Tyrannia (9 page)

And just where does the water go, once it has fallen? You’d think that the ground would flood, but it doesn’t. There might be grates leading into a sewer system, or something. There might be a vast, underground ocean under the surface of the earth, where mer-people live ordinary, screwed up lives in screwed up mer-civilizations, and no one can figure out where that waterfall comes from. I couldn’t say one way or another, and there’s no chance I’ll find out.

There was only one time, years ago, when I came awfully close. Or at least, I thought I did; now I’m not so sure. I’m not sure what side I come down on. It was the time I was a sycophant, and it wasn’t pretty. I was twenty, or thereabouts, young and stupid, and I’d only been at the pawn shop for a year. I had wandered for a while before that, and since I couldn’t find a way past the border, I stopped and looked for a job. No one liked to pump gas and pawn guns in sight of the angels, so the station was always hiring. Turnover is hell. But I kept my nose clean. I had a trailer that I was actually proud of. No one lived around me. I had no idea how lonely I was, especially after my double shifts.

It was at the tail end of one of those double shifts when a woman came in to tell me her car broke down, and could she get some help. It was Sunday, going on evening, and no one credible in town was going to jump-start her car, or fix her flat. Which was where I came in. She had her hair in a beehive bun, and wore a T-shirt that looked wooly and too warm. I figured she was driving from a ways off; she had a funny accent. I asked her where her car was. About three miles that way, she said. She pointed north, parallel to the border. My brother’s still in the car. He’s guarding it.

Like an angel? I said.

I . . . I guess, she said. It was even more obvious she wasn’t from around here.

I smelled her then—acrid, sour raspberries. It didn’t smell like the stench of a long road trip, but neither did it smell like perfume. But I was bored all the time, like I said before, and so the intrigue won out against my better judgment. She was something different. I decided that I could be some use to her, and the blood in my head pounded.

Okay, I said. I’ll help you in 15 minutes. Can you wait 15 minutes? That’s when I get off.

She thanked me, and she seemed sincere, and she smiled. I became aroused. She was perfectly pretty, and I wasn’t ashamed to notice this. It was a reaction—I knew that I wouldn’t
act
on the reaction ever. It just wasn’t how I operated, to make huge, unyielding assumptions about what a smile meant.

After my replacement came—I forget his name, after all of these years, like I’ve forgotten a lot of things—I took her to my car. A filthy Civic. It was embarrassing, but she didn’t seem to mind the birdcages and miniature sinball games strewn on the floor of the shotgun seat. I also had a gun behind my shotgun seat—just a pistol, a non-angelic gun. The birdcages were from a man who pawned about a dozen parakeets on us. I’d bought them and set them free. I felt pretty bad for them, and no one was going to buy them.

Oh, just move that stuff out of the way, I said, starting the car. I was more ashamed about my vehicle than my erection. The erection was a private matter, while the car was definitely public space.

She smiled, not to me really, and rolled down the window. She was serene, undisturbed.

I love the breeze, she said, sticking her arm out as I pulled out. The mist, too.

The mist is pretty nice, I said. I hadn’t gotten bored of the mist yet. It was fine and soft enough that you would realize, with the right wind, that your face was wet and cool. The mist made the heat bearable.

I drove closer to the waterfall. The land was a wasteland: no hills, no vegetation, all dust and sand and sandstone. After about a minute, she said: turn down that road there.

I tried and tried but couldn’t place her accent at all. I usually had an ear for those kinds of things. My father, right as I left his house to seek my fortune, had told me that I would always be wandering around the bottom of the world. Actually he shouted it as I was walking away. I think he had meant it as a curse, but I never saw him again anyway. I didn’t want to ask her about the accent, where she came from.

But I wondered if I would find out anyway. I’d stupidly hoped that she’d abandon her brother and come with me back to my trailer for a few whiskey sours and she’d clench herself against me on my sofa (brand: “Sof-ahh . . .”), and I’d say, no, the sofa folds out, it’s a hide-a-bed. Or something along those lines. This was breaking my vow of nonintervention that I made when I met her. I know that. But I didn’t know what to expect. I figured there was a chance she wanted me, and that I could help her along the process of wanting me. I was, however, afraid of my own mouth, the bombshells that would pirouette from it.

Her arm hanging out the window did a little dance, a little hand puppetry, and she closed her eyes.

After she closed her eyes, I put away my seduction plan, folded it up like a map. It was a dumb plan anyway.

The road running parallel to the border was a kind of service alley at first, filled with speed bumps, behind fast food restaurants and hotels you’d pay for by the hour. “Hotel” was probably too kind of a word. But then the sprawl stopped and the road turned dirt. Soon we were in the bona fide desert, and the border was a half-mile east of us. I heard the waterfall roar and, peering into the mist, saw the silhouettes of angels—or at least their bright ponchos—here and there.

I hadn’t known about this road at all. (It has since disappeared altogether. The main road fades into pure desert now. The beginning of the service alley that I remember is now an abandoned waterpark. Once a year I go looking for the road she took, but no luck.) It was bumpy, and the Civic’s shocks were horrible. I apologized about the smoothness, or the lack of it, of the ride.

She must have been sleeping, or meditating, or something. She opened her eyes. What did you say?

The road is bumpy, I managed.

She shrugged. I told you I had a brother, right?

I think so, I said. A sudden spray turned the windshield to a fine mud and I turned on the wipers.

He has a birth defect, she said. I think I failed to mention this. Just to warn you, so you don’t become alarmed or anything.

I nodded and smiled, as if to say, no problem, whatever. I was secretly troubled. I wished that the brother wasn’t in the picture at all, that I could take care of her car trouble with no familial witnesses. Perhaps, I reasoned, like I imagined a snake would reason, his birth defect meant that he was only a shell of a person, and could not interfere in any relationship that might develop between me and the stranded woman.

The sun was beginning to set. We hit a pothole and, startled, she grabbed my hand. Hers was warm but mine was warmer. She pulled away and didn’t meet my gaze, even though I was offering it to her.

At last we reached her car, which was actually a Hummer. Maybe they were drug dealers, I thought, or smugglers, although that would have been impossible, on account of the waterfall border and the angels. I pulled up next to the Hummer and we got out.

Thank you
so much,
she said, sounding like she really meant it. She stretched her arms up.

No problem, I said. Happy to help. Let me look at the engine. Can you pop the hood?

I glanced at the interior of the car, looking for her brother. The windows of the Hummer didn’t have tinting, and I could see her brother lying across one of the backseats. I forget which backseat, as there were three in the SUV. He seemed to be made out of water. He wore dark glasses that didn’t seem to be made of water, but that was it. Water. I could see right through his body. He looked a few years younger than she was. But for crying out loud—gauging such a thing was totally without value. Talk about a birth defect. I wasn’t scared of him though.

She didn’t pop the hood, like I’d asked. She just kept stretching. At first her arms, and then her legs, as if she was getting ready to sprint. I almost wanted to cry. Instead I said: Is this some kind of joke? A prank? Is your car perfectly fine or is it not?

She then told me that I was to drive the Hummer into the waterfall.

But I’d die, I said. You’d die, too. If the angels don’t kill you—and they will—well, you can’t get through the waterfall. It can’t be penetrated. It just can’t.

She then explained to me how she wouldn’t die, because she wouldn’t be in the Hummer. She would just be watching, watching out for angels who might start to get ideas and try to stop them. And then she would stop
them
.

Even though she didn’t threaten me, per se, I guess I should have been a little afraid of her threat-like statements.

But instead I laughed. I was getting angry, that she only had wanted to use me. Not to fix a car, which was perfectly legitimate. But rather to drive, in suicidal fashion, in reach of the angels. I had worked myself into a lather over this? I wanted to please her, but not at such a steep, ridiculous price.

Stop angels, I said. Huh.

Absolutely, she said. She stopped her stretching and walked toward me. Do you know what’s on the other side? Do you know what’s in the other country?

No, what, I said. Try me.

I was ready, at that point, to drive away, good riddance.

People like me, she said.

She then revealed her true face, which I really don’t want to talk about any more than I absolutely have to.

At any rate, after her revelation, I saw her point rather clearly, and I asked what I could do to help. Anything to help. I was desperate
to, and there wasn’t really any question about any previous, skeptical thought processes that I might have had regarding her and her needs.

She hid her true face again—one glance was enough for me to become her sycophant, no need to overdo it—and then explained the rest of her plan, which I considered extremely cunning.

My brother is the safecracker, she said, in her honeyed voice. He can turn off the waterfall, at least for a few instants. Your purpose—and it is a very noble purpose—is to collide into the waterfall and kill yourself. There’s a good chance there’ll be a spectacular explosion, which would be a nice touch. This will distract the angels just long enough for my brother and I to pass through.

Got it, I said. And so you’ll be in the mist near the car, waiting for your brother to open up the waterfall.

Exactly! I knew you’d understand.

I was pleased by her words. I wanted to befriend her, now even more so, and this seemed to be the only way. I wished, naturally, that I wouldn’t have to die to curry her favor. Barring mental disorder, or some kind of severe, unbearable depression, who wouldn’t? But I searched the catacombs of my brain over and over, and came across only dead ends where any objections should have been. So that decided things.

Okay, I said, I’m ready! Let’s do this.

She threw me the keys. The wind blew her wooly shirt up a little. I could see for a second some kind of armor above her knees. At this point my desire for her wasn’t sexual at all. It was pure and altruistic. This point should be clear.

Okay, she said. Why don’t you drive a little closer. Into the mist. I’ll walk alongside the car, so drive slowly.

Great! I said. I’d never been happier. I opened the car door, stepped inside, and started the Hummer up. I began to buckle my seat belt, but that seemed absurd, considering that the
point
was to kill myself. Safety wasn’t coming first. Her brother—although I wasn’t sure whether it was her brother at all—was still laying behind me, totally still. He didn’t say anything, but then I saw he had an orange handkerchief covering his mouth. It was almost like the handkerchief was gagging him.

Hey, I said behind me, taking the Hummer out of park and letting it crawl forward, on Lydia’s signal. I knew her name was Lydia all of the sudden. I didn’t know the water-guy’s name; otherwise I would have used it.

He still didn’t say anything. I wondered briefly if the handkerchief in his mouth was impeding his speech. But I was preoccupied with the driving, really.

You’ll be able to do your thing soon enough, I told him. And then you’ll be home free. Scotch free.

The man tried to say something, but it was muffled.

Did you say anything? Lydia asked me.

The man’s eyes widened and he shook his head. I didn’t know why it was important to him, but I called out to her: No, you must be hearing things.

I loved her! But the guy relaxed. He must have loved her, too, and wanted to please her; otherwise, he wouldn’t be in this position.

I want to say, at this point, that in no way did I believe I was a sycophant. I was merely doing what I thought was in my best interest, which happened to be in her best interest. Others might consider alignment of desire some kind of flattery. But it’s not the same. Even now, I’m not sure what to think about that time in the desert with Lydia and her brother. I had a customer come in about a week ago who was an angel. I didn’t think this was at all strange. Why was that? He wanted chaw and ethanol for his truck, but he didn’t seem to have a truck. He did, however, have a sword strapped to his belt. He wasn’t wearing his poncho and seemed even taller up close. And there was no winged gun in sight. The sign on my door said BANS GUNNED ON PREMISES, but the sign didn’t say anything about edged weapons. And what was a PREMISES, anyway? A group of more than one premise? Every word, in the presence of the angel, seemed to be utterly beautiful and yet completely falter as a means to communicate. He blinked at me, and he paid for the chaw, and I told him that we didn’t have any ethanol-substitute fuel, we weren’t really positioned in a progressive part of the country. He appeared mildly upset. It’s for my truck, it’s broken down just outside of town, he said. I pretended he wasn’t there. Finally, he gave up on me. Have a good day! I called out to him as he left. Then I noticed that there was moss in the ice cream sandwiches case, and that I should probably clean it out after I closed.