She slept on the couch in her clothes, because they had put Rosalie to sleep in her bed. Just after seven she rose, put on her glasses and stood at the front window, blinking out at the day. The rain had stopped, the wind dropped, though it was still gusting cold fitfully. The Virginia Marie was breaking apart fast, and there was a big crack in the parking lot where her prow had acted like a wedge on the asphalt. More yellow sawhorses blocked it off. Sailboats were lying all along the tideline, and one actually had come to rest on the boardwalk.
Turning, slipping off her glasses to rub her gritty eyes, she heard sudden footsteps from the hall.
Rosalie was up and dressed, pulling on one of her father’s coats. Nana Amelia was right behind her, looking unstoppable. After them Celia came, hopping as she tried to put on her shoes while following.
“Sweetie, you need to stay here and rest—” she entreated, but Rosalie ignored her mother.
“Where are you going?” asked Margaret Mary.
“Where do you think?” said Rosalie, in a furious voice, flinging open the door and marching out, as Nana Amelia pulled on her shawl.
Margaret Mary stuck her feet in her saddle oxfords and clumped hurriedly along after them, running to catch up.
The rain had packed down the line of borax before Tia Adela’s gate, but had not washed it away. Tia Adela and her husband were out in the garden. She had filled another basket with windfall apples, and he was sawing loose a bough that had been broken by the storm. He did not look up as Rosalie threw the gate wide and shrieked:
“Let him go!”
Tia Adela lifted her head, gazed at them. She looked down at the harbor, where the Virginia Marie wallowed broken in the surf.
“This has come of your wickedness, you see?” Nana Amelia told her sternly. “And her child needs a father, Adela.”
“Please, Tia Adela! For the baby’s sake!” Celia implored.
Tia Adela looked hard at Rosalie, who was scuffing through the line of borax with all her might. She grimaced, looking for a long moment as though she’d tasted poison.
“That won’t do it,” she sighed. She went to the shed and got a broom. Casting a long regretful look over her shoulder at Bento, she walked to the front gate.
“Stand back,” she said. They shuffled out of her way and she swept the borax aside, in a white fan like a bird’s wing.
The sun broke through, a long beam brilliant and white, whiter still for the seabirds that rose in a circling cloud through it, crying and calling.
“Look at the rainbow!” cried Margaret Mary, and they all looked up at the great arch that spanned the harbor, in colors so intense they nearly hurt the eye.
When they looked down again, they saw the car pulling up.
It was black, and long, and so, so expensive. The dashboard was inlaid with patterns in mother-of-pearl, all shells and mermaids and scalloped waves; the upholstery was sea-green brocade. The chrome gleamed as though it were wet.
And she who sat at the wheel was exquisitely dressed, tapping with her ivory fingers on the wheel, just a little impatient. Though her face was that of a skull, her very bones were so beautiful, so elegant, as to inspire self-loathing in any woman with a face of flesh (too fat!).
She hit the horn. It sounded like a foghorn.
The mortal women heard the quick footsteps behind them, felt the ice-cold touch as Bento shoved through them in his haste to go. He was smiling wide as he got into the car, didn’t so much as look back once. He closed the door. The car glided away down the hill without making a sound. The women stood there, looking after it.
“Bitch,” they said in unison, and with feeling.
But before noon the Coast Guard had picked up Jerry from the swamped and drifting derelict Medford, which he had been able to scramble aboard somehow, and they brought him home to Rosalie’s waiting arms.
Seven years later, though, in another November, his luck ran out. The Star of Lisbon was lost with all hands. The Old Woman of the Sea is a poor loser, but she is a worse winner.
Rosalie wore black, and once or twice a week climbed the long street to Tia Adela’s house, carrying baby Maria and tugging little Jerry by the hand. Jerry sat in the middle of the faded rug with his toy tractors and trucks, running them to and fro while Maria napped, and Rosalie learned how to make the old dishes: Caldo Verde with bacon, linguica with sweet peppers, garlic pork roast. And she waited for the wind to change.
PORTRAIT, WITH FLAMES
Shadow saw the fire from the Hollywood Freeway, and realized it must be near her apartment. Her heart beat faster all the way down the exit at Odin Street, and all along Highland Avenue, until she saw that it wasn’t her place after all. One of the apartment complex’s garages had caught, instead.
Leaping flames made the predawn gloom darker. The revolving lights of the fire engines strobed out across Highland and flashed on the windows of the apartments above. She had to park all the way up on Woodland Court, threading her way down the narrow winding steps between bamboo thickets to get to her door. She sniffed the air appreciatively: jungle perfumes of copa de oro and night-blooming jasmine mingled with smoke. It smelled like exotic danger.
Letting herself in, she checked the room with a glance. No intruders in her furnished studio sanctuary. A red light hit her like a splash of blood, flicked away. She went to the window and looked down.
She didn’t know whose garage was on fire, because she knew none of the other tenants. The firemen were mostly standing around watching it burn, playing water on the adjoining garages to keep them from catching too. These were all of clapboard, built in the 1920s and consequently accommodating nothing wider than a Model A. Fifty years on most of the tenants used them for storage, with the exception of one or two who drove Volkswagen Beetles.
Shadow lost interest. She went to her tiny refrigerator, crouched before it, and pulled out a half gallon of lowfat milk. Thirstily she drank from the carton, in long, sensual swallows. When she put it back, she was pleased that she didn’t feel hungrier. She was trying to avoid solid food. Shadow must always be lean.
Prior to reinventing herself as Shadow, her name had been Samantha, and she had lived with her accountant mother in a tiny, courtyard apartment over on Gramercy. Three years ago, when she’d turned eighteen, they had had a terrific fight over—well, everything, really—and parted company for keeps.
She’d dyed her mousy hair black, bought an all-black wardrobe at thrift stores, and lived for a while rent-free over on Franklin Avenue in a basement, in a sort of commune called Mohawk Manor by its members. She’d hung out at Oki Dog, wandered up and down the Strip, and danced at the clubs. But she made it a point never to join any crowd, never to need anyone. People weren’t worth the trouble.
Then one night a couple of large girls and a boy with a spiked collar got very drunk, and broke into her room and tried to get her to form a vampire coven with them. She had excused herself to go to the toilet, where she’d crawled out the bathroom window and run down the hill to the all-night market a block away. There she’d stayed until dawn, flipping through magazines.
And Shadow had given the stockroom clerk there a hand job, and secured for herself a job on the night shift bagging groceries. For a few other favors, he’d loaned her the money for a rental deposit on this place. Now she’d moved on to clerking at a bigger all-night market, much better pay. She’d been able to buy a cavernous old Chevy Impala, painted matte black over primer. It had an eight-track music system and the floor of the passenger’s side was littered with tapes of the Clash, of the Sex Pistols, of Siouxsie and the Banshees and Buzzcocks. Now she owned the night.