Mendoza in Hollywood (35 page)

But even as I turned my attention to the latest nasty caricature of Abraham Lincoln, I picked up the signal of a mortal approaching. So much for blessed solitude.

I ignored it as long as I could, which wasn’t very long. What the hell was this mortal doing? I set down the papers, got up, and went outside.

It was a male, very much in control of his thoughts and emotions, wary but not particularly afraid or even disturbed. No, he was concentrating
intently on his activity of the moment, which seemed to be the covert surveillance of our humble establishment. I faded back into the doorway and scanned.

Yes, there he was on the ridgeline, a barely visible figure having a nice leisurely look at us through a pair of field glasses. They were all I could distinguish on visual alone. Infrared in broad daylight gave me a sketchy little scarlet ghost, but judging from the proportions, he was large. There were large animal readings, too; the man must have had a horse tethered just out of sight.

Over the next hour he worked his way around our canyon, studying us from ail sides. I gave up and went indoors, deciding he was after the valise. He was welcome to it, as far as I was concerned. He didn’t read like a mortal intent on violence, so I settled back in the kitchen, put my feet up again, and resumed my perusal of the British funny papers. I did make sure that my gun belt was fastened properly and my Navy revolver was loose in its holster, though.

Was he going to have his look and go sneakily away, leaving me in peace? No, damn it, here he was again, riding up the trail on horseback like a proper visitor. He was going to come to the door. I had him on audio now; there were the plodding hoofbeats of his horse; I could hear his breathing and his heartbeat. There was something unsettling about them. I eased my gun from its holster and held it concealed behind the copy of
Punch
I had been reading. I hoped I wouldn’t have to blow a hole through that comic poem about highwaymen. He was a
very
large man, too. Would one bullet stop him?

“Hello? Is anyone here?” he called out.

And his words might have been a bullet through me, such an impact they had on this immortal body I wear, señors. I jerked as though I’d taken a hit, cursing silently and wondering whether I was having some sort of malfunction, some electronic seizure. My chair squeaked a good two inches backward. I did a self-diagnostic in the fraction of a second it took for the echo of his words to die away, but found nothing wrong.

The man heard the noise my chair made and was coming to the
door. Angrily I got to my feet, holstering my weapon—why, I don’t know—and tossing away the papers. Every defensive sense I had was activated. There, he had stepped through the doorway and halted, looking into the kitchen at me.

A big mortal indeed, absurdly so, even without the tall hat he was in the act of removing. He wore the tailored clothing of a Continental gentleman, in subtle tones of gray and brown that had just incidentally made him nearly impossible to see in the underbrush. You couldn’t have told he’d been out there crawling around in the purple sage, though; not a wrinkle nor a stain on the man, not a single twig in his lank fair hair.

He was even wearing gloves; at least the hand that held the Spanish-English phrasebook was gloved. He was wearing a gun, too, though that was discreetly holstered under his left arm and would have been invisible to another mortal. He smiled at me with a great deal of charm and no little confidence. When he smiled, his pale-blue eyes narrowed and his high wide cheekbones seemed to slant upward, which made his long broken nose look longer.

He was, señors, the living image of the man I had last seen bound to a stake, screaming in flames, three centuries ago and half the world away. How could I not know him, my one and only lover? He had died in those flames, and my human heart had gone into the fire with him and become the charred thing it was. But here he was now, he’d smashed through the barrier of dreams and come to claim me in no more hauntings but in living flesh. My doom had come upon me, as the lady in the poem said.

“Please excuse me, señorita,” he said in perfect Castilian Spanish. He pretended to read from the phrasebook. “Is this the inn where one may meet the coach to San Francisco?”

It was the same voice, too, that dark tenor of such power, such beauty. When he’d preached to the avid spectators from the flames, even they had been moved to tears.

I found myself perfectly calm. Well, I wasn’t a mortal woman who might have fainted or wept, was I? I was the same cyborg creature
who’d watched Nicholas Harpole die, and I knew he was dead, and this man could not be my lover miraculously returned to me. “I speak English, señor,” I said.

“Do you?” he replied. “How very convenient for us both.” His smile widened, and the phrasebook disappeared into his pocket with a single graceful movement. Dear God help me, he was an Englishman. Not
my
Englishman, of course. I was going to be rational about this if it killed me.

Who did I think he was, you ask? Give me more Theobromos, and I’ll tell you my friend Joseph’s theory of genetic stability.

Thanks so much. Joseph calls it the English Character Actor Phenomenon. Have you ever had occasion to watch a lot of British cinema, or look at British portraits or photographs? You may have noticed that many of the faces are identical, though separated by decades or even centuries. Compare a cast photo of the D’Oyly Carte company from 1885 with one from 1973, for example. Some of them could be the same people, as immortal as we are. Of course they’re not; and there’s no need to grope for a mystical reason to explain the resemblance, either. It’s a simple matter of genetics on a rather small island. There are only so many faces, only so many physical types in that gene pool. You can find the same sort of recurring appearances in other communities that tend to disapprove of marriage outside one’s race.

Older operatives with countless lifetimes behind them—like Joseph, for example, whose theory this is—are always running into people who could be identical twins to mortals they knew centuries earlier. I’m told one gets over the surprise fairly soon. Perhaps I would, too.

“By your leave, señorita,” said the mortal man, holding my gaze steadily as he stepped forward with a caution that indicated he’d noticed my weapon and taken my measure. “I believe we have acquaintances in common. I was informed at the Bella Union Hotel that there was a well-spoken daughter of joy who kept a private house at this location. Have I the pleasure of her company?”

“No, señor,” I said. “She is away. I do not expect her return for some days.”

“Ah.” He tilted his head a little to one side, considering me. “You are perhaps in her employ?”

I blinked at him. It actually took me a moment to realize that this magnificent stranger was asking me to have sex with him. He thought I was a whore, my long-lost beloved.

On the other hand, I had been celibate for just over three centuries now, and the nearness of his mortal flesh and the sound of his voice were more than I could bear.

Why not? Why deny myself this thing?

“Yes,” I said.

“Very well,” he said, drawing off his remaining glove and tucking it in his hat with the other one. “I trust you have the afternoon free? Where may we be undisturbed?”

I led him into Imarte’s room without a word.

The light flickered over his eyes as he took in the dimensions of the room, rapidly noting placement of doors and windows, locking mechanisms, possible traps. He was
scanning
, señors, as ably as one of us, if without electronic assistance. He spotted the valise under Imarte’s table—no change in his expression at all—and turned his attention to me with nothing but expectant and straightforward lust. Had I always been able to read him like this? But I was so young when I met my man, and so many years of hard living since then had sharpened my perceptions.

“What is your pleasure, señor?” I asked after an awkward pause. Wasn’t that what whores said?

He drew his eyebrows together slightly. “Well, under the circumstances, I believe it’s customary for one to undress,” he said, just a hint of irony in that well-bred voice. Undress, right. I unbuckled my gun belt, and he held out his hand to take it. “Allow me.”

He hung it over a chair, well out of my reach. I watched as he turned back to me, and our eyes met, acknowledging that he’d scored
the first touch. He stepped back a pace to indicate that I should proceed.

So I took them off, the drab and convenient garments of my life, the long walking skirt with its slightly muddy hem, the plain dark blouse and bodice, the battered high-topped boots and threadbare black stockings. My lingerie was a disgrace, shabby gray cotton I’d mended with pack thread; but I had never expected to sleep with anyone again. It just goes to show that you ought to invest in good underwear, because you never know, do you, when a long-dead lover will pop up and whisk you into bed. At least my flesh was presentable: to all appearances that of the same eighteen-year-old girl who’d loved the man in England. Immortality has that much consolation.

He watched me intently, and only when he’d seen that I had no other weapons concealed in any other possible place did the good red blood rise into his face, and a certain ready warmth into his eyes.

“Charming” was all he said; and setting down his hat and gloves, he shrugged out of his coat. There was his holster, for anyone to see, with a revolver snugly tucked away in it. He acknowledged my stare with a frank smile. “Lest one fall amongst thieves whilst traveling,” he explained. He took it off and hung it on the chair next to mine, but rather closer to the bed. While removing his boots, he was able to get a good look under the bed and satisfy himself that nobody was lurking there. Off came his waistcoat with its watch in the little pocket, off came his flowing tie; and that was as undressed as he was going to get, except for letting his suspenders down and unbuttoning where necessary. What a pity; I wondered if the rest of him was eerily identical to Nicholas Harpole. What I could see as he unbuttoned was gorgeously the same.

We sank down on the counterpane together and, yes, if this wasn’t the same man, there was something wildly wrong with the universe. He kissed like Nicholas, used his hands with the same masterful expertise, played my body like a rare instrument just as Nicholas had done, as though I were something beautiful.

There was only one moment of trouble, when an expression of amazement crossed his face, and he rose on his elbows and gave me a sharp wondering look; but the music was playing too sweetly to stop the dance now, and we went leaping on. I didn’t try to guess what he was thinking. Would
you
have?

I won’t describe the physical pleasure. You wouldn’t believe it, señors. I don’t know that I believed it myself. One moment the world had been the sad ordinary place I’d lived in for the better part of three centuries, and the next it had shattered and fallen away like an image painted on glass, a dreary illusion gone forever. If this day was possible, then angels might exist, fairies too, miracles and wonders, even a loving God.

I think we made love for hours. He was a determined sensualist, as perfect and as tireless as one of us, and seemed intent on exhausting me, which of course he couldn’t do, except emotionally. A long while later, I lay weeping silently, curled against him. He leaned up on one elbow to regard me.

My God, the same dear face, flushed in the same way after his pleasure. His eyes were sharp and considering; and yet I could sense no desire to harm me, though I’d detected at least three more weapons concealed on his person during our lovemaking. What on earth was he, a professional assassin?

Well, why else would he be carrying all those weapons? He’d been sent for the valise, and I was the only witness.

This realization hit me like a thunderbolt, in the precise moment that he casually draped an arm over me and pulled me close again. Without apparent effort on his part I found myself caught against him, my arms securely pinioned and the weight of his big body holding me down. If I’d been a mortal woman, I couldn’t have escaped. My heart raced all the same.

He looked into my eyes, probing for something. “That was delightful, my dear,” he told me suavely. “But you’re not a whore, are you?”

“No, señor,” I said. “My apologies for the deception.”

“You were in fact a virgin, were you not?” He sounded regretful, not for my lost innocence but because he was afraid there might have to be a death in this room, and he was sincerely hoping it wouldn’t be necessary.

I stared. I couldn’t tell him that if I seemed a virgin, it might be because I hadn’t slept with anybody since March 1555. Did you know our bodily regeneration was that thorough? I hadn’t known. “Yes, señor, I was,” I answered.

He smiled slightly. “I don’t flatter myself that my personal attractions led you to sacrifice something of such value to a young lady. Why, then, did you lie to me concerning your . . . vocation?”

What he intended to do next depended on my answer to that question. What was the right answer? No way to tell him the truth. At least I was in fair control of myself. Time was when even a mortal in a temper would have had me winking out in nervous terror. Killer apes, I’d called them; but this was a killer angel. You may think he was a monster, señors, prepared as he was to quietly kill a woman he’d just pleasured; but I tell you it maddened me with new desire, and isn’t
that
monstrous? But who in the hell knows what’s clean or unclean in love?

“I needed the money, señor,” I lied, as frankly as I knew how. “Bereavement has left me a pauper, without refuge. In the past few days my situation has become desperate. The whore of this place is absent, I told you the truth of that; and when you came inquiring for her, it appeared that fate had placed a terrible opportunity before me. You seemed like a decent man, señor.”

“Or at least a wealthy one?” He raised one eyebrow and studied me. His body was relaxing. “And this, then, was the occasion of your fall from grace? I trust you won’t take offense if I observe that you don’t seem suited for this occupation. Are you aware you never even set me a price, my dear? Pleasant as our dalliance was—and believe me, señorita, it was a pleasure indeed—I think this is not the life for you.”