My Wholly Heartbreaking Heretic, Page 3

  Chapter Two

  I certainly have used a lot of words to say “Ma Bichette has some crazy plan exploiting hippies and I am a television repairman”, didn’t I? I’ve been told before, by many different people, to shut up and get on with it. I will make an effort now, in the remaining chapters of this volume, to do just that. No promises though.

  The rest of the year passed well enough, I suppose, save for a messy fight I had with a victim outside of a rough bar near Pyramid Lake. Ever take a crowbar to the head multiple times? Instant regenerative abilities or not, that smarts something awful. I managed to wrest the iron bar away from him, however, and I must say there is nothing like that surprised look on his face when he realized I wasn’t dead. The fight drew attention, however, and I was forced to flee before my harvest. I was quite concerned that I would be identified as the perpetrator and would have to bolt, but that wasn’t the case (see, I am simplifying things, believe me, there was a story there).

  I celebrated my good fortune by deciding to have a pool dug in my backyard. I finally got around to it in February of 1971. So, from August to February I hadn’t heard so much of a peep from Ma Bichette, but neither had I read in the newspaper that there had been another rash of cult killings, so I put it out of my mind.

  I didn’t start making house calls until noon at the earliest. The excavator came over early, however, and I observed it with my usual wide-eyed wonder while drinking my coffee in the kitchen. It was loud and mighty and then and there I decided that my next identity would involve heavy machinery. I enjoy those blue-collar jobs much more than the white-collar ones; when you’re sitting at a desk all day you’ve got nothing to do but ponder your own mortality, or, in my case, lack of it. But when you’re actually, you know, working for a living, you can manage to forget things for a while. Oh, a welder, that’s another thing I haven’t done yet that I want too. I need to look into that.

  My creamy piss-yellow telephone rang sharply, jarring me out of my thoughts.

  “Sunshine Repair,” I said distractedly into the phone, wondering what sort of inappropriately cheery name to give my future excavator enterprise.

  “Mon amour,” Ma Bichette breathed into my headset. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” I answered cautiously. Last time we had seen each other she was a bit peeved at me, you’ll recall, and now she was being as sweet as diabetic’s heart.

  “I miss you,” she cooed.

  I paused before answering. Again, my brain was forming up into two factions; the side that knew she wanted something from me, pretty desperately at that, since she had forgone our usual re-correspondence routine, and the side that was excited that she was missing me. “I thought you had lots of company up there,” I said after a moment or two of contemplation.

  “Oh, I have, but they are just servants and I can’t really connect with them. I’m sure you know the feeling, all these inferiors around.” Despite her honey sweet attitude she couldn’t resist making a barb on my behalf, apparently, by reminding me that I had been on the better half of the unpleasant social structure that had only recently begun to be dismantled.

  “That’s not necessarily true, darling, and I think you should try harder,” I replied quickly. The still-functioning part of my brain was beginning to win control of the situation, and I do hate it when she starts trying to manipulate me without even so much as a compulsory round of fornication. “Call me back when you have tried.” I wasn’t going to really hang up on her, but I wanted to see her reaction. Turns out it was quite satisfactory.

  “No!” she suddenly said. It looks like she yelled, with the exclamation point and all, but she didn’t. I could hear the restrained urgency in her voice, however. “Mon canard, I just wanted to talk, that’s all.”

  I sat down at the Formica topped kitchen table. “What about?” I wasn’t trying to, but I think I sounded fairly cross. “Has your little wine scheme gone south already?” I absentmindedly traced my fingers along the spangled-gold pattern on the tabletop.

  “No, it’s doing quite well actually,” she answered, the pride on her accomplishment drowning out her thinly-veiled desperation. “I’m about to bottle my vin de primeur, Rose Acres Pinot Gris, and I’d like you to have the first bottle, that’s all mon canard.”

  I seriously doubted that was all, but her offer melted the cockles of my heart or some such rubbish like that. “Really?”

  “Really. The only stipulation is that you must come and fetch it yourself, I don’t want to risk sending one of my babies through the post.”

  Hahaha, fool that I am, thinking that she didn’t have any ulterior motives. But I was blindsided by her ostensibly honest gesture of goodwill. Is it really so bizarre, I reasoned at the time, that she would want to show off her vineyard? As we are both French and immortal, does it not stand to reason that we are both wine snobs? “A Pinot Gris as a vin de primeur, isn’t that a touch ambitious?”

  I could hear her smile over the line. “Yes, but I am not afraid of challenges. They were the vines that were growing here when I came, and I am afraid I just couldn’t wait to put out some bottles. Will you come to me, mon canard?”

  “Yes,” I said, almost against my own will. Her voice, it sounded so close, even though she was five hundred miles away. If I shut my eyes I could imagine that she was next to me.

  “Excellent. Come as soon as you can, mon amour. When is that?”

  I was too wrapped up in my own fantasies to take note of her uptick in desperation at that last line on anything other than a subconscious level. “Oh, um,” I said dully as I reached for my agenda and flipped through it hurriedly. “Next…Wednesday is the earliest I can take a few days off.”

  “That’s eight days,” she whined. “You can’t come sooner?”

  “I’d have to cancel a bunch of appointments,” I explained. “I don’t like doing that, it’s just plain rude.”

  She sighed. “But it will take you a day to drive here,” she said.

  “I’ll fly. Salem’s got an airport, right?”

  “Shall I pick you up?”

  I hesitated before answering. Although I am certain she was merely being cordial, I did not want to be dependant on her, because I have found that the moment I relinquish control is the moment she takes it. If I asked her to pick me up, I would no doubt be surrendering any sort of dominion over my visit, which would already be dominated enough by her since it was on her turf. On the other hand, she would probably throw herself into my arms and kiss me the moment I deplaned. (Oh, for the days when you could be picked up at the gate itself. Also not be treated like a criminal for having the audacity to make your way through security with a modicum of dignity.)

  “I’d hate to trouble you, I’m sure you have your hands full overseeing your…whatever you want to call them-”

  “Bootlickers,” she answered curtly.

  “Yes, them. I’ll just rent a car.”

  For the sake of brevity I will skip ahead to the flight itself. While nowadays the majority of people have been on an airplane at some point, some forty years ago the opposite was true. I, of course, had no fear of a plane accident. Which isn’t to say I wanted to experience one, but I am more worried about having to explain why everyone was burned or whatever to death and I escaped the accident unscathed as opposed to the sheer terror that such an incident would prove to be to the other passengers.

  On this short flight I sat next to a young woman who bummed half my pack of cigarettes off me, the whole time anxiously describing to me a recurring nightmare she had since childhood about an airplane crash. I was a little annoyed that she was abusing my generosity by requesting so many cigarettes, but the poor thing seemed so genuinely scared that I couldn’t really dislike her. As we were nearing McNary Field she requested one final cigarette before we landed. I lit it with gentlemanly aplomb, then said to her “You don’t necessarily die if there is a crash.”

  “No?” she asked as the plane began it’s descent. It turned towards
the sun and a flood of blinding light hit the windows.

  I nodded. “You could just become a vegetable or lose a leg or something,” I darkly said. “And death isn’t he worst thing.”

  Her face paled and she ignored me for the rest of the flight. The reason I include this little exchange is because it’s likely that the poor lady is still alive (presuming she didn’t die in a plane crash) and I would like to apologize. We both ended up at the same rental counter and she gave me what I believe is called the stinkeye until I got my Nova issued to me. (Goodness, cars were certainly something else back then. I look at the ugly little cars that litter up the roads today, and as fuel efficient that they be, I couldn’t imagine talking a woman into pleasuring me in one of those. It’s so uncouth.) So, dear lady, in the unlikely event that you are reading this, I’m terribly sorry I probably added to your nightmares. But, you know, you did bogart half my pack of cigarettes. Obviously I wasn’t annoyed enough to hunt you down later, so consider yourself lucky.

  The weather in Oregon in February? Abysmal. At least when it freezes and snows it’s pretty, but when the mercury hovers at just above freezing and you’re pelted with buckets of icy rain? There is no beauty in that. I cranked up the heater on my rented Nova and tore off across vineyards which probably are gorgeous when in bloom, but at the time they were just bleakly stark and grey.

  Rose Acres. It sounds painfully generic, but she chose the name of the vineyard to match with her identity of the bullshit goddess from space. Ninsutu means cosmic rose, according to her (true meaning of the name lost to the ages, of course, if it ever meant anything at all). As I approached the vineyard I saw a group of people clustered in a circle in a clearing between the naked branches of the dormant vines.

  I pulled into the driveway and drove slowly up the bumpy dirt road. Surprisingly, no heads turned in my direction, but the at the sound of the car door slamming shut a figure about a foot shorter than the others briskly emerged from the group. Ma Bichette’s talents and charms do not transfer so well to outdoorsy sorts of things, so she had a look of weary frustration on her face.

  “Two hours! I have been telling this morons for two hours how to properly transplant a vine and they still haven’t gotten the hang of it! Strung out on drugs? More like strung out on stupid!” she shouted in French at me as a way of greeting.

  I had expected something warmer, based on her telephone call the previous week, so I cocked my head. “What?”

  She tossed a shovel on the ground and ordered one of her ‘bootlickers’ to pick it up in English, which he did without a moments hesitation. “I am happier than a pig in shit that I am not paying these idiots!” Except that she didn’t say pig in shit, she is a classy lady and doesn’t use vulgarities outside of their appropriate setting. I’m just translating approximate meanings into English.

  “I can assume we are free to speak privately like this?”

  “Oui.” Ma Bichette had forgone fashion and was wearing a thick tan work coat, which was several sizes too big, and mud incrusted canvas pants. “Not exactly the grand draw that I was back then, eh?” she said with a smile as I took in her decidedly common outfit. “Hideous, but you try instructing a bunch of troglodytes in a field while wearing a lace chemise.”

  “I could never pull that off, I’m too shy about my breasts.”

  She giggled demurely. It’s not part of her act, I really do make her laugh. I think. I pray that I do. “I wish that I could kiss you, but I can’t in front of them. I’m supposed to be celibate unless it’s with my celestial consort.” She raised her eyebrows ever so slightly at the last few words. “However, should you choose to claim your rightful throne…”

  “Can I also have a stable of dim-witted followers of the opposite gender who will obey my every word?”

  “No, you have to have men too, that’s the way it works, that’s why I haven’t got any other women here,” she said earnestly, always eager to explain to me what’s on her mind. “Well, obviously the real reason is that I don’t need the competition. But, I tell them it’s because men were formed of the manure of the sacred solar cow and women were formed from the tears of the supreme mother when…oh, I forget, something silly.” Ma Bichette grinned. “I’m making one of them write this all down because I can’t be bothered to. Anyway, men are the designated tillers of the soil and women are doing all of the things that take them far, far away from me and my little slice of heaven on Earth.”

  “Hm, in that case I’ll pass.” I tore my eyes off of her divine visage and glanced at the dozen or so young men grouped behind her some forty feet away. All were dressed in work clothes as well, but considerably shabbier and more thread-worn than hers. They stared back at me and I couldn’t not help but feel a bit perturbed. “So, yeah,” I said and turned my attention back to my unholy monster bride. “They don’t seem surprised to see me. What did you tell them?”

  “That I was expecting a guest. We don’t get many, as you can imagine, I want to keep prying eyes away from this place. I didn’t tell them a thing about you, except for that they are not to speak to you unless spoken to and they are to not interfere in anyway when we are together. Basic rules for visitors.” Unconsciously, she made a move towards me, but stopped herself just in time. “Of course, I can’t control all of their thoughts, so what they infer via our interactions is up to them.”

  I smiled sourly. “You’re not going to get me to play along with this,” I muttered and leaned against the car.

  “It’s a free country, you can do whatever you like,” she answered and trotted up to the commonplace-looking house that was situated on a grassy (well, dead grassy at that time of year) knob. I followed her up to the house.

  “It doesn’t stink in here like I thought it would,” I complimented her. Other than a whiff of some sort of petrochemical odor wafting in from the back porch (nothing sinister, I think some sort of chemicals having to do with winemaking) her house smelled, well, like nothing. Not even like her.

  “Yeah, they aren’t allowed in the house,” she said and ushered me into the living room. “Ideally I would make them shower everyday, but the hot water heater just hasn’t got that capacity. Do you expect me to go without bathing?”

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “I bet I know what you dream of still,” she said. “Sit down, mon canard, I’ll fetch you up some refreshments.”

  I obeyed her and sat down on the floral patterned velveteen sofa. “You don’t let them in the house at all?” I hollered at her as I hear her bustle about with cabinets and dishes. “You’re a cruel mistresses, ma bichette.” I pulled out my lighter and began casting my eyes about for an ashtray.

  “You would know all about that, wouldn’t you?” she shouted back. “Don’t smoke in here, by the way, I don’t want that smell lingering after you go.”

  I rolled my eyes and stuffed my lighter back into my pocket. I was comfortable enough with her that I did not feel obliged to politely offer help, so I flipped through an issue of a trade magazine for wine makers until she came in with a tray carrying the wine bottle and it’s accoutrements.

  “The labels aren’t ready yet, I need to go pick them up tomorrow,” she said and set the tray on the coffee table. She handed me the green bottle and I accepted. Normally I enjoy the sensation of a chilled bottle of wine, but my hands were just this side of numb so I wanted to set it back down as soon as possible.

  “Open it, that’s the man’s job,” she ordered me and handed me the corkscrew. “Slowly.”

  I twisted the corkscrew in just as I always do. If she wants to micromanage literally everything she can do it herself. “How long has it been fermenting?”

  “Since…” she counted on her fingers “nine weeks,” she said after a few moments of calculation. “For this batch at least.”

  I nodded and pulled the cork out with one fluid motion. Immediately she took the bottle from me and poured out two perfectly equal amounts to clunky cut-crystal wi
ne glasses. You know the sort I am talking about, I’m sure; if you’re about thirty your grandparents had them lying around their house and if you’re about fifty your parents had them. Not much to look at, but they have a nice heft to them, like a beer stein.

  She handed me my glass. “To my one true and eternal love,” she toasted.

  The crystal glasses clinked together, and I said nothing to her declaration. I must had one of my characteristically brooding looks on my face, however, because she rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yes, I meant you, Rémi. Don’t torture yourself so, mon amour. Even if I hated you, I’d have to learn to love you.” She leaned back into her seat. “It’s not like I have much choice in the matter, have I?”

  I sampled the wine before traipsing through the minefield she had just presented me with. It was redolent of pear, which would have been better in the summer time of course. I don’t really get the point of making a vin de primeur of a white wine, because by the time the season is right for it it’s regular wine. I guess that goes to show that Ma Bichette truly is mad. “When will you let that die?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that,” she said casually. “Just in a practical sense. I mean, just how many other immortals are running around? Some, I’d imagine, but I haven’t run into any yet. And I said ‘if’ I didn’t love you. Because I do, mon canard.”

  That is an excellent question that she raises. Exactly how many undying people are there? It’s not like there’s a Facebook page or anything to join. Obviously Alava knew what she was doing and there was an established ritual and such, so logically there must be more of us, but other than the one I ran into a few years ago, I haven’t met another. I think due to films and books and television shows (especially within the last twenty years or so) people may have this impression that there is some hidden cabal of some iteration of undead beings running the show, as it were, from behind the scenes. That idea is just as ridiculous as the Masons or the Jews covertly ruling the world. We apparently don’t have the organizational skills, for one.

  Before I could respond, however, Ma Bichette scooted closer to me on the sofa. She had taken off her heavy jacket and underneath she wore a frustratingly modest woolen sweater. She rolled up the sleeves and then leaned backwards and drew the curtains closed.

  “Do they ever get mouthy or anything?” I asked.

  She put her head on my shoulder. “One did,” she answered and didn’t elaborate on it.

  I am sure you can deduce, what with the wine and close proximity to each other, what happened. And, I am also fairly certain that you can deduce that since she drew the curtains in advance, she had planned it. Immediately after I asked her that as I drew out a cigarette.

  She propped herself up on the floor up with her elbows. “So what if I did? Is that a bad thing? And what did I say about smoking in here?”

  “Ugh, not even now?” I protested, but relented under her authoritarian stare and put it away.

  “Not now, not an hour ago, not ever,” she reiterated with a warm smile.

  “So, is this what you called me up here for? Because if so, I’m flattered.”

  “Mon canard, is it really so hard for you to believe me when I tell you I miss you? If I really wanted to, I would disappear from you, forever, but I always come back to you, or accept you back.”

  “I am not staying here. I do not want to have anything to do this.” I felt it vital to stress that to her. No matter what, I was determined to not get entangled in her commune of hopelessly astray souls. I might be a damned monster, but even I am not blasphemous enough to get wrapped up in Ma Bichette’s manufactured religion.

  “I am not asking you to. There’s no reason we have to do everything together, right?” She snaked her arms around me and kissed me; she finds that a much more effective way to restrain me then any ropes or chains ever could. “I just missed you,” she breathed in my ear. “I love you, Rémi, I miss you when we aren’t together.”

  She has spoonfed me many, many lies over the years, that cannot be denied. I think that she never lied about that though, purely because I know it’s possible to fall in and out of love and then back in and then back out, pretty much perpetually, as easily and naturally as the seasons change.

  “Don’t you love me still?” she asked me.

  I nodded and wrapped my arms around her. “Yes, yes I do mon cherie,” I answered and kissed her. I love her and more. Each and every possible emotion, positive and negative, at some point I have felt them for her.

  “I need someone I can trust,” Ma Bichette said slowly as she laid her head on my chest. “I need an equal, and you are my only equal.”

  I closed my eyes. Of course she needed something. But I was more than willing to provide it to her. She had rocked my world, so to speak, and I was vulnerable to her orders. “Quel est votre souhait, ma déesse?” (I will continue to write the more mortifyingly romantic things in French, partially because everything sounds better in French, and partially because odds are you won’t understand exactly what I said and still perceive me as a cool cat as opposed to a fawning boy.)

  “It’s not important right now.” She sighed happily and squeezed my hand. “I’ll tell you later.”

  We laid there for a while in rapturous reprise; until the (sur)reality of the situation demanded her attention. In this case it was a knocking on the door. Ma Bichette groaned and sat up. “I told those simpletons to leave me alone,” she said with annoyance and started to wriggle back into her clothes.

  “Maybe it’s not them. Didn’t you say they aren’t allowed in the house?”

  “They are allowed to knock. Usually it’s because they’ve run into some minor problem that they work out.” Ma Bichette arose. Gracefully, always so gracefully. “Stay here,” she ordered me.

  She shut the door so I couldn’t hear anything more than a muffled conversation. I figured that private time was over so I got dressed as well and then waited for her to finish. “-my personal business! Not for you to know!” I heard her shout. Curiosity got the better of me and I waltzed over to the door and put my ear against it.

  “Your Worship, I did not mean to insinuate anything, but there have been concerns about the visitor is all, and it’s your safety we are worried about,” groveled the young man.

  I rolled my eyes. I suppose I should say that I could not believe that she had apparently told them to address her as “your worship” but, yeah, I can totally see that. Perhaps one day she really shall go mad and believe herself to be divine, as the groundwork for that has already been laid.

  “My safety? Have I not proven to you that my mortal form has nothing to fear?”

  “We have discussed it, Your Worship, and we are afraid that he is a shedu in human form sent by Nanna to spirit you back to the celestial palace. Did you not warn us of that last week in your prophesy?”

  Well, all that nonsense aside, I am proud to say that I actually knew what a shedu is due to my classical education. It’s akin to a sphinx, a mythological beast of ancient cultures with a highly unlikely combination of animal parts. In this case it’s an ox with the head of a man and the wings of an eagle. That little factoid has been rattling around in my brain since before indoor plumbing was available. Bullish comparisons to my genitals aside, I can’t imagine what would lead them to conclude that I was a chimera from space.

  Ma Bichette was beginning to get a bit flustered, no doubt torn between wanting to keep her asinine story straight and wanting to push her subordinate back into his place. I could hear it in her voice, and when she starts to get thrown off-balance she usually charges in, guns-a-blazing, in the hopes that her display of strength will win her the upper hand back. And if I know nothing else, I know her.

  “You forget your place! You dare to challenge me? To double guess my judgment? What goes on in my sacred cloister is none of your concern! Be gone from my sight!” The front door slammed shut and I eased open the door that was separating us.

  “Having problems with y
our flock?”

  She jabbed a finger at me. “Don’t you start, too!”

  I shook my head. “How long do you think you are going to be able to keep this up? Sounds like you are already losing them.”

  “No, they just need a reminder, that’s all.” She glared out the window. “I am not good with their names, but I am pretty sure that his name is Andrew.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t all renamed them.”

  “To gain a name from me is a reward,” she said distractedly. “It’s a reward that costs me nothing and that I can give them that makes them feel incredibly special. It’s good to have little incremental incentives to goad them into working harder and believing more blindly.”

  I opened the front door. “Is it allowed for me to smoke on the porch?”

  “Fine, yes,” she answered and I could tell she had more on her mind than my simple request.

  She is more than capable to come up with her own plots, so I leaned against the railing in the near-freezing temperatures and lit my cigarette. The one who had knocked on the door, Andrew she said his name was, had hoofed it back to his comrades and they clustered together in the gathering gloom. They threw glances of suspicion in my direction every now and again, and rightly so, as I was compromising their worship’s celibate integrity or some such foolishness.

  I can understand how Ma Bichette found the whole farcical situation amusing. No doubt you’ve drawn the parallels between what she was doing and antebellum plantations, and I think that the majority of the kick that she got out of this was that she was a woman of color with a dozen white young men as her de facto property. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen her stroke that particular chip on her shoulder, but it was certainly the biggest and most obvious incarnation of it. While she had always technically been “free”, she hadn’t been treated equally (anti-miscegenation laws being the original problem in my first volume). But she’s not the type to take that sort of thing lying down and I’ve had to physically restrain her on several occasions from murdering the tar out of an offender.

  Well, whatever floats her boat. I, however, was hoping that this particular scheme would blow up in her face sooner rather than later and she would come slinking back to me, full of gentle coos and that lovely smell of hers. Ma Bichette tends to be humbled for a few years after she is proven wrong, and maybe then we could have a period of domestic tranquility until we grow sick of each other. I would never purposely sabotage her plans; however, this is not so much out of love rather than the fact that I did once and she took it very badly when she found out.

  The door opened behind me. “When you are good and ready come upstairs, I’ve got something to show you.”

  I nodded and once I finished my cigarette, I ascended the narrow wooden stairs. Ah, that’s it. Have you ever seen Night of The Living Dead? The old one, in black and white? Her farmhouse was almost exactly like that. I love that film. I love films in general, but I think that is another story.

  I heard the distinctive humming of a film projector from a room and wandered in. Ma Bichette was setting a reel into place with a look of pure concentration on her face. I must admit, I was intrigued. Ma Bichette tends to be a late adapter to technology (she only recently ditched her positively ancient Nokia for an iPhone I bought her) so to see her with technology that I didn’t shove into her hands certainly piqued my interest. “What’s that for?”

  “You’ll see. Turn off the light switch.”

  I obeyed and with a few muttered annoyances from Ma Bichette an image of (who else, really) her popped up on the wall. The footage was filmed at either dawn or sunset on a grey winter day. I hate (lie, I love) to nitpick, but I believe her gauzy linen gown was more indicative of ancient Egypt than Babylon. I wasn’t so concerned with that inaccuracy as I was with the fact that her nitpicks were clearly visible under the sheer gown.

  “Oh, I don’t like that one bit,” I muttered.

  She clicked her tongue. “What did I tell you about small incremental rewards?”

  The eerie silence of Ma Bichette vamping it up as much as a respectable goddess could for half a minute or so was deafening. “So, this is your act?”

  “The short version.”

  Onscreen she daintily bent over into the hard earth and when she straightened back up there was in her hands was primitive looking stone knife. “You don’t bleed,” I commented as she stuck the blade into her throat. “That makes it look like a trick.”

  “Goddesses don’t bleed,” she said plainly. “That’s an authentic reproduction of a real Babylonian knife, I stole it from a museum. Along with some other stuff.” Her projected double ripped the blade out with a flourish. She stuck it in her arms for good measure a few times, then the film ended and the sound of the celluloid slapping around on the spent reel cued her to flip the light back on.

  “Remember we had a discussion last year about keeping a low profile?” I said.

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Oh, good, because I am sure you have a really good reason for having extremely incriminating footage of yourself dressed up like some sort of mentally ill child while committing suicide,” I drolly said.

  “Mon canard-”

  I cut her off, irritated with her constant flouting of my expressed wishes. “Don’t give me that cut and dried burlesque act of yours. You might fool those simpletons out there with it, darling, but I know you better than I know myself. May I guess what happened? Your real motivations for summoning me here?”

  She set her gorgeous lips in a pout. “If you’re going to be like that, all presumptuous and mean, fine, go ahead.”

  I tore the film off the reel in a hissy rage. “You need something from me, right? You need someone you can trust. So you order me up here to do it, and it’s got something to do with this damn film, hasn’t it?”

  “You’re a regular Charlie Chan.”

  I took my lighter from my pocket. “Your career in movies is officially over,” I said as I applied flame to film. To my surprise she didn’t protest, but instead directed me to drop the now blazing reel in a metal garbage bin.

  “Very good. Do you want to guess what act two is? In which the hero endures many perilous encounters to save the maiden?”

  “Maiden? Is there someone else involved?” I jeered at her. I know I’m coming off as rather rude, especially considering we had just coupled no more than half an hour ago, but honestly, it was now apparent that she had lured me up to do her bidding and not just because she loved me.

  It goes to show how much she wanted me to do her bidding that she didn’t morph into a blistering ball of anger and slapping at my last comment. “There was another reel,” she explained quickly and set her hands on my shoulders as I looked up from the smoldering remains in the garbage bin.

  I sighed. No sense in fighting the inevitable. “Do you know where it is at least?”

  “I know who has it.” She rubbed my shoulders and then put her hands around my back. “I can’t go get it myself, I can’t leave here. I need someone I can trust, mon canard, I need the only other person on this planet who has ever been there for me.”

  “If I find it, I’ll burn it,” I acridly said.

  She hesitated before replying. “Please don’t, I need it for…something.”

  “Why would you even film that?” I asked with naked weariness.

  “Look,” she began to explain, “clearly it wasn’t the best of plans, can we just leave it at that?”

  I turned to face her. A shadow of some nameless sadness flickered in her eyes for a moment, but as soon as I saw it, it disappeared, only to be replaced by a forced and tired seduction.

  “Who has it?” I asked her. In retrospect that wasn’t what I should have asked.

  “A little bastard who thought he could use me,” she answered sourly.

  “Why can’t you just make more? You’ve made another one, apparently, just make some more. Let this one go.”

  She shook her head quickly.
“This one is special. I can’t redo it. You have to believe me.”

  I sighed. “Ma bichette, what’s so important about it?”

  She kissed me before she answered. Not one of your normal kisses either, the sort that if you see it on television or film you get a touch embarrassed to be intruding on such an intimate moment. “Rémi,” she breathed instead of just answering my damn question, “bring me back the film and you can go. I won’t bother you with this goddess garbage again,” she bargained with me.

  “What makes you think I want that?” Ugh, space gods preserve me, that’s exactly what I wanted. But when a woman has her arms wrapped around you, her breasts pressed against your chest just enough that you can almost feel her soft breathing (but you can’t, you can only imagine it, and then you recall the sound of her up-tempo breathing during earlier said coupling), and is eye-banging you like there is no tomorrow, you (and obviously I mean myself) cannot tear yourself away for all the sane reasons in the world.

  Well, it’s must be obvious to you that she was giving me the run-around for some reason or another. I was fairly confident that it had to do with the reason why she had made the films in the first place. She was evasive about it, more or less daring me to beat it out of her. Later that night I regained control of my senses, however, and told her that if it was so very important for her she could do her own leg work.

  “I have my own life!” I shouted at her. She had convinced me to take a walk around the vineyard after dark. It was a clear night, so aside from the chill it was a pleasant enough walk. “I can’t drop everything because you have some whim that needs to be fulfilled!”

  Ma Bichette walked a few paces in front of me. “Don’t shout,” she dryly said. “You’re excitable enough as it is.”

  “Let me summarize my day for you, my darling,” I said, although I did lower my voice at her urging. “I got up at five this morning, had a delay at the airport until noon, got here at five, been made love to for an hour straight, then told I have to go fetch for you for reasons that are still elusive to me. Did I mention the crazy people? Because God forbid I leave out the part about all the morons who believe you are literarily divine! How am I not supposed to be a bit agitated?”

  “Relax, mon canard, have a cigarette,” she said serenely. “You don’t have to leave tonight.”

  “I don’t have to go anywhere,” I promptly replied. “You seem to think that I’m another one of your mindless drones who will do anything for the promise of some of your forbidden carnality. Been there, done that, and I’m not about to run off on some wild goose chase to have another shot at your celestial gates. So unless you give me a fantastically sound reason as to why I should go and chase down one of your mistakes, I will head back to Reno tonight.”

  She turned to me and smiled. I could see her so clearly in the moonlight. Exactly the same as she looked two centuries previously, one century previously. Her sparkling eyes narrowed a bit at me, but her slightly plump lips stayed in the same calculated grin as she outlined her fantastically sound reason. “If that footage is leaked to the world at large, yes, people will be shocked,” she said so quickly that I am certain she had this little speech of hers planned out in her head long before I asked. “And if people find out about me, I will be forced to tell them about the obsessive and slightly deranged man who turned me into a monster against my will. How would you like that, huh? You think people don’t like that Manson? Try spending the rest of forever after you’ve been exposed according to my narrative.”

  I shook my head. “No one will believe you,” I answered after a moment. “They’ll call you schizophrenic or delusional, but they won’t believe you for a second. Immortals, ma bichette? There’s no such thing,” I scoffed. “Might as well say we are loup-garous or mermaids.”

  “Try me. I’ll blow my brains out in front of each and every scientist and doctor that they can find to prove my ‘divinity’. Even if they lock me away in a boobyhatch for a while your name and face will be attached to mine.” She turned from me and continued her walk down the path. “Besides, a nuthouse might be fun for a while.”

  “Tell me what this is all about, why you’re being so…” I threw my hands up in frustration. “You’re being a hundred different kinds of irrational!”

  She didn’t break her pace. “I know.”

  “What’s so important about this?” I pleaded with her. “If anyone sees it, they will think it’s a trick. Don’t worry, no one will come for you,” I tried to console her. My poor little doe. Whenever something is deeply affecting her she is compelled to cover it up with posturing and arrogant rebuttals. I don’t suppose it has something to do with being raised in the backrooms of brothels, I suppose it has everything to do with being raised in the backrooms of brothels.

  “I need it back!” she shouted, louder than I had shouted earlier. “Curse you and your questions, I need it back!” She then instantly clammed up.

  “Come on, ma bichette, you shouldn’t have all these secrets from me,” I said and picked up my pace so I could be along side her. “Am I not your beloved? Geneviève, I love you more than I could ever say, even now, even now though you are keeping secrets and manipulating me. You don’t need to be a goddess to those idiots back there, or to the whole world, because you have me, and I will never stop loving and worshiping you.”

  She stopped suddenly. “Rémi, please, please just do this for me. Please don’t ask me why I need it back so badly. I just do, alright? Please, please, I need you to do this,” she beseeched me, and the cavalier tone of her voice was noticeably absent. “Do not make me beg.”

  “I need to know what the big damn deal is,” I repeated for the umpteenth time. “Don’t make a fool of me. I don’t want to be a cog in some master plan of yours. Why won’t you tell me?”

  She dropped to her knees suddenly. Always with the theatrics. “Mon amour, s'il vous plaît, accordez-moi ma prière. J'ai besoin de toi, mon héros, mon champion, faire ce que je vous prie.” I will grant her the same dispensation that I grant myself when it comes to overly quixotic dialogue. She grasped my hands and kissed them.

  I sighed. “For the love of God, ma bichette, get up.” I no longer had the energy to struggle against her. Her fortitude and determination outstrips mine. We had gone from cajoling to threats to downright mortifying behavior and I didn’t want to witness her next performance. “Get up, what if one of your idiot boys sees you like this?”

  She shook her head. “Agree, please. I need you.”

  “Fine,” I agreed. If it was so direly important to her I could rationalize away her manipulations and drama by the simple fact that my little doe is very battered and fragile, emotionally and mentally, and that I must remain the stalwart salvation in whom she found safe haven in so long ago. Oh, the half-truths and distortions we tell ourselves to explain away our mad endeavors.

  She arose. “Merci,” she repeated several times and hugged me.

  “Who has it?” I asked wearily, strapping myself in for what was more likely than not going to be a gigantic pain in my ass.

  Ma Bichette did that facial expression were the mouth goes diagonal (I’m sorry, I’ve got no idea what that’s called). “It’s a complicated story,” she said after a moment of thought.

  “Oh, I’ve got no doubt about that.”

  She started to walk down the path again and I followed. “Around Christmas one of my followers got a big stocking full of sudden cynicism from Santa,” Ma Bichette began. All the desperation and mania had drained from her voice. “He up and disappeared. Didn’t tell anyone where he was going, what he was doing, or why he left. I wasn’t too upset about it. I expect some of them to wise up sooner or later. But when I went to go watch my film a few days later, it was gone. He had left a note that said that I’d get it back when I had paid him back for all of his time and work. He said he would contact me when he was ready.”

  “What does he mean by that?” I was concerned that it was a vaguely sexual threat;
after all, she did entice them with her sensual charms.

  She shrugged. “No idea. Money I figure, but then again why didn’t he steal the projector or the television or any of the other nice things I’ve got? Anyway, I’m certainly not going to wait for him to tell me what he wants and I’m certainly not going to do it for him.”

  “Right,” I said sarcastically. “It’s not nice of him to exploit somebody.”

  She must not had been able to appreciate the irony because she just nodded her head enthusiastically in agreement. “Very ungentlemanly of him.”

  “What’s the guy’s name?”

  “Eugene Muller,” she said.

  “And you don’t know where he went? How in the hell am I supposed to find this guy?”

  “I know where he’s from. Small town in Kansas called Dighton,” she explained.

  I stopped walking for a moment. “You want me to go to the middle of nowhere and what? Just start making inquires?”

  Ma Bichette sensed me stop and turned around. “It’ll be fun. You’ve played at being all kinds of humiliating jobs, why not play detective for while?” With that she condescendingly tapped me on the nose like a little boy.

  I glared at her. At that moment I hated her more than I had ever hated anyone. I resented her for commanding me to go and solve her problem for her on my own time. I loathed her for her presumption that I once she had lied and manipulated me enough that she could still enough mileage out of my guilty love to twist me into whatever shape she wanted. I gazed back at her beautiful face and all I could feel was anger.

  “You manipulative harpy,” I spat at her. “Is that all I am to you? Someone you can use up like you use up everyone else you come across?”

  Her smile evaporated and she smacked me across the face. Granted, it’s not like it hurt (and me getting smacked in the face seems to be a running motif in my writings) but it was like having the veil ripped from a gorgon’s face. “You turned me into a monster,” she hissed at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I breathed instantly. I was not tempted to dissuade her from her valid anger. It was an impulse. I was sorry. I am sorry. I am so sorry, my love, for what I did to you. I should spend the rest of our eternity atoning for having made you into an undead cannibal without your permission. Please, Ma Bichette, please believe me when I say I’m sorry. This is all half lover letter, half confession. I don’t know if I shall ever achieve absolution, and what’s more, I don’t know if I deserve to.

  “You’re right, you’re sorry, as am I,” she said, her voice sharp with pain I couldn’t even begin to imagine. She stared at me, all affection and allure driven from her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but whatever words she had to intended to speak faltered. She gaped at me for a few seconds, and when she did, even all her anger and hatred was driven from her eyes, and all that remained was stark anguish and sorrow.

  She turned from me and fled, dashing down a row of bare vines. I stood where I was. Perhaps you think I should have given chase, but that enterprise would have been as fruitless as the vineyard currently was. What would I have said? What could I say that had not yet been said a thousand times? I watched as her petite figure sprinted over a hill.

  Once Ma Bichette had disappeared from sight I lit a cigarette and inhaled it in no more than three drags. I was committed now to carrying out her will. It was no longer an option.

  I spent the night sitting up in the parlor where we had our relations earlier, alternating between staring at the empty spot on the rug where we had lain and the television, which was showing black and white movies I couldn’t be bothered to follow. I disrespected her wishes and smoked heavily, ashing into an empty soup bowl. No doubt that she would be mad about that, but it would just be a drop in the bucket.