FSF, September 2007

by Spilogale, Inc

  Obediently, Stephanie closed her eyes. She'd been trying desperately not to think about that night, but now she let it come. That place had come to seem like a really unpleasant job, a place you thought about all the time, even when you weren't there, so that it colonized all your available soul, and ruined your Sundays. Scribbles on a paper cocktail napkin decorated with a blue ship's wheel. A bit of table, a paper plate with a smear of frosting. A man's hand....

  "I see his cufflink."

  "Can you draw it for me?"

  "I don't draw very well."

  "It's not a contest. Nothing off a matchbook cover. I just need something to go on.” He rummaged around on the office's Steelcase desk, searching for a piece of paper that was not already covered with scribbles, and finally came up with an empty paper bag only slightly stained with grease. He smoothed it out and handed Stephanie a ballpoint.

  To her surprise, the image that appeared under her hand was a clear and accurate rendering of the oblong crystal of the man's cufflink. She even managed a reflection of the reception room's chandelier, which she had not consciously noticed. Maybe somewhere in those swirls was her own trapped face.

  "Wow,” she said. “I can't even draw things right in front of me this well."

  "It's a symptom. It confirms my suspicions. Don't worry. The symptom is serious, but the cause is curable. Cliffie!"

  "What, boss?"

  "Can you make me one of these?"

  Cliff squinted at the drawing on the white paper bag. “With what? We don't got a lot of cubic zirconium around here, unless you've been getting shipments I haven't been inventorying."

  "Just do the best you can with what we got on hand. There's the rearview that broke. It's in the trash, but you can get something off of it."

  "Great. I love wiping mayo and jelly donut off broken glass."

  Jason just looked at him and Cliff eventually shambled off.

  A few minutes later he was back. He'd taken a square of the mirror-backed glass and glued it to a hose clamp. It didn't look that much like the cufflink, but Jason seemed happy with it.

  "Here's what I want you to do,” he said. “I'm going to give you a tube of polymer adhesive. When you get home, take the cap off your crankcase, the one the oil goes in. Glue this to the underside of the cap. Let it harden, shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes, then put the cap back on. Make sure it's glued on tight, or it will fall off and screw up your entire engine."

  Stephanie waited a couple of seconds, waiting for some explanation that made sense, but it did not seem that one was forthcoming.

  "What does this get me?” she said.

  "It gets you in an accident. And that gets you back here. Where I can do what I do: work on your car."

  "Oh, for God's sake just listen to him, Stephanie.” Marlene was sparkly. She'd arranged something, gotten everyone interested. That was what she liked.

  "What will it run me?” Stephanie ignored Marlene's gasp at the crude question.

  "Nothing in cash.” Jason really was a most attractive man, Stephanie thought now. He listened hard when you talked, and his eyes were a nice and unusual dark blue. Clean him up, dress him up, and cheer him up, and he'd be great to be out with somewhere. “But, there will be something ... a piece of information, a connection. I don't know what yet. That's what I work for."

  But it was no doubt that air of great and secret tragedy that Marlene had really bought into.

  "I think I can deal with that,” Stephanie said.

  * * * *

  What happened to test patterns? There was a time when people went to bed but ponderous electron-spitting tubes at TV stations had to be kept hot all night. Stephanie's dad had many dates for when civilization had passed the knee in the downward curve, and the end of the test pattern was one of them. “Its disappearance marked the end of the era when the TV itself would tell you that you were wasting your time,” he said. “Though no test pattern I ever saw said explicitly ‘you're a miserable loser.’”

  Miserable insomniac loser. Thanks, Dad. So, instead of a test pattern, Stephanie found herself at three in the morning watching a rerun of a TV movie about ... what was it about? A once-famous murder-or-maybe-not in a wealthy suburb. The TV movie came down in favor of murder by the entitled wealthy husband. Stephanie had once wondered who in the world watched TV movies. Now she knew: terminally depressed people. A bigger market than she might have anticipated, it looked like. Hell of a target demographic.

  According to Marlene, she'd met Jason when she came in to get a dent taken out of her door and ended up figuring out a way to leave her old job without half a year of misery and poor performance: her usual MO.

  "And you think he had something to do with that?” Stephanie was incredulous.

  "Well, yes. He makes connections. That's just kind of the way he works. Just relax. It will work out for you."

  Stephanie thought about some of the things Jason had said. “What did it cost you?"

  "Cost?"

  "He said that solving that kind of problem doesn't cost anything. Not in cash. But in—"

  "Oh. Well, it was a little odd. I will say that."

  "What?” Stephanie was suddenly apprehensive. “What did he want?"

  "Nothing gross or intrusive. The name of my imaginary childhood playmate. And the last time I had played with him."

  "Him?"

  "Sure. Besides my two sisters, all my friends were girls. So Carlo had a role in my young life. Until that day when I saw a Batman comic at school. One of the boys had it. I lost my heart to that dark knight...."

  "And Carlo got dumped."

  "Like a sack of concrete. So that was what I gave to Jason. An out-of-date imaginary playmate. Not too scary, right?"

  "Um, no. Probably not. But weird."

  "Unusual maybe.” Marlene was oddly insistent. “Not weird. Maybe life would be easier if I went for guys like Jason. You know, the non-lummox type. But it doesn't really do anything for me. Plus ... oh, jeez, this is going to sound really dumb. Jason's looking for someone. A woman. Someone he was once hooked up with. They broke up ... she ran away ... it all sounds wretched and melodramatic and book-groupish ... anyway, he's still hooked on her, wherever she is."

  "I'll let him work on my problem,” Stephanie said. “And answer whatever question he has."

  "It will be great. He's really got some ... magic."

  As she remembered that afternoon's conversation, Stephanie reached over the side of the bed and grabbed at the pint of Karamel Sutra. The thing was empty. She scraped at what was left on the lid, then threw herself back on the bed. Ouch. She reached behind her and pulled out an InStyle and a Vogue, each the size of an organic chemistry text. She'd read and dog-eared them both. That spa in Costa Rica looked great ... maybe she could sell everything she owned and go there. Or maybe the nice patterned stockings from Saks would be a more reasonable choice.

  She'd gone to sleep just fine, but had again woken with a jerk at a little after two a.m. The husband and the husband's blow-up doll mistress were setting up a perfect murder in the bedroom only ... oh, the girlfriend was supposed to be innocent, a dupe. She thought it was for a surprise party. So that was whose now-remaindered memoir the movie was based on.

  Well, if she wasn't going to get back to sleep, and wasn't going to enjoy anything tawdry, she was going to get another pint of ice cream at White Hen Pantry. By God.

  She pulled out of the apartment complex parking lot—

  The car came around the corner with a screech. A big powerful sedan from some other era, wide, flat, and edged, rather than overinflated like modern SUVs. It was some pale color, and flashed across her field of view like a lightning bolt. Stephanie swerved toward the curb, but it was too late. The sedan sideswiped her, making her car rock up onto one pair of wheels, and then was gone, not even slowing down. She stared in shock after its red taillights, then whimpered.

  Even a brief moment of thinking she was going to die hadn't gotten her mind off that telep
hone number. What was she going to do?

  The driver's side door was so dented it wouldn't open. She had to climb across the gear shift and out the other door.

  The car was a mess, scraped and pushed in all the way from the front of the rear quarter panel to the headlight which, miraculously, still worked. Then she remembered. Her little afternoon task. Epoxy, a mockup cufflink, an oil cap. She didn't know any more about what was happening to her, but now, at least, she was good and mad.

  Thunder rumbled overhead. She'd never had an imaginary friend, male or female. So there was no way Jason was ever going to get that from her.

  * * * *

  The shop entrance came up more quickly than Stephanie expected. She skidded on the wet pavement as she made the turn, and was satisfied to see Jason leap out of the way as she slewed into the bay. She let the water flick off her windshield wipers for a moment before turning off the car. They froze halfway down.

  She wrestled with the dented door for a moment, swore, and dove across to the passenger side. She was so mad she banged her head on the top of the door as she jumped out. Jason stood right there, a printed diagram of a car hanging from his hand. Parts of the car were circled and marked with red pen. Looked like an insurance company was about to be charged for some hefty repairs.

  "You bastard,” she said. “You set that up.” A pause when he didn't say anything. “How?"

  "'How’ is just technique.” Jason was calm. Cliff and Gordon sat in the near background, placidly playing cards despite the fact that it was still only midmorning, while a radio played some endlessly rotated ‘60s song whose name Stephanie had never learned, and that the two old men must have heard for the first time when they were already adults, married with children. Water dripped through the leaky roof and into a line of mismatched buckets. “I could go into how, but it would be distracting."

  He slapped the diagram against the wet side of her car, and it stuck. Water seeped through the thin paper. As she watched the ink blossom, she realized that it was a diagram of her car. It showed the damage she had just brought in. What had she gotten herself into? Marlene's answering machine message had cheerily noted the day's wet weather, so she hadn't disappeared or died or anything. Stephanie had yelled her message, in case Marlene was in the shower, but there had been no answer, and the machine had eventually cut her off.

  "Distracting? I could have been killed."

  "Not likely.” Jason was dreamy, and a bit sullen. “Not likely at all."

  She wished she'd clipped him coming in, but had to be satisfied with the line of wetness her wiper had thrown onto his coverall.

  "Did you think I understood what I was agreeing to? That I was signing up to have a car smash into me?"

  "Well ... yes."

  "Well, nothing. That's ridiculous. Do I seem like someone who understands the workings of whatever ... magic you play at here? Like someone who can give informed consent to whatever nutty contagion or psychic inertia or whatever the hell is your stock in trade?"

  "She's got you there, Jason,” Cliff said.

  "Yeah.” Gordon got up, dug around in a locker and came up with an incongruously fluffy white towel. He draped it over his shoulder. “Hard to keep up the rent and maintenance on the kind of metaphysical freight you charge. Just doesn't translate into, like, bill-paying stuff."

  "Maybe if you charged in cash...” Cliff said.

  "This is the best job I've ever had.” Gordon put a couple of cards down. “Don't want to lose it."

  "Do you work here?” Cliff, clearly losing, picked Gordon's discards up.

  "I'm sorry,” Jason said to Stephanie. “I'm sorry. But it's a pretty strong curse."

  "Curse?” She felt like someone had just kicked her in the stomach.

  "There are more technical terms, but yes, of course. Curse. You angered someone. Someone who had either developed or acquired the power to do you harm by influencing nonphysical states. So he cursed you."

  "Your job is uncovering curses?"

  "No!” He stepped past Stephanie and knelt by her car, looking carefully at its scraped side. “I'd like nothing better than to just fix cars. That's what I did, for a long time. Fix cars. But, sometimes things would unfix, stop working in ways I could not explain. I realized that I had not adequately defined the boundaries of the problem. Nine tenths of solving any problem is knowing what the boundaries are. Keep that in mind. Your man drives a yellow car."

  "Yellow—” She hadn't really seen it, but now the flash of bright color came vividly back. “Yes! How do you know?"

  He gestured, and she knelt down and looked, even though it was painful to see what had happened to her car. The metal was buckled and scraped. But, yes, there, deep in the scratches: streaks of gold in the bare metal. Beyond that, the dark blue of buckled paint, so they seemed a gleam of sunlight darting, at the last possible moment of evening, through the clouds that had hovered in the sky the entire day.

  That color made it real. A real car had hit her. Driven by—?

  "You made him hit me,” she said.

  Jason shook his head. “He'd already hit you. I've just processed the damage so that it's a little easier to see. And thus to understand.” He frowned and looked more closely at the paint.

  "Jesus!” Marlene strode into the shop from the rain outside. “What's up with this weather?"

  Her color was high. Her hair was wild from the rain, and it looked like she'd walked for quite some way. Mud had spattered up her calves and caked on the high-heeled sandals that curved their straps around her calves. She wore a bright red dress that looked like it was made out of rubber. Stephanie had run out of the house in dress appropriate for a spring cold snap, in a Fair Isle sweater and wool skirt.

  Gordon handed Marlene the towel.

  "You're dressed like Polly Pocket,” Stephanie said.

  Marlene toweled her hair. “You're dressed like my mother."

  "Ouch."

  Jason quietly stood up from his examination of the dent, grabbed a Makita drill, and slid a wire brush wheel onto it. Everyone watched him put on goggles, step back to the car, spin up the drill, and lower it to the scraped quarter panel.

  "Jason!” Gordon stepped forward. “That's the evidence there. The only connection to the accident you're trying to repair. Why are you—?"

  "Yeah, boss.” Cliff was equally agitated. “That's just not good business."

  Jason jerked back, almost scraping his nose with the wire wheel. “None of your business, gentlemen. Get back to whatever you were doing."

  "Jason.” Marlene raised a hand, but, seeing the expression on his face, did not touch Jason's arm. The drill whined to a halt as his finger ceased to press on the trigger. “What's wrong? What do you see there?"

  "What did that man look like?” Jason spoke to Stephanie. “The one who cursed you."

  "I said as much as I remember. I wasn't paying attention at that point. But I'm still thinking about the telephone number."

  "The telephone number....” Jason looked stunned, as if hearing all of it for the first time. “Old cars ... cufflink.... Did he ... his fingernails...."

  "Terrible,” Stephanie said. “A horror. I must say, I'm impressed by how nice you keep your hands, Jason. Given what you do for a living."

  Jason ignored Stephanie's feeble compliment and looked at Marlene, who stepped back, startled by the intensity of his gaze. “When we met, I was looking for someone. A woman who—"

  "You're still looking for her, right? I mean, you haven't told me anything different.” Marlene's cheerful mood had vanished.

  "That's true."

  "So I didn't add in any hope. It's still the same amount."

  Jason closed his eyes. “I'm sorry."

  Gordon leaned over Stephanie's car, ran a finger down the streak of yellow. “That's it. The track. We got him, Cliffie. We got him. The guy she ran off with. Right here.” He rubbed his bald head with a large-knuckled hand.

  "Amazing,” Cliff said. “Great thing about guys
like that. They keep trying things, until you find them again."

  Gordon grabbed a box from the desk and handed Stephanie a tissue.

  A few seconds later, she turned and sneezed. “Does anyone seem particularly happy about that, do you think?"

  Gordon shrugged. “Jason's been looking for this guy for a long time. He thinks finding him will solve his problems, get his girl back, all kinds of stuff. Even smart people don't understand anything. Only way the rest of us can get by in this world, I always say."

  "That trace on my car is going to let him find his old girlfriend?"

  "He thinks so. And he seems to know his business."

  "Buff it out.” Stephanie's voice came out harsher than she expected, almost a bark of command.

  Gordon and Cliff jumped. “What?"

  "Clean out the paint. Then you can pull the dent, put in some Bondo, do your thing, right? Why don't you get started?"

  They both looked at Jason.

  "Don't listen to her.” Marlene was just as peremptory. “Jason. Do what you do."

  "Do you ... do you mean that?"

  "Was this girl someone who would say things she didn't mean?” Marlene shook her head slowly. “That gives me some hope, then, because I always mean what I say. Find her, Jason. Find her, however you do that. We'd have to deal with her eventually anyway. Right? Then we'll see."

  "This was just coincidence, you know. I wasn't looking for her when I decided to help Stephanie...."

  "Keep denying things and I'll start to think there's something worth denying."

  Without another word, Jason went into his office.

  "Marlene....” Stephanie was irritated with Jason for agreeing so easily, even though she could see that he would have had to eventually.

  "Gordo,” Marlene said. “Got any of those tissues for me?"

  Jason reemerged, with what looked like a set of jeweler's tools: picks, scrapers, swabs. This time, when he removed the yellow streak from the side of the car, no one tried to stop him.

  * * * *

  "I usually have more paint to go on for a match than this.” Jason looked at a small glass vial. Clear solvent filled most of it, but a thin layer of yellow floated at the top. “This is really police lab stuff. Fortunately yellow's a pretty straightforward color. Blues shift into green, reds into orange, with oxidation and light. Makes trying to figure out what color it was when it rolled off the line almost impossible. Yellow's pretty stable and has a nice single pigment, so there are no ratios to worry about.” He cleared some space on the desk and turned on a bright white light. He pulled a peacock-tail Pantone color chip book out of a locked drawer, fanned it out, and held paint swatches against the tube.