Lullaby

  According to Oyster, the “dads” have all the power so they don’t want anything to change.

  He means me.

  I’m counting 1, counting 2, counting 3 . . .

  Oyster says all the “moms” have a little power, but they’re hungry for more.

  He means Helen.

  I’m counting 4, counting 5, counting 6 . . .

  And young people, he says, have little or no power so they’re desperate for any.

  Oyster and Mona.

  I’m counting 7, counting 8 . . ., and Oyster’s voice goes on and on.

  This quiet-ophobic. This talk-oholic.

  Smiling with just half his mouth, Oyster says, “Every generation wants to be the last.” Into the phone, he says, “Yeah, I’d like to place a retail display ad.” He says, “Yeah, I’ll hold.”

  Mona puts the pillow back over her face. The red snakes and vines go down the length of each finger.

  Cheatgrass, Oyster says. Mustard. Kudzu.

  Carp. Starlings. Seeding meat.

  Looking out the car window, Oyster says, “You ever wonder if Adam and Eve were just the puppies God dumped because they wouldn’t house-train?”

  He rolls down the window and the smell blows inside, the stinking warm wind of dead fish, and shouting against the wind, he says, “Maybe humans are just the pet alligators that God flushed down the toilet.”

  Chapter 24

  At the next library, I ask to wait in the car while Helen and Mona go inside and find the book. With them gone, I flip through the pages of Helen’s daily planner. Almost every day is a name, some of them names I know. The dictator of some banana republic or a figure from organized crime. Each name crossed out with a single red slash. The last dozen names I write on a scrap of paper. Between the names are Helen’s notes for meetings, her handwriting scrolled and perfect as jewelry

  Watching me from the backseat, Oyster’s kicked back with his arms folded behind his head. His bare feet are crossed and propped up on the back of the front seat so they hang next to my face. A silver ring around one of his big toes. Calluses on the soles, the gray calluses are cracked, dirty, and Oyster says, “Mom’s not going to like that, you going through her personal secret shit.”

  Reading the book backward from today’s date, I go through three years of names, assassinations, before Helen and Mona are walking back through the parking lot.

  Oyster’s phone rings, and he answers it, “Donner, Diller and Dunes, Attorneys-at-Law . . .”

  There’s still most of the book I don’t get a chance to read. Years and years of pages. Toward the end of the book, there are years and years of blank pages for Helen still to fill.

  Helen’s talking on her phone when she gets to the car. She’s saying, “No, I want the step-cut aquamarine that used to belong to the Emperor Zog.”

  Mona gets into the backseat, saying, “Did you miss us?” She says, “Another culling song down the toilet.”

  And Oyster folds his legs into the backseat, saying, “Does the rash bleed?” into his cell phone.

  Helen snaps her fingers for me to hand her the daily planner. Into the phone, she says, “Yes, the two-hundred-carat aquamarine. Call Drescher in Geneva.” She opens the planner and writes a name under today’s date.

  Mona says, “I was thinking.” She says, “Do you think the original grimoire might have a flying spell? I’d love that. Or an invisibility spell?” She gets her Mirror Book out of her knapsack and starts coloring in it. She says, “I want to be able to talk to animals, too. Oh, and do telekinesis, you know, move stuff with my mind . . .”

  Helen starts the car and says, loud at the rearview mirror, “I’m sewing my fish.”

  She puts her cell phone and her pen in her purse. Still in her purse is the small gray stone from Mona’s witch party, the stone the coven gave to her. When Oyster was naked. His wrinkled pink stalactite of skin pierced with its little silver ring.

  Mona, that same night, Mulberry, and the two muscles of her back, the way they split into the two firm, creamy white halves of her ass, and I’m counting 1, counting 2, counting 3 . . .

  In the next little town, in the next library, I ask Helen and Mona to wait in the car with Oyster while I go inside and hunt for the poems book.

  This is some small-town library in the middle of the day. A librarian is behind the checkout desk. The most recent newspapers are mounted in big hardcover bindings you sit at a big table to read. In today’s paper is Gustave Brennan. In yesterday’s is some wacko religious leader in the Middle East. Two days ago, it was some death row inmate on his latest appeal.

  Everyone in Helen’s planner book died on the date their name is listed.

  In between are newspaper articles about something worse. Denni D’Testro today. Three days ago, it’s Samantha Evian. A week ago, it’s Dot Leine. All of them young, all of them fashion models, all of them found dead without an apparent cause of death. Before that was Mimi Gonzalez, found dead by her boyfriend, dead in bed with no marks, nothing. No clues until the autopsy announced today shows signs of post-mortem sexual intercourse.

  Nash.

  Helen comes in, asking, “I’m hungry. What’s taking you so long?”

  My list of names is on the table beside me. Next to that is a newspaper article with a photo of Gustave Brennan. In front of me is another article showing the funeral of some convicted child molester I found listed in Helen’s daily planner.

  And Helen looks at everything in one glance and says, “So now you know.”

  She sits on the edge of the table, her thighs stretching her skirt tight across her lap, and she says, “You wanted to know how to control your power, well, this is what works for me.”

  The secret is to turn pro, she says. Do something only for money, and you’re less likely to do it for free. “You don’t think prostitutes want a lot of sex outside of their brothel?” she says.

  She says, “Why do you think building contractors always live in unfinished houses?”

  She says, “Why do you think doctors are in such poor health?”

  She waves her hand at the library door and the parking lot outside and says, “The only reason why I haven’t killed Mona a hundred times over is because I kill someone else every day. And I get paid a great deal of money for it.”

  And I ask, what about Mona’s idea? Why can’t you control the power by just loving people so much you don’t want to kill them?

  “This isn’t about love and hate,” Helen says. It’s about control. People don’t sit down and read a poem to kill their child. They just want the child to sleep. They just want to dominate. No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have your own way.

  The masochist bullies the sadist into action. The most passive person is actually an aggressor. Every day, just you living means the misery and death of plants and animals—and even some people. “Slaughterhouses, factory farms, sweatshops,” she says, “like it or not, that’s what your money buys.”

  And I tell her she’s been listening to Oyster too much.

  “The key is to kill people deliberately,” Helen says, and picks up the picture of Gustave Brennan in the newspaper. Looking at it, up close, she says, “You kill strangers deliberately so you don’t accidentally kill the people you love.”

  Constructive destruction.

  She says, “I’m an independent contractor.”

  She’s an international hired killer working for huge diamonds.

  Helen says, “Governments do it every day.”

  But governments do it after years of deliberation and by due process, I tell her. It’s only after weighty consideration that a criminal is deemed too dangerous to be released. Or to set an example. Or for revenge. Okay, so the process isn’t perfect. At least it’s not arbitrary.

  And Helen puts a hand over her eyes to hide them for a moment, then moves her hand and looks at me, saying, “Who do you think calls me for these little jobs?”

  The U.S. State Department calls her?
r />   “Sometimes,” she says. “Mostly it’s other countries, any country in the world, but I don’t do anything for free.”

  That’s why the jewels?

  “I hate haggling over the exchange rate, don’t you?” she says. “Besides, an animal dies for every meal you eat.”

  Oyster again. I see my job will be keeping him and Helen apart.

  And I say that’s different. Humans are above animals. Animals were put on this planet to feed and serve humanity. Human beings are precious and intelligent and unique, and God gave the animals to us. They’re our property.

  “Of course you’d say that,” Helen says, “you’re on the winning team.”

  I say, constructive destruction isn’t the answer I was looking for.

  And Helen says, “Sorry, it’s the only one I have.”

  She says, “Let’s get the book, fix it, and then go kill ourselves some lovely pheasant for lunch.”

  On the way out, I ask the librarian for their copy of the poems book. But it’s checked out. The details about the librarian are he has frosted streaks of ash blond in his hair, and the hair’s gelled into a solid awning over his face. Sort of an ash-blond visor. He’s sitting on a stool behind a computer monitor and smells like cigarette smoke. He’s wearing a turtleneck sweater with a plastic name tag that says, “Symon.”

  I tell him that a lot of lives depend on me finding that book.

  And he says, too bad.

  And I say, no, the fact is only his life depends on it.

  And the librarian hits a button on his keyboard and says he’s calling the police.

  “Wait,” Helen says, and spreads her hand on the counter, her fingers sparkling and loaded with step-cut emeralds and cabochon star sapphires and black, cushion-cut bort diamonds. She says, “Symon, take your pick.”

  And the librarian, his top lip sucks up to his nose so his upper teeth show. He blinks, once, twice, slow, and he says, “Honey, you can keep your tacky drag queen rhinestones.”

  And the smile on Helen’s face doesn’t even flicker.

  The man’s eyes roll up, and the muscles in his face and hands go smooth. His chin drops to his chest, and he slumps forward against his keyboard, then twists and slides to the floor.

  Constructive destruction.

  Helen reaches a priceless hand to turn the monitor and says, “Damn.”

  Even dead on the floor, he looks asleep. His giant gelled hair broke his fall.

  Reading the monitor, Helen says, “He changed the screen. I need to know his password.”

  No problem. Big Brother fills us all with the same crap. My guess is he was clever the same way everybody thinks they’re clever. I tell her to type in “password.”

  Chapter 25

  Mona rolls the sock off my foot. The stretchy sock insides, the fibers, they peel my scabs off. My crusted blood flakes off onto the floor. The foot is swollen until it’s smooth with all its wrinkles stretched out. My foot, a balloon spotted red and yellow. With a folded towel under it, Mona pours the rubbing alcohol.

  The pain’s so instant you can’t tell if the alcohol is boiling hot or ice cold. Sitting on the motel bed, my pant leg rolled up, with Mona kneeling on the carpet at my feet, I grab two handfuls of bedspread and grit my teeth. My back arched, my every muscle bunches tight for a few long seconds. The bedspread’s cold and soaked with my sweat.

  Pockets of something soft and yellow, these blisters almost cover the bottom of my foot. Under the layer of dead skin, you can see a dark, solid shape inside each blister.

  Mona says, “What’ve you been walking on?”

  She’s heating a pair of tweezers over Oyster’s plastic cigarette lighter.

  I ask what the deal is with the advertisements Oyster’s running in newspapers. Is he working for a law firm? The outbreaks of skin fungus and food poisoning, are they for real?

  The alcohol drips off my foot, pink with dissolved blood, onto the folded motel towel. She sets the tweezers on the damp towel and heats a needle over Oyster’s cigarette lighter. With a rubber band, she reaches back and bundles her hair into a thick ponytail.

  “Oyster calls all that ‘antiadvertising,’” she says. “Sometimes businesses, the really rich ones, they pay him to cancel the ads. How much they pay, he says, reflects how true the ads probably are.”

  My foot won’t fit inside my shoe anymore. In the car, earlier today, I asked if Mona could look at it. Helen and Oyster are out buying new makeup. They’re stopping to defuse three copies of the poems book at a big used-book store down the street. The Book Barn.

  I say what Oyster’s doing is blackmail. It’s casting aspersions.

  Now it’s almost midnight. Where Helen and Oyster really are I don’t want to know.

  “He’s not saying he’s a lawyer,” Mona says. “He’s not saying there’s a lawsuit. He’s just running an ad. Other people fill in the blanks. Oyster says he’s just planting the seed of doubt in their minds.”

  She says, “Oyster says it’s only fair since advertising promises something to make you happy.”

  With her kneeling, you can see the three black stars tattooed above Mona’s collarbone. You can see down her blouse, past the carpet of chains and pendants, and she isn’t wearing a bra, and I’m counting 1, counting 2, counting 3 . . .

  Mona says, “Other members of the coven do it, too, but it’s Oyster’s idea. He says the plan is to undermine the illusion of safety and comfort in people’s lives.”

  With the needle, she lances a yellow blister and something drops out. A little brown piece of plastic, it’s covered in stinking ooze and blood and lands on the towel. Mona turns it over with the needle, and the yellow ooze soaks into the towel. She picks it up with the tweezers and says, “What the heck is this?”

  It’s a church steeple.

  I say, I don’t know.

  Mona, her mouth gaps open with her tongue pushing out. Her throat slides up inside her neck skin, gagging. She waves a hand in front of her nose and blinks fast. The yellow ooze stinks that bad. She wipes the needle on the towel. With one hand she holds my toes, and with the other she lances another blister. The yellow sprays out in a little blast, and there on the towel is half of a factory smokestack.

  She tweezers it and wipes it on the towel. Her face wrinkled tight around her nose, she looks at it close-up and says, “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  She lances another blister, and out pops the onion dome from a mosque, covered in blood and slime. With her tweezers, Mona pulls a tiny dinner plate out of my foot. It’s hand-painted with a border of red roses.

  Outside our motel room, a fire siren screams by in the street.

  Out of another blister oozes the pediment from a Georgian bank building.

  The cupola from a grade school busts out of the next blister.

  Sweating. Deep breathing. Gripping my soft, dripping handfuls of bedspread, I grit my teeth. Looking up at the ceiling, I say, someone is killing models.

  Pulling out a bloody flying buttress, Mona says, “By stepping on them?”

  And I tell her, fashion models.

  The needle digs around in the sole of my foot. The needle fishes out a television antenna. The tweezers fish out a gargoyle. Then roof tiles, shingles, tiny slates and gutters.

  Mona lifts one edge of the stinking towel and folds it so a clean side shows. She pours on more alcohol.

  Another fire engine screams by the motel. Its red and blue lights flash across the curtains.

  And I can’t draw another full breath, my foot burns so bad.

  We need, I say. I need . . . we need . . .

  We need to go back home, I say, as soon as possible. If I’m right, I need to stop the man who’s using the culling poem.

  With the tweezers, Mona digs out a blue plastic shutter and lays it on the towel. She pulls out a shred of bedroom curtains, yellow curtains from the nursery. She pulls out a length of picket fence, and pours on more alcohol until it drips off my foot clear. She covers her nose
with her hand.

  Another fire engine screams by, and Mona says, “You mind if I just turn on the TV and see what’s up?”

  I stretch my jaws at the ceiling and say, we can’t. . . we can’t. . .

  Alone with her now, I say, we can’t trust Helen. She only wants the grimoire so she can control the world. I say, the cure for having too much power is not to get more power. We can’t let Helen get her hands on the original Book of Shadows.

  And so slow I can’t see her move, Mona draws a fluted Ionic column out of a bloody pit below my big toe. Slow as the hour hand on a clock. If the column’s from a museum or a church or a college, I can’t remember. All these broken homes and trashed institutions.

  She’s more of an archaeologist than a surgeon.

  And Mona says, “That’s funny.”

  She lines up the column with the other fragments on the towel. Frowning as she leans back into my sole with the tweezers, she says, “Helen told me the same thing about you. She says you only want to destroy the grimoire.”

  It should be destroyed. No one can handle that kind of power.

  On television is an old brick building, three stories, with flames pouring up from every window. Firemen point hoses and feathery white arcs of water. A young man holding a microphone steps into the shot, and behind him Helen and Oyster are watching the fire, their heads leaned together. Oyster’s holding a shopping bag. Helen holds his other hand.

  Holding up the bottle of rubbing alcohol, Mona looks at how much is left. She says, “What I’d really like to be is an empath, where all I have to do is touch people and they’re healed.” Reading the label, she says, “Helen tells me we can make the world a paradise.”

  I sit up on the bed, halfway, propping myself on my elbows, and I say, Helen is killing people for diamond tiaras. That’s the kind of savior Helen is.

  Mona wipes the tweezers and the needle on the towel, making more smears of red and yellow. She smells the bottle of alcohol and says, “Helen thinks you only want to exploit the book for a newspaper story. She says once all the spells are destroyed—including the culling spell—then you can blab to everybody that you’re the hero.”