‘I’m not sure,’ Phil starts to say, but the President doesn’t seem to hear him.
‘Quite a letter, yes. And of course we need people like you, Mr Dick. We’re proud to have people like you, in fact. Someone who can speak to young people – well, that’s important isn’t it?’ Smiling at the other men in the room as if seeking affirmation. ‘It’s quite a talent. You have one of your books there, I think?’
Phil holds out the copy of Voices from the Street. It’s the Franklin Library edition, bound in green leather, his signature reproduced in gold on the cover, under the title. An aide gave it to him when he arrived, and now he hands it to the President, who takes it in a study of reverence.
‘You must sign it,’ the President says, and lays it open like a sacrificial victim on the gleaming desk, by the red and white phones. ‘I mean, that’s the thing isn’t it? The thing that you do?’
Phil says, ‘What I came to do—’
And Emmet steps forward and says, ‘Of course he’ll sign, sir. It’s an honour.’
Emmet gives Phil a pen, and Phil signs, his hand sweating on the page. He says, ‘I came here, sir, to say that I want to do what I can for America. I was given an experience a day ago, and I’m beginning to understand what it meant.’
But the President doesn’t seem to have heard him. He’s staring at Phil as if seeing him for the first time. At last, he blinks and says, ‘Boy, you do dress kind of wild.’
Phil is wearing his lucky Nehru jacket over a gold shirt, purple velvet pants with flares that mostly hide his sand-coloured suede desert boots. And the tie that Emmet bought him in the hotel shop, a paisley affair like the President’s, tight as a noose around his neck.
He starts to say, ‘I came here, sir,’ but the President says again, ‘You do dress kind of wild. But that I guess is the style of all writers, isn’t it? I mean, an individual style.’
For a moment, the President’s eyes, pinched between fleshy pouches, start to search Phil’s face anxiously. It seems that there’s something trapped far down at the bottom of his mild gaze, like a prisoner looking up through the grille of an oubliette at the sky.
‘Individual style, that’s exactly it,’ Phil says, seeing an opening, a way into his theme. The thing he knows now he needs to say, distilled from the scattered notes and thoughts last night. ‘Individualism, sir, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Even men in suits wear ties to signify that they still have this one little outlet for their individuality.’ It occurs to him that his tie is exactly like the President’s, but he plunges on. ‘I’m beginning to understand that things are changing in America, and that’s what I want to talk about—’
‘You wanted a badge,’ Haldeman says brusquely. ‘A federal agent’s badge, isn’t that right? A badge to help your moral crusade?’
Emmet and Haldeman and Krogh are grinning as if sharing a private joke.
‘The badge isn’t important,’ Phil says. ‘In fact, as I see it now, it’s just what’s wrong.’
Haldeman says, ‘I certainly think we can oblige, can’t we, Mr President? We can get him his badge. You know, as a gift.’
The President blinks. ‘A badge? I don’t know if I have one, but I can look, certainly—’
‘You don’t have one,’ Haldeman says firmly.
‘I don’t?’ The President has bent to pull open a drawer in the desk, and now he looks up, still blinking.
‘But we’ll order one up,’ Haldeman says, and tells Emmet, ‘Yes, a special order.’
Something passes between them. Phil is sure of it. The air is so hot and heavy that he feels he’s wrapped in mattress stuffing, and there’s a sharp taste to it that stings the back of his throat.
Haldeman tells the President, ‘You remember the idea? The idea about the book.’
‘Yes,’ the President says, ‘the idea about the book.’
His eyes seem to be blinking independently, like a mechanism that’s slightly out of adjustment.
‘The neat idea,’ Haldeman prompts, as if to a recalcitrant or shy child, and Phil knows then, knows with utter deep black conviction, that the President is not the President. Or he is, but he’s long ago been turned into a fake of himself, a shell thing, a mechanical puppet. That was what I was becoming, Phil thinks, until the clear white light. And it might still happen to me, unless I make things change.
‘The neat idea,’ the President says, and his mouth twitches. It’s meant to be a smile, but looks like a spasm. ‘Yes, here’s the thing, that you could write a book for the kids, for the, you know, for the young people. On the theme of, of—’
‘ “Get High on Life”,’ Haldeman says.
‘ “Get High on Life”,’ the President says. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ and begins a spiel about affirming the conviction that true and lasting talent is the result of self-motivation and discipline; he might be one of those mechanical puppets in Disneyland, running through its patter regardless of whether or not it has an audience.
‘Well,’ Haldeman says, when the President finishes or perhaps runs down, ‘I think we’re done here.’
‘The gifts,’ the President says, and bends down and pulls open a drawer and starts rummaging in it. ‘No one can accuse Dick Nixon of not treating his guests well,’ he says, and lays on the desk, one after the other, a glossy pre-signed photograph, cuff links, an ashtray, highball glasses etched with a picture of the White House.
Emmet steps forward and says, ‘Thank you, Mr President. Mr Dick and I are truly honoured to have met you.’
But the President doesn’t seem to hear. He’s still rummaging in his desk drawer, muttering, ‘There are some neat pins in here. Lapel pins, very smart.’
Haldeman and Emmet exchange glances, and Haldeman says, ‘We’re about out of time here, Mr President.’
‘Pins, that’s the thing. Like this one,’ the President says, touching the lapel of his suit, ‘with the American flag. I did have some . . .’
‘We’ll find them,’ Haldeman says, that sharpness back in his voice, and he steers the President away from the desk, towards Phil.
There’s an awkward minute while Egil Krogh takes photographs of the President and Phil shaking hands there on the blue carpet bordered with white stars, in front of furled flags on poles. Flashes of light that are only light from the camera flash. Phil blinks them away as Emmet leads him out, through ordinary offices and blank corridors to chill air under a grey sky where their car is waiting.
‘It went well,’ Emmet says, after a while. He’s driving the car – the car Phil hired – back to the hotel.
Phil says, ‘Who are you, exactly? What do you want?’
‘I’m your agent, Phil. I take care of you. That’s my job.’
‘And that other creature, your friend Haldeman, he takes care of the President.’
‘The President – he’s a work of art, isn’t he? He’ll win his third term, and the next one too. A man like that, he’s too useful to let go. Unlike you, Phil, he can still help us.’
‘He was beaten,’ Phil says, ‘in 1960. By Kennedy. And in 1962 he lost the election for governor of California. Right after the results were announced, he said he would give up politics. And then something happened. He came back. Or was he brought back, is that what it was? A wooden horse,’ Phil says, feeling hollow himself, as empty as a husk. ‘Brought by the Greeks as a gift.’
‘He won’t get beaten again,’ Emmet says, ‘you can count on that. Not in 1976, not in 1980, not in 1984. It worked out, didn’t it – you and him?’ He smiles, baring his perfect white teeth. ‘We should get you invited to one of the parties there. Maybe when you finish your book – it’ll be great publicity.’
‘You don’t want me to finish the book,’ Phil says. He feels as if he’s choking, and wrenches at the knot of his tie. ‘That’s the point. Whatever I was supposed to do – you made sure I didn’t do it.’
‘Phil, Phil, Phil,’ Emmet says. ‘Is this another of your wild conspiracy theories? What is it this
time, a conspiracy of boring, staid suits, acting in concert to stifle creative guys like you? Well, listen up, buddy. There is no conspiracy. There’s nothing but a bunch of ordinary guys doing an honest day’s work, making the world a better place, the best way they know how. You think we’re dangerous? Well, take a look at yourself, Phil. You’ve got everything you ever dreamed about, and you got it all thanks to me. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be no better than a bum on the street. You’d be living in a cold-water walk-up, banging out porno novels or sci-fi trash as fast as you could, just to keep the power company from switching off your lights. And moaning all the while that you could have been a contender. Get real, Phil. I gave you a good deal. The best.’
‘Like the deal that guy, the guy at the hotel, the doughnut guy, got? He was supposed to be a singer, and someone just like you did something to him.’
‘He could have changed popular music,’ Emmet says. ‘Even as a doughnut shop operator he still has something. But would he have been any happier? I don’t think so. And that’s all I’m going to say, Phil. Don’t ever ask again. Go back to your nice house, work on your book, and don’t make trouble. Or, if you’re not careful, you might be found dead one day from vitamin poisoning, or maybe a drug overdose.’
‘Yeah, like the folk singer,’ Phil says.
‘Or a car crash,’ Emmet says, ‘like the one that killed Kerouac and Burroughs and Ginsberg in Mexico. It’s a cruel world out there, Phil, and even though you’re washed-up as a writer, be thankful that you have me to look after your interests.’
‘Because you want to make sure I don’t count for anything,’ Phil says, and finally opens the loop of the tie wide enough to be able to drag it over his head. He winds down the window and drops the tie into the cold gritty wind.
‘You stupid bastard,’ Emmet says, quite without anger. ‘That cost six bucks fifty. Pure silk, a work of art.’
‘I feel sick,’ Phil says, and he does feel sick, but that’s not why he says it.
‘Not in the car,’ Emmet says sharply, and pulls over to the kerb. Phil opens the door, and then he’s running and Emmet is shouting after him. But Phil runs on, head down in the cold wind, and doesn’t once look back.
He has to slow to a walk after a couple of blocks, out of breath, his heart pounding, his legs aching. The cold, steely air scrapes the bottoms of his lungs. But he’s given Emmet the slip. Or perhaps Emmet doesn’t really care. After all, Phil’s been ruined as a writer, his gift dribbled away on dead books until nothing is left.
Phil thinks, Except for that one book, The Man in the High Castle. The book Emmet conspired to suppress, the book he made me hate so much because it was the kind of thing I was meant to write all along. Because I would have counted for something, in the end. I would have made a difference.
He walks on, with no clear plan except to keep moving. It’s a poor neighbourhood, even though it’s only a few blocks from the White House. Despite the cold, people are sitting on the steps of the shabby apartment houses, talking to each other, sharing bottles in brown paper bags. An old man with a terrific head of white hair and a tremendously bushy white moustache sits straight-backed on a kitchen chair, smoking a cheap cigar with all the relish of the king of the world. Kids in knitted caps and plaid jackets bounce a basketball against a wall, calling to each other in clear, high voices. There are Christmas decorations at most windows, and the odours of cooking in the air. A good odour, Phil thinks, a homely, human odour. A radio tuned to a country station is playing one of the old-time ballads, a slow, achingly sad song about a rose and a brier twining together above a grave.
It’s getting dark, and flakes of snow begin to flutter down, seeming to condense out of the darkening air, falling in a slanting rush. Phil feels the pinpoint kiss of every flake that touches his face.
I’m still a writer, he thinks, as he walks through the falling snow. I still have a name. I still have a voice. I can still tell the truth. Maybe that journalist who interviewed me last month, the one who works for the Washington Post, maybe he’ll listen to me if I tell him about the conspiracy in the White House.
A bum is standing on the corner outside the steamed up window of a diner. An old, fat woman with a mottled, flushed face, grey hair cut as short as a soldier’s. Wearing a stained and torn man’s raincoat that’s too small for her, so that the newspapers she’s wrapped around her body to keep out the cold peep from between the straining buttons. Her blue eyes are bright, watching each passer-by with undiminished hope as she rattles a few pennies in a paper cup.
Phil pushes into the diner’s steamy warmth and uses the payphone, and then orders coffee to go. And returns to the street, and presses the warm container into his sister’s hand.
DOUGLAS SMITH
By Her Hand, She Draws You Down
DOUGLAS SMITH IS A TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE for an international consulting firm. He lives just north of Toronto, Canada, with his wife and two sons. His stories have appeared in more than thirty professional magazines and anthologies in eleven countries and nine languages, including Amazing Stories, Cicada, Interzone, The Third Alternative and On Spec.
In 2001, he was a John W. Campbell Award finalist for best new writer, and won an Aurora Award for best SF&F short fiction by a Canadian. Like the rest of humanity, he is working on a novel.
‘This is the first horror story I ever wrote,’ admits the author, ‘and given that you’re reading it here, I just may try another sometime. The inspiration for the tale resulted from the hard work in which you can often find writers engaged: staring out a window. Actually, it was the window of a bus. I wanted to write a story about some form of creativity other than writing. Perhaps the constant flow of visual images flashing by the window led to the idea of a visual artist. From there, I thought of the portrait artists that I’d often see during visits to Ontario Place, a lake-front tourist attraction in Toronto, and Cath and her situation was born.’
By her hand, she draws you down.
With her mouth, she breathes you in.
Hope and dreams and soul devoured.
Lost to you, what might have been.
BY HER HAND, SHE draws you down . . .
Joe swore when he saw Cath doing a kid. He had left her for just a minute, to get a beer from the booth on the pier before it closed for the night. Walking back now, he could see Cath on her stool, sketch pad on a knee, ocean breeze blowing her pale hair. A small girl sat on another stool facing her, a man and a woman, parents he guessed, beside the child.
Kid’s not more than seven, he thought. Cath promised me no kids. She promised.
The sun was long set and the air had turned cool, but people still filled the boardwalk. Joe wove through the crowd as fast as he could without attracting attention. Cath had set up farther from the beach tonight, at the bottom of a grassy slope that ran up to the highway where their old grey Ford waited.
‘Last night tonight,’ Cath had said when they had parked the car earlier. ‘It wants to move on. I can feel the change.’
Joe had swallowed and turned off the ignition. He was never comfortable talking about it. ‘Where’s it headed?’
Cath had just shaken her head, grinning. ‘Dunno. That’s part of the fun, isn’t it? Not knowing where we’re going next? That’s fun, isn’t it Joe?’
Yeah, loads of fun, he thought now as he approached Cath and her customers. It had been fun once, when they’d met, before he learned what Cath did, what she had to do. When his love for her wasn’t all mixed up with fear of what she would do to someone.
Or to him.
The child’s parents looked up as Joe came to stand beside Cath. The father frowned. Joe smiled, trying to hide the dread digging like cold fingers into his gut. Turning his back to them, he bent to whisper in Cath’s ear. That flowery scent she had switched to recently rose warm and sweet in his face. Funeral parlors, he thought. She smells like a goddamned funeral parlor.
‘Cath, she’s just a kid,’ he rasped in her ear.
Cath shook her head. Her eyes flitted from the girl to her pad. ‘Bad night. I’m hungry,’ she muttered, ignoring Joe.
Joe looked at the drawing. It was good. But they were always good. Cath had real talent, more than Joe ever had. She would set up each night where people strolled, her sketches beside her like trophies from a hunt. People would stop to look, sometimes moving on, sometimes sitting for a portrait.
Eventually Joe and Cath would move on too. When the town was empty, Cath said. When the thing inside her wanted to move on. They had spent this week at a little New England vacation spot. At least they were heading south lately, he thought. Summer was dying and Joe longed to winter in the sun. Sleep for Joe was rare enough since he’d met Cath. Winters up north meant long nights in bars. Things closed in then, closed in around him. On those nights, he would lie awake in their motel bed, feeling Cath’s stare on him, feeling her hunger.
He looked at the sketch, at the child captured there, perfect except for the emptiness that spoke from the eyes, from any eyes that Cath drew. And the mouth.
Where the mouth should have been, empty paper gaped. Cath left the mouth until the end. The portraits always bothered Joe when they looked like that. To him, the pictures weren’t waiting to be completed, waiting for a last piece to be added. To Joe, something vital had been ripped from what had once been whole, leaving behind a void that threatened to suck in the world around it. An empty thing but insatiable. Waiting to suck him in too.
‘Cath,’ he whispered. ‘You promised.’
She ignored him again. Joe wrapped his fingers around the thin wrist of her hand that held the sketch pad. ‘You promised.’
Cath snapped her head around to glare up at him. Joe caught his breath as anger met hunger in her grey eyes, becoming something alive, something that leapt for him.
The father cleared his throat and the thing in Cath’s eyes retreated. Cath turned to the parents. ‘Sorry, can’t get her right. You can have this.’ Tearing the sketch from her pad, she shoved it at the mother. ‘We gotta go.’ Cath stood and folded her stool as the child ran to peek from behind the father’s legs. Joe grabbed the other stool and the canvas bag that held Cath’s supplies. He put an arm around Cath’s waist, leading her away.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2002, Volume 13 Page 20