They finished their meal in silence, Samson wondering what Harlan meant by "It's gone." Later, as he fell asleep listening to the soft breathing of his cousins, he imagined himself living on the Ponderosa; sleeping in his own room, herding cattle on his own black horse, carrying two shiny six-guns, practicing his fast-draw, and always staying on the lookout for Indians.
CHAPTER 8
Meet the Muse, Mr. Lizard King
Santa Barbara
Calliope Kincaid waited on the steps of the Tangerine Tree Cafe thinking about the past lives of lizards. A small, brown alligator lizard was sunning himself on the planter box by the steps and his lidless eyes, glazed but seeing, reminded Calliope of a picture of Jimi Hendrix that her mother had kept next to the bed when she was growing up. She wondered if this lizard really could be an incarnation of Jimi, and what he must feel like living in the planter box in front of a cafe, eating bugs and hiding, after being a rock star.
Between the ages of seven and nine Calliope had been raised a Hindu, and during that time she had developed an acute empathy for other creatures, never sure what bird or beast might just be Daddy or Grandma working off some karma. She had taken the concept almost to the point of agoraphobia — she was afraid to go out of the house for fear that she might crush some relative doing time as a stinkbug — when her mother moved into NSA Buddhism and Calliope's spiritual focus was changed to sitting before a gong with her mother, the two of them chanting for prosperity until the apartment's heater ducts began to vibrate. Evicted for disturbing other tenants, Calliope's mother turned to goddess worship, which Calliope liked because she didn't have to wear clothes to the rituals and there were always lots of flowers. When Calliope blossomed at thirteen and began to attract too much attention from neopagan males, her mother turned to Islam, changed her daughter's name to Akeema Mohammed Kincaid, and equipped her with a veil. Calliope, who had easily grasped the concepts of karma and reincarnation, of transcendentalism and oneness, of harmony with nature and the goddess within, was completely thrown by the concepts of guilt, self-flagellation, and modesty set down in Islam. She promptly shaved one side of her head, dyed the remainder of her waist-length blond hair hot pink, and began taking hallucinogenic drugs and sleeping with awkward, pimpled tough-boys with mohawks. Men replaced religion, and Calliope accepted their seductive lies with the same open wonder she had given the gods.
In an attempt to pull her daughter out of a spiritual tail-spin, Mom turned Unitarian, but Calliope had already slashed the ecumenical apron strings and Mom was left to hopscotching religions on her own. Currently she lived in an ashram in Oregon where she acted as the spirit channel for a four-thousand-year-old, super-enlightened entity named Babar (no relation to the elephant).
As a child exposed to so many religions, Calliope had developed a malleability of faith that stayed with her into adulthood. Through the assimilation of many spiritual beliefs, without science or cynicism to balance them, Calliope was able to define everything in her world, accept the highs and lows of life with resolve, and never be burdened by the need to understand. Why understand when you can believe? For Calliope, every event was mystical and every moment magical; a flat tire could be a manifestation of karma, or a lizard might be Jimi Hendrix. If she fell in love too easily and got hurt too often it wasn't bad judgment, it was just faith.
She was humming "Castles Made of Sand" to the lizard when Sam's Mercedes pulled up to the curb. She looked up and smiled at him, not the least bit concerned that he was thirty minutes late. It had never occurred to her that he might not show. No man had ever stood her up.
She ran to the car and tapped on the passenger window. Sam pushed the button and it whirred down. "Hang on a second, I have to do something," she said.
She went around to the front of the car and searched the grille until she found a moth that had met its end with minimal damage. She plucked the moth from the grille, took it to the planter box, and wiggled it in front of the lizard while singing a few bars of Hendrix's "Little Wing." The lizard snapped at the moth halfheartedly and slithered away under the geraniums to sulk. Calliope had been correct in guessing that this particular lizard had, indeed, been a rock star in a previous life, and if she had sung a chorus of "L.A. Woman" or "Light My Fire" the lizard would have been delighted, but how could she have known?
She dropped the moth into the planter box and returned to the car.
"Sorry I'm late," Sam said.
"It's only time," she said. "I'm always late."
"I had them fix your car." He was trying not to look at her. He'd just gotten enough control of his nerves to drive and he wasn't ready to be rattled by the girl again, but he wouldn't have thought of not picking her up. During the whole debacle at the condo, the urgency to see her again had hovered in the background of his mind and finally snapped him out of his confusion over the Coyote medicine. Was she connected to the Indian?
"That's sweet of you," she said. "Did you look at the car?"
"Look at it? No. I just had the garage come down."
"It's a great car," Calliope said. "It has over three hundred horsepower, a six-pack of Weber carburetors, competition suspension and gearing — it'll do over a hundred and eighty on a straightaway. I can blow most Porsches off the road."
Sam didn't know what to say, so he said, "That's nice."
"I know that women aren't supposed to care about things like that. My mother says that I'm obsessed with vehicles because I was conceived in the back of a VW microbus and spent most of my childhood in one. We moved around a lot."
"Where does she live?" Sam asked. He would ask her about the Indian, really, when the time was right.
"Oregon. I didn't build the car myself. I used to live with this sculptor in Sedona, Arizona, who built it for midnight drives in the desert. One day I was telling him that I thought that cars had replaced guns as phallic symbols for American men, and I thought it was interesting that he had one that was so small and fast. The next day he gave me the Datsun and went out and bought a Lincoln. It was very sweet."
"Very sweet," Sam echoed. Now or never, he thought. "Calliope — that is your name, right?"
"Yes," the girl said.
Sam put on his salesman's this is a serious matter voice. "Calliope, do you know who the-"
"My name wasn't always Calliope," she interrupted. "Sherman — he was the sculptor — started calling me Calliope, after the Greek muse of epic poetry. He said that I inspired men to art and madness. I liked the way it sounded so I took it as my real name. My mom even calls me Calliope now."
Sam had brought thousands of sales interviews back into control when the client tried to wander, he wouldn't let this girl sidetrack him. "Calliope, who was the Indian-"
"You know, the Indians used to change their names as they grew up and their personalities changed or when they did certain things, like Walks Across the Desert and stuff like that. Did you know that?"
"No I didn't," Sam lied. "But I really need to know-"
"Oh, there's my car!"
Sam slowed and pulled the Mercedes in behind the Z. "Calliope, before you go-"
"We can't have sex tonight," she said. "I have some things to do, but I can cook you dinner tomorrow if you want."
Sam turned to her, his mouth hanging open. She was smiling at him, waiting for his answer with her eyes wide, as if she'd just been surprised. He realized that every time he had looked at her she'd worn that same expression of wonderment, and each time it had thrown him. Dammit, he wouldn't be distracted. She was sharp, but he was sharper. He was in control here.
"Okay," he said.
"Terrific. I live at seventeen and a half Anapamu Street — that's upstairs. Whatever you do, don't go to the downstairs door. Six o'clock, okay?" Without waiting for his answer, she was out of the car and away.