Slow Dancing Through Time

by Gardner R. Dozois

  There were five of them white as snow and about the size of cocker spaniels, nuzzling up against their mother’s side. Their stubby little horns were still covered with furry velvet, and except for the fact that they were squirming and moving about, they looked just like the unicorn plush toys you sometimes see in the more imaginative gift shops.

  “Funny,” I said, “you didn’t look pregnant.” I met the unicorn’s liquid eyes, and she stared back at me serenely and guilelessly. “So, old girl,” I said ruefully. “You weren’t a virgin either, were you? No wonder you didn’t care.”

  The unicorn whickered again and blew out its lips with a soft snorting sound, and I sighed. I thought of the snow that was gusting around outside. No wonder you wanted a place to live—you might not be so hot at recognizing virgins, but you sure knew a sucker when you saw one. The unicorn rested her head in my lap, staring lovingly up at me out of her enormous eyes, and gently licked my hand with her velvet tongue.

  Jenny was leaning by me now, her eyes as wide as saucers, her face soft with wonder. “Oh, Mommy . . .” she breathed. “Oh, Mommy, they’re so pretty—”

  The babies were squeaking and squirming about, making little mewing noises, and one of them nuzzled its mole-soft nose trustingly into my hand, searching blindly for milk, gently nibbling me with its soft little lips . . .

  I sighed again.

  So this week I put an ad in the paper:

  UNICORNS—FREE TO GOOD HOMES

  But somehow I don’t think we’re going to get many replies.

  AFTERWORD TO THE STRAY

  Susan started this and got stalled on it, and a few days later, while she was sleeping, I picked it up off her desk and finished it for her. This was a pretty nervy and presumptuous thing for me to do, since I hadn’t even asked her if I could work on it, and I got a bit uneasy about what her reaction to this would be, after it was too late, but she was in a generous mood that morning (or else stunned by the sheer chutzpah of what I’d done), and let me live. The story was finished on April 24, 1982.

  “The Stray” turned out to be a bit more nakedly sentimental than either of us was entirely comfortable with, certainly more sentimental than either of our solo work, but this was what seemed to be called-for by the tone and mood of the story, so we went with it. If the story is too sentimental for your taste, you can, if you wish, imagine the unicorn running amuck at the end and skewering the mother and daughter with its horn, or, perhaps, picture the mother going berserk with a chainsaw and slicing and dicing the unicorn to a blood-soaked mass of bones and flesh. The way the horror market is these days, we probably could sell either of those variants, too.

  The story sold to the ill-fated second issue of Imago, a fantasy magazine which died stillborn and never even produced the first issue. A few years later, Tappan King bought it, and it appeared in the December 1987 issue of The Twilight Zone Magazine.

  THE CLOWNS

  GARDNER DOZOIS, JACK DANN, & SUSAN CASPER

  The C. Fred Johnson Municipal Pool was packed with swimmers, more in spite of the blazing sun and wet, muggy heat than because of them.

  It was the dead middle of August, stiflingly hot, and it would have made more sense to stay inside—or, at the very least, in the shade—than to splash around in the murky, tepid water. Nevertheless, the pool was crowded almost shoulder to shoulder, especially with kids—there were children everywhere, the younger ones splashing and shouting in the shallow end, the older kids and the teenagers jumping off the high dive or playing water polo in the deep end. Mothers sat in groups and chatted, their skins glistening with suntan oil and sweat. The temperature was well above 90, and the air seemed to shimmer with the heat, like automobile exhaust in a traffic jam.

  David Shore twisted his wet bath towel and snapped it at his friend Sammy, hitting him on the sun-reddened backs of his thighs.

  “Ow!” Sammy screamed. “You dork! Cut it out!” David grinned and snapped the towel at Sammy again, hitting only air this time but producing a satisfyingly loud crack. Sammy jumped back, shouting, “Cut it out! I’ll tell! I’ll tell! I mean it.”

  Sammy’s voice was whining and petulant, and David felt a spasm of annoyance. Sammy was his friend, and he didn’t have so many friends that he wasn’t grateful for that, but Sammy was always whining. What a baby! That’s what he got for hanging out with little kids—Sammy was eight, two years younger than David—but since the trouble he’d had last fall, with his parents almost breaking up and he himself having to go for counseling, he’d been ostracized by many of the kids his own age. David’s face darkened for a moment, but then he sighed and shook his head. Sammy was all right, really. A good kid. He really shouldn’t tease him so much, play so many jokes on him. David smiled wryly. Maybe he did it just to hear him whine—

  “Don’t be such a baby,” David said tiredly, wrapping the towel around his hand. “It’s only a towel, dickface. It’s not gonna kill you if—” Then David stopped abruptly, staring blankly off beyond Sammy, toward the bathhouse.

  “It hurt,” Sammy whined. “You’re a real dork, you know that, Davie? How come you have to—” And then Sammy paused, too, aware that David wasn’t paying any attention to him anymore. “Davie?” he said. “What’s the matter?”

  “Look at that,” David said in an awed whisper.

  Sammy turned around. After a moment, confused, he asked, “Look at what?”

  “There!” David said, pointing toward a sun-bleached wooden rocking chair.

  “Oh, no, you’re not going to get me again with that old line,” Sammy said disgustedly. His face twisted, and this time he looked as if he were really getting mad. “The wind’s making that chair rock. It can rock for hours if the wind’s right. You can’t scare me that easy! I’m not a baby, you know!”

  David was puzzled, Couldn’t Sammy see? What was he—blind? It was as plain as anything . . .

  There was a clown sitting in the chair, sitting and rocking, watching the kids in the swimming pool.

  The clown’s face was caked with thick white paint. He had a bulb nose that was painted blood red, the same color as his broad, painted-on smile. His eyes were like chips of blue ice. He sat very still, except for the slight movement of his legs needed to rock the beat-up old chair, and his eyes never left the darting figures in the water.

  David had seen clowns before, of course; he’d seen plenty of them at the Veterans’ Arena in Binghamton when the Barnum & Bailey Circus came to town. Sammy’s father was a barber and always got good tickets to everything, and Sammy always took David with him. But this clown was different, somehow. For one thing, instead of performing, instead of dancing around or cakewalking or somersaulting or squirting people with a Seltzer bottle, this clown was just sitting quietly by the pool, as if it were the most normal thing in the world for him to be there. And there was something else, too, he realized. This clown was all in black. Even his big polka-dotted bow tie was black, shiny black dots against a lighter gray-black. Only his gloves were white, and they were a pure, eye-dazzling white. The contrast was startling.

  “Sammy?” David said quietly. “Listen, this is important. You really think that chair is empty?”

  “Jeez, grow up, will ya?” Sammy snarled. “What a dork!” He turned his back disgustedly on David and dived into the pool.

  David stared thoughtfully at the clown. Was Sammy trying to kid him? Turn the tables on him, get back at him for some of his old jokes? But David was sure that Sammy wasn’t smart enough to pull it off. Sammy always gave himself away, usually by giggling.

  Odd as it seemed, Sammy really didn’t see the clown.

  David looked around to see who else he could ask. Certainly not Mr. Kreiger, who had a big potbelly and wore his round wire-rimmed glasses even in the water and who would stand for hours in the shallow end of the pool and splash himself with one arm, like an old bull elephant splashing water over itself with its trunk. No. Who else? Bobby Little, Jimmy Seikes, and Andy Freeman were taking turns diving and
cannonballing from the low board, but David didn’t want to ask them anything. That left only Jas Ritter, the pool lifeguard, or the stuck-up Weaver sisters.

  But David was beginning to realize that he didn’t really have to ask anybody. Freddy Schumaker and Jane Gelbert had just walked right by the old rocking chair, without looking at the clown, without even glancing at him. Bill Dwyer was muscling himself over the edge of the pool within inches of the clown’s floppy oblong shoes, and he wasn’t paying any attention to him, either. That just wasn’t possible. No matter how supercool they liked to pretend they were, there was no way that kids were going to walk past a clown without even glancing at him.

  With a sudden thrill, David took the next logical step. Nobody could see the clown except him. Maybe he was the only one in the world who could see him!

  It was an exhilarating thought. David stared at the clown in awe. Nobody else could see him! Maybe he was a ghost, the ghost of an old circus clown, doomed to roam the earth forever, seeking out kids like the ones he’d performed for when he was alive, sitting in the sun and watching them play, thinking about the happy days when the circus had played this town.

  That was a wonderful idea, a lush and romantic idea, and David shivered and hugged himself, feeling goose flesh sweep across his skin. He could see a ghost! It was wonderful! It was magic! Private, secret magic, his alone. It meant that he was special. It gave him a strange, secret kind of power. Maybe nobody else in the universe could see him—

  It was at this point that Sammy slammed into him, laughing and shouting, “I’ll learn you, sucker!” and knocked him into the pool.

  By the time David broke the surface, sputtering and shaking water out of his eyes, the clown was gone and the old rocker was rocking by itself, in the wind and the thin, empty sunshine.

  ###

  After leaving the pool, David and Sammy walked over the viaduct—there was no sign of any freight trains on the weed-overgrown tracks below—and took back-alley short cuts to Curtmeister’s barbershop.

  “Hang on a minute,” Sammy said and ducked into the shop. Ordinarily, David would have followed, as Sammy’s father kept gum and saltwater taffy in a basket on top of the magazine rack, but today he leaned back against the plate-glass window, thinking about the ghost he’d seen that morning, his ghost, watching as the red and blue stripes ran eternally up around the barber pole. How fascinated he’d been by that pole a few years ago, and how simple it seemed to him now.

  A clown turned the corner from Avenue B, jaywalking casually across Main Street.

  David started and pushed himself upright. The ghost again! or was it? Surely, this clown was shorter and squatter than the one he’d seen at the pool, though it was wearing the same kind of black costume, the same kind of white gloves. Could this be another ghost? Maybe there was a whole circus full of clown ghosts wandering around the city.

  “David!” a voice called, and he jumped. It was old Mrs. Zabriski, carrying two bulging brown-paper grocery bags, working her way ponderously down the sidewalk toward him, puffing and wheezing, like some old, slow tugboat doggedly chugging toward its berth. “Want to earn a buck, David?” she called.

  The clown had stopped right in the middle of Main Street, standing nonchalantly astride the double white divider line. David watched him in fascination.

  “David?” Mrs. Zabriski said impatiently.

  Reluctantly, David turned his attention back to Mrs. Zabriski. “Gosh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Zabriski. Gosh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Z,” he said. A buck would be nice, but it was more important to keep an eye on the clown. “I—ah, I promised Sammy that I’d wait out here for him.”

  Mrs. Zabriski sighed. “OK, David,” she said. “Another time, then.” She looked across the street to see what he was staring at, looked back puzzledly. “Are you all right, David?”

  “Yeah. Honest, Mrs. Z,” he said, without looking around. “Really. I’m fine.”

  She sighed again with doughy fatalism. And then she started across the street, headed directly for the clown.

  It was obvious to David that she didn’t see him. He was standing right in front of her, grimacing and waving his arms and making faces at her, but she didn’t even slow down—she would have walked right into him if he hadn’t ducked out of the way at the last moment. After she passed, the clown minced along behind her for a few steps, doing a cruel but funny imitation of her ponderous, waddling walk, pretending to spank her on her big, fat rump.

  David stifled a laugh. This was better than the circus! But now the clown seemed to have grown bored with mocking Mrs. Zabriski and began drifting slowly away toward the far side of Main Street.

  David wanted to follow, but he suddenly realized, with a funny little chill, that he didn’t want to do it alone. Even if it was the ghost of a clown, a funny and entertaining ghost, it was still a ghost, after all. Somehow, he’d have to get Sammy to come with him. But how could he explain to Sammy what they were doing? Not that it would matter if Sammy didn’t come out of the shop soon—the clown was already a block away.

  Anxiously, he peered in through the window until he managed to catch Sammy’s attention, then waved to him urgently. Sammy held up his index finger and continued his conversation with his father. “Hurry up, dummy,” David muttered under his breath. The clown was getting farther and farther away, almost out of sight now. Hurry up. David danced impatiently from one foot to the other. Hurry up.

  But when Sammy finally came running out of the barbershop with the news that he’d talked his father into treating them both to a movie, the clown was gone.

  ###

  By the time they got to the movie theater, David had pretty much gotten over the disappointment of losing the clown. At least it was a pretty good show—cartoons and a space-monster movie. There was a long line in front of the ticket window, a big crowd of kids—and even a few adults—waiting to get into the movie.

  They were waiting in the tail of the line when the clown—or a clown—appeared again across the street.

  “Hey, Davie!” Sammy said abruptly. “Do you see what I see?” And Sammy waved to the clown.

  David was startled—and somewhat dismayed—by the strength of the surge of disappointment and jealousy that shot through him. If Sammy could see them, too, then David wasn’t special anymore. The whole thing was ruined.

  Then David realized that it wasn’t the clown that Sammy was waving to.

  He was waving to the old man who was waiting to cross the street, standing just in front of the clown. Old Mr. Thorne. He was at least a million years old, David knew. He’d played for the Boston Braves back before they’d even had television, for cripes’ sake. But he loved children and treated them with uncondescending courtesy and in turn was one of the few adults who were really respected by the kids. He was in charge of the yo-yo contests held in the park every summer, and he could make a yo-yo sleep or do around the world or over the falls or walking the dog better than anyone David had ever seen, including the guy who sold the golden yo-yos for the Duncan Company.

  Relieved, David joined Sammy in waving to his old friend, almost—but not quite—forgetting the clown for a moment. Mr. Thorne waved back but motioned for them to wait where they were. It was exciting to see the old man again. It would be worth missing the movie if Mr. Thorne was in the mood to buy them chocolate malteds and reminisce about the days when he’d hit a home run off the immortal Grover Cleveland Alexander.

  Just as the traffic light turned yellow, an old flat-bed truck with a dented fender came careening through the intersection.

  David felt his heart lurch with sudden fear—But it was all right. Mr. Thorne saw the truck coming, he was still on the curb, he was safe. But then the clown stepped up close behind him. He grabbed Mr. Thorne by the shoulders. David could see Mr. Thorne jerk in surprise as he felt the white-gloved hands close over him. Mr. Thorne’s mouth opened in surprise, his hands came fluttering weakly up, like startled birds. David could see the clown’s painted face grinning over t
he top of Mr. Thorne’s head. That wide, unchanging, painted-on smile.

  Then the clown threw Mr. Thorne in front of the truck.

  There was a sickening wet thud, a sound like that of a sledgehammer hitting a side of beef. The shriek of brakes, the squeal of flaying tires. A brief, unnatural silence. Then a man said, “Jesus Christ!” in a soft, reverent whisper. A heartbeat later, a woman started to scream.

  Then everyone was shouting, screaming, babbling in a dozen confused voices, running forward. The truck driver was climbing down from the cab, his face stricken; his mouth worked in a way that might have been funny in other circumstances, opening and closing, opening and closing—then he began to cry.

  All you could see of Mr. Thorne was one arm sticking out from under the truck’s rear wheels at an odd angle, like the arm of a broken doll.

  A crowd was gathering now, and between loud exclamations of horror, everyone was already theorizing about what had happened: Maybe the old man had had a heart attack, maybe he’d just slipped and fallen, maybe he’d tripped over something. A man had thrown his arm around the shoulders of the bitterly sobbing truck driver; people were kneeling and peering gingerly under the truck; women were crying; little kids were shrieking and running frenziedly in all directions. Next to David, Sammy was crying and cursing at the same time, in a high and hysterical voice.

  Only David was not moving.

  He stood as if frozen in ice, staring at the clown.

  Unnoticed, standing alone behind the ever-growing crowd, the clown was laughing.

  Laughing silently, in unheard spasms that shook his shoulders and made his bulb nose jiggle. Laughing without sound, with his mouth wide open, bending forward to slap his knees in glee, tears of pleasure running down his painted cheeks.

  Laughing.