The 37th mandala : a novel (35 page)

No, it wouldn't do to stay around Crowe much longer. If he couldn't help them, then he would only harm them. And they'd be bringing trouble on his head if the cops found out they'd stayed here even one night.

He left Lenore in the kitchen and started packing their bags. They could check out the motel a few blocks up the street, or—better yet—move on to someplace farther from Crowe. But they had to move quickly. It had cost more to cross the country than he'd expected, but the remaining cash would last a few weeks if they found the right place. Best of all would be a temporary living situation, with some roommates; and then he had to think about getting a job. All that would take time. And it hinged on Lenore's stability. The mandalas could return at any moment; this was just a lull, he felt, a moment of peace before they returned. He hated to mention that possibility to Lenore. She'd had plenty of lucid moments in the last few days, but none of them had lasted. The mandalas weren't going to give her up so easily.

The door of Crowe's bedroom clicked open, and the man made a dash for the bathroom, blinking over at Michael as if startled to see him. Michael peeked into the kitchen.

"Crowe's up," he said. "I'm just going to run this stuff up to the car. Why don't you get ready?"

"What's the rush?" she said.

"Lenore ... just do it, all right?"

She gave him a blank look. He realized her eyes were not on him at all, but fixed in the air above his head.

Here it comes
... he thought, and headed for the door.

It was a windy day, fog blowing over the tops of the tall apartment buildings, setting the signs of Chinese restaurants swinging, shaking the little plastic pennants strung outside corner stores. To Michael it felt warm by comparison to the climates they'd left behind. He walked slowly up the street, under the weight of their bags, in no mood to enjoy the atmosphere of San Francisco. Fisherman's Wharf, Coit Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge. How could he care about any of these things? Besides, none of them were visible from here. Derek Crowe lived in a seedy neighborhood. Half the people coming down the street toward him looked like junkies or bums, their faces scabbed and sunburned, hair all matted, their ragged clothes dark with grime. The others on the sidewalk wore business suits, moving briskly through the slower-moving pedestrians as if they occupied two different worlds. He didn't trust either group, didn't fit in here.

He rounded the corner where he'd parked the car and came to a sudden stop.

A meter maid stood by the Beetle, writing a ticket.

He crossed the street as fast as he could, heading for the motel.

That's it, he thought. That's how it starts. They'll run a check on the car. Maybe they'll stake it out, wait to see who comes for it. Even if it doesn't happen yet, it will.

We've got to dump the car. Smartest of all would be to just ditch it here. There's nothing in it that we can't live without. But it's too close to Crowe, and I don't want to drag the guy into this. We're just going to have to hurry.

He was panting by the time he reached the motel. It was an old motor court, looking weirdly out of place among the tenements and office buildings. It had been refurbished, repainted, given a trendy face-lift—Route 66 nostalgia. The no light was off in the vacancy sign. He dragged his bags into the office and soon had a key.

All the units were built facing a courtyard with a kidney-shaped swimming pool. There were palm trees in big cement planters, leaves skritching in the fog, and country music coming from a bar across the patio. He climbed the steps to the balcony and found the door to their room. Just then the sun came peering through the gray swirls of mist—white and watery, but still the sun.

"Fuckin' A," he said, suddenly elated, a big grin breaking out of nowhere, like the sun through the fog. "California!"

Derek Crowe wandered into the kitchen, combing his wet thinning hair, looking awkward in a bathrobe. Lenore couldn't help but think of the picture on his book, Crowe wrapped in a gimmicky cape.
This
was the
real
Crowe. Still, the mandala

presence was strong around him. There was a solid core to the man, a presence that transcended his crowded kitchen and the cramped apartment. He was, like her, being looked after. It was with a feeling of wordless solidarity that she poured him a cup of coffee and handed it to him. He looked surprised and pleased.

"Thank you," he said. "I imagine you're hungry. I don't have much in the house, but you're welcome to it."

"I'm fine," she said, sitting at the table. He smiled nervously, then sat down across from her.

"Did you sleep well?"

There wasn't time for small talk. It was essential that they not waste a single moment together. "Mr. Crowe, I'm worried about Michael."

He looked hesitant. "He—I'd say he's worried about you."

Lenore snorted. "I'm a strong person. I've been through a lot, enough to toughen me. I can take almost anything. But Michael—it's not only that he's weaker ... it's that ... have you seen his mandala?"

Derek smiled uncomfortably. "Now, Lenore, I don't have that—ah, ability."

"Have they told you anything lately?"

"We haven't been in touch."

"Well, I can see them," she said, convinced that he should know everything she knew. Perhaps that was part of her role here, to put him in touch again with the mandalas; maybe his work was not yet done. "And Michael's looks sick."

"Sick? Is that possible?"

"I was hoping you could tell me."

"You two are both under the misapprehension that I know more about the mandalas than is in my book."

"I haven't read your book," she said flatly. "I know them from direct experience. From moving among them, and with them, and trying to figure out what they want. I know they're not exactly alive like you and me. You wouldn't think they could die—but what if they can? What if they have a life cycle of their own? Something so slow they're practically immortal?"

"A fascinating idea," he said. "You're really in communication with the mandalas all the time?"

"Mostly. And it's hard to tell sometimes, I've gotten so used to it. At first it all seemed strange and different, but it's starting to seem normal now."

"I'd like to ... to ask you about all this sometime," he said. "Sometime when I can take notes. If you're going to be around for a while, I mean. Maybe if I put questions to you, you could put them out to—to the mandalas, and they'd give us both the answers. It's occurred to me, you know, that maybe they'd like me to put out another book."

"Mr. Crowe—"

"Derek, please."

"Derek, I think Michael is in some kind of crisis. His mandala is breaking up. I've seen others attack it, and it's weak—maybe too weak to defend itself much longer. If they can kill it, if it can die, then what happens to Michael? I'm afraid for him."

"Well, I understand that. But the mandalas, almost everything about them, is a mystery, isn't it? How can we hope to know them so soon, when they've only just revealed themselves? You sound as if you've been very close to them for a few days, but all that's done is raised more questions in your mind than I ever thought to ask."

Lenore tried to suppress her growing frustration, to keep it from turning to anger. "Michael thought you were the expert. He thought you'd have the answers for us."

"I'm very sorry, Lenore. I tried to explain to your husband my part in all this. And ... I had the impression that you had your own reasons for coming here." He gave her a sly look, one with a variety of possible interpretations. She did not like most of them.

"I was drawn to you," she said. "Coming here was part of the solution to a puzzle I've been working out. Now I've done that part and I don't see where it fits in. It's not finished yet."

At that moment the buzzer sounded.

"There he is now," he said, and jumped up with obvious relief. A minute later Michael came into the kitchen, breathing heavily. He looked worse than ever, as if by admitting her fears she had brought them into sharper focus. If only he could see the things that slashed the air just behind him, spiny mouths opening, poison tongues, all of them pricking and stabbing his mandala. The thing shivered and recoiled and clung to Michael with pitiful desperation; no more coherent than a cloud, it could scarcely hold itself together, let alone shield Michael from attack.

Michael's face had grown silvery and transparent, so that she could see the veins beneath his skin and the tumbling of mercurial corpuscles; the squelchy sound of his bones sliding and sloshing in lymph-soaked tissue sounded loud as a radio turned up full blast. She sickened to think of her own bones trapped and smothered in flesh, except for teeth standing like outcrops of rock, small peaks protruding from a thick red sea. The hairs on his skin were like seared trees clinging to a wasteland, their bark and foliage like hardened excrement. He metamorphosed further before her eyes, evolving into something ratlike and sickly, timid and malnourished. He looked ... used up. His usefulness just about exhausted. His head seemed wrapped in a clotted, crumbling fog, a dry yellowing brittle mass like a tide-pool creature left too long in the hot sun—a fragile pod about to burst.

She flinched when he touched her but instantly regretted it. She still loved him, didn't she?

"Got us a room at the place up the street," he said. "We won't have to bother you again tonight, Mr. Crowe."

"You've been very little bother," Derek said. "But I'm sure you'll be more comfortable with some privacy and a place to spread out."

"We should get out of your hair right away. You ready, Lenore?"

"I guess so," she said. "But what are we going to do all day, Michael? We can't just sit in a room."

"Mr. Crowe said he knew a place where we might meet some people who could help us."

"That's right," Derek said. "It's a big occult shop, Hecate's Haven. They have a bulletin board and roommate listings; a lot of people just come in and hang out. You might find someone who can help you. And a place you can stay. If you like, I'll come along. I can introduce you to my friends, and we'll see what they can do for you."

"You don't have to do that," Michael said.

"I think it's a good idea," said Lenore. She was trying to figure out some way to stay near Crowe, despite his pretense that he knew less of the mandalas than she did. At least he already believed in the mandalas and knew something of their power. If something started happening to Michael's mandala, he wouldn't automatically think they were crazy.

"I think we've been enough trouble. Mr. Crowe probably has plenty of work to do on his books."

"I'm between books right now," Derek said. "And I—I owe an old friend a visit over there. If you're anxious, we could leave any time."

"I'm just... I'm worried that the car might not make it. It's on its last legs."

"The bus runs right to the place," Derek said. "Or we could take a cab."

"Come on, Michael," Lenore said, "don't be ridiculous."

"All right then," he said. "Are you ready?"

Lenore scurried to make sure she had all her things, but there really wasn't much. Michael stood in the hallway, urging her to hurry. He rushed down the stairs ahead of them. Lenore lingered with Derek as he locked the front door's deadbolts.

"You see what I mean?" she said. "He's not himself. Something's getting to him."

"Probably exhaustion. Well, I'll take your word for it. I imagine his mandala can look after him. Even if it is sickly, how long could something that ancient take to die? How many human lifetimes?"

The thought made Lenore shudder. What if the deterioration was only beginning for Michael? What if it went on and on, worsening gradually; what if it had been well under way since long before she'd been able to see his mandala ... before she'd even met him ... before he'd been born?

"Michael!" she called out suddenly, wanting the reassurance of his presence. She chased him down the stairs, catching hold of his hand on the street in front of the building. Michael paused at the corner, holding her back for a moment as he peered around at their car.

"Okay," he said, "hurry up."

"What's going on?"

"Nothing. Come on."

Michael drove nervously in the city's frantic traffic. She could see his nerves were as brittle as his mandala. "I'm used to the highway," he said after nearly colliding with a city bus. "Everything happens slower there."

Last night, as they emerged from the Treasure Island tunnel and began to climb between the light-strung girders of the westernmost span of the Bay Bridge, Lenore's eyes had gone from the glittering lights of the San Francisco skyline to a huge wheel of cloud that had gathered in the midst of the stars like a black whirlpool. The only reason she could see it was because the city lights cast a bluish pall on the belly of the low cloud, illuminating strands of vapor dangling down like tendrils, swaying in the high wind as if groping through the tops of the jeweled pylons, reaching toward the car.

Michael hadn't seen it. To him, it was just another cloud. He hadn't seen how it whirled and clenched; how the swaths of enfolding vapor slowly sloughed away, revealing the hard black tegument beneath; how the irising teeth, gleaming in the city-glow, snicked open and shut as it wheeled above the towers like a whirling crown.

It's like the city's guardian, she had thought. Presiding over everything. This is what called me here—this is what's drawn us all this way. My own mandala, a smaller version of this....

Beneath it, she could see myriad other mandalas soaring and flitting about, smaller but brighter, swirling in as if drawn by the mass of the greater. They spun between the skyscrapers, spiraling in like satellites gently drawn to earth.

And closing her eyes, she had known herself as one of them. One of many drawn in on the spiral path to some gathering she could not quite imagine.

Why? What were they all doing here?

Derek Crowe guided them to Market Street, which was a straightaway. The sky this morning was gray, low and oppressive, as if they were living just beneath a lid of fog. Pedestrians hurried about with heads bowed into the wind, holding their coats closed at their throats. After traveling a mile or so, Lenore saw specks of blue above. The fog thinned as they went on, until she saw twin peaks ahead of them, two mounds like pale-brown breasts, one of them topped with a skeletal red and white tower that seemed to sway in and out of the mist. Nearer, looming up suddenly, was the crest of a hill with loose reddish rock piled atop it like a tumbled Stonehenge. Derek pointed out a parking space near an ornate building with curved oriental eaves, like an Asian temple.