Talulla Rising
Page 69

‘Shouldn’t they be back by now?’ I asked.
Madeline, also scrubbed, precisely made-up and in clean clothes (dark blue Levis, tight white t-shirt, black suede cowboy boots), had just come in and put the kettle on. There was a rich ambiguous atmosphere between us, wulf’s telepathy still volatile. I knew she was aware of me having turned over the sapphic possibility back in the WOCOP compound, though I couldn’t tell how she would’ve reacted if I’d reached out and touched her. I supposed she ‘did’ girls, professionally, if only because it was economically dumb not to, but for all I knew it was strictly business. Besides, there were Devaz and Fergus now, if I was looking for a loveless version of fuckkilleat, no need to resort to lesbianism. I heard this phrase – no need to resort to lesbianism – in the voice of our neighbour in Park Slope, Mrs Spears, who was brisk and brusque and always absolutely knew her mind and yours too and always told you what not just you but everyone in the world should do. Good Lord, Talulla, there’s no need to resort to lesbianism! At which I was forced to concede that I was more interested in Madeline than I was in either of the two males. Partly a little titillating masochistic jealousy. Partly an irritation with what suddenly felt like absurd (super-absurd, given my other activities) anachronistic bourgeois repression. Partly sexual curiosity that went all the way back to Lauren. Partly just the feeling that since it was going to happen sooner or later I might as well get on with it. Partly, of course, Jake between us. Jesus, he must be loving this. I imagined him settling down with a Macallan and a Camel and a big grin in front of his afterlife TV: and now, a little earlier than advertised, ultra-hot two-girl werewolf action. Fan fucking tastic. Where’s the slow-motion on this thing? Where’s the repeat?
‘Don’t worry,’ Madeline said, opening a fresh carton of milk. ‘Luce knows what she’s doing. They’ll be fine. Anyway, come on, you still haven’t told me.’
How I’d ended up with Devaz and the late Wilson, she meant, werewolves conjured up from the WOCOP faithful. Jake’s journal, incredibly, had survived the night, but she still hadn’t seen it. It wasn’t necessary. I knew the relevant lines by heart. I knew the lines and the scene: The Castle Hotel room, Caernarfon, night. Jake staring at the Harley phone in the wake of the Harley message. Madeline emerging from the en suite, post-coitally repaired, clipping up her hair:
‘Look at that,’ she said, turning her cheek and showing me a tiny lovebite on her pliable young neck. ‘That’s a mark, isn’t it?’
I knew it well enough, having read and re-read it countless times once the penny – thanks to Caleb’s story of his making – dropped.
‘Jake gave you a lovebite,’ I said. ‘That night in Caernarfon. The night Grainer and Ellis turned up with Harley’s head in a bag.’
I watched her thinking back. It brought the images again, Jake fucking her, her face’s worked-for look of professional collusion. Somewhere else in her the little girl (like Cloquet’s little boy on the dock) was waiting for the reunion that would never come. And yet maybe it could come now. My own childhood self hadn’t minded the monster much. It was the older versions that had freaked out. In fact it was like the little girl’s revenge: See? I told you it was like this. All these terrible and wonderful things.
‘He gave you a lovebite,’ I said. ‘It had to have broken the skin just enough. Meanwhile the anti-virus they’d been slipping him had worked. There’s no other explanation. The next night, full moon, you changed, just like he did.’
A few moments while she took it in. ‘How do you know all this?’
No avoiding the truth now. ‘He kept a diary.’
‘Did he?’
‘Yes.’
More cogitation. Here were the versions of her face her customers never saw. She arrived at something. ‘Don’t suppose he had much good to say about me. Dumb blonde. Never read a book in her life.’
‘He said he wished he’d kissed you more.’
Which caused a sudden psychic traffic jam in her. Embarrassment. Curiosity. Pride. It would be a while before she stopped being fascinated by the effects she had on people.
‘You haven’t given anyone any, have you?’ I asked her. ‘Any lovebites?’
She shook her head, still processing.
‘No one with a fetish for them?’
‘I don’t think so.
‘Because they come with a big price tag now. Just so you know.’
‘Did he know?’
‘Jake? No. He wouldn’t have done it if he had.’ Not to you, my mean-spirited realist could have added – which thought I hoped she was mentally occupied enough to miss. Jake hadn’t known what he’d done, but he – or wulf – had known there was something that made him uneasy when he thought of Madeline in those last hours in the Castle Hotel.
Something nags when I think of Madeline here. This room’s hauled it to the edge of memory but can’t quite heave it over the border.
It was there in the journal, practically the last thing he wrote before Llewellyn arrived to take him to Beddgelert Forest, to me, to Grainer, to his death. Something smarter than his human knew: You bit her. She’ll Turn. And if he hadn’t bitten her, I’d be dead now.
Don’t bother looking for the meaning of it all. There isn’t one.
Maybe not, but life compulsively dangled the possibility. Life, the dramatist on speed. Life, that couldn’t stop with its foreshadows and ironies and symbols and clues, its wretched jokes and false endings and twists. Life with its hopeless addiction to plot.
‘Don’t tell Fergus,’ Madeline said.
‘What?’
‘Don’t tell him you can Turn someone with a lovebite.’
‘He’ll start dishing them out?’
‘I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s a loose cannon. In fact I wouldn’t mention it to Trish, either. Don’t get me wrong: I love Trish. But she’s like a kid with a new toy with this, seriously. Can’t blame her, mind, crap she’s been through.’
Caleb coughed. Spat something out. His breathing was bad. I was going to have to find him blood. Would an animal’s do? I could always give him some of mine, I supposed – but who knew what that would turn him into?
‘So you just... bit them?’ Madeline asked.