The Last Supper Before Ragnarok, page 9
Amanda spreads her hands. “Is this the life you want for Beatrice?”
For a long time, no one speaks.
Tanis whispers throatily. “That’s some cheesy fucking blackmail, you piece of shit. I—”
Whatever she’s about to say goes unsaid. Beatrice, alerted by her name, wobbles out from the nursery, chubby arms held out for stability. I hadn’t really taken time to inspect her in the car ride. At first look, she’s all Naree: the same complexion, the same upturned nose, a smile that takes her whole face hostage. But when Tanis lopes after the girl, worry flashing across her expression, I can see where she takes after the other woman. They have the same eyes. And there’s a precocious muscularity to Bee’s motions that might make her a world-class athlete one day.
Or a hired gun, like her mother.
I staunch the impulse to ask if Tanis has watched The Professional. While I’m hardly known for my wisdom, even an idiot would know not to provoke her.
The light comes back to the universe, washes outwards, spreads to wrap the little girl in gold. You could almost hear the Hallmark music gearing up. Bee swerves out of Tanis’s encroaching embrace and totters defiantly up to the intruders in her home, boggling at us.
“I do not have candy and I regret being the only person here who has never handled a child,” Fitz drawls.
I glance at him. “It’s not just you. If it helps.”
“I thought your ex had a kid?”
I pause. George was, technically speaking, a child. In many of the ways that mattered, he was also my step-child. As parent, I took my incumbency with the utmost seriousness. I filled the fridge flush with donations from the blood bank, the moistest cuts of meat. I made sure the doors were lamellared in talismans, kept every window locked, every vent obstructed by post-it wards. And I even let George drink my blood to encourage bonding.
But he wasn’t at all a kid the way Beatrice is: cute, curious, and actually alive.
The fact that George had no skin and was, technically speaking, an eight-month-old fetus gouged from his mother’s belly is completely tangential.
“It wasn’t the same.”
Fitz looks me over. “Mmm.”
As Tanis scoops Bee into her embrace, Amanda whispers, “Please. For your daughter. We cannot do this without you.”
“Jesus fff—” She catches herself. “Fluffing cripes.”
I nearly gnaw through my beer can, trying to waylay the impending laugh.
“I think that is as good an answer as you’re going to get.” Naree’s shoulders loosen and she forces a hollow chuckle. “I think this is as good an answer as any of us will ever get. It’s not about what we want. It’s about what’s good for Bee, right? Anyway. As long as they bring you back in one piece.”
“We’ll try,” says Fitz, raking his eyes over Tanis’s muscular frame. Thank Guan Yin there’s nothing lecherous about his inspection; I get the feeling even the slightest indication of lust wouldn’t go well. “But in the meantime,” he continues, “there’s one more mystery to solve.”
“Please stop talking.” Cason tents his hands over his mouth. “I don’t even know what you’re going to say, but just don’t say it.”
Of course, Fitz barrels past that.
“What’s your special power?”
More silence before:
“She’s a lamia,” says Naree, brows arrowing.
“Half-lamia,” Tanis adds. “Mother only had mortal men to breed with.”
Something in her expression, the infinitesimal rise of her smirk to a sneer, suggests that the story is more involved than that. But it couldn’t have been anything good. Jouncing Bee in her embrace, she walks over to the television and sets the girl down. Some tinkering with the maze of electronics ensue before the theme song for Teletubbies begins blaring. Beatrice gurgles in obvious glee.
Cason tilts his head. “You’re a snake creature?”
“Something like that.”
“Okay. Uhm. What are lamias known for?” he continues.
“Super strength, incredible flexibility, Olympic-level athleticism.” Naree begins counting nonchalantly off her fingers as she speaks. “Two dicks.”
The room stops in its place save for the ambient noises of a deranged children’s television program.
I can’t tell who said the word first, but I don’t think it matters. Within a second or so, we all say some variation of, “What?”
EIGHT
TANIS PALMS HER face, shoulders rustling.
Carson looks scandalized, and Fitz jams his knuckles into his mouth. Amanda is the only one of us not to move: stock-still, jaw slack, expression suspended in that tender place between amusement and horror. As a group, we are still recovering from that recent epiphany.
“Naree.” Tanis’ voice is strangled.
“Nothing wrong about acknowledging the existence of good dick.” Naree waggles her eyebrows. “Especially when they come in a matching set.”
“I feel like…” Amanda pauses, regroups, and tries again. “You know what? I feel like I lost the plot somewhere. Which isn’t to say that this isn’t fascinating data. Snakes have hemipenes. It stands to reason that a cryptid derived from reptilian stock would share such characteristics, but seriously. How does this relate to anything?”
The humour ebbs from Naree’s expression. Lovingly, she reaches for Beatrice as the toddler waddles full-speed into the conversation, clutching the Teletubby she’d liberated from under a pyramid of folded laundry. Naree closes hands over the kid’s ears and smiles sweetly up at us. Then, just there, a wobble in her voice: “Because you’re stealing my wife away for a fucking suicide mission. The least I can do is make sure you die a little uncomfortable.”
“If you’ve changed your mind about this, I’ll remind you that I wasn’t onboard with this at all.” Tanis takes Bee’s hand and shepherds her back to the television.
Carson rises, moves to collect the cans we’ve emptied and scattered across the living room, his gait stilt-legged, awkward: a puppet’s disjointed walk. “Sorry, we’re making a hell of a mess.”
“That’s fine,” says Naree dismissively. “Just leave it.”
“We’re being terrible guests.”
“Really. It’s fine.”
“I just want to help—”
“Put the clutter down or I shoot you in the head,” Tanis snarls.
A sweet voice exults: “Shoot!”
“Look at what you did.” Tanis stops herself short of a rude gesture and swings down as Bee comes barrelling away from her programme yet again, clearly having decided that this was the most productive way of accruing attention. The exasperation in Tanis’s expression, worn smooth by constant use, suggests she’s aware of the manipulation. “Come on, honey. The adults are talking. Do you want Dora the Explorer instead?”
“Shoot you!” Bee repeats.
Tanis hoists her up. “That’s not a nice thing to say.”
“Shoot you… please?”
“I guess that’s an improvement,” says Tanis.
“Anyway,” continues Naree. “It’s no big deal. You should still stay the course. This matters. All of it still matters. Amanda made it clear. I get why this needs to happen and why Tanis needs to go with you. But that doesn’t change the fact she’s the love of my life and there’s a part of my head that says she’s not coming back. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if I’m right. So, I’m going to be petty. Just a little bit. Just for a moment. And that’s all that is..” She taps her breastbone with a finger. Bee, picking up, maybe, on the fact that her mothers are in distress, twists in Tanis’s embrace. Her breath begins to hitch, the thin beginnings of a wail expanding in her throat.
Tanis, rocking Bee in her arms: “Babe, is that really everything?”
I clear my throat. “Should we give you guys some privacy?”
“Shut up,” the two women snap in unison.
Fitz gives me a sympathetic shrug and slinks towards their fridge, carefully extracting the remnants of our six-pack of artisanal beer and holding it up. Amanda demurrs and Carson flatly ignores him, so he comes around the tableau and sinks onto the moss-green couch beside me.
I crack open a beer, earning another glare.
“Naree,” Tanis tries again, when the sound of my beer’s enthusiastic foaming ebbs away. “Babe—”
“This is hard, okay? Being complicit in all of this. Telling you to go. Telling you to put yourself at risk. Telling you it’s okay to, maybe, die for a bigger purpose when all I want is for you to stay home, stay here, stay with me and be safe and I…”
“I thought I made it clear. I was outright askin’ you for—ssh, Bee, just give me a second—your opinion. If you don’t want me to go, I won’t. I swear to god—”
“If I had said something, you’d have just thrown everyone out!”
“That’s my point!”
“No. No, it isn’t! Not my point, at least. My feelings don’t matter here. We don’t even need to have this discussion. I just… I just needed to let off some steam, okay? Just a little bit. Can we please stop discussing this?”
“No. This actually sounds like it’s important to you.”
“You are making a big deal out of—”
“Probably not.”
“See?”
“I feel like someone should be steering this conversation away from this route,” I say.
Tanis doesn’t even look over. “Shut up.”
“Shutting up again,” I say. “Man, I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot—”
“Shut—”
“Got it.”
Naree collects the toddler into her arms, head downturned. “I love you. I love the fact you’d give up everything for me, risk everything for me. Which is why we’re doing this. You need to go save the world. Because if you don’t, there’s not going to be a future for Bee. We owe it to her to be strong.”
“I’m coming back.”
Naree shrugs a shoulder, face still obscured by the waterfall of her hair, but her voice is steady. “If you don’t come back, I’m going to find you. I’m going straight down to Hell and I’m going to find you, and I’m going to drag you back, and I’m going to beat you with a shoe.”
“You sound like your mother.”
Naree laughs, shrill and loud and long, and it cuts through the fraying tendon of Beatrice’s certainty that the world is alright. Her eyes go round and then her mouth follows, her face concaving into the howl that follows.
“Aw, heck. Bee. I’m sorry. Sssh. Amma didn’t mean—Ssh, ssh. It’ll be okay.” There’s a sheen of tears on her cheeks. She holds Bee close, bouncing the child at a jagged tempo until she finds one that blunts her daughter’s howling. She vanishes into the nursery, and the door is mule-kicked shut behind her.
Another silence tightens around the room.
“I hate all of you,” Tanis announces after a full five minutes.
“We don’t have to like each other to save the world,” says Amanda.
“If it’s any consolation,” Cason joins in. “We don’t like each other very much.”
I snort. “Hey, speak for yourself. I like you guys just fine. It’s myself I hate.”
Tanis stalks through the room, stopping by a liquor cabinet; she wrenches the doors open and pries out a glossy-looking bottle of bourbon. The cork is popped, and Tanis downs a quick swallow and wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. “You know what pisses me off the most? The fact that you’re springing this on me now. Naree and I never even got the chance to be married! We were just—”
“I could fix that,” says Amanda.
“What are you talking—?” Tanis’s eyes go wide; her irises shift from brown to serpentine yellow, almost to gold. “You could?”
“It wouldn’t take very much,” the clone continues modestly. “It’s just a question of records. But if you want a ceremony, I… I don’t know if I’d be the best person to ask for something like that. If you don’t mind the informality—”
“You know, I could help with that part of the equation.”
“What—forget it.” Tanis looks at me, puzzled. “Alright, Einstein. What’s your deal?”
“I’m going to ignore the fact that sounded like an insult. Um, it wouldn’t be legal in the eyes of America, but I guess that Amanda is taking care of that part of it.”
“It’s been a long, long day. Cut to the chase.”
“Well, in theory, I’m probably—I’m at least as good as any priest you’d find. Most clergymen tend to not actually be personally anointed by their, uhm, employers, if you know what I mean? If you don’t mind the fact that I was consecrated by Hell rather than Heaven, and—”
“Again, it’s been a long day. Keep it moving.” .”
“Let me officiate your wedding. I’m about as close to an—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—authentic holy man as we’re going to get on short notice. Amanda can make the official part of things happen. I can do the ceremony. We can get you married. It’s not ideal, but it’s something, and if the worst happens, at least…” My voice drains away. “You know.”
Tanis considers it for a moment. “Well, I guess Naree isn’t religious, and well, I don’t know what I am.” She takes another slug of the bourbon, her expression raw, halfway to hope, halfway to despair. But there is a new brightness there. “This sounds either like the worst idea in the world, or something Naree and I are going to laugh over in thirty years. Assuming we survive that long. So, you know what? Let’s do this. I’m going to wait until Naree is done in the shower and I’ll see about proposing.”
Amanda clears her throat. “If you don’t already have a ring, there are two hundred and forty-five prospective sellers within driving distance. Apparently, Orlando’s not the happiest place in the world for marriages.”
AND THAT, ANG moh, is how I got into the wedding business.
NINE
READER, I MARRY them.
It is not the ceremony that anyone might have coveted, bereft of grandeur. There are no bands, no musicians in three-hundred dollar tuxedos, satin around their waists and a smile on their faces. There is no champagne, only cheap beer procured in bulk from the ramshackle gas station three blocks down. No gazebo, no fairy lights strung in the willow trees, no cake so elaborate you’d feel guilty for even desecrating it with a breath. Nothing of those components essential to a fairytale wedding.
Instead, they have us.
They have Bee.
And most importantly, they have each other.
We come by the next day, after several excursions to some of Orlando’s many fried chicken venues. None of which, let me tell you, come within spitting distance of Malaysia’s ayam goreng, with its myriad of spices, its fish sauce marinade. The Americans, of course, pooh-pooh it as nationalism, but I know who wins the fast food wars.
Spoiler: it isn’t the people who invented it.
But that is a collateral fun fact. What matters is that I marry Naree and Tanis by the dwindling wolf-light, the firmament burnt indigo by the encroaching night. Dusk this evening is bands of gold and rose, the horizon flushed with phoenix colours.
“I think I’m going to cry,” Fitz whispers to me while we stand under the first stars, waiting for Naree to walk down the dew-spangled grass to where Tanis waits for her. Earlier today, we cleared their backyard of Bee’s little yellow-pink push-car, and moved the rest of the mess—garden rakes, stray cigarette butts, a graveyard of nicotine patches, a few cans of energy drinks—into a plastic castle, the face of a luridly grinning princess emblazoned forever on one tower.
“Me too.” I worry at the little bow-tie I’m wearing. “You clean up okay.”
He mocks a bow. “Why thank you, sir.”
“I have to ask,” Cason says, coming over. “When was the last time you actually put on—” He flicks me on the underside of my chin and I straighten, startled. The distraction is apparently what he’s angling for as he lunges for my bow-tie. “Jesus, stop moving. You’re squirming like a kid at prom.” He achieves whatever he’s hoping for and straightens with a sigh. “How’s that?”
“It’s a bit tight.”
“How did you survive getting so old?” Cason might be the oldest guy in the room, but the way he rolls his eyes at me, you’d think he was fifteen and damned by hippie parents.
“We really have to sit down one day and discuss what ‘survive’ means in my neck of the woods. It’s not as clear-cut as you think.”
No such thing as perfect in a world worn down by gods and worse. Three Stooges gone to seed, a woman who is the entire digital world, a picnic spread of whatever we could forage in the gas station. You could ask for a lot more for a wedding. But we’re trying, and hopefully this will be close enough. If nothing else, we have fairy lights.
Tanis comes out of the house first: still muscular, still don’t-fuck-with-me, but so much more elegant in a subtle pinstripe suit with heels I’d assumed she wouldn’t be seen dead in. The trousers are high-waisted, held up by braces. The black vest might as well be painted on. Tanis holds the jacket hooked on a finger and over her shoulder. Every curl gleams, lacquered into place, luminous as the smile she wears so nervously.
“How’d I look?”
“Like your father would die proud,” I whisper.
She winces. “Yeah, I have no idea about that. He’d certainly be surprised.”
Her gaze drifts. Cason throws the last coil of fairy lights into the trees and steps back, fists on his hips, a satisfied nod coming to fruit once he realizes for sure that the foliage won’t catch fire. He looks back to us and salutes with a double thumbs-up before scurrying back into the house. Piano music drifts out, slow and breathless, slightly plinky, but hey, we’re making do.
