"Let's go," Rizzo said, moving toward the door. Hamilton nodded, and Billy surprisingly did the same. Bubba took it as his cue to sashay toward the door, as well; Billy had to catch him, hold him close, and explain that their morning constitutional was being temporarily postponed.
Then out the door, down the stairs, into the street and the dark green, late-model Plymouth parked illegally at the corner.
Just as Billy's phone began to ring.
"Damn," Dave muttered, retracting the antenna of his Extend-A-Phone and setting the receiver back down in its cradle. The morning's gray pallor seeped in through the living room windows of his spacious West Seventy-Ninth Street abode. The sky looked a lot like the inside of his head felt: murky, gloomy, completely miserable. Not even the ficus trees, ferns, and other foliage—calculated to lend a sense of airiness and lightness—could put a dent in the ugliness.
Dave Hart sat squarely in the middle of his sprawling home studio, rubbing his forehead like a magic lamp. His three wishes were firmly in place.
I wish I didn't feel so bad. I wish I knew what the hell was going on here.
I wish Mona would answer the goddam phone.
None of them seemed on the brink of coming true. He kept rubbing anyway, just in case. All around him, the bright LED eyes of his machinery watched: four-track porta-studio, digital drum machine, all manner of computerized, synthesized ultra-high-tech audio gear. His eyes focused on the monitor: the waveform of his last keyboard program was displaying itself in endlessly replicating patterns.
Like my life, he mused. Like my life.
He'd been up since quarter of six, wrestling with this stupid headache and his feelings for the sultry Ms. de Vanguardia. It was coming together in song-form, with reasonable success: a cool chord progression, a decent skeletal rhythm section down on tape. And the words were coming with remarkable ease:
You got a skinny little man somewhere,
And he loves you a lot,
But he's not takin' care of ya.
It's been draggin' on too long.
You go to work, and he goes out to play.
Then he takes you to dinner, but
You wind up payin', honey.
Don't it strike you that it
Might be wrong?
Mona!
I fell in love when you
Came dancing across the screen.
Mona!
I could feel your body shakin'.
What does it mean?
Dave was also trying to forget the dream he'd had. He wasn't having very good luck with that. At all.
It was too fucking weird. He'd been up late: MTV had slated a special back-to-back screening of the Brakes' videos, and he'd had the band and some friends—sans Mona—over to celebrate. They'd partied heavily through the whole show and after; Dave had finally stumbled to bed around four. His consciousness sank like a stone, aided by the combination of high-grade Jamaican and a bottle of Moët champagne.
And the first tendrils of the dream had wrapped around his brain . . .
At first it was good, so good: the world evaporating, shrinking away till there was nothing left but the two of them. No stardom. No fame. No interference. Just Dave, and Mona, and the taut, ceaseless friction of skin on skin.
And his music: the way it sounded in his soul, before the hit factory in his brain took hold and molded it into product. It was timeless and eternal, flowing out of his fingers to caress her as mere flesh could not.
She danced for him. For him alone. Dancing away, then toward him again, with that same I-want-you ferocity that she'd brought to his videos and his bed . . .
. . . and then they'd felt the eyes upon them.
Cold eyes. Cruel eyes. Watching them.
Hating them.
Dave ran to Mona, screaming through airless lungs across a vast black distance. She turned to him, arms outstretched . . .
. . . and in the second before their fingers clasped, his hands began to twist and gnarl. He recoiled, still screaming, watching in helpless horror as his fingers welded together, bubbling and steaming—
"No," Dave said, fighting of the memory. It was ridiculous that a dream should strike such terror in him. He looked at his hands. They were good as new. Better, actually: no new set of hands could possibly pull of the musical acrobatics that his ten highly-trained digits could perform automatically.
They looked so delicate, though; he had to admit it, holding them to the light from the lamp beside him, seeing the red beneath the webbed skin between. Ten little skin-and-bone twigs, suitable for snapping of and using as kindling—
"No. No. Cancel. Stop." He squeezed his eyelids shut, felt the dull thudding in his brain sharpen to crystal clarity. When he brought his hands up to clutch his skull, the fingers felt brittle, arthritic. "NO, dammit!" he yelled, holding his hands away from him suddenly, as if fending off the grip of a strangler.
There were a couple of bottles of Kirin beer in the fridge. Dave got one out and cracked it open with trembling, alien fingers. He downed half of it in one long pull, took a deep breath, and finished the rest. Then he repeated the process.
By the end of the second bottle, the dull thrumming in his head had returned, and his hands felt only marginally other-directed.
It was his third such bout, since he'd awakened.
Sedated again, Dave's thoughts flickered over more cheerful matters. A four-letter word imposed itself immediately, beginning with M and ending with O-N-A. There was a definite smile to be had from the thought.
Until he pursued it deeply enough. At which point he got depressed again.
Mona was back with her do-nothing boyfriend. He could feel it in his bones. At best, that meant a future of upset rehearsals and dampened celebrations, as she ministered to his perpetually floundering ego. At worst (and Dave grimaced at the thought), it meant watching her sink further and further into a destructive relationship that could jeopardize everything: her career, her happiness, her future.
If neither of those prospects thrilled him, the idea of sitting on his hands while Mona went down the dumper was even less appealing. He knew damned well that she'd used him on Friday to get back at Billy; but he also knew that he'd felt something pass between them, beyond mere bodily fluids. A spark. A little ping! at the bottom of his heart.
A chance: perhaps his last.
Because Dave Hart was wasted on one-night stands, endless parades of brainless chippies who couldn't see beyond the star to the man. The love in him ran deeper than that, and it had been far too long since that part of him had been addressed in anything but his tunes.
He wanted one woman, one woman alone, to give himself to completely.
And that woman, without a doubt, was Mona.
No problem, said a voice in his mind. All you have to do is steal her from her poor long-suffering loverboy. It placed a moral porcupine in his hands, prickling and squirming as he tried to hold on. Other voices, not his own, informed him that he was a heartless and mercenary scumbag.
"Fuck you all," he said. "If it's a choice between him and me, I choose me. Q.E.D."
And let us not forget, he added, that even an "object of desire" can have an opinion of her own.
He decided, once again, to find out what it was. Dave lit a smoke as he moved toward the phone, plucked the receiver from its cradle, and punched in Mona's number.
The phone rang once, twice.
Halfway through the third came the sound of the receiver on the other end, lifting.
"Hello?" he said, grinning. "Mona?"
"I'm so glad you called. I was just thinking about you."
"Yeah, I bet you were, asshole. I been thinking about you, too. Like, for instance, how you and your buddy would look in a pair of body casts."
Larry frowned, his headache coming back. This was not going well at all. But then, his monthly conversations with Albert never did. As landlords went, Albert rated somewhere between Mickey Mouse and Mussolini. He was a squat, stinking dwarf of a man w
hose pleasant demeanor was matched only by his lustrous personal hygiene. It was Larry's considered opinion that Albert's underwear was embroidered, not with the days of the week, but with the months of the year.
For the moment, Larry kept his opinions to himself. It was bad business to insult someone who you owed back rent to . . . especially when that someone had passkeys and a penchant for hired help.
Very nasty hired help.
Larry poured on the smooth, effluent FM-dj tones with which he customarily jerked of creditors from both the private and professional sectors. It was an act akin to pouring Dom Perignon on a turd. "Albert," he crooned, "there's no need to get hysterical—"
"Historical?" Albert sputtered. "I'll give you historical, asshole! If you're not paid in full by Friday, you're HISTORY!"
"But—"
"No buts, Buttski! Where I come from, IOU and DOA spell the same fuckin' thing! You read me?"
Larry winced. Albert was being witty. It was always nauseating when Albert got witty. "Loud and clear," Larry murmured, swallowing down the first saline burst of bile.
Albert hung up then, abruptly. Larry gave thanks for God's small favors, briefly, before allowing himself the luxury of fury.
"Fucking idiot," Larry hissed into the dead receiver. Exactly who he was referring to was open to debate: Albert, for being one; Billy, for acting like one; his humble self, for allowing things to degenerate to this state.
Even Brenda, of the vast poitrine, for letting the schmuck get through in the first place. He had his finger on the page button, ready to feed her the full brunt of his executive rage.
Then his mind strayed to the previous night, and the image of twin flesh zeppelins effectively put the brakes on his anger. Better to fuck her tonight, he chuckled internally, than to fuck with her now. Am I right?
Absolutely.
He shifted internal gears, inclined himself toward more pressing matters.
Picked up the phone.
Got an outside line.
And dialed.
"First Choice Messenger Service. May I help you?"
It was always a riot to listen to Ralphie on the customer line. It was like watching a toad do a Sir Laurence Olivier imitation. "Caviar on a Cheez Doodle," Lisa muttered, repressing the urge to swear.
Ralphie glared, went on pretending. Lisa pulled her clipboard from the black canvas bag cinched around her shoulder. Wishful thinking, she told herself. Coupled with the Boy Scout Motto.
She did not like working for First Choice. It had landed on her by default. When Your Kind Of Messengers, Inc., had sold out to First Choice, part of the deal had been that all the hot-shit messengers went along for the ride. Most of the messengers were not so wealthy that they could afford a payless job-hunting interim. Lisa was among the majority.
And so she had found herself peddling madly through the streets of Manhattan at the behest of the sleaziest batch of motherfuckers ever to design their own business logo. Hoods, losers, popeyes, and hopheads surrounded her every time she came into the office. It made her ill. It made her furious.
It made her a little over two hundred a week.
Until Paula's money came through, that would have to do. Even afterwards, she'd have to bike for somebody: one did not get rich on two or three editing jobs a year. But there were four-score-and-seven-odd other messenger services in Manhattan, and any one of them had to be better than this.
"Here's one for you, babe," Ralphie croaked, hanging up the phone and turning to her. "Front Line Media, 1775 Broadway. Move yer pretty ass."
"As soon as you waddle on over here and give me the ticket, I will."
Ralphie smacked his lips, exposed his greenish choppers. "Why doncha come in here," he crooned, "an' take it."
"Messengers aren't allowed behind the counter, she answered frostily. "That's one of the many rules."
"In your case, I think we can—"
"No, I don't think so." Cutting him off. "Rules are rules. You should know. You've made so many of them."
It's hopeless, she mused. Casting pearls before swine. The proverbial swine were clearly in evidence, leering and snickering in their pen. Five guys, every one of them malignant and brainless. Yeah, I wanna get caught in the back there with you, airightee.
But I wouldn't want to clean up what was left of you, when I got done.
"So are you going to give me the run or not?" she wearily inquired.
"She got a temper, don't she?" Ralphie said, elbowing the goon beside him. The pigpen erupted with haw-haw-hews. "Whatsamatter, baby, sisters not treatin' you right at night?"
"Okay," Lisa. The words I don't have to put up with this shit stayed right where they belonged: inside. It would only fuel their pinheaded fire. She turned to leave . . .
. . . and walked straight into the flower.
Lisa's heart skipped a beat: she flinched involuntarily. Things thrust into her face always freaked her out a little.
Then she smiled. It was okay.
It was her little friend.
"Oooooo, Stanley!" Raiphie catcalled, leering at Lisa. "Looks like Stan the Man's got a serious jones for you, missy."
"Better watch out, Stanley! Her girlfriends might beat you up!" yelled another.
"Yeah, Stan," chimed in a third. "You wouldn't wanna get decked by a dyke!"
"You guys are incredibly fucking clever," she snapped, then turned back to the flower-bearing outcast before her.
Stanley Peckard was a strange blend of Peter Lorre and Wally Cox. There was the bug-eyed toadishness of the former, clothed in the anal-retentive chic of the latter. And like both of them, he was essentially brain-dead.
But he was a little sweetheart, and that was a fact. Beneath the natty little suit, with all its buttons buttoned
. . . beneath the polka-dot bow tie and the graying, spit-combed hair . . . beneath the anachronistic simp/wimp exterior, there beat a heart as sweet as cotton candy.
And it was true that he had a terrible crush on her: every time she walked into the room, his eyes got shiny as marbles. It was usually only a matter of moments before he produced the day's present: a plastic toy, a whistle, or (as he'd done one day, when her Flair had gone dry during checkout) a felt-tip pen.
And today, it was a flower. A hot flower, she noted. He'd obviously nicked it from one of the well-tended beds that skirted the traffic islands of Park Avenue. There were dirt smudges on his knees. Probably a major adventure for him, she thought.
The flower was still in front of her face, quivering. She accepted the offering, taking it gently from his hand. "Thank you," she said. "You made my day."
Stanley beamed like a jack-o'-lantern, showing crooked, brittle teeth.
There was a thimble-sized dimple in the middle of his chin.
TWENTY-ONE
SHARP!
The day rolled on, another link in the endless chain clamped firmly around the neck of Stanley Peckard. He hustled back and forth at the beck and call of Ralphie, bow tie tight against his neck as he wore his Kinney loafers down to nubbins on the unforgiving cement. At least a dozen times in the course of that minimum-wage day, he wanted to cut loose and shove that tie right into his pocket where no one would see, unbutton his shirt and roll up his sleeves.
But he couldn't. He was working, and when you worked you had to look
(sharp!)
good, or you'd never get ahead. Mother had told him that, and he'd never forgotten. Not even after she died.
It was okay. He'd cut loose tonight. Tonight was gonna be somethin', alright. The very thought of it was what got him through the day. It made him happy.
Stanley hummed a little tune, one of his favorites. He must have heard it a million times, on the TV:
"Here's to good friends.
Tonight is kind-a spec-ial . . ."
By 5:05, he was all checked out and ready to roll. He stepped out onto Park Avenue and headed south, toward Thirteenth Street and home. He walked fast, sprightly, not taking time to enjoy the tall buil
dings, or the park with its funny squirrels that would come up and grab a nut right out of your hand if you let them.
By 5:25 he was home; a rundown six-story dump on Thirteenth, east of Avenue A. He hustled up the four flights of stairs as fast as his scrawny legs would carry him. The stairwell reeked of Clorox and Night Train-scented urine, but he refused to let it bother him.
Tonight was kinda special.
Stanley Peckard had a date.
By 5:45, he was back on the street. It wasn't time yet. Oh, no. But he had something he had to do, and he had to hurry.
By 5:55, he made it to the store, a sigh of relief melding with the ragged catch in his breath. It was very rude to show up for a date without a present, and this store was his favorite place to shop. They closed at six: he'd have to be quick. No time to browse amongst the aisles and aisles of bright, handy helpers and special surprises.
Luckily, he found just the thing: in the back, by the cash register. On a neat little counter with a magnetic strip, put there to keep everything neat. It was really special, had practically jumped up and shouted his name as he walked past.
He held it in his hand now: six inches long, with a real wooden handle. Stainless steel. Shiny.
And, in tiny, incised script, the name.
A classy name. For a classy date.
Master Carver.
She was going to love it.
There were demons in his head. It wasn't that hard to figure out. Sometimes he was barely aware of them; sometimes he was aware of nothing else. But he always knew, in what remained of his mind, that there were always demons dancing in what used to be his brain.
And they were always, always hungry.
He stepped out of E&H Hardware on Second Avenue, his present pressed tightly against his breast. There was a butcher shop on the corner, closed for the night. Rows upon rows of polished stainless steel hooks hung in the window, patiently awaiting the new day's wares. He looked at them like a child staring at a mantelful of Christmas stockings, and whispered something so quietly that only the demons could hear.
The Cleanup Page 15