Semblance of Eden 10 ~ What a Desert Remembers

 

 

Passing the Babylon town limits, I suddenly know how Agamemnon felt after the siege of Troy, entering those scorched walls for the first time in ten blood-soaked years: Tired; frustrated and sore and sick to his gut from the heat. Needing a cold beer so badly that he'd mud wrestle Odysseus for the chance at one.

 

I pull to the curb and the engine rattles and wheezes to a relieved halt. At some point during that last stretch, the muffler gave out and the thing runs loud as a tank without it. My instinct says the radiator's shot, too, not to mention something in the fuel line that makes the whole cab stink like gasoline.

 

I'll have to arrange for something else soon. Never know when we'll have to leave town in a hurry.

But never in such a hurry that there's not time for a drink.

 

"Hey, Marlowe!" The kid's still crawling out of the back seat, picking at his perspiration-stained shirt.

 

"I smell like gasoline," he mutters, and then turns his eyes to me. "And cheap cigarette smoke."

 

"Don't look at me. Those cigarettes weren't cheap." I gesture toward the saloon with a tilt of my head. "Come on. I'll buy you a beer."

 

His face twists into a pout so pathetically comical it belongs on a character in a shitty newspaper cartoon strip. "I smell like sweat, too."

 

"I know. We both stink." I hold the collar of my shirt to my nose and draw a deep breath to prove this point. "That means people will leave us alone."

 

He turns up his nose distastefully. "That doesn't sound very nice..."

 

I'll never understand people who don't appreciate the value of sullen silence. Wolfwood's one of them, come to think of it, but Midvalley isn't. I guess they make up for the awkward moments with sex.

 

"Suit yourself, kid, but if you don't come you're going to be sitting out here in the car. I'm not getting us a room until I have a drink for luck." I shrug, and my right shoulders grumbles at me. I had almost forgotten about it, written it off as healed. But all that driving couldn't have been the best thing for it, and besides... I'm a fool if I ever thought Legato would allow himself to just be written off.

 

Whether he likes it or not, if this dusty planet remembers anything of us after we're gone, it's going to be that he once walked upon its face.

 

"Right, for luck," Marlowe mutters, and I'm not sure if I was supposed to hear it or not, so I don't comment. Just start for the door of the saloon without looking back at him. After a few paces he follows, swiping the sweat from his forehead - just spreading it around is more like it - as he draws up at my elbow.

Inside, I ask what's on tap. Listen closely without really hearing, and then hold up two fingers and parrot the last thing the bartender said. He gives my profile a hard stare, and I turn on the barstool so he can see my other Eye.

 

Shock floods over his face. Priceless.

 

And then, more slowly, it is replaced by creeping understanding. Worrisome.

 

"You're with those other two that came through here, aren't you?" he mutters, slamming our beers down on the counter. His eyes shift to Marlowe, and I can't help but wonder if that 'you' was intended for both of us.

I'm silent for a long time, and I watch him as though I could make his question a rhetorical one by will alone. He's drearily handsome. Brown hair, beginning to streak gray at the temples. Sharp cheekbones, a square jaw... his nose is a little flat at the bridge, as though it's been broken at some point along the way, but that seems a long time ago from where I'm sitting. His eyes are small and hard, gritty, the colorlessness of dust or the sky just before dawn breaks.

 

By the time Marlowe shifts nervously on his barstool - nearly sliding clean off the green vinyl and on to the floor - we've been staring each other down for a quarter of a minute. Or maybe a year.

"You mean the priest, right?" The tip of Marlowe's index finger skates around the rim of his beer glass. "And the musician? Yeah, they're friends of ours."

 

He blushes furiously, taking a deep gulp of his beer as though to dissuade the bartender from questioning us any further.

 

He turns his attention back to me instead. "I don't..."

"Want any trouble?" I finish for him. "I just stopped by for a beer." I take a drink as if to prove that fact. A long drink, savoring it. "For luck." The alcohol's so bitter that it's almost sweet going down, so cheap and greasy it almost tastes smooth.

 

Guess today is my lucky day.

 

"What's your name, compadre?" I hear myself ask.

 

He hesitates. He doesn't trust me. That's fine, even though I can't imagine that I've given him a reason not to. I'm even drinking his hooch in good humor.

 

"Cassius," he says at last.

 

Fascinating. “You got a wife, Cassius?"

 

His eyes harden even more. I hadn't thought that was possible.

 

"Dead," he reports coolly.

 

"Any kids? Or are they dead, too?"

 

I'm not sure quite what I'm doing. Trying to get him to back off, I think. Mind his own damn business. Keep his head down so he can keep it at all. But when he nods, something inside me seems to snap into place, so sharp and sudden it almost hurts.

 

There's a reason his family is dead. It's not cancer like it says on the death certificates, not dysentery or respiratory failure or heart defect. The real reason is the same reason one of my eyes is blood red, the same reason a part of my brain which had been dormant at my birth is awake now, buzzing with white electrical impulse, synapses firing a million times a second to cloud the senses of men and even... more perfect amalgamations.

 

The same reason I'm here, in this town, one last time with feeling.

 

I realize he's still watching me. Marlowe, too, but the look in their eyes isn't the same. I nod, hoping it seems sage enough to throw them both off the scent.

 

"I understand, then. It doesn't make sense yet, but it will soon enough."

 

I can't help but think that's a lie, but I've told bigger lies in the past, for better reasons, and to people I care about more. And though I feel that Cassius knows this - the lie, if not the more important parts, too - he backs off. "The beer's gonna be six double dollars," he tells me stiffly. "If you two are staying here, I can run a tab."

 

We are, but I pay him anyway. He leaves after that, and I know he won't be back until my drink is low. For a while, I have that silence I was hoping for, but it's heavy on our shoulders.

 

Marlowe cracks under the pressure of it first, and I don't blame him. "Ms. Dominique...?"

 

"Quiet. I told you everything will make sense soon enough."

 

"How did you know about his kids, Ms. Dominique?"

 

"It happens all the time in this city. Everything will..."

 

"Make sense soon enough?" The cool voice makes my jaw clench convulsively. A shadow moves into my light.

 

"Legato!" Beside me, Marlowe almost chokes on nothing more than the stifling atmosphere of his presence. "Sir," he amends weakly.

 

Everything I said a few minutes ago about the stink of travel clinging to us... I take it all back. Because he's sweeping his long coat out, perching elegantly on the barstool at my left elbow.

 

"You sound so certain of that, Dominique." His eyes, sharp as stilettos, flash hungrily. "I must admit, I wonder at this truth you seem to be searching for."