Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #217 Page 13

  "Will you come to a party with me?” she asked the faun eagerly.

  The faun turned a piercing gaze on her. Before she'd spoken to him, he'd been carefully and thoughtfully disassembling a pinecone with his slender fingers. “Is there something you desire?” he asked.

  Pamela scrunched her nose. “Well, of course. I want you to go to a party with me. I just asked you!"

  "That is something you want,” the faun said. He seemed to be holding his breath. “What I want to know is if there something that you desire."

  Pamela thought about it. She thought about Magdalena. She thought particularly about Magdalena's eyes, of making their condescending hardness melt into slush. Into humiliation and remorse. Into something human and touchable.

  "Yes,” Pamela breathed. “Yes, there is."

  The faun sighed wearily. “Then I will help you,” he said.

  Quickly, Pamela bundled the wild youth in her cashmere coat. She hustled him out of the park, glancing furtively to the left and right, scrutinizing each oak for possible menace. Once they were safely clear of the oaks, she marched him back to her apartment building, ignoring the soundless mouth flapping of her doorman.

  Pamela left the faun standing in her entryway while she made a quiet reconnoiter to ensure her son Riley was not home—she certainly didn't want to disturb him! But then, he typically wasn't at this hour. Since the day was sunny, he was most likely reading tomes of philosophy on the steps of the public library (always below the stone lion called Fortitude; he had an active, and somewhat bewildering contempt for Patience) in his black beret. If it had been raining, he'd be drinking coffee in some darkened boîte over by Union Square. Such a soul that boy had! Her heart swelled with accustomed pride.

  Her nose, however, was swelling with something else—the olfactory attack of goat.

  Deprived of the benefit of the copious amounts of fresh air that the outdoors typically provides, the faun was stinking up the place. He had his hands clasped behind his back, and was looking around the apartment appraisingly.

  "Nice,” he said. “Prewar. What, thirteen, fourteen hundred square feet? I love the built-ins."

  Pamela wrinkled her brow at him before stepping into the bathroom and turning on the tub spigot. She doped the water liberally with a French bath salt that smelled of rosemary and lavender. Then she herded the wild youth into the bathroom and relieved him of his stinking animal-skin vest. He stood regally, allowing himself to be disrobed like an antique Sultan, staring critically at the water rushing into the tub as if gauging its suitability to touch his exquisite flesh. With a silly little half bow Pamela excused herself, closing the door behind her.

  The stinking vest she burned. Or rather, she would have burned it, if she'd had the means to; actually, she double-bundled it in a plastic bag and threw it down the garbage chute.

  The faun emerged from the bath an hour later. He was damp and steaming and wrapped in an oversized Egyptian cotton towel. The bath had very much improved his appearance; the moist, warm skin of his upper half was a pleasant shade of cocoa, and the silky, coal-black hair of his lower half was shiny and curly, like fine astrakhan. Two delicate nubules of horn protruded from his brow.

  With businesslike brusqueness she marched him into her son's room and pointed wordlessly to some of Riley's old clothes. When he emerged, she noticed with some horror that he was not wearing the paint-stained chinos and white T-shirt she'd laid out on the bed; rather, he'd apparently rummaged through Riley's closet and selected items more suitable to his tastes: a pair of black silk slacks and a pale seafoam shirt that made his leaf-green eyes glisten. He buttoned the cuffs casually as he crossed the room, his hooves clicking across the oak floors.

  "Riley's not going to like that,” Pamela said tapping an anxious nail against her upper teeth.

  "Worry about what he thinks, do you?"

  "He's sensitive,” Pamela said. “An intellectual. A very intelligent boy!"

  "I'm sure,” the faun said.

  Then, something caught his eye that made that verdant orb gleam with malicious pleasure. It was Buttons, Pamela's fat tabby housecat, licking himself. Loosing a wild high whoop, the faun leapt at the cat, grabbing it by one leg. The cat was agile enough to escape the faun's grasp, and it darted to hide under the entertainment center. The faun scrambled after it, falling prone and reaching his arm under the TV-VCR combo; the cat hissed and spat and yowled somewhere underneath.

  All of this was taken by Pamela to mean that the wild youth of the forest was hungry. She quickly made him a liverwurst sandwich and served it to him with some chips and a glass of Appolinaris water. He ate ravenously, even devouring some pomegranates in the center of the table that she'd bought more for decoration than for devouring. He dabbed sweet blood-red juice from the corner of his mouth. “Delicious,” he said. “But I prefer cat. Then you have the skin, too."

  An electric thrill of apprehension coursed through Pamela; she hoped he wouldn't ask what had become of his fur vest. She hurried to change the subject. “So ... do you have a name?"

  "Comus,” he said. “Comus of Central Park.” He leaned back in the dining room chair, stretching out a thick, silk-clad leg. The hard black hoof gleamed from beneath the cuff.

  "And you ... you've lived in Central Park for a long time, have you?"

  "Long enough,” Comus said. He glanced at a watch on his wrist, which, Pamela noted with horror, he'd appropriated from Riley's bedside table. “It's getting late. Don't we have a party to get to?"

  Pamela nodded and called downstairs for a cab. While she was on the phone, the faun vanished into Riley's room and reemerged wearing a smartly tailored Cole Haan jacket and a yellow cashmere scarf. Pamela made a small strangled noise of protest; Riley was not going to be pleased at all.

  "I have no doubt that your son is a spoiled brat,” the faun said in a clipped tone, smoothing the scarf around his smooth brown throat. “But he has very good taste."

  When he said it, his green eyes gleamed much as they had when he caught sight of Buttons. The voracity in his voice unnerved Pamela, and the suggestion that her son was a spoiled brat was both ridiculous and offensive. She suddenly thought the idea of getting Comus out of her apartment as quickly as possible was quite a good one.

  * * * *

  Magdalena lived on the top floor of an apartment block built some time in the 20s. Its design was a fantasy of paradox; curves tortured into angles, angles tortured into curves, floral forms springing from mechanical motifs, polished wood panels with thin channels of inlaid brass depicting stylized skyscrapers that looked structurally unsound.

  It was the kind of environment in which one imagined heavy kohl, smudged around red-rimmed eyes. Asymmetrical shingle bobs, beaded dresses torn at the hem, cocaine in glass syringes, deflowered showgirls from Kansas. Just Magadalena's kind of place.

  The door to Magdalena's apartment was standing wide open, as was customary at Magdalena's parties. Magdalena liked to crow that this was because she was a wild spirit, she didn't care who showed up, the more the merrier, that she would have been just as tickled to have a homeless drug addicted bum off the street walk through the door as she would an invited guest. This was just precisely as flattering to her guests as it sounded.

  The open door policy suited Pamela quite well that night, however, for it allowed her to creep in unseen with the faun at her back.

  This evening the usual joylessness that saturated all of Magdalena's parties was especially pronounced, as was the smell of mud and fungus emanating from the items the guests had dutifully collected. Pamela was rather late; the others had already arrived and were sitting on Magdalena's angular uncomfortable furniture with twee little plates of catered food balanced on their knees. It was the regular assortment of victims: a mildly successful painter and his wildly unsuccessful wife who hated him; a psychologist who specialized in assuring masochists that there was nothing wrong with them; various drab stockbrokers, corporate attorneys, and financial planners, and o
ne man who owned a string of dry-cleaning establishments and had been implicated in some scandal involving a sheep. Each guest had things on the floor beside him or her; twisted tree limbs and clumps of moss and notable bits of trash. As Pamela crept in silently, she could see that they'd already started whatever ‘game’ Magdalena had thought up; the gray-turtlenecked painter was standing in front of the group with an abstract painting that he'd done of Central Park (Pamela felt a rush of sympathy for him, because Magdalena would certainly eviscerate him for failing to strictly adhere to the rules of the game) and he was stammering through an embarrassed monologue about metamerism and non-objective overlap. Magdalena was watching him, taking obvious pleasure in his tortured writhing. Just as it seemed he would break down and cry, Pamela broke in.

  "Oh, hello everyone!” she chirped brassily. Two dozen vaguely guilty eyes jerked up to look at her. “Am I late?"

  There was a heavy stillness as everyone in the room stared. They stared not at her, of course, but at her faun. At Comus. He stepped forward, presented himself to be stared at, his arms spread in an ironic “ta-da!” Everyone goggled; with astonishment, then wonder, then pride and then ... yes ... admiration. They were impressed. They were inspired. Pamela had struck a blow for freedom.

  Power surged through her, power and elation. She felt like Moses. Parting the Red Sea would be nothing after such a victory. She imagined leading them all from this place, perhaps to have a rollicking Chinese dinner at a local chop-suey palace, raising glasses to toast Magdalena's downfall, ding dong, the Witch is dead...

  But Magdalena, who had been standing in her normal position by the black marble fireplace, was not going to go down without a fight. She prowled over to where Pamela and the faun were standing. Her eyes roamed over Comus appraisingly, and it was clear that she was working up to say something cutting. But Comus’ glittering green eyes and his magnificently beautiful face left even Magdalena speechless. Pamela felt like laughing out loud.

  "My dear,” Magdalena murmured to Pamela, her warm breath sending a thrill down the side of Pamela's neck. Magdalena's eyes wandered freely over Comus. Her eyes lingered on the fabric of Comus’ Dior Homme trousers, and Pamela saw her lick her lips. “You really have brought me something wonderful."

  Then, Magdalena reached forward and hooked her arm through Comus’ arm, and pulled him away from Pamela's side.

  "Pamela's won the game,” Magdalena tossed up a dismissive hand, as if Pamela had just broken open a Christmas cracker and extracted a paper crown. “Everyone else can throw away all that junk you've brought and help yourself to more drinks."

  There was a sigh of relief from everyone in the room, and many people broke into a run for the booze. Several relieved and grateful gazes were directed at Pamela, and many jealous ones, too. But Pamela could hardly fathom what had happened. Where a moment before she had felt triumphant, now she felt empty and cheated.

  Magdalena had appropriated her faun!

  Magdalena was staring at Comus, and he was gazing back at her, heavy-lidded. Magdalena lifted her chin and arched her neck upward. It was a pose so unlikely to be attractive that the fact that it was attractive was an utter affront to Pamela's notion of justice. Pamela wanted to kick Magdalena in the teeth.

  "Yes, I found him in Central Park,” Pamela said loudly, more for the benefit of Magdalena than the other guests, who were either hiding in the kitchen or hastening to throw away the things they'd brought, per Magdalena's instructions. “Down in the ravine. Isn't it astonishing?"

  Pamela wasn't quite sure what she was expecting, but she knew what she wanted. She wanted Magdalena stammering as helplessly and foolishly as she always had. She wanted Magdalena to flounder. But instead, Magdalena had seemed to forget that anyone other than the faun existed. They were whispering to each other, smiling mysteriously, giggling like teenaged confidantes. They were getting on, in short, like a goddamn house on fire.

  Then things went from bad to worse. Because Magdalena and the faun seemed to come to some kind of agreement. Pamela heard Magdalena give a loud answer to the faun, an answer to a question that Pamela did not hear.

  "Yes,” Magdalena breathed, a whole ocean of implication in the word.

  The faun nodded, and Pamela heard him say: “Then I will help you."

  Then, with a smooth swift movement like a wolf pouncing upon a rabbit, Comus leapt upon the gray-turtlenecked painter and threw him to the ground, straddling him. Magdalena gave a triumphant cry as Comus, with his long sharp nails, began ripping the painter's clothes off, shredding his gray turtleneck to rags and throwing his silver wire-rimmed glasses across the room.

  The other guests, most of whom were nursing stiff drinks and who'd thought their ordeal was over, watched with horror. One or two of them turned betrayed glances toward Pamela, their message as clear as if it had been spoken aloud: you fool ... what have you done?

  The painter might have said something, made some comment of astonishment or protest, but it was drowned out by Comus’ voice; he was singing, high, flutelike notes in a strange language. Comus straddled the painter, lifted his head, and sang, or rather howled, or rather ... well, keened. The notes made Pamela's chest vibrate, flutter; her groin throbbed. She was terrified and appalled. Within moments the painter was writhing rhythmically beneath the faun, tossing his head from side to side. Like erotic automatons, the spectators began to leave their banquettes and were stripping down to flesh, discarding expensive designer outerwear and flimsy designer underwear. Comus’ high keening flute-voice hung over everything like a miasma; the smell of damp goat quickly became unbearable. Soon, caviar was being licked from indelicate crevices and the white flokati rugs were damaged beyond hope of repair.

  Pamela crept from the apartment, red-faced and ashamed, as Comus threw himself on Magdalena, tearing the wrap-dress from her skinny body and thrusting his goat-haunches against her bony hips.

  * * * *

  After that night, with the unflagging assistance of Magdalena Delancy, Comus was launched upon society like some extremely communicable virus. Magdalena took him around to party after party, each of which was less likely to devolve into an orgy than the last, and each of which devolved more quickly than the one before it.

  Pamela, who had taken to sitting at home with Buttons on her lap, watching wholesome reruns of Touched By An Angel and drinking copious quantities of hot cocoa, seethed. She'd been the one who found Comus, and invited him to the party in order to humiliate Magdalena Delancy. She'd been the one who brought him out of the park and bathed him and clothed him and fed him liverwurst. She'd been the one whose cat had almost been eaten.

  Comus and Magdalena ... that horrible Magdalena with that horrible white throat of hers, and Comus nibbling on it and worse...

  Pamela couldn't bear to think about it.

  Her depression over the matter was so pronounced that even her son Riley, who typically never noticed things about his mother, noticed it.

  Riley was Pamela's pride and joy. He lived at home, and his mother waited on him hand and foot. He had dabbled in college courses at the New School, but had given them up as being too pedestrian. Lately, he'd taken to hanging out around Union Square and exploring his personal relationship with Marxism. She thought that was very generous of him, even if it did mean that he frequently came home late, smelling of Gauloises and cheap beer, with tracts printed on cheap red paper bursting out of all of his pockets.

  It certainly wasn't her intention to mix Riley up in the Comus affair, especially after the protracted lecture she'd received for letting the faun make off with Riley's favorite cashmere scarf. But after she'd schlumped listlessly around the apartment for a week in a lime velour jumpsuit and fuzzy slippers, Riley could hardly help but look up from his book of Derrida essays and exclaim, rather petulantly: “Honestly, mother! You look like a cleaning lady at a used-car dealership who's just lost her last dollar playing online poker. What is wrong?"

  And after such an accusation, how could Pamela avoi
d spilling out the whole story to him (leaving out most of the seamier orgy-specific details)?

  Riley listened to the expurgated version of events with sober (if somewhat supercilious, as evinced by his steepled fingertips) interest, then shrugged as if all her problems were but chaff before his keen intellect.

  "Well, it's quite clear to me that he's a figment of your deranged ego,” Riley said.

  Pamela narrowed her eyes at him.

  "What?” she asked. “How could that be? I mean ... he's real."

  "It happens all the time,” Riley said. “Fantasies become realities. You're working them out through the creation of this faun. What was it you said he asked you? If there was anything you desired?"

  "Well, yes..."

  "There you have it!” Riley's fingers snapped the exclamation point. “Comus is the product of your own thwarted desires. Projection, mother. Pure and simple.” Then, obviously satisfied with the thorough manner in which he'd dispatched his mother's difficulties, he stuck his nose back in the pages of Derrida.

  Pamela was silent for a moment, not wanting to disturb him, but not especially pleased at being asked to swallow the assertion that her own thwarted desires had somehow created, whole cloth, a mythological creature in the heart of Central Park.

  "If he's a projection of my desires, then why isn't he here right now?"

  "Maybe you should ask yourself that,” Riley muttered.

  "I'll tell you why! Because he's off with that horrible Magdalena Delancy! If he's a projection of my desires, then how come she's all over him? How come they're running around town, making whoopie with all and sundry!"

  Riley looked at her over the top of his reading glasses. “I certainly haven't the least bit of interest in delving into your deepest, most disgusting desires, mother. Whatever they are, I'm sure that they're bourgeois and pedestrian. My only recommendation is that you figure out a way to get over them immediately. All you have to do is confront whichever of your unnatural, perverse longings called this creature into existence. Then he'll go away. Vanish into a puff of smoke, I imagine."