The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove (19 page)

Val couldn't stand it anymore. Gabe's faux pas opened the gate, and she stepped through it. “Gabe, we have to talk.”

“I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to…”

She grabbed his arm to stop him. “No, I have to tell you something.”

Gabe braced himself for the worst. He'd fallen out of the lofty world of theory into the awkward, gritty world of first dates, and she was going to drop the “Don't get the wrong idea” bomb on him.

She gripped his arm and her nails dug into his bicep hard enough to make him wince.

She said, “A little over a month ago, I took almost a third of the people in Pine Cove off antidepressants.”

“Huh?” That wasn't at all what he'd expected. “My God, why?”

“Because of Bess Leander's suicide. Or what I thought was her suicide. I was just going through the motions in my practice. Writing prescriptions and collecting fees.” She explained about her arrangement with Winston
Krauss and how the pharmacist had refused to put everyone back on the drugs. When she finished, to wait for his judgment, there were tears welling up in her eyes.

He put his arms around her tentatively, hoping it was the right thing to do. “Why tell me this?”

She melted against his chest. “Because I trust you and because I have to tell someone and because I need to figure out what to do. I don't want to go to jail, Gabe. Maybe all my patients didn't need to be on antidepressants, but a lot of them did.” She sobbed on his shoulder and he began to stroke her hair, then pushed up her chin and kissed her tears.

“It'll be okay. It will.”

She looked up into his eyes, as if looking for a hint of disdain, then not finding it, she kissed him hard and pulled him on top of her on the couch.

And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast?

—Revelation 13:4

Steve

What horrors can a dragon dream? A creature who has, in his own way, ruled the planet for millions of years, a creature for whom the mingy man mammals have built temples, a creature who has known no predator but time—what could he possibly dream that would frighten him? Call it the knowing?

Under a stand of oak trees, sexually satisfied and with a bellyful of drug dealers, the dragon dreamed a vision of time past. The eternal now that he had always known suddenly had history. In the dream he saw himself as a larva, tucked into the protective pouch under his mother's tongue until it was safe to venture out under her watchful eye. He saw the hunting and the mating, the forms he had learned to mimic as his mercurial DNA evolved not through generations, but through regeneration of cells. He saw the mates he had eaten, the three young he had borne as a female, the last killed by a warmblood who sang the Blues. He remembered the changing, not so long ago, from female to male, and he remembered all of it in pictures, not in mere instinctual patterns and conditioned responses.

He saw these pictures in the dream, brought on by the strange mating with the warmblood, and he wondered why. For the first time in his five thousand years, he
asked,
Why
? And the dream answered with a picture of all the oceans and swamps, the rivers and bogs and trenches and mountains beneath the sea, and they were all empty of his kind. As sure as if he were floating through the cold black at the end of the universe, where light gives up hope and time chases its tail until it dies from exhaustion, he was alone.

Sex does that to some guys.

Val

“Oh my God, the rat brains!” Gabe shouted.

It was a different response to lovemaking. Val wasn't sure that she might not be hurt, feeling vulnerable as she was, with her knees in the vicinity of her ears, a biologist on top of her, and her panty hose waving off one foot like a tattered battle flag.

Gabe collapsed into her arms and she looked over his shoulder to the coffee table to check that they hadn't kicked the wineglasses off onto the carpet.

“Are you okay?” she asked, a little breathless.

“I'm sorry, but I just realized what's going on with this creature.”

“That's what you were thinking about?” Yes, her feelings were definitely hurt.

“No, not during. It came to me in a flash right after. Somehow the creature can attract mammals with lower than normal serotonin levels. And you've got, what, a third of the population running around in antidepressant withdrawal?”

She was pissed now, not hurt. She dumped him off her onto the floor, stood up, pulled her skirt down, and stepped away. He scrambled into his pants and looked around for his shirt, which lay in shreds behind the couch.
He had a tan that ended at the neckline and just below the shoulders; the rest of him was milk white. He looked up at her from the gap between the couch and the coffee table with a pleading in his eyes, as if he were looking up from a coffin in which he was about to be buried alive.

“Sorry,” he said.

He wasn't looking her in the eye, and Val suddenly realized that he was talking to her exposed breasts. She pulled her blouse closed, and a battery of insults rose in her mind, ready to be fired, but all of them were mean-spirited and would serve to do nothing but make them both feel ashamed. He was who he was, and he was honest and real, and she knew that he hadn't meant to hurt her. So she cried. Thinking, Great, crying is what got me into this in the first place.

She plopped down on the couch with her face in her hands. Gabe moved to her side and put his arm around her. “I'm really sorry. I'm not very good at this sort of thing.”

“You're fine. It's just too much.”

“I should go.” He started to stand.

She caught his arm in a death grip. “You go and I'll hunt you down and kill you like a rabid dog.”

“I'll stay.”

“No go,” she said. “I understand.”

“Okay, I'll go.”

“Don't you dare.” She threw her arms around him and kissed him hard, pulling him back down onto the couch, and within seconds they were all over each other again.

That's it, she thought, no more crying. It's the crying that does it. This guy is aroused by my pain.

But soon they lay in a panting sweaty pile on the floor and the idea of crying was light-years away.

And this time Gabe said, “That was wonderful.”

Val noticed a wineglass overturned by her head, a
cabernet stain bleeding over the carpet. “Is it salt or club soda?”

Gabe pulled away far enough to look into her eyes and saw that she was looking at the stained carpet. “Salt and cold water, I think. Or is that blood?” A drop of sweat dripped off his forehead onto her lips.

She looked at him. “You weren't thinking about that creature that doesn't exist, were you?”

“Just you.”

She smiled. “Really?”

“And a weed-whacker, for some reason.”

“You're kidding.”

“Uh, yes, I'm kidding. I was only thinking of you.”

“So you don't think I'm a horrible person for what I've done?”

“You were trying to do what you thought was right. How could that be horrible?”

“I feel horrible.”

“It's been a long time. I'm out of practice.”

“No, not about this. About my patients. You really think something could be preying on them?”

“It's just a theory. There may not even be a creature.”

“But what if there is? Shouldn't we call the National Guard or something?”

“I was thinking of calling Theo.”

“Theo isn't even a real cop.”

“He deserves to know.”

They lay there in silence for a few minutes, staring at the spreading stain on the carpet, feeling the sweat run down their ribs, and listening to the beat of each other's hearts.

“Gabe?” Val whispered.

“Yes.”

“Maybe we should go to couples' counseling.”

“Should we get dressed first?”

“You were serious about the weed-whacker, weren't you?”

“I don't know where that image came from.”

“There's supposed to be a good couples' guy in San Junipero, unless you'd rather go to a woman counselor.”

“I thought we were going to call the National Guard.”

“Only if it comes to that,” Val said. Thinking, When we tell the shrink about this, I'm leaving out the part about the wine spilling.

Theo

Is there anything more irritating than people who have just been laid? Especially when you have not. Not for a long time.

Oh, it was obvious as soon as they came through Molly's front door, waking Theo for the second time that night: Gabe's grin looking like the oversized grill on an old Chrysler, Val Riordan wearing jeans and almost no makeup; the both of them giddy and giggling and blushing like children. Theo wanted to puke. He was happy for them, but he wanted to puke.

“What?” Theo said.

Gabe was obviously amped and trying not to show it. He put his hands in his pockets to keep from waving them around. “I”—he looked at Val and smiled—“
we
think that this creature, if it exists, may be attracted to prey with low serum serotonin levels.”

Gabe bounced on the balls of his feet as he waited for his statement to sink in. Theo sat there, staring at him, with no discernible change in expression from the weariness he'd worn since they came through the door. He guessed that he was supposed to say something now.

“Molly was here,” Theo said. “The creature exists. It
ate Mikey Plotznik, and Joseph Leander, and who knows who else? She said it's a dragon.”

Gabe's grin dropped. “That's great. I mean, that's horrible, but it's great from a scientific point of view. I have another theory about this species. I think it has some specialized mechanism to affect its prey. Have you been horny lately?”

“There's no need to be arrogant, Gabe. I'm glad you two had a good time, but there's no need to rub it in.”

“No no, you don't get it.” Gabe went on to explain about Val Riordan's decision to take her patients off antidepressants and how the lowering of serotonin levels could lead to increased libido. “So Pine Cove has been full of horny people.”

“Right,” Theo said. “And I still can't get a date.”

Val Riordan laughed and Theo glared at her. Gabe said, “The rats I found alive near this trailer, where we think the creature might have been, were mating when I found them. There are some species of carnivorous plants that give off a sex pheromone that attracts their prey. In some species, the behavior of the male—a display, a dance, a scent—will stimulate the ovaries in the female of the species without any physical contact. I think that's what's happened to us.”

“Our ovaries are being stimulated?” Theo rubbed sleep from his eyes. “I gotta be honest with you, Gabe. I'm not feeling it.”

Val turned to Gabe. “That's not very romantic.”

“It's incredibly exciting. This may be the most elegant predator that the world has ever seen.”

Theo shook his head. “I have no home, no job, no car, there's probably a warrant out for my arrest, and you want me to be excited over the fact that we have a monster in town that makes you horny so he can eat you? Sorry, Gabe, I'm missing the positive side of this.”

Val chimed in, “It may be the reason that you've been able to quit smoking pot so easily.”

“Pardon me? Easily?” Theo wanted to jump off the couch and bitch-slap them both.

“Were you ever able to go this long before?”

“She could be right, Theo,” Gabe said. “If this thing affects serotonin, it could affect other neurotransmitters.”

“Oh good,” Theo said. “Let's open a detox clinic. We'll feed half of the patients to the monster and the other half will recover. I can't wait.”

“There's no need to be sarcastic,” Gabe said. “We're just trying to help.”

“Help? Help with what? Bar fight? I can handle it. Skateboard theft? I'm on it. But my law enforcement experience hasn't prepared me for dealing with this.”

“That's true, Gabe,” Val said. “Theo's little more than a rent-a-cop. Maybe we should call the sheriff or the FBI or the National Guard.”

“And tell them what?” Theo asked. Rent-a-cop? I'm not even that now, he thought.

“He has a point.” Gabe said. “We haven't seen anything.”

“That old Blues singer has,” Val said.

Theo nodded. “We need to find him. Maybe he'll…”

“He's living with Estelle Boyet,” Val said. “I have her address in my office.”

The Sheriff

Sheriff John Burton stood by the ruins of Theo's Volvo, pounding the keys of his cell phone. He could smell the cow shit he'd stepped in coming off his Guccis and the damp wind was blowing cowlicks in his gelled silver hair. His black Armani suit was smudged with the ashes he'd poked through at Theo's cabin, thinking there might be a burned body underneath. He was not happy.

Didn't anybody answer their goddamn phone anymore? He'd called Joseph Leander, Theophilus Crowe, and Jim Beer, the man who owned the ranch, and no one was answering. Which is what had brought him to Pine Cove in the middle of the night in a state of near panic in the first place. The second shift of crank cookers should be working in the lab right now, but there was no one around. His world was falling down around him, all because of the meddling of a pothead constable who had forgotten that he was supposed to be incompetent.

Crowe's line was ringing. Burton heard a click, then was immediately disconnected. “Fuck!” He slammed the cell phone shut and dropped it into the pocket of his suit jacket. Someone was answering Crowe's phone. Either he was still alive or Leander had killed him, taken his phone, and was fucking with him. But Leander's van had been parked at Crowe's cabin? So where was he? Not at home,
Burton had already checked, finding nothing but a sleepy baby-sitter and two groggy little girls in nightgowns. Would Leander run and not take his daughters?

Burton pulled out the phone and dialed the data offices at the department. The Spider answered.

“Nailsworth,” the Spider said. Burton could hear him chewing.

“Put down that Twinkie, you fucking tub of lard, I need you to find me a name and an address.”

“It's a Sno Ball. Pink. I only eat the marshmallow covers.”

Burton could feel his pulse rising in his temples and made an effort to control his rage. In the rush to get to Pine Cove, he'd forgotten to take his blood pressure medication. “The name is Betsy Butler. I need a Pine Cove address.”

“Joseph Leander's girlfriend?” the Spider asked.

“How do you know that?”

“Please, Sheriff,” the Spider said with a snort. “Remember who you're talking to.”

“Just get me the address.” Burton could hear Nailsworth typing. The Spider was dangerous, a constant threat to his operation, and Burton couldn't figure out how to get to him. He was immune to bribes or threats of any kind and seemed content with his lot in life as long as he could make others squirm. And Burton was too afraid of what the corpulent information officer might really know to fire him. Maybe some of that foxglove tea that Leander had used on his wife. Certainly, no one would question heart failure in a man who got winded unwrapping a Snickers.

“No address,” Nailsworth said. “Just a P.O. box. I checked DMV, TRW, and Social Security. She works at H.P.'s Cafe in Pine Cove. You want the address?”

“It's five in the morning, Nailsworth. I need to find this woman now.”

The Spider sighed. “They open for breakfast at six. Do you want the address?”

Burton was seething again. “Give it to me,” he said through gritted teeth.

The Spider gave him an address on Cypress Street and said, “Try the Eggs-Sothoth, they're supposed to be great.”

“How would you know? You never leave the goddamn office.”

“Ah, what fools these mortals be,” the Spider said in a very bad British accent. “I know everything, Sheriff. Everything.” Then he hung up.

Burton took a deep breath and checked his Rolex. He had enough time to make a little visit to Jim Beer's ranch house before the restaurant opened. The old shit kicker was probably already up and punching doggies, or whatever the fuck ranchers did at this hour. He certainly wasn't answering his phone. Burton climbed into the black Eldorado and roared across the rutted ranch road toward the gate by Theo's cabin.

As he headed out to the Coast Highway to loop back to the front of the ranch (he'd be damned if he'd take his Caddy across two miles of cow trails), someone stepped into his headlights and he slammed on the brakes. The antilocks throbbed and the Caddy stopped just short of running over a woman in a white choir robe. There was a whole line of them, making their way down the Coast Highway, shielding candles against the wind. They didn't even look up, but walked past the front of his car as if in a trance.

Burton rolled down the window and stuck his head out.

“What are you people doing? It's five in the morning.”

A balding man whose choir robe was three sizes too small looked up with a beatific smile and said, “We've
been called by the Holy Spirit. We've been called.” Then he walked on.

“Yeah, well, you almost got to see him early!” Burton yelled, but no one paid attention. He fell back into the seat and waited as the procession passed. It wasn't just people in choir robes, but aging hippies in jeans and Birkenstocks, half a dozen Gen X'ers dressed in their Sunday best, and one skinny guy who was wearing the saffron robes of a Buddhist monk.

Burton wrenched his briefcase off the passenger seat and popped it open. False passport, driver's license, Social Security card, stick-on beard, and a ticket to the Caymans: the platinum parachute kit he kept with him at all times. Maybe it was time to bail.

Skinner

Well, the Food Guy finally got a female, Skinner thought. Probably because he had the scent of those mashed cows on him. Skinner had been tempted to roll in the goo himself, but was afraid the Food Guy would yell at him. (He hated that.) But this was even better: riding in the different car with the Food Guy and his female and the Tall Guy who always smelled of burning weeds and sometimes gave him hamburgers. He looked out the window and wagged his tail, which repeatedly smacked Theo in the face.

They were stopping. Oh boy, maybe they would leave him in the car. That would be good; the seats were chewy and tasted of cow. But no, they let him out, told him to come along with them to the small house. An Old Guy answered the door and Skinner said hi with a nose to the crotch. The Old Guy scratched his ears. Skinner liked him. He smelled like a dog who'd been howling all night.
Being near him made Skinner want to howl and he did, one time, enjoying the sad sound of his own voice.

The Food Guy told him to shut up.

The Old Guy said, “I guess I know how you feel.”

They all went inside and left Skinner there on the steps. They were all nervous, Skinner could smell it, and they probably wouldn't be inside long. He had work to do. It was a big yard with a lot of shrubs where other dogs had left him messages. He needed to reply to them all, so each could only get a short spray. Dog e-mail.

He was only half-finished when they came back out.

The Tall Guy said, “Well, Mr. Jefferson, we're going to find the monster and we'd like your help. You're the only one who has seen it.”

“Oh, I think you'll know him when you see him,” said the old guy. “Y'all don't need my help.”

Everyone smelled sad and afraid and Skinner couldn't help himself. He let loose a forlorn howl that he held until the Food Guy grabbed his collar and dragged him to the car. Skinner had a bad feeling that they might be going to the place where there was danger.

Danger, Food Guy, he warned. His barking was deafening in the confines of the Mercedes.

Estelle

Estelle was fuming as she cleared the teacups from the table and threw them into the sink. Two broke and she swore to herself, then turned to Catfish, who was sitting on the bed picking out a soft version of “Walkin' Man's Blues” on the National steel guitar.

“You could have helped them,” Estelle said.

Catfish looked at the guitar and sang, “Got a mean old woman, Lawd, stay angry all the time.”

“There's nothing noble in using your art to escape life. You should have helped them.”

“Got a mean old woman, Lawd, Lawd, Lawd. She just stay angry all the time.”

“Don't you ignore me, Catfish Jefferson. I'm talking to you. People in this town have been good to you. You should help them.”

Catfish threw back his head and sang to the ceiling, “She gots no idea, Lawd, what's hers and what's mine.”

Estelle snagged a skillet out of the dish rack, crossed the room, and raised it for a rocketing forehand shot to Catfish's head. “Go ahead, sing another verse about your 'mean old woman,' Catfish. I'm curious, what rhymes with 'clobbered'?”

Catfish put the guitar aside and slipped on his sunglasses. “You know, they say a woman was the one poisoned Robert Johnson?”

“Do you know what she used?” Estelle wasn't smiling. “I'm making my shopping list.”

“Dang, woman, why you talk like that? I ain't been nothin but good to you.”

“And me to you. That's why you keep singing that mean old woman song, right?”

“Don't sound right singin 'sweet old woman.'”

Estelle lowered the pan. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“You can help them and when it's over you can stay here. you can play your music, I can paint. People in Pine Cove love your music.”

“People here sayin hello to me on the street, puttin too much money in the tip jar, buying me drinks—I ain't got the Blues on me no more.”

“So you have to go wreck your car, or pick cotton, or shoot a man in Memphis, or whatever it is that you have to do to put the Blues on you? For what?”

“It's what I do. I don't know nothin else.”

“You've never tried anything else. I'm here, I'm real.
Is it so bad to know that you have a warm bed to sleep in with someone who loves you? There's nothing out there, Catfish.”

“That dragon out there. He always be out there.”

“So face it. You got away from it before.”

“Why you care?”

“Because it took a lot for me to open my heart to you after what I've been through, and I don't have much tolerance for cowards anymore.”

“Call it like you sees it, Mama.”

Estelle turned and went back to the kitchen. “Then maybe you better go.”

“I'll get my hat,” Catfish said. He snapped the National back into its case, grabbed his hat from the table, and in a moment he was gone.

Estelle turned and stared at the door. When she heard his station wagon start, she fell to the floor and felt a once warm future bleed a black stain around her.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

The cave lay under a hillside, less than a mile from the ranch road at Theo's cabin. The narrow mouth looked down over a wide, grassy marine terrace to the Pacific, and the interior, which opened into a huge cathedral chamber, echoed with the sound of crashing waves. Fossilized starfish and trilobites peppered the walls and the rocky floor was covered with a patina of bat guano and crystallized sea salt. The last time Steve had visited the cave it had been underwater, and he had spent a pleasant autumn there feeding on the gray whales that migrated down the coast to Baja to bear their young. He didn't remember the cave consciously, of course, but when he sensed that Molly was searching for a hiding place, the
map in his mind that had long ago gone to instinct led them there.

Since they'd arrived at the cave, a dark mood had fallen on Steve and, in turn, over Molly. She'd used the weed-whacker on the Sea Beast several times to try to cheer him up, but now the sex machine was out of gas and Molly was developing a heat rash on the inside of her thighs from repeated tongue lashings. It had been two days since she had eaten, and even Steve refused to touch his cows (Black Angus steers, now that Molly knew he couldn't tolerate dairy).

Since the coming of the Sea Beast, Molly had been in a state of controlled euphoria. Worries about her sanity had melted away and she had joined him in the Zen moment that is the life of an animal, but since the dream and the horrible self-consciousness that had descended on Steve, the notion of their incompatibility had begun to rise in Molly's mind like a trout to a fly.

“Steve,” she said, leaning on her broadsword and staring him squarely in one of his basketball eyes, “your breath could knock a buzzard off a shit wagon.”

The Sea Beast, rather than go on the defensive (which was fortunate for Molly, because the only defense he could think of was to bite her legs off), let out a pathetic whimper and tried to tuck his huge head under a forelimb. Molly immediately regretted her comment and tried to patch the damage.

“Oh, I know, it's not your fault. Maybe someone sells Tic Tacs the size of easy chairs. We'll get through it.” But she didn't mean it, and Steve could sense her insincerity. “Maybe we need to get out more,” she added.

Dawn had broken outside and a beam of sunlight was streaming into the cathedral like a cop's flashlight in a smoky bar. “Maybe a swim,” Molly said. “Your gills seem to be healing.” How she knew the treelike growths on his
neck were gills, she wasn't sure—perhaps more of the unspoken communication that passes between lovers.

Steve lifted his head and Molly thought that she might have gotten his attention, but then she noticed that a shadow had come over the entrance to the cave. She looked up to see half a dozen people in choir robes standing at the opening of the cathedral.

“We've come to offer sacrifice,” one woman managed to say.

“And not a breath mint among you, I'll bet,” Molly said.