Sentinel of Heaven (19 page)

So Moira did,
glancing in the rear-view mirror.  He smiled up at her gaze and covered her
hand with his own.

In that very
pleasant fashion they passed the miles until they came through town.  For the
first time this week Moira stopped for gas – the little old vehicle could be
pretty good about its consumption, and she
had
only gone to work three
days.

“Wait here,”
she told Leo, lifting her hand from his leg with some reluctance.  “I'll go
inside to pay and be right back.”

The gas
station was decrepit; the tiles on the floor stained by the passage of millions
of feet across the years and would never be truly clean again – not that the
proprietor appeared to try.  Owner, operator, and sole cashier sat behind the
counter with its racks of lottery cards and suspiciously shrouded glossy
magazine covers.

His back was
firmly to the store as he talked into his phone.  “Yeah, he finally did,” the
grizzled old man was saying, scratching apathetically at the t-shirt stretched
across his belly.  “Just this morning; Jeanine called not twenty minutes ago to
tell me he'd finally up and died.”

Moira flinched
as if stung, then looked down at her spread fingers, counting.  Leo'd been off
by one.

“I guess so,”
he answered the unheard caller in a voice that sounded like it gargled gravel
and whiskey.  “Jeanie's writing up his obit now, although I don't know if the
boy did anything worth putting in the paper.  Unless drinking and smoking pot
are a claim to fame...

“No, I ain't
speaking ill of the dead,” he continued patiently, “but I call it like I see
it, always have.  And no matter how worthless the lil' prick was, nobody
deserved a death like that.  I went and saw him at the horspital not two days
ago and already his wits were wandering.  He hadn't been right since Tuesday when
he came home and they couldn't get his nosebleed to stop.  He was white as
those horspital linens when I saw him, and all the tubes goin' in him and such.

“Jeanie said
that here at the end he didn't even know his own mama.”

Moira twisted
the curve of her cane in her hand, for the first time feeling a stab of guilt.

“Yeah, I don't
doubt the funeral'd be soon.  You'll hear as soon as I know somethin' else. 
Yep, talk to you then.”

He hung up and
spun around on his stool at last.  “What can I help you with, miss?”

“Hi...” she
managed.  “I needed to put forty on pump three, please.”

He took the
two bills from her and began pressing buttons on the register.

“I'm sorry, I
couldn't help but overhear,” Moira began carefully.  “Who was it that died?”

The old man's
mouth twisted a wry line over his horsey dentures. 

“My wife's nephew,”
he sighed.  “I never saw much good in the boy but I guess it takes all types. 
Name was Chester.  The docs were sayin' it mighta been a brain aneurism.  He
was pretty young to go.”

He passed her
the receipt.  “Hey, you look about his age, if you don't mind me sayin' – didja
go to high school with him?”

“I don't
recall,” she demurred quickly.

“Yeah, and
that might be for the best,” he answered darkly.  “Chester wasn't a real
favorite 'round here, 'cept of his mama's.”

“Well,” Moira
said, her voice soft, “my condolences to his mama, then.  You have a good day,
sir.”

He grunted and
turned back to the phone in his role as the anchor-root of the Great Southern
Gossip Tree, waiting until she'd gotten to the door to light his cigarette.

Moira pumped
the gas in thoughtful silence, pondering the Done thing.  Going to the viewing
or the funeral itself – however much she wanted to make sure the bastard was
dead, and however sure she was that she wouldn't be the only vulture verifying
that all life had left the body – was Not Done.  Jeanine would be there and
she'd know.

But maybe
picking up Sunday's paper to verify the obituary quietly; maybe that would be a
Done thing. 

I don't need
to feel guilty, she told herself.  After all,
I
didn't do anything.

She put away
the pump nozzle once the meter stopped, capped the tank and closed the little
door, getting back into the car.  “You were wrong,” she told the angel
reclining easily in the passenger's seat.

He quirked an
eyebrow; she turned to stare at him over her shoulder.

“Chester the
molester didn't wait all five days to die.”

A look came
into Leo's eyes that she hadn't seen before; something more of the warrior he
must have been before he crashed into her grandmother's rose-bush not yet a
week ago.  He was evaluating his performance.  Was it within tolerance?  Was
there anything on which he could improve?

Leo shrugged,
allowing a mildly satisfied expression to rise on his features.  Close enough
for jazz.

“The man in
there said he died badly.  That he didn't know his own mother at the end.”

Leo
contemplated, then nodded vaguely. 

“Did you
intend for that to happen?  Did you mean for him to go that way?”

He meandered
his hand back and forth, which she took to represent that while the relative
roughness of Chester's passing was not planned on its own merits, per se, it
was a side effect that (being not entirely unexpected) Leo considered
acceptable, given circumstances.

“You killed
him, on my behalf.  And you don't care that he died badly.”

Leo nodded
once, agreeing, then shrugged again.  Seen worse.  Or perhaps the gesture could
better be translated as: done worse.

“I'm just
trying to figure out what, if anything, I should be feeling right now about all
of it.”

He folded his
hands loosely on his abdomen and gave her a bland look.  Whatever you want to
feel, said that expression.

Moira started
the car without another word and pulled back out onto the road, then took the
ramp onto the interstate.  Once she'd hit a cruising speed, Leo pulled her
right hand lightly from the wheel and lay it on his thigh again.

I'm not a
monster.  I didn't want him to suffer,
she told herself. 
I just
wanted him to stop being a threat to me.  I wanted him to not ever be able to
touch me again.  If it took him dying to assure that, so be it.

Yes, of
course, said that little voice at the edge of her consciousness.  But do you
mind
that he suffered?

Moira held her
breath.

She let
herself feel that incandescent red rage again, the towering inferno of
righteous anger that had enveloped her at the moment when she realized that it
was
his hated hand
up the inseam of her jeans, digging in search of
her most private parts.  As if it had been his sovereign right to grope her. 
As if her body had been his property to plunder, all because he knew she
couldn't run and he believed she couldn't fight.

No,
she decided, exhaling to clear her vision so she could focus on the drive. 
I
don't mind.  I don't think I mind at all.

She squeezed
the taut muscle of Leo's leg, suffused with a wave of affection.  “Thank you,”
she said. 

He made no
reply of course, other than to lay his arm across the back of her seat where it
radiated his comforting warmth along her shoulders.  The jungle of the city
rose up before them out of the tangled mass of interstate, all steel and glass
and concrete.

She guided the
car onto the side streets, passing through areas that were almost deserted at
this hour, compared to the press of commuters during the work-week.  La
Maupin's parking lot was only now beginning to fill.

Moira wondered
about the story behind this place; she figured it must either be owned by an
angry, sensual woman – or by a prudent man who had married one.  For all that
it was a charming French bistro and cafe the Greek icon of the Medusa was
everywhere in various little touches: marble busts, paintings, even the tile
mosaic on the sidewalk in front of the door. 

Once inside,
the place was warm and perfectly lit.  It was one long single room, lined with
mirrors on both sides to make the space feel larger.  All the fixtures were
brass and copper, immaculately clean and polished.

Along the
right-hand wall was a white marble and mahogany bar over several baker's cases
with the curving front glass.  Inside those cases looked to be around a hundred
different cakes, pastries, pies, tarts, cupcakes... oh, everything a decadent
sweet tooth could crave.

“You will be
mine
,”
Moira murmured, bending over where the lemon tarts sat on pristine paper
doilies under the glass, then turning to follow the young host to the table he
was preparing in the back. 

Leo trailed
behind.  When she glanced back to check on him she saw he was gazing up at the
high ceiling, which was festooned with long looping strips of sailcloth dyed
different shades of purple and blue.  When he caught her eye he smiled and
flexed his shoulders.  All the space above his head was comforting, obviously. 

She stood by
the table and leaned on her cane as she waited for him, noting with pleasure
how the weak winter sun reflected back from a million different places in the
room and seemed to flow along his sleek pony-tail and be swallowed up in his
dark clothing.  She noticed other women noticing him – his size, his shoulders,
the smooth masculine confidence of his walk.  They turned their faces away from
their children, their friends, their dates, their own husbands, following his
path like sunflowers after Apollo's rays.

Oh, Leo. 
I was right – nobody's looking at your feet, my love...

But all the
other women
did
see how he pulled out her chair and seated her before
he took his own place, lounging across from her with an imperial presence,
larger than life and a thousand times more gorgeous.

“You...” she
began, then smiled and shook her head.  “You're just something else, baby.”

He took her
hand and kissed it, pulling away just long enough for the waitress to put down
glasses of water and the menus.  Leo opened his and studied it seriously,
flipping the parchment pages.

“I forgot to
ask... you
can
actually eat human food, right?  It won't make you
sick?” she whispered when they were alone again.

Leo waved away
the question with aplomb, making a silent “ooh!” of appreciation when he got to
the breakfast section.  He settled his decision at last on the crepes, turning
the menu and tapping the entry so she could read it.

“Difficult to
choose, huh?”  He nodded enthusiastically, rolling his eyes.  Moira could see beyond
his broad shoulder where occasionally various women would look up or turn,
glancing over at him.

Sometimes they
met her eyes, after.  Moira maintained her serene smile.

The waitress
looked to be all of sixteen and a half but was serious about her task, frowning
with concentration as she wrote Moira’s french toast order on her pad.

“And for you,
sir?” she asked, turning to Leo.

“Ahh... my
companion has taken a vow of silence, so I will be ordering for him,” Moira
interjected smoothly.  “He'll be having the crepes, with cherries.”

He nodded and
smiled at the girl, who grinned nervously in reply and took their menus to rush
away to the safety of the kitchen.

Vow of
silence? he mouthed when they were alone again.

“Look, if you
get a better idea, you can tell her when she gets back.”

He shook his
head and chuckled in his soundless way, reaching over for her hand once more.

“This place is
a conundrum,” she said after a moment, meeting his calm blue eyes.  “I looked
it up after the first time I came here.  'La Maupin' was an opera singer in seventeenth
century France; she fought duels and was famous for seducing men and women
alike.  If Don Juan had been a gorgeous bisexual female contralto that was good
with a rapier, he would have been La Maupin.

“So she of
course is quintessentially French – at least as Americans would consider it, I
guess.  Fighting, feasting, fuc– er, making love.  And this is a French bistro.

“But all the
decor is of Medusa, who is Greek, and who had a much less, ahhh, 'positive' story. 
She started out as an absolute beauty; too beautiful, probably, because she got
the attention of the gods.  It turned out that Poseidon actually raped her in
Athena's temple, according to the myths.”

Leo raised his
eyebrows.

“And then,
pissed off at the defamation of her sacred space, Athena punished the defiled
instead of the defiler – she gave Medusa venomous snakes instead of hair, and
made it so that anyone looking at her face directly would be turned to stone. 
Some myths have it happening because Medusa was so ugly... but some say it’s
because she was more beautiful than ever, snake-locks and all.”

Moira looked
down at her hand, small and protected in the shelter of Leo's palm.

“So Medusa
went off to live in a cave with two other Gorgons, both the others immortal;
but it turns out she was pregnant with Poseidon's children.  And when Perseus
came along to kill her, they sprang out of her dead body – Pegasus the winged
horse and Chrysaor, some sort of big golden giant.”

She considered
it for a moment.

“Do you know
if there are some sort of interesting mushrooms available in Greece?  You've
got to wonder where they got all this stuff.”

Leo shrugged,
his gaze amused.

“So then, to
add insult to injury, the poor girl's head gets carried around for a while and
used to turn other monsters and things into stone and rescue some other pretty
little chick, and
finally
her head is given to Athena of all people,
who puts it on her shield to use in battle.  If you think about it, you realize
that her head was more powerful separated from her body than attached to it. 
It's sad, really.”