And that was where Lisa spotted him.
"Howdy, stranger!" she hollered, pulling up to the curb. "Bowing to Megalopolis again, I see!"
Billy looked up, saw her, and beamed. "Hey!" he hollered back, "if it isn't the ugliest bike in New York City!"
Which was true. She had a stripped-down racing bike that she'd painted the most dismal shade of puke-green imaginable. That, three top-of-the-line locks, and a quarter-ton of chain were the only things between her livelihood and the bicycle-thieving hordes. It worked. She was one of the only bike messengers she knew who'd never been ripped off.
Its one shortcoming was that it accentuated her beauty by way of glaring contrast. It gave the apes something to shout about, a potential they rarely let go undeveloped.
As if to prove it, a bulldog-headed construction worker strolled leeringly by, stopped to shamelessly appraise her, and said, "Hey, baby. How ya doin'?"
"Just fine, toots," Billy hissed, staring squarely into the man's eyes. "How are you?"
The construction worker's eyes went wide, and he turned a deep maroon. Lisa laughed. Billy kept staring into Bulldog's eyes until the man shuffled away in embarrassment.
"My hero," Lisa said.
"My pleasure, ma'am," he drawled, tipping an imaginary hat. It had only taken the tiniest tickle of Power to make the guy nearly douse his drawers; and God, was it fun! "All in a day's work for the Central Park Vigilante—" he continued.
And stopped.
Because Lisa was no longer smiling, and her eyes had adopted that electron-microscope look. It was a look he knew well. He often suspected that it could see through lead: it had never had any problem with his defense mechanisms, no matter how heartily he manned them.
It had scared him before: she'd caught him chin deep in his own bullshit before, dredged up feelings he'd been too ashamed to admit to. There are few things scarier than being known like a book in the hands of an apt pupil.
But he'd never been more frightened than he was at this moment.
He'd never had quite so much to hide.
"Oh, come on! Jesus!" he heard himself blurting. "I'm just teasin' ya, kiddo! C'mon!"
"No, you're not," she told him bluntly.
He felt himself reddening under the heat of her gaze, felt laser beams tracing every curlicue and canyon on his brain. The words you wouldn't believe it if I told you raised across his consciousness and out of his lips before he had a chance to stop them.
"Try me," she said.
By the end of the first pitcher, she had Christopher's name. Midway through the second, he was really spilling his guts, and the mysteries behind both Billy and Mona had pretty much been revealed. She had nodded her head through most of it, encouraging him without having to say, word. Which was good.
By the time they started the third pitcher, she was nearly drunk enough to speak.
She watched her companion from across the table. His tears had dried, his composure was back, he could almost have been the man that she'd known for slightly more than a year. But not quite.
Because he was not the same man, and now she knew too much to deny it. There was a part of her that wanted a crass display of magic
(hey, rocky! watch me pull a rabbit outta muh hat!)
as proof, but that part of her was completely overwhelmed by the knowledge that it was true, he was the vigilante, he had healed Mona, and she was not going insane.
But if she saw so much as a card trick, she might just go over the edge.
"Hey, Paleface," he said softly, drawing her out with his eyes. "Talk to me. C'mon. I spilled my guts, now it's your turn."
"Billy—"
"Billy shmilly," he taunted, cutting the edge off of it with compassion. "Turnabout is fair play. The least you can do is tell me what you're feeling."
"I don't know what I feel," she told him honestly. "I mean, you just laid the weirdest story on me that I have ever heard. I had suspicions, but they weren't nearly as crazy as this. I don't know what to think! I—"
"Don't think. Just talk. That's what I did. If I'd been thinking, you'd still be guessing. If you keep thinking, I'll be guessing for the rest of my life."
"Oh, Billy. I . . ." He was right, of course, but his rightness did nothing to alter the way she felt. "I . . . I need to know more."
"Yeah, right." His face had gimme a break written all over it. "What else do you need, Lisa? There's hardly a spot left in my soul that I didn't just lay out in bite-size chunks."
"I need to know where it's going." She knew the words were right, even as she said them. It made her stronger, surer of where she stood and why she stood there. "I need some sense of where you're planning to take this destiny of yours. Is cleaning up the streets enough, or do you plan to take it further than that?"
It was, once again, his turn to clam up. That was fine: it gave her a chance to try and get her own addled reasoning powers together.
"Is that your definition of a hero?" she added, before he had a chance to respond to the first line of questioning.
"A hero," he said tersely, "is someone who's willing to risk it all for what he believes in, and the ones he loves." His tone was shifting, turning sharper.
"But according to what you tell me," she countered, "you aren't risking shit. Nothing can hurt you. Nothing can kill you. You've got nothing to lose—"
"BUT MY FUCKING IMMORTAL SOUL!" he shouted back. "AND THE LIVES OF THE ONES I LOVE! DON'T TELL ME THAT'S NOTHING, GOD DAMN IT, BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN LIVING WITH SINCE THE WHOLE FUCKING THING BEGAN!"
He caught himself shouting, went abruptly silent. "It's alright," she said before he could get his apology out. "I'm sorry, too. I didn't mean to bait you like that."
Billy said nothing. He just stared at his hands: one bi fist, clenched together on the table before him. He looked so bitter, so stretched to the limit, that her heart flowed out through her fingertips. Very gently, she reached across the table and held his hands in hers.
His eyes slid shut, and he smiled just a little. It was painful with effort. She knew what he meant. One tear, from either one of us, a voice choked in her head, and I think we'll both lose it completely.
"You know what I wish?" he said, softly breaking the silence. "I wish that there were no such thing as evil in the world. Man, I was havin' such a good time a few days ago. . ." He laughed, shook his head. A frog came into his throat. "I could have just spent the rest of my life making music, healing little broken people, and rolling Mona all night long. That would have been fine. That would have been nice.
"But no. God had to go and make evil: which, when you look at it, was a pretty shifty thing to do. I mean, it cracks me up when Christians talk about Adam and Eve, and how terrible it was that the Snake got in there and ruined everything. Who do they think made the snake, fer crissakes! It was a setup!"
"Even the Devil serves God's purpose," Lisa added. "Kinda makes you wish you knew what God's purpose is, don't it?"
"That it do."
"I think God is the ultimate schizophrenic, to be truthful. All of creation is in conflict because God is in constant conflict with Itself. There's war in the brain of the Creator, and we're all just acting it out."
"So where does that put us, in terms of God's plan?"
"Right in the middle of the battlefield."
Their eyes locked, and they smiled deeply into each other. It was the smile of kindred spirits, in communion with the flame.
"I feel much better now. Thank you," Billy said at last.
"Same to you, mac. I feel much better, too."
"I really needed to talk to somebody human."
"That's me."
"But it scares me, kiddo. How much you know—"
"No psychic lobotomies, thank you," she interrupted. "It was my choice. I needed to know."
"I'm just scared of making you a target—"
"Listen, Billy. If I am one now, I'm sure that I already was one. It doesn't matter."
"But—"
; "If it's flesh and blood, I can handle it."
"Will you stop interrupting me?"
"Will you stop trying to be my mother? Jesus!" She laughed. He didn't. "I'm already a target, if that's what you want to call it, because I'm taking care of Mona. And I'll kill anyone or anything that tries to ever hurt her again."
"I believe that."
"You'd better." She smiled. He tried. "No, really. Billy. Don't look at me as a handicap. I'm a fighter. And in the big fight between Good and Evil, I'm on your side. Okay?"
Pause.
"Okay?" she repeated.
Billy's hands were no longer knotted together; they were now clasped with her own. Wordlessly, he brought all four to his lips and kissed the ones that weren't his.
"I love you, Lisa," he said.
"I love you, too," she said, voice cracking over the words. She could feel the Power coursing between them.
And it was beautiful.
"Okay," he said.
THIRTY-FIVE
STOMPING GROUNDS
It was eight-fifteen by the time Billy got back to his building. Three pitchers of Beck's had left him groggy, highly emotional, and curiously at peace. He noted with pleasure, for instance, that Roxie the hooker was not manning her position at the corner.
And the car's empty, too. Good girl, he mused, putting his key to the downstairs lock and twisting. The door gave, allowing him access to the urine-scented foyer and the second door. It was dark and ripe and horrible in there, as usual; standing in the foyer was like being one of those cakes of soap in a public urinal. He wasted no time in unlocking the second door, moving into the brighter and less fragrant hallway.
Where another scent met him, acrid and harsh and imperceptible to the ordinary human nose.
What the fuck? his mind inquired. He knew instinctively that he was picking up on something outside his normal range. It made him tingle with Power. He took one giant step toward sobriety and then stood there, head cocked and nostrils flaring, trying to place the smell.
It didn't work.
But it reminded him of a moment just before he'd run into Lisa, standing out front of the Variety Photoplays. He'd gotten a strong whiff of something, just then; and though it wasn't the same as this one, it had severe alarming similarities.
It didn't seem quite real.
And it was foul . . .
The smell remained a mystery. All he knew was that it was there, it was weird, and it was important. He moved farther down the hallway, his conversation with Lisa forgotten, his heightened senses leading him on. On the wall to his right, the words ALBERT SHOULD BE BOASTED ALIVE IN HIS OWN STINKING JUICES were painted in big letters, with the appropriate jagged-edged mania. Billy smiled; truer words had never been written. It was one of the coolest things that Larry had ever done, God bless him . . .
Bells began to go off inside his mind.
Albert. DING! The thought and the sound were one. It was as if his skull had become a pinball machine: the silver ball was his consciousness, the flippers were his will, and the truth went DING every time he scored a point on it. Larry. DING!
The stink.
DING! DING! DING!
"Bonus points," he informed the hallway, which didn't care. An ugly gestalt was taking shape in his imagination. He didn't know what it meant yet, but he knew that it wasn't nice.
The rent, he thought.
And the bell went DING!
But there was more, and Billy knew it. There was a jackpot waiting for him that had yet to be rung up. He batted it around as he moved to the base of the stairwell, to no avail.
That was where the odor split into two distinct directions.
Down the hall, toward Albert's door.
And up the steps, toward his own.
DING! DING! DING!
"Alright," Billy murmured, addressing the challenge. His mind ran over the possibilities while the Power did the work. Albert was the only one who had an apartment on the first floor; that much he knew for certain. There were twelve apartments above him, only one of which was his, any one of which might hold the key to the puzzle.
But the smell is stronger from up there, his mind informed him, and the requisite bell went off. He started up the stairway, trying to visualize the handful of neighbors he actually knew. It didn't work; it didn't matter. The absence of bells assured him of that.
He followed the scent up the stairs.
He was, somehow, not a bit surprised when it led straight to his door.
Larry was not a happy man when Billy came in. He was holding a Baggie full of ice cubes to his left eye, which still prickled and ached. With his right, he was surveying the carnage.
"You're just in time, asshole," he said, very cold. "Maybe you want to break a bottle of champagne across the doorway. This shit should be dedicated to you."
He didn't pick up on quite how crazy his roommate looked. What he did pick up on, he attributed to the state of the apartment. Lord knows that he'd felt a bit on the bongo side ever since he'd come home.
"What happened?" Billy said. It was almost a whisper.
"Well, I'll tell ya what," Larry answered, somewhat snidely. "Howz about if we take a little tour through the battlefield. Then you can see exactly what happened." He grabbed his roommate by the shoulders and dragged him toward the bedroom door. "Call it a field trip. Pretend you're back in school."
The kitchen through which they moved was bad enough: every plate and glass shattered across the floor, the refrigerator's door open and contents splayed amongst the shrapnel. But it was nothing compared to Larry's bedroom, which he furiously shoved Billy into now.
"Oh, God," Billy muttered.
"Hey, that's an idea!" Larry hissed, contemptuous. "Maybe if we pray real hard, the place will just clean itself up! Whaddaya think?"
It was cruel, the way he was handling it. He didn't give a shit. All he had to do was take one look at what had happened, and all the compassion leaked out of him like helium from a ruptured dirigible. It was not an unjustified frame of reference.
All he had to do was look.
Larry'd built a loft bed; the ceiling was higher than the room was wide, it had made a lot of spacial sense to put as much as possible in the air. At the time.
But not anymore.
Larry'd also had nearly a thousand dollars' worth of uninsured stereo equipment. Again: not any more. The wooden supports that had propped up the loft, bed were totaled. When the bed fell, everything beneath was totaled, too.
Including the stereo, all of his records, and a few other choice bits of Larry Roth memorabilia.
"I'm not happy," he said, understating the obvious. "Bet that's tough to figure out. But you still don't know the half of it." He spun Billy around, stared him straight in the eyes, and removed the ice pack.
The flesh around his left eye was a violet rainbow motif, with both red and blue standing out as primary colors. It wasn't as pretty as it sounded, and it failed to esthetically please him.
"This is what happens when you fall three months behind on your rent, he said, hoping to bring the point across by means of subtlety. "Too bad it didn't fucking happen to you."
"What happened, specifically," Billy said. It wasn't a question. He seemed a bit too self-possessed for Larry's tastes, at the moment. It did not sit well.
"Well, let me tell you," Larry said. He grimaced a lot as he spoke. "I got home at about six-thirty. Albert was in the downstairs hallway, talking with some greasy little spic. Both of 'em were looking at me, so I had to ask them what was going on.
"All of a sudden, this big fucker grabs me from behind." He pantomimed the big fucker's grip. It looked awesome. "I tried to get away, but I couldn't. And then Albert asked me where the rent money was.
"So I gave him my share, but it wasn't enough. He paused to emphasize the fact. "Then the big guy whipped me around and slugged me, and they all went back to Albert's apartment."
"And you came up here . . ." Billy continued for him.
"A
nd this is what I found," Larry completed. "Those fuckers were up here, and this is what they left us." He paused to swallow hard. "I just wish they woulda made it half as bad for you."
Billy got a strange look on his face, then: half struggle for comprehension, half hate. Larry felt the ice pick of fear rip a divot out of him, invisible as the source was. He felt himself back off as Billy brushed past him and headed toward his own room.
Whafuck? his mind asked in a tiny, shrill voice, but he couldn't get his mouth to articulate it for him. The terror was sudden and bright and total: a sniper's bullet, from out of nowhere, stunning and mowing him down.
Then Billy disappeared into his bedroom, and Larry's terror diminished into echoing, lingering memory. It enabled his mind to work again, to think about what had happened.
Which produced another kind of terror, gnawing away within him.
Billy's not right, he heard himself saying. Billy's going out of his mind. He looked at the locks on the front door, and a fresh wave of strangling impotence overwhelmed him. The locks were for keeping the crazies out.
But if the crazies had keys . . .
A low moaning rose up from the deathly quiet that had enveloped the apartment. An animal sound. A thing in pain. Larry could feel his hackles rising as the drone grew stronger and heightened in pitch.
It was coming from Billy's room.
It was coming from Billy himself.
Oh, God, Larry thought, instinctively scanning the wreckage for anything to use as a weapon, not even thinking about what the action meant.
And then Billy started to laugh. Somehow, it sounded very much like screaming.
Only worse.
His albums were destroyed. That was the first thing he saw. All those vintage old Hendrix and Beatles and Airplane and Dead albums lolled out of their crushed covers in jagged slice-of-pie shards. The floor was littered with them. The crates that had housed them were kicked over, too, and one of them had been battered to splinters. Not that it mattered. There was nothing left worth putting in it, anyway.
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