At length he got to his feet, feeling stronger for the effort, and began walking toward the motel, its unlit faзade melting up from the dark. He was in rotten shape, his head throbbing, vision fluttering, feet and torso bleeding, but bottom line, he had to get the keys. Arguments occurred to him as he went. Explanations. The Elfland’s sign must be on some weird separate circuit. The night man had blundered into the door, shattered the glass, and run away. Vandals had set the elf in the second-floor doorway, or else it was a kid wearing a funny hat. He had been unsteady on his feet and imagined the tug on his shirttail. The clattering . . . Well, he’d have to work on that one. None of this held water, but neither did any less-rational explanation, and he allowed it to satisfy a need for some logical ground, however flimsy, on which to stand.
On reaching the rear of the motel he was blind again, and virtually deaf. The breezeway lights had not come back on, and the crash of the surf drowned out lesser sounds. He moved out onto the grass, cool, dewy, and easier on his feet, and shuffled along, waving an arm before him to feel for obstructions. His instep came down on some hard, sharp thing. He yelped and sprawled on the ground, squeezing his foot to stifle the pain. Once the pain had subsided, he groped about in the grass and found a sprinkler head. He twisted the thing angrily, trying in vain to uproot it, and then clutched at his foot again, rubbing away the soreness. Suddenly weary, he hung his head and closed his eyes. He could have nodded off, no problem, but he remembered that this sort of sleepiness was a symptom of concussion and forced himself to stand. His thoughts narrowed to keys, car, drive.
He must have gotten turned around, because after a couple of steps he came up against the wall at the edge of the cliff. He clung to it for an instant, getting his bearings, and made a beeline for the breezeway—he estimated that no more than fifteen or twenty steps would carry him there. But he took twenty-five steps, then thirty, and still was walking on grass. Thinking he might have gone off on a diagonal, he altered his path by a few degrees and continued. He went another twenty steps. The lawn hadn’t been this extensive—he should have hit concrete by now. He decided to return to the wall, get his bearings again, and start over; but he walked until, by his reckoning, he was somewhere out over the Pacific and did not encounter the wall. He tamped down his anxiety, telling himself to stay calm . . . And then he saw that the character of the darkness had changed. Whereas before it had been dead black, now the air had acquired a distinct shine, a gloss that reminded him of obsidian or polished ebony, and appeared to be circulating around him, as if he were at the center of a slow whirlpool. Behind the currents of the whirlpool he could see the elves. Not clearly and not for long, but they were gathered around him, cutting off every avenue of escape, fading out and reappearing closer to hand and in different postures—like watching a streaming video with gaps in the continuity. Fear seeped into the corners of his mind, but did not flood and overflow it. It was fear tempered by doubt and disbelief, by a degree of acceptance, and by one thing more. He wanted the elves to be real. Death at their hands would be preferable to the ignominy of an overdose, hepatitis, any of the protracted stand-ins for suicide toward which he was inexorably bound. This would be death by punch line. Suicide by elf.
“Bring it, bitches,” he said, slurring the words.
On Sleazy, on Spongehead, on Ratfuck and Groper.
He gave an amused grunt. Now this was some funny shit. I mean, really. Elves. They were almost in striking distance, cudgels lifted, knives at ready, their scowling faces knotted in fury. In their original context, they might have been seen as brave and resolute, the defenders of a helpless village. Rambos among elves. Forest guerrillas. Hardy little fuckers. Here they could only be misunderstood.
At the last second fear eroded his intention to meet death head on, and he made a panic move, stumbling forward in an attempt to break through their defenses. Something cracked the top of his head, and he found himself gazing into the depths of the whirlpool, into a funnel of blackness at whose blacker-than-black bottom a convulsed flower revolved, a bloom with a thousand petals that rippled and undulated like those of some vast and complicated sea creature sucking him down into its nothing-colored maw.
——
An orange glow penetrated his lids and his first thought was that the breezeway lights had come back on, but on opening his eyes he realized it was the early sun. He lay at the base of the wall and everything ached, especially his head. His clothes were soaked with dew. Laboriously, he made it to his knees and saw over the top of the wall other cliffs, stratifications of reddish sediment towering above the ocean. Beneath the shadows of high cumulus the water was dark purple, and among the cloud shadows lay swatches of glittering orange. The soft crush of the surf was constant and serene. He touched the crown of his head and couldn’t tell whether he felt his scalp or the pads of his fingers.
“Thank goodness,” said the girl’s voice behind him. “I thought I was going to have to call nine-one-one. What happened?”
Her hand fell to his shoulder and in a reflex of fright he knocked it away and scrambled to his feet. She retreated, bewilderment plain on her face. At her rear, a couple of yards distant, stood the elves—an evil Walt Disney platoon prepared to follow their hillbilly Snow White ditsy queen into battle. He was fairly certain they were grouped and posed differently from when he had initially seen them. Dizzy, he sank down in the grass and leaned against the wall.
“You got blood all over you,” she said, and held out a packet of tissues. “I bought you some wipes.”
If she were a witch, if she had almost killed him and was gaming him now, she had a smooth fucking act.
“Did you know the office door’s busted out?” she said. “That have anything to do with how you got bloody?”
“You tell me.”
She took to running her mouth, saying there was so many criminals these days, why, even in a piddly place like her hometown, people were always breaking into Coulters, this big old department store, and robbing the Dairy Queen and all. His paranoia ebbed and, though with half his mind he believed that her asinine rap was designed to put him at ease, make him let down his guard, he permitted her to kneel beside him and dab at his injuries with the wipes. The astringent stung, but it felt better than it hurt. He kept an eye on the elves. Sunlight glistened on their caved-in faces, charged the tips of their weapons. Their scowls seemed diminished. They approved of this union between Magic Girl and Action Lad. What the fuck, Michael said to himself. If you believe what you think you believe, you should render her ass unconscious and beat it—but he wasn’t sure he could drive.
“You’re wrong to be doing this,” said the girl as she finished her cleanup.
“Doing what?”
“Breaking up with me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, if you don’t think so, there’s nothing to say, ’cause when you go and think something you’re bound to believe it. I may not know much about you, but I know that.”
He rested his head on his knees. “I don’t want to talk.”
After a while the girl said, “I’m sorry.”
He cocked an eye toward her. “What for? Did you do something to me?”
“That wasn’t my meaning. I’m just sorry about everything.”
The wind gusted, flattening the grass; a thin tide of light raced across the lawn and from somewhere below the rim of the cliff came the crying of gulls. Michael felt weak and lazy in the sun.