Tim Powers - Dinner At Deviant's Palace

«What is it?» Urania asked. «You said 'he'? Is that the Lord, in that tequila bottle?»

Rivas glanced from Urania to Barbara. «How birdy are you ladies?» he asked.

Barbara frowned deeply. «Coming out of it,» she said. «Now I . . . know he w-w-wasn't really God. I mean, I know it, but . . .»

Urania shook her head sadly, staring at the tequila bottle. «So I have to go home and marry Joe Montecruz.»

«You're what, Uri,» said Rivas, «thirty? You can do what you want. You don't have to marry this guy if you don't want to.»

Urania shook her head dubiously.

«I remember some of the dinner, Sister Windchime,» said Rivas. «But how did we get out of there? And . . . what happened to me?» He touched his bandaged head.

«You're supposed to call her Barbara,» said Urania virtuously.

«People might remember the, uh, birdy name,» Barbara explained. «Well, the place started collapsing as soon as you threw that squid thing at him, and then bullets were flying so thick you'd get hit if you moved. Sister Sue moved, tried to pull the thing off the L—off Jaybush. Then after you . . . cut him up, a rock hit you in the head. I was sure you were dead, or dying anyway, but I got you into the boat and then just headed for one of the arches. I thought one of those bridges was going to come right down on us and mash us all—that was happening to most of the people on the rafts, it looked like—but I figured why not keep moving. Anyway, I got us through the arch into a little tunnel and then it wasn't so bad, the tunnel roof was just dropping pebbles and sand, and the waves from the pool in the big room helped move us along.»

She shook her head. «Do you remember when h-he told all those people they were going to die? Well, even though he seemed to be dead, they didn't want any change in plans. Some had wound up in under the arch with us, but they didn't try to get into our boat, or swim out—they were trying to drown, and getting mad when they'd come up and take a breath in spite of themselves.

«I paddled us along the tunnel, and when we came outside we were in one of the canals, so I just kept going. After a while I found an old pier hidden under a big pepper tree, so I left the two of you there and went back.»

Urania was listening avidly, and Rivas wondered if this could be the first time she'd heard the story. Could she have been too incurious to ask?

«The building had mostly fallen down by that time,» Barbara went on, «and I could hear sounds something like seals barking, or honking geese, from the big pool inside the crumbled walls, but it was like they were speaking with mouths and throats that weren't any good for speaking with. It seemed like they kept trying to say, 'Where are you, Lord?' And some of the voices were coming from the sky, where things were flying around; they sounded so awful, just the noise of them flying, I mean, like big wet wings slapping, that I was glad it was dark and I couldn't see them. Anyway, a lot of bodies had floated out of the tunnel into the canal, and I went through the pockets of three or four of the better-dressed ones.» Her voice was still matter of fact, but Rivas could see tears in her eyes and her hands were clenched on his blanket, pulling a section of it drumhead taut. «A couple of them had quite a lot of money. I took it and came back to where you two were.» The blanket tore with a sound like a spitting cat, startling all three of them. «Urania was still crying. You still looked like every breath was your last. We all waited there until morning, then I got us a room and got a doctor for you. And then I used nearly all the rest of the money to buy this donut wagon and two horses, and we've been doing well enough since.» Staring down at the torn blanket, she added, «My f-father owns a bakery, so I . . . know how to . . .»

«Except we have to move around a lot,» put in Urania. «The pocalocas keep zeroing in on us,» Barbara explained. «I've tried to keep moving east, figuring to get to Ellay, but those damned women make us backtrack a lot of the time. They'll march past quickly, then back again not so quick, and then if we don't rouse the horses and get the wagon out of there they start just milling around, looking everywhere, like they're not even sure what they're looking for. I've been having Urania decoy them away by singing in a street in the other direction—they hate music—but lately they haven't been as easy to deflect. I think they want what's left of . . . their god,» she said, looking at the tequila bottle, «or the guy that killed him,» she said, looking at Rivas. «Or, more likely, both.»

Rivas shivered. He raised his right hand and tried to make a fist; he could, but he couldn't have crushed a sponge in it. God, I'm weak, he thought. A single pocaloca could kill me right now, easy as killing a bug. I'm going to have to get some exercise . . . and some food.

With the thought of food came an awareness of ravenous hunger—and of the smell that filled the wagon. «Could I have some of your donuts?» he asked.

«Of course,» Barbara said. «But there's some soup, if you'd rather. Bean and onion, and the guy I bought it from thins it with sherry.» She said this a bit primly, as if she still couldn't bring herself to approve of alcohol.

«Oh, yes, please,» said Rivas fervently.

Barbara went to the front part of the wagon, which was evidently a tiny kitchen, clattered around for a minute, and then returned with a steaming bowl and a spoon. «I'd better feed you,» she said.

«My God, I'm not a baby,» Rivas said. «I can feed myself. Here, give me the spoon, I'll show you.»

She did, and he could hold it, but his hand shook so badly that most of the soup spilled out of the spoon, and then he dropped the spoon in. It sank out of sight.

«God damn it,» he grated, afraid for a moment that he might cry at this defeat.

Barbara fished it out, wiped it off, dipped up some soup and held it to his mouth. «It's no disgrace,» she whispered. «Eat, dummy.»

He did, and it was delicious, and in a few minutes she'd scraped the last spoonful out of the bowl.

«Would you like something to drink?» she asked him as she stood up.

«Sure, thanks,» he said. «What have you got?»

«Nothing, but there's a market a block away, and the donuts made some money this morning.»

«Okay, I'll, uh, pay you back,» he ventured.

«Don't be silly. What would you like?»

«Beer?»

She pressed her lips together, but said, «Okay. Back in five. Uri, anybody knocks, make sure it's me before you open up, right?»

«Sure, sure.»

«See you.» Barbara left, drawing the door closed behind her.

Rivas turned and stared at Uri. She did look much better now than she had at the Regroup Tent and the disastrous dinner; her hair was clean and she seemed to have got enough sleep lately. He didn't need a mirror to know that she must look ten years younger than he did. But she wasn't Uri, the girl he'd dreamed of and written songs to for thirteen years, the girl that had made all other girls seem coarse and insensitive and stupid by comparison. And he realized at last that what had made her so enduring an obsession was his deprivation of her. If her father hadn't separated them after that birthday party, she'd simply have been his first girlfriend. It was the drama of frustrated love—and the safety of it, too, of course, for frustrated love is never subjected to the daily patch-and-make-do reality of a marriage—that had made him base his life on it.

He remembered, suddenly, what he'd been dreaming of, just before he woke up. Probably prompted by hearing Uri's voice, he'd been dreaming of the birthday party. It was a dream he'd had before, but always before in it he'd been young Rivas, winding up barking in drunken apprehension behind the bushes. This time he'd been the present day thirty-one-year-old Rivas, somehow transported back through time to be an observer of that traumatic evening thirteen years ago.