Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 97 Read online

  “What’s his name?” a man asked.

  “Luzenberg,” Ann said.

  “Strange name for a dog,” he said.

  Ann nodded. “It would be.”

  Ann and Luzenberg (for now that he had been named, Ann could think of him as nothing else) continued on their path, and the man followed.

  “Would you like a tour?” the man asked, and placed his hand near Ann’s elbow as if to guide her.

  Luzenberg growled low in his throat, low enough that Ann thought perhaps she had imagined it.

  “No thank you,” Ann said. “I’m local.”

  “You don’t sound like it,” he said.

  “Nor do you.”

  He nodded, smiling. “Rhode Island. Just arrived in the city a few days ago.”

  Luzenberg slowed his pace, eventually working his way between Ann and the stranger.

  “Not sure you’d be a good tour guide,” Ann said.

  “Probably not.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  She turned to look at him. He had a long face, like an overstretched egg, and his eyes were set too far apart for her liking. The one thing she admired about him was that he had pulled his hands away, clasping them behind his back so as not to invade her personal space. Or perhaps he feared Luzenberg would bite him. Would Luzenberg bite him? Ann wasn’t sure.

  He shrugged. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

  “Mission accomplished,” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me,” and she turned on her heels and walked away. He didn’t follow. Another point in his favor.

  When she told Mrs. Luzenberg, the latter chided her for being impolite to a stranger in their city.

  “He was just hoping to make friends,” Mrs. Luzenberg said. “Don’t want him to go home with a bad impression of our hospitality.” Mrs. Luzenberg then told her a story of how when she was a young girl at Sacred Heart, she and her friends were asked by the nuns to go down to the Quarter where the French Naval Officers were visiting. “It’s our responsibility, as hosts,” she said.

  Ann wasn’t so sure, but Luzenberg liked the cemetery so every day for a week she took him. Sometimes they saw the egg-faced man, and he waved at them, respectfully, from a distance. The third time he waved, she noticed he was following behind a tour group, listening as the guide spoke of water tables and storms and caskets floating down the avenue. The stories were all a bit overdramatic for Ann’s tastes. A body dies; it is moved to a location suited for a long internment suited to the geological and geographical complexities of the area. To ogle, to take pictures and ask questions about such a private time in a body’s life, felt like an invasion.

  On the eighth day, the man came up to Ann as she sat reading a book in the shade of one of the crypts. Luzenberg scrambled up the walls to better sun himself, or perhaps to give her some privacy.

  “Should he be up there?” the man asked.

  Ann ignored him.

  “I mean, wouldn’t the family mind?”

  Ann looked around at other tombs: cracks in the walls and weeds. Bird shit dried and caked into the cement. Some were cleaner than others, owned by families who took more care to preserve their dead. “It’s his tomb, in a way,” she said, and pointed at the neatly carved names on the marble slab above her head.

  Clement.

  King.

  Luzenberg.

  “Oh,” he said. “You really are local.”

  Ann shrugged. “More or less.”

  “Would you mind giving me a tour, then?”

  Ann closed her book and looked up at him. From below, his head no longer looked long and stretched. His eyes, she thought, were not so small and beady as before. Above her a shadow loomed and there was a moment of cold silence before Luzenberg jumped down beside her. He didn’t growl; he didn’t bite. He merely turned his head, tentacles quivering in a questioning manner.

  “Why not,” she said.

  “I’m Howard,” he said, extending his hand to help her up.

  “Ann,” she said.

  Howard’s vacation extended a week, then a month, then two. Ann gave him Mrs. Luzenberg’s address and phone number as her own, and later moved in to the large house to make it easier when Howard came to pick her up. Mrs. Luzenberg insisted that he come in each time to have a drink (no matter the hour) and talk about the weather while Ann finished dressing or fixing her hair or face. Howard assumed Ann was Mrs. Luzenberg’s daughter, and neither corrected him.

  “It’s true enough,” Mrs. Luzenberg said later.

  Ann and Howard went to the zoo, the aquarium, and the opera. He took her to dinner at a different restaurant each week, claiming he wanted to experience as much of the city as possible before returning home.

  Mrs. Luzenberg did not press for details, but gave knowing looks when Ann decided to fix her hair differently, or came home with a new dress to replace the faded and frayed one.

  “It’s not for him,” Ann said. “It’s for me. I’m not sure I even like him that much, besides.”

  “Neither of us is getting any younger,” Mrs. Luzenberg said.

  Ultimately, Ann believed, Howard preferred her company when they could bring Luzenberg. And truthfully, so did she. With Luzenberg, there was a friend between them, someone they could both discuss and revel in the familiarity. They took him on long walks along the levy, and drove out to the bayou. As winter approached, he even asked her what Mardi Gras costume she had planned for him.

  “Cerberus perhaps,” she said.

  “Isn’t that a bit easy? I think we should—” he continued, but Ann wasn’t listening.

  We, he had said. Mardi Gras would be nine months from their first date. Did that mean something? Did she want it to?

  Mrs. Luzenberg insisted it did, insisted that it had gone on long enough for her liking without a kind of understanding. Again Ann mused aloud that perhaps she didn’t want it to go on any more. Perhaps she should apply again for grad school.

  “Oh Ann, but it’s been years since you stopped talking about that. You’ve been so happy; don’t spoil it,” and Mrs. Luzenberg poked and prodded Ann’s stomach to get her to twirl and show off the new dress that had been bought for her. “You look gorgeous,” she said, stressing the word as if surprised to find it so.

  Ann and Howard continued on. Ann tried to speak only of easy things: books, movies, plays. Ann cared little for politics, but enough to know that she and Howard disagreed on almost every point. He made her cross the street whenever they were approached by certain people and encouraged Luzenberg to growl at anyone unfamiliar.

  When Ann again expressed her intention to finally end things to Mrs. Luzenberg, she was encouraged to give it a few more days as Mrs. Luzenberg had already arranged for them to be invited to the Proteus ball. Ann told herself that it would be an unusual experience, one worth examining from a historical and sociological perspective, something she could discuss in a graduate school application essay, and agreed.

  And when Howard arrived to pick them up, even Ann agreed that he looked marvelous in tails.

  “This is what this city is about,” Howard said, waving his hand at the red and gold silks which hung from the walls, the men in masks and supple leather boots, the girls in their long white dresses and gloves. “This is civilization.”

  As they danced, Howard’s hand held her firm at the small of her back. Her feet ached, and her head swam from the whiskey sours they had given her. Yet all she could think about was how lovely Luzenberg would look nestled in the giant seashell, his wings spread high and wide, eclipsing Proteus with his young debutante queen. Then she thought of Luzenberg’s first brother, the crushed entrails smeared between the seahorse and the crown, the redness of her hands whenever she needed to clean the garbage disposal, and her head swam too much for her to bear.

  The next day Howard arrived with a large bundle: a rich wool suit expertly tailored (it appeared) for a creature of indeterminate size and wingspan. When he shook it out, Ann realized the pockets had been stuffed
with $100 bills. It even came with a cream silk tie covered in small, outstretched hands.

  “Do you get it?” Howard said. “He’s Ray Nagin. Or Bill Jefferson. They’re all the same anyway.”

  Who is all the same, Ann wanted to ask, but her head pounded, and she thought she felt sick. She couldn’t remember drinking as much as she apparently had.

  “I don’t think—” she started, and then she had to sprint for the powder room.

  “Perhaps you should take Luzenberg yourself, Howie. I don’t think our Ann is up for it.”

  When Ann opened her eyes again, she was leaning against the toilet, the old woman’s hand in her hair, pulling it back.

  “I think I made a mistake,” she said.

  “We all do, from time to time,” Mrs. Luzenberg said. “Next time you’ll know better how to control yourself.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Shh now, don’t exert yourself.”

  There was a burst of citrus on her tongue, and she looked up at the old woman’s neck but it was white and pale and smooth.

  Howard didn’t come back that afternoon, nor the next day. He had made a dinner reservation for Thursday, a date Ann began to look forward to as a way to break up with him once and for all, but he canceled at the last minute. A man delivered a bottle of expensive bourbon to the house addressed to both Ann and Mrs. Luzenberg. Attached was a note: “With my apologies for missing you tonight. I thought of sending flowers, but thought this was more appropriate. —H”

  “He didn’t say anything about Luzenberg,” Ann said.

  “I’m sure he’s alright.”

  Ann called him, but there was no answer. She tried again and again but still was unable to reach him. At night she let the window open in case Luzenberg found his way back to her, and twice she went down to the police station to report a theft, or kidnapping, but whenever they asked her to describe her missing pet (which, they reminded her, was not a police concern), she could tell them nothing. The words would not come. “Try the shelters,” they said, and ushered her out the door.

  By week three she knew that Luzenberg was gone for good. Mrs. Luzenberg patted her back and said that men were only ever after one thing, and Ann was better off without them. “In a few more years, you can change your name. Everyone will assume you’re simply a widow. No one will be the wiser.”

  Mrs. Luzenberg’s neck moved with her lips and Ann held out her hand, letting the small, weak creature fall onto her palm with a slick plopping sound. Both of its eyes were open and it stared at her, unblinking and unafraid. Ann grasped it by the legs, and with a deft snap of her wrist, cracked its head open against the white porcelain sink.

  “You never told me why it happens,” Ann said.

  “Just as my mother never told me,” Mrs. Luzenberg said. “Some things are not for us to understand, but to accept, and deal with, and clean up after.”

  “Doesn’t seem fair.”

  The next Sunday, Ann joined the bridge club in the living room. She was introduced as Mrs. Luzenberg and everyone assumed that she was the widow of Mrs. Luzenberg Senior’s son, the one who died in a war. They told Ann how lovely it was that she decided to stay in New Orleans, despite the sad memories, just to care for her mother-in-law. Ann nodded and poured tea from the silver service, crinkling her nose at the faint smell of polish.

  After, as they scrubbed the plates and put away the leftover sandwiches in glass containers, poured out the remaining Champagne (it doesn’t keep) and folded up the linens, Ann asked why the women hadn’t recognized her as Mrs. Luzenberg’s assistant.

  “We’ve all been there, dear,” she said. “Some women don’t get married, and isn’t it a shame when their time runs out.”

  “So they all know the truth,” Ann said. “And pretend otherwise.”

  “Such is the way of things.”

  “I could still leave,” Ann said.

  Mrs. Luzenberg turned. The skin of her face was caked thick with makeup, and her neck sagged and jiggled as she moved. Ann could see the definition of her bones and veins as she pulled a dishcloth across a plate. The skin at her neck was pale and translucent and Ann marveled that Mrs. Luzenberg did not die each time a new baby cthulhu pierced through her neck. “You could,” she said.

  A few years later as Ann finalized the arrangements for Mrs. Luzenberg’s funeral, she received a card in the mail. At first she assumed it was yet another note expressing sincere and heartfelt condolences and she set it aside with the others. But when she sorted through them again, she noticed it was unsigned with no return address. Yet the postmark of Providence told her enough. She didn’t know which of them had sent it. She didn’t think it mattered.

  She set the card on the table and considered it for a long time. She could burn it. Or simply throw it away. But when she reached for it, she found her hands folding it into a paper airplane, a shape she hadn’t made since she was a small girl. First in half, then triangles in the corners, and long, straight edges for balance. She folded and folded again as she walked up the stairs to the second floor, then the third, then through the hatch which led to the roof. From there she could see the cemetery, and the top of the Luzenberg crypt where the old woman would soon be buried, and for the first time she wondered if Luzenberg was even the woman’s real name. She raised her hand to flick the postcard in the air, to let it sail through the heat and humidity until it landed someplace alone in the dark. It would be a petty revenge, but hers.

  She pulled her hand back and then thrust it forward, before back again with the plane still in her hand. She could not let go.

  Howard wouldn’t have sent a card. He got what he wanted; he was done with her. This was from the other one: her Luzenberg. To let her know that he was all right, and alive, and out there in the world somewhere. As she thought it, the skin at her neck tingled she inhaled the rich scent of citrus.

  Smiling, she brought the pointed nose of the cardboard airplane to the skin at her collarbone, digging at the small indentation she knew was beginning to form. She pulled and sawed at it until she could feel her blood pour out of her and a tiny, delicate wing extend. Ann helped the creature out, setting her on the ledge where her wings might dry before reaching for another. She pulled and she tore until the skin at her chest was as loose as a cape and still they kept coming. They rolled out of her, sliding down her legs and summersaulting over their siblings. They barked and they cawed and they butted their heads and entangled their tentacles.

  Finally, with the postcard still clutched in her fingers she clambered onto the roof with them, crawling on all fours and leading her parade of cthulhus towards the precipice.

  She stood, and the crowd of them, a single organism, leaned against her legs, steadying her as she pulled her arm as far back as it would reach. They flapped their wings in encouragement as she flung the cardboard plane high into the air.

  And then they leapt after it.

  She watched as they soared over the cemetery, past the dead and the treetops and all the houses where all the Mrs. Luzenbergs of the world lay sleeping. Her chest heaved and flushed and tingled as her skin desperately tried to reknit itself. She pulled it free again and again, reaching into her chest and her liver and her kidneys and the dark spaces in between to pull the last of them free: the timid and the shy and the half-formed and set them upon the air.

  Blood and death and life and brutal, hard desire streamed out of her, and still the cardboard airplane sailed. It rose and it rose and it pulled hundreds of cthulhus behind it, to make of the world what they would.

  About the Author

  Helena Bell is an occasional poet, writer, and international traveler which means that over half of what she says is completely made up, the other half is probably made up, and the third half is about the condition of the roads. She has a BA, an MFA, a JD, and a Tax LLM which fulfills her life long dream of having more letters follow her name than are actually in it. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Shimmer Magazine, Brain Harvest, an
d Rattle.

  Seeking boarder for rm w/ attached bathroom,

  must be willing to live with ghosts ($500 / Berkeley)

  Rahul Kanakia

  First Listing

  I’m looking for a roommate, preferably a gay male, non-drinker, non-drug user, to share a comfortable Craftsman-style, three-bedroom, two-bathroom bungalow in Berkeley. Owner-occupied home has hardwood floors, skylights, fireplace, built-in bar-b-q, nice garden, washer and dryer. Clean and well maintained. Room is approximately one hundred eighty sq. ft and includes attached bathroom.

  This is a quiet residential neighborhood, full of children and dogs. You must have your own telephone, but all other utilities shared. Place is wired for DSL. I want to build a comfortable home based on communication and shared responsibility. Share with owner (me), a sixty-one-year-old gay male and small business owner who works in the ectoplasmic removal / storage sector and has lived in the home for thirteen years.

  Sole caveat: The living room, garage, basement, and third bedroom are used primarily for ectoplasmic storage. Don’t know if you’ve ever seen them, but ghost flasks are small, unobtrusive, and thoroughly safe. However, mine do emit a slight noise. The previous boarder, a twenty-seven-year-old medical student, is leaving due to excessive emotional involvement with the ghosts, and I’d prefer if my next boarder attempted to leave them alone as much as possible.

  The rent is $500.00 per month with a $725.00 deposit.