The Pinecone
And there it was in front of them—the yellow Hummer that had almost run her down that afternoon. And they were on it, howling and brandishing their cone-topped staffs like lances in religious battle. In a momentary gleam of light, she saw Harmonia’s thyrsus, ahead of her, mysteriously stained with darkened blood. They were all over the Hummer, all over its shiny, arrogant male parts, Mandy leading the pack. Spread-eagled on its hood, the coolness of its yellow paint and metal countering the hot thrust of her blood, the bitter piercing sweetness of her agave-sated mouth as her teeth bared, the pounding music of the Latin dancehalls, the Brazilian nights, the rhythms out of West Africa leading her heart into a pulse unstoppable, quicker and more urgent than making love or whatever it was called what they did there all of them together in those after-midnight places in the hills, bristling with leaves the terrified deep eyes of deer the eerie warnings of the owls with their massive wings that swooped down from above without warning as they themselves did, all those maddened women who were sisters, lovers, friends. And in the sickened quickened pure and mighty outrage of her blood that Dionysus and his warrior maids inspired in her loins her groin her groans the flame that caught from there and spread and could never be quenched till it was done, she and the others with their strong bare hands, with parted lips and legs, with whatever could grip and tear, ripped it apart from limb to limb, the yellow beast, the Hummer that would hum no more, the mucho macho vehicle that, piece by raw delicious piece, they unmanned with pleasure.
*
She had a terrible time the following morning getting to the staff meeting by 8:00. Brad and the others were all sitting in the conference room already, Crispy Cremes and boxes of coffee on the long hardwood table amid a sea of photocopies. They looked at her with that typical cool dismissive judgment as she slipped in, as the long clock hand slipped straight up to the hour mark.
The sight of the doughnuts made her stomach turn. She felt queasy, hung-over, though she’d only had a glass of Barefoot Chardonnay with an egg salad sandwich for dinner the night before. Maybe she was coming down with something—but she’d used up all her sick leave and couldn’t take off. Whatever Brad was saying didn’t interest her in the least, though she knew she really ought to try to pay attention. She found herself lost in a reverie instead, remembering fantastic fragments of her dream and wondering what they would make of it, these bland, blasé young things.
An unconscious half-smile played on her face as Big Bad Brad laid out the operational plan for the fiscal year and her coworkers nodded in sycophantic unison. She couldn’t bear to watch him sermonizing to his doting flock, abuzz with self-important managerial buzzwords, so she kept her eyes as usual on her hands folded in different prayers under the conference table, on her wrinkled denim skirt.
She regarded her fingernails with surprise. The nails of both hands were torn, broken, stained with metallic yellow paint. She worked a flake of paint out, studying its jagged edges on the bruised skin of her palm. The events of the night before poured back in full, in all their sensational detail.
She looked up, caught Brad’s eyes, and held them, amused to see him startle as he took in her happy, as yet unsatiated smile.