Then we were cruising down Embassy Row, past mansions with battlements and minarets and towers, fake Tudor facades and Moorish splendors and crepe myrtles blooming everywhere in explosive bursts of magenta and rose. Handsome Brown said nothing, only turned up the radio. It was tuned to a station that played nothing but the lushest most soul-melting ballads, Al Green and Teddy Pendergrass and Prince wailing heartbreak like the world was going to end at midnight. Every now and then Handsome Brown’s face would fill the rearview mirror as he glanced back at us, unsmiling but his eyes keen as blades.
I stared out my window, biting my lip and trying more than anything not to see him there beside me, though I could feel him and if the music died, I could hear his snores and his even breathing. There was a ghost there in the purple darkness, his long hair slipping around his shoulders like black rain and his white shirt undone at the throat, there were two ghosts—Oliver and myself, circling the city forever while outside the night deepened and distant laughter rose from the Tidal Basin—
I felt as though my heart would break, my eyes filled with tears even as I smiled bitterly—so this was what it was like to get old, you rode around in taxicabs and cried when you heard Prince on the radio…
“Sweeney,” I heard a low voice whisper. “I’ll love you next time. I promise.”
And silently I wept. Because of course there would never be a next time. There had never even been a first time; and I moved closer to the window so that Dylan wouldn’t see me crying.
After a minute or two I stopped. I wiped my eyes and hoped there wasn’t mascara all over my face. We were downtown. Cab 393 slipped between the other cabs flowing past the White House, like caravels around a royal barge, then headed for the Mall.
“It’s so beautiful,” Dylan said softly. “And it’s so small. Even the worst parts of it only go on for a few blocks.”
“It’s worse now than it used to be—now you’ve got all these crack houses, and gangs, people getting shot everywhere. It’s just different now.” I sighed. “I guess everything is different now.”
The cab moved smoothly past the Monument, the museums in the distance and above all of it the Capitol, the City on the Hill. I could feel Dylan beside me, his warmth and the sweet soapy smell of his sweat. I stared resolutely out the window, pretending interest in the tourists in front of the Lincoln Memorial, gazing at the great sad giant entombed within.
“Maybe it’s good that it’s different,” Dylan whispered. “Maybe it’s better…”
He put his hand on my shoulder and gently turned me to him. For an instant I tried to resist, then gave up. I was staring into his sea blue eyes, his sunburned face spangled with green and crimson from the traffic lights outside. He wasn’t smiling, there was nothing mocking in his gaze, nothing playful at all. He was staring at me as though he had never seen me before; he was looking at me as I imagined Angelica had looked upon Keftiu so long ago. As though he saw something in me long dreamed of, something he had hardly dared hope to find. I could feel his other hand on my thigh, his fingers burning through the coarse linen, his fingers trembling as they pulled the fabric taut, and then he drew me to him and I was gone. My fingers tangled in his long hair and I could feel him all around me, his arms pulling me close until I could hear the roaring of his heart as he kissed me and I wasn’t thinking of Oliver anymore, I wasn’t thinking how different we both were, how young he was or who his mother had been, I wasn’t thinking of anything at all except for Dylan, Dylan, and how I would have waited another twenty years for him, a hundred, a thousand. I would wait forever for him, now that I knew he was there.
CHAPTER 18
A Meeting
BABY JOE MET HER in a Manhattan bar called Chumley Peckerwood’s, a garishly lit franchised strip club where a visiting executive on an expense account could drop a grand for a steak and a few margaritas and a blond lap dancer from Massapequa named Tiffany Gayle.
“Hey, Annie,” Baby Joe murmured, hugging her. “God, you feel good.”
“Baby Joe…” She was surprised at how quickly the tears came; just as quickly she blinked them back. “I’m—I’m so sorry I missed Hasel’s funeral. I was touring and I couldn’t take off—I’m not big enough that I can get away with that—”
He made a dismissive gesture, slid into the booth, and sniffed her club soda. “Ugh.” Grimacing, he beckoned a waitress. “Double vodka martini. And bring her one too.”
Annie started to protest but he waved her off. “It’ll put some hair on your head. So. Angie’s found you.”
Annie felt her chest contract. “How did you know?” She sank into her corner of the booth, shrinking like Alice into burgundy leather.
‘“Cause you wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this, unless you were drunk or crazy or in very deep shit.” He took his drink from the waitress, cast her an appraising look as she handed Annie her martini, then downed his in two gulps. “And I know you don’t drink, and you didn’t used to be crazy. So it’s got to be mondo poo-poo. And I’m thinking it’s got to be Angie.”
Baby Joe slid his empty glass back onto the tray and glanced at the waitress. “Two more.” He turned back to Annie. “I’m waiting.”
“We-ell.”
She took a deep breath. Every few months Baby Joe called her, but Annie hadn’t actually seen him in years. He’d grown into an imposing figure: big and broad-shouldered, with a body that should have run to fat but so far had not. His hair hung to his shoulders, straight and very, very black. His deconstructed suit jacket was black, too, except for where the lining showed, as were his trousers and the T-shirt that read JELLY BISHOPS in tiny white letters. A pair of cheap plastic sunglasses was shoved into the thick hair above his forehead. He looked like a bellicose young capo in whatever the Filipino analog of the Mafia might be; though there was a weariness to his gaze she didn’t recall, a sorrow she could see mapped in the lines around his dark eyes and mouth.
It’s Hasel, thought Annie, and felt ashamed that she hadn’t shown more grief over the death of their old friend. She stared at her untouched drink.
“Well, you’re right,” she said at last. “I am in trouble.”
She gestured at the dark-paneled walls and crimson lighting behind them, the stage where a young woman in high heels and a peacock feather writhed to a synth-pop version of the theme from Gigantor. “This place, I heard about it from a girlfriend and I thought it’d be good cover for me.”
Baby Joe’s eyebrow arched. He reached for her martini and sipped it thoughtfully. “Trouble. Is it Angie?”
“I think so.”
“Huh.” He finished her first drink just as the waitress returned with his second. His expression remained impassive, but his eyes narrowed very slightly. “So. Our Lady of Perpetual Motion has decided to get in touch with all her old college chums.”
Annie nodded.
Baby Joe reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and tapped one out. “Tell me about it.”
“There was a murder—two nights ago. In Provincetown—”
Baby Joe bared his teeth in a smile. “The Eviscerator.’ I saw the file photos.”
“I saw it in the flesh.”
“You saw it?”
“I nearly was it. This rave out at Herring Cove. A bunch of Angelica’s followers were there, performing some kind of ritual. And somebody must’ve slipped me something, ‘cause it was like I was someplace else. Like I had some kind of out-of-body experience. I know for all you guys from the Divine, that would be, like, all in a day’s work, but let me tell you, I was freaked…