The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, 2010

by Elizabeth Bear

  The week before the talent contest they held auditions at the Downlow. The stage was lit with a spot that pointed up the tawdriness of the glittery silver Saturns and comets on the dark blue painted backdrop; but there were amps and a good PA and professional quality mikes, everything a performer might need. Waiting to go on, through what seemed an interminable sequence of stand-up comics with no sense of timing, accordion players, twirlers, off-key vocalists, tap dancers, rappers, and a man who could put a foot behind his ear while standing and repeat everything you said backward (Clyde’s favorite), he had several drinks to ease his nerves and oil his instrument . . . perhaps one too many, for when his turn came, following a sax player who noodled a decent rendition of “My Favorite Things,” he announced that he would be performing an original composition entitled, “ ‘Annali . . . uh, Melissa.’ ” A guy in the back asked him to repeat the title and he said, “Sorry. I’m a little nervous. That’s ‘Melissa Anne.’ ”

  Pet Nylund was supposed to be in the audience and, as he adjusted the mike, adding a bit touch of reverb, Clyde searched for him (though he couldn’t recall his face and wasn’t certain what he would be like after so many years away from the limelight), but the spot blinded him. He warmed up with a scale, which drew catcalls, but after he had performed he received scattered applause, which was better than most had done.

  Afterward he was given a packet containing an entry number and forms, and told he was in. His main competition was the sax player, a black chick named Yolanda who sang a wicked version of “Chain of Fools,” and a young guy who did a one-man-band comedy act that was borderline obscene and a real crowd-pleaser. The singer and the young guy were one-two, he figured, but he stood a good chance for third place money, three hundred bucks and a Pet Nylund box set, enough to buy Annalisa something nice. He’d give the box set to Mary for Roberta, who was a fan.

  He had another drink at the bar, looked around again for Annalisa and Pet, and talked to Spooz for a bit. Spooz complimented him on his whistling and said he should hang out—Brad would be along soon. Brad had a job topside that kept him running and was hardly ever around, and Clyde would have liked to stay and talk sports with him; but lately he preferred being alone with his thoughts of Annalisa to the company of others, so he begged off.

  The lights were on in Ms. Kmiec’s living room and, as he ascended the ladder, taking pains not to slip, because drunken ladder mishaps were a common occurrence in Halloween (only the week before Tim Sleight, whom Clyde knew from the Dots, had gotten a load on and fallen two floors, narrowly missing a granite outcropping and splashing in the river), Ms. Kmiec’s door flew open and, framed in a spill of yellow glare, she leaned out and said merrily, “Clyde Ormoloo! Come have a drink!”

  Her hair was pinned up loosely, riding atop her head like the remains of some blond confection, a soufflé that had fallen, a wedding cake that had been dropped. She had on a black lace peignor and a pair of matching panties; her unconfined breasts bobbled as she swayed in the doorway. She or someone had made bullseyes of her nipples with concentric circles of green ink. He assumed she was trashed and warned her to be careful.

  “Clyde Ormoloo-loo!” She pouted. “You get in here right now! There’s someone wants to see you!” She sang this last sentence and leaned farther out and beckoned to Clyde.

  He scaled the remaining rungs, pushed past her and closed the door to prevent her from doing a half-gainer into the Mossbach.

  The yellow room was as always, but for three notable exceptions: Prince was curled up on the sofa, his head tucked into his stomach, and the large framed photograph of Stan and Helene had been defaced by the realistic cartoon (also in green ink) of a stubby erect penis sticking out from the center of Mr. Kmiec’s forehead. An aromatherapy candle that had gone out sprouted from a blue glass dish on the coffee table—the packaging, which lay on the floor, said it was Tyrrhenian Musk, a product of Italy, but it smelled like charred Old Spice to Clyde. He had the idea that he was interrupting one of Helene’s private sessions.

  “See!” Helene. She leaned into Clyde. “Princey’s here!”

  With some effort she lifted Prince, cradling him like a baby, and pressed him into Clyde’s chest, as if expecting him to hold the animal. Prince yielded an annoyed, “Mrap,” and struggled weakly. Clyde saw that the door leading to the adjoining house stood partway open.

  “Is someone here?” he asked.

  Helene buried her face in Prince’s tummy and made growly noises, offending the cat still more.

  A big, tanned woman with strong features, muscular arms and legs, several inches taller than Clyde, black hair tumbled about her broad shoulders, entered from the corridor, bottle in hand. Her face reminded him of the image of an empress embossed on a Persian coin that his dad once showed him, too formidable to be beautiful, yet beautifully serene and leonine beneath her ringleted mane. She wore a red Lycra sports bra and shorts that did their best to control an exuberant bust and mighty rear end. His first thought was that she must be a transsexual, but there was no sign of an Adam’s apple and her hands were slender and finely boned—three rings, none a wedding band, adorned them, including a significant diamond nested among opals. “Hello,” she said in a humid contralto. “I’m Milly. And you must be Clyde. Would you care for some apple brandy? It’s sooo good!”

  “Yeah . . . okay.” Clyde perched on the couch beside Helene, who was still making much over the cat. Recalling Annalisa’s description, he said, “You’re Milly Sussman?”

  “The same.”

  Moving with a stately grace, Milly took a seat in an easy chair and poured a dollop of brandy each into three diminutive glasses shape like goblets.

  “I thought you owned the house across the way,” Clyde said.

  “I own two houses.” She held up two fingers for emphasis. “One’s basically an office. Helene?”

  “Yes, please!” She scooted to the edge of the couch. Prince writhed free, fell with a thud to the floor, and waddled off to find a quieter spot.

  “New friends,” Milly said, lifting her glass.

  Helene chugged the brandy; Cliff had a sip.

  “It is good,” he said, setting down his glass. “I notice you have a tan. That’s unusual around here.”

  Milly examined her arms. “I’m just back from three glorious weeks in Thailand. Well, not just back, but I was there recently. A little island not far from Kosumui. You should have seen me then. I was nearly absolutely black. But now. . . . ” She heaved a dramatic sigh. “I’m entombed in Halloween once again.”

  Helene went over to the portrait of her late husband and studied it with her head cocked.

  “You must like it here,” Cliff said. “I mean, two houses.”

  “It has its charms.” Milly crossed her legs. “Lately, however, I find it limiting. And you?”

  Helene hunted for something on the end table beside the easy chair, but was impeded in her search by the folds of her peignor and shrugged out of it. She located what she had been looking for—a Magic Marker—and stood sucking on the tip, apparently contemplating an addition to her work. Though for seven, eight seconds out of ten on the average, Clyde’s thoughts turned to Annalisa, the sight of Helene almost naked was difficult to ignore.

  Milly repeated her question: “And you?” Her smile seemed to acknowledge Clyde’s distraction.

  “I liked it better when I first arrived,” he said. “I guess maybe I’m finding it limiting, too.”

  With a knee resting on the arm of Milly’s chair, Helene drew on the portrait.

  Milly ran a hand along her thigh, as if to smooth out an imaginary wrinkle in the skin-tight Lycra. “Perhaps there’s a way we can help one another exceed those limits.”

  Choosing his words with care, Clyde said, “We’re probably talking about different sorts of limits.”

  “Ah.” Her face impassive, she sipped her brandy.

  They endured a prickly silence; then Clyde asked, “So what do you do . . . for a living?”

>   “I have a foundation that funds cottage industries in the Third World. I was a lawyer; I suppose I still am. But the law. . . . ” She made a disaffected noise.

  “We could use some cottage industries here. This raking walnuts thing gets pretty old.”

  “Actually I was speaking to Pet about that very thing before I left for Thailand. Of course we don’t need them, but diversity might infuse the people with a better attitude. Raking walnuts, packaging walnuts, shipping walnuts, all this ridiculous drudgery. . . . It reinforces the notion that he owns them. But he insists on running the town his way. Pet’s an unpleasant little man. He’s one of the reasons I’m thinking about leaving.”

  “Never met the guy.”

  “I did some legal work for him during the nineties. I liked him then, but he’s changed a great deal since he stopped performing.”

  “There!” Helene backed off a few paces to assess her work. Atop Stan Kmiec’s head she had created the line drawing of a parrot that, its head turned sideways, was threatening to bite the stubby appendage protruding from his brow.

  “Very nice,” said Milly. “Clyde and I were talking about Pet, dear. Anything you’d care to contribute?”

  “Pet’s an even bigger prick than Stan,” she said absently, and cast about the room. “I think Prince went over to your place.”

  She headed off along the connecting corridor, weaving from wall to wall.

  Well,” said Clyde, sliding to the edge of the sofa. “I’ve got work in the morning. Walnuts to rake.”

  “A question before you go,” Milly said. “I realize that men—many of them—find me too Amazonian for their tastes. Is that why you turned me down?”

  Clyde was startled by her frankness.

  She smiled. “Be truthful, now!”

  “It’s more a case of my head not being in the right place,” he said.

  She put her glass on the coffee table, leaning close to him as she did. He became aware of the smallness of the room, and the heated scent of her body, and had a paranoid flash, recalling movies featuring women of her dimension and fitness level who served villains, generally of Eastern European origin, as paid assassins; yet he picked up nothing from her other than a gloomy passivity.

  “I’ve got stuff on my mind,” he said. “Life stuff, you know.”

  Milly sank back into the cushions, again crossing her legs. “Helene told me you were unattached.”

  A scream ripped along the corridor between the houses, followed by an explosive crash of glass breaking. Clyde and Milly sprang to their feet at nearly the same moment and, due to the cramped quarters, her head struck him on the point of the chin, knocking him back onto the sofa and sending white lights shooting into his eyes, and while she went down heavily between the easy chair and the end table. Milly managed to un-wedge herself and struggled up into a crouch, when Helene rushed in and bowled her over again. Helene yanked at a drawer in the end table, pulling it completely out and spilling a large pistol, a .357, onto the floor.

  “Son-of-a-bitch got Prince!” she said tearfully.

  She cocked the gun and, scampered across the coffee table between Milly and Clyde; she flipped a row of wall switches and threw open the door. Exterior lights bathed the granite cliff and the neighboring houses in an infernal white radiance, illuminating every crevice and projection. From the sofa, Clyde had a glimpse of something unusual. Traversing the cliff ten yards above them was a greenish black creature—at that distance it resembled an enormous cabbage that had been left out in the rain and rotted, losing all but an approximation of its spherical form, its leaves shredded and hanging off the central structure like the decaying rags of a homeless person. It moved rapidly, albeit in a series of fits and starts, growing taller, skinnier, pausing, then shrinking and becoming cabbage-like again, its body flowing between those poles, as if its means of perambulation involved muscular contractions and expulsions of air similar to those utilized by an octopus. Still groggy, Clyde sat up, hoping for a clearer look, but Helene blocked the doorway. She braced against the doorframe, adopting a shooter’s stance, and squeezed off three rounds that boomed across the gorge and shattered the air inside the yellow room. Clyde stumbled up off the sofa just as she said, “Damn it!” and began fumbling with the gun. She tugged on the trigger, holding the weapon at such an angle that, if it hadn’t been jammed, would have blown off her foot.

  “Wait!” he said, going toward her.

  A petulant expression replaced one of stupefied determination. She transferred the gun to her left hand and, playing keep away, thrust it out over the gorge, a clumsy movement that caused her to overbalance. She flailed her arms, clutched at the air, shrieked in terror and toppled out the doorway. Clyde made a dive for her and snagged an ankle, stopping her fall, but momentum swung her against the side of the house—she smacked into the wall headfirst and went limp. The edge of the doorway cut into the back of Clyde’s arms. He eased forward, so his arms were free, his torso and head extended over the gorge, and firmed up his grip, paying no mind to Milly’s hysterical advice. The dark river and the diminished pier and the strip of yellow-white sand beside it looked like really keen accessories to a toy model of the town. He closed his eyes to forestall dizziness. Other voices were heard. A man poked his head out the window of the house next door and told him not to let go. Someone else called from below, telling him to swing Helene out over the river and let her drop into the water, as if a forty-foot plunge were nothing to fear. Women’s voices shrilled; thick, sleep-dulled male voices rumbled and children squeaked. It seemed the gunshots had waked half the population of Halloween and they each and every one were offering stupid suggestions.

  “Milly! Get behind me,” he said. “Grab my ankles.”

  She did as told and immediately began yanking him into the room.

  “No, stop . . . stop!” he said. “Don’t pull until I tell you. Okay?”

  Inch by inch, Clyde worked his grip higher on Helene’s leg. Sweat broke on his forehead. Helene was not a heavy woman, but he couldn’t get his back into the lift and a hundred-ten, hundred-twenty pounds of dead weight took a toll on his arms. Her head kept banging against the house and he decided this was a good thing—if she woke and went to thrashing about, he might lose her. The lights gave him a headache and the small crowd that had gathered on the shingle below distracted him. Once he had secured a hold on Helene’s knee, he told Milly to pull him about six inches back. She tugged on his ankles and Clyde twisted onto his side, a movement that swung Helene’s free leg toward him. Holding her by the knee with one arm, he trapped the other leg and locked both hands behind her thighs. He told Milly to pull him six inches farther and when she did he heaved on Helene, shifting her up along his body to a point where he had a grip on her hips and buttocks, and a faceful of lace panties.

  “Okay,” he said to Milly. “Bring us in.”

  Once they were inside the room, Milly dragged Helene off him. The cheer that arose from the gorge was fainter than he might have expected, as if a sizable portion of those watching had been rooting against them. Blood smeared Helene’s mouth and chin, most coming from her nose—Clyde thought it might be broken. While Milly ministered to her, he had a seat on the sofa and pounded the rest of his brandy. He poured another glass and knocked down the lion’s share of that. The muscles in his shoulders burned. Helene came back to the world crying and carrying on about Stan, how ashamed she was for defacing his picture. She didn’t remember a thing about the accident or Prince, but planted a bloody kiss on Cliff’s mouth in gratitude after Milly brought her up to speed. Milly decided to take Helene over to her place, where she could better care for her, and said she’d be back to check on him as soon she made Helene comfortable.

  Clyde closed his eyes and thought about the cat-killer (it wasn’t the first inexplicable thing he’d seen here, but it certainly staked claim to being the headline on Weird News), and about Prince mrapping around Cat Heaven, and about Annalisa, what lay ahead for them and how it would be . .
. and then he was being shaken awake by Steve Germany, a squat, shaven-headed man, all his features crowded together toward the center of his face, a walnut raker who worked nights as a bouncer at the Downlow, and another bouncer, Dan or Dave, he couldn’t recall, sat next to him, and Spooz studied him from the easy chair, his double-chinned mug pale as an onion, and said, “Man, did you screw up,” and there was a fourth guy, a scrawny, shriveled-up, narrow-shouldered geezer with a prunish face (except for a young man’s sneering mouth) and his gray hair in a pony tail, wearing a midnight blue velvet jacket over a T-shirt bearing the design of a Chinese character on the chest and black jeans belted with a buckle in the shape of a P flocked round by silver birds (it looked as if he’d borrowed his grandson’s clothes) and this enfeebled gangster of love, this Lilliputian Monster of Rock (Clyde knew he was Pet Nylund), produced a pocket tape recorder, clicked the play button, and Clyde heard his own voice say, “ ‘Annali . . . Melissa,’ ” pause, crackle, and then, “Sorry. I’m a little nervous. That’s ‘Melissa Anne.’ ”