The Best of Lucius Shepard (85 page)

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The anteroom is empty of scaffolding, swept clean of plaster dust, and I am
sitting in a folding chair beneath the domed ceiling, like—I imagine—a
gray-clad figure escaped from the lower portions of my mural. Years down the
road I may look back and judge my work harshly, but I know at this moment I
have achieved my goal and created something greater than myself. The mural
rises up from solidity into the diffuse, from dark specificity into layered
washes of light from which less definite figures emerge … less definite, at
least, from this vantage. At close quarters they are easily identifiable.
Bianca is there, a golden swimmer in the air, and at her side our son, her
proof made flesh, born five months after our conversation in this very room.
When told of his birth I went to visit her in the newly designated maternity
ward of the prison hospital. Sleeping, she looked exhausted, her color weak and
cheeks sunken, yet she was beautiful nonetheless. The child slept beneath a
blanket in a crib beside her bed, only the back of his head visible. My
emotions seemed to be circling one another like opponents in a ring. It was so
strange to think of her with a child. Now that she had established the ultimate
female credential, the freak detector in my brain emitted a steady beep. It was
as if I were determined to paint her with a perverse brush, to view her
condition and her Mystery in terms of an aberration. At the same time, I was
drawn to her as never before. All my old feelings were reinvigorated. I decided
to seek a reconciliation, but when I informed her of this she told me it was
not what she wanted.

“You
can’t hide what you feel,” she said. “You’re still conflicted.” She gave
“conflicted” a distasteful reading and closed her eyes. “I’m too tired to
argue. Please go.”

I
sat with her a bit longer, thinking she might relent, but when she fell asleep
again I left the room. We see each other on occasion. Each time we meet she
searches my face but thus far has found no apparent cause for confidence there.
I have little hope she will ever find me other than wanting, and the prospect
of life without her grows more difficult to bear. It seems I cannot shake the
skepticism that Frank Ristelli correctly attributed to me, for despite
everything I have experienced at Diamond Bar, I continue to speculate that our
lives are under the influence of a powerful coercive force that causes us to
believe in unrealities. My chest, for instance. Some weeks ago I noticed a scatter
of pale discolorations surfaced from the skin thereon, their hues and partly
rendered shapes reminiscent of the tattoo on Ristelli’s chest, and yet when
that tattoo achieves final form, as I assume it must, I will with part of my
mind seek an explanation that satisfies my cynic’s soul. If the birth of a
child from a woman once a man fails to persuade me of the miraculous, is there
anything that will overwhelm my capacity for doubt? Only when I paint does the
current of belief flow through me, and then I am uncertain whether the thing
believed is intrinsic to the subject of the work or a constant of my ego, a
self-aggrandizing principle I deify with my obsessive zeal.

Ristelli,
too, occupies a place in the dome of the anteroom, a mangy gray ghost slipping
back into the world, and Causey is there as well, tumbling toward its center
where, almost buried in light, Quires hangs in his eternal torment, a
promethean Christ yielding to a barbaric sacrifice. I have pored over Causey’s
notes and rummaged the archives in an attempt to learn more about Quires, to
understand what brought him to this pass. A transcendent moment like the one
that left Saul stricken on the road to Damascus, an illumination of blinding
sight? Or did Quires gradually win his way to a faith strong enough to compel
his redemptive act? I have discovered no clue to explain his transformation,
only a record of atrocities, but I think now both answers are correct, that all
our labors are directed toward the achievement of such a moment, and perhaps
therein lies the root cause of my skepticism, for though an illumination of
this sort would remove the barriers that keep me from my family, I fear that
moment. I fear I will dissolve in light, grow addled and vague, like Czerny, or
foolishly evangelical like Ristelli. The abhorrence of authority that pushed me
into a criminal life resists even an authority that promises ultimate blessing.
I am afflicted with a contrarian’s logic and formulate unanswerable questions
to validate my stance. I poison my feeble attempts at faith with the
irrationalities and improbabilities of Diamond Bar.

Pleased
by my celebration of their myth, the board has offered me another room to
paint, and there I intend to celebrate Bianca. I have already sketched out the
design. She will be the sole figure, but one repeated in miniature over and
over again, emerging from flowers, aloft on floating islands, draped in shadow,
dressed in dozens of guises and proximate past forms, a history of color and
line flowing toward her twice lifesized image hovering like a Hindu goddess in
an exotic heaven populated by her many incarnations. That I have relegated her
to the subject of a painting, however contemplative of her nature, suggests
that I have given up on the relationship, turned my obsession from the person
to the memory of the person. This distresses me, but I cannot change the way
things are. My chains still bind me, limiting my choices and contravening the
will to change. In recent months, I have come to envision a future in which I
am an ancient gray spider creaking across a web of scaffolding that spans a
hundred rooms, leaking paintlike blood in his painful, solitary progress,
creating of his life an illuminated tomb commemorating folly, mortal confusion,
and lost love. Not so terrible a fate, perhaps. To die and love and dream of
perfect colors, perfect forms. But like all those who strive and doubt and seek
belief, I am moving rapidly in the direction of something that I fear,
something whose consolations I mistrust, and am inclined to look past that
inevitability, to locate a point toward which to steer. My son, whom Bianca has
named Max, after—she says—her favorite painter, Max Ernst, an implied insult, a
further dismissal from her life … I sometimes think my son might serve as such
a point. My imagination is captivated by the potentials of a man so strangely
born, and often I let myself believe he will be the wings of our liberty, the
one in whom the genius of our home will fully manifest. Since he is kept apart
from me, however, these thoughts have the weight of fantasy, and I am cast back
onto the insubstantial ground of my own life, a gray silence in which I have
rarely found a glint of promise. Tears come easily. Regrets like hawks swoop
down to pluck my hopeful thoughts from midair. And yet, though I am afraid
that, as with most promises of fulfillment, it will always hang beyond our
grasp, an eidolon, the illusion of perfection, lately I have begun to
anticipate the completion of the new wing.

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*
* * *

Hands
Up! Who Wants to Die?

Shit happens, like they say.
You know how it goes. The cops are looking at you for every nickel-and-dime
robbery they can’t solve, and the landlady hates your guts for no reason except
she’s a good Christian hater, and everything in the world is part of a clock
you got to punch or else you’ll be docked or fined or sentenced to listen to
some ex-doper who thinks he has attained self-mastery explain your behavior as
if the reasons you’re a loser are a mystery that requires illumination.
Otherwise it’s been a kicked dog of a week. The boss man’s had you stocking the
refrigerator sections of the food mart, leaving you alone in the freezer while
he sits and swaps Marine Corps stories with the guy supposed to be your helper,
so you come off work half froze, looking for something to douse the meanness
you’re feeling, which could be a chore since you’re a piss and a holler from
being broke and New Smyrna Beach ain’t exactly Vegas. Well, turns out to be
your lucky night. Along about eight o’clock you wind up with a crew of rejects
in a beach shack belongs to this fat old biker, snorting greasy homemade speed,
swilling grape juice and vodka, with a windblown rain raising jazz beats from
the tarpaper roof like brushes on cymbals. There’s a woman with big brown eyes
and punky peroxided hair who’s a notch on the plain side of pretty, but she’s
got one of those black girl butts sometimes get stuck onto a white girl, and
it’s clear she’s come down with the same feeling as you, so when the rain lets
up and she says how she’s got an itch to sneak onto the government property
down the beach and check out what’s there, when everybody tells her it ain’t
nothing but sand fleas and Spanish bayonet, you say, Hell I’ll go with you. Ten
minutes later you’re helping her jump down from a hurricane fence, risking a
felony bust for a better view of those white panties gleaming against the strip
of tanned skin that’s showing between her jeans and her tank top. She falls
into you, gives you a kiss and a half, and before you can wrap her up, she
scoots off into the dark and you go stumbling after.

It
don’t take more than that to get shit started.

—Hey,
I shouted. Come on-back here!

She
glanced at me over her shoulder, her grin shining under a moon fresh out of
hiding, then she skipped off behind some scrub palmetto. I was trying to recall
her name as I ran, then a frond whacked me in the face and I slipped to a knee
in the soft sand. I spotted her moving along a rise, framed by low stars. Hell
you going, girl? I said, coming up beside her.

She
slapped at a skeeter on her neck and said, Lookit there.

The
land was all dips and rises, an old dune top gone nappy with shrubs and beach
grass, but down below was a scooped-out circular area, wide and deep enough to
bury a mini-mall in. Dead center of it stood a ranch house with cream-colored
block walls and a composite roof and glass doors. It was a giant banana, I
couldn’t have been more startled.

—I
heard about there was a house here, she said. But I swear I didn’t believe it!

We
scrambled down the slope and tromped around the house, peering in windows. Some
rooms were empty, others were partly furnished, and though I wouldn’t have
figured on it, the sliding door at the back was unlocked. I shoved it open and
she put her hands over her head and got to snapping her fingers and hip-shaked
across the threshold. A big leather sofa stood by its lonesome in the middle of
the room. She struck a pose beside it, skinned off her jeans and showed me what
I wanted. Wasn’t long before we were sweating all over each other, grunting and
huffing like hogs in a hurry, our teeth clicking together when we kissed. The
cushions got so slippery, we slid off onto the floor afterward and lay twisted
together. The moon came pale through the flyspecked glass, but it wasn’t
sufficient to light the corners of the room.

—God,
I could use something to drink, she said. I know there can’t be nothing in the
kitchen.

My
carpenter’s pants were puddled at the end of the couch. I undid the flap
pockets and hauled out two wine coolers. What you want? I asked. Tropical
Strawberry or Mango Surprise?

—I
can’t believe you carrying ‘round wine coolers in your pocket.

—I
hooked ‘em off a truck when I was coming outa work.

We
unscrewed the caps, clinked our bottles and drank.

—My
name’s Leeli, she said, sticking out her hand. I’m sorry but I forget yours.

—Maceo.

—That
a family name? It’s so unusual!

—It’s
for some guitar player my mama liked.

—Well,
it’s real unusual.

She
seemed to be expecting me to take a turn, so I asked what a house was doing out
there setting in a hole.

—Beats
me. Government bought up all the land ‘round here years ago. To keep people
away from the Cape...’cause of the rockets, y’know? But I never knew nothing
was here. My ex, his friend runs a helicopter tourist ride? I guess he saw it
once.

—Maybe
they opened it up for development, I said. And this here’s the model home.

—Y’know,
I bet you’re right! She gave me a proud mama look, like my-ain’t-you-smart!

I
couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I went to loving her up again. She
started running hot and came astride me, but before she could settle herself,
she let out a shriek and crawled over top the couch. I rolled my eyes back to
see what had spooked her, said “Shit...Jesus!” and next thing I was hunkered
behind the couch with Leeli, my heart banging in my chest.

Two
men and a woman were hanging by the glass doors, nailing us with a six-eyed
stare as clear in its negativity as a No Trespassing sign. The men were young,
both a shade under six feet, dressed in slacks and T-shirts. A blond and a
baldy. They had the look of fitness sissies, like they might have pumped some
iron and run a few laps, but never put the results to any spirited use. The
woman wore cut-offs and an oversized denim shirt and carried a bulky tote bag.
She was fortyish and big-boned, with wavy dark hair, and her body had a sexy
looseness that would still draw its share of eye traffic. Her face was full of
bad days and wrong turns, the lines cutting her forehead and dragging down her
mouth making it seem older than the rest of her. Way the men tucked themselves
in at her shoulders, you could tell she was queen of the hive.