Immortal Lycanthropes

chapter 3.


Of course, Gloria was not really looking for a coyote. She only made inquiries when she knew she’d get a negative response. She only looked for his spoor down alleys she suspected he would never go. Anything to prevent another clue from materializing, while offering the promise of another clue like a rainbow’s end, always just at the horizon. I know Gloria, and I know how she works, and she was running the long con. And on the long con, all you need to do is wear your mark down. Myron was tenacious, but perhaps she could have worn him down in time, perhaps she could have gotten him acclimated to life on the C. She had never believed what Myron believed, as he became more and more frightened of the shadows: that time could possibly run out.

Gloria took a lot of risks, frankly, since she was used to dodging the cops and not the lion, or the bear, or me. It’s hardly surprising that someone would catch wind of her antics, and one day she telegraphed carelessly what joint she’d hit up next. And so Myron was killing time outside a rest home, while Gloria took advantage inside, when a slim man in a tweed cap came slinking up. He was smoking a cigarette in a long, thin quellazaire. Myron could tell that he was one of us.

“You want to find the coyote, come with me,” he said gruffly, trying to grab Myron’s arm.

“I don’t want to find the coyote,” Myron said, twisting away. “I just want to find the Rosicrucians.”

“What, the main temple in Portland?”

“Yeah, that one,” Myron said.

“The one behind the Twenty-Four-Hour Church of Elvis? Everyone knows where that is, why would you care? Now come on, the coyote’s waiting for you.”

But Myron turned and ran straight into the rest home. “No running!” shouted the guard. And Myron stopped in the lobby and looked over his shoulder. The slim man was watching him through the glass double doors, and then with a shrug he slunk away.

“No running,” said the guard again, trying not to look at Myron’s face.

When Gloria turned up again, wearing a strand of pearls she had just won, Myron excitedly told her what had happened. The Rosicrucians were in Portland! Must be Portland, Oregon! All they needed to do was take their winnings and hop a bus!

But Gloria waved him off. “Myron, that fellow was obviously the ermine, and the ermine has never been trustworthy. The whole thing is a trap.”

“No, no, I tricked him into revealing the location,” Myron insisted.

“You didn’t trick him, he was trapping you.”

“So the Rosicrucians aren’t in Portland?”

“They’re probably in Portland. Myron, truth is more dangerous than lies at this point.”

“We can go scope the place out at least.”

But Gloria had invested all their savings in lottery tickets, which, it turns out, gave them a microscopic chance of being able to travel to the West Coast in a private jet and a very good chance of not being able to afford leaving Chicago at all.

“You said,” Myron objected, “that you don’t need money when you’re on the C. Why can’t you just talk your way onto a bus?” She’d more or less done it before, after all.

But Gloria wanted to wait for the lottery drawing. She said Myron didn’t know when he had a good thing. She insisted (against all evidence) that it was safer in Chicago.

“How can it be safer here?” Myron asked. The lion knows we’re here.”

If Gloria was thinking, Well, he knows you’re here, she was too smart to say it out loud. “I’ll tell you what. If one more person gets wise to us, we’ll leave.”

But she was no more careful than before, and two days later a Volkswagen Bug pulled up next to the two of them as they were trying to hustle a businessman at a bus stop. You should have seen Myron’s eyes light up when he saw who was driving.

I was, of course. And that’s when his adventures began.