Saturnalia

Chapter 2-2

Max wasn’t impressed by the Club, and of all our friends, he was the only person who wasn’t impressed by East, either.

I rolled onto my side, giving him my back. ‘I’m going to tell you a secret,’ I said. ‘But you can’t look at me while I’m talking.’

I stared at the wall and told him about the night before, everything up to Amparo slicing her foot on the glass. I told him about the book, too – stupid early Christmas gift – and then I said, ‘I’m never going back to the Saturn Club.’

He was lying beside me by then, keeping his gaze respectfully on the ceiling. ‘Good,’ he said.

I was surprised. I argued against myself. ‘But what about everything I’ve been working for? What about the Saturnalia Committee?’

‘Who cares?’ he said. ‘It’s not the only way in the world.’

‘I won’t have any friends.’

I was thinking about Amparo. If I told her the truth, she would forgive me for the last twenty-four hours. But if I quit the Club – if she had to choose between me and it, her past and her future – then I wasn’t confident I was worth the trade.

‘I’ll still be your friend,’ he said, and touched my wrist.

Max wasn’t coming on to me, but he didn’t tense when I laid my palm on his chest or when I slung one leg over his lap. He shifted beneath me, and I straddled him. My skirt, too short for a cold night, for Blue Christmas, was around my waist, and his fingertips, just his fingertips, were on my ankles, then my calves, the space where my thighs rested.

‘I’m too old for you,’ he whispered, smiling – his smile. Max’s smile. Soft. Always like it’s just meant for you. Always like he was touching me, though he never did, not until now.

‘I don’t want him to be the last person who touched me,’ I said. I wanted to replace the persistent sensation inside of me. I wanted to obliterate it. I wanted to be obliterated. I wanted pain. I wanted so much pain that I couldn’t think. I wanted the pain because it was real. The polite circle, the polite deaths of ghost stories, the polite blaze of a fireplace – none of that was the real me. I was the fire.

• • •

I went home and slept on the couch. I woke up and stripped the sheets from my bed and threw them away. I started a new life, alone.

Heard you’re out, officially, Max messaged, when I officially withdrew from the Saturn Club in February. Let me know if you need anything, after I lost my job at the communications firm in March. I knew cutbacks were coming, but without the Saturn Club, I no longer had protection. In April, I found a package in my mailbox, a manuscript. Galanis Publishing was printing an edition of old ghost stories, all out of copyright, and Max wanted me to proofread. His regular person couldn’t do it, his note said; I would be doing him a favor. He included a style handbook and a check – because I was doing him a favor, the money was up front. I had just opened a third credit card to pay off my second.

I deposited the check and did the job.

One of the stories was about a kelpie, a Scottish water spirit, like the tale I read at Blue Christmas. In this version, though, the spirit wasn’t evil. When the horse leaves the water, it becomes a beautiful man wearing a golden bracelet. He meets a woman and falls in love with her, but she suspects his true nature. She feeds him bread and cream, and when he falls asleep, she slips the bracelet from his wrist. He transforms back into a horse, and she rides him across the moors, the gold shining against her skin, until his backward hooves bleed.

I don’t know how Max got my new address or my new phone number. I often think of Max as the only friend I kept, but the truth is, he kept me.

His next gift was a Saturn Club Deck, to replace the one I left behind in the West Philly apartment. He had offered it to me before – You can make good money – and I refused. I wanted nothing to do with the Club. But there it was, tied in ribbon, in my mailbox. I sat at my small kitchen table, rescued from a street corner, and tapped the carved wooden box against the chipping particleboard.

I could resell the deck, I thought. The printing was limited, making it a collector’s item. I opened it. I shuffled the cards and one fell onto the floor.

They say that a fallen card is an omen – the universe trying to tell you something. This card was the Horseman: a dusky purple figure on a dusky purple horse. The rider is helmeted, with long hair curling down their back. Behind them, a swirling gray cloud.

It’s not a popular card. It’s muted and simple. It signifies a long journey. No first-step thrill, no last-step reward, only the middle’s exhaustion and doubt. Rushing blindly from nowhere to nowhere.

Keep on, I might tell a client. Muster your strength. Tap your patience.

The rider’s face is invisible, but their body leans forward. The horse’s legs reach forward, too, its body a kind of bridge into the future. The Horseman requires no path and no vision but what they possess within.

Unless the Horseman isn’t the one chasing; unless the Horseman is the one being chased. Unless the card doesn’t portray blind courage; unless it indicates blind terror.

What do you see? I would ask a client. What kind of Horseman are you?

• • •

Outside the museum, I dial Rhea, but I can barely hear the phone’s ring over the vibration in my head. I press where the cup of my ear meets my skull, like I can touch that ringing sound, like I can stop the blood before it starts to fall.

The phone rings. My head rings. A single tone.

Rhea doesn’t answer.

My call disconnects and I try again. ‘Please,’ I whisper.

Rhea doesn’t answer.

I turn the corner onto Thirty-Third Street.

The two security guards lie in a heap at the door.

My vision fogs, but I can’t rest. I lean forward into the clouds.

I fall, but I don’t hit the ground.

‘Hey,’ Amparo says. I can’t tell if she’s whispering or shouting, but she’s here, her shoulder under my arm, holding me up. She speaks with her old voice – the voice that confided in me, comforted me, repeated my thoughts back to me. Not the person who conspired with East or called me a traitor, but my best friend. ‘Hey,’ she says, her face close to mine. ‘Are you okay?’

Everything I felt earlier – regret and anger, jealousy and vindictiveness – it’s nothing more than air, blowing away. Thank god, thank gods, thank fate, thank chance – she’s here.

‘It’s going to kill us,’ I say. ‘Hurry.’

‘But East is inside.’

‘He’s dead.’

Her eyes go wide.

‘Trust me.’

She does, and we run, but we make it only a few blocks before I’m out of breath. It’s as if the ringing in my ears has expanded, pushing down my throat and into my chest. Across the street, the children’s hospital windows blaze an icy white. The rotating doors are flanked by armed guards and staff in scrubs, checking their phones.

‘What’s wrong?’ Amparo asks. I can just make out the muffled words. I pat my ears and hold my hands up; they’re both dry. I’m not bleeding. I’m out of the storm, but I’m afraid it’s not out of me – my brain, spinning like a tornado, set in motion by the Mandragora’s voice.

‘Mandragora,’ I say.

Amparo frowns; she doesn’t know the word.

‘It’s after me.’ I twist the gold ring, and it rotates only a quarter turn around my swollen finger.

Amparo’s forehead creases with worry. ‘I think you need some rest,’ she says. She puts her arm around my waist, and I lean into her, her backpack holding my weight. ‘Can you make it home?’

Home. Our old apartment on Fifty-First Street. The place where I struggled against East and where Amparo bled on the wreckage we left behind, but also where she stood on my bed, flipping her hair – This one’s the I’ll Never Tell Your Girlfriend – while I curled around a pillow, laughing. Cheap string lights and boxed wine and empty bowls, studded with rice and milky with coconut grease, meal deliveries from her mother. The world, we knew, was in trouble, but we were okay; we were burning filaments hanging over a cracked wall that had been painted too many times.

I would do anything to turn the horse around, speed into that past.

‘Yes,’ I say, though the apartment’s a mile away. ‘I can make it. But the ring…’

The storm closes in. Amparo, the parked cars, the hospital, all disappear behind a brown nothing.

• • •

Cold concrete along my leg, under my ribs. The coarse canvas of Amparo’s backpack under my cheek, its bulk pressing an awkward angle into my neck. A car door opens. ‘It’s okay,’ Amparo says, her breath against my cheek. ‘I’m going to help you stand up.’

She hoists me into a taxi and buckles my seat belt, and then we’re coasting through the residential streets of West Philly, Victorian rowhomes and tall trees. Most of the houses are dark, but a few small parties remain on the wide porches. Normal people, normal families, preparing for a normal tomorrow. We walked this neighborhood countless late nights, tipsy or sober, clutching each other on icy sidewalks, strolling to enjoy a summer night after the heat broke. Once I got scared coming home late from the bus stop. I called her and we stayed on the phone as we jogged toward each other, meeting in the middle.

Abruptly, the familiar scene breaks. The trees are replaced by stumps, and the houses are bandaged with plastic sheeting. Boarded-up windows are tagged in graffiti. f**k city hall. prepare for the end.

Damage from the last tornado – I didn’t know it came down our street. Her street.

‘What happened to East?’ Amparo asks.

‘He couldn’t let go. It caught up to us. I got away. He didn’t.’ I’m trying to explain, but it just comes out as rambling. I try to show her the ring again, to ask for help, but she doesn’t understand; she pats the back of my hand, all the while squinting at the driver’s seat, working out some calculation.

‘You and East were working together,’ I manage.

‘He called me a few days ago. He said he needed my help. He had made something incredible.’

Max hadn’t even told me that. Just a box, he said, a simple delivery.

‘What else did he tell you?’

‘Everything,’ she answers. She wouldn’t accept less.

‘The jar, the Alban Arthur Society, the settlement investment.’

‘Did he tell you what’s in the jar? What they’re going to do to him?’

‘Do to who?’ Amparo leans forward to direct the driver. ‘You can pull over there.’

The car slows at the curb.

‘Can you make it up the stairs?’ she asks me. Our apartment – her apartment – is on the top floor, two flights up.

I nod.

The covered porch is still painted a gummy purple. The entryway hasn’t changed, either: a worn green runner on the stairs, a wobbly railing, and a domed yellow light fixture, shadowed with dead bugs.