The Color of Night by Madison Smartt Bell Read Free Book Online Page A

flicked in and out like a snake’s.
    “Duh,” the woman said, and stirred a little, her closed eyelids fluttering. “Duh …  Doormat. ” She turned and nuzzled against her lover, gouging deeper into sleep.
    Laurel had taken a handful of spoons from the kitchen and now she switched them with some jewelry that was laid out on the vanity. We didn’t actually steal anything, though. Laurel put the jewelry where she’d found the spoons, and Creamy filled a cereal box with dry cat food and Stitch put a picture from the wall on the coffee table and propped a book from the table on the nail where the picture had been.
    We slithered out. Halfway across the patio the word doormat pulsed into my mind and I went back and turned the doormat around so the WELCOME would be upside down.
    Stitch let the car roll down the canyon. For a minute it felt like we were falling out of a plane. Then Stitch started the car by popping the clutch even though she had the key in the ignition all along, and all of us started laughing all at once.
    “Doormat,” Creamy said, through the giddy laughter. “Doormat—that was a good one, Mae.”
    I could begin to feel my head coming back to me then, away from the People, and it was odd how I didn’t really want it to.
    “Tell me what that was all about?” I said.
    “Higgledy-piggledy,” Laurel said, still laughing, wrinkling her nose as I hugged her, both of us feeling the flush of fear as it changed the name we put on it.
    “Just a little.” Laurel giggled. “A little higgledy-piggledy for the pretty piggy people in the morning.”

So it was told by Epitherses, returning from his voyage, the ship on which he was embarked lay opposite the isle of Paxi, becalmed, when out of the dark forest lining the shore a voice called for the Egyptian pilot Thamus, at which the passengers stopped drinking their wine. Thamus heard the call three times before he answered; the voice then boomed out to him: When you come opposite to Palodes, announce that Great Pan is dead. Then Thamus was not sure at all if he would do as he was enjoined, but after some reflection thought that he would let chance or destiny decide the question—if the wind was fresh when they came near Palodes, he would sail past while holding his tongue, but in the event they were again becalmed there, the longboat drifting, turning in slack tide; Thamus then with some reluctance raised his voice loud across the dark plane of the water, and when they heard him there was tumult among those gathered on shore, with cries of wonderment and sorrow.
    Great Pan is dead.
    So too, many oracles have failed, and what had branded immortality in me—
    The god that had once lived in D—— had left him long ago. The shell of him still lay in bondage, under D——’s government name. The name of a petty criminal, thief and pimp, a murderer only by proxy. From his own being he had nothing to offer except the cheapest mortal madness.

    The first casino where I worked was a round room. Once the door had closed behind you, it was near impossible to get out if you didn’t know your way. A tight interminable circle, all mirrors and buzzers and flashing lights. The promise of money and nothing but money, the vacant tokens of exchange. So you let yourself be lured along, forgetting everything outside the lure.
    The worst was it was always Christmas there. They made everyone wear Santa hats, and for the girls, red miniskirts with a trim of fake white fur.
    There were rats there too, in the round room, the kind with four paws and snaky tails. I seem to remember one that ran and ran, with the dogged determination of a pit boss making his rounds, only with no purpose, around and around the edge where the circled wall met the carpeted floor. A flashback, maybe. I don’t know. In those days I was coming off a lot of long strange trips. But it is a realistic rat in my memory. It wasn’t washed over in op-art graphics and it didn’t wear a Santa hat or cap and