Games Creatures Play

by Charlaine Harris

  “Okay,” Francis said. “Let’s do it.”

  Luke smiled. “Awesomesauce,” he said. He smiled at Betty Lou.

  “Hey, Ma? If you’re done hanging upside down like that, can you help me plan a wedding?”

  • • •

  John wanted to walk down an aisle. We didn’t have a church at our disposal, so he got aisle six: Chips, Salsa, and Ethnic Foods. You might be surprised to hear it, but I didn’t know much about gay marriage etiquette. Francis didn’t want to walk down an aisle, John did, and that was that.

  Bo got his Twinkies after all. The store was trashed; I didn’t think the Safeway owners would mind if I left some money and took a box for the boy. He munched away, as happy as he could be considering how dinged up he was from his dance with the Coinstar machine. Other than a big bump on the back of his head, he hadn’t suffered any serious damage—if you didn’t count his pride, of course.

  He also got his scallops, but he wasn’t eating those. They were still in the bag, still frozen. Sunshine held the bag to the back of Bo’s big head. She patted her brother’s shoulder as they waited. Bo and Sunshine stood off to the left, as friends of the grooms—note the plural, thank you very much.

  The former pitching prospect of the New York Yankees was out of our line of vision, in the next aisle over getting ready. Betty Lou was helping him.

  Francis and I stood at the end of the aisle, waiting. Luke stood behind us. Bo had made him a little podium out of blue milk crates. For once, Luke was the tallest person in the room.

  • • •

  Somehow, I’d wound up being the best man at a gay ghost wedding. Luke said that me being the best man was important and necessary, but I had a hunch he thought it was funny, on account of my initial reaction to John and Francis being a couple.

  My son is pretty much a smart-ass.

  Well, Luke had saved the day, and for that he got to call the shots. Best man I was.

  Francis cleared his throat. He was obviously nervous, but other than that he looked damn near normal, like an extra in that old Kevin Costner baseball movie.

  I wasn’t sure what to call him. He was probably sixty years older than me, but he had the face of a twenty-four-year-old—the age he’d been when some homophobe had put a bullet in his back.

  Still, I recognized that look on his face, recognized it from experience. I had to make sure he was ready for this.

  “Uh, Mr. Haupberg?”

  His eyes snapped toward me; just a touch of that green fire burned up.

  I leaned back. “Take it easy,” I said. “I’m here to help, remember?”

  The flame faded out. He looked away. “So you tell me,” he said, but he clearly knew I was speaking the truth. Now he looked nervous and embarrassed.

  All of a sudden, I had flashbacks to high school, when my buddy Bobby Jake Carvin got married to Bessie Ann Dermot. I remember wearing that ridiculous tuxedo (teal, with lime ruffles—maybe I don’t know fashion, but I know ugly when I see it). I remember Bobby Jake sweating like a sinner in church (to be fair, that’s exactly what he was), looking so nervous I thought he might collapse. I remember what I said to him then. As bizarre as it seems, I used that same line in the haunted Safeway.

  “Francis,” I said, “if you don’t want to go through with it, now’s the time to bail.”

  His eyes snapped to me again, this time, thankfully, free of that spooky flame.

  “But . . . I . . . I’ve been waiting for this for eighty years.”

  I nodded. “That don’t change the fact that marriage is a big deal.”

  He licked his lips, rubbed at his eyes. Sure, he was a century old, but maturity-wise he was just a kid who played baseball for a living. Hell, he wasn’t that much older than my Bo.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “If you’re not sure, then you don’t have to do anything. We’ll figure something else out.”

  “Like what?” he said. “Not get married, so my spirit can rise every April and I trash whatever building happens to be here at the time?”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. It felt solid, real.

  “I’ve got contacts in the Netherworld Protectorate,” I said. “Son, if you don’t want to get married, we’ll figure out what to do. Betty Lou and I will help you.”

  Francis looked at me much the way Bobby Jake had, like I was the only rock he could lash himself to during a Grade-A tornado.

  My face turned red again as I realized something—maybe Luke hadn’t made me be the best man on a lark . . . maybe he’d known Francis might need an older man to help him, to play the role that older men have played for younger men since time began. I glanced back at my son, still standing on his podium of milk crates. He smiled at me. A knowing smile.

  How can a fourteen-year-old be that wise?

  After this was done, I needed to have a talk with Luke. A long talk. There was much for me to learn about that youngster.

  Francis swallowed hard, leaned closer to me.

  “You’re married,” he said. “Was it the right thing to do?”

  Betty Lou walked into sight at the aisle’s far end. That meant John couldn’t be much longer. I thought about Francis’s question as I looked at my wife. She was more beautiful than the day I’d first laid eyes on her, and at that time she was already the most beautiful thing that God had ever created.

  “Yes, it was the right thing to do,” I said. “The single best thing I ever did in my life was to get hitched to my high school sweetheart.”

  Francis nodded, slowly. “And you . . . you never strayed?”

  I laughed lightly. “Many men do, but not me. If you’re one of the lucky few who finds the right woman . . . er, sorry, the right partner . . . then that won’t be a problem.”

  I didn’t even know if ghosts could stray, at least in the biblical sense. Like I said, they often don’t really understand that they’re dead. Or, maybe I had it wrong; for all I know, ghosts can get it on just as much as the living.

  “You’ll be fine,” I said. “This moment right here? This ceremony? This is the hardest part.”

  Francis looked down. The nervousness seemed to fade a little bit.

  “Thanks,” he said. “That helps.”

  I saw Betty Lou smile, that look she gets on her face when the kids dress up nice. Then John Carlisle came into view. He wore a pinstriped black suit, something straight out of a gangster movie. He looked like a million bucks.

  And damn, if he didn’t look like the happiest man on the planet. Or the happiest ghost on the planet. Probably both.

  I glanced at Francis. He was smiling, too, his eyes wide, perhaps in disbelief that this was really happening.

  I leaned in close. “You had your doubts—sure you want to do this?”

  He nodded without looking away from John. “Yeah,” he said. “Even more than I wanted to play in the big leagues. More than I ever wanted anything.”

  Betty Lou and John walked down the aisle. I’d done my part, keeping Francis in place long enough for him to realize what his heart had been telling him all along. Just like I’d done for Bobby Jake, just like my daddy had done for me.

  John and Betty Lou reached us. She stepped to the right. John stepped forward. He and Francis stared at each other. They both smiled that wide, easy smile that true lovers share.

  Luke held up his hands. “Let us begin,” he said, and then he did.

  • • •

  Ghosts are complicated things. They’re all looking for resolution, something that will let their souls finally rest. Most of the time, you can’t give that to them. In the Case of the Haunted Safeway, though, turned out we could.

  Luke performed the ceremony. I ain’t never been so proud of that boy, I’ll tell you that for free. He saved the day. More than that, he ran with an idea, put himself at risk, and gave those two poor souls what they deserved�
��peace.

  When he finished the ceremony, the two ghosts glowed a soft blue, like a lit-up summer cloud. They looked beautiful (and I don’t often think of men as beautiful, mind you). Then, they kissed, and when they did, their noncorporeal bodies merged together, became one.

  They faded away like wisps of dissipating fog. We don’t know what became of them. Unless they come back next April, we never will.

  I finished up the case knowing that I had underestimated the mettle of my smallest son, and overestimated the common sense of my biggest. Bo’s size made me forget he’s still just a kid, and he still needs my guidance. I love them both just the same, though, ain’t nothing ever going to change that.

  I also learned a little bit about myself, some things I ain’t proud of. I didn’t have anything against the gays, but, truth be told, I guess I didn’t really believe two men—or two women, for that matter—could love each other as intensely as I love my Betty Lou. Well, I learned better. Those boys had given up everything for each other. Most male/female couples I know will never come close to that level of commitment and sacrifice.

  Once upon a time, I was a racist asshole, and now I have a black son.

  And, once upon a time, I didn’t think of homosexuals as being capable of real love, and I wound up the best man at a gay wedding.

  As my daddy once told me, all you can ask for in life is to keep learning.

  Thanks for reading my War Journal. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you want to read more, well, there ain’t no end to the stories I can tell.

  Stay away from rabid unicorns,

  —Hunter

  PRISE DE FER

  ELLEN KUSHNER

  Ellen Kushner’s award-winning novels include the Fantasy of Manners Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword, and Thomas the Rhymer. Kushner’s own audiobook recordings of her three Riverside novels, with herself as narrator, were released by Neil Gaiman Presents. With Holly Black, she coedited Welcome to Bordertown, a recent revival of Terri Windling’s original urban fantasy series. The longtime host of public radio’s Sound & Spirit, she lives in New York City and travels a lot. Ellen says: “When Toni and Charlaine asked me for a sports story for this anthology, there was a long pause, during which I must confess I was thinking: ‘Just what about me says sports to you?’ Then I realized that I am best known for novels in which people stick each other with long pointy bits of metal, and that in some cultures that evolved into a sport . . . if, sometimes, a dangerous one.”

  “You’re not deceiving anyone, you know. It is perfectly obvious that you are a woman.”

  I nearly dropped my foil, but did not. It’s not just that unescorted men aren’t allowed in the halls of Saint-Hilaire. Even if someone’s visiting brother had escaped the eagle eye of Madame la Directrice and wandered into the fencing salon for some reason, surely he would be wearing something a bit less . . . showy? And not be presenting himself in a tight jacket of wine-red brocade, with white lace and ruffled sleeves, like an ambassador from a London Carnaby Street boutique?

  “Monsieur,” I said, standing at rest. “Your grasp of the obvious is astonishing.”

  He made a little bow—just enough to acknowledge the touch. His hair was even longer than that of the boys I’d seen in Paris, who had so scandalized my grandmother. It was tied at the nape of his neck with a ribbon.

  We were speaking French, that being the language of the school, and of the country it was in. The Academie Saint-Hilaire des Jeunes Filles is situated in an old chateau snuggled between the fields and orchards of Basse-Normandie, just far enough from Paris to make it next to impossible for its students to get there and back in one day (or night) to indulge in the sort of behavior that got them sent there for the summer in the first place.

  “And you, mademoiselle, you do not fear discovery as you are?”

  He had a point. He was not the only one who might want to know what I was doing alone in the Saint-Hilaire salle d’armes after hours, when I should have been in my room in the south tower, snoring across from pretty little Madeleine de Mailly—or possibly studying. Not that I had a Bac to pass. I was returning to New York for my senior year at Norton at the end of the summer. But there was no point in failing, where I could pass.

  When attacked, you have two basic choices: retreat or parry.

  “Sir,” I said, “since I am already discovered, what need to fear? Unless, of course, you propose to raise the alarm. But might that not also raise questions of discovery for you yourself?”

  He raised a slender hand to the lace at his throat: a formal, theatrical gesture. For a moment, I felt that we were in a play, actors on a stage late, late at night in the salon of the old chateau of Saint-Hilaire, back when it had been the chateau’s reception room, its long mirrors reflecting candlelight for the elegantly clad, and not the questionable forms of young women struggling with their parries and ripostes.

  “Having offered no insult to your so-charming self, but only a single astonishingly obvious, useless observation, what need have I to fear discovery here?”

  Oh, dear. A flirt as well as a dandy. Dangerous combination. He was attractive, and he knew it. I would not engage. I didn’t trust him. I raised my foil. “That is not my concern. If you will excuse me, I have serious work to do.”

  He bowed again, a little deeper, and took a step back, yielding the floor to me. So there was nothing I could do but go back to my drill: attacking myself in the mirror in Quarte, in Sixte . . . Disengage and double-disengage, over and over to strengthen my wrist and teach my body to unlearn that bad habit I have of leaning into my attack instead of just fully extending my arm before the lunge.

  I did not like having him behind me, but at least I could see him in the mirror—so when he made a gesture of annoyance, I stopped at once.

  “Your grip,” he said, “is entirely too tight. And if you do not stop leaning into your attack too soon, you will get yourself entirely killed, should you attempt this movement anywhere but on the comic stage.”

  I gaped.

  No bow, this time; just that little gesture of hand to throat, and from his forefinger the flash of a ring red as blood.

  “I bid you good day, mademoiselle.”

  He turned and placed his hand on the mirror behind him. It had a door handle I’d never noticed before. His long hand turned the handle down; the mirror swung back into the darkness, and he disappeared into it.

  I heard the chapel bell chime midnight. Later than I thought. I put my foil back in the rack and headed through the salle’s main door to the hallway. The huge windows of the old chateau were awash with moonlight, and so I found my way up the stairs to my room.

  “Coffee, not chocolate,” Madeleine murmured in her sleep when I closed the door behind me. She must have thought she was at home, with a maid coming in to serve breakfast. I undressed as quietly as I could.

  Although I was raised in New York and known at Saint-Hilaire (rather rudely, behind my back) as l’Americaine, my mother was French—or so I’m told; I never met her. She divorced my father as soon as I was born and took off for Monaco with an Argentinian polo player. They were killed in one of those celebrity road accidents on those notoriously treacherous coastal roads that seem to exist only to separate the wealthy from their sports cars.

  But every summer, once I was housetrained enough to sit at the dinner table with a linen napkin that stayed on my lap, I visited my grand-mère in Saint-Tropez. You do not know what boredom is until you have spent weeks in the company of slender, bronzed people with slender gold chains around their necks and wrists, diamonds in their ears, wearing only the bottom halves of very expensive swimsuits, lying around trying to perfect an even deeper bronze. Sometimes they were joined by girls my age, who competed with them for boredom with inane conversation about movie stars, clubs, clothing designers, and why it is critical not to shave your legs, but to have them waxed, my dear, alw
ays waxed, because otherwise it grows back twice as thick!

  But at least I learned fluent French. And when Grand-mère offered me the opportunity to study at Saint-Hilaire—so that I could “improve my reading and writing, while getting to know the Right Sort of People”—I seized it.

  Never mind that my fellow students were distinguished principally by their laziness and ignorance of anything beyond their small world of privilege, fashion, and money. Which is why, instead of summering in Nice or on a yacht, they were spending the summer cramming for their Terminale, the final year of Lycée that includes the university entrance exams, before their parents had to admit they were stupider than dirt and would never pass the Bac.

  But the Saint-Hilaire summer program was where Simone Gaillac had chosen to teach fencing that summer. I would have gone to the seventh circle of Hell, and roomed with girls far more terrible than these, to study with her.

  I think she knew that was why I was there; at least, she spoke warmly of her American colleagues, women she’d fenced with at the London Olympic games in ’48, where she had won glory for a war-torn France.

  “I respect them, of course,” Mme Gaillac told me on our first day, “but it is good that you come to France to study. France is where fencing began.” She addressed the class, lined up in our white fencing jackets and knickers: “The art of fencing was created here originally to help our ancestors train to fight serious duels. Duels of honor. Duels to the death.”

  We all nodded, as though we heard this sort of thing every day; no one wanted to appear shocked or thrilled in front of the others. “Their fighting was not precisely like ours; it evolved over the years. Theirs involved more blade-to-blade contact, and the target was the whole body, naturally. And their steel was sharp! The foil we use today”—she lifted hers—“is based on the eighteenth-century smallsword, whose goal was to kill. But with their sharp weapons safely blunted, fencers could work on the speed and elegance of their thrust”—and she executed one flawlessly—“and the precision of their intention, without risking their lives! Medicine in those days meant that even a simple wound could kill. One must know where the other’s blade is at all times. And once you know that . . .”