LAST WEEK: Jackson is murdered and rows across the River Styx to meet Jim in the afterlife.
Read last week’s installment here. See all installments here.
Chapter 88
River
San Francisco — 1985
Cinnamon Spice
It’s late. River is home mixing a cake. The rich spicy scent of cinnamon permeates the room. Huck sits on the counter watching, hoping for a dollop of batter. He has not sworn off sweets, only Chinese sweets. He hops off the counter and crows excitedly.
“Shhh,” River cautions. “It’s late. You’ll wake the neighbors.”
River feels rather than hears a soft knock on the door. He could have sworn it was locked. He always locks his door. It is, after all, the Tenderloin. But the door doesn’t actually open. It fades away like the memory of pain.
Pamela stands in the doorway. River stops stirring and opens his arms. Pamela doesn’t even need to cross the room. She melts into him, soft as butter into flour. She is cold, damp as night fog. River rubs her arms. Huck leaps onto her shoulder, leaning across to peck some batter off the counter before gliding back to the floor. Pamela laughs.
“Birds,” Pam says, “I’ve always loved birds, so light, so free, so unbound to Earth.”
“Birds have hollow bones,” says River. “That’s why they’re so light, that’s why they can fly. Hollow bones, no teeth and… do you think animals have souls?”
“I know they do,” Pam says. She closes her eyes and shudders. “And maybe… just maybe, some animals have souls, and some people don’t…. After all, what is a soul? We talk of death as though it were the worst thing that can happen, yet it happens to everyone. Every tragedy ends with the death of the hero, and every life, too. So, is every life a tragedy? I don’t know. I have no idea what’s out there. Things I once thought true have been proved false.”
“The only truth I know is that I love you,” says River.
Pam puts an icy finger on his lips. “Perhaps emotion is immortal: flesh dies, and love survives.”
“That’s a nice thought. If love survives, maybe friendship does too. I’d like Jackson to know he was my friend. …But if love survives, then wouldn’t hate, fear and distrust survive as well?”
“Maybe they do,” says Pam. “Maybe that’s why you sometimes feel happy or sad but don’t know why. You’ve run into a cloud of free-floating emotion just waiting for a body.”
“A scary thought, all those emotions wandering around in the universe,” River says. “What do you think, Huck? Do you have a soul?”
Huck hops into his nest box. He fluffs up his glossy feathers and tucks his head under his wing.
“Want to taste the batter?” River asks with absolutely no hope that Pam will. “Huck seems to enjoy it.” Pam dimples and shakes her head.
“I love this cake,” River says, licking lumpy beige batter from a wooden spatula. “Cinnamon spice. It’s like one my mother used to make, though much better. Truth be told, Mom was never really much of a cook. Still, tasting it makes me think of home… or rather, the home I wished I’d had, the home I wanted. When I eat this, I’m never really sure if I’m enjoying the cake or just eating imaginary memories.”
“I know what you mean,” Pam says, twirling a strand of reddish-brown hair round her fingers. “Smells and music can take me like that, like distant caresses. I don’t know if I really like the aroma of lavender and the melancholy of Chopin, or just the memory of long-ago places and lost love.”
“Lost love? Should I be jealous?” River asks.
“Not unless you’re jealous of someone who died a long, long time ago. Anyway, you don’t strike me as the jealous type,” she says.
“Dead? I’m sorry.”
“Me too; sometimes I don’t want to feel too much, because I just can’t take another loss. My father died before I remember. My mother… well like I said, she was never more to me than anger and fury… My nanny, Sarah… and my first love… my only love, before…” Pamela lowers her head. “I didn’t want to love again,” she whispers. “I can’t bear to lose you.” Her voice crackles with unshed tears.
River leans over and kisses the tiny indentation of her dimple.
“Sometimes,” he mutters, “you’re so beautiful it hurts. You are my first love, Pamela, my first and my only, my forever love.”
“Shhh,” she presses a finger to his moving lips. “Don’t say that. Forever is too long for anything, even love.”
“No, Pamela. For me, you are the difference between being asleep and awake, being dead and alive. Before you, I’d wake up and think, ‘another day; how many other days do I have to go through before it will all end?’ And now, everything is in Technicolor, I feel like I’m floating, my skin feels hot. There’s a new meridian running through me that is you.”
River leans over and kisses her lips. She tastes fresh as new fallen snow.
In the morning, River wakes up sticky from last night’s words. They cling to him, like scent on sheets. He wishes Pamela was there. He wishes she had stayed. He wants to wake beside her. To be certain she is not just a dream.
In the shower, old skin and memory peels from his chest, sultry and sweet as rolls of cinnamon.
Chapter 89
Gabriel
San Francisco — 1985
Crystal Earring
Gabriel has made an earring. He doesn’t know why. He never plans his pieces; they just emerge, formed from an interior blueprint. It’s the way Jim felt when totems sprang to life beneath his fingers. It’s what River understands when he’s elbow deep in dough. Who knows where inspiration is born? Is it a muse that visits, or a fire within? Is it an idea in the head, or a longing in the heart? It’s unsought but vital, a striving to live on, a wish for continuance, an act of faith in a faithless world.
Chapter 90
River
San Francisco — 1985
Warning
A thick coat of fog drapes the city. River walks through steep, curving streets toward Bert’s. Rounding a corner, River smells pine trees, damp moss, and old beer. Even though he is walking on pavement, his feet seem to crackle on soft, fall leaves.
“Go home, River,” River turns.
A woman is standing behind him, a stranger so dazzling and pale that his breath catches in his throat.
“Go quickly now, you haven’t long.” There is something familiar about her, and suddenly, he knows.
It’s Lisa. But not the gawky Lisa of high school. This Lisa is ashen and gleaming, fragrant and ephemeral as the night-blooming cereus that flowers only once a year, on a single evening. She lays a hand against his scar. It burns cold as ice. She smiles sadly. In the darkness, her teeth glisten sharp and long as icicles.
River freezes. He hears the rush of the ocean and the beating of a drum, his blood and heart kicking into overdrive. He inhales, filling his lungs so completely they are bursting. Then he flees, running as fast as if all the nightmares of childhood were upon him, as if terror were tangible, as if death could be outpaced.
He reaches his apartment wet with fog, sweat, and fear. Sharp claws grab his shoulder. Screaming, he tumbles through the door.
Huck releases River, squawking noisily.
“Shit! Huck! I hate it when you do that!”
Huck fluffs up his feathers. He flies to his nest box and pretends to sleep.
Chapter 91
Gabriel
San Francisco — 1985
Beautiful and Strange
Gabriel awakens beside Lisa. Her hair is gold for a single instant, before fading to ash. In the morning light, her charred body lies on Gabriel’s azure cover.
How odd, he thinks, to have a piece of sky on his bed. Only last week, the cover had appeared to him a pale gray, lighter than the bay, darker than the sun. Now it’s brilliant as the heavens, expansive as space, its very vibrancy making the grayness of Lisa’s body starker.
In his mind, Gabriel can see her pearl skin glowing with an inner fire. He can smell her gardenia scent, unpolluted by the fragrance of flesh. He can feel the connection that linked them, as strong as love, as powerful as desire, when he looked into her pale luminous eyes. Now she is gone. Only her crystal teeth remain.
Like an aftershock, they shoot prisms around the room, illuminating the darkness, radiating violets and ultra-violets, blues, and reds. The walls are tinted by happy yellows, mystic blues, seductive purples, and passionate reds. They filter the white light into infinities of color and endless options, rich with unknown, unknowable, possibilities. To Gabriel, the rainbow is still separated by thin bars of black. He doesn’t know this is peculiar.
Glancing down at the form that had been Lisa, something fragile and human inside him feels a stab of loss at the death of something beautiful and strange.
Chapter 92
San Francisco — 1985
Dangerous Beauty
The day is beautiful. Cloud-castles rise from purple hills. Maples open tiny vibrant hand-shaped leaves, searching for a celestial palmist. Spring breezes ruffle newspapers and lift girls’ skirts. Dogs frolic on leashes, straining to catch blowing papers. Squirrels scold from leafing branches. The Castro is alive with couples of all persuasions, and The Mystic Eye is open. The playful weather is good for business. With such beauty all around, it is easy to believe that the future will be bright. Surely under such skies, only happiness will come.
Young lovers pause beneath the gold and purple arch as if under mistletoe. Teenagers ditching school look at the tarot cards, certain that they predict wealth and success. It is clear that they are headed in the right direction: all they need to do is to follow their hearts. Even the dust on the windows glistens like stardust and hope. Old ladies, backs bent, hobbling along the twisted streets feel expectation, as if various outcomes might be possible, as if all roads did not lead to the same end.
Outside The Mystic Eye, flowers are in bud and blossom, blue larkspur and violet delphinium, pink spotted foxglove and sweet-scented Daphne, elegant, ruffled iris, and fragile lily of the valley, all harbingers of spring, all concealing deadly compounds behind delicate countenances.
Watch the author read this week’s installment in the video below:
NEXT WEEK: It’s way past midnight; the night is cold and clear. A wind blows in from the bay. The morgue is locked. River presses the night button. He hears a distant ring echoing from below. It sounds hollow.
Edited by Mitchelle Lumumba and Sophie Gorjance.
E.E. King is cohost of the MetaStellar YouTube channel's Long Lost Friends segment. She is also a painter, performer, writer, and naturalist. She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it involves animals. Ray Bradbury called her stories “marvelously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought-provoking. I cannot recommend them highly enough.” She’s been published widely, including Clarkesworld and Flametree. She also co-hosts The Long Lost Friends Show on MetaStellar's YouTube channel. Check out paintings, writing, musings, and books at ElizabethEveKing.com and visit her author page on Amazon.