Valley of Bones

Eighteen

Paz hardly ever brought his male Cuban friends to the restaurant, and his mother (whom nothing escaped) had often remarked on this: What, you’re ashamed of me? But it wasn’t that at all; it was because of what was going on now with Morales. The young detective was eatingzarzuela, what the Cubans have instead of bouillabaisse, served out to him from a pan the size of a bus tire by the proprietress herself. An observer would have been hard-pressed to derive from the scene which of the two men was the beloved son and which the stranger, or rather the observer would certainly err, for Morales was getting the royal treatment, with Mrs. Paz dropping the most succulent marine tidbits on his plate, while leaving Paz to scoop for himself from what was left. Within twenty minutes of sitting down at the special banquette reserved for her most favored patrons, Mrs. Paz had sucked from Morales his entire life history and that of his immediate ancestors. It turned out that Morales lived with his mother, that his two older sisters were both married with children, that he himself was engaged to be married (picture exhibited, to sighs of admiration from Mrs. P.), that he was taking courses at Miami-Dade University on the road to a bachelor’s degree. Paz had not known much of this, and he found himself wishing that Morales had a secret life as a violent pedophile. As this love fest progressed, the mother shot him numerous little looks: See, this is what a good Cuban son is like!

Paz only picked at the marvelous food, as a way of getting back at her, but of course this was just another indication of his inadequacy, for Morales was putting it away with both hands. Eventually the young man had to stop, when the constraints of physiology trumped even the will of Margarita Paz. Having consumed a mass of prime seafood about the size of his own head, and at the point of tears, Morales rose from the table and repaired to the men’s.

“You know, Mami,” said Paz, “I think it’s a felony to make a police officer explode in public.”

“That’s a nice boy,” said the mother, ignoring this. She gestured and a waiter made the debris vanish. “It’s a shame his sisters are married already.” A deep disappointed sigh. Then to the attack: “You ate like a bird. Something’s wrong with you.”

“Nothing’s wrong, Mami. It’s the middle of the day. If I ate like he did, my brain would shut down.”

“What, he hasn’t got a brain?”

“He doesn’t need one as long as he’s partnering with me. Look, Mami, I need to ask you a favor….”

“No, you look bad, son of mine. First you kill thatbrujo, and just the other week you shoot someone else. Don’t you know you have to be washed after something like that?”

“I’m not going to yourile, Mami.”

“Of course not, you know everything, why am I even wasting my breath?” A red-nailed finger pointed at his eye. “Also you have a new woman,” said Mrs. Paz. Sweat popped out on his forehead and thezarzuela did the fandango in his belly. “And of course you’re ashamed of your old mother, you don’t bring her to meet me. I know the spirits are angry with me, what otherreason could there be to be treated like this?”

“Mami, on Sunday. I’ve invited her to dinner on Sunday.”

“Mm. I’ll makelangosta a la crema. And what is this favor you want from me?”

“I need to talk to Ignacio Hoffmann.”

She looked away.That was unusual. “He doesn’t come in here anymore.”

“Mami, I know he doesn’t come in here anymore. He’s a fugitive. Look, I got no interest in the man or in causing him any grief. I just need to talk to him.”

“What makes you think I can find him?”

“Come on, Mami. Ignacio practically lived in this banquette for years. The seat is still warm from his ass.”

“Watch your mouth!”

“And besides, youhave to know him. He’somo-orisha.” This was a guess. Paz didn’t know whether Hoffmann was a devotee of Santeria, but the altar at Jack Wilson’s house had suggested the connection. Where would an Anglo like Wilson have picked it up if not from his former boss? And he knew his mother knew anyone who was at all prominent in the cult.

Now the eyes came back at him, full force. He made himself meet their mighty rays. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

“Mami, it’s part of a homicide investigation. I’m asking you nice, but the fact is every citizen has to help the cops when they ask them to.”

She held out her hands, wrists together, golden bracelets dinging softly. “So arrest me.”

“Mami, come on…”

“Isaid I’ll think about it.”

Paz was about to say something about time being critical, but at that moment his cell phone rang. He glanced at the screen. “This is the girlfriend. I’m going to ask her to marry me and have four grandchildren for you right now.”

“Oh, you’re so smart!”

“Hello, Lorna.What! When? Calm down, Lorna. Porky Pig? Are the cops there yet? Uh-huh. Okay. Okay, let me talk to him. Yo, Jerry…yeah, I do. No, this is part of a homicide investigation. Right. You got anything on the guy? Yeah, Porky Pig, I heard. No vehicle ID? Uh-huh. Look, can you do me a solid? Have someone drive the vic over to me. I’m at Nineteenth and the Trail…yeah the restaurant. Okay, great, I owe you a meal. No, I’ll take the statement and we’ll handle the complaint. Yeah all the paper too. Thanks, Jerry. Put the vic on again.”

After some soothing words, Paz clicked off the phone and explained to his mother what had happened. “See, you don’t even have to wait until Sunday,” he said.

“Not hurt?”

“No. But it’s no fun getting mugged.”

Mrs. Paz examined her son closely and waved a hand, as if to indicate something floating around his head. “You’re worried now. I think you like this one.”

“Yeah, it’s true, I like this one, and I think I got her into a world of trouble.”

“If you were in the restaurant business or you had a nice profession you wouldn’t be getting women into trouble.”

“Thank you, Mami, that’s helpful.”

“Don’t be sarcastic with me, Iago.”

Morales came back to the table at that point, picked up the new vibe, and looked searchingly at Paz, who directed his own gaze at the big fish tank. Mrs. Paz, however, gave the young detective a radiant smile and said, “You have room for some flan, yes?”

“No way, thanks, Mrs. Paz, really….”

She gestured to the hovering waiter. “Two flan,” she commanded.

This was delivered, and Morales was induced to consume some, after which Mrs. Paz left to attend to other customers.

“I can’t finish this,” said Morales as his stared at his flan. “I’ll die.”

“Okay, but if you don’t you’re not the perfect Cuban son. My mom’s got a lot invested in you now, and she’s going to be pissed if you don’t finish every rich spoonful. Alternatively, there’s a pain-in-the-ass job you can cover for me.”

“Anything,” said Morales.

Paz explained what had happened to Lorna Wise. “Jerry McLean caught it, but he’s not going to break his balls on a mugging with nothing much taken and no one hurt. Grab the case from him personally, do a thorough canvass of the area, try to find anyone who saw the guy getting away, his vehicle, whatever.”

“I’m on it,” said Morales, and slid from his seat. “Porky Pig, huh? You think that’s significant?”

“It could be, Tito. It could be Elmer Fudd trying to send us a message. Or Bugs himself. You’ll find out. Go!”

Ten minutes later, Lorna Wise was deposited in front of the restaurant Guantanamera by a police car, where Paz, who had been waiting for her under the awning, snatched her up and embraced her. She looked terrible, he thought, pale, splotchy, her makeup tear-ruined, and she trembled. He wanted to shoot someone.

Inside, she went straight to the bathroom and was in there for so long that he almost called one of the waitresses to go in and check on her, but eventually she emerged, looking somewhat more put together. He ordered coffee for her and a plate oftorticas de Moron, but she touched neither.

“Look,” he said, “I know you’re shaky and I’m sorry as hell that this happened, but I have to ask. Did you get a chance to read the notebook before it got taken?”

She nodded.

“Okay, then you need to tell me what, if anything, in it was relevant to the case. Your memory is fresh now….”

“Yes, I understand. But I don’t know what’s relevant and what isn’t, it’s just more amazing adventures of Emmylou.” She gave him a summary of the third notebook and added, “It’s a continuation of her sad story. She seems to have caused another killing, run off with a survivalist dope lord, and got herself shot. No secrets that anyone would want to know about, that they would shove a knife in someone’s face, unless it’s the gold….”

“What gold?”

“This dope lord she lived with buried pots of gold all around his mountain. She knows where they’re hidden.”

“And some guy in Sudan came looking for it? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Although everything else makeperfect sense,” she cried, her voice breaking at the end.

He made soothing sounds and patted her hand, but she pulled it away and dashed off again to where the restrooms were.

Lorna retches, bringing up little. This is the second or third time today. It may be, she thinks, a nervous reaction to what happened, or something to do with being truly ill. She washes her face, stares at herself in the mirror. She thinks of extinction, that this very face will grow thin and hollow-eyed and yellow as the cancer takes over its body and then waxy on an undertaker’s slab being made up to look natural, and then be reduced by flames to nothing at all, a few grains of dust. She feels her neck and armpits again, as she does every hour or so now, and finds the same rubbery bulges. Diagnostic for lymphatic cancer, as are the sweats and the weakness, the itching and the weight loss. She has not heard of nausea being a symptom, but it is entirely possible that her gut is involved too, that the thing sneaked up on her, despite her precautions, and all the watchful diets and exercises, the too-frequent doctor’s visits. Strange how she knew from an early age that she was doomed in this way, perhaps even before her mother succumbed, maybe the cells tell us, Don’t count on long life, sweetie, the genome’s deeply fucked. What does she feel now? She consults her heart, finds an odd relief, not to have to worry anymore, death the end of neurosis at least, she is one with the kamikazes, the suicide bombers, an unearthly calm. A certain interest in religion, although that could be due to her current immersion among the snake handlers and speakers in tongues, still perhaps it would be even nicer to die thinking that a loving Jesus was set to carry you off. To where? She has never thought about eternity before, discovers she has no idea what it means. Also an urge to cry, to cry and never stop. Also an urge to find a drug, to turn off the mind entirely until the end. And other urges, surprising ones.

She puts her face together and goes back to the restaurant again, suppresses the nausea occasioned by the food smells. A large woman in a flowered yellow pantsuit and a lot of jangling gold jewelry is standing talking to Jimmy Paz, who politely rises as Lorna approaches and introduces her to his mother. She receives a long look and returns one. It strikes her as amusing that she and Mrs. Paz are almost exactly of a height and, allowing for the twenty-year age difference, have virtually the same figure. This makes her smile and feel crazy, and amazed that she can still find humor in things. Mrs. P. smiles too, slides into the banquette and pulls Lorna down next to her. After the obligatory commiseration about the mugging, and a capsule biography from Lorna, Mrs. Paz compliments Lorna on her hair and other features, then adds, “You know, you look like a serious woman. I admit I’m surprised, this son of mine, he’s always bringing around these, what you call them,esqueletas …”

“Skeletons,” says Paz.

Lorna finds herself laughing. “Not guilty,” she crows.

“Si, si,I can tell you are a serious person,” Mrs. Paz continues. “You have a head on your shoulders, a profession, and I have to say, although it sticks me in the heart, my son is not a serious person.”

“Gee, thanks, Mami.”

“See, like that, always with the sarcastic remark. You want to know the truth? I think you could do a lot better.”

“I do too,” says Lorna, deadpan. “But you know, I can’t help myself, he’s so pretty.”

Mrs. Paz looks at her son. “He’s not bad,” she admits grudgingly. “Not what you would call ugly.”

Paz looks ostentatiously at his wristwatch and stands. “Well, this is so pleasant, but I got to go to work. Lorna, I’ll take you home unless you think you can do better thumbing on Calle Ocho.” He embraces his mother, kisses her cheek. “Mami, always a real treat…”

“I need you for lunch tomorrow.”

“No can do, Mami, tomorrow I got my day job. Speaking of which, are you going to get me with Ignacio or not?”

“Come to thebembe tonight,” says Mrs. Paz. “Then we’ll see.”

“Mami, please…”

“I mean it, Iago. I have to consult theorishas about this and you have to be there.”

This is in Spanish, and in the dialect of Guantanamo, so Lorna cannot follow it. But now the mother turns her eye upon Lorna and says in English, “And bring her too.”

She sails off to greet some favored patrons. Lorna says, “Bring me where?”

Paz explains about the Wilson connection to Santeria, and who Ignacio Hoffmann is, and his connection to the case, and what abembe is and how his mother has him over a barrel here, because all the leads have run out and Hoffmann, if he can get to him, is the last link, the last person who might know why someone like Jack Wilson would have been interested in killing a Sudanese in the oil business.

“And why does your mom want me to come?”

“Why does my mom want anything? I don’t try to figure her out anymore. But it might be interesting, part of the tour de wacky superstition I seem to be taking you on.”

“This is like voodoo, right?”

“Not exactly. My mother, you should know, is a big deal in Santeria.”

“What does she do?”

“She gets help from the spirits,” says Paz, “and gets ridden by thesantos when they come down to earth.” There is an astonished pause.

“You believe this?”

Paz shrugs. “No, but I’ve seen weird stuff happen.” Lorna senses his discomfort and declines to press him further.

They arrive in front of Lorna’s house. Paz asks her if he should pick her up later.

“For the voodoo jamboree? I’m game. Why not? Will they foretell my future?”

“Maybe. I’ve never been to one of these either, so what do I know?”

“Really? So we’ll lose our Santeria cherries together.”

“Yeah. Okay, I’ll pick you up around eight. Will you be all right?”

“I’m fine, Jimmy,” she says. “Can you come in?”

“No, I got to get back and follow up on some things.”

“That’s a shame,” she says and leans over to kiss him.

Paz thinks it would be a simple good-bye deal, but it is not. She grabs his head and plants her open mouth on his. Steam is generated, his tongue receives a fine chewing, she hikes up her skirt and throws a thigh into his lap. He feels her smoking crotch grind against his leg.

After some time, he feels obliged to pull away and looks at her. Her pupils are unnaturally huge, nearly erasing their blue surround. “Jesus, Lorna,” he says, croaking a little, “give me a break here. I’ll have to change my shorts.” Her mouth now attacks his neck with small bites.

“Stop, Lorna,” he insists, feeling stupid, and moves her firmly away. He examines her face. If he didn’t know she was sober he would have said she was drunk. She sags back in the passenger seat and lets out a long sigh. After that she opens the door and walks slowly down her walk, and he notices there is something off about her stride, it’s too slow and uncertain. He feels crappy about leaving her, but he has to go back to police headquarters. “I’ll call you,” he cries out, but she doesn’t respond.

Paz saw the envelope sitting on his desk as soon as he entered the squad bay, a plain eight-and-a-half-

by-eleven manila with no markings on it. He opened it and slid the contents out onto his desk.

“Anybody see who left this here?” he called in a loud voice. The other four detectives looked up but none of them responded. “Nobody saw who left this here?” Apparently not. “Jesus Christ!” Paz exclaimed. “This is a restricted area. You only get in here with a fucking card. Somebody with access must have brought this in.”

More blank looks. A detective named O’Connell said, “What is it, Jimmy? Kiddie porn?” Paz stared at his colleagues and got hostile stares back, or nasty smirks.

He grabbed the envelope and its contents and stalked out of the bay, heading for Major Oliphant’s office. There he blew past a protesting secretary and entered the major’s office without knocking, earning a glare from the man, who happened to be on the telephone. He said, “Thanks, Arturo, but I got something here?let me get right back to you.” He hung up and continued glaring. Paz slapped the two eight-by-ten color glossies down on Oliphant’s desk. The major examined them, instinctively handling them by their edges. “Who’s the woman?” he asked.

“Lorna Wise, the psychologist working with Emmylou Dideroff. Someone came in here and dropped this on my desk, which means either someone has a pass card who shouldn’t or one of our guys is bent. This isn’t supposed to happen.”

“No, it’s not,” said Oliphant dully. He studied the two photographs. One was a shot of Lorna Wise and the other was of Paz, lying on his back asleep. Someone had carefully drawn, with a fine marker, a crosshair sight centered on each head. “Telephoto lens,” he said. “Probably from a boat, the angle here. You took her to the beach?”

“Yeah, I did. We have a relationship.” Oliphant was silent, staring down at the photos. Paz said, “What are we going to do about this, sir?” No answer.

“Sir?”

“Well, Jimmy,” said Oliphant in a tired voice, “I don’t know. Whoever’s behind all this is cranking up the volume. I’ve had a couple of calls in the last hour, from friends. It looks like I’m going to be indicted.”

“Indicted! For what?”

“Malfeasance. Misappropriation of government funds. I ran a kiddie-porn sting operation at the Bureau about four years back?I think I may have mentioned it?and it involved major buys. We were posing as a big operation, trying to suck in producers all over the world, working with Interpol and foreign police…anyway there was a lot of money flowing through my office, all cash, of course. Well, you know, in an operation like that, if they want to get you, they can. The boys with the green eyeshades get busy and they find you’re a thousand short here, a couple of thousand short there. They get some scumbag to say, hey, I only got five grand, and they say you vouchered for eight. Like that. Then this call I was on when you came in, an old pal informs me the word is around DOJ that this all might go away if this thing with Emmylou falls right, meaning we act like good little locals, consider the case closed like we were supposed to, and move on. Also, I hear they’re moving to pick her up on an old warrant, something with a drug operation in Virginia, some officers got killed raiding it. You know anything about that?”

“Yeah, I do, but the only way anyone else would know that our Emmylou and that Emily Garigeau are the same person is if they read it in the notebook that an armed robber took off Dr. Wise this afternoon. I haven’t read it yet, but Lorna did, and the connection is apparently there in detail.”

“Mm, like I said, they’re cranking up the volume. It also means that there’s a direct link between the Bureau and Justice and whoever is doing all these crimes down here.” Oliphant raised his big brown hands to shoulder level, palms up, and then lets them drop. “Ah fuck it all, Jimmy…I don’t know what the hell to do now. I’m open to suggestions.”

“Hey, we got beat, boss. We had the Red Sox and they brought in the Yankees. Let’s head for the showers.”

“You’re serious?”

“Absolutely. You should immediately dictate a direct written order to me and Morales, telling us not to waste any more valuable department time on a closed case. You could send your pal in Washington a copy of it.”

“That would get me off the hook,” said Oliphant. “And what about you?”

“Oh, well you already noticed that I’m exhausted, you’ve actually mentioned it to me. That’s probably why I wasted so much time on this case. Probably my judgment is so impaired that you might think about directing me to take annual leave, four weeks or so. Write a letter and put it in my file. I have the hours.”

“I could do that. What would you do on your vacation?”

“Rest and relaxation, sir. I would take my girlfriend, Lorna, on a trip, maybe to the islands.”

“Sounds great. But I hope you won’t take advantage of the free time to sneak in some work on this case.”

“No, sir, that would be wrong. And if you found out about it, you could write a severe reprimand. You could break me back to patrol if you wanted, or suspend me.”

“Yes, I could.” Oliphant was grinning now, but Paz kept his face quite straight. “Well, I think we’re done here, Jimmy. I’ll get those papers moving. Thank you for your input.”

Paz hung around the homicide bay until Oliphant’s secretary brought him the letters, after which he filled out a leave ticket for twenty-eight days and showed it to Lieutenant Posada, together with the letter from Oliphant directing him to take it. Posada seemed delighted to sign the ticket and get rid of Jimmy Paz for a month. As he was heading to his car, Morales rang him on the cell to say that the parking garage attendant at Jackson had seen a white Explorer SUV with tinted glass tearing out of the place at about the time Lorna had been mugged.

“Plates?” Paz asked.

“Not any numbers. He thought maybe they were out of state.” A pause. “You saw a car like that when we were going to see that guy Zubrom.”

“Yeah, and here it is again, and we’ll probably never find out who was driving it,” said Paz, and then told him about what he’d discussed with the major, that they had to lay off the case now, that he was being put on leave, that they would probably get back on the chart when he returned, and in the meantime, the unit would find Morales some detective work to do.

“That sucks,” said Morales.

“Win some, lose some,” said Paz lightly. Just then all he could feel was delight that the white Explorer actually existed outside his own mind.

Lorna is wondering what to wear to the voodoo and finds that she can still laugh at herself. She thinks this is a good sign. More than the dissolution of her flesh she dreads the breaking of her spirit, sinking into the universe of Sick. At some level, she knows she is being a little nuts, she should be planning her cure campaign in consultation with Dr. Greenspan and a squad of oncologists, she should be discussing treatment options, she should be telling her near and dear, so that they could start treating her in that smarmy half-horrified way that people treat the cancerous, she should be getting biopsied and staged and starting chemo. But she doesn’t make the calls. Instead, she looks the monster in the eye; embracing it; she says, You can have me, but first I’m going to live without fear. Then she finds herself thinking about Emmylou, about miracles, about living without fear. She wonders whether this is one of the famous stages of death, denial or whatever, but she doesn’t feel mortal just now as she goes through her closet. She feels like she has laid down a load.

Paz arrives. He seems tense to her and she offers him a drink. They sit on her patio and drink vodka and lime. She feels his eyes on her and says, “This outfit is all right, isn’t it? I never dressed for a what d’you call it before.”

“Abembe, ” he says. “It’s a ceremony where they call the spirits down to ride people. You just picked that out?” She is wearing a white wraparound cotton skirt and over it a yellow boatneck short-sleeved jersey with fine pale green vertical stripes, and yellow sandals.

“Yes, too dressy? Not dressy enough?”

“No, they’re not big on dress codes in Santeria. But you picked Ifa’s colors.”

“Ifa being…?”

“Theorisha of prophecy. You’ll get your fortune told for sure.” He drained his drink. “Let’s go.”

It is just a regular house, on a classless street in what they called Souesera, which is a corruption of the English “Southwest area,” the name for a substantial region of modest residences stretching south and west of Little Havana. The former lawn is being used as a parking lot, and both sides of the street are solid with cars. Paz parks at a hydrant, with a police card stuck on the dash.

They hear drumming as they walk past the parked cars. Inside, the living room is crammed with people, mostly women, and lit by many, many candles. It smells of incense, and the sweet holy sprays they sell atbotanic as,and the perfumes of the people, and something else, earthier, almost rank. The drumming comes from a trio of black men set up in a corner, drums of three different sizes. They tap quick riffs and turn the tuning pegs.

Mrs. Paz drifts toward them through the crowd. She is in a white dress trimmed with blue at the hem and wears a blue turban, and around her neck a pendant fan shell. Somewhat to Lorna’s surprise (not to mention Paz’s) she greets both of them warmly, with embraces and kisses. Her eyes are huge and liquid in the candlelight, and Lorna wonders if she has taken some drug. She is starting to feel a little nauseated now, from the smells and the heat and the closeness. Mrs. Paz holds her arm and guides her around the room, greeting people, introducing her son and his friend to others, and exchanging a few words in a language Lorna doesn’t know. Mrs. Paz explains that it is Lucumi, the language of the religion, from Africa.

The other people have the worn faces of the hardworking non-rich Cubans of Miami, the moppers of floors, the caretakers of the old, the sandwich makers. Many of these people are dressed in odd colors, and Mrs. Paz explains that these indicate the particularsantos, theorishas, to whom they are bound: white for Obatala the Calmer; red and white for Shango, spirit of force; yellow for Oshun, the Venus of Africa; green and black for Ogun, the Warrior; blue and white for Yemaya, the Mother, the Sea.

“That’s you,” says Lorna.

“Yes, I’m made to Yemaya for many years now. Now, look, you see we have palm leaves all over the walls and the ceiling, because in Africa we danced under the sky in groves of trees.”

“What are all those yams?” Lorna has located the source of the earthy odor. There are perhaps two hundred large yams piled around a pedestal draped in elaborately beaded yellow and green silk brocade. Similar brocade hangs as a canopy from the ceiling. Dozens of candles flickered around it, interspersed with cut coconuts and opened bottles of beer, soda, and rum.

“Gifts to Ifa,” said Mrs. Paz, “this is hissopera, that pot, you see, it contains hisfundamentos, his sacred stones, and all of these, these little statues and medals, these are gifts from those he has helped.”

Mrs. Paz falls into conversation with a small man dressed all in white, thesantero, Pedro Ortiz, and Paz whispers into Lorna’s ear, “Are you having fun yet?”

“It’s…fascinating,” she whispers back, but when she looks at his face she is astounded to observe that he is frightened. His mother appears at his side with two stern-looking women, and after a short conversation in rapid Spanish, the three of them whisk Paz out of sight.

Then without any particular signal or announcement, the drums start to beat. The throng reassembles itself before the drums, leaving a small sickle-shaped area of floor vacant. Lorna has never heard drumming like this; it is entirely different from the drumming of popular music, even Cuban popular music, enormously complex, like a language, dense with data, insistent; she feels her body taken over by it in a disturbing way. The people are swaying now, and chanting: ago ago ago. She sways with them despite herself.

Now people are entering the dancing area, they are barefoot, and although they are middle-aged women and men they appear to move with the grace of professionals. Lorna looks past them to the people standing on the other side of the dance floor and sees Jimmy Paz. He is dressed in a white robe and has a white cloth wrapped around his head. His face is blank, no, not blank exactly but presenting an expression she has never seen on it before, not at all an American face anymore, more like a carving in some tawny wood. She feels like an alien here, and fear starts to tug. The embarrassment monster cranks up in her head, What are you doing here this is crazy what are you doing with this idiotic relationship what will your friends say…? The chants grow louder and louder, drowning out the monster’s voice. Then, suddenly, the drums fall silent.

Something has changed in the room. Lorna is aware of it without knowing just what it is. The air seems cooler and drier, but at the same time harder to see through. The faces of the people glow oddly, and seem mysteriously beautiful. When she was in college Lorna took LSD several times and she recognizes this state as similar: something has happened to her brain. She knows she should be concerned but is not. She turns to the woman next to her and whispers in her primitive Spanish, “Why did they stop? What’s happening?”

The woman says, “Eshu has opened the way for theorishas.”

The drums start up again, a quite different rhythm than before. Now there is another dancer on the floor, and Lorna sees that it is Mrs. Paz. Her dance is a swooping undulating thing, all waves and spray, with a balanced force underlying the moves. The image of the sea pops into Lorna’s mind and she seems to scent salt air and coolness. The people are chantingOke oke Yemaya l’odo, l’ari oke. The drumming reaches a crescendo, the higher pitched drum utters a set of sharp reports, and Mrs. Paz falls to the ground as if shot. Women surround her, help her to her feet, and take her away. The drums are silent, people are chattering now as if at an intermission. Lorna asks the same woman what has happened. The woman smiles and in English says, “Theorisha has arrived. Yemaya is here.”

Mrs. Paz comes back to the room, and now Lorna for the first time feels a thrill of real fear, because this can’t be happening. They have decked her in a cloak of blue and white that has thousands of small seashells worked into its surface and must weigh twenty pounds, but Mrs. Paz carries it like chiffon. She is at least ten inches taller than she was an instant ago and sixty pounds heavier, her breasts are like cannonballs and her belly is a whale’s back. Her face is stern but ineffably kind and not the face of a human being at all. Her hair has been untied and falls down her back in dense stiff coils, as if carved from ebony. The drums start up again, and the drummers sing a song in some African language. Mrs. Paz-Yemaya circulates around the dance floor, inviting people to dance and whispering things in their ears. She approaches Lorna, pulls her out onto the floor. They whirl and stamp together.

Lorna looks into the eyes of theorisha of maternity and of the sea. Now she is not at thebembe anymore. She is lying with her mother on the glider on the porch of their beach house on the Jersey shore. She is four. They are alone in the house, the father and brother are off somewhere, and she has her mother all to herself. They are examining Lorna’s shell collection, talking quietly, her mother reads fromThe Golden Book of Seashells. Lorna can smell the iodine breath of the sea and her mother’s scent, sweet sweat and suntan oil. She is perfectly secure in love.

This just for an instant but so real!

Now Yemaya is stroking Lorna’s body, her hands strong and soft, it feels as if they are penetrating her flesh, stroking her insides. She is talking in a deep voice, not Mrs. Paz’s voice at all, but Lorna cannot make out the African words. Lorna feels her knees give way, but the women standing on either side of her hold her up. She feels tears breaking through, the knife-at-

the-back-of-the-throat feeling, and she now recalls that from the moment the drums started the heaviness of her impending death has been absent. But now it returns.

The drums change their song. Now they are wilder, nervose, irritating. She sees Paz has returned to the circle. He’s looking right at her but makes no acknowledgment that he’s seen her. Mrs. Paz embraces him, she seems to tower over him, she seems to pick him up as if he were a child, which Lorna knows is impossible, but she seems to observe it. People are in the way now, she can’t see them, but in any case this has become a sideshow. All eyes are fixed on a woman of about thirty with a round face, she is whirling and dancing with abandon, thrusting her hips, flailing her arms. The congregation is chanting Oya Oya, and after an impossible leap, the woman faints away. The older women help her up, they drop a tunic of maroon silk over her head and a necklace of skulls. In her hands they place a long black wooden lance, carved with figures.

Lorna asks the woman next to her what’s happening. “Oya,” says the woman, with awe in her voice. “Ruler of the dead.” Oya is a popular fellow at thebembe, it appears. People gather around him for news of the dead, and press offerings of currency to his sweat-slick skin. After a good deal of this, Oya dances with some people, a wild bacchanalian fling, and then, before she can think to resist, Lorna feels her arm grabbed with an irresistible force and she finds herself dancing with Death. Sweat is in her eyes, stinging, and that must be why she sees not a round-faced young woman but a gaunt man with eyes that seem to fill their whole sockets with black, glistening oil and she recalls with horror what she saw when Emmylou showed her the demon. Theorisha says to her be prepared this life of yours is almost over, perhaps in words, perhaps in her head. She feels light-footed, graceful, terrified, full of sexual abandon. But with the terror she feels a sense of deep comfort, for just behind her left shoulder is the loom of her mother’s being, her scent. She knows if she turns now the ghost will be there and she will lose her mind, go screaming off into the night.

Nausea rises in her throat. With a heave she breaks from her partner, pushes through the crowd, and out the front door. It is a cool night and the air outside feels like air-conditioning’s chill against her dripping face. She staggers to the curb, kneels, and pukes.

Lorna walks unsteadily away from thebembe. She finds Paz’s car, climbs in, and within minutes sinks into grateful, exhausted sleep.

When she awakens, Paz is beside her and the car is moving at speed, heading south on Ludlum.

“You all right?” he asks, when she stirs.

“I guess. Somewhat wiped out, really. What happened to you?”

“Oh, they…I participated in what they call alimpieza. I got washed and anointed in the bathroom. Now I’m pure.”

“What did they do to you?”

“It’s hard to describe,” said Paz carefully.

“Try.”

Paz ignored this. “I heard Oya took you for a whirl around the floor.”

“Yes.”

“Any comments?”

“No. Why won’t you tell me?”

“You first. Oya doesn’t appear very often, and when he does it’s a big deal. Did he say anything to you?”

“I couldn’t understand any of it.” Despite herself a groan escapes her lips. She says, “But…but anyway, it was alovely evening, Jimmy, and I want to do it againreal soon.”

Hysterical laughter that they find difficult to stop. In Lorna’s house, they are still sputtering in bursts as they rip each other’s clothes off and fall together on the floor of her hallway.