The Fifth Sacred Thing (9 page)

“You were not. You were not a virgin when you met me. I remember it clearly. You were quite experienced.”

Suddenly he was there, sitting on the edge of her bed, blond and bearded and sexy in his tight, faded jeans like he was when he was nineteen years old.

“You’re blocking the view, you old crow,” she said to him. “Move over. Where’ve you been the last couple of weeks?”

“Places. But don’t change the subject. We were discussing your unlamented virginity, which as I recall you’d unburdened yourself of at fifteen or so.”

“I’m not talking about my hymen. I’m talking about my state of being. I allowed you to mate me.”

“Was that so bad?”

“Well, it had its moments. Good and bad.”

“The best and the worst,” Rio said. “You know I never do things halfway.”

“Once I would have said it took years off my life. But I guess I can’t complain on that score.”

“Pure luck,” Johanna said. She made a fairly substantial ghost, sitting next to Rio on the side of Maya’s bed, her molasses-dark skin gleaming in the warm light, her washed-silk shirt glowing in soft shades of green. But no weight depressed the bedclothes and mattress. “Happenstance. Not for any great virtue the rest of us don’t possess.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You. Why you’re still alive and the rest of us are dead.”

“Jealous?”

Johanna snorted, a sound characteristic of her in life. “Not of you, girlfriend. There are a few pleasures that compensate for the discomforts and petty humiliations of corporeality, but I’m afraid you are long past them.”

“Don’t count on that. And watch out. Dwell too much on the pleasures of the flesh, and you’ll find yourself reincarnating.”

“I intend to, at the earliest opportunity, in your line if not my own.”

“My line seems to have faded out.”

“Don’t give up on Bird yet,” Rio said.

“Why not? Do you know something I don’t know?”

“The dead are forbidden to tell all we know,” Johanna informed her.

“Oh, screw you,” Maya said, but her tone was affectionate.

“That, I’m afraid, is no longer possible between us.” Johanna smiled, tilting her head down to look up from under raised brows, a seductive gesture Maya remembered well. “But you wait. Someday we’ll both be back in young nubile bodies again, and it’ll be like it was that first time, when we got stoned on all that acid and ended up surprising ourselves on the locker-room floor. Not to mention those two gym teachers who found us.”

“Even dead, you’re incorrigible.”

“I am a daughter of the river, of Oshun, the Goddess of Love.”

Maya turned back to Rio. “Do you or do you not know anything about Bird?”

“Can’t say.”

“Well, I’m not sure I want either of you in my line anyway.”

“Why not? Didn’t I act as a perfect father to your kid?”

“You were a great father to every kid except your own.”

“And whose fault was that? If you or Johanna had told me she existed, I would have fathered her too.”

“Never mind that,” Maya said. “I’m not quarreling with your talent for paternity. The point is, as a son you were hell on wheels. Do you think I want to inflict that on my descendants? Wait for Madrone to breed, you and Johanna both. She’s your granddaughter. Not that she has any plans in that direction right now, not since Sandy died.”

“My line doesn’t plan these things,” Johanna said. “We have fortuitous accidents.”

“Like the fortuitous accident you had after carrying on with Mr. Superstud here?” Maya kicked her foot toward Rio’s ghost. “Who was, may I remind you,
my
boyfriend at the time?”

“That was no accident. That was an ancestor knocking at the door, wanting to be Rachel.” Johanna stretched, yawned, and winked. “Maybe ‘accident’ isn’t the operative term here. Maybe I’d better just say that my line is susceptible to intervention from the dead. Otherwise how do you explain Rachel herself, a fifty-year-old medical doctor, no doubt acquainted with the facts of life, getting knocked up by a twenty-six-year-old
combatiente
in the Guadalupano Liberation Front?”

“She was following the bad example of her elders.”

“Speak for yourself, girlfriend.”

“I was quite youthful when I had Brigid. In my mid-forties. And I would have had her by you”—she turned to Rio—“if you hadn’t had that vasectomy in prison.”

“You were practically menopausal,” Johanna said. “But that’s beside the point, which is that Rachel’s little dalliance gave us Madrone, and your fling with—what was his name?”

“Carlos.”

“Right. Anyway, he gave you Brigid and, through her, Marley, rest his soul, and Bird. And without them all, the odds would be even worse.”

“The odds of what?”

“The odds that our next lifetime will be the restful, pleasurable, tropical idyll that I am in the process of planning instead of a miserable starved sojourn in some Millennialist-infested breeding pen.”

“Our
next lifetime?”

“You, me, and Rio, our little karmic trio. That rhymes, did you notice?”

Maya looked at Johanna with suspicion. For just a moment, she seemed to have a sheaf of colored brochures in her hand, as if she’d just come from some astral travel agency. Were there agents in the afterlife who could get you special deals on accommodations in the next? Did they offer group rates?

“How can you be making plans for my next life,” Maya asked, “when I’m still in the middle of this one?”

“I’d say tail end, not middle,” Johanna countered. “You’re winding down.”

“I’m not dead yet. Anyway, haven’t we stored up enough karmic good points in this life to have assured some comfort in the next?”

“That is exactly what nobody seems to grasp about this karma business. It’s not a simple matter of cause and effect, reward and punishment. It’s a
question of what’s available. You see, as long as life for the majority of souls on this planet is just a long round of starvation, misery, torture, and early death—and believe me, outside this fortunate watershed that is an apt description of the state of affairs—as long as only a few live in comfort while the masses scrape along in want, then all us returning souls have to take our fair share of shifts among the hungry. You think this life you’ve lived was tough? Let me tell you, it was just R and R between the ones where you never get a solid meal two days running or you die before your first birthday from drinking bad water.”

“Johanna, you’re not cheering me up.”

“I didn’t come to cheer you up. I came to warn you. This next year is a pivotal time, one of those hinges that open or close the doors of fate. Watch out!”

“What do you mean?” Maya asked. She sat up and opened her eyes, but the room was empty.

Madrone quietly pushed open the door and entered Maya’s room, bearing a very old tray commemorating the marriage of Prince Charles to Lady Diana, back in the last century. Upon it rested two of Maya’s favorite Chinese cups, eggshell-thin, grass-green, with a pattern of butterflies on them, and a brown chipped teapot.

Maya observed her closely. She looked rested, but there was still a pale undertone to the hue of her warm skin that spoke of deep fatigue.

“How are you this morning?” Madrone asked.

“I’m still alive. What do you think of that?”

“I’m glad somebody is,” Madrone said, carefully placing the tray and settling herself on the edge of the bed. “You’ve been talking to the dead again?”

“How can you tell?”

“A certain faraway look you get in your eye, a little cloudy, like cataracts.” Madrone smiled and handed Maya her tea. “Any good news from the other side?”

“The dead are annoyingly cryptic.”

“They’re probably swamped with new arrivals.”

Maya sipped her tea. It was the herb they called Mystery Mint, from some spontaneous miscegenation of peppermint and spearmint in the Black Dragon garden. She wished it were good old caffeinated black tea. Twinings English Breakfast: that was what she used to like. With a little milk. They never saw that anymore. She had outlasted Twinings too. Or maybe it still existed, out in some corner of that vast world they no longer moved in. Maybe, in some air-filtered sunless enclave, the Stewards drank it every day.

“You’re really worried about this new disease, aren’t you?” Maya observed.

Madrone swirled the tea in her cup, as if looking for her fate in the dregs. Her voice was soft, controlled, but Maya could hear the pain concealed in it. “It just hit me again, about Consuelo.”

“How did it happen?”

“Her fever spiked up suddenly, triggered premature labor. She was fine the day before. There was nothing to indicate a problem, no fetal distress, no signs of toxemia. Just that odd low-grade temperature and the slight headache. Like Sandy had, before he fell off the roof.”

“You think he fell because of the fever?”

“I know he did. I could feel it, this whatever it is. Like a presence in his blood, a certain color in his aura. I can
feel
it, but I can’t
see
it or get hold of it. We don’t know what it is or how it’s spreading or what to expect. I’m afraid,
madrina.”

What to say? Maya wondered. Wasn’t she supposed to be old and wise and comforting? When did this highly touted wisdom suddenly descend? Was it like tongues of fire, or the holy dove of the Christians? Would she ever feel its claws digging into her scalp?

“I wish I could help you,” she said at last. “You carry too many burdens for somebody your age.”

“I’m twenty-eight. Almost mature.”

“A baby. A mere child, barely out of diapers. Far too young to do what you do. Why, the
curandera
who tried to train me in Mexico wasn’t allowed to heal anyone except herself until she was thirty. And she couldn’t work on anyone outside her family until she was forty.”

“That sounds luxuriously sane,” Madrone admitted. “But we don’t live in sane times.”

“At any rate, you need some time off. Or at least some stimulation besides the company of one crotchety old woman. Have you heard from Sage and Nita and Holybear? When are they coming back?”

“Not for another few weeks.”

“They should be down here with you. The house is empty without them.”

“They can’t leave their trial ponds until their experiments are complete,” Madrone said. “You should be more appreciative of their efforts.”

“How do I appreciate fifty-seven new breeds of waterborne bacteria?”

“Bacteria that can neutralize toxins might mean that our descendants could eat shellfish out of the bay again someday. If any of us survive. Which I’m beginning to think is less and less likely.”

“Everyone’s so gloomy today,” Maya complained. “Even the ghosts are intimating doom.”

Madrone smiled. “Isn’t that a ghost’s prerogative?”

“Maybe. But it worries me to see you so down in the mouth.”

“I just feel bad. About Consuelo, about Sandy. About everybody. I feel like I’ve failed them all.”

Maya patted her arm. There was nothing to say, really. She herself still felt bad about everyone she’d ever known who’d died, from Sandy back to Cameron Graham Rosenthal, who’d died of AIDS downstairs sixty years ago when the house was still divided into two separate flats. Yes, she still missed him from time to time, missed dressing up with him and strolling through the Castro, making private comments about all the beautiful young men they passed. She’d been living off Johanna’s charity then, just back from Mexico, trying to write. And the beautiful young men had not yet wasted to living skeletons, to die blotched with lesions, gasping for breath.

“I wish I could help you,” Maya said.

“You do,
madrina
. You help a lot.” Madrone closed her eyes. Really, she could almost sink back into trance, here in the sun with Maya’s hand to soothe her. When you’re tired enough, Madrone thought, the
ch’i
worlds are just an eye blink, a breath away. Like yesterday, watching beside Consuelo’s closed coffin, surrounded by lighted candles in the Sisters’ living room. Rosa sat, looking solemn, almost hidden behind a huge bouquet of calla lilies.

“I’m sorry,” Madrone had said to her. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Rosa had said, with tears pooling at the bottom of her eyes.

Not my fault but my inadequacy, Madrone said to herself, settling down to keep vigil. She had focused on the coffin, letting herself sink into the searching trance, moving down through the wood of the box, until she could
see
, with her inner eye, the body, shaped by light, its energy form already starting to come apart. Traces of Consuelo’s spirit, shreds of personality, lingered like wisps of scent. Madrone sniffed emotion—anger, outrage, a sense of being cheated, the aggrieved surprise of the unexpectedly dead. She felt sweat on her face and willed herself to breathe deeper, to sink down further. This was the worst level, and she could only get through it by saying over and over again, “Not mine. Not my pain. Not my grief.”

Down. And yes, there was something else—that elusive something she had
felt
after Sandy died. But what was it? Could a microbe have a personality, or was she just anthropomorphizing—what? If only she could see whatever it was, grab hold of it, learn how it spread and how to defeat it. She could track it, patient as any hunter, but what was there to scent but elusive traces in the air, shifts in energy? Not a flu virus, not something patterned on the old HIV series or a spirochete like syphilis or Lyme disease. They each had their characteristic signature in the energy realms, and she could recognize them as
easily as she could identify mugwort or comfrey in an overgrown garden. No, this was something else, and she was beginning to recognize its
feel
but she still couldn’t
see
it, only follow, down and down.…