Chris Adrian - The Great Night

She was enormously patient with the man. She listened (or at least half listened) all through dinner, waiting and waiting for him to say something of substance, and then walked with him down Union Street while he looked into shopwindows and told her about the things that he owned that were similar or dissimilar but always superior to the things on display, and she even walked with him down to the end of Scott Street to have a look at his boat. She felt progressively weary as they walked down toward the marina; by the time they arrived she was exhausted. That seemed curious to her, since she had exerted practically no physical or magical effort all evening, until she realized that it was her little-exercised faculty of patience that was wearing her out. Just for a moment she was proud of herself, and then she was angry for thinking that nostalgia for her Boy’s lost delights compelled her to suffer the prattling of a mortal fool. “There is nothing in you,” she said to him as they stood on the boat slip, interrupting his discourse on the Volvo Penta engine. “No grief, no sadness, no rage. Shame! Shameful excuse for a mortal! Where are your tears?” She stood up higher as she talked — she had been hunching under the disguise all evening long — and he goggled. His stupid uncomprehending eyes were round and black; they looked like a crab’s eyes. “What do you have to say?” she asked him. “What do you have to say to me?” His mouthparts bubbled but he didn’t make any words. She turned him into a crab, because of those eyes, and when he scrabbled out of his fine suit, she kicked him into the water. She made herself into a bird, and took his tie in her beak before she flew away, taking the long way home, so people marveled at the snow-white crane with a bloodred tie in her mouth as she winged her way over Crissy Field and the Presidio and Seacliff. Back home, she handed the tie wordlessly to Lyon, who knew, from the look she gave him with it, to hang it with barbs and flagellate himself until dawn.

She tried one more time, with Oak’s peanut-butter-footed gentleman. She waited for him on a bench in Duboce Park. It was dusk, and the fog had followed her down the hill to muffle the barking of the dogs at play. They ran aimlessly and brought back toys and balls not thrown for them. A dog approached her, a black Lab with a collar of silver spikes, and sat down at her feet.

“Milady goes a-whorin’,” it said. She kicked at it, and it wagged its tail.

“If I showed you what was in my heart,” she said, “it would burn you to a cinder.”

“I’ve tried to burn you similarly,” it said, “but you never even noticed when I opened up my chest.”

“Go sniff out your Master.”

“I’ve searched all day,” he said. “He’s not—”

“Fetch,” she said, picking up a stray ball and throwing it, because she was in no mood to listen to Puck’s litany of failure, which was to say she was in a relatively good mood, her recent romantic misadventures, for whatever reason, not weighing heavily on her just then. She threw the ball clear over the city; it bounced once outside the Ferry building and splashed in the bay. Puck barked once and trotted after it, and not long after that Oak came along, leading a dazed-looking man by the hand. He sat him down on the bench, gave him a hug, then bowed to his Mistress and hopped away.

“Goodbye, Arthur,” said the man.

“Goodbye, darling!” said Oak.

“That was my nephew,” the man said. “I think.”

“A charming boy,” said Titania, shaking her head because Oak had brought her a homosexual again. Not that it ultimately mattered; the man would see someone he wanted, but she sighed over it nonetheless. The man sighed as well, which made her laugh.

“Are you laughing at me?” he asked, tilting his head. He was confused, still charmed by whatever song Oak had used to draw him down from his apartment, and she could tell that his desire had not yet cast her into a definite form.

“Yes,” she said. “Shall we go to dinner?”

“I know a little place,” he said, and then sucked in his breath when her image settled. “But are you sure you want to go there with me ?” She examined his perception of her: a stocky bearded youth whose handsome legs were shown to lovely effect by his soccer shorts.

“Of course,” she said, taking his hand. The little place he knew was a sushi restaurant across the street from the blond boy’s apartment: Titania half expected to see him still coming on his stoop. The staff in the restaurant let out an insincere cheer when they walked in, but the waitress, a middle-aged woman who reeked of death, seemed genuinely happy to see Titania’s date.

“A friend!” she said. “You have a friend! No lonely sushi combo tonight!”

“This is …” her date began. “This is …”

“Joe,” said Titania. “My name is Joe.” The lady pumped Titania’s hand. Titania raised her nose at her, the better to smell her. The odor of death was interesting, and not all that unpleasant, but a deeper sniff told her a cancer death was in store for this lady, and she was transported back to the ruined little room in the hospital.

“I’m sorry,” said her date when the woman went to fetch them tea. “She’s … enthusiastic. I live around the corner, and I come here all the time. I got food poisoning here once, but I still come here all the time. She’s my sushi aunt. She makes fun of me and she always offers to set me up and asks if I’m lonely. Which I’m not. Alone is not lonely. I can say that in Japanese.” He barked the phrase at her. “Are you all right? Did she upset you?”

“My name is Joe,” she said, and he smiled, and leaned back in his chair. He shifted his leg under the table, and their knees collided. Neither of them drew away. Their tea came, and the waitress withdrew again with a giggle, and he looked at her coyly from over the steaming cup. His eyes were round and bulged a little, but not unpleasantly, and they sparkled as he looked her up and down.

“What shall we order?” he asked.

“Whatever you desire,” she said, settling her chin in her hand to look at him. She barely moved again for the rest of dinner, though the sushi came in an increasingly exotic procession, as the waitress tried ever harder to surprise them, and the chefs and all the other staff, intoxicated by her presence, shed their fake sushi cheer and became genuinely delighted with their patrons and showered them all with fine fish. Titania didn’t eat a thing but drank the sake, impressing her date when she lifted the brimming box to her lips without spilling a drop. The strongest mortal liquor was weak compared to faerie wine, but she thought it might be affecting her because she was feeling very well disposed toward the situation. Though there was no delight for her in the mortal art of arranging fish cleverly upon a plate, and the great common happiness in the room — the very good time being had by all — seemed as futile and hopeless as any mortal happiness, Titania was happy to be there.

That was different, of course, from being happy. She was as unhappy as ever, in the pervading absence of her husband and her Boy, but there was something about her present situation that deferred the pain of it, made the unhappiness temporarily acceptable. This was a rather mysterious surprise, the felicitous blame for which she laid upon the shoulders of her date. She didn’t know why exactly this was, and it did not bother her particularly not to know. As wise as she was, as many mysteries as she kept, there were many things she didn’t know or understand because she was not interested enough in them to bother to understand them. But here was something she was keenly interested in, and yet she did not get it. What was so special about this middle-aged homosexual that he had captivated her over a meal of dead fish served by a dying woman?