The Elementals Page 8

  “Eat your lotus,” Perry instructed.

  “It’ll make you live forever,” Tania added, in her mysterious purr.

  John was quiet, watching me from the other side of the table. I couldn’t really look directly at him.

  For dessert we had mounds of green tea mochi ice cream in pale pink bowls. It had a rich, sweet, almost chalky texture and a powdery softness. I felt like I’d been starving for months, which was sort of true.

  My companions and I ate and drank and smoked and talked. The candles burned, dripping wax onto the tablecloth, illuminating their faces, making shadows in the hollows of their cheekbones. They were even more beautiful than I remembered them. Tania’s hair had grown out a little and she had dyed it a soft pink color. She wore a gold mesh dress and gold sandals. The dress showed off the roses tattooed on her shoulders. They were so lifelike; it seemed as if they had blossomed out of her flesh.

  “Tell us about your classes,” Tania said, licking the ice cream off her spoon.

  “I can’t really tell yet. English lit, classics, creative writing and I got into an upper division class on modernist poetry.” Melinda Story had recommended me to the teacher who was her advisor.

  Perry grinned. “Oh the joys of freshman year. How are your grades, Sylph?”

  “Good. I got all As last semester.”

  “Keep it up,” Tania said. “Don’t let anything slide. That’s how we got where we are today.”

  Where they were. “Yeah, not bad.” I looked around at the white garlands of leaves and flowers embossed on the ceiling and walls. “Do you mind if I ask how three starving grad students afford this?”

  Perry lowered his eyes and raised his glass. “To Marisa Manners, boho artist extraordinaire. Who has made up in death”—he gestured around the room—“for her negligence in life.”

  And Tania clinked and continued. “His mom. She left him this house and a small fortune so we’re just biding our time, preparing to be discovered.” She threw up her arms.

  “Although who gets discovered in Berkeley? I keep telling them we should move to L.A. Or New York,” Perry said.

  “We’d be miserable there.” It was the first thing John had contributed besides a brief greeting when I’d arrived.

  I finished my drink; the warmth in my veins made me feel bold. “You never know. You should come visit sometime. I’d show you the secret places.”

  “Really? There are secret places in Los Angeles?” He was staring at me so intently and I wanted to avoid it but I forced myself to look back at him.

  “You should come. You should all come.”

  “Want to see our secret places?” Tania asked.

  She and Perry and I went outside. The night was misty and chill—we could see our breath, and the earth under my toes—I’d left my boots inside the house—was soft with wetness. The fairy lights were on, twinkling in the trees. It was like the fantasy I’d had in L.A. except that John didn’t come; he said he was going to read a bit. I wanted to run back in and take his hand.

  Tania led the way through the trees to a hedge. Where it parted stone steps descended into a dark garden. Roses grew everywhere—I couldn’t see them that well in the darkness, except as soft, slightly glowing shapes, but I smelled them and I wondered again how they could grow like that this time of year. In the dim I saw what looked like a small, vine-covered gazebo with a tree growing up through the middle and bits of broken statuary scattered around. I heard the splash of water but I still couldn’t make out the source. The whole thing reminded me of the secret garden I had dreamed of finding throughout my childhood. Jeni and I even had a game where we pretended we had found it. We would describe it to each other as we wandered through my neatly groomed backyard—the imagined overgrowth of vines and flowers, the hidden fantasy grottos.

  Perry flopped onto the mossy ground in spite of the cold and damp. Tania danced in the moonlight, her dress swaying around her legs. I could see the outline of her body underneath the fabric.

  “If you want to be our friend, really our friend,” Tania said. She stopped dancing and looked at me. “Do you?”

  “Yes, of course,” I answered.

  “Then there are some things you have to do for us.”

  I’d seen my mom without her hair.

  I had never been kissed by a boy.

  Jeni was gone.

  I felt in that moment that I would do anything they asked, as long as I could be part of this world.

  “Take off your clothes,” Tania said.

  I laughed. “You already saw me naked.”

  “Not naked. Only topless in your panties.” There was a slight taunting tone in her voice, like the mean, popular girls at my high school, like Lauren, but there was a softness, too, a seductive note, something breathless.

  My heart beat faster. They would see everything—the cleft and hair between my legs.

  “Why just me?”

  “It’s our house,” Tania teased, just a hint of smile in her voice. “It’s our rules. You want us.”

  “That’s only half of it,” Perry added breathily.

  What did that mean? That they wanted me? That’s what it felt like. They wanted me?

  I was barefoot already. It was just my coat, the blue silk dress, my bra and panties. The underwear was cream and light blue lace, a Christmas present from my mom.

  I took off the coat and dropped it on the ground. Goose bumps rose on my arms. Perry gathered my coat in his arms, almost tenderly, the way you would pick up after a child you cared about.

  I wasn’t ready to take the dress off yet so I removed my underpants and clutched them in my hand, not sure what to do with them. Finally I set them on the ground, too, but Perry didn’t touch them; I was relieved. It was easy to slip the bra off. The silk of the dress felt good against my bare skin. My nipples were stiff from cold, pushing up the fabric.

  “Dress. Now,” said Tania.

  I hesitated, hoping she meant it as a verb. She didn’t.

  “It’s my dress anyway, remember? I gave it to you.”

  I turned away from them and pulled the dress off over my head, held it in front of me as I turned back around, covering John’s marks, as I’d come to think of them. I felt conscious of how thin I was, how wide and lethal my hip bones looked.

  Tania snapped her fingers and held her hand out. “My dress.”

  “Tania, be nice,” Perry said.

  “It’s just a game.” The sweet Tania voice. “Ariel knows it’s just a game.”

  Just a game? This reassured me somewhat. I gave her the dress and stood shivering in front of them.

  “Now we are going to ask you some questions,” Tania said.

  I waited. My whole body was trembling with cold, even my hair and nails.

  Perry’s voice was softer than usual. “She’s freezing.”

  “This won’t take long.” Tania stood and came to me. “And it’s refreshing for the skin.” She took my hair gently and brought it back over my shoulders so it no longer covered my chest. Her hands grazed the tops of my breasts and I felt the skin there instantly warm.

  She went and sat down again.

  “Answer quickly and without thinking. Have you ever been kissed?”

  I took a second. “Yes.”

  “By a boy?”

  My cheeks got hot even in the cold. “No.”

  “By a girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  I stopped. This one I didn’t want to answer.

  “Who?” she demanded.

  “Jeni,” I said, my head lowered.

  “Jeni who?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest to keep myself from shaking. “My friend. The one on the flyer.”

  It was quiet for a moment. Tania’s eyes downcast. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  I didn’t want to stop and think about Jeni. “Go on.”

  And Tania did. “French kissed?”

  “No.”

  “Been licked?”

>   “No.”

  “Fingered?”

  “No.”

  “So you’ve never been fucked?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever come?”

  Oh God. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”

  “Then the answer is no,” Perry said.

  I felt like a brutalized contestant on a reality TV show. And I was thinking this: if Jeni had not disappeared I would not be standing naked in a garden with these strangers staring at me, humiliating me. No part of me would have wanted it. Now I wanted it.

  “Were you ever abused? Sexually?” Tania asked.

  “No!”

  “I have been,” Tania said quietly. “Stepfather.” This caught me off guard and I forgot about myself for a second. I didn’t know how to respond but I didn’t have to. She was already on to the next question.

  “Do you know any poetry?”

  I nodded.

  “Recite something.”

  I only knew one whole piece by heart. It was the Baudelaire. I saw Jeni’s postcard in my mind, the way the photo of the Conservatory of Flowers stuck out of the top of my book, as I said the words.

  “Bravo.” Perry was clapping before I even finished.

  “Very nice,” Tania said. “And a Frenchy. Too bad you don’t know it in the original.” She cleared her throat.

  “La Lune, qui est le caprice même, regarda par la fenêtre pendant que tu dormais dans ton berceau, et se dit: ‘Cette enfant me plaît.’”

  “Are you finished?” I asked. “Can I get dressed?”

  “No. No. Not finished. Perry has questions, too.” She stroked Perry’s curls. “Go for it, love lamb.”

  “Tell me how you define the prevalence of addiction in our current society.”

  I thought for a moment. I thought of myself drinking, thinking about drinking, thinking about these people in this house, desiring them. I had wondered why the feelings were so strong, what they symbolized. There was so much missing from my life—love, connection, comfort. But my desire was for more than just that. It was for the fleeting feeling I got when I looked at the full moon in the trees or when I watched the play of light on shallow water or for the feeling certain music gave me until the song ended.

  “An absence of devotion?” I said.

  Perry grinned. “Very, very good.” He looked straight into my eyes. Even in the darkness I could see an eerie flicker of light that seemed to be coming from inside of him. “Do you believe in the continuation of the soul?” he asked.

  “And why or why not?” Tania added.

  I had not been raised religiously. My dad was Jewish and my mom was Catholic but they had both given it up for what they called the religion of poetry. Beautiful language was the way to feel close to spirit. But what happened when the person died and there was no more language left? My parents had never taught me anything about what they believed happened after death. It just wasn’t discussed. Now I had to think about it because there was a chance my mom would be gone soon.

  Would die soon.

  I hadn’t let myself fully accept it yet, not until that moment, standing naked in the misty garden before them. And they were asking me about the soul. I didn’t even know what that meant.

  But I felt something. I just couldn’t articulate it. It was connected to those responses stirred by moonlight and water and poetry and music, those resonances that I couldn’t explain. It was what I felt when I thought of my parents, especially my mom, and when I thought of Jeni and now, somehow, in a twisted way, when I looked at these two people I didn’t know, viewing my naked body and my more naked soul in the green tangle of their garden.

  What was soul? And did it continue?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I wish I did.”

  “Well, that’s not going to help Johnny with his dissertation, is it?” Tania pouted.

  “What?”

  “He’s writing about it.” Tania walked toward me, looking me up and down. “I see you can get naked, you can recite Baudelaire and you can answer the addiction question correctly but you don’t know if the soul goes on.” She came closer. I flinched and she laughed. “You look like you think I’m going to whip you. Come here.” She reached out and hugged me. Her body heat relieved the chill that had iced my bones. I couldn’t help clinging onto her for an extra moment before she pushed me away—not hard, but firmly.

  “There are only two more things you have to do. Since you couldn’t answer the question.”

  I met her eyes and pushed my shoulders back. “Okay. Go.”

  Tania was pointing to the ground. It sloped downward, toward the hidden center of the garden, growing muddier as it went.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I want you to roll in it.”

  “Oh my god, this is reality TV.”

  Perry laughed. “You got that right. I told you, T.”

  “Reality is bullshit,” Tania said. “Kids these days. Come on. It’s fun.”

  “Don’t freak. I’ll show you how it’s done.” Perry pulled off his T-shirt but kept on his brown velvet jeans—I couldn’t help worrying that they’d be ruined. His torso was perfectly cut—I could see every muscle in his abdomen and that aroused me in spite of myself. He reached out his brown, sinewy arm to me and I took his hand. He brought me down to the ground with him. The mud squished up between my toes and thighs. It had a rich, mineral scent and clung to my skin.

  “Not just sit. Roll,” Tania said.

  I lowered myself down onto my belly and rolled over onto my back, then onto my belly again. Why was I doing this?

  I rolled down the slope after Perry—the mud tangling in my hair, getting into my nose and mouth—and stopped by a small pool full of rushes and water lilies. A waterfall spilled from a small outcropping of rocks along the side; that was the sound I’d heard.

  “And now water,” Tania said. She had followed me. She watched as Perry pulled me up. He was covered in mud also and he pushed me gently toward the pool. I stumbled forward into the water. It was deeper than it appeared and colder. I shuddered.

  “Don’t stop now,” she said.

  I forced myself to go in, up to my neck. My whole body was convulsing with cold. I thought of John, back in the warm house. Why was I—

  “Okay,” Tania said. “Good enough.”

  I staggered out of the water, shaking so hard I wasn’t sure I could stay upright.

  “Let’s get you inside,” Perry said softly, draping my coat around my shoulders. “Are you all right, sweetie? It wasn’t too much, was it?” The tenderness in his voice after the rush of coldness made my womb ache. I understood something perfectly in that moment—the eroticism of the soft glove after the whip.

  The fire had been lit and the warmth hit me hard as I walked inside. The coat itched my skin.

  “May I please have my dress?” I asked. Tania’s eyebrows went up. “Your dress?”

  She laughed but handed it to me and I slipped it on. “There you go. That wasn’t so bad, was it? You passed the test, Sylph.” I was sweating but they didn’t seem to mind the heat themselves.

  We went into the parlor, where John lay on the ground with his long legs spread out in front of him, firelight making the watery fabric of his green shirt gleam. Tania and Perry sat on the couch. It was hard to imagine that they had been staring at my naked body a short time earlier.

  I sat a bit farther off. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do now. The fire crackled in the grate but no one spoke.

  “Remember when you told me about your thesis?” I asked John.

  He turned his head and there was a brightness in his eyes, probably from the firelight, that I wanted to imagine had to do with me. “Yes.”

  “You believe in the continuation of the soul?”

  “I believe the daimon goes on in some form. In a form we recognize if that’s the way we perceive the world.”

  “The daimon?”

  John flipped onto his stomach so his face was closer to mine. “Dai
mons are the spirits in things.”

  “Is it like demon?”

  “Demons are considered evil. Daimons don’t have to be. Daimons are everywhere, every rock and tree and body of water, everything. Every culture has some form of them. But people stopped believing in them so they had to find different ways to be recognized.”

  “If you deny them they will reappear in your head.”

  “Exactly.”

  “There’s a homeless man on the street. And the first time I passed him he said that. I thought he meant demon.”

  “They appear in psychology, in dreams, anywhere they can be accepted. They don’t just come for their own purposes. Without them people are nothing, zombies. Daimons are souls and I don’t think they ever just vanish into some void.”

  “Because my friend…” I began.

  Tania reached out for me. “Come here,” she said. “Come, baby, come closer to the fire.”

  “I’m too hot.”

  “Come closer.”

  I found myself moving toward them. The heat was so intense, especially after the cold of the garden. My head was a-throb and it was hard to breathe. Moisture trickled into my eyes like tears.

  “It’s purifying,” Tania said. “It will help you understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “Who we are. Who you are.”

  “Who are you?” But maybe I didn’t want to understand. Suddenly a black shade of anxiety was dropping down over my mind. I needed air. I was gasping for it.

  “Are you okay?” John asked. He got up and came to sit beside me, handed me a glass of water and I took a small sip. He brushed some hair from my cheek. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I feel a little light-headed.”

  John turned to Tania and Perry. “I’ll take her home,” he said.

  Just like the last time he put me in the finned car with the torn upholstery and drove me to the dorms. We didn’t talk the whole way; I was too exhausted from the night. I sat breathing that warm, heady flower-smoke scent that seemed to follow them everywhere and staring at a crystal pendant that looked like a piece from a chandelier hanging from the rearview mirror. I wondered if it might hypnotize me if I stared at it long enough.