33

Broken sleep met me as I skimmed porches and fire escapes. Lovers lost all passion, dreamers all sequence, as I fingered past each human form, sorting, glancing, tasting the air. My search was a kind of sleep. He was the dream. I hunted the bungalows and apartments of the Richmond District, of the Sunset, the lawns and window boxes of Parkside.

Nothing escaped me. The spaghetti of streets, the warehouses, the television antennas commanding Twin Peaks, the Mission District, garages, empty playgrounds.

I searched for two nights.

On waking each twilight I was weaker, and when I fed I became more alive, more tireless, more determined. I could feed on the wing, hovering above a sleeping man or a woman, piercing and lapping with my tongue, the tongue itself a coiling, demanding organ, nursing the blood from the vein. Only what I needed, I promised.

All for Rebecca.

When I tried to remember my life as a man, the memories were beyond reach. It was a mild surprise that when I recalled anything about my life, I remembered houses, steps, doors. Human dwellings, decals worn thin by sun and wind. I could not remember faces, laughter, affection. Sex was impossible to imagine, a fleshy knot.

But I did have one or two vivid memories. Of being with my father in a lab, beside glass boxes. Wood shavings curling around sleeping white mice. What experiment are they for? I asked. Or maybe I didn’t have to ask. “Little animals like that die so people can live,” my father said.

The statement baffled me. My father laughed gently, maybe embarrassed at his own didactic blather. “They can see if a new medicine will kill people by using it on rats and mice.”

I knew that already. But what I had not known was how like someone I had known a mouse looked, gazing up at my shadow with his blood-dark eyes. I had not known how unfeeling my father was, opening his appointment book, ignoring the living creatures all around us. The rats dragged skin tumors the size of oranges through the curls of wood.

When my mother died I called my father in London. He was staying at the Savoy, and I hoped he wasn’t in his room, calculating the time difference. He was eating breakfast, I told myself. He was taking a walk by the river. But he answered just as I was about to hang up, just as I was feeling thankful that I had bought a little more time.

“But that’s not possible!” he’d said.

I let him try to convince himself.

“I don’t believe it,” he said, stern, in command.

I experienced a weird pleasure, feeling superior, because I had already seen the truth and accepted it, having no choice. Having held her hand, feeling how heavy it was, how empty of love.

My days were spent under houses, under the roots of trees.

On the third night my hunt seemed about to end.

I could scent him in the wind, and I could guess at his dreams, the badly sorted deck of cards, the half-waking fever. He was sick, and he was always afraid.

South of Pacifica a neighborhood stretched away from the ocean, following a creekbed up into the hills. It was a populated woodland, firewood on back porches, tin-roofed cabins next to three-story houses, pickups parked beside Porsches.

I could smell him, with the disgust I had previously reserved for things decayed, fly-worried fish in an alley. I descended. My wings brushed the arching branches of the redwoods. I felt gravity press my body into the mulch.

I scuttled awkwardly over the roots, decayed wood on my leather wings. I panicked. There was a pair of eyes across the creek, an animal snouting the air. I dragged over a rock, tumbling down the bank.

Stand. I craved my old body, wanting to climb to my feet and take a human breath. But I was helpless, splashing into the water, swirling, struggling to get airborne.

Stand up. The bones of my legs unfolded. Flesh cascaded down and around me, molding itself, joints, organs. My skull ballooned to its usual, human capacity. My vision faded, flattened, lost detail. My finger bones ached, metacarpals throbbing.

I opened my mouth, blinked. I took a breath, and let the air out, feeling my chest lift and fall. The pair of eyes in the brush watched me. Whatever sort of creature it was, it would not turn, would not run, backing slowly away.

I was clothed as I had been, jacket, shoes, the clothes oddly unstained. My shoes filled with stream water, the cuffs of my trousers getting wet. I bent low and lapped the water. I spat it out. To a living man perhaps this creek would have tasted refreshing, but to me it was a dilution of the roots and road cuts the water had traveled, the larvae already teeming somewhere in the canyons.

My quarry was nearby. He was in one of the cabins behind the trees, but I could not be certain which one. A radio alarm came on, mid-song, country and western music. The bronze tang of coffee drifted in the air.

I told myself to find him now, finish it.

I flexed my hands. A large bird swept all the way from the upper branches of a tree and perched on a stone across from me. The black beak parted. The bird spoke, a brief, ugly noise.

The crow was not hostile, but suspicious, curious. I made a noise, too, echoing his, but with an added twist: I belong.

The crow cocked his head. Perhaps he saw me as potential food, sensing in me something of the gibbet, a man left unburied as a warning. The large bird spread his wings and without seeming to make an effort glided all the way across the stream to my bank. His flight was lovely, the product of more efficient engineering. He dipped his head, fluttered his plumage, black feathers already blue with early day. He made no further sound. When he left me I felt the hardness of my solitude, how even the uncaring fellowship of a bird was welcome.

Hurry, I urged myself. There isn’t time.

A jay laughed, coasting upward. Its feathers were blue, shocking blue—like something broken open, a gemstone, an exotic fruit. It was almost day. I held my breath, trying to sense him, where he lay sweating.

No time. I had no time—all day I would be helpless. I splashed across the stream, and climbed carefully over a fence, to find myself on a large pile of chopped cordwood. The splinters were white, the sap glittered.

This was where he lived, that chain saw, that ax. This was all his. He was waking. He was lying in that room beneath a wool blanket. I knew how languor kept him there, a drowsy erection, sleep in his eyes.

His part of the house was on stilts, a wing added on to the main body of the house. I could hear movement, floorboards, clothing. Urine plunged into the water of the toilet, a loud, animal gush. I couldn’t stop myself from giving a low laugh.

I crept beneath the porch, pinecones, dog turds aged white. The floor creaked. A child’s voice rose, bickering, whining. No. A woman’s voice. A child cried. Something didn’t make sense. This wasn’t right, not the right people, not the right place.

A pinecone gleamed, casting a squat shadow. Pine needles caught the light, a thousand pinpricks, dazzling. Too late. The sunlight had arrived, and I was in pain.

He was waiting for the tap water to run hot. A silhouette rippled in the pebbled window, a profile. He was studying his face in the mirror.