I should have known that Carmen’s warehouse had something weird going on. Lore escorts me to the Chicago exit, and I find myself popping like a weasel through a random cardboard box in a corner of the main space. Nobody home, the quiet grinding at the walls. I dog-ear one of the flaps so I can find the right box again, just in case, and head back to my room. It’s the last time I’ll ever see this place. Maybe Lore can track me down no matter what I do, but I don’t have to make it easy for her.
The blue box of candles is sitting square in the middle of the table. The matches perch on top. The silence goes oily with expectancy as I pull them close. After a moment’s thought on the subject of carbon monoxide, I decide against staying in my room and carry the boxes out to the center of that cracked cement sky. Dump out the candles and stare at the heap. Stumpy broken bones, disconnection cast in wax. It’s hitting me now that Lore and I didn’t exactly get down to the finer points of what the hell I should do. Like it would just be obvious once I got started.
Fine. I strike a match. Let it fall.
Like magic—hah—the lights go out. It’s just me and the unsteady shine boxed in darkness. Shadows radiate into a vast ragged flower all around me. My own figure sways, cut from projected unlight. I wait while the flames skip from wick to wick, while the wax pools and runs into the nearest crack. I could just turn around and walk out right now, and leave the old bastard twisting.
Instead I raise my booted foot and stamp, drowning the flames in their own streaming pus. Hot wax splatters my calf, like I give a fuck. Stamp again, choking out the firelight, making room for the dark. Smoke braids thick around me. It takes a few tries, but at last there’s just one guttering little spark. Trying to hold off so much night on its own, and failing abysmally. I know the drill from last time; the lights will flare as soon as it’s extinguished.
Stomp.
And then I’m just standing there in rocky darkness. Entombed.
Something is stinging my eyes. They’re watering like crazy and tears spill down my cheeks. A thick, acrid stench shoves down my throat and sets off a fit of coughing: the kind that feels like someone is yanking on your lungs with a fishhook. Right, the smoke, but it has none of the buttery softness of ordinary candle smoke. It’s toxic, grasping. And all at once I’m getting the feeling that maybe this wasn’t my most inspired idea ever. I can’t even locate the door to make a run for it, not when the darkness is wheeling around me.
Something—two somethings—settle gently on my shoulders from behind. I can feel the impressions of fingers, palms, but they’re not solid enough to be flesh. Their touch is hot, drafty, full of minuscule coilings.
Hands, but hands made of smoke. They’re sliding directly against my skin; my shirt doesn’t impede them at all. My muscles jump with the instinct to bolt. But it’s probably my only chance to tell him off before he trashes me. To make him recognize that, whatever he thinks—whatever I do—I’m not just his shitty little beamer.
I force myself to turn, even though my knees bang together a little. “Hey, Gus. Great to see you! Or it would be, if you’d can the drama and turn on the stinking lights.”
Those hands. I can’t help noticing that they feel a dab more solid, now, against my collarbone. The way he’s clinging to me comes off more weak and unbalanced than threatening. Something about blowing through all the candles at once, hitting a critical mass of magic, and now I’ve dragged him here in the flesh, still discombobulated. I could lean in and kiss him and rip his life right out.
You know, if only I was Lore’s bitch, that’s exactly what I’d do.
The lights flick on. Wearily, somehow. And there he is: my dear progenitor, live in person and looking like ass. It’s hard to remember that I’m supposed to be afraid of him when he’s a head shorter and wearing a body like congealed barf. We both take a step back.
“Angus.” His eyes are ice green, nesting in ashy folds. “The waste of it all.”
I’m not sure if he’s referring to me or to the candles.
“The candles aren’t all I’m going to waste,” I tell him. “I’m not going through with your charade. I just wanted you to know that, when I waste my chance, I’m doing it completely on purpose.”
His weedy brows cock up. No point in pretending he doesn’t know what I mean.
“You’ve made the mistake of spoiling your innocence, when innocence is the best advantage I could give you. But I’ll overlook that for now. There’s no chance she’ll love you if you don’t at least apply yourself, make every effort—”
“There’s no chance she’ll love me,” I interrupt, “because I’m you. But now I’m in on the joke. Turns out it’s both of us.”
He starts forward. And okay, I don’t remember remember how it feels when he pulps me. But memory fidgets inside me, a cold agitation in my heart. My body feels empty, echoing with all the times I’ve met his eyes and hated him. I thought I’d forgotten fear, but it’s funny how it all comes back to me.
Then something shifts in his saggy old face. I’d almost call it tenderness if it weren’t so crushing.
“Angus. No one knows better than I do how many times you’ve failed me. But often you’ve failed by acting too soon, or too late. By a trick of perspective. If the angle of her understanding had only been minutely different, she would have seen that mutuality is intrinsic to a love like ours. That it is an inescapable condition.” If I’m so him, why does it take me by surprise to hear him crooning philosophically, as if he were talking to himself? “You are preoccupied with your chance, but that’s a callow, selfish way to think of it. Yours isn’t the one that matters, difficult as that may be to accept. Our love is generous, Angus; generous above all else! The chances it allows are infinite. Don’t ruin hers.”
It almost sounds like he’s begging. And I kind of see his point. I’ve been looking for a way to spite the maximum number of fuckers, ready to sacrifice Geneva to that goal, even though I love her so much it aches. Maybe that’s contradictory, but if I don’t look too hard at the contradiction it can’t hurt me.
“I’ve seen what happened, Gus. I’ve been there. You didn’t exactly give her infinite chances when it was Catherine in front of you. I mean, when you were young.”
His eyes flare. “I’m always young, foolish boy.”
“Yeah?” I say. “Because you look like a hot dog and a dirty dishtowel had a baby.” But then, of course, duh. I see my own strong, golden arms, the jostle of dark curls hanging over my eyes, and I guess that to him my overblown beauty is part of his generosity. His eagerness to accommodate.
“She hasn’t exhausted the chances I’m prepared to give her. I believe she never will. You are my proof, my testament. You are the amends I make for having been too hasty, long ago.” He gives me a searching gaze, and it’s more effective than it has any right to be. “So when you speak of waste—wanton, deliberate—do you finally understand what you would be wasting?”
I’m sliding into his head, snaking among his thoughts. A trick of perspective. It’s not like he’s ever actually killed me. Just remade me. And my agony in the process is part of our offering to her—
For a moment I can’t remember who her is this time. Faces mingle, interbreed, swap features.
“We’ll find her in the end, Angus. We’ll live in her eternal truth. And that truth will be her love.”
Okay, I don’t say. Fine. I’m in. I see him in a net of light, then realize I’m looking through tears.
“Catherine,” he says. He makes her name glow like stained glass. “You are always young in me.”
Something in me flicks at that. He almost had me for a second there.
That’s not her name, I don’t say. Not to me. Don’t you dare call her that to me. But Geneva doesn’t matter to him at all, I realize. Not as herself. Why do I buck at his smug assurance that his her is the only one that counts, when I knew he felt that way? Why do I want to throw that name—Catherine—off my back, out of my head? Or into one of those fucking cracks she—
Gus screwed up, but even I realize it’s better if he doesn’t recognize it. Not yet. He can figure it out later, if he gives enough of a shit to try.
I see his face unraveling. His brow, his ear, the fall of his cheek burst into dove-gray petals and diffuse, spreading back into smoke. Theatrical motherfucker. I can feel the magic that gushed from all those candles ebbing, feel our visit—thinning out. In an instant the smoke man is huge, hunched over me, his open mouth like a writhing crown around my head. All his delicate smoke filaments slowly untangle and blur, until I’m crouched under a loosely humanoid cloud. I don’t remember sinking down, but my knuckles are digging at the cement.
Then nothing. I’m on the floor and he’s gone. The raw scratching in my lungs fades and I’m finally getting enough clean air.
Fuck you, I think. And while we’re at it, fuck Catherine.
Geneva isn’t his, and neither is my love for her. My single lousy year of life isn’t his. It’s all I have and I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth.
I’m not saying that our love isn’t generous, though. Just that his generosity and mine might find different modes of expression.