The Best of Lucius Shepard (123 page)

The
following March, I went fishing with Andrea at Kempton Pond. She was reluctant
to join me, assuming that I intended to make her a stand-in for Rudy, but I
assured her this was not the case and told her she might enjoy an afternoon out
of the office, some quiet time together. It was a clear day, and cold. Pockets
of snow lay in the folds and crinkles of the Bittersmiths, but the crests were
bare, and there was a deeper accumulation on the banks than when Rudy and I had
fished the pond in November. We had to clear ourselves a spot on which to sit.
The sun gilded the birch trunks, but the waters of the pond were as Stygian and
mysterious as ever.

We cast out
our lines and chatted about doings in her office, my latest projects—Lesion
(black metal) and a post-rock band I had convinced to call themselves Same
Difference. I told her about some loser tapes that had come my way, notably a
gay Christian rap outfit with a song entitled “Cruisin’ For Christ (While
Searching For The Heavenly City).” Then we fell silent. Staring into the pond,
at the dark rock walls and oily water, I did not populate the depths with fantasies,
but thought instead of Rudy. They were memorial thoughts untainted by grief,
memories of things said and done. I had such a profound sense of him, I
imagined if I turned quickly enough, I would have a glimpse of a bulky figure
in a parka, wool cap jammed low on his brow, red-cheeked and puffing steam; yet
when I did turn, the figure in the parka and wool cap was more clearly defined,
ivory pale and slender, her face a living cameo. I brushed a loose curl from
her eyes. Touching her cheek warmed my fingertip. “This is kind of nice,” she
said, and smiled. “It’s so quiet.”

“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.

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