Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

Toby’s eyes widened. “What happened?”

“I’m not sure. I think she was drinking and fell and hit her head.”

“Jesus. How’s Gryffin taking it?”

“As well as can be expected.”

“I better call him.”

He hurried to the front of the apartment. I fidgeted and fought my paranoia with more Jack Daniel’s. It helped, but not much.

“He doesn’t sound too good.” Toby returned and sat across from me. “Coroner or someone’s on the way over; they’re taking her body to Augusta. Gryffin’s got to do something about a service and cremation. What a shame.”

He looked upset but not surprised. “She had kind of a drinking problem for a long time. Like I said, I never knew her that well, but—that whole crowd from back then, for a while there we were pretty tight. Someone should tell Denny.”

“Are you going to help Gryffin?”

Toby sighed. “I wish I could. But that northeaster—I got to get over to Lucien’s place and make sure everything’s battened down. Denny’s supposed to have closed everything up for the winter, but Lucien likes me to run backup.”

“I’ve got to get back to the city. I really need a ride back to Burnt Harbor. Can you bring me before you go?”

“I can’t. Sorry. I should have checked Lucien’s place last week, but I got caught up with another job. And now the weather’s supposed to come down. Can’t let the pipes freeze.”

“Couldn’t you just run me over first? Like, just a real quick trip there and back?”

“I’m sorry.” His dark eyes glinted. “Any other day, I’d be glad to. But I can’t let this slip. First thing tomorrow, though, I’ll be out.”

“Shit. Well, Is there someone else? Like Everett? Can I call him?”

Toby sucked at his lip. “Boy, you’re in a spot. I don’t know if you could find anyone today. They’ll be out looking for Kenzie Libby.”

“So why wouldn’t one of them give me a lift?”

“Well, I don’t know as I’d ask them. If I were you, I mean. Maybe you should just lay low till tomorrow morning. Kenzie’ll show up by then, everyone will be all pissed off at her for scaring ‘em. They’ll fall all over themselves to help you. If the weather’s not too bad, I mean. This is the first big northeaster of the year.”

“I don’t give a fuck. I want to get the hell out of here—”

Toby shrugged. “Well, you can go down to the harbor and take your chances, I guess. I wouldn’t. Tempers running high already, and now this thing with Aphrodite. But you can stay at my place if you want.”

He gestured vaguely at a corner. “There’s a futon.”

“I have to leave,” I said.

Toby’s phone rang. “’Scuse me,” he said and ducked into the shadows.

I stared at the row of monitors. They now appeared to be clocking atmospheric disturbances somewhere east of Subar.

I got up and started pacing. I searched for a mirror, to see if I looked as crazy as I was starting to feel, but of course there were none, not even a window.

The bathroom had a shower stall. But no mirror.

I went to the kitchen and got some more water. Toby stood in the doorway, phone pressed to his ear, and stared into the boiler room, talking to Gryffin again, I assumed. He lifted his hand to me, and I turned away.

I wandered toward the back of the room again and passed a cluttered table. From underneath it peeked a mask. I stooped and pulled it out, another brightly colored confection made of papier-mâché and chicken wire and acrylic paint.

It was a frog’s head, like the one I’d seen on Northern Sky . This one was even more eerily totemic. Also surprisingly heavy, as I discovered when I lifted it. I put it over my head, knocking a book off the table as I did.

Inside, the mask smelled like library paste and hashish. I took it off and put it back where I’d found it then picked up the book.

Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane. The same book I’d seen in Denny’s bus. I set it on the table, frowning.

Something else had fallen over, a photo in a cheap plastic frame. I picked it up.

It was an SX-70 close-up of a naked girl lying on her back, hands splayed beside her face. The film emulsion had been manipulated so that fizzy lines exploded around the edges of the picture. Her hair formed a dark corona around her head, and an eye had been drawn on each of her open palms.

You couldn’t see her face. It was covered by a tortoise shell that had two more eyes painted on it. In one, someone had painted a tiny green star.

“What the hell,” I said.

Toby came up alongside me. “Whatcha looking at?”

“Where’d you get this?”

He took it and held it to the light. “Denny. Sort of experimental, isn’t it?” He handed it back and pulled meditatively at his pigtail.

“Who’s the girl?”

“That was a girl named Hannah Meadows—’Hanner.’ She had a real strong Maine accent. You can’t tell from that, but she was real good-looking.”

“You can’t tell from this if she was even alive.”

“Oh, she was alive. She was one of Denny’s girlfriends. He had a bunch of them back then. Bunch of women, bunch of kids. He got into all that tribal stuff.”

He pointed at the mask beneath the table. “Like that. That took me forever to make. And God, did I sweat in it.”

“You made that?”

“Sure. We all had to make our own masks—that was part of the thing. You chose your spirit animal, and then you made the mask, and then we had a ritual, and you were filled with the mask’s energy. That was the theory, anyway,” he said and laughed. “But Hannah, she was a nurse—she worked the night shift at the hospital up past Collinstown. She was beautiful, and something about her—well, a lot of those girls were cute, but Denny just loved to take her picture. She used to model for him all the time. He even talked about marrying her.”

He whistled. “And boy, Aphrodite, she wasn’t happy about that. And she sure didn’t like him taking all those pictures.”

“What happened to the girl?”

“Oh, that was terrible. Really sad. She got into a car accident driving home one night. In the summer; it was after she got off work. She flipped over the guardrail and went into a lake. She got out of the car okay, but then she never made it to shore. They got the car out of the lake, but she wasn’t in it. Took them almost a week to find the body. Denny was the one found her, he was with the crews out looking. She’d gotten tangled up in some alders along the shore. I guess it was pretty bad. Something had been at the body, some kind of animal. He kind of went off after that, accused Aphrodite of cutting her brakes, though I don’t think they ever found any proof. It was a bad scene. Hey, you okay?”

His face creased with concern. “You look like you’re going to pass out.”

“C’mere.” He steered me to a chair and made me sit. “Put your head between your knees,” he said. “That’s it. So you don’t faint. Just stay there for a minute, I’ll be right back.”

He went and got a cold washcloth, pressed it to my forehead. “There. Boy, you look a mess. Maybe you should try to take a nap. Sounds like you had a rough morning over there.”

“I haven’t eaten anything,” I said, though the last thing I felt like was food. “Do you have some crackers or something?”

He got me some stale Uneeda Biscuits, also a glass of something cold and brown. “Here, see if this helps.”

I ate a cracker, took a tiny sip of the brown liquid. “Christ, that’s disgusting! What is it?”

“Moxie.”

“It tastes like Dr. Pepper laced with rat poison.”

“That’s the gentian root.”

I shoved the Moxie back at him and finished the crackers. Toby raised an eyebrow. “Better?”