The Library at Mount Char Part 14

III.

"-and that motherf.u.c.kin' lion dropped not five feet away from me, I kid you not," Marcus was saying. "He was p.i.s.sed. If my third shot hadn't caught him just right..."

"For real?" Aliane said.

"For real."

The little patch of forest they were in was supposed to look wild. It pretty much did from a distance. Up close, not so much. Even if you discounted the little Christmas-tree lights marking the path, something about it said "landscaping." The palms were too evenly s.p.a.ced, or something. But wild or not, Marcus's walled forest was plenty big. She could barely make out the sounds of the party.

"Anyway, once the big lion was asleep, I just walked over and picked up the cub. She was little-bitty then. And then when I did that, I heard this roar and here comes momma running after me now."

"What'd you do?"

"Well, I put down the cub. But it was too late. Momma was a crafty b.i.t.c.h-she snuck in a lot closer than the daddy had been, and all our tranquilizer guns were empty. So one of the native guys, he pulls out a rifle and shoots her."

"Aww! You shot her? She was just trying to protect her baby."

"Yeah, we shot her! She was fixin' to eat my a.s.s. And lucky we did, too. She landed on one of them dudes we had toting our tents and tore his arm all up before she died. I heard later it had to get amputated."

Some of what Aliane felt must have shown on her face.

"It's OK. I gave him some money." Marcus looked at her. "What?"

"Nothing," she said. Then, in hopes of changing the subject, "How long ago was this?"

"Mmm...this was maybe a month after I got off tour, so I guess it must be coming up on a year now. Naga-she was the cub-has grown a lot. Back at the house I got a picture of me standing with my foot on her dad while I'm holding her. Now she's pus.h.i.+ng two hundred pounds, and she's only half-grown."

"d.a.m.n. How big's the daddy?"

"Like, maybe four hundred pounds? It took four people to lift him. Twelve hours later we was all on a plane back to Connecticut."

"They let you bring lions in?"

"I got a permit. This here's a zoo."

Aliane looked around her and s.h.i.+vered. The weed was doing its thing, but not in a good way. The landscaped forest seemed very dark, very deep. She could hardly hear the party at all anymore. For some reason she thought of Mae, her mother, thought of their last fight. Aliane had come home from the city to visit, but she had not brought enough drugs. After two days she grew sick. She lost control of her bowels, became weak. She huddled on the mat where she had slept as a child, sweating, shaking. Mae brought her a bowl of feijoada, a gla.s.s of water, and a cool cloth, her face soft and compa.s.sionate in the light of the candle. She remembered the hurt on Mae's face when she slapped the bowl out of her hands. She didn't want food. Food was not what she needed. She left the next morning without saying good-bye, fled to So Paolo, to the lights and the nightclubs and the men who would give her things if she would do things for them. She didn't mind. Anything was better than growing old in a simple shack on the edge of the Panta.n.a.l, wasting her life the way Mae had done. But here in the shadows Mae's face came to her again.

"Let's go back," Aliane said. "I'm, um, cold."

"In a minute. We're almost there."

A few steps later the path ended in a small clearing. Marcus opened up a panel in what had looked like a tree. All of a sudden the clearing was flooded with light.

"Whoa." She blinked. "What's that building?" It looked like a garden shed, except on stilts.

"Chicken coop," he said. "The zoo guy said to keep it way over here so they can't smell the lions. It gets 'em all riled-up."

Just like the towels and the marble foyer, the door to the chicken coop had been stamped with Marcus's initials, written in flowery Old English script. On a chicken coop? "Palhao," she said, louder than she intended.

"What?"

"Nothing." She gave him her best cover-girl smile.

Marcus smiled back. "Here, take this." He handed her a long bamboo pole with a length of thin rope tied to one end.

"What's this for?"

"Told you," he said. "We're going fis.h.i.+ng." He grinned. "You'll probably want to wait out here. It's pretty smelly inside." A moment later she heard a wild cacophony from inside the shed, five parts angry chicken noises and one part irritated rap star.

"C'mere, you little s.h.i.+t!"

Squawk, flutter, cackle.

"G.o.ddammit!"

After a couple of minutes of this the door opened and Marcus emerged holding a wire cage containing two chickens. The birds' wings flapped quite a bit, but they were reasonably calm, all things considered.

"Gimme that," he said.

She handed over the bamboo rod. Marcus put it over his shoulder like a fis.h.i.+ng pole. The cage in his other hand reminded her of a tackle box. He made a la.s.so out of the string on the end of the pole and slipped it around one chicken's foot.

All of a sudden it dawned on her what he was going to do. "Oh, Marcus, no..."

He flashed her his alb.u.m-cover grin, his gold grill s.h.i.+ny against his white skin. "Gangsta, baby. Come on." He headed back the way they had come. She followed, then stopped. "Marcus?"

"What?"

"I thought I saw something move over there."

He squinted out into the night. "Probably a monkey," he said. "We got a couple of monkeys in the trees. They won't bother you. Come on."

Aliane walked behind him, feeling sick. It seemed to her that the chickens grew agitated as they approached the lion pit. Only a little, though. If it was me getting fed to that cat I'd be squawking my head off, she thought. They're lucky they're so dumb.

A minute or so later they emerged in the small clearing. Marcus walked out onto the bridge between the two lion pits and dangled the chicken over the edge. He let out some slack in the line. The chicken flapped its wings, helpless. It squawked in terror.

"Oh, Marcus, don't do this...."

"Just watch!" He snickered. "It's hilarious." He bounced the chicken at the end of the string. "C'mere, Dresden," Marcus called. "C'mere, big guy! Suppertime."

"Baby, please, why don't we go back to the-" She broke off. Marcus wasn't smiling anymore. "Baby, what's wrong?"

"Dresden?" Marcus said. "C'mere, big guy." He looked back and forth across the pit. Aliane followed his gaze. The pit was an oval shape, deep but not terribly big. It was about forty feet across at its widest point. There was gra.s.s on the bottom, some concrete boulders, a couple of sawed-off tree trunks that were supposed to look natural but didn't. You could see every inch of the pit from where they were standing.

"Where's the lion?" she asked.

Marcus just looked at her. His eyes were very wide. The chicken dangling at the end of its string squawked again, outraged. Marcus dropped the pole. The bird fell five feet or so. The loop came off its foot. With a bit of fluttering it freed itself, then stomped around, making outraged clucks.

Nothing came to see what the fuss was about.

"Marcus, where's the lion?"

"Shhhh," Marcus said. He held one manicured finger up to his lips. His brow was knotted. He lifted up the back of his s.h.i.+rt and pulled out a pearl-handled 9mm automatic.

"Are you saying it got out?" she whispered. "How could it get out? You said there was no way-"

"Shh!" Marcus's face was strained. It was too dark to see much, but he could still listen. After a moment, Aliane listened with him.

Crickets. The soft echoes of cars on the freeway. Up by the house, there was a big splash as someone fell into the pool. Laughter.

Then, closer in-not far away at all, really-a branch cracked.

"Marcus?" she said softly.

He turned and looked at her. There was no need for him to speak. The look on his face said it all.

The pit was empty.

The pit was empty and something was moving out in the night.

IV.

"Marcus, o que e que e?"

"I don't know," said Marcus. He didn't speak Portuguese but, really, there was only one thing she could be asking about. But he did know. A stick had cracked, close by, a big one. He jacked the slide back on his pistol, c.o.c.king it. In the distance, up at the house, a bunch of a.s.shole freeloaders were laughing. By now the alb.u.m was on to the third track, something called "Money Shot" that his A&R man liked quite a bit and, oh, something was moving out there in the night.

"What do we do?"

Marcus rocked his head in time with "Money Shot," thinking. Then it came to him: "The Husbandry Room," he said. The zoo guy had shown it to him. It was an underground room between the two lion pits, very solid, with poured concrete walls and metal doors. There was a slit in the wall with a metal slide in it for watching the lions, like the slit in the door of a jail cell. "We can get in there and..." What? Make a call? Hide out? It didn't matter. He would be safe. "Come on."

"Yeah, f.u.c.k that," Aliane said behind him. "I'm going back to the-" She stopped and gasped. "Marcus?"

Something in her tone made him turn. Just in front of her, less than five feet away, stood the lion she had come to see. His muzzle wrinkled back over thick yellow fangs.

Aliane turned toward him. Her expression was dreamlike. "Tell Mae that I-"

Dresden sprang. The two of them went to the ground together, wrapped in a cloud of dust and small rocks. Aliane's head bounced off the ground. She squirmed a bit, but the lion gripped her with forepaws the size of shovel blades. Then it had its jaws around her neck. The angle at which it held her was such that she was looking directly at Marcus. She seemed resigned, even peaceful.

A few moments later Marcus was a member of a fairly exclusive club. He had no idea how many people had been firsthand witnesses to not one but two lion attacks, but he thought that the number would be very, very small. Gangsta, baby, he thought, and wet himself.

About two hundred yards away he could hear the party going on. Some chick with a thick Bronx accent was saying "Oh. My. Gawd" over and over. The sound of her voice was like ice picks in his ears. I f.u.c.king HATE my friends, he thought. f.u.c.k it. I quit. No more rap-star bulls.h.i.+t for me. Starting tomorrow I'm going to flight school. The rapper thing had never been his first love. He sort of fell into it after a talent show in high school. If David Lee Roth can be a paramedic, I can be a pilot.

The lion, his muzzle bloodied, looked up from Aliane's body. He roared.

Marcus screamed. He felt sudden weight in his boxers. He squeezed off three quick shots from his nine, kicking up dirt high and wide of the lion. The stink of his s.h.i.+t hung in the warm night air.

Marcus moaned, thinking about the Husbandry Room. The entrance was on the far side of the lion pits, a closet-sized cinder-block building built to keep the rain off the stairs. The door to this stair house was thick steel. No lion could claw through it.

I'll be safe in there.

Marcus turned his back on Aliane without a second thought. He sprinted off the path and into the dark. The small, tasteful lights lining the path blinked off. The stair house entrance was well off the path, hidden behind a tall hedge, surrounded by undergrowth. Marcus didn't quite see it in time. He crashed into the metal door, splitting his lip open. He didn't even notice. The pain in his mouth was eclipsed by a terrible vision-his key ring, hanging from a peg in the kitchen.

"Ah no," he said. "No, no, no, no."

He fumbled at the door handle, sure that it would be locked. But the handle turned easily in his hand. "Thank you, Jesus," he whispered, yanking it open. "Thank you, thank-"

Then he screamed, as much from surprise as terror.

There was a man just inside the door, standing on the top stair. He's blocking my waaaay, Marcus thought. Even his thoughts were moans now. Time seemed very slow. The guy was enormous, both in height and muscle, but-what the f.u.c.k?-he was wearing a lavender tutu.

How the h.e.l.l did he get in there? Marcus wondered. Then, on the heels of that, A tutu? Marcus briefly entertained the idea that he was dreaming. It doesn't matter. All that mattered was that he was in the way. Marcus lifted his left hand to push the man aside, simultaneously raising his right to threaten him with the gun. Threaten my a.s.s, Marcus thought. I'll shoot him if I- There was a sudden, bright explosion of motion. He felt a sort of pressure on the fingers of his gun hand, then found himself sitting on his a.s.s in the dirt. He looked down and saw that his two smallest fingers were dangling at an odd angle. A splinter of bone poked out of his pinkie. Seeing this, he felt the first twinge of pain.

He looked up. The man in the tutu was examining Marcus's pistol. He ejected the magazine and twirled it between his fingers like the flourish at the end of a magician's trick.

He flashed Marcus a grin. His teeth were very dark, almost black. He stepped out of the stairwell and circled around behind Marcus, dropping the unloaded pistol in his lap as he pa.s.sed.

Another man, this one completely naked, climbed up out of the dark stairwell.

"Are y'all with the party?" It occurred to Marcus that someone might have spiked his wine cooler. That's it! I bet Wilson slipped some of that PCP in my Bayberry fizz. Good old Wilson. They would laugh about this later. "You best not be b.u.t.t-f.u.c.king down there! I don't want no f.a.ggot s.h.i.+t around up in my-"

"Shhh," said a woman's voice from the darkness. "Out there. Lions."

Marcus opened his mouth, then shut it. It wasn't an unreasonable point. When he spoke again his tone was softer. "Who the f.u.c.k are you?"

The woman stepped forward. "I am Carolyn. This is Michael. That is my brother David."

"Yeah, hi, pleezdameetcha, now gimme a G.o.dd.a.m.n hand so we can get down in-"

She shook her head. "No."

"What do you mean, 'no'?" Something occurred to him. "Heyyyy...are y'all the ones who let my lions out?"

"We are."