Love in the Time of Global Warming (11 page)

I wasn’t surprised about the cake, remembering Beatrix. That witch knew his weaknesses. Luckily, Hex knew hers was sexy young men. I still don’t know what happened between them but I can guess and sometimes it makes my heart beat so fast that I can’t breathe.

“Pie,” Hex corrected Ez. “It was lemon meringue pie.”

“No, it was cake, too. I had it once from a bakery called Angel something. The filling was like clouds. It was serious insanity.”

“I’d want a cheeseburger and fries and a chocolate cookie milkshake,” Hex said. “And a diet soda.”

“Diet soda?” I squeaked. “That’s the worst thing for you. And why diet? Look at you!” I pinched his ribs and he batted my hand away, grinning. “It tastes like chemicals and rotten fish.”

“What? You’re concerned about my
imaginary
diet soda? Really? I guess you won’t let me have any imaginary cigarettes either?”

I stuck my tongue out at him and he winked at me.

“It’s better than the shit I used to put in my body, believe me.”

“I’d even settle for frozen pizza and cold cereal at this point,” Ash said.

“What about you, Pen?”

I thought of my mom’s dinners, each dish infused with love. There was a shiitake mushroom spinach quiche she made, with a buttery crust, a lentil soup served with homemade corn bread, tomato-ey ratatouille with pine nuts, smoked baba ghanoush, wild salmon croquettes with honey wasabi dipping sauce. My stomach hurt—fiercely—and I shook my head.

Later, Hex read aloud to us:

“‘But leave me now to eat my dinner, for all my sorrow, for there is no other thing so shameless as to be set over the belly, but she rather uses constraint and makes me think of her, even when sadly worn, when in my heart I have sorrow as now I have sorrow in my heart, yet still forever she tells me to eat and drink and forces me to forgetfulness of all I have suffered, and still she is urgent that I must fill her.’”

“No more belly talk, please,” I begged, even though what I really meant was home talk.

So Hex brought up music. “It was invented so man could speak to God,” he said.

“Do you believe in God?” Ash asked. It was the first time any one of us had mentioned the subject.

Hex paused, only briefly. “I believe in music. It’s in our genetics. There’s even a gene for it. Like songbirds have.”

And, like songbirds, we spent the rest of the day singing, for one another, our favorite tunes. Hex knows the lyrics to them all. They sound exotic, magical and strange, these popular songs about love, where all that was at stake was your heart.

Ash’s voice is mellifluous; when we asked what his favorite music was, he said, “I like the
Four Seasons
by Vivaldi.” Hex and Ez looked at him, surprised. Not me, so much; I’d had that vision of him playing the piano.…

“
What?
” he said, defensive.

“You just don’t seem like the classical type,” said Hex. “I would have guessed indie, art, emo.”

Ash shrugged and tapped long brown fingers on the dashboard. “Do you think we’ll ever hear a concerto again?”

As if in answer something went dark—the sun had suddenly set or a rain cloud had moved in?—but when we looked, we saw it was a hulking figure looming on the horizon, still as stone, eyes closed as if asleep.

*   *   *

Now we’re parked behind an outcropping of rock. Usually we keep going, one person at the wheel while the others sleep, but sometimes we need to just stop for a while and feel the ground motionless under us as we rest. I want to get out of the stuffy, sweaty van and smell the sand and desert air but I remember how we can’t risk being without the little protection we have in case anything comes, in case the Giant on the now-distant hill wakes. Also, when it’s as cold as this your fingers feel like they’re so swollen and burning with pain that they’ll fall off if you rub them together to warm them. As if he’s heard my thoughts, Hex takes my hands and holds them in his lap so I can feel the thick denim of his jeans.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. You?”

“You’re not okay,” he says.

I want him to kiss me. I want to tell him that sometimes I imagine him and Beatrix together in a bed made of branches. I’m grateful to him for freeing us but I don’t like the idea of him at the mercy of Beatrix’s lips with their pornographic swell, the dark intoxstasy of her hair.

I glance back at Ez and Ash asleep in each other’s arms, Ez’s head tucked under Ash’s chin.

“Thank you for letting Ash come,” I say.

“I don’t like that twee suit he wears.”

“He was modeling it. And there aren’t exactly a lot of clothing options anymore.”

Hex winks, so fast I’m not sure I saw it. “But it wasn’t up to me, anyway. Outvoted.”

“Yes, but you are the strongest of us, Prince Charming.”

“What did you just call me?”

“If you can call me sparkle princess—I just mean, you could have made the final call.”

He shrugs. “You’re stronger than you know. And there were those butterflies, after all.”

Without looking at him I smile, grateful he understands. “Ez was wrong about love,” I say. “Miracles of love still do occur, I guess.”

Hex nods. His voice is serious now, almost grave. “Of course, Pen. Had you given up?”

I look out at some shrubs shaking in the wind. “I’ve given up on everything.”

“Even me?”

“Sometimes I think about what happened with Beatrix.”

“You’re jealous?” Hex is smiling and I can see the flash of his vampiric incisors. The tip of his nose is perfectly sculpted with a little flare of bone above either nostril.

“Not jealous, I just…”

“It was battle,” he says. “Strategy, nothing else.” He slumps in the seat and runs his hands down the length of his thighs.

“Okay.”

“I did what I had to do. It was dark.” He pauses, patting his pockets like he’s trying to find a cigarette. “Pen, I’m not exactly the person you think I am.”

“What does that mean?” I’ve had enough surprises. I want everything to remain as much the same as possible within the confines of this van, where we’ve finally established some safety.

“I’ve been with a lot of people, since I was really young.”

“Okay,” I say. “I kind of figured that out. Pretty girls and everything…”

Wind rocks the van and I tense, thinking, at first, it’s a hand.

“I can’t really count how many. I couldn’t do the whole monogamy thing very well.”

Now the tension isn’t about being in a Giant’s clutches. At least not an actual Giant’s. “Okay,” I say again—third time—shifting in the seat.

“But I want to, now.”

I can’t look at him; I can tell our gaze might light something on fire.

“And I wasn’t always a boy,” he adds. “My name was Alexandria. I called myself Lex at first.”

Non sum qualis eram.
I am not what I once was. Written boldly on his body.

I’m more shocked by the first statement than the second. He wants to be monogamous?
With me?
He wasn’t always male.
So what?
The vision I had of him in the pink room was my first clue. And it’s been on his skin anyway, clearly there the whole time.
Non sum qualis eram. I am not what I once was.

I think of Moira. How I used to feel such wonder at the way her cells had joined together to form the miracle of her. Now this love was just another loss in a sea bubbling with corpses of loss. My crush had ceased to matter because everything had ended and it seemed trivial now to have ever worried about my sexual identity, especially in a family that was so open-minded. But then there were still the politicians and the preachers screaming about family values and hell and it had made me doubt myself, even though I knew better. I’d stopped worrying about it all in the midst of so much real loss and grief. I had forgotten what I thought about sexuality, except that I liked to be near Hex, that I liked to hear his voice, to watch him hunkered down, staring out at the ruined horizon, black steel-toed motorcycle boots kicking at the dirt like he was trying to find something buried there. His gender seemed irrelevant. All I knew was that I didn’t want him to touch anyone else, even as a strategy.

Hex pulls at the neck of his T-shirt like he’s too hot, like the collar is too constricting for that slender neck with its Latin words. Then he hesitates, looks at me, deep, and pulls the shirt over his head. His ribs stick out and his chest is slight and very white beneath a large tattoo of an anatomically correct human heart and the word
Heartless.

“That’s one thing you’re not,” I say.

“I’m not what I once was.”

“I don’t give a fuck what you are or were. I just don’t want you to go away. Ever.” Tears squeeze out of my desert-dry eyes, streaking the dust on my face.

Hex leans over and runs his hands over the prickling stubble that has grown in on my scalp. Part of me wishes I had hair again, long hair, like Then, wishes I had Beatrix-hair, pretty-girl-hair to let him lose himself in. But it doesn’t matter. I can feel his mouth kissing my face, his tongue licking at my tears.
Her
. It doesn’t matter.

“I love you, Pen,” Hex says. “You are the who I love.”

As my lips become indistinguishable from Hex’s, it is like the stirring of a hundred orange butterfly wings around us, fanning to life a perfect flame. I can see the fire tearing over the planet, not a force of destruction but of renewal, a prescribed fire like farmers sometimes used, wiping out all the debris and waste and death so that something new can grow.

The world might be gone but somehow, here with Hex, it feels like when we open our eyes it will all come back, so much better than before.

15

OASIS OF TARA

A
ROUND US STRETCHES MORE DESERT,
harsh and blank except for rocks. Even the Joshua trees are gone, all of them, as if violently harvested, ripped from the ground by huge, rough hands. The Cahuilla Native Americans used to eat the white flowers and the seeds of the Joshua trees’ pale green fruit. My mouth salivates to think of this. When my family and I drove to Joshua Tree for a camping trip years ago, I never thought I’d want to get down on my knees and weep for the lost plants, never thought that, in spite of the warnings, they’d ever really become extinct.

None of us speak. In the backseat, Ez rests his head on Ash’s shoulder. Hex doesn’t even hum one of his songs from Then like he usually does. He’s probably sung half the hip-hop and emo/alternative hits from the last five years over the last week.

We’ve driven for two days to get here, making our way around junk and cracks in the road, using up most of Merk’s fuel and some of the extra rancid vegetable oil from the fast food place. We kept driving anyway, taking turns at the wheel. Although the landscape has been rather merciless, it is, in some ways, easier to take than the ruined city with all its reminders of what once was. Most important, it’s on the way to Las Vegas and Ash thinks we’ll find water soon. But now I’m starting to doubt our decision.

I am biting my nails so that the tips of my fingers are peeling and raw. We really shouldn’t have come out this way, I think. What if Merk and his map was all BS? Are we on a suicide mission and just too cowardly to admit it to ourselves? Are we all already dead? That would make the most sense of all.

But when the sun is highest in the sky, beating down on us without the protective layer of ash that blankets the city, Hex points out the window to forms in the distance. The sunlight blinds me and the world goes white.

“It’s a mirage,” Ez says. “It has to be.”

The light does tremble, miragelike, but as we go closer we all see tall fan palms clustered together and I swear I can smell water. I want to run to the majestic scaly-trunked trees, dripping with fronds and green light and put my arms around them but Hex says no and fastens his sword to his waist.

“We have to check this out first.”

We park the van and get out, then walk through a gate. There’s a swimming pool, empty save for a small amount of muddy residue. The building beside it has broken windows. We walk in slowly, Hex in front with the sword drawn instead of hanging from his waist where he usually wears it when we explore.

“Anybody here?” Hex shouts.

Inside are empty booths, a sticky bar covered with sharded glass. There’s a sweetish-rotten smell under the smell of spilled alcohol and we don’t want to know what it is so we leave quickly and walk out the gate again, toward the palm trees.

They grow thickly, reflected in a lake of dark green water that smells like minerals, like life, not like death. I want to hold on to the trees until I turn into one, like a nymph in a mythological tale. There are more plants, too. Silver-green willow and cottonwood and arrowweed with lavender flowers. I can hear, or imagine I hear—a sound like … birds? Could it be? A small red houseboat floats on the center of the lake.

The girl—she must be about sixteen—is seated cross-legged on the shore, under a spiky, red-flowering crown of thorns bush. Her hair is piled loosely on her head, some strands falling down over her shoulders. She’s draped in thin ruby-red cloth and I can see her breasts through the fabric. The only thing more mesmerizing is her face, which is round with kind lips and high cheekbones. Her skin is sunlit satin. I would guess she is only a teenager but as I get closer I see that her dark, slanted eyes look somehow very old and wise. In one hand she holds a glass vial from which she is dropping liquid onto the ground and as the light of the setting sun catches the glass, red sparks shoot into my face. There is a flock of orange butterflies around her, the most I’ve ever seen together in one place except for the time my parents took me and Venice to a butterfly tent at the Natural History Museum.

The girl looks familiar but I can’t figure out why until Hex whispers, “The mural at the Lotus Hotel.”

Yes, that was her, on the wall. Even the petals swarming around her like insects, even the necklaces at her throat like crystal bones and the bangles on her wrists like snakes made of metal. Someone saw her and drew her on the wall, unable to accept that she was “gone.” Wasn’t that what art was, after all? Desperate artists telling stories, drawing images, in order to keep some part of the goddess alive and close?