Red Dreams

by Dennis Etchison

  "Um. Do you have a match?"

  She was pretty, cute, close enough to it, at least. He nodded and fished in his windbreaker.

  "Thanks." She ignored the pottery hounds—they were picking over the last few pieces, anyway—and watched his eyes. "Do you have a cigarette?"

  He watched back, came up with two.

  She cradled her elbow in her other hand and flexed the cigarette in her fingers. He lit hers and then his, waiting ceremoniously for the sulfur to burn off first. She cupped her hands, small and gray with dried clay, around his and inhaled.

  "Do you have a car?" she asked, without blinking.

  He had to laugh. "What's your—" Only then did he recognize her as the girl his roommate had pointed out in the cafeteria. That one'll help you forget, man, Greg had smirked. She'll go out with an-y-one. For one night. "Your name's Sherron, isn't it?"

  "Mm-hm. I have to get to the USC Dental Clinic by three o'clock. I have an appointment."

  She stared him down.

  He glanced at his watch. "Three o'clock, huh?"

  "I thought afterwards we could go to my place. I could make you some Ovaltine, or something."

  When he looked up she was smiling. Really smiling.

  "You're not putting me on, are you." He said it like he already knew the answer.

  "No," she said. And she wasn't, either.

  So it had gone: from ice-packing a wisdom tooth socket all the first night, to breakfast and lunch and dinner, to the friendly, slippery morning showers, till it was too damn much trouble driving back to the House for periodic supplies of books, money, underwear and socks. He had moved out, and moved in. One night they passed in and out of each other's eyes for hours, each leaning forward as if to enter a mirror held by the other, and out again, and then again. So they would get married—no shit. She acted as if she didn't care about that part at first, though she warmed to it after introducing him to her sisters in West Covina. Some nights he dreamed he had stuck his neck out an open skyscraper window, but made himself leave it there on the sill, daring the window to come crashing down and behead him. He had broken through to the other side, and he was going to stay there, no matter what.

  So that now, after a basketball game at the Long Beach Sports Arena, they found themselves mousing their way back in a determinedly unhurried stumble-pace to the car. A few colored lights remained on along the Nu-Pike, an old boardwalk fronting the parking lot, and the bulbs reflected in the easy tide lapping the sandy bar, breaking up like winking Christmas lights in the gently strafed waters.

  "Hey," she said, "I wanna ride the roller coaster!"

  "Naw," he said, tightening his arm on her neck, steering, "come on, they tore it down, remember?"

  "No, then, well, so what?" insisted Sherron. "We can still have fun!"

  "You want to get mugged? There's nothing over there but winos and sailors."

  "Come on. You can buy me a cotton candy, or something."

  A country-and-western bar was letting out in the amusement park. The couples sashayed away, all sequin shirts and wide dresses, their dishwater children, he imagined, left under blue TV screens in paper-thin rooms somewhere; he couldn't hold back a bitter thought of Jeannie and the hick veteran she had run to the altar with—was it only seven weeks ago? Some kind of square. He had seen him once. Probably has tattoos, thought Geoff.

  Sherron led him past boarded-up concession stands, a fortune-telling parlor with frayed tassel drapes and a palmistry chart the size of a hyperthyroid octopus. The pavement glistened with stains of indeterminate origin, shiny smears like the ones found on garden leaves and walkways the morning after a rain. A huge plastic model of a hot dog-on-a-stick thrust out from a stand in an obscene beckoning. In the dim glass, beyond her reflection, he saw dark and cooling game machines and wilted stuffed animals. He stood staring, trying hard to think of something, when she began pulling excitedly at his sleeve.

  She pointed to a spot a hundred feet down the pike, where stragglers had drifted to form a crowd in front of a small wooden platform.

  "It looks like a show! Oh, can we go?"

  A man with a neck microphone was gesturing at the canvas behind him, and now Geoff heard a tired voice reverberating between the rows of empty rides and abandoned booths.

  He caught up with her just as the pitchman introduced a girl in a turquoise harem costume. The pitchman promised a mystifying, stupefying and mesmerizing demonstration, "one which you will remember the longest day you live.

  "But first," he pressed on, his moustache brushing the microphone like the sound of a riffled stack of bills, "allow me to call your attention to what I hold here in my left hand…"

  He held up a blue roll. All day long, he said, he had been selling admissions at one dollar per. He made a rhetorical bet that some "within the sound of my voice now" had paid that full price time and again to see the very same show that was about to go on again inside the tent.

  "But this is our last performance of the night and, tell you what, I'm going to put these away." He held up a pink roll. "That's right, fifty cents, the regular child's price—this time and this time only!" To a faceless man in the booth: "Herb, don't sell any more of these adult tickets tonight…"

  "I bet he says that every time," whispered Geoff.

  "Shh!"

  Then the barker called everyone—there were only twelve or fifteen—in close to the platform, so they would not miss the mind-boggling demonstration he had promised.

  He tied her wrists to a splintered, cross-like T-square (to force truth from her before the trick was over?). Geoff watched her writhe in the soft ropes, her bejeweled navel rising and falling above a low gilt belt. Now the latecomers, almost all men, pressed intently to the platform, their eyes rolling over her like ball bearings on a washboard.

  "She's wearing a wig," Sherron interjected. "And there's a rip in her armpit. Poor thing."

  The barker pitched and persuaded and promised and enticed and the audience, grown restless, flicked eyes from the word pictures flying like spittle-moths from his mouth to the painted poster renderings strung up against the tarp:

  Pin Head, an androgynous mystery.

  Mister Frozo.

  Petrified Man.

  The Human Pin Cushion.

  A sword swallower with the neck of a giraffe.

  A fire eater.

  And a geek, curiously unexplained.

  He started a portable phonograph, promising admittance for those in line before the music stopped—"Limited standing room!"—and then, don't blink, the girl whipped her freezing hands out of the ties, hiding them in her veil as she ducked inside.

  They got in.

  Geoff smelled sawdust and something he didn't want to name as they inched from the closed flap. His eyes strained to open to the dim light. Sherron hung on his sleeve, her breast pushing into his arm, and he liked that, and then remembered why: Jeannie, walking home from school in their sophomore year, before he had gotten his car. He hadn't known what it meant, that memory, until now, and he fought it, everything about Jeannie, Geoff and Jeannie, Jeannie and Geoff. Well, the hell with her. He had something different now, and better, he told himself, and he wasn't going to give it up. It didn't, it didn't matter what his friends said, that he was on the rebound…

  He put his arm around his fiancée.

  The sword swallower slid an assortment of smooth chromed blades into his gullet, starting each one carefully and then allowing the weighted handle to glide it down all the way. He wiped them before with a rag reeking of antiseptic, drawing them swiftly up and out and wrapping them neatly away at the end.

  "That's easy," confided Sherron, "see, he just tips his head so far back his whole throat opens."

  "Yeah, sure, but how does he keep from throwing up?"

  "Aw," said Sherron, "I wanna see something good!"

  The magic show was slow and tacky; it was the sword swallower again, doing double duty. He struggled through a levitation with the girl in the harem costum
e. He got her up on the board, then kicked out the chairs, then put the sheet over her—he had forgotten; and every time she started to tip one way or the other he had to yell back at the shabby curtain for someone to tighten the wires.

  It was the last show of the night, all right. Geoff felt embarrassed for the man, he couldn't help it. But Sherron laughed. She was getting restless, he could tell.

  Pin Head was asleep, they were told.

  Mister Frozo was down for the last time, too, laid out on a bed of nails surrounded by twenty-five-pound blocks of ice like the ones that come down the chutes of vending sheds in small towns. You didn't want to stand too close to the table, with the dirt and straw melting to mush underneath. Mister Frozo, a beefy pink man without expression, appeared at first, too, to be asleep, and perhaps he had been for hours; the outline of his body had sunk deep into the icy supports; when he got up, if he would when the show was over, he would leave behind a mantle of Gaudi architecture, clear shivering crystals like the pointed slopes of translucent icebergs.

  But just then Mister Frozo, prodded, did sit up, lifting slowly at the waist like a rigor mortised cadaver, so that all could see the deep hole-like indentations quilted into his back.

  "Sit on him!" someone suggested, and a girl laughed.

  Shuddering, Geoff stepped ahead to the next stall. The cold was beginning to get to him. He rubbed his hands, breathed into them.

  Next in line was the Petrified Man.

  Geoff stood reading the signboard while Jeannie, no, it was Sherron, moved over with him, and then the others led by the sword swallower. The sign was crudely lettered and spelled, as if by a child. This is what it said:

  THE MAN 14,000 YRS. YOUNG!

  This perfect Specimen of a MUMMY unearthed in North Amer. Continent by Archeologists in the Place: Puebla, Mex. in the year: 1939 A.D. The Prehistoric Man was a member of the Clovis Culture (12,000-10,000 B.C.) and made his own Lanceolated Spear Points using the Flint or Chip Method of design. He is therefore assumed to be a Hunter, several of his Tribesmen were found nearby & were also known to be Hunter's also. He made his home a rude Wickiup made of sticks or branches and the skins of Animals he Tracked & Killed. He is preserved so timelessly by the High Altitude & Dry Climate, so that he was preserved whereas his Tribesmen were not. Look carefully and you will see authenticated Hair, Fingernails. You have just witnessed the Most Perfect Specimen of Man of his Era on Earth!!

  Truly An Unforgettable Sight

  The sword swallower recited the same words out loud. And that was that, except that those who wanted a closer look were given time to file past Petrified Man in his plastic-capped pine box, a very realistic mock-up, brown and taut and convoluted as a chestnut. Uneasily Geoff noticed the teeth.

  Sherron no longer clung to his arm. He turned and snared her wrist out of the stragglers shuffling to the far end of the tent.

  "You don't want to see any more, do you?"

  "Well, what do you think?"

  "I think it's a stone drag," he answered soberly.

  "Oh, come on," she said, "we never have any fun," and that brought him up short.

  A drunk, a pair of sailors similar as bookends, a girl from the country-and-western bar, an overweight, rumpled, lonely man with perpetual five o'clock shadow, a young crew cut with his sleeves rolled, picking his nose slowly after a hard day and night at the pinballs, Geoff and his girl and three or four—who could be sure?—other furtive presences on the fringe. They found themselves clumped together before the last platform.

  The sword swallower went into a low-key spiel about fire-eating.

  Someone yawned loudly and left the tent.

  Hearing that, the sword swallower gave up. He dropped to the edge of the platform and tried an informal huddle.

  First he dipped a black-tipped wire—it was something like a coat hanger with a charred marshmallow at the end—in fluid and ignited it with a whoosh.

  He spat out a medicinal lozenge and showed the inside of his mouth. He lifted his tongue. "No," he answered candidly, "my mouth's not coated with anything. You don't need anything to do this," and Geoff believed him. In fact, this casual revelation was the first thing he had believed tonight.

  Fixing his eyes on the ceiling, the sword swallower popped the fireball in and closed quickly to extinguish it. "It's the fumes," he said. "The fumes are what's burning, not the wad. You cut off the air, that's it." He picked a second wire from the jar and lit it with his Zippo. Black smoke wisped upward.

  "See, I can put my fingers right through it." He cupped his hand through the glowing aurora around the fireball. "See, it's the vapors burning," he said, flashing his smudged palm. "That's what you call the fumes."

  "Don't you ever burn your mouth?" someone asked.

  "You get numb to it. I been doing this for years." He plucked two more torches, holding them between his knuckles like xylophone sticks, and ignited them. "The trick is to hold your breath, or you suck fire."

  "Yeah, but did you ever get burned?"

  He twirled the first torch toward his lips in a graceful, surprisingly feminine gesture, dousing it quickly, and then the pair of torches together. He inserted them rapidly, aiming cleanly into the center of his open mouth. A second longer and the flames would lick his nose and chin, would sweep up the rod to his fingers.

  "Sure, I been burned. Wouldn't you?"

  He hunkered closer. He stretched back his thin lip with his thumb to reveal a beaded chain of small blisters lining the inner membrane. Someone drew a breath.

  "I been burned more times than I can remember. Every part that can burn has been."

  Geoff took a close look at him. The face was one of those the age of which, once past puberty, is incomputable, rawboned and alert, every trace of self-indulgence long gone from it. The eyes were a startling eggshell blue, transparent as water, the nose pointed, nostrils pinched, the bridge pitted with blackheads as his cheeks were pitted with scars. The short, coarse hair shone from working in the sun, and the skin reflected a bright oil sheen. The expression on the sword swallower's face was a kind of detached mercilessness, toward itself as well as the world. It was a face seen at shooting gallery machines in Greyhound bus depots the country over, and it was a law unto itself.

  "You all probably want to see this," he said.

  He felt behind him, came up with a forty-five rpm record. Geoff tried to read the label. The sword swallower held it as if displaying a product, and a certain indefatigable pride showed through now in spite of the late hour.

  He bit the record about an inch into the grooves, grimacing, his teeth dry and white and bone-like. The vinyl cracked and crumbled. He showed the disk, a rough half-moon missing from the edge. He began to chew. His eyes clenched, his jaws vibrated. The plastic broke and ground to powder. He chewed till nothing but black grounds remained in his mouth. He balled the powder into a clod and wiped it into a handkerchief.

  A girl's voice tried to interrupt.

  He held up a hand and went on cleaning his teeth and gums with his fingers. Then, "Hey," he called behind the curtain. He waited, hand out. "You know what I want." The curtain wobbled. A deep, unseen voice grumbled. "Don't give me any of that," he snapped.

  He dropped his eyes to the bottom of the curtain, reached over and picked up a light bulb.

  He turned it in his fingertips. Then he cracked it on the stage like an egg, took a curved, opaque wafer and positioned it in his mouth. He began to chew in a rolling motion, grinding it to dust. He extended his tongue to show the pile of shining particles, then picked off the ground glass cautiously, daubing with the handkerchief.

  "Why don't you swallow it?" asked a girl.

  "Who said that?" he asked coolly, but the spectators were hidden in the shadows. "I can swallow it. You want to see me swallow it?"

  "Don't it hurt your innards?" asked a man's voice. It was one of the sailors, in front, and he sounded genuinely interested.

  "Sure it does. What do you think? Let me ask you something.
Wouldn't it hurt you?"

  No answer.

  "What did you say?"

  Finally, "Then—" The sailor did not finish.

  "It's something I do," answered the sword swallower.

  He took a bent pack of Kools from his pants pocket, straightened one with careful strokes. He lit it, inhaling deeply. Seconds passed. A board fell outside, and heavy shoes somewhere.

  "Let's see you put that cigarette in your mouth," said a girl.

  He looked into the darkness, his face hard as rock. Then he laid the cigarette on his tongue, the glowing tip protruding from his mouth, and simply flicked it inside like a chameleon. Smoke blew out his nose. Then he opened his mouth, flicking the cigarette back out and down.

  "Satisfied?" he said to the darkness. He wasn't smiling.

  "Let's see you put it out."

  The sword swallower held a deep breath, let it out slowly and with great control. He cocked an eye knowingly. "Let's hear the rest of it," he said.

  A giggle.

  "No. Come on. You want to say something, say it."

  "Let's see you put that cigarette out in your mouth, I said."

  No, thought Geoff. Don't let her make you.

  The sword swallower sat forward, elbows braced on knees. He stared at the cigarette. His expression was unreadable. He took a hard drag and tapped the ash, rolling the cigarette between his fingers. He made a short, bitter sound that might have been a laugh, straightened his back, crossed his left ankle on his right thigh, dragged again, tapped the ash again so that the bare coal was hot and bright in the air.

  "I can do it, you know. I've done it before. It'll blister for four days, then it'll hurt like hell. But I can do it. What's the matter, you think I can't?"

  Geoff cleared his throat. "Man," he offered, "you don't have to prove anything." Uncertainly he added, "The hell with her, see?"

  The sword swallower looked at Geoff, or as near as he could come to him in the shadows. The eyes, sharp and steely, would not give him away. Strange eyes, Geoff thought. The eyes were looking at him.

  The sword swallower put his feet down and flexed his legs, half-standing. He opened his mouth, showed his tongue. Then, you know what he did. You know what he did then.