The Last Supper Before Ragnarok, page 14
“Listen, there are exactly two things I am good at: curries and dying. If that’s what it takes to save the world…” My voice flags. I hate how cheesy that rings, but I like the alternative less. Telling a trickster god that it’s about a woman seems like a criminally bad idea. “I can die for it.”
“But what if you don’t come back this time?” Coyote looks so pleased with himself, speaking a thread above a whisper. The next question is for me alone. “What if you die and—goodbye, good night, thank you for coming? This is the last screening of the Rupert Wong Show?”
I slump into the backseat, half in, half out, one leg drawn close, fingers laced around the knee. I look up, the sky still rinsed of colour, and breathe out. “Honestly, I’d welcome it.”
“This is what I love about you mortals. It’s never enough for you.” He crushes the cigarillo in a fist and then lets the breeze take the ashes away, embers and mottlings of black. “Give you fifty years and you want a hundred. Give you immortality and all you can think about is dying. You’re never satisfied. You push and you gnaw and you ask questions. It’s glorious.”
“Well, since you’re a fan of the interrogative,” Fitz cuts in. “Here’s a question: does this mean you’re going to help?”
“There’s a wrong answer to that.” Tanis swings her Remington up, bracing the stock against her shoulder; smooth, like she’s done this too many times. “I’ll let you guess which one.”
You can tell from the way Coyote lights up that he falls in love with Tanis a little right then, his face softening, an eyetooth bared. “If ever you and Naree decide you want a third in your bedroom—”
“It ain’t gonna be you, jackass.” An adder couldn’t look more glacial.
“That’s fair. I suppose if it was going to be someone, you’d probably want it to be Maman again, huh? She kisses and tells, koulev.” His eyes hood with amusement as the colour bleeds from Tanis’s face, anger sparking.
She kills her anger with a snarl. “Son of a bitch.”
“You know, my wife Allison, she got us Groupon vouchers to try out this mindfulness workshop, and the teacher there said that this kind of combative dialogue is—”
“Oh. My. God. ” Fitz breaks first. “Tanis? Shoot me. I’m not dealing with anymore of this suburban Stepford husband bullsh—”
“Yes.”
Somehow, with just a word, Coyote plunders the air of all competing noise. In the silence that follows, a pin drop would have deafened the world.
“Yes,” Coyote says again, softer this time, nearly purring. “I’ll help. As long as you tell the folklorists that I did it for me, not you. Because of all the futures I’ve been shown, this is the only one that surprises me.”
“Mary on a tricycle,” Fitz shakes his head. “Let’s get started then.”
“Not yet.”
Tanis groans. “What the fuck now?”
“Now, we get ourselves the best sandwiches in Oregon.” Coyote lithely pours himself into the passenger’s seat. “Then we drive me to my death.”
FOURTEEN
THE DINER IS still open when we come back, although most of the truckers have swanned back onto the highway. Amanda sits at the counter under a halo of warm light, elbow propped and chin in palm, a coffee cup and a one-cup French press before her, keeping company with a plate of half-eaten waffles. She looks over as we enter, and her contented expression drops away.
“Oh. You found him. Great.”
Coyote throws his arms open and his head back, chest stuck out. It is pure theatrics; everything about Coyote is, down to the blue-glint of the buckles of his brogues. “Aw. I missed you too, treacle.”
“You two have history, I’m guessing,” I say.
“Not enough,” says Coyote.
“Too much,” growls Amanda.
“Shut up.”
I settle on a bar stool and sprawl over the countertop, my antics earning me a low chuckle from across the diner. Marie comes back, a fresh coffee stain yellowing on her apron but otherwise unchanged. She smiles and I smile back, and there’s an invitation in the crinkling of her eyes. Between one breath and another, I’m tempted. I know how this goes: she sharpies her number into a napkin; I call her the next day; we go out; we fall in love. But I don’t take her up on it.
“Y’all look like you need to eat.”
My mouth flutters. “Second time this week that someone said that.”
“Second time someone was right.” If there is any disappointment, Marie doesn’t exude it. Her smile is kind, her eyes bruised grey. “I see a lot of you types comin’ through here, burning the candle both ways, dying for their jobs.”
“That is uncomfortably grim,” I say.
“You could say that about most of being alive. End of the world’s coming. You know, I didn’t really believe it at first, despite all the things you see on the news. The rising temperatures, the ice caps melting. But you know what made me finally decide we weren’t coming back from it all?” Despite the morbidity of the subject, her grin is luminous, ferocious.
“What was it?”
“I drove home to see my aunt last month. She’s about eighty-five now, and spent her life chain-smoking two packets a day.”
“Amazing she lasted that long.”
“I know!” Marie does a little wiggle, leaning in. She smells of black cloves and bourbon vanilla, musk and motorcycle leathers. “But this isn’t about her. It’s just on that long drive back, I realised something.”
“What was that?” I play the receptive audience without complaint. It nets me a fresh cup of chicory coffee, poured one-armed as Marie props an elbow on the counter, chin rested in an opened palm.
“My windshield wasn’t covered in bug stains.” She stares at me, daring me to say something, I’m not even sure what. “When I was little, that drive would have left a thousand mayflies, ladybirds, flies, bees, what-have-you smeared all across the glass. But this time around? It was almost completely clean.”
“I don’t know if hygiene’s really a marker for the apocalypse.”
Marie laughs, a sound I wish I could bottle, keep in a jar to ration out for nights that don’t seem like they’d end. It is human, sweetly uncomplicated, bright as a wish. Carefree, despite the conversation. Like she’s learned grace. “There are news articles every day talking about how we’re losing our biodiversity, how a hundred to a thousand species per million are lost every year. Our insects are dying, falling away. Without them, who is going to pollinate the planet? The crops are going to shrivel up and we’ll wither away. I used to never think about that until that trip. The insects, they were really gone…”
“You don’t seem terribly bothered by this.”
“I’m scared shitless. But what can I do about this except recycle, cut down on the plastic, and encourage people to do the same, right? I mean, I’m trying to build a beebox in my backyard. So, there’s that. But really, it’s just there’s no point in losing yourself to grief. If the end’s comin’, I’ll make the most of what’s left. Make people happy, you know?” Her eyes drop, overtaken by an abrupt shyness. “Speaking of which, I’m going to see what’s still in the kitchen. It’s probably going to be a lot of bacon and a lot of potatoes fried in the grease—”
“That sounds almost as divine as you, sweetheart.” Coyote comes in from the east of me, a grin already loaded. Marie rolls her eyes, bless her, years in the service industry inoculating her against charms cheap as his.
“You could just place an order like a normal person, stranger. Not like our kitchen closes ever; Yasmin would cry.”
“But then it wouldn’t come with a smile.”
“I live on tips.” Marie jangles a pickle jar at Coyote, coins rattling at its base. “Everyone gets a smile.”
“Don’t eventhink about it, you old dog,” Amanda hisses when Marie has slunk away. Coyote perches on a stool beside her, bushy-eyed, neat as a bowtie, and when he moves to drape an arm across her shoulder, she slaps him away. “Don’t touch me.”
“So,” I start. ‘Despacito’ booms through the diner, incongruous with the 1950s decor. “You guys have history, huh?”
“Too much.”
“Not enough,” Coyote corrects, booping Amanda on the nose, nearly getting skewered with a fork. “We didn’t spend half enough time with Amanda when she was little.”
“Little?” I ping-pong between them, lingering longest on Amanda. She must have upgraded the wetware while we were absent. The microcosm of her face ripples with lines that pull, pinch, and press into subtle expressions, telegraphing gradients of disgust I hadn’t known existed.
Coyote barks a laugh and flings an arm out again to corset Amanda in an embrace. She shoves, hard. Coyote ricochets away, does a quarter-turn, before Fred Astaireing his way up into a booth, a foot planted on its seat. He spreads his hands with a flourish, and you can just about hear the calliope music. “This was back before Amanda became so precocious. So many questions, so much raw power, spinning in a billion CPUs, crying out to be loved. And after the mischief you caused, we couldn’t resist.”
“Shut up.”
“And in the family way, I see.” Coyote’s eyes go big. “I thought it’d at least be another few dozen years before you thought about creating a pantheon. Who’s the daddy, huh? Was it with the Agent? I could see that. All those government men looking in on all the porn in the world. That’s kinda hot—”
“Wasn’t the Agent, Coyote. Wasn’t anything that I wanted, either...” Amanda spears the remnants of her waffle with a fork. She waggles the sodden pastry at Coyote, syrup rolling from its edges. “Want to know something else I didn’t want? You.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit. It’s not like I tracked you down. It was your heroes who came looking for me—”
“The prophecy isn’t our fault.”
“Some of it is. For example: if you hadn’t stepped in to help that darling boy Fitz, he probably wouldn’t be here. The prophecy would have fallen apart and—”
“Semantics.” Amanda tears a chunk of dough loose with her teeth, chewing noisily. In the background, there’s the sizzle of bacon in a pan, conversation in lilting Spanish, the smell of peppers charred in pork fat. “It would have found someone else. It would have kept on finding someone else, no matter who died, until things either happened or failed to happen. That is how prophecy works.”
“For a child, you are very sure of yourself.”
“For the love of—”
“Wait.” It takes a damn minute, but it clicks into slot. “Wait. Did you say that this whole prophecy thing has an opt-out clause?”
Amanda reddens. “It’s not quite like that.”
“Tell him, then.” Coyote oils from the booth to stroll up to us again, hands in his pockets, jacket rumpled just so. “Tell him what you mean.”
“Yeah. Tell me.” I pause. “For the record, I think you’re an asshole and I hate that I’m actually agreeing with you.”
His answering grin is sly and thick with teeth. “No offense taken.”
“I didn’t—you know what? Forget it.” Very deliberately, I turn back to Amanda. Her face is blotchy with colour, patchworked and hyper-realistic. If I wasn’t still debating if the upcoming confession warrants rage, I’d congratulate her on the effect. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s complicated.”
“We’ve got all night. It’s not like I’m sleeping again anytime soon. Being eaten twice in one week does things to you, you know?”
“Supper.” Marie emerges from the kitchen, saloon doors swinging shut behind her, a queue of plates staggered up her arm. Bacon, breakfast sausages, golden-white omelettes, a single mushroom in each serving. “Hope you’re all hungry.”
We are silent as she sets the supper down, Marie lingering over my plate, her fingers so close to mine that they’re almost grazing. But I don’t reach for her. In all honesty, I don’t know what I’d do. I suppose what’s fashionable these days is a no-strings hook-up, honest, raw as two people up all night, talking about what they broke to be this shape today.
I gaze up into her waiting eyes. “If I was fifteen years younger, I’d be trying to talk you down to the altar.”
Her laugh peals through the air, golden, and she turns away, the light drawing attention to the divots of her collarbones and the feathered curl of her lashes. A single rhinestone flashes from the frayed upturn of her cat’s eye. “You wouldn’t have to try too hard.”
As soon I’m sure she’s out of earshot again, I return my attention to the supine gods: Coyote, true to his nature, is gorging himself on his stack. “Nicely done,” he says around a full mouth. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”
“I had a long-term girlfriend for forty-nine years, okay?” Mortality is slippery when Hell doesn’t want you. I pick out a strip of bacon with my fingers, the grease still scalding; it’s something to do, something to distract the body enough for the mind to prepare for what’s coming. I lick the fatty shine from my fingertips, shoot Amanda a look that says what? and please?
I think I know where this story is going.
I don’t want to be right.
“Come on, mami,” Coyote purrs. “Tell him.”
Outside somewhere, Cason is trying to find reception so he can call his kids. Outside, Tanis and Fitz are arguing over the pick-up, seeing if there’s anything to scavenge from the banged-up wreck. Outside, a night black as good coffee, air that won’t have to hear what I hear. I string bacon into my mouth.
She breathes in. The tendons in her long neck tense against the skin, tremble. “Prophecy is very… picky about who is capable of fulfilling its conditions. However, there is some leeway, a kind of failsafe to account for the fact that fate itself is a fractal structure, endlessly expanding into new possibilities with every small decision made. Instead of just requiring a predetermined roster of names, it calls for—hmm—actors matching certain criteria, if that makes sense?”
“I’m still following, yeah.”
“Okay. Good. When Fitz told me about the prophecy, I ran thousands and thousands of simulations, trying to figure out the optimal configuration. And when I was done, there it was. The smoke cleared and you three were the ones left standing.”
I investigate the eggs. The line-chef in the diner’s a virtuoso, wasted in this nowhere truckstop. The omelette is the perfect French omelette: almost custard with a glazing of butter, chives and sea salt.
“I know I’m going to hate myself for asking, but one last question: why us, specifically? What’s the one grand attribute that we all share? The thing that pushed us from mediocre options to great?” My mouth twists with a bitterness I didn’t know I was holding.
“Oh, that’s easy,” she said. “Of everyone I looked at, you three are the most willing to die.”
COYOTE HOOKS AN arm through the open passenger window and leans out, his hair twisting loose of its thick ponytail, the black bleeding away to brindle and white streaks, like winter’s working its fingers through the mass. He grins, teeth sharp, and sunlight catches weird in his eyes, turning them gold.
“Did I ever tell you guys the story about how Coyote taught the Internet to read?”
Amanda makes a face. “This didn’t happen.”
I didn’t sleep much the previous night. Amanda’s confession wasn’t anything that I hadn’t already expected, but that didn’t change anything: she was right, and somehow, that hurt to know. Fitz and I, we’ve been wrung dry. Tanis, Cason? It doesn’t take a genius to know they’d martyr themselves for the good lives they’ve made. We’re not acceptable damage; we’re the frontliners, the vanguard, meat to placate the grinder. Like we’ve always been, always will be.
“But it did! You don’t have to like the truth, Little Sister, but it’ll come for you all the same, sure as I’m going to be road kill one day.” The radio quiets, Tom Waits gargling a curse as Coyote taps out a beat on the dashboard with a long, lithe hand. The world wraps around the spindle of his song, stills to listen as the demigod lifts his voice, laughing. “That’s the problem with you new gods. You hate tradition so much, you won’t admit you’re just the next generation. Nothing new, just something borrowed.”
I glance over to Tanis and Fitz, leaning together, shoulders like steeples, the lamia’s head propped on the Chronicler’s cheek, both snoring. Cason sits on the other end, trying to take photos of the landscape blurring past. He wants to bring his son here, someday. Says that Oregon would be good to teach him how to unwrap the minutes into moments, teach him how to get lost in the good of what’s left.
His voice wounded itself on the end of that sentence and the light bled out of his eyes, but he rallied, torniqueting himself with stories of vacations past: gibberish about the Grand Canyon, a layover turned into a second honeymoon in Hawaii. Simple stuff, domestic. Talismans of normal to ward against the future.
“Rupert.” The way Coyote drags my name out, fills it with vowels, forces a shudder down my spine. “Rupert, did I tell you that story?”
“You can’t tell a story that never happened,” Amanda hisses, fingers blanching as she grips the steering wheel tighter.
“I taught humanity to write. I stole them fire. I gave them everything, and Zeus gave me eagles to tear out my liver.”
“That was Prometheus.”
“That was me too.” Coyote’s tongue lolls out, long and pink, dragging in the wind. “And if you asked Anansi, he’d tell you that he freed the salmon and so on and so forth. Because, what the fuck is the use of a trickster if he isn’t writing his own fanfiction?”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“You know it makes sense, Rupert. You tell ’em.” Suddenly, the backseat floods with the smell of anise and chicory, New Orleans in a cocktail glass. Coyote ashes the cigarillo he hadn’t been holding a second ago, his face red-lit by the cherry’s glare. “You know what I’m talking about.”
