Люциус Шепард: The Best of Lucius Shepard

“Told you you’d like it,” I said.

“I do.”

She jiggled her line.

“You’ll never catch anything that way.” I demonstrated proper technique. “Twitch the line side-to-side.”

Amused, she said, “I really doubt I’m going to catch anything. What were you and Rudy batting? One for a thousand?”

“Yeah, but you never know.”

“I don’t think I want to catch anything if it resembles that thing he had mounted.”

“You should let out more line, too.”

She glanced at me wryly, but did as I suggested.

A cloud darkened the bank and I pictured how the two of us would appear to God, if God were in His office, playing with His Gameboy: tiny animated fisherfolk hunched over their lines, shoulder-to-shoulder, waiting for a tiny monster to breach, unmindful of any menace from above. Another cloud shadowed us. A ripple moved across the pond, passing so slowly it made me think that the waters of the Polozny, when upthrust into these holes, were squeezed into a sludgy distillate. Bare twigs clattered in a gust of wind.

“All these years,” Andrea said. “All the years and now five months…”

“Yeah?”

“Every day, there’ll be two or three times when I see you, like just now, when I look up and see you, and it’s like a blow… a physical blow that leaves me all ga-ga. I want to drop everything and curl up with you.”

“Me, too,” I said.

She hesitated. “It just worries me.”

“We’ve had this conversation,” I said. “I don’t mind having it again, but we’re not going to resolve anything. We’ll never figure it out.”

“I know.” She jiggled her line, forgetting to twitch it. “I keep thinking I’ll find a new angle, but all I come up with is more stupidity. I was thinking the other day, it was like a fairy tale. How falling back in love protected us, like a charm.” She heel-kicked the bank. “It’s frustrating when everything you think seems absurd and true all at once.”

“It’s a mystery.”

“Right.”

“I go there myself sometimes,” I said. “I worry about whether we’ll fall out of love… if what we feel is unnatural. Then I worry if worrying about it’s unnatural. Because, you know, it’s such a weird thing to be worried about. Then I think, hey, it’s perfectly natural to worry over something you care about, whether it’s weird or not. Round and round. We might as well go with the flow. No doubt we’ll still be worrying about it when we’re too old to screw.”

“That’s pretty old.”

“Yep,” I said. “Ancient.”

“Maybe it’s good we worry.” Then after a pause, she said. “Maybe we didn’t worry enough the first time.”

A second ripple edged the surface, like a miniature slow tsunami. The light faded and dimmed. A degree of tension seemed to leave Andrea’s body.

“You want to go to Russia?” she asked. “I’ve got this conference in late May. I have to give a paper and be on some panels. It’s only four days, but I could take some vacation.”

I thought about it. “Kiwanda’s pretty much in control of things. Would we have to stay in Russia?”

“Don’t you want to go clubbing in Moscow? Meet new people? I’ll wear a slutty dress and act friendly with strangers. You can save me from the white slavers—I’m sure I’ll attract white slavers.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said. “But some of those slavers are tough.”

“You can take ’em!” She rubbed the side of her nose. “Why? Where do you want to go?”

“Bucharest.”

“Why there?”

“Lots of reasons. Potential for vampires. Cheap. But reason number one—nobody goes there.”

“Good point. We get enough of crowds around here.”

We fell silent again. The eastern slopes of the Bittersmiths were drowning in shadow, acquiring a simplified look, as of worn black teeth that still bore traces of enamel. But the light had richened, the tree trunks appeared to have been dipped in old gold. Andrea straightened and peered down into the hole.

“I had a nibble,” she said excitedly.

I watched the surface. The water remained undisturbed, lifeless and listless, but I felt a presence lurking beneath, a wise and deliberate fish, a grotesque, yet beautiful in the fact of its survival, and more than a murky promise—it would rise to us this day or some other. Perhaps it would speak a single word, perhaps merely die. Andrea leaned against me, eager to hook it, and asked what she should do.

“It’s probably just a current,” I said, but advised her to let out more line.