up, when there had been three of them. He looked just as eager and dumb, though he didn’t have the same crookedness, and there was the hair of course. Still, he looked a lot like him. Everybody’s got their double, it just wasn’t good to see them. When Corvus had seen Sherwin’s fetch it had certainly not done Sherwin any good. She heard the feign of him saying, “When the two shall be one and the without as the within and the male with the female neither male nor female, that’s when the party begins.”

“Hey there,” the boy said, grinning at her. “You here for the vigil?”

“No,” Alice said.

“First time, huh?”

“What’s it for?”

“Tonight it’s for the aquifer. Lots of people can’t quite grasp the aquifer.”

“Grasp it?”

“Understand how it works.” He was so skinny his ribs showed.

She splayed her hand out before her. “Don’t explain,” she said.

“Last night it was the octopus. Would you have liked that better?”

She would not confess to this.

“Those big eyes, man. And, if they like you, they turn this rosy color. You know what its flesh feels like? Like the inside of your cheek. But things aren’t looking up for the big mollusk. Richly deserving of a vigil, the octopus. Night before that, the Greenland ice sheet. You can’t play favorites.” He was efficiently handing out candles as he spoke. “To continue backwards. Wild horses on BLM land, fetuses, the earth in general, that synagogue from the thirties downtown they want to demolish, fetuses again. We try not to repeat in a month’s time, but fetuses keep coming up. They’re in demand. As a nonprofit, nonsectarian organization, we have no agenda. No long-term goal. We’ve got vigils
against
stuff, too. Nights against grafted cactus, technological entrancement, alternative fuels, the fur trim on those big ski parkas you see people wearing when it ain’t even cold? That’s German shepherd.”