I ask him why Nikki got married then, if she’s an alien. Camouflage, he says. I say that I hope her fiancé, her husband, I mean, doesn’t mind. Jak says that New York is full of blonde women who resemble Sandy Duncan and most of them are undoubtedly aliens, that this is some sort of invasion. After he came in Chloe or Annamarie’s mouth – probably neither name is her real name, he says – he says that she said she hoped they could see each other again and let him out of her apartment. So what do the aliens want with you? I ask. I don’t know, Jak says and hangs up.
I try to call him back but he’s left the phone off the hook. So I go back inside and wake up the man in my bed and ask him if he’s ever made love to a blonde and if so did he notice anything unusual about her vagina. He asks me if this is one of those jokes and I say that I don’t know. We try to have sex, but it isn’t working, so instead I open up a box of my father’s Christmas tree decorations. I take out tinsel and strings of lights and ornamental glass fruit. I hang the fruit off his fingers and toes and tell him not to move. I drape the tinsel and lights around his arms and legs and plug him in. He complains some but I tell him to be quiet or my father will wake up. I tell him how beautiful he looks, all lit up like a Christmas tree or a flying saucer. I put his penis in my mouth and pretend that I am Courtney (or Annamarie, or whatever her name is), that I am blonde, that I am an alien. The man whose name begins with a C doesn’t seem to notice.
I am falling asleep when the man says to me, I think I love you. What time is it? I say. I think you better leave, before my father wakes up. He says, but it’s not even five o’clock yet. My father wakes up early, I tell him.
He takes off the tinsel and the Christmas lights and the ornamental fruit. He gets dressed and we shake hands and I let him out through the side door of the garage.
Some jokes about blondes. Why did the M&M factory fire the blonde? Because she kept throwing away the Ws. Why did the blonde stare at the bottle of orange juice? Because it said concentrate. A blonde and a brunette work in the same office, and one day the brunette gets a bouquet of roses. Oh great, she says, I guess this means I’m going to spend the weekend flat on my back, with my legs up in the air. Why, says the blonde, don’t you have a vase?
I never find out the name of the man in my bed, the one with the stud in his penis. Probably this is for the best. My reading is coming up and I have to concentrate on that. All week I leave messages on Jak’s machine but he doesn’t call me back. On the day that I am supposed to go to the airport to pick him up, the day before I am supposed to give a reading, although I haven’t written anything new for over a year, Jak finally calls me.
He says he’s sorry but he’s not going to be able to come to Virginia after all. I ask him why not. He said that he got the Carey bus at Grand Central, and that a blonde woman sat next to him. Let me guess, I say, she didn’t have a vagina. He says he has no idea if she had a vagina or not, that she just sat next to him, reading a trashy romance by Catherine Cookson. I say that I’ve never read Catherine Cookson, but I’m lying. I read a novel by her once. It occurs to me that the act of reading Catherine Cookson might conclusively prove that the woman either had a vagina or that she didn’t, that the blonde woman who sat beside Jak might have been an alien, or else incontrovertibly human, but I’m not sure which. Really, I could make a case either way.
Jak says that the real problem was when the bus pulled into the terminal at LaGuardia and he went to the check-in gate. The woman behind the counter was blonde, and so was every single woman behind him in line, he tells me, when he turned around. He says that he realized that what he had was a one-way ticket to Sandy Duncan Land, that if he didn’t turn around and go straight back to Manhattan, that he was going to end up on some planet populated by blonde women with Barbie-smooth crotches. He says that Manhattan may be suffering from some sort of alien infestation, but he’s coming to terms with that. He says he can live with an apartment full of rats, in a building full of women with no vaginas. He says that for the time being, it’s safest.
He says that when he got home, the woman in the apartment on the fifth floor was looking through the keyhole. How do you know? I say. He says that he could smell her standing next to the door. The whole hallway was warm with the way she was staring, that the whole hallway smelled like Lemon Fresh Joy. He says that he’s sorry that he can’t come to Virginia for my reading, but that’s the way it is. He says that when he goes to Ankara this summer, he might not be coming back. There aren’t so many blonde women out there, he says.
When I give the reading, my father is there, and the owner of the coffeehouse, and so are about three other people. I read a story I wrote a few years ago about a boy who learns how to fly. It doesn’t make him happy. Afterwards my father tells me that I sure have a strange imagination. This is what he always says. His friend tells me that I have a nice clear reading voice, that I enunciate very well. I tell her that I’ve been working on my enunciation. She says that she likes my hair this colour.
I think about calling Jak and telling him that I am thinking of dyeing my hair. I think about telling him that this might not even be necessary, that when I wake up in the mornings, I am finding blonde hairs on my pillow. If I called him and told him this, I might be making it up; I might be telling the truth. Before I call him, I am waiting to see what happens next. I am sitting here on my father’s living-room couch, which smells like Lemon Fresh Joy, watching a commercial in which someone’s hands are dialling the number for a video calendar of exotic beauties. I am eating butterscotch out of the jar. I am waiting for the phone to ring.
CONRAD WILLIAMS
City in Aspic
CONRAD WILLIAMS IS THE AUTHOR OF Head Injuries (The Do-Not Press) and the International Horror Guild Award-nominated Nearly People (PS Publishing). His short fiction has most recently appeared in Cemetery Dance, The Spook, Dark Terrors 6, Phantoms of Venice and The Museum of Horrors. He is a past winner of the British Fantasy Award.
‘City in Aspic’ was written by an author who has never set foot in Venice. ‘But,’ argues Williams, ‘it’s one of those cities that worms its way into your consciousness, especially if you’ve seen Don’t Look Now, which is simply one of the best, if not the best horror films ever made. You can’t help but feel you know that city, and working with a Time Out Venice Guide did me a few favours . . .’
It was the author’s fondness for the Nicolas Roeg film that inspired him to write the tale. ‘It is my tribute to the film,’ continues Williams. ‘The names of the characters in my story correspond to the names of the actors who appear in Don’t Look Now, and the Europa is the hotel where John and Laura Baxter actually stayed.
‘I’m hoping to go to Venice some day to find out how authentic this story managed to be in terms of its sense of place. Probably in the winter. No doubt I’ll see a few mateless gloves flapping about. If you go out looking for them, they’re everywhere.’
IT WAS A PLACE THAT needed people in order for it to come alive. In winter, the streets whispered with uncollected litter and nervous pigeons. The air grew so thick with cold that it became hard to walk anywhere. When night came, the water that was slowly drowning the city turned the darkness into an uncertain quantity. There was astonishing beauty here too, though, even where there oughtn’t to be any. The crumbling structures, the occasional bodies dragged from the waterways, the bleach of winter that pocketed the city’s colour for months on end: all of it had a poetry, a comeliness. Massimo understood this skewed charm. Where others saw moles, he saw beauty spots.
Many times Massimo had wished he could simply drift away like the tourists at the tail end of the season, or the leaves that blew from the trees. It would be nice to spend the coldest months of the year farther south, perhaps with his cousins in Palermo. But now that was not possible. He and Venice were stuck with each other until March.
He stood on the balcony of the honeymoon suite, smoking his last cigarette and enjoying the garlicky smells of chicheti that wafted up from the
osterie on the Riva degli Schiavoni. One of Venice’s interminable mists had risen from the Canale di San Marco and clung to the façades like great sheets hung out to dry. Behind him, from deep within the hotel, the sound of the vacuum cleaners on the stairs competed for a short while with the toots of the vaporetto and the bell of San Nicoló dei Mendicoli. The last of the guests had checked out that morning and in a little while Maria, the cleaner, would be finished and he could lock the great doors of the Hotel Europa until next year.
He could have his dinner here, on this balcony, every evening if he so wished. The corridors would be his alone to patrol. A different bed to sleep in whenever he liked, though such a choice disturbed him perhaps more than it ought. Deaths had occurred in some of the Europa’s rooms; children and divorces had their origins on a number of those mattresses.
He flicked his cigarette end in the direction of the canal and returned to the room where he smoothed the bedspread before taking the stairs down to the ground floor. His father, Leopoldo, had told him this was a job of great responsibility; if he went about it with professionalism, then he would be considered for the post of reception clerk. He was under no illusions. He was a security guard, no more. In the seventies, his father had run the Europa with a touch of élan and much warmth. Tourists who stayed at the Europa came back the next year and the year after that. And then the hotel had been taken over by men in suits with large bellies and eyes that gleamed when they assessed his father’s profits. They paid a hefty sum to take over the hotel. Massimo’s father was tired. A stroke had robbed him of his personable nature. Though the hotel was Massimo’s birthright, Massimo agreed that they should take the money in order that it should fund his father’s senescence. But his father, though crippled by the stroke, clung to life and the money was running out.
Maria, who had been a cleaner here for as long as Massimo could remember, patted his arm before she left and told him that spring would be here before he was aware. ‘Take advantage of the rest,’ she advised him. ‘You’ll be busy again too soon.’ Perhaps seeing the bitterness in his eyes, she smiled at him. ‘Your father would be proud of you.’
And now, alone. The magazines had been read and the puzzle books completed. The evening stretched before him like the interminable carpets on the five floors above. He took a cursory stroll of the ground floor, checking the window catches in each room and the locks on the doors. The furniture was shrouded with dust sheets that reduced everything to the same lumpen shape.
He was about to return to the lobby and rewatch an old football video when he saw the single glove draped across the newel post. The stairwell reached up into darkness, those risers beyond the sixth step lost to a night that had fallen on the city as stealthily as snow. It was a lady’s glove for the left hand, made from black leather and scuffed with age. The inside smelled of perfume. Maria must have come across it while she was preparing the rooms for the winter. He pocketed it and drew the curtains across the front entrance but not before noticing that the street was empty. He didn’t like the way that Venice was abandoned each year. It was as if sunshine and long days were the only things of interest to visitors. Newly married couples ran the gamut of clichés before returning to their homes; the way the tourists clung to St Mark’s Square or were punted around in boats suggested that Venice had nothing else to offer.
Irritated by this train of thought, Massimo turned off the television and went out into his city, a place where he could still get lost in the dark, a place that thrilled and comforted him like no other. The somnolent lap of the water against the gondolas was the beat of a mother’s heart. It was not merely a comfort. It justified him. It fastened him like a bolt to the earth and gave him substance.
He stopped for coffee and grappa at the trattoria al canastrello and watched from the window the black water as it ribboned beneath the Ponte di Rialto. One of his favourite occupations was observing people, but at this time of the year the only people around were the old and infirm. They drifted through the streets as if the weight of their experience was shoring Venice up, as much a support for the ancient city as the countless larch poles that cradled it beneath the waves. Venice, during the winter, seemed to run down like an old clock. Its streets and façades could still play a backdrop for anybody from any time over the last fifteen hundred years without them seeming anachronistic. He would not have been surprised to see Marco Polo himself hurrying along the Fondamenta del Vin. The people fastened Venice to the here and now. But when there were no people, it was as if the city were immune to history. Venice had the quality of an eternal ghost.
A woman with one hand paused at the apex of the bridge to look into the water, but then he saw how the light was absorbed by the dark glove on the limb that he thought had been missing, which made it seem invisible. She was moving away from the bridge, in the direction of the San Polo district, when Massimo remembered the glove in his pocket. He cast a handful of lire on to the table and burst out of the trattoria into the cold. The air was damp and settled heavily in his lungs.
By the time he was under the grand arch at the top of the bridge the woman was nowhere to be seen; she could have taken any one of the half-dozen exits away from the canal. Frustration bled through him. He glanced back to the warmth of the trattoria and saw that somebody had already taken his place at the window, was hunched over a newspaper. Angry, he stalked in the direction she had taken, rubbing at the glove in his pocket. It was an old thing. Tomorrow, no doubt, she would buy herself a new pair, thus rendering pointless this little chase of his.
Massimo walked for twenty minutes, until the fog had drawn an ugly, persistent cough from his chest. He tugged at the collars of his coat but the damp was in him and around him now, settling on the thick black twill like dew. He heard a brief snatch of music from one of the pensiones but it was stolen away before he had the chance to place it. The absence of people disarmed him. During the day, this area was a hive of activity filled with erberia and pescheria, along with jewellers’ shops and clothes stalls. Now it was lonely and its voice was any number of echoes. The lack of physicality, of motion, had taken away his confidence. The street names were made indistinct by the quickening mist. He had grown up in this city, and understood that part of its charm was its complication of alleyways, but never before had he felt so lost. His home had turned its back on him.
Shutters closed noisily on the night. Venice was sealing itself against the hour.
He stumbled gratefully upon the Campo San Polo where he was able to reorient himself. Eager to return to the hotel, he lingered as he heard the skitter of heels clatter through the arches toward him. She was still nearby, or somebody else was. He bit down on his compulsion to find her and hurried back to the Europa. Once there, he locked the glass doors and threw on the lobby lights.
He placed the glove behind the reception desk and checked the phone messages. There was just one, from his father, who felt well enough to take lunch with his son the following day, if the weather was fair.
In bed, Massimo allowed the creaks and sighs of the old hotel to lull him. At least here, among these well-known and much-loved sounds, he could feel at home, even if his city had shown him its inaccessible side tonight. He slept and dreamt of hands reaching out from the sacrament-black waters. They would not rest until they touched him. And where they touched him, a little part of his happiness, his warmth inside, was switched off for ever.
Massimo wakened feeling hollow and feverish. He knew it was his blood-sugar levels in need of a boost, but could not resist blaming the dream on his skittishness. He wished, as was so often the case with other dreams, that he had been unable to remember it.
He took breakfast in another of the suites, white dust sheets covering the furniture and brightening the room, while also making it cold through its lack of definition. The mist had disappeared. Feeble sunlight splashed across the roofs and turned the surface of the canal into the colour of watered-down milk. Feeling better, he set the timer on the central heating
to ensure that each room would be warmed for a few hours, and switched on the television.
In the night, a murder had been committed in Venice, at the campanile near the church of San Polo. According to the reporter, who was standing by the Palazzo Soranzo in the square, his nose red from the cold, the woman had been found just after midnight by a man walking his dog. The camera switched angles to show the crime scene, which was dominated by a white tent erected by the carabinieri, a number of whom were standing around with sub-machine guns hanging loose over their arms. Bystanders watched as a stretcher was shunted into an ambulance, a crimson blanket covering the body.
Shaken, Massimo switched off the bulletin and showered. He had picked up a sniffle after last night’s adventure and he felt too ropy to go out. He considered calling his father to cancel lunch, but the old man did not take the air much these days; he would be looking forward to spending a little time in the sunshine with his boy.
Massimo toured the hotel, desultorily checking windows and locks. He flapped ineffectually at the pigeons that had settled on the terraces and made a mental note to buy some disinfectant and talk to Franco, the handyman, about getting some netting to drape from the roof, to prevent them nesting. With a heavy heart, he locked the hotel doors behind him. It was not so much the emptiness of the old building that got to him, but its silences. Coming back to a quiet place, that over the years had known so much bluster and happiness, was saddening in the extreme. It was a different hotel from the one his father had run. It was as if, at the time of Leopoldo’s departing, its spirit had left too, perhaps clogged up with the cogs of the old-fashioned fob watch he wore in his waistcoat, or bunched in a pocket like one of his maroon silk handkerchiefs.
Massimo spotted his father easily. His beard was a white strap for his chin and he wore the only tie he owned, a dark blue knot against a badly ironed white shirt.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2002, Volume 13 Page 43