by Lionel Fenn
When he looked back, Daisy had stripped her hair of its nighttime security and was trying to coil a strand of it coyly around her little finger.
Violet, however, came after him again. "I want to know why you were in there," she demanded, jowls jumping. "It's a crime, you know, spying on women like this, taking advantage of helpless females in their declining years."
"It's not a crime, it's a miracle," Daisy offered breathlessly, and was hushed by a look that would have sent her instantly to the crematorium had she not taken the moment to pour herself a glass of water to ease the flush that had reddened her rouge-laden cheeks.
Gideon, paying little attention to the strange women in his house, shook his head in wonderment, turned and walked down the hallway, Violet threatening him from behind, the voices louder as he reached the foot of the stairs. Then he looked into the living room and grabbed at the wall for support.
"My god," he said. "My god!"
A lamp was burning in the far corner, and he rubbed a knuckle across his eyes just to be sure he wasn't hallucinating. When Violet jabbed him in the small of the back, he reached around without looking and yanked the rolling pin from her hand.
"Well, I never!" she declared.
"Liar," said Daisy. "Don't you remember that milkman in Omaha? Four times before he could get away, as I recall."
"Three, and don't bring it up again. You know what the warden said—the past is past, and we have to look to the future if we want to contribute our share."
Gideon walked stiff-legged into the room, and gaped. The furniture, his old, comfortable, sagging furniture was gone, as well as his stereo and television and, Jesus Christ, even his crossword puzzle books! All had been replaced with plastic-webbed lawn chairs, fan-backed wicker chairs, an oval braided rug, a bamboo couch, and standing lamps whose shades were tassled and red. The bay window had decorative iron bars on the outside. The fireplace was bricked up.
He whirled, and the two women retreated hastily. "What the bloody hell is going on around here?" he said, fairly shouting. "What do you think you're—" Then he looked at the staircase, and whatever else he was going to say was drowned in his throat when a chorus line of mummified Ziegfeld girls crowded each other to get a good look at him. He pointed a trembling finger. "And who the hell are they?"
Immediately, every woman in the foyer began talking, questioning, explaining, and paying no heed to Violet, whose jowls were so agitated they were bruising her shoulders. Finally, Rose, the woman who had gone to call the police, stormed out of the dining room, shouted for silence, and stood in the doorway with her arms folded imperiously across the general area of a long-forgotten chest. She and Gideon glared at each other for nearly a full minute before she flung open the door and pointed.
"Go!" she ordered.
"Like hell," he said.
Violet snatched the rolling pin from his hand and stood beside Rose. "Go," she said.
"Like hell," he said.
Daisy joined them, looked up at her friends on the stairs and told them he had just appeared, like a scruffy angel, out of the pantry. There were exclamations of disbelief, of wonder, of yearning, of outright lascivious suggestion, but no one made a move when he unholstered his baseball bat and rested it carefully on his shoulder.
The house quieted.
The bat felt disturbingly more ordinary then he had sensed earlier.
"Now," he said, when Violet reluctantly lowered her own weapon without actually letting go of it, "would someone mind telling me what you ladies are doing in my house?"
"This..." Daisy inched forward, her face flushed, her eyes sparkling myopically. "This isn't your house. It's ours." When Rose cleared her throat in obvious reprimand, Daisy hunched her shoulders. "Well, it really isn't ours except in the sense that we all live here from time to time. But it's certainly more ours than yours."
Rose and Violet nodded emphatically.
The women on the staircase nodded as well.
"I'm sorry," he said, "but you're wrong. I don't know what you're doing here or who's been telling you all these lies, but I'm afraid that I am really the owner."
"But you can't be," said Violet, one hand to her face. "The owner's dead."
"I am not," he said angrily.
"But you can't be the owner. It..." She frowned, sensing perhaps that this was a classic case of mistaken identity, and only the bat on the man's shoulder gave her pause. "The man who used to own this tatty little place," she said, "is dead. A long time ago. His name—"
"Gideon Sunday," Gideon said.
"Right! A has-been football player. A quarterback, I believe," she added with a moue of distaste. "He disappeared without a trace, and took all the scotch with him. The state bought the place, and now here we are."
Gideon felt his legs giving way, and he leaned against the wall. "Has-been."
"Never was, as far as I'm concerned," Daisy said. "But then, I was always partial to linebackers."
"Partial to postmen, too," said Rose.
Daisy scowled. "That's Violet!"
"Milkmen," Violet corrected. "You're postmen. I'm milkmen. Rose is trees."
"Trees?" Gideon said, then quickly waved the explanation away. He didn't want to know. He wasn't even sure he wanted to know what had happened to his house, which wasn't his house any longer because the state in its totalitarian wisdom had purchased it for some mysterious purpose after he had supposedly died. Mysteriously, no doubt.
But for god's sake, a silent voice argued in lieu of coherent thought, how much time had passed since he'd gone into the pantry? Didn't it take seven years for a missing man to be declared legally dead? Didn't there have to be inquiries, searches, sheriff's auctions, lawyers?
He blinked.
The women waited.
I'm dead, he thought; Jesus H, I'm dead.
Daisy, who had apparently seen how stricken he was, put out her hand and touched his arm. "Was he a friend of yours?" she asked kindly. "Did you know him very well? The man who lived here, I mean."
"In a way," he managed when he'd gotten his breath back.
"I'm sorry."
"Daisy!" Violet hissed.
"Oh, shove it, Vi," she said. "Can't you see the boy's in trouble?" Hesitantly, she approached him, looked at the bat until he lowered it and finally placed it in its holster. Then she led him to the doorway and pointed to the porch. A chilly breeze gusted into the foyer. "Maybe a breath of fresh air."
"Yes," he muttered. "Or a good stiff drink."
"Now that's an idea," Violet said, and Rose silenced her with a firm grip on her arm. "Well, it is a good idea. I always get my best ideas when I've had a bracer."
"Hush, girl," Rose told her in exasperation. "Daisy, don't you think—"
"It'll clear your head," Daisy told him. "Autumn is always the best time to clear your head."
He didn't have the faintest idea what she was talking about, but he stepped out onto the porch anyway and inhaled deeply, slowly, several times, massaging his forehead with a thumb while his other hand rubbed his chest as if fending off a threatened heart attack. Then the door slammed behind him, and as he turned he heard the bolt slam into place.
A fist snapped up to pound on the wood, then lowered when he discovered that somewhere between the bunny slippers and the bamboo couch he had lost much of his strength.
It was, of course, a nightmare.
Just like in those movies he always hated.
He would wake up any moment now and find himself back on the plain—no, back in his bed, up in his room, and the convention of grandmothers would be gone. When he sneezed, he decided that a nightmare might be too obvious; it was probably some sort of alcoholic stupor induced by his polishing off that last bottle of mediocre scotch he kept in the sideboard which, he recalled with a horrified shudder, was also gone. In which case, he was under the influence of one of Whale's spells, except that Whale was in Rayn, which didn't do him any good because none of it existed, right?
He faced the street.
Ivy, he thought; Ivy isn't here, and I am.
The neighborhood was the same, as far as he could tell, even to the burned-out streetlamp on the corner, down by the all-night drugstore that had the largest liquor department in town, and the most extensive display of trusses and wheelchairs in its window.
He staggered down the steps to the sidewalk, looked in both directions, and decided to go left. There was only one person he could call, one person he could depend on to give him the straight answers he required. And once that was accomplished, he would come right back, break down the door, and throw those interlopers out on their collective, padded butts before they had a chance to organize.
There was no question that his desperation had forced him into contacting his agent.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Easier thought, he thought, than done.
Ten minutes later, shivering and sneezing, he found a public telephone. With a sigh and a vengeful smile, he lifted the receiver, reached into his pocket, groped and moaned, and replaced the receiver. He had no money. He couldn't call his agent, his accountant, or even the police because he was stranded in the real world without so much as a single dime in his pocket. Then he looked at the telephone and gasped. Christ, even if he had a dime, he wouldn't be able to use it, because now the damned thing required a quarter.
An automobile sped past, and he jumped, startled at the noisy intrusion, realizing that it hadn't taken him very long to get used to the silence of the Plain, the stillness of the villages, the serenity of the forests, the placid acceptance of the quiet that seemed now like a dream that wasn't all that bad, all things considered.
A patrol car drove by, slowed, and backed up. Gideon smiled his most professional greeting and waited for the officers to ask him what he was doing on a street corner in the middle of the night holding a baseball bat. He looked at the bat, and looked at the car, and prayed that they thought he was a baseball fanatic and not a bat-wielding maniac.
No one got out.
He could hear the crackle of the radio inside, could see two dark shapes in the front seat, but neither of them made a move to open a door. Instead, the driver rolled down his window, spat onto the street, rolled up the window, rolled it down again and tossed out a cigarette butt, rolled it up again, and released the brake. The car drifted off.
Gideon watched, too confused to call out, or to run after it.
A truck's air horn made him clap a hand to his ear.
A white cat wandered by, hissed at him, and wandered on.
The hell with it, he thought, and started back toward the house. He would do it on his own—rid his land of the squatters, then call his agent to find out what had been going on in his absence. He would make up some excuse about taking a vacation, think of something else if the idea of a vacation didn't fit.
He hadn't gone a block when he saw a quarter glinting in the grass of someone's manicured lawn.
A sign; it was a sign, and he grabbed it up, ran back to the phone booth, and dialed his agent's number. When a man answered, his voice filled with sleep and annoyance, Gideon announced himself as he always did: "Hey, Scottie, when the hell do I get traded to Dallas?"
It took several seconds for the explosion of curses to calm down on the other end, and several seconds more before Giedon realized that his agent thought someone was playing a practical joke on him, at nearly three A.M., in the middle of the week, in the middle of football season. Hastily he tried to reassure the man that this wasn't a joke, the call was legitimate, and if it wasn't an emergency he most assuredly would have waited at least until the sun was up.
"Jeez, pal, who the hell is this?"
Giedon leaned against the booth's wraparound metal hood and grinned into the empty street. "It's Gideon!"
There was a silence.
"Hello? Hey, Scottie, you still there?"
"Who the hell is this?" Scottie was awake, and he still didn't sound happy.
"It's Gideon, damnit. And I need—"
"Pal, I don't know any Gideon, okay? So screw off and let—"
Gideon lost his temper. His agent had always been bad with names, particularly his, but right now he needed clear thinking, and he wasn't going to put up with the man's mental foibles. "Gideon Sunday, you stupid son of a bitch!"
There was a silence.
"Hello?"
"Look, pal, you want me to call the police or what? Just get the hell off the line and—"
Gideon strangled the receiver into submission, brought it back to his ear and said, "Scottie, this isn't funny. Not anymore. I need your help and I need—"
"You're right, pal, it ain't funny. I don't know who you are, but you sure as hell ain't Gideon Sunday."
"The hell I'm not!"
"Then you're a ghost, sucker, because Sunday died eight years ago."
The line went dead.
Gideon stared in disbelief at the receiver, at the cradle, at the dial, at the braided wire, at the receiver again as he slammed it down onto the cradle and caused the dial to spin halfway around.
Eight years?
He stepped away from the booth and shoved his hands into his pockets.
Eight years?
He looked up and down the block, and shrugged. What the hell, he thought; eight years is eight years, except in human terms when it's only a couple of months, and what the hell am I talking about?
He decided to return to the house.
Then he decided to run back to the house, break down the door, roust the old bats out of their beds, and find out just how far his delusion reached before it achieved overkill and sent him screaming into the night.
Eight years. Time can really be a bitch when it's moving on all fours.
—|—
Eight years, he thought as he stood in front of the house and looked at the tasteful black-and-gold sign on the lawn whose letters, even in the dark, well and truly proclaimed his little place the New Jersey Senior Citizen Reclamation Center.
Tuesday, he thought, is gonna lay an egg.
With a sigh at the light in the window that used to be his, he strode up the walk, took the porch steps in a single bound, and knocked on the door. Almost before his hand was back at his side, Rose answered, and he was inside before she could change her mind.
The ladies were gone from the staircase.
Violet was standing in the living room with the rolling pin, and gave him a sad, slow shake of her head. "You lost or something, stranger?"
"I think so," he said calmly.
"Violet," Rose snapped, "smash him one and let's call the police before the parole shits show up."
"Oh, language," Daisy admonished from the dining room entrance. "He may be crazy, but he is a man."
Rose looked disgusted. "Just hit him once, all right? Just once, so I can go to bed happy."
Violet looked at the rolling pin, considered the command, and, judging by her expression, decided she was too old to take on a man whose temper would probably wither her with a glance. Instead, she closed the door over Rose's protest and took Gideon by the arm. He looked down at her, and continued to stare as she brought him back into the kitchen, sat him at the table, and put on the kettle. Rose and Daisy followed.
Dead, he thought; my home is gone, and I am dead.
"The state," he muttered dully.
"That's right," Daisy said, slipping behind Gideon and removing his bat from its holster. "Didn't you know this was the New Jersey Senior Citizen Reclamation Center?"
He shook his head. "Not until I saw the sign out there."
"Well, it is."
He watched without speaking as Violet placed a cup of steaming tea in front of him, then reached into her robe and pulled out a bottle of moderately poor scotch. Ignoring Rose's condemning gaze, she laced, tatted, and quilted the tea until the steam stopped and Gideon was able to drink without gagging.
"My own recipe," the woman said, jowls aquiver with pride.
"Tasty," he said truthfully. "What do you ladies rec
laim, if you don't mind me asking?"
I'm dead, he thought; Christ, eight years in the grave.
"Us," Rose said stiffly.
"You?" And then he remembered something, a comment about the warden. "Don't tell me this is a halfway house. For a prison."
"Got it in one," Violet said, grinning to prove that the teeth that were hers and the teeth that weren't were still able to be dazzling when she put her mind and red lips to it. "When we feel as if we're slipping back into our old ways, we come here, rest awhile, and then return to the outside world as productive members of a society that feels guilty as hell about neglecting us."
A longer silence prevailed.
And he didn't move when he heard the others shifting about, didn't look up when he heard someone hushing those who had gathered in the hall. He only sipped, and he only sighed, and when he took in the kitchen again, only Rose was there, sitting opposite him and smiling.
"Gideon Sunday," she said.
He nodded.
"I've heard of you, you know."
He almost smiled.
"Could throw the longest passes in the history of the known world, and once, in the middle of a game, gave twenty bucks to a center so he wouldn't tackle you."
He did smile. "My emergency fund."
Her grey hair was coiled snugly at the back of her head; her eyes were dark blue and starred about with wrinkles that added not age but laughter to her face. "Yes... I remember."
"And you're not surprised?"
She leaned back, though her hands stayed folded on the table. "There isn't much left that can surprise me, Gideon. Not much left at all." She looked over her shoulder at the now empty hall, looked up at the ceiling and sighed, deeply. "Actually, I'm only surprised that the things are still working. It's been a long time, and I thought, after a while, I'd only been dreaming."
"Things?"
"The Bridges."
He dropped the cup onto the saucer, fumbled it back into his hands; she laughed.
"Mine," she said without nostalgia, without regret, "was in Utah. In the middle of the Great Salt Lake. I was trying to commit suicide, but that's damned hard when you can't keep your head underwater for very long."
"A Bridge?"