by Steven Brust
“There are worse lines.”
“Shit.”
I shrugged and turned back to my banjo case. The flap that lets you get to the inner pocket of the thing has been broken for a few centuries now, so it takes major work to get to it. When I had the tuner stored, she was gone.
“Her friend was giving you the eye,” said Tom.
“Who?”
“A redhead she was sitting with during the show.”
“Hmmm. Point her out to me if they show up again.”
“I will.”
“You should have said hello to the blonde.”
“Next time.”
Rose was watching Jamie leave with his new friend. “Watching” may be too mild a word. Rose and Jamie have nothing going on between them, Rose has no shred of jealousy in her, and she isn’t bothered at all by Jamie’s attentions to other women; except when they do and she does and she is. I saw the look on her face and knew what came next in this script, so I went over to her to help her with the Jameson, since she was too small to be expected to finish the whole bottle herself. And besides, it was Jameson.
Presently Fred shut out the lights. Rose talked, I listened, and we drank.
I don’t get hangovers.
I keep telling myself that. I figure that if I can convince myself it’s true, maybe I won’t feel quite so bloated, shrunk, dehydrated, sweaty, achy, numb, stretched, and tender the next morning. Tom has been growing gradually less sympathetic to the morning-after conditions of those around him. He said, “Are you going to be able to play tonight?”
I nodded, while trying to pick burrs out of my tongue with my teeth—which was hard because my teeth had turned to foam rubber during the night. “Water,” I said. “Water would be a good thing. Water. Then coffee. That’s what I’m going to accomplish today. Great. I have a plan. Ambition. A goal in life. Yeah. Water, then coffee. But first, the bathroom. Good. We’re getting organized now.” Tom smiled, hooked his hands behind his head, and leaned back in his pile of odds and ends that passed for a bed. He lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and let it out slow, probably to tell me how nice it felt not to have a hangover. But I was going through one of my periodic fits of not smoking, so it just made me feel superior.
I got up and stumbled to the bathroom, going through the kitchen so I didn’t have to look at the breakfast crowd, whose sounds I was hearing through my fog. I tried to remember what time Feng’s opened, but couldn’t, and it annoyed me that I didn’t know if I couldn’t remember because of aftereffects of the jump or of drinking.
I made it to the bathroom, where I splashed water on my eyes, cheeks, and the back of my neck, while making sounds that were not unlike a tin can and a smoke detector achieving simultaneous orgasm.
I was about to leave, still dripping water from my face, when I heard a noise like someone was setting off a firecracker just outside the bathroom door. It was sharp, though dulled by the door, and had a particular echo that my memory must be exaggerating. Or maybe not; the echo still haunts me.
Then there was another one, and another, and I think another but I’m not certain. I started to open the door to find out what was going on when it suddenly swung open toward me, jamming my middle finger. I cursed and looked for someone to be snide to. The someone fell into me and continued on toward the floor. I caught him. His face, which I’d never seen before, was branded with shock. His mouth worked like a fish’s. He was breathing in gasps. I held him for just a moment, then he got his feet under him. He pushed away from me as if panicking and crashed into the nearest sink, then turned around and faced me. My right hand felt wet and sticky, and I glanced down, and knew that it was blood and I forgot about my jammed finger.
There was a big ugly red splotch on his chest, burnt around the edges, and I could see muscle tissue and, I think, bone. Then I noticed a red stain on the stomach of the pale yellow sports shirt he wore, and two more high on the left leg of his dark knit pants. One of his leg wounds was pumping blood.
His face, which was long, mustached, and dark, had a fresh scratch along one cheek. His hair was nearly as long as mine. For a second he stood upright, leaning against the wall. He looked right at me, and said, quite clearly and distinctly, “Sugar Bear.” Then he slumped to the floor and seemed to concentrate all of his energy on breathing and blinking.
I did the only thing I could, which was to stand there, unable to move or even think about anything except how ugly the guy’s wounds looked, feel my heart pound, and say the words gunshots gunshots gunshots over and over in my mind.
Presently I realized that things were quiet, which was how I realized that I’d been hearing screams from the next room. I stood there, heroically paralyzed and staring at the guy who was probably dying or something. Then I heard Tom calling my name from the other side of the men’s room door.
“I’m in here,” I said. “There’s someone hurt.” I somehow couldn’t say “shot.”
When the door opened it was Libby and Fred. Libby glanced at the guy, who was still bleeding and all like that. She knelt down next to him. I said, “Is there anything I can—”
She looked at me, shook her head, and said, “Just go sit down.”
“Right. Sit down,” I said. “Good idea.”
She said, “Fred, make sure no one comes in.”
“Will do,” he said, as if he’d done this sort of thing thousands of times. Then I saw that he was holding a small, flat, silvery grey automatic pistol in his hand. Something about the way he held it told me he knew how to use it. I said, “Did you—” My voice caught.
“No,” he said. “I’m being careful.”
I heard Libby say, “Can you hear me? I’m a paramedic. I’m going to…” as I walked out. I made my way through what was rapidly becoming a large group of curious people. I sat down in one of the booths and had coffee. I think Rose brought it to me, but I’m not certain. There were a lot of people gathered there, and I knew several of them, but I’m not exactly sure, in retrospect, who they were.
Someone sat down next to three or four gunshots, Mr. Kevely, kay-ee-vee-ee-ell of a way to start to get an idea of where he was standing when did you first hear you play sometime, sir, but why is it that your band lives within the township of New Quebec Municipal Police Force, Criminal Investigation Division of labor makes sense, Officer, so we work here as part-time employees when we’re not playing in the band of raggle-taggle gypsies—oh, sure, I’m fine, thanks, Officer, except this is the first time I’ve seen or heard the phrase sugar bear sugar bear sugar bear up under this kind of questioning for three fucking hours and that is yours so those must have been his orders to investigate the shooting death of a male Caucasian height of idiocy to just let him stay here when we aren’t sure if he knows more or less everything we can get from Billy take this and some water, you should lie down and rest of the time between now and then we just have to guess that should be enough help him or her is that you Libby thanks for being here or therefore I may as well sleep for a while.
My last conscious thought was, How the hell am I supposed to play tonight?
The answer was: in a fog, and I’m not sure the others were doing much better. I remember none of our usual arguing over the set list, nor do I remember any details of the performance itself, except that at one point I had trouble with my jammed finger, but I don’t even know what song we were doing. I kept getting the shakes in the middle of tunes and almost losing it. I tried to lose myself in the music, but then I’d remember why I was trying to do so and I’d get the shakes again.
During the first break, Tom started talking to the woman we’d noticed the night before. During the second break, he introduced me to her and her friend. I promptly forgot both of their names, but, then, I might not have been able to come up with my own if I needed to in a hurry.
When the show was over, I noticed Tom rushing to put his instruments away, I guess to go talk to his new friend. I took some time putting mine away. I sat on the stage and took two deep breaths
.
“There were police here,” someone said.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m wondering why there were police here, earlier today.”
A redheaded woman with bright green eyes that were probably tinted contacts sat at the table near the stage, drinking something clear out of a Tom Collins glass. There was fruit in it. After a moment, I placed her as the woman who’d arrived with Tom’s friend.
I said, “Someone was shot in the bathroom this morning.”
Her eyes widened. “Shot, dead?”
“Yes.”
“That’s pretty scary.” Her English had the barest trace of a French accent, but was otherwise faintly Oxford.
I said, “I was right there when it happened. Scared hell out of me.”
“I would imagine.”
I realized that I wanted her to keep talking, because I liked her accent, so I contrived to do so. She gave me her name, and I forgot it, and she gave it to me again. Souci. Pronounced “Sue” as in taking someone to court, with the accent on the “cee.”
I got us coffee, and we covered a variety of subjects, but always came back to the dead man.
I said, “It’s one thing to know you’re going to die someday. It’s another to see it happen so suddenly like that. You can’t help identifying with him.”
“I know,” she said.
“But think about it. Your whole life, all your plans, everything you’re going to do tomorrow and next year, and the things you want to see, and then, blam, it’s over.”
“I know.”
“It’s how fast it happened, that’s what gets to me.”
“I don’t think you should think about it anymore right now,” she said.
“I guess.” I shuddered. “Let’s get some food. They’ll still serve if we hurry.”
“I could eat a little,” she said.
Feng’s always served food until at least three-thirty, and we were picking at the remains of French onion soup and Cajun blackened chicken until something like four o’clock. I learned that Souci was local, didn’t really care for Irish music, but her friend, the blonde, did, and Souci allowed that we were all-right. She said she was a dancer. I raised an eyebrow, and she shook her head.
“No. I dance for clubs like Montague’s,” as if that should explain things. She added, “I do not strip,” as if it were perfectly reasonable for me to wonder.
“Okay,” I said, and we went on from there.
I can no more remember that conversation in detail than I can remember playing that evening, but it went on for a long time. When the day finally caught up with me, and each eyelid acquired a ten-pound weight, I asked Souci if she’d like to crash in the corner of the storage area where I kept my futon. It didn’t seem odd at the time, and she said yes, and I fell asleep almost at once. Souci, curled up in my arms, was soft and warm.
She was still asleep when I woke up. It was only when I saw her there, asleep, that I realized just how beautiful she was—which was odd, because I’m not normally that slow to notice, and mornings aren’t kind to anyone. She had a few freckles, and her hair may have been dyed, but she had the complexion to match it. Her cheekbones were high and quite pronounced, and the line of her jaw was emphatic, almost West Indian, ending in a very strong chin. Her eyes were deeply set, the brows fine, and there was a permanent, very slight pout to her lips. Her skin looked like fine silk. Her face, taken as a whole, was almost otherworldly, with an odd sort of perfection that hit me very hard.
It was impossible to see what the rest of her looked like under the blankets, but from what I recalled from the night before she had no excess weight and all of the right curves. I wondered how in the world I’d been able to fall asleep so easily with her next to me.
She woke up and caught me staring at her. I quickly looked away and said, “Good morning. Want some coffee?”
“Ummmm.” She stretched. “Cream.”
“What? Oh. Uh, right.”
When I went to get the coffee, I found Tom sitting in a booth with the blonde. They were on the same side of the booth, Tom was leaning forward with his hands on the table in front of him, she was leaning back, her hands folded over her stomach. I could tell right away that neither of them had had any sleep. There was a coffee decanter on the table in front of them. “Good morning, folks,” I said.
“Don’t say that,” said Tom, screwing his face into a grimace.
“Sorry.”
“This is Carrie. Carrie, that’s Billy.” He blinked several times, rapidly.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. She nodded. Tom said, “What time is it?”
“I don’t know. Do you really want me to find out?”
“Well, no,” said Tom.
When I came back that way with coffee, his friend was leaning forward, her head next to his in that position that always gives me the impression that people are exchanging thoughts directly through their foreheads. I left them alone. I set the coffee down, ran off to use the men’s room.
When I got back I sipped at my coffee. I told Souci, “The police markings are still on the floor in there.” I licked my lips. “It was a strange thing for me.”
She nodded. “I suppose you pretty much hated it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty much. Not half as much as he did, though. You ever been there when someone was killed?”
“No.” She tilted her head to the side and pursed her lips and said, “I almost killed someone once, though.”
I said, “Oh?”
“I threw a desk chair at him, down three flights of stairs.”
“You’re kidding.”
“He was my boyfriend. We were at a party at our own house, and he was, what is the phrase? Coming on to his ex-girlfriend.”
“What happened to him?”
“He stopped coming on to her.”
“No, I mean—”
“Oh. It missed his head, but broke his collarbone. I used to have a nasty temper,” she added judiciously.
“I guess. But now you’re a pussycat, right?”
She smiled. Then she said, “You were pretty tired last night.”
I nodded. “And upset.”
“I could tell.”
“How?” I asked, intending the question to be sarcastic.
“You didn’t make a pass at me.”
This took me aback a bit. I wondered if it was the norm in this society to be that direct. I suspected it wasn’t. I almost asked if she expected every man she hung around with to make a pass at her, but I didn’t because, on reflection, it would have been a pretty stupid question. So I said, “Did you want me to?” I wanted my tone to be light and bantering, but it didn’t come out that way.
“Yes,” she said.
I sat there for the length of a couple of breaths while I checked with my short-term memory to make sure I’d heard that correctly, and checked with my facial expression interpreters to make sure I wasn’t being laughed at. I felt my heart pounding. “You could make a pass at me,” I heard myself saying.
“Want to make love?” she said.
“Yes.” I was surprised at how even my voice was.
One nice thing about mornings is how much energy I have. Her, too.
“Hi there.”
“Mmmmm.”
“Move over this way just a bit.”
“Mmmmm.”
“I liked that.”
“Mmmmm. Me, too.”
“I just changed my mind about something.”
“What?”
“I think I want to get an apartment, after all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’d been thinking about just staying here for a while, but—”
“Why would you do that?”
“It’s cheap.”
“But—all right.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Mmmmm.”
“Do you think you might be able to help me find a place?”
“Let me go home and change first.”
“Okay.”
When she came back, about an hour later, she was wearing a loose-fitting black sweater, low black boots with high heels, and baggy black pants. I almost jumped her again, but instead bought her hash brown potatoes made with green peppers, red peppers, mushrooms, and onions; a soft-boiled egg; and English muffins. I had the same except I had a bagel. We both had a great deal of Feng’s Roast coffee, then we attacked the outdoors. It took me a moment to work up the courage to step outside, but I did at last—and stopped, cold.
“What is it, Billy?”
“It’s just—nothing. I’m just enjoying the morning.”
“Afternoon.”
“Whatever.”
I’d gotten a look out the window before, but I hadn’t been outside. Think of a high, deep blue, the air rippling like it does off the pavement on hot days, and no clouds, and a small, pale yellow sun set in the middle of it, like it was lost. That was my first view of New Quebec on Laurier around Chaucer. Across the street, yes, it was certainly a bakery. To my left was a square little shop whose sign read, “Salon de Coiffure Pour les Chiens.” To my right was a very tall building that could have been a grocer or a drugstore.
Streets—at least the three I could see from the door—were wide and very clean, as if they’d been scrubbed, and buildings were widely spaced and quite varied. There was a Victorian mansion with five towers and three chimneys and a bright red door just down the way, and next to it what seemed to be an underground bunker, and what could have been a church but wasn’t was to our left. What was a church was to our right across the street and next to it was a small storefront, looking naked with nothing touching it, and just beyond that a tall businessy-looking place with lots of reflective windows. I made a note to see what it looked like at sunset, after establishing which direction could be considered west. It was, for the record, left as we stepped outside, so the old west wall was the north wall, if you chose to look at it that way.
There were a few people on the street: one elderly couple leaving the store, a man carrying an infant across his chest, two girls looking in the bakery window. They looked like people, with nothing to distinguish them from anyone on the streets of Ibrium City or Jerrysport, and it seemed that, for how far we’d come in time and space, there should have been more.