Cellars

by John Shirley

  A crash-and-tinkle of breaking glass came from the kitchen. His thoughts abruptly changed lanes—he jumped upright and hurried to Madelaine.

  She was on the kitchen floor, huddled with her knees drawn up, pressing her breasts out of shape. Her face was contorted like an infant about to burst into a long, hard crying spell, but the tears never quite burst free. She seemed to be trying to hold something in and keep something out all at once. She rocked on her haunches, her face partly hidden by her curly black hair. The cocktail glasses were shattered, in a small brown puddle, under the sink. The sink rattled low to itself.

  “Madelaine! Should I call—an ambulance? You have too much coke, or—?” But he knew it wasn’t the cocaine.

  He touched her shoulder and recoiled; her skin was hot, so that his fingertips tingled painfully, and her flesh was hard as carved wood.

  At his touch she jerked her head spasmodically to stare at him in abject terror. She wasn’t pretty, just then, her face deranged by frightened disbelief and confusion, her mouth slack, chin wagging up and down, nose wrinkled, eyes alternating between opening too wide and crinkling almost shut. “They want Carl too,” she said, and he knew then that she wasn’t seeing him. She was looking at something behind him, above him, beyond him.

  They want Carl too…

  Lanyard suppressed an impulse to leave the apartment and run like hell.

  SHEBOP AND BRIZZY stood outside the Backstage Social Club, Members Only, West 110th Street, just as the street lights came on, and as if that were some kind of signal, the unmarked patrol car came swinging around the corner going so hot it fishtailed. Before Shebop could say anything more than, “Who those motherfuckers fuckin’ wid now?” The yellow sedan nosed into the curb, pulling up with a jerk, and three plainclothes cops piled out. The car was a familiar sight in the neighborhood. Everyone knew about it. The man selling works on the corner crossed the street slowly, careful not to seem in a hurry but hurrying anyway; the pussy broker on the stoop above the deli lit a cigarette and studied the cloudy sky as if wondering about the weather: he wasn’t holding and his girls were all out on tricks; the sidewalk dealers stepped into their buildings’ front hallways, not too quickly. But the cops—in suits or jacket and jeans, all three of them pink-skinned as a rat’s tail—they came strutting straight for the Backstage Social Club. For Shebop and Brizzy. Brizzy said, “Shebe, get yo’ black ass in gear, nigger.” Because they were holding, they’d just bought. They turned to run.

  Someone was coming out of the social club, two teen-age boys, possibly brothers. They both had the same big eyes, and the same skin tone, black as midnight, and both of them were on roller skates—they’d been practicing roller-disco moves for the contest. They saw the white guys in the suits running at them—Brizzy and Shebop between them and the cops and they saw the guns popping from the white guys’ coats, and they both naturally thought (Shebop guessed): “Some kind of mob action, better get the fuck outta here.” So they tried to split, too, skating off down the sidewalk. And Brizzy ran not far behind Shebop.

  When the bullets hit Brizzy in the lower back it felt, at first, like the impact of hard, cold snowballs. It didn’t start hurting till he’d been lying on the sidewalk a half minute, shaking and trying to make his legs work, trying to get to his knees—and then it hurt, it hurt, it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

  The car sounds, the gunshots, the shouting, the screaming, the weeping—all of it she heard in her brain. She heard it just the way Brizzy heard it, because she was picking it up through Brizzy. Why did they call it a “Gift”?

  Brizzy rolled onto his back so he could use his arms to protect himself against the boots of the man kicking him. He could see that Shebop was down too, and he could see two men standing over him pumping shots into Shebop, and he could imagine the cops explaining, “The suspects attempted to escape….” And then he saw the big cop with the red face hide the little pistol in Shebop’s jacket. He heard shots and screams, from out of his line of sight: the other cops gunning down the two kids on roller skates, who would later be “accidentally caught in our line of fire.” And then he heard someone, a woman’s voice, someone’s mother, shouting, “What the hell you animals think you doing shooting those boys down? Them two boys on the skates, they good boys, I know those boys, they—”

  “Suck my white cock, you nigger cunt,” said one of the cops and the others laughed and then Brizzy was gone for a while. He came awake long enough to realize he was bumping through the streets in the back of an ambulance, feeling every bump in his wounds like a baseball bat slamming him, and he heard the cops tell the driver, “No, that fucking hospital’s practically around the corner. Go to the one uptown. We’ll tell ’em the wounded niggers asked to be taken to that one. Give ’em time to bleed, I don’t wanta have to listen to these assholes lie all over the witness stand….”

  And that was the last thing Brizzy heard—

  Madelaine screamed again and this time she clawed at her ears.

  —because after that Brizzy was occupied with listening to the roaring sound that came to fill his head when his heart gave out from lack of blood pressure and he tried to yell for his sister Tess because Tess took care of him since Dad got busted and—

  Madelaine tore her clothes away, trying to get at the wounds that she knew were bleeding her life into nowhere, though she wasn’t bleeding, and by then Brizzy, in another part of the city, was already dead.

  “Joey keep them out….Keep them out!” Madelaine gurgled, her face hidden by the shift she’d dragged over her head.

  “Okay—if you’d be more comfortable without your clothes,” Lanyard said, “I’ll help you get them off….There….” He pulled her dress off over her head. “Now lie still, and I’m going to call an ambulance.”

  “Uhh—uhhh—UHHH-UH!” A crescendo of shouting as she dragged her nails over the skin of her belly, her rib cage.

  Lanyard stood over her, paralyzed by recognition. Her hands were moving in deliberate patterns, making a specific design, clawing the same lines over and over on her quaking skin. The red appearing on her belly like smeared lipstick to make the configurations of the cutting.

  The cutting Lanyard had seen again and again, on the victims of the subway killings. Their bellies cut open, in just the pattern, though bloodless now, as if only in blueprint, that Madelaine dug with her nails across her skin.

  Joey, she’d said. Joey keep them out.

  Lanyard nodded slowly to himself.

  She was lying on the floor, alternating convulsively between two positions: stretched out rigidly, legs together, feet pointing at the door, arms crossed on her chest, trembling with tension; then she snapped her knees up to her chest, her hands over her ears, her eyes screwed shut as she screamed, “Out, OUT!” Lanyard bent over her, trying to hold her still, afraid she’d hurt herself. He tried to pry her grinding jaws apart so he could slip a pencil, which he took from his shirt pocket, between her teeth, in case she’d been taken with an epileptic seizure.

  But suddenly she went slack in his arms, the tension drained from her, and the pencil was no longer necessary. Her lips were parted, her eyes shut, her face was more placid. She was breathing shallowly, her white skin blotched with rose. He hugged her close and helped her to her feet:

  “You okay, Madelaine? You…are you on some kind of medication I can get for you? Are you supposed to be taking Dilantin? What happened, honey?”

  She leaned on him, her head bowed, blinking, wobbly, heavy drops of perspiration from her chin splashing his arm.

  “My God,” he muttered. He helped her to the living room and sat her on the couch.

  “I’m going to call an ambulance,” he said firmly, looking for the phone.

  She shook her head adamantly. She took a deep breath, and forced a smile. “Uh-uh. No. I’m better now. Had some bad flashes. My Gift—I get some ugly pictures, sometimes. That’s all I get lately. And clearly, more clearly than…I wonder why they’re doing it to me? To force me closer t
o them?”

  She was calmer, but seemed confused, almost delirious. “You need a doctor.”

  “No, please. No. But you know what I do need? A drink. Really and truly. Boy, do I ever. Okay? Some cognac. In the kitchen, the cabinet over the fridge.”

  “Sure!” He wiped the wetness from the corner of his eyes, feeling weak himself. For a moment, he heard the background sizzling sounds that led to his hearing the Voices, the whispering, and seeing the squirming darkness. Ignore it, he told himself. It’s not there. He kept it repressed with maniacal firmness when he was with Madelaine. He tried not to wonder why, and went into the kitchen, blinking in confusion. Where was the refrigerator? He was still shaken, not thinking clearly. There, and above it a white wooden cabinet. He stepped over the broken glass at the sink and took the quarter-full bottle of Courvoisier from the cabinet above the refrigerator.

  I hope a drink is the right thing for her, he thought. Maybe it’ll make her feel worse. He couldn’t find the shelf where she kept her drinking glasses. Finally he elected to wash the single coffee cup in the otherwise spotless sink. He poured three fingers of cognac into the cup and returned with it to the living room. To find her gone.

  The closet in the entryway was open, one of her long coats missing; the front door was ajar. Her purse was gone. The radio played an old Janis Joplin tune; Janis said she felt a ball and chain weighing her down. Hands shaking, Lanyard set the cup onto the floor—and then he picked it up, drained it, threw it down.

  Then he ran to the door and down the hall to the elevator. He waited impatiently—then remembered that it had broken. He ran to the stairs, and took them, down and down, three at a time. He burst out into the lobby, puffing. She wasn’t there. The doorman scowled. “Where did she go?” Lanyard demanded.

  “Miss Springer?” As if he didn’t know.

  “Obviously! You must have seen her!”

  “She went out. She was wearing a coat and no shoes. I think you had better talk to the building manager—”

  “The hell you say!” Lanyard muttered, shouldering the doorman aside.

  She was not on the sidewalk. The traffic was dense with every sort of vehicle, especially long shiny Caddies and Lincolns intent on blocking one another as they angled testily into the street. The background noise was building to a hysterical pitch, presaging rush hour.

  Lanyard wondered what to do.

  He made excuses for her: She was embarrassed by the fit. Maybe she was an epileptic—there are various kinds of epileptic fits—and ashamed of having been seen in seizure. She just had to get away to avoid his pity, or his disgust.

  Nah.

  Well then, she’d had too much cocaine, probably a great deal of it before he’d arrived. And some drug-inspired impulse drove her from the apartment—she probably forgot he was there. She might have felt the need to get outside, to walk…

  Maybe.

  More likely, she had gone to Minder.

  Lanyard stood on the corner, stone-faced, thinking: It’s not her fault. If she’s treating me like I’m a nothing, walking out on me, pretending there was nothing wrong in the way I was treated at Minder’s, it’s only because of the drug, because she’s become dependent on Minder for it.

  Oh, sure.

  They’re twisting her around somehow. Minder’s doing something to her… because it just wasn’t possible that she’d become one of them.

  No?

  He thought of Maguss, Who knew Minder. It was time he gave Maguss his report, anyway.

  He took a cab home, chewing his thumbnail, reading and rereading the little yellow signs that said DRIVER NOT REQUIRED TO CHANGE BILLS LARGER THAN $5 and NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR FORGOTTEN VALUABLES. There was a scratched pane of bulletproof glass between Lanyard and the driver. When they arrived he pushed a five through the small metal PAY HERE drawer in the window. “Wait—here’s an extra couple of bucks to cover the time…I’m just going to run up the stairs and grab some papers and run back down, take me two minutes…

  “Okay.”

  When he returned, in just over two minutes, winded and red-faced from taking the stairs so quickly, the cab was gone. He swore and tucked the envelope under his arm. He set off, west.

  Lanyard walked toward Astor Place, at intervals trying to hail a cab and failing. The sky was darkening, and in the distance the mist was becoming fog. He stopped at a pay phone and called Minder’s.

  “Mr. Minder’s residence, may I help you?”

  Too urgently, Lanyard said, “I need to talk to Madelaine Springer, if she’s there…”

  A pause. “I’m sorry, sir. She’s in rehearsal.”

  Lanyard banged the phone onto the receiver and, on impulse, dashed down the subway entrance, thinking, It’ll be faster this way, I’ll avoid the street traffic.

  And found himself pressed onto the uptown local in the midst of rush hour. Deep underground.

  Lanyard had bought his token and passed through the turnstiles without really looking around, until he found himself swept up in a single-minded throng into the train. “Let ’em out, let ’em out!” shrieked the public address system, trying to tell the people eager to get aboard the train to let those debarking through to the platform; the order was for the most part ignored, and the doorway was a bottleneck jammed with human bodies in twisty currents, some edging and elbowing in, some edging and elbowing out. Lanyard was forced to walk in silly, mincing steps because there was so little room in front and behind him. He found a corner of the car and hung onto one of the spring-hinged metal handholds.

  The doors tried to shut; a black newsboy was caught in between.

  “Geddaway from the doors!” the P.A. voice shouted.

  Two people inside forced the doors open, and the black kid plunged into the train. The doors rattled, as if petulant with the delay, and squeaked shut. The train gave a great heave and everyone inside was wrenched about on their straps or in their seats—they showed no change of expression during this lurching, though they were bounced one against another.

  Then they were barreling down the unlit tunnel, taking the corners at a harrowing rate so that the wheels strained to leap the rails; now and then, without explanation, the lights cut out, and they were plunged for five or ten seconds into total darkness.

  When the lights came back on, no one had altered their expression. The car was crowded from back to front; the air was close, and though a few people chatted above the apocalyptic racketing of the old train, Lanyard sensed that each rider was intent on mentally maintaining a sense of personal space—mentally, since it was impossible physically.

  They stopped at four stations, taking in more people than they let out (“Leddemout, comeon, leddemout…Move away from the closing doors please don’t block the doors…”) so that Lanyard’s arms were crushed hard to his ribs by the pressure of commuters: careworn shopkeepers and hard-eyed secretaries and proud young blacks in speckless business suits gripping monogrammed briefcases; everyone clutching their purses, their packs, their wallets protectively.

  They rocked to a stop at Grand Central, and an old woman accidentally poked her umbrella into Lanyard’s thigh; he bit off a curse, and she scowled as she withdrew the umbrella from him, as if he’d been trying to steal it.

  As they paused in Grand Central Station, Lanyard looked out the window, bending to see past the graffiti on the glass, and thought he glimpsed Madelaine in the crowd, buying a magazine from a newsstand. He couldn’t be sure. The woman stood with her back to him, and people dashed back and forth in his line of sight, running to or from a train. It looked like her hair—but she was too far for him to tell. The woman wore a long, tan coat. He couldn’t see her feet.

  He pushed frantically through the crowd, eliciting “Hey whoyuh shovin’ azzhole,” and flung himself through the door, onto the platform; he nearly fell flat, and the doors rattled shut behind him. He threaded the crowd, making for the newsstand. The newsstand contained one of the stumpy, cap-wearing, cigar-chewing, bulldog-faced men that Lanyard
was sure were bred in some secret kennel, probably in the wilds of Long Island.

  The woman—Madelaine?—was no longer at the newsstand. He saw her climbing the stairs under the paint-flaking wooden sign that said MAIN TERMINAL; she was just one more figure in an endless chain of others climbing the stairs, part of the crowd flow and almost indistinguishable from it. He still couldn’t be certain.

  Two hundred people occupied the forty-foot space between Lanyard and the staircase. The trains roared their musty wind into the station, and people, more people and more, pushed past him, glaring because he was standing still, because he wasn’t going somewhere and therefore he was in the way….

  He weaved through the crowd, moving against the confluence with painful slowness, plowing through an ambience of synthetic clothing and defaced wall-posters for stage musicals and horror movies and rock bands, feeling that he was gradually being buried under the incalculable weight of the station itself, the tons of concrete around him somehow adding their fulsome gravity to keep him from reaching Madelaine before he lost her in the crowd. “Madelaine!” he shouted, and could hardly hear himself over the pandemonium. He had lost sight of the woman. He reached the stairs and was forced to ascend them one at a time, one every two seconds because the way was packed and to go faster he’d have had to walk over their heads.

  When, at last, burning with frustration, he reached the top, he found himself at forking hallways. Had she gone to the left or right? The ceiling sagged above him; insulation and rotting support frames and rusted pipe hung down; the signs indicating his whereabouts were patched over with cheaply printed posters warning about the Rockefeller Conspiracy, or the Consequences of Sin or the Consequences of Nuclear Power. Again he hesitated and again he was buffeted by the impatient crowd flow. A nun sat on a folding wooden chair at the crossways, holding a cup for money on her lap, her eyes hidden behind dirty wing-tip glasses, her smile frozen; as he watched she dumped the change into a leather pouch, replacing the empty cup on her lap. “Guh bless you,” she said, when someone dropped a coin into her metal cup. “Guhblessyou, Guhbless.”