“I had to tell you that,” she said, “and also I have to tell you that while I am unbelievably hot for you, we are not going to jump into bed right now.”
“No?”
“No. I was serious about being still a little stuck in the unseen world. It wouldn’t be healthy for either of us. Real sorcerers are usually chaste.”
“Uh-huh. And when do you think you’ll get unstuck?”
“When I’m home in Sionnet, after having escaped by water. The prophecy.”
“But the thing’s over. Dingdong the witch is dead.”
“Oh, right, so now we can just forget what happened? You’ve seen Ifa. Do you think he’s someone you want to fuck around with?” He had nothing to say to that. An involuntary shudder ran up his spine. She rose from his lap, grabbed a straight chair, and straddled it.
“A little distance, I think,” she said. “Look, you’re feeling sexual, right? Attracted to me?”
“Majorly.”
“Right, and I’m attracted to you. You’re exactly my type, as you probably figured out already. You don’t have his brilliance, but you’re more solid. You love your mother and she loves you. You really are un hombre sincero de donde crecen la palma. There isn’t a big fat hole in you for the grelet to crawl into. Besides that, I’m unbelievably horny. The escape from danger, and it’s been years for me …” She laughed. “Always a deadly combo. I’m throwing out gallons of pheromones and so are you. If we’re not careful, we’ll have a romance.”
“This would be bad?”
“Well, yeah. Do you want to spend more time in drugged hallucination? I don’t.”
Paz didn’t like the way the conversation was going. “What do you want, then?” he asked.
“I want to take Luz back to my family and glue her into it. I want to ask forgiveness from them, and forgive them, too. I might be able to help my mom, and even if not, I can be there for her as a person, not a cranky child. She doesn’t love me, but I can love her. I want to sail around the Sound with Josey and teach Luz the water. That seems like enough for starters. Later, I’ll take up my work again. I need to get back in touch with Marcel Vierchau, too, speaking of forgiveness. You know, I saw him once a couple of years ago in the Atlanta airport. I spotted him coming down the corridor and I ducked into the ladies’ so I wouldn’t have to confront him. The point is, I want to live actual life now, not hallucination, so …”
“I get it.” He stood up. “Well, I guess I’ll be going then.”
“Oh, sit down! We just defeated the powers of darkness together and now you’re ditching me because I won’t fuck you?”
Surprising himself, he sat down again. She said, “You want some advice?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Sure. If your life is perfect you don’t need any advice. That’s a Yoruba saying.”
He thought about that for a while. “All right. What is it?” Grumpily.
“Do the same as me. Stop acting like a baby with your mom. See her. Love her for what she is. And your father, too.”
“What? That bastard?”
“He’s still your father, and you’re not a little kid anymore. You’re a big, strong cop. A heroic cop. You’ve been on TV, on national TV. Your pal Doris is going to write a bestselling completely fallacious but plausible book about this whole thing, and you’re going to be the star of it. There’ll be a movie. The Cuban community’s going to be falling all over themselves to thank the guy who caught the fiend who killed Teresa Vargas. Don’t you think the whole thing about your dad is going to come out?”
Paz had not considered this. He felt fear sweat prickle on his forehead. She went on: “You have to look him in the eye and forgive him. If he rejects you then, it’s on him, you don’t have to drag his shit around for the rest of your life. You’ve got a couple of half siblings, too. And a stepmother. They might have something to say about it.”
“Thanks for the advice,” he said neutrally. She held his eye for a long time, waiting, it seemed, for something that did not occur, and then closed her eyes.
“You’re welcome.” She stood up and yawned. “Look, Paz. I haven’t slept more than a couple of hours in over four days. I’m going to sleep until Luz wakes me up tomorrow. We’ll talk then. Good night.”
With that she walked into her bedroom and shut the door.
Paz drove slowly through the city, to his apartment, showered, and got into bed. For a while he listened to grel thoughts: crazy bitch, white girl, couldn’t possibly understand, never going to do that shit, need to find some other women, need to move out of this place, quit the restaurant, what am I supposed to do, go see Yoiyo, what crap, he’d spit in my face … and then fell into an unprofitably dreamless sleep.
In the morning, there were TV crews outside his house, wanting interviews and film. He brushed past them and drove to the Grove, to the garage on Hibiscus Street, thinking about not going anywhere, about becoming the turtle-faced cop, sixty and all alone, getting blow jobs from teen whores under the crime lights and never a woman to love him like Jane Doe had loved her demon husband. He thought about what Jane had said the night before. For a moment a different path opened up in his mind, a path that led to being a different kind of person. It didn’t last long. He thought he might try to open it again, though.
He found Jane’s apartment empty, stripped of everything but a few trash bags with Goodwill written on a note pinned to one of them. Paz felt a vast relief, mixed with … no, he was not going to go there today. What he’d do now, he thought, was take a week or so of leave, avoid the newsies, maybe fly over to Bimini for a couple of days, meet someone, maybe a girl in a string bikini, a regular person with no cosmic powers who didn’t know him at all and didn’t care …
“Hey, Paz.”
He went out on the landing. She was there, with Luz, saying good-bye to her neighbors, a large, hippie-looking woman with two mulatto kids and the pregnant woman, Dawn, with her toddler in tow. They seemed genuinely sad to see her go, actual tears. She walked halfway up the stairs.
“Well, Paz, how’s reality?” she asked cheerfully. “Thought any about what I said?”
“Reality is holding,” he said, ignoring the rest. “I came to see you off.” He handed her a bottle of champagne.
“Thank you. Must I break it over the hull?”
“Whatever.”
“Then I think I’ll drink it tonight. Will you do me a favor?”
“Anything.” A hint of suspicion in his tone.
“Drive us down to the dock and help me get loaded, and then take the Buick and give it to some deserving poor.”
“No problem,” he said happily.
They drove to Dinner Key then, and Paz got one of the little marina carts and unloaded their small baggage and helped them wheel it down to where the yacht was anchored. He waited on the dock with Luz while Jane stowed their gear and did various mysterious things around the vessel. Jane came back on deck from the cabin. Paz handed the child over to her. Jane had donned an orange life jacket, and now she strapped a miniature version onto Luz.
Under the jacket Jane was wearing a blue T-shirt and khaki Bermudas. She had Top-Sider boat shoes and a pair of fancy sunglasses on, they looked like Vuarnets, Paz thought, extremely cool, and she looked terrific. Bye-bye, Jane. Sad, but also a little relieved.
She said, “I can’t really handle this rig under sail myself so I’ll stop up the Waterway and pick up an itinerant sailing freak for crew, or else I’m going to have to putt along inland up to New York. What I really want to do is run out Government Cut from here and head for blue water and feel a live deck under my toes again.” She stepped up onto the dock and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then she dropped onto the boat again, down below this time, and he heard the heavy cranking of a diesel and then the sough-sough of a sweetly tuned engine idling, and smelled the acrid smoke of the exhaust. She untied the stern line and brought it aboard, coiling it neatly with an obviously practiced motion.