The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

Lanark drank more after that, but why shouldn’t he, and it got so I’d have to walk him home nights to be sure he got there. Sometimes he kissed me at the door, but he was too broken up to do anything else. Eventually I’d have to go make sure he was still alive in the mornings, too. One morning he wasn’t. That was back in 1942, I guess.

Miss Harlan lived on a good long time in that cottage, kept Billy waiting until 1957 before she went off into the sea with him. At least, I imagine that’s what happened; the door was standing open, the house all full of damp, and there was a trail of sand clear from her room down to the beach, like confetti and rice after a wedding. Nobody haunts the place now. That snooty woman sells her incenses and herbal teas out of it, but I have to say she keeps the garden nice.

So I’m the last one that knows.

I kept the bar open. Right after the war the highway was put through, and those young drifters found the shacks that didn’t belong to anybody and started living in them, with their beat parties and poetry. Then later the hippies came in, and pretty soon rich people from San Francisco discovered the place, and it was all upscale after that.

Not that it’s a bad thing. When Kevin and Jon offered me all that money for the hotel, I was real happy. Being the way they are, I knew they’d fix everything up beautiful, which they have, too, mahogany and brass all restored so I don’t have to feel guilty about it anymore. They’re kind to me. I stay on in my old room and they call me Nana Luisa, and that’s nice.

They sit me out here in this chair so I can watch everything going on, all along the street, and sometimes they’ll bring guests and introduce me as the town’s official history expert, and I get interviewed for newspapers now and then. I tell them about the old days, just the kinds of stuff they want to hear. I listen more than I talk. Mostly I just like to watch people.

It’s pretty now, with the flower gardens and art galleries, and the cottages all lived in by rich folks with sports cars, and you’d never think there’d been whorehouses or saloon brawls here. The biggest noise is the town council complaining about the traffic jams we get weekends. People talk about how Marian’s Landing was such an unspoiled weekend getaway once, and how more tourists are going to ruin it. They don’t know what ruin is.

I look out my window at night and there’s lights in all the little houses, the human community all nice and cozy and thinking they’re here to stay, but that cold black night out there is just as heartless as it was, and a lot bigger than they are. Anything could happen. I know. The lights could go out, dwindling one by one or all at once, and there’d be nothing but the sea and the dark trees behind us, and maybe one roomful of folks left behind, lighting a lamp in the window so they don’t feel so alone.

But I don’t worry much about Arion.

Even with all the restoration and remodeling, even with them selling T-shirts and kites and ice cream out of the sawmill now, nobody’s ever found any of him. He’s still down there, under that new redwood decking, and sometimes at night I hear him moaning, though people think it’s just the wind in a sea cave. He’s growing back together, or growing himself some new parts; Aunty Irina said he might do either.

He will get out one of these days, but I figure I’ll be dead by the time he does. That’s one of the advantages to being a mortal.

I do worry about my sweetie boys, I’m afraid this AIDS epidemic will get them. I wonder if it’s something to do with that Labienus fellow, the one Uncle Jacques told me cooks up epidemics because he hates mortal folk. And I wonder if Uncle Jacques and Aunty Irina found a new place to hide, some shelter in out of the black night, and how the war for power over the Earth is going.

Because that’s what it is, see. I’m not crazy, honey. It’s all there in the Bible. For some have entertained angels unawares, but some folks get let in on their secrets, you follow me? And it isn’t a comforting thing to know the truth about angels.

The Millennium Party - WALTER WILLIAMS