Bone Dance

Mr. Lyle’s smile was benevolence itself. “You don’t understand the island. Besides, the City can’t afford a helicopter.”

Of course. The building that held my treasure house stood in plain sight of Ego and her tall sisters. The spi

Mr. Lyle shrugged and stood up in the same motion, as if his shoulders pulled the rest of him along. “Come see what we have.”

So I was shown through the dining room, the kitchen, the pantry, and, finally, into the power shed, opening off the pantry. I was a little disappointed. There were enough tools, but no more, and they were only of reasonable quality. The inverter was all right, but I had one rated for twice the load, and another hidden away, still crated, for when the first began to show its age.

This wasn’t the opulent marvel that the rest of the house was; this wasn’t the magnetic center of anything, for anyone. While I took the inverter apart and assaulted it with multimeter probes, I asked Mr. Lyle, casually, what they ran off it. Answer: a pump, some lights, some fans, a couple of recharging units. No audio, no video? A shortwave radio. So this wasn’t Paradise, after all.

Mr. Lyle must have seen something in my face. He said gravely, “There are so few disks and tapes left, and they cost so much, that it’s easier to fall back on other things. Books, and live music, and theater. There’s a lot of that on the island.”

“Anyone recording the music?”

He looked at me as if I hadn’t spoken a language he knew.

“The trouble is finding blank tape stock. It would be great to videotape the plays, but there was never as much tape or hardware for that, so it’s hard to get. I think we’ve lost the movie biz for good.”

Then, appalled, I shut up. Enthusiasm had possessed me for a moment, tricked me into an ope

The output off the inverter seemed steady. I put the cover plate back on. “Hand me the lamp and we’ll test it.”

The fluorescent tube clinked like microscopic bells and lit. Mr. Lyle stared at it, pleased, and the light sketched chilly blue-white highlights over his bare scalp, down his nose, along his upper lip, and across his chin like a scratchboard drawing on the brown of his skin. “My first name is Claudius,” he said. “Feel free to use it.”

As if I’d earned it by fixing the inverter — but that didn’t ring true. Before I had time to reconsider, I asked, “What happened to your voice?”

“I used to sing. I was proud of it. But when I was fifteen, I was involved in a cocaine deal that went a little astray. I was shot in the neck.”

“Chango.” My eyes, before I could stop them, went to a spot just below his face, but the band collar of his shirt hid most of his throat.

“It was hard to forgive that fifteen-year-old boy for ruining my voice. But you must forgive yourself. I never forgot; that would have meant unlearning the lessons that made me wiser than him. But I forgave.”

“Well, there,” I said brightly, and put the screwdriver away. “All done. But I still think you should switch to wind.”

As we retraced our steps to the front of the house, I waited for him to return to the subject. I was relieved when he didn’t.

The person I least wanted to talk to was Theo, so I was unreasonably a

“She’s not my Frances,” I said, without heat. “But I wish her luck. Theo’s doing all right if he remembers to go home when we turn the lights off.” That was spite; Theo was perfectly acute by any normal standard. Now I could tell her how many -

I could, too. I could tell Frances all ma

Frances was pla

“Are you well?” said China Black.

I’d forgotten I was in the middle of a conversation. “Yes,” I said. There was a leaf cast aside on the counter, brown around its red-and-green edges. I picked it up and turned it between my fingers and thumb. “Dana called you ‘Maitresse,’ ” I said suddenly.

China Black went on tearing lettuce. “Shall I answer the question you want to ask? I am teaching her, for her safety.”

“Safety?”

“I may be too late. Pombagira may already have her.”

“Who,” I asked with a stirring of unwelcome alarm, “is Pombagira?”

“She is the wife of Eshu. Some call her Red-eyed Erzulie. You will see her in the bar, in the whorehouse, wearing her tight red dress, smoking her cigarette. She likes liquor and blood, and in her service there is power and money, but no lasting joy.”

I pleated the lettuce leaf, and heard the center rib pop with each fold. “You can’t Deal with joy,” I muttered, but she heard me. She turned her back on the counter and stared at me.

“No. You can Deal with power and money, and shame and pain. Do you want your friend to have those?”

“I have no friends,” I said, and walked blindly away.

Pantry, power shed, garage. I stood staring at the limo, barely visible in the near darkness; the sun was dipping its toes in the river, to the west, and the garage windows faced east. Did Albrecht have a limo? Had Theo ridden in it, to the Underbridge, even, and dusted the smell of wealth off at the door to keep the secret? But it had been no secret for Sherrea. Just for me.

I didn’t want to think about either of them. I hoped Frances the Serial Killer was scaring the wits out of Theo, along with the information she wanted. Was this why Albrecht wanted the Horseman movie? Not because it was rare, but because he had a damned good reason for wanting to know about the Horsemen, no matter how unreliable the source? Because he was suffering an infestation of Tom Worecski?

Or maybe he was a willing accomplice. I thought of that money-pale face in the light of his desk lamp, the profile repeated on the coins he gave me. He’d sent me to find a copy of Singin’ in the Rain. Maybe Gilles de Rais would have loved Singin’ in the Rain. But if A. A. Albrecht was delighted with Tom Worecski, why had he wanted the Horseman movie?

My thoughts were as productive as peas in a rattle: they made a lot of noise, and went nowhere. My eyes had adjusted enough to see the garage door, so I left by it.

Evening, in that garden, seemed to bloom like one of its plants. Clinging to the garage wall was a vine with flowers like the bells of trumpets, milk-white and luminous in the dusk, lavishly scented. Bats rose in a translucent cloud from the eaves of an outbuilding and set to hunting with brisk, irregular darts. A slow spark fired and disappeared in the shrubbery across the grass, and another: fireflies. I crunched along the gravel path to round the garage and see the last of the sunset.