Chapter 9 #3
“Come on, we’re leaving.” I pay the exorbitant bill as Dick Face tells me I’m wasting my money, I shouldn’t pay, they’ll give us everything for free.
I get a Lyft and drag him outside, into the bustling neon night of South Beach.
A warm breeze sifts salt from the ocean into my face; a woman in a gold lace bodysuit and six-inch red heels glides by.
People are crowding the sidewalk, almost no one wearing all the normal articles of clothing.
“I need your number,” I say once I’ve loaded him into the car. He hands me his phone, allows me to enter my number under Tempest Your Daughter from NJ. I text myself.
We get out at his building, and I sling my backpack over my shoulder. Dick Face stumbles against my side. I have to help him to the door.
I hate touching him, hate that I want to help him anyway. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say. “I’m here another day. I’ll come back in the morning. We have more stuff to talk about.”
“More questions, more questions,” he mutters. And then, with a mighty inhalation, he draws himself up and seizes my shoulders. His face wobbles toward mine.
“Daughter.” His voice is gravelly with prophecy. “Save yourself. Learn how to use your power.”
“I know how it works,” I say.
“No,” he intones fiercely in that resonant voice.
“No. You are not commanding it. You have to want . . . to want to use it. . . .” He falters, his eyelids drooping, then shivers back into himself.
“Then you can bend them, like me! Once you get going. It’s a good one!
I’ve seen it. Some very powerful men went down.
Sometimes just a kiss! Sometimes just a look, if you can believe. If you practice! If you’re lucky.”
I flinch.
He glares at me. “I know what you are.”
I wait, wavering under the force of his alcoholic breath.
“You’re too damn nice. Nice!” He spits a laugh out like it’s rotten.
“Wrong personality. If the hunter comes for you, though, you destroy him. You have to. Don’t hesitate.
” He glares fire into my eyes. “Unlock yourself. Save yourself. Save your siblings! The line! The line needs to be saved.”
“Why don’t you do it?” I demand. “Why aren’t you trying to kill him?”
He shudders. And then I see the truth of it.
He is afraid. Even though he is alone, he is afraid to die.
Two thousand years isn’t enough.
He thinks the hunter can kill him.
“Crap,” I say to myself. And then, “Why don’t you just brainwash someone and send them— ”
“Doesn’t work like that! Smart thinking, though! Very smart. But I gotta be close. I gotta be right here, so close. . . .” He leans forward like he’s going to touch his nose to mine. I reel back.
He laughs like I’m funny, then looks thoughtful. “There’s one other thing I could try. Should summon it. Shoulda summoned it already! But you don’t mess around with that shit, y’know?”
I do not. I know nothing about that shit.
“G’night,” he says before I can ask what he means, if I’m even going to ask. I’m not sure yet.
“Crap,” I say again. He manages to get us inside, and I bring him up to the penthouse.
He types the wrong code into the keypad twice before he gets it right.
I maneuver him to the couch, a sprawling leopard-print atrocity that curves around into a half moon.
There are giant windows that probably overlook the ocean—it’s too dark to tell—empty pizza boxes piled on the floor. It smells like booze and garbage.
I straighten, exhausted. “I’m going.”
He lifts a fluttering hand in farewell.
I think of something. “One more thing.”
He groans.
I have to, though. I have a feeling I need to ask everything right now, just in case.
“Do you know if there’s any way to break it? To break the curse? Is there any way for me to be . . . a regular person?”
My mind leaps to Joel: my hands on his face, pulling him toward me. The sweetness in his eyes. Please, God, I am praying. Please. Let me touch him.
My next thought, which comes a little guiltily, is of Grub. I should’ve thought of him first.
Dick Face is silent. I think he might be considering, but then he snuffles loudly, and I realize he has instead fallen asleep for a second.
He laughs thickly, and I can already feel the sharp ache of an old, desperate sadness in the hollow of my stomach when he says, “Of course not! Didn’t I tell you her whole thing?
A bass! She was a bass.” He gestures in my face, like, Don’t be an idiot.
“It’s eternal. Unbreakable! That’s some solid shit! ”
I leave, my head strobing. I stand in the lobby for a long time, trying to make myself check my email, find the address of the motel. I’m abruptly starving, woozy. I’m parched, my throat cardboard. No one ever brought me any water at that damn bar.
* * *
The next morning, when I show up at his building, Dick Face doesn’t answer the bell.
I stand in the lobby for only a few minutes before a delivery person lets me in. I go up to the penthouse and the door is wide open.
A serpent swallows my heart, works the still-beating organ through the sickening curve of its throat.
I am too afraid to step inside.