Love in the Time of Global Warming (6 page)

“Let’s go,” Hex says as if to himself—he’s driving. “Go go go.”

Earthquake. Flood. Fire. Giant cannibals.

We go.

8

THE SIRENS OF BEVERLY HILLS

H
EX AND I DRIVE NORTH
and then west according to the compass he keeps in his pocket. The only reason we chose this course was because the road was less ruined and we were able to make our way slowly through the rubble and flooding.

I can still taste the lotus juice in my mouth, making my tongue furl up, sore with longing for more.
I’m so thirsty
. There’s still water in the van (thankfully no one broke in and stole it while I was on my lotus bender) but Hex doesn’t have any bottles of the potion with him.

“It’ll force me to sober up,” he says. I don’t know why he’d want to, but I refrain from saying so.

“The Giant won’t get far,” he continues, almost cheerfully, as he drives. “Either he’ll burn in the fire or drink some wine and be out for a few days.”

After he eats them
, I think.
The ones who didn’t burn to death. Fire clan or no.

Hex eyes me sideways where I sit in the passenger seat with my feet tucked up under me, winding a length of coarse rope, that was among the supplies in the van, around my hands. I still haven’t washed off the Giant’s blood.

“He is after you, right? He said something about his brother.”

I shrug and shiver myself into a smaller ball. My high is wearing off fast.

“I thought so. You blinded Kronen’s Giant, homegirl? That’s impressive.”

“I don’t know,” I mumble.

“The Cyclops!” Hex reaches into his backpack and pulls out the book, points to it as he quotes:

“‘… he … caught up two together and slapped them, like killing puppies,… and the brains ran all over the floor, soaking the ground. Then he cut them up limb by limb and got supper ready.’”

I try to shiver off the image.

“Why the hell are there
Giants
?”

“Kronen cloned stem cell–manipulated beings, somehow enhanced so their bones wouldn’t break from the strain of the size?” Hex wonders aloud. “Maybe it was funded by some secret corporation, to gain power? Or maybe the Giants were the last straw that caused the earthquake that ended the world? I have no idea.”

“Where are we going?” I ask, hoping he has a more lucid answer for this question than for my first one.

He shrugs. When we stop it’s because we have to. A large expanse of swampy water stretches out in front of us. And we hear singing.

Not just any singing—it’s high-pitched, too high, eerie but gorgeous. The words don’t make any sense but I want to catch them, rearrange them into something my mind understands.
Hey ho the runway in the blimey blithely air! Shooting sugar into your lines and crevices. Say chic luxe fortitude be-glistens your wrecked eyeballs’ celebrity against the sea storm of my heart. Lachrymose! Oh you will be smote with bows and trinkets of botulism oblivion, birthday girl!
Hex stops the van and gets out and runs to the edge of the swamp. I follow him. For some reason I bring with me the coil of rope. My companion crouches and stretches out his hand toward the water.

The air sweats sulfur, rank in my nostrils.

A head emerges, then another. Girls. Their hair is long and tangled, thick with mud, their noses small for their faces. They rise up and we see their bare breasts and emaciated torsos. They are wearing jewels, all kinds of necklaces and bracelets and rings coated with mud and entangled with weeds. Around them in the water float shoes and more jewels and mannequins in what were once expensive items of clothing.

“Come to us,” the girls sing. “He won’t smell you here, in the mud. Giants can smell you out good, you remember? ‘Fee Fi Fo Fum.’”

This part of town, it’s familiar but so changed. The palm trees have fallen, necks snapped like slaughtered birds’. The buildings have crumbled, large sheet glass in piles of shards. This is where the wealthy once roamed in their shiny cars. A leviathan of a Rolls-Royce lies busted and belly up at the edge of the swamp. Not a butterfly in sight. I’m starting to imagine them as guides and I don’t think they want me to be here.

“Come on,” Hex says to me but I pull him back.

“We have to go,” I say.

“They’re so pretty.” He sounds high again, gazing at the mud-slicked bevy of girls, and my stomach ties itself into a perfect bow.

One of the girls turns her head and smiles at me, heart-shaped lips baring large teeth. Her hair is matted with black oil and her cheekbones are sharp enough to do damage. “I used to love pretty things,” she whisper-hisses, slithering toward us, her bony back arching from the mud. “Wicked jewels and shoes. I went shopping all the time. Attended the showings of the hottest collections. Had the best plastic surgeons in town remake my entire face and body as if from scratch. But it was never enough.” She flings her head from side to side, strings of hair streaming out, flicking mud. “Now I can have whatever I want. Come into the swamplands of Beverly Hills where all the jewels are free and there are no men to worry about impressing.” She grins at Hex. “Except you! Lovely boy!”

I tighten my grip on his arm.

“Isn’t it major?” The swamp creature holds something up out of the dark ooze. It’s not a boho-chic paisley dress or a lavender-and-black tweed suit draped with chains or a nude-and-black lace blouse, all of which I might recognize as “major” from Moira’s leftover magazines.

It’s a human skull.

Hex leans closer to look at it. The girl reaches out her hand and grabs at his sweater, lifting herself up out of the water. “Now you are a man to keep!” Her breasts are fake-looking and her waist is disproportionately small.

“Hex!” I say. “No!”

I pull at him and fall backward onto the muddy ground. He stops and looks at me.

“Pen?”

“We have to go,” I say, struggling to stand, slipping. “Please. You’ll die there. Remember the sirens luring the men to their death?”

“Yes. The book.”

“Stories,” I say. “I’ll tell you a story. Come on.”

He looks at me, then back at the girl with the skull. Something glitters grimly in its eye sockets. Something that princesses and movie stars would have worn on their fingers.

“The sirens,” Hex says. He sits down in the mud beside me, still watching the girl. “I have always been a sucker for pretty girls. Especially ones who can sing. Even mean ones. I’d do anything for a pretty girl.”

I take the rope I’m still carrying and wrap it around his wrists, tie it in a knot the way Venice learned in Cub Scouts. Hex lets me do this without even flinching, as if he doesn’t know I’m here.

“Come on,” I say, standing, tugging. He doesn’t weigh that much more than I do so I’m able to get him to his feet. “I’ll tell you a story.”

*   *   *

I drive as far away as I can get from the swamp. Hex is in the passenger seat, the rope still around his wrists. He keeps looking out the window and moaning softly. I start talking, telling him the first thing that comes to my mind, a memory from before the Earth Shaker:

Moira and Noey in a pool…? The last time I saw them and it was only an image on my computer.

“Gavin’s having a Christmas party,” Moira said, brushing her hair. She insisted we call her Ginger and it was accurate anyway; her hair was a blush color more than an actual red.

I could feel my jaw tighten.
I don’t want to go.

“Come on, Penelope.” Noey had noticed my reaction; she knew me so well. “We need to get you out of here.”

They didn’t think it was healthy that I avoided leaving my house if I could help it, but what was the point of going anywhere, especially if they were there with me?

“You guys go. There’s some reading I want to catch up on.” It wasn’t an excuse; I had a date with Ovid.

“Oh shit, Penelope.” Moira came and sat beside me on the bed. She had tried semi-successfully to cover up her freckles with makeup but I loved the way they played across her face. “You need to live a little.”

For me, living was that, being there with them, but they didn’t understand. They told me I wasn’t active enough. Not that they were exactly action heroes but they sometimes went to political protests; I didn’t like the crowds. Noey took tae kwon do and Moira rode horses and surfed. I was weak and awkward, barely passing PE most years. Noey took photographs of Moira she called “girlist,” partial body shots of long legs in torn stockings and violently high, toe-crushing shoes, torsos in bathtubs with rose petals that looked like blood, hands squeezing a tiny roll of belly fat, eyes dripping mascara. The pictures made a statement about our female dissatisfaction. My reading and studying and retellings of old stories didn’t do anything except help me think better. I was at least thoughtful. Too thoughtful, my friends said. And all I thought about was myths and old paintings that made me feel drunk on wine or struck by lightning but didn’t matter to most people.

Let’s take some photos at the beach. There’s a party on the boardwalk. There’s a housing protest downtown. Close your books. Come dancing. Come swimming.

I had no outlet, my friends said, no place to let out my frustration and anger at the world except the occasional fight with my mom. But Noey said yelling wasn’t taking action; it was desperation and it didn’t change things.

“It just makes your throat hurt and raises your blood pressure. That’s the only way my mother feels she can control her life and it sucks,” she said.

Noey and Moira weren’t close to their parents like I was. Noey went to AL-ANON meetings to deal with her mother’s alcoholism and Moira’s therapist thought her mom was a narcissist. Mostly they just avoided their families, retreating to my house when they needed some parental affection and a good home-cooked meal. But after dinner with us that night, Moira and Noey ended up going to Gavin’s party. I watched them from my window as they ran across the lawn. Moira in a faded pink denim miniskirt and a light green lace T-shirt and Noey in purple skinny jeans and a black hoodie with small silver stars on the back. They were laughing and their hair was shining like leaves in moonlight, their limbs long as saplings. I thought, Girls are magical at this phase, girls are invincible, nothing can touch them. I didn’t think “us” because I didn’t feel that; I felt other, on the outside, watching them. I stayed at home with Ovid’s
Metamorphosis
. At least I was smart, I told myself. I read the encyclopedia for fun. Not everyone could do that.
Would want to do that
, my friends would have said.

Noey texted me Sally Mann–esque photos of Moira’s legs in tie-dyed stockings dancing, Moira’s hair flying out across her face, under a halo of red and green heavy glass Christmas lights, Moira’s bare belly with a boy’s hand grabbing her belt. The last one was of Noey’s legs dangling in the water while Moira kissed a boy, both of their heads emerging above the misty pool, her hair afloat around them. She looked like a siren, who could lure him to his death if she chose.

I went to sleep staring at the last image, wondering, not what his mouth tasted like, but hers.

*   *   *

This part, this last, I don’t tell Hex, although I trust him enough to tell him anything—don’t I?—so I’m not sure why I don’t. Because I don’t want him to know I had a crush on a girl or because I have a crush on him? He’s asleep anyway, though, and my eyelids are dropping shut over my eyes like the lids are forged of silver, so I stop the van and untie the rope from his wrists. Maybe it’s not the best idea for us both to sleep at the same time but it’s better than crashing the van. It’s dawn and the air is a silty gray. I hope the cloud cover will hide us from danger. If I let myself, I’d be able to hear the girls singing in the distance, wanting us back, like the sirens in the weirdly prophetic book that lies on the seat between me and Hex. The book scares me a little now but I pick it up anyway.

“You will come first of all to the Sirens, who are enchanters of all mankind and whoever comes their way; and that man who unsuspecting approaches them, and listens to the Sirens singing, has no prospect of coming home.”

9

BEATRIX THE WITCH

S
LUMPED IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT
of the van I have a dream I’ve had versions of before:

Venice doesn’t come home from school. I ask my mom where he is and she says she let him walk alone. I scream at her and call a phone number. Venice answers, says he is with a friend and I ask him to put the friend on. It’s a man who laughs and tells me that his daughter and Venice are in class together. I ask the daughter’s name and the man hangs up. When I call back, his voice is deep and hollow, and when I ask to speak to Venice—
Please, please put him on
—he keeps laughing and saying, “Who? Italy? Rome? Who do you want to speak with?” I am screaming and tearing at my mom’s clothes, begging her to go find Venice, but she keeps cleaning the house. I have a large cut on my knee that is deepening into a bloody hole. There is a gypsy fortune-teller sitting in a balloon-festooned cupola on a hill in a park. She asks me if she can read my fortune but I run away screaming, stepping in piles of dog shit, searching for my brother.…

*   *   *

When I wake up my whole body hurts, like poison has been injected into my veins. I wonder if the planet feels like this after everything we’ve put her through.

Someone is stroking my head with hands gentle as my mom’s. For a moment I wonder if she will be there beside me.… My chest tightens with hope.

It’s Hex, sitting up in the passenger seat. He doesn’t ask me what the dream was and I’m grateful. Not that waking up is much better. Except that he’s here.

“Are you okay?” he asks. His voice sounds the clearest I’ve ever heard it. The lotus potion must have completely worn off.

“I had a dream. About my brother.”