Chapter 59 Gargoyles
Gargoyles
By the time Evan caught up to Candy outside the church, Vespers was being conducted inside. The voices of the choir reached them sporadically over the city noise, the harmony like a vibration.
As he mounted the wide stairs, Candy waited with her hands on her cocked hips, a fall of bangs down across one eye.
“It’s done?”
He said, “It’s done.”
She was dressed conservatively, long skirt, high-necked blouse with ruffle trim, pink satchel purse that matched her block heels and lipstick. Makeup invisibly contoured her face, altering her appearance slightly but effectively. Her skin was ivory today, her loosed hair sleek and shiny.
The chilled afternoon breeze smelled of roasting chestnuts from the street vendor on the corner.
One hymn ended and another began, also in Romanian, this one a bit louder.
He could make out a few words, all those rich vowels.
They studied the homely facade of the white stucco building, with its barred windows and electrical lines.
“Didn’t want to go in?” Evan asked.
“Not for me,” she said. “I do better out here.”
“Guarding the perimeter.”
“That’s me,” she said. “That’s us.”
“Gargoyles.”
She laughed. Her teeth were perfect, white and straight, like in a toothpaste commercial. He thought about the damage of her back, how she’d let him stroke the gnarls and whorls of scar tissue, as intimate a touch as he’d ever known.
Leaves fluttered on the trees below. A few people had carved love hearts into the whitewashed trunks.
Traffic was constipated, cabbies shouting out windows.
People scurried along, plugged into Bluetooth earpieces or talking into phones.
A homeless man slumbered on a bus-stop bench, hugging himself, hands stuffed into his armpits for warmth.
A tinny song played, breaking through the city sounds.
Oh, she’s sweet but a psycho!
Evan looked at Candy, one eyebrow arched inquisitively.
Candy unsnapped the top of her purse, withdrew a phone. The ringtone continued.
She answered: “Do you need my help?”
Evan blinked at her.
She listened for a moment. “How did you get this number?”
She appeared to be serious.
“Stay where you are,” she said. “I’ll contact you within the hour.”
The phone disappeared into her purse. Balancing on one foot, she tugged off one shoe and wacked it against a concrete planter.
The block heel broke off and she reseated her foot in the low shoe.
Switching stork legs, she knocked off the other heel.
Then she wound her long blond hair up into a tucked ponytail.
Evan watched her, poleaxed.
“I have my own missions, you know,” Candy said.
“Like what?”
“A woman’s secrets are her own.”
Leaning in, she kissed him on the cheek. He could smell her hair, plumeria lotion, the scent of her. Behind them the plain wooden door cracked open, the service letting out, churchgoers flocking onto the plaza. Evan turned to look for Anca and when he pivoted back, Candy was gone.
He touched his cheek and his fingertips came away tacky, rouged with pink.
The exodus of congregants continued, more of them, it seemed, than the church could hold.
He stood firm, the herd parting around him, and then Anca bobbed into view, conveyed toward him.
She wore her rose-patterned shawl draped across her shoulders.
The bruise around her eye was nearly gone and she walked fluidly, without discomfort.
She arrived before him. The crowd kept streaming out, enveloping them.
“It’s over,” he said. “They’re in the hands of the law now. You are, too.”
“No,” she said. “Better hands.”
The crowd kept coming, streaming by, everything feeling suddenly rushed.
“Where do you go now?” she asked. “What do you do next?”
“This again, I suppose.”
“You’re like a Western cowboy. Shane.”
“Strong, silent American.”
Her smile glowed. “Boring, quiet American.”
People kept moving around them, jostling them slightly. After all they’d been through together, it was an awkward place to say good-bye. They stood there, a cocoon of stillness within the flowing crowd.
Down on the street, a cabbie laid on the horn, leaning out the window to scream at a bike messenger who’d tangled up with pedestrians at the curb. Above, an electronic billboard cycled to a new image, a close-up of a phallic lipstick core rising to meet a woman’s O-shaped mouth.
“The city,” he said, “keeps citying.”
“And people keep people’ing.” She twisted one of the shawl’s tassels between her thumb and forefinger. “Everyone is just trying their best.”
“Except everyone who’s not.”
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
“How much grace should they get? We. Should we get?”
“Some,” she said.
“But not much.”
Another smile. “Good-bye, Evan.”
A strange impulse seized him. To hug her. But he had never initiated a hug. Not once. He didn’t know how. He nodded instead.
She lingered, too.
Her eyes welled. “This,” she said. “This is everything.” She made a fist, tapped it gently against his chest. “So know what you are. To me.” Her face trembled. “I’ll pray for you.” The throng tugged at her and she gave him a last look and let it sweep her away.
He remained. He could feel the sun on his shoulders. For the first time in a long time, he had nowhere to go.
After a while, the plaza cleared.
His shadow lay out clear on the ground before him. Above rose that hexagonal cupola, the intersecting slashes of the cross.
An X stood on end.
When at last he turned to go, a sight at the bus stop brought him up short. The homeless man was still on the bench, curled into himself for warmth. But draped over him was a fringed shawl, dark green patterned with roses.
Evan wasn’t thrilled about it but here he was, back in the speakeasy lounge with sultry scarlet lighting, sunk into the plush maroon booth with button tufting, sitting across from Joey.
Mercifully it was earlier in the evening than the last time they’d met here, which meant no Betty Boop onstage and no drunken carousers from the finance sector.
Joey had decided to stay in Manhattan for a few nights to do young-person-in-the-city things with some hacker friends she’d met on a HexChat hacker IRC server.
She’d asked Evan to meet her here to say good-bye.
He had one stop after this, Devine’s, before Aragón’s plane would convey him home.
He was ready to get back to the soothing quiet of his penthouse, with its shiny clean surfaces and polished windows.
Joey flipped the menu over. “We should have a celebratory drink,” she said. “Like a ‘mission complete’ cocktail.”
The last beverage here had not worked out. “No.”
“No? Why?”
“The vodka selection,” Evan said, “is lacking.”
“Well, sorry they’re not up to your standards. Next time I’ll pick somewhere that has vodka derived from, like, unicorn milk.”
“Unicorns are genderless,” Evan said. “Thus, no unicorn milk.”
“Unicorns don’t exist. Like your sense of humor.” Joey thumped down the menu. She was dressed for going out, dark eyeliner and a scoop-neck sweater, nothing too risqué. “You said we’d talk in person after the mission. So here we are. In person. After the mission. So?”
He was unsure how to start.
Fortunately, Joey wasn’t one to let a silence linger. “Last time we were here, you looked at me like I’d barfed chunks of dead gigolo all over the table.”
“Vivid image,” he said. “But ‘dead’ is a bit redundant.”
“Fair. ’Cuz the gigolo has already been rendered down to chunks.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” Leaning back, she crossed her arms and waited. The wait did not last long. “Well? Why’d you get so mad? What was it?”
He watched his blink rate. Had to resist rubbing his face. Vodka snobbery aside, he was having second thoughts about turning down a drink.
“X, you don’t get to just not answer.”
“Why not?”
“Because. I don’t know. Because.”
He drew in a deep breath, held it for a moment. “When I saw the video of Anca…” He paused. “It was bad. Really bad.”
He stopped again.
“X,” Joey said, softly prompting.
“Then when I was with you, I couldn’t help but think about what would happen if it was … if you…” His voice caught a wobble.
It was just a split second but Joey missed nothing and her brown eyes filled instantly. She reached across the table, put her hand on his forearm. “You can feel that,” she said. “It’s okay for you to feel that.”
Four-second inhalation. Four-second hold. Four-second exhale.
“If you feel more,” he said, “you have to feel more.”
There it was.
A new Commandment. His own.
He said, “How am I supposed to let you go into the field and trust that you won’t get hurt?”
“The closer I am to you, the stronger I am,” she said. “And the stronger I am, the more I can handle.”
“I can’t protect you, Josephine.”
“I’m not asking you to. Anymore.”
“That’s not…”
“What?” she said. “‘A mission that ends’?”
“No,” he lied.
She smiled. It was great. “Maybe this is what it feels like to be someone’s kid.”
“Same,” he said. “But reverse.”
“Weird.”
“Yes,” he said. “Weird.”
He really could have used that vodka right about now.
“So this is, like, what real people feel like,” Joey said. “All emotional and shit.”
“There are no real people.”
“Or we’re all real people,” Joey said. “We’re all just the same.”
Evan thought. “Except the really bad ones.”
“I know. I fucking hate the really bad ones.”
They smirked a little and then sat there looking at each other, suddenly awkward.
Joey checked her watch. “Welp, my friends are here any sec. So you’d better blow. Remember”—she did Dumb Evan voice: “‘Your job is to remain unnoticed, inconspicuous. Not to present ostentatiously and elicit shitty cocktails from people at the bar.’”
“The voice,” he said. “You’re getting better.”
“Been practicing.” She was beaming. Even her eyes smiled at him.
He did not want to leave.
He did not want her meeting up with hacker friends from online.
He did not want her out in the world unchaperoned.
He considered what to say. No idea. He thought about what someone wiser than him might say. He summoned a smile or at least a more neutral shape for his mouth.
“Have fun,” he said.
He slid out, stood.
Joey looked up at him. Her eyes were brimming again and he felt something deep in his chest, something like anguish. If he allowed himself to have this, to have Joey, then he would have something to lose that could end him.
It was not a risk worth taking.
But he no longer had a choice.
She hesitated and he saw her trying for it, trying for it more. But she couldn’t quite get there.
“You’re the worst,” she said.
Evan dipped his chin. “Me, too, Josephine.”