Authors: Elizabeth Hand
It’s Hasel,
thought Annie, and felt ashamed that she hadn’t shown more grief over the death of their old friend. She stared at her untouched drink.
“Well, you’re right,” she said at last. “I
am
in trouble.”
She gestured at the dark-paneled walls and crimson lighting behind them, the stage where a young woman in high heels and a peacock feather writhed to a synth-pop version of the theme from
Gigantor.
“This place, I heard about it from a girlfriend and I thought it’d be good cover for me.”
Baby Joe’s eyebrow arched. He reached for her martini and sipped it thoughtfully. “Trouble. Is it Angie?”
“I think so.”
“Huh.” He finished her first drink just as the waitress returned with his second. His expression remained impassive, but his eyes narrowed very slightly. “So. Our Lady of Perpetual Motion has decided to get in touch with all her old college chums.”
Annie nodded.
Baby Joe reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and tapped one out. “Tell me about it.”
“There was a murder—two nights ago. In Provincetown—”
Baby Joe bared his teeth in a smile. “The Eviscerator.’ I saw the file photos.”
“I saw it in the flesh.”
“You
saw
it?”
“I nearly
was
it. This rave out at Herring Cove. A bunch of Angelica’s followers were there, performing some kind of ritual. And somebody must’ve slipped me something, ‘cause it was like I was
someplace else.
Like I had some kind of out-of-body experience. I know for all you guys from the Divine, that would be, like, all in a day’s work, but let me tell you, I was
freaked …
“And then I turned around and saw
him.
This kid, laid out on the floor like a turkey on the day after Thanksgiving. And these geeks who killed
him,
they start coming after
me,
only this—well, somebody scared ‘em off.”
“You go to the cops?”
“No.”
“How come?”
She shrugged, glancing around uneasily. “I don’t know.”
Baby Joe rolled his eyes. “You know, every movie I see, somebody witnesses a horrible murder, but they don’t go to the cops. And I’m like,
Why don’t they go to the cops!
So, why don’t you—”
Annie started to slide from the booth, furious. “This is not a fucking
joke,
Baby Joe! If you’re not gonna—”
“Hey!
Hija,
sit—” His hand clamped around hers and he pulled her into the seat beside him. “It was a rhetorical question. So you saw a bunch of Barbie’s playmates waste this kid and you figure they’ll pin it on you. Okay, I’ll buy it. Hey, if Angie’s involved, I’ll buy
anything.
So now what?”
Annie glowered, her buzz cut sticking out in tiny spikes around her pale face. She looked even more like a feisty kid than she had back at the Divine. Feisty, but scared. When she didn’t say anything Baby Joe tilted his head toward her second martini.
“Drink that. It’s costing the paper thirty bucks.”
Annie stared at him belligerently. Suddenly her hand shot out; she grabbed the glass and drank it, then gestured for the waitress to bring another.
“Okay,” she said, her eyes watering. She turned sideways to face Baby Joe. “What do you remember about Oliver’s death?”
“Oliver?” Baby Joe looked taken aback. “Oliver Crawford?”
“Yeah. Did you go to his funeral?”
“No.”
“Know anybody who did?”
Baby Joe stared at her, brows furrowed. “No. Hasel and I wanted to go, but we got a call from Professor Warnick. He said the Crawfords didn’t want anyone there but immediate family.”
“Did you ever actually
meet
his immediate family?”
Baby Joe frowned. “Do you mean do I think they
exist
? I know they do, my brother was—”
“No—I meant, did you see any of them
then.
After Oliver supposedly jumped out the window of the hospital.”
Baby Joe was silent. The waitress brought Annie’s drink, disappeared into a flood of ruby light. Baby Joe looked at Annie holding her double martini in both hands, like a child drinking a glass of milk. “You think Angelica killed him?” he said at last.
“I don’t know
what
I think.” Annie sipped her martini, made a face. “This really costs thirty bucks?”
“Yeah.”
“No wonder your newspaper’s in trouble.” She shuddered. “Listen. I want you to do me a favor.”
Baby Joe raised an eyebrow.
“Labrys canceled the rest of my tour. Angelica called them. I don’t know how she did it—like maybe she pulled Fiona from a flaming plane wreck once and I never knew about it. But Fiona called me a few nights ago and the tour’s off. Angelica Furiano threatened them with a lawsuit, some bullshit about me making a statement to the press that Angelica was involved with that murder in P-town. Only I never
talked
to the press! I never talked to anyone except Helen and now you. But unless I go along with her, Labrys pulls the plug on me, MTV dumps my video, and the masters for my next album disappear somewhere between here and Iona Studios.”
Baby Joe whistled. “Sounds like you’re fucked,
hija.”
“Tell me about it. So I’m going underground for a little bit.” She sighed and leaned back into the booth, her cheeks bright with a false rosy glow from the martini. “See, I’m thinking that maybe Angelica’ll just kind of forget about me. Like maybe she just wanted to scare me; so
Whoo!
I’m scared.” Annie fluttered her hands in front of her face, then cocked her head. “Think it’ll work?”
“No.” Baby Joe looked at the empty stage, his expression remote. When the music blared out again and another girl pranced onto the platform, he ducked his head to reach inside his jacket. “Here. You better read this.”
It was Hasel’s letter, and the worn obituary notices from the Charlottesville paper. Annie scanned them quickly.
“What is this?” Her face went dead white. “Baby Joe … ?”
“It’s what happened to Hasel,” he said softly.
“But—is it true? I mean, this stuff he wrote you about Angelica?”
“I think it’s true,
hija.
”
“B-but—but
why
?” Annie’s voice broke and she looked away. “Why would she kill
Hasel
?”
“Why would Angelica kill anyone?” Before she could protest, he lit his cigarette and took a drag, leaned over and slid the pages from her hand. “You know what this is,
hija
?” He waved the papers at her and put them back inside his jacket.
Annie shook her head, hardly seeing him at all. “What?”
“This is some bad fucking fallout from the
Benandanti.”
“The
Benandanti?
But Angelica
hated
them, she told me! All that patriarchal shit—she was like, way ahead of the curve on that,” Annie said, and in spite of herself smiled wryly. “She’d
never
go along with the
Benandanti.
”
“I’m not saying she went
along
with them. I’m saying she’s coming
back
at them. You ever read her books? No?” He looked surprised. “I would’ve thought you’d be into that shit—”
“Why? Because I’m a lesbian? Please.” Annie’s glare softened into curiosity. “So what about her books?”
“They’re a fucking blueprint for a new religion, that’s what.
Dios ka naman!
She’s got women from here to Bombay, reading this stuff, making these
círculos
—” He inscribed a circle in the air, looking as though he’d spit into it. “—these, like,
covens. Talagang bruja!
When I first read her stuff, I couldn’t believe it—I mean, I couldn’t believe anyone would buy into it. Goddess rippers! Like Witchcraft 101. But now …”
His black eyes grew distant, unfocused; looking at him, Annie shivered.
The Benandanti.
For the first time in years she thought about Baby Joe being one of them. She swallowed, her mouth tasting bitterly of vermouth.
“Not any more,
hija,”
he said softly. “I’m like Angie: I got out. But what she’s doing—
Dios ko,
this is some serious shit! I been hearing about it for a while, at the paper. We get all the crazies, you know? Wife beaters, guys who want to stick it to little girls, but this is crazier even than
that.
These guys call us, saying their wives and girlfriends are into some kind of cult, you know—get together with the gals once a month over on the Upper East Side or wherever, and we should be writing about
that
instead of trade sanctions against Japan. Girlfriends dancing in the moonlight, snake handling, calling up demons, whatever. These guys talk about blood, they say the women’re up to something weird. But you know—guys like
that,
they
always
think women are up to something weird. So who pays attention?
“But then I start to hear other stuff. Guy I know, covers homicide, starts talking about these ritual killings. Bones alongside the Major Deegan Expressway, this fire circle up by the Cloisters. A snuff video, with all these women and some guy who gets it at the end, only no one ever reports him missing. Stuff like that.
“Then some
bodies
start to show up.
Mutilated
bodies. No single MO, the killings are all over the map, but a lot of the victims are homeless men. Sometimes homeless women. And a
lot
of kids. I mean, like runaway boys who’re hustling or whatever. Some people say it’s
Santeria;
maybe even Anton LaVey’s people. But then the
Santeria
folks say No way, this isn’t them at all, and even the other guys, the
Satanists,
get pissed off! That’s when
I
started to take a professional interest.
“Then I hear about something out West. One of Angelica’s bodyguards is, like,
eaten by killer ants
! On Angie’s ranch, with Angie supposedly asleep back in
la casa.
Then there’s all these unsolved murders of runaways and homeless people out in Arizona and L.A. and Seattle, and your acid test up in Provincetown, some dumb kid on smart drugs ends up wearing his small intestine for a necktie. Now you look me in the eye and tell me there’s not something weird going on.”
She tried to look him in the eye, but Baby Joe only stared at the stage, where two women were embracing and simulating orgasm. Annie lowered her head into her hands and ran her fingers across her buzz-cut scalp.
“And you really think Angelica’s behind it all?”
Baby Joe turned back to her. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
“But why? I mean, I know she’s got
something
to do with it—I
saw
her, when I was hallucinating, or—well, whatever I was doing. But she can’t be in all these places at once. Can she?” Annie added, a little desperately.
“‘Let us placate her in advance by assuming the cannibalistic worst,’” recited Baby Joe softly.
“What?”
“Just something I read. Listen, Annie—”
He took her hand, her small fingers disappearing beneath his. “Something really strange is going on—I don’t mean just with you, or me, or Hasel, but with everything. The whole world, maybe.
“You remember how Angie used to talk—all that goddess stuff, all those books Warnick gave her? Well, I read some of them too—back then, I mean. And I
saw
what happened at the Orphic Lodge that night, before—well, before Oliver jumped—”
“And?”
“And—well, what if something
really happened
to them? What if Angie
did
something—what if that night, her and Oliver
both
did something, and—well, what if they woke something. Something they shouldn’t be screwing with.”
“Something like—what?” Annie asked warily.
“Christ, Annie! You were at the Divine, you
know
there’s a whole world of stuff out there that nobody else talks about! You weren’t supposed to find out, and I walked away from it, and maybe Oliver killed himself because of it—but
it’s still there.”
Annie tried to draw her hand away, but Baby Joe only clutched it tighter.
“It’s still there, Annie! You know it is! Look what’s happened to the world since that night at the Divine—only what, nineteen years ago? People always say how the past looks better than whatever we have now—but
Dios ko,
things really
have
gotten worse! There’s all these horrible little wars, there’s this horrible plague that’s killing us and everyone’s pretending not to notice. Things happen like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and we’re supposed to just forget. Men go around hunting women and children like they were deer, and women fall on the men with knives. And on top of
that,
the whole fucking planet is just sort of
dying.
I mean, we got earthquakes, and fires, and floods, and droughts and blizzards and—well,
everything
! It’s like the pregame show for the apocalypse!”
His voice rose as Annie continued to look at him with a stony expression. “Don’t you see, Annie? This is
it
—and whatever it is, Angelica’s not just
part
of it. Angelica
is
it. I mean, for two thousand years Christians have been talking about the Second Coming, about Jesus and the saints and all that shit … but what if there could be a
different
kind of Second Coming?”
“But why is she killing
us?”
Annie tried to keep her voice from quavering. “We were her friends! Why did Oliver have to the, and Hasel? Hasel would never hurt anyone! And me, they tried to kill
me
—”
“Maybe to her it’s not like killing. I mean, if somehow this goddess has been reincarnated as Angelica.” Baby Joe laughed, a soft ominous giggle. “Maybe she’s trying to
save
us—keep us from seeing what comes next. Maybe she thinks she’s doing her friends a
favor.
”
For several minutes they sat without talking. Dancers walked on and off the stage behind them, sweat and glitter silvering the air in their wake. Finally Annie asked, “What about Sweeney? You’re in touch with her—does she know?”
“I told her about Hasel. And she knows about Angelica—I mean she knows that Angelica’s come back. She saw her on TV a week or so ago, some talk show.”
“But this other stuff? These—” Annie raked her fingernails across the table’s surface. “You know,” she ended brokenly.