Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

by Cory Doctorow

together,begging.

  "Please," he said, as the loop of intestine he'd been holding in trailedfree.

  "Please," he said, as Alan seized him by the hair, jerked his head back,and swiftly brought the knife across his throat.

  Benny took his knife, and Ed-Fred-George coaxed Clarence into a slow,deep fissuring. They dragged the body into the earthy crack and Clarenceswallowed up their brother.

  Benny led Alan to the cave, where they'd changed his bedding and laidout a half-eaten candy bar, a shopping bag filled with bramble-berries,and a lock of Marci's hair, tied into a knot.

  #

  Alan dragged all of his suitcases up from the basement to the livingroom, from the tiny tin valise plastered with genuine vintage decorailway stickers to the steamer trunk that he'd always intended torefurbish as a bathroom cabinet. He hadn't been home in fifteenyears. What should he bring?

  Clothes were the easiest. It was coming up on the cusp of July andAugust, and he remembered boyhood summers on the mountain's slopes abuzzwith blackflies and syrupy heat. White T-shirts, lightweight trousers,high-tech hiking boots that breathed, a thin jacket for the mosquitoesat dusk.

  He decided to pack four changes of clothes, which made a very small pileon the sofa. Small suitcase. The little rolling carry-on? The wheelswould be useless on the rough cave floor.

  He paced and looked at the spines of his books, and paced more, into thekitchen. It was a beautiful summer day and the tall grasses in the backyard nodded in the soft breeze. He stepped through the screen door andout into the garden and let the wild grasses scrape over his thighs. Ivyand wild sunflowers climbed the fence that separated his yard from hisneighbors, and through the chinks in the green armor, he saw someonemoving.

  Mimi.

  Pacing her garden, neatly tended vegetable beds, some floweringbulbs. Skirt and a cream linen blazer that rucked up over her shoulders,moving restlessly. Powerfully.

  Alan's breath caught in his throat. Her pale, round calves flashed inthe sun. He felt himself harden, painfully. He must have gasped, orgiven some sign, or perhaps she heard his skin tighten over his bodyinto a great goosepimply mass. Her head turned.

  Their eyes met and he jolted. He was frozen in his footsteps by hergaze. One cheek was livid with a purple bruise, the eye above it slittedand puffed. She took a step toward him, her jacket opening to reveal ashapeless grey sweatshirt stained with food and -- blood?

  "Mimi?" he breathed.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, her face turning into a fright mask.

  "Abel," she said. "Nice day."

  "Are you all right?" he said. He'd had his girls, his employees, show upfor work in this state before. He knew the signs. "Is he in the housenow?"

  She pulled up a corner of her lip into a sneer and he saw that it wassplit, and a trickle of blood wet her teeth and stained them pink.

  "Sleeping," she said.

  He swallowed. "I can call the cops, or a shelter, or both."

  She laughed. "I gave as good as I got," she said. "We're more thaneven."

  "I don't care," he said. "'Even' is irrelevant. Are you *safe*?"

  "Safe as houses," she said. "Thanks for your concern." She turned backtoward her back door.

  "Wait," he said. She shrugged and the wings under her jacket strainedagainst the fabric. She reached for the door. He jammed his fingers intothe chain-link near the top and hauled himself, scrambling, over thefence, landing on all fours in a splintering of tomato plants andsticks.

  He got to his feet and bridged the distance between them.

  "I don't believe you, Mimi," he said. "I don't believe you. Come over tomy place and let me get you a cup of coffee and an ice pack and we'lltalk about it, please?"

  "Fuck off," she said tugging at the door. He wedged his toe in it, tookher wrist gently.

  "Please," she said. "We'll wake him."

  "Come over," he said. "We won't wake him."

  She cracked her arm like a whip, shaking his hand off her wrist. Shestared at him out of her swollen eye and he felt the jolt again. Somerecognition. Some shock. Some mirror, his face tiny and distorted in hereye.

  She shivered.

  "Help me over the fence," she said pulling her skirt between her knees-- bruise on her thigh -- and tucking it behind her into herwaistband. She jammed her bare toes into the link and he gripped onehard, straining calf in one hand and put the other on her padded, softbottom, helping her up onto a perch atop the fence. He scrambled overand then took one bare foot, one warm calf, and guided her down.

  "Come inside," he said.

  She'd never been in his house. Natalie and Link went in and out to usehis bathroom while they were enjoying the sunset on his porch, or to geta beer. But Mimi had never crossed his threshold. When she did, it feltlike something he'd been missing there had been finally found.

  She looked around with a hint of a smile on her puffed lips. She ran herfingers over the cast-iron gas range he'd restored, caressing thebakelite knobs. She peered at the titles of the books in the kitchenbookcases, over the honey wood of the mismatched chairs and thesmoothed-over scars of the big, simple table.

  "Come into the living room," Alan said. "I'll get you an ice pack."

  She let him guide her by the elbow, then crossed decisively to thewindows and drew the curtains, bringing on twilight. He moved aside hispiles of clothes and stacked up the suitcases in a corner.

  "Going somewhere?"

  "To see my family," he said. She smiled and her lip cracked anew,dripping a single dark droplet of blood onto the gleaming wood of thefloor, where it beaded like water on wax paper.

  "Home again, home again, jiggety jig," she said. Her nearly closed eyewas bright and it darted around the room, taking in shelves, fireplace,chairs, clothes.

  "I'll get you that ice pack," he said. As he went back into the kitchen,he heard her walking around in the living room, and he remembered thefirst time he'd met her, of walking around her living room and thinkingabout slipping a VCD into his pocket.

  He found her halfway up the staircase with one of the shallowbric-a-brac cabinets open before her. She was holding aMade-in-Occupied-Japan tin robot, the paint crazed with age intocraquelaire like a Dutch Master painting in a gallery.

  "Turn it upside down," he said.

  She looked at him, then turned it over, revealing the insides of thetin, revealing the gaudily printed tuna-fish label from the original canthat it had been fashioned from.

  "Huh," she said and peered down into it. He hit the light switch at thebottom of the stairs so that she could see better. "Beautiful," shesaid.

  "Have it," he said surprising himself. He'd have to remove it from TheInventory. He restrained himself from going upstairs and doing it beforehe forgot.

  For the first time he could remember, she looked flustered. Herunbruised cheek went crimson.

  "I couldn't," she said.

  "It's yours," he said. He went up the stairs and closed the cabinet,then folded her fingers around the robot and led her by the wrist backdown to the sofa. "Ice pack," he said handing it to her, releasing herwrist.

  She sat stiff-spined in on the sofa, the hump of her wings behind herkeeping her from reclining. She caught him staring.

  "It's time to trim them," she said.

  "Oh, yes?" he said, mind going back to the gridwork of old scars by hershoulders.

  "When they get too big, I can't sit properly or lie on my back. At leastnot while I'm wearing a shirt."

  "Couldn't you, I don't know, cut the back out of a shirt?"

  "Yeah," she said. "Or go topless. Or wear a halter. But not in public."

  "No, not in public. Secrets must be kept."

  "You've got a lot of secrets, huh?" she said.

  "Some," he said.

  "Deep, dark ones?"

  "All secrets become deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the natureof secrets."

  She pressed the towel-wrapped bag of ice to her face and rolled her headback and forth on her neck. He heard pops and crackles as
her musclesand vertebrae unlimbered.

  "Hang on," he said. He ran up to his room and dug through his T-shirtdrawer until he found one that he didn't mind parting with. He broughtit back downstairs and held it up for her to see. "Steel Pole Bathtub,"he said. "Retro chic. I can cut the back out for you, at least whileyou're here."

  She closed her eyes. "I'd like that," she said in a small voice.

  So he got his kitchen shears and went to work on the back of the shirt,cutting a sizable hole in the back of the fabric. He folded duct tapearound the ragged edges to keep them from fraying. She watchedbemusedly.

  "Freakshow Martha Stewart," she said.

  He smiled and passed her the shirt. "I'll give you some privacy," hesaid, and went back into the kitchen and put away the shears and thetape. He tried not to listen to the soft rustle of clothing in the otherroom.

  "Alan," she said -- *Alan* and not *Asshole* or *Abel* -- "I could usesome help."

  He stepped cautiously into the living room and saw there, in thecurtained twilight, Mimi. She was topless, heavy breasts marked red withthe outline of her bra straps and wires. They hung weightily, swaying,and stopped him in the doorway. She had her arms lifted over her head,tugging her round belly up, stretching her navel into a cat-eyeslit. The T-shirt he'd given her was tangled in her arms and in herwings.

  Her magnificent wings.

  They were four feet long each, and they stretched, one through the neckhole and the other through the hole he'd cut in the T-shirt's back. Theywere leathery as he remembered, covered in a downy fur that glowed whereit was kissed by the few shafts of light piercing the gap in thedrapes. He reached for the questing, almost prehensile tip of the onethat was caught in the neck hole. It was muscular, like a strong finger,curling against his palm like a Masonic handshake.

  When he touched her wing, she gasped and shivered, indeterminatelybetween erotic and outraged. They were as he imagined them, these wings,strong and primal and dark and spicy-smelling like an armpit after sex.

  He gently guided the tip down toward the neck hole and marveled at theintricate way that it folded in on itself, at the play of mysteriousmuscle and cartilage, the rustle of bristling hair, and the motility ofthe skin.

  It accordioned down and he tugged the shirt around it so that it camefree, and then he slid the front of the shirt down over her breasts,painfully aware of his erection as the fabric rustled down over herrounded belly.

  As her head emerged through the shirt, she shook her hair out and thenunfolded her wings, slowly and exquisitely, like a cat stretching out,bending forward, spreading them like sails. He ducked beneath one,feeling its puff of spiced air on his face, and found himself staring atthe hash of scars and the rigid ropes of hyperextended muscle andjoints. Tentatively, he traced the scars with his thumbs, then, when shemade no move to stop him, he dug his thumbs into the muscles, into theirtension.

  He kneaded at her flesh, grinding hard at the knots and feeling themgive way, briskly rubbing the spots where they'd been to get the bloodgoing. Her wings flapped gently around him as he worked, not caring thathis body was pretzeled into a knot of its own to reach her back, sincehe didn't want to break the spell to ask her to move over to give him abetter angle.

  He could smell her armpit and her wings and her hair and he closed hiseyes and worked by touch, following scar to muscle, muscle to knot,working his way the length and breadth of her back, following the muscleup from the ridge of her iliac crest like a treasure trail to the muscleof her left wing, which was softly twitching with pleasure.

  She went perfectly still again when he took the wing in his hands. Ithad its own geometry, hard to understand and irresistible. He followedthe mysterious and powerful muscles and bones, the vast expanses ofcartilage, finding knots and squeezing them, kneading her as he'dkneaded her back, and she groaned and went limp, leaning back againsthim so that his face was in her hair and smelling her scalp oil andstale shampoo and sweat. It was all he could do to keep himself fromburying his face in her hair and gnawing at the muscles at the base ofher skull.

  He moved as slow as a seaweed and ran his hands over to her other wing,giving it the same treatment. He was rock-hard, pressed against her, herwings all around him. He traced the line of her jaw to her chin, andthey were breathing in unison, and his fingers found the tense place atthe hinge and worked there, too.

  Then he brushed against her bruised cheek and she startled, and thatshocked him back to reality. He dropped his hands to his sides and thenstood, realized his erection was straining at his shorts, sat back downagain in one of the club chairs, and crossed his legs.

  "Well," he said.

  Mimi unfolded her wings over the sofa-back and let them spread out, thenleaned back, eyes closed.

  "You should try the ice-pack again," he said weakly. She groped blindlyfor it and draped it over her face.

  "Thank you," she sighed.

  He suppressed the urge to apologize. "You're welcome," he said.

  "It started last week," she said. "My wings had gotten longer. Toolong. Krishna came home from the club and he was drunk and he wantedsex. Wanted me on the bottom. I couldn't. My wings. He wanted to get theknife right away and cut them off. We do it about four times a year,using a big serrated hunting knife he bought at a sporting-goods storeon Yonge Street, one of those places that sells dud grenades and camoupants and tasers."

  She opened her eyes and looked at him, then closed them. He shivered anda goose walked over his grave.

  "We do it in the tub. I stand in the tub, naked, and he saws off thewings right to my shoulders. I don't bleed much. He gives me a towel tobite on while he cuts. To scream into. And then we put them in gardentrash bags and he puts them out just before the garbage men arrive, sothe neighborhood dogs don't get at them. For the meat."

  He noticed that he was gripping the arm rests so tightly that his handswere cramping. He pried them loose and tucked them under his thighs.

  "He dragged me into the bathroom. One second, we were rolling around inbed, giggling like kids in love, and then he had me so hard by thewrist, dragging me naked to the bathroom, his knife in his other fist. Ihad to keep quiet, so that I wouldn't wake Link and Natalie, but he washurting me, and I was scared. I tried to say something to him, but Icould only squeak. He hurled me into the tub and I cracked my headagainst the tile. I cried out and he crossed the bathroom and put hishand over my mouth and nose and then I couldn't breathe, and my head wasswimming.

  "He was naked and hard, and he had the knife in his fist, not like forslicing, but for stabbing, and his eyes were red from the smoke at theclub, and the bathroom filled with the booze-breath smell, and I sankdown in the tub, shrinking away from him as he grabbed for me.

  "He -- *growled*. Saw that I was staring at theknife. Smiled. Horribly. There's a piece of granite we use for a soapdish, balanced in the corner of the tub. Without thinking, I grabbed itand threw it as hard as I could at him. It broke his nose and he closedhis eyes and reached for his face and I wrapped him up in the showercurtain and grabbed his arm and bit at the base of his thumb so hard Iheard a bone break and he dropped the knife. I grabbed it and ran backto our room and threw it out the window and started to get dressed."

  She'd fallen into a monotone now, but her wingtips twitched and herknees bounced like her motor was idling on high. She jiggled.

  "You don't have to tell me this," he said.

  She took off the ice pack. "Yes, I do," she said. Her eyes seemed tohave sunk into her skull, vanishing into dark pits. He'd thought hereyes were blue, or green, but they looked black now.

  "All right," he said.

  "All right," she said. "He came through the door and I didn't scream. Ididn't want to wake up Link and Natalie. Isn't that stupid? But Icouldn't get my sweatshirt on, and they would have seen my wings. Helooked like he was going to kill me. Really. Hands in claws. Teethout. Crouched down low like a chimp, ready to grab, ready to swing. AndI was back in a corner again, just wearing track pants. He didn't havethe knife thi
s time, though.

  "When he came for me, I went limp, like I was too scared to move, andsqueezed my eyes shut. Listened to his footsteps approach. Felt thecreak of the bed as he stepped up on it. Felt his breath as he reachedfor me.

  "I exploded. I've read books on women's self-defense, and they talkabout doing that, about exploding. You gather in all your energy andsqueeze it tight, and then blamo boom, you explode. I was aiming for hissoft parts: Balls. Eyes. Nose. Sternum. Ears. I'd misjudged where hewas, though, so I missed most of my targets.

  "And then he was on me, kneeling on my tits, hands at my throat. Ibucked him but I couldn't get him off. My chest and throat were crushed,my wings splayed out behind me. I flapped them and saw his hair move inthe breeze. He was sweating hard, off his forehead and off his nose andlips. It was all so detailed. And silent. Neither of us made a soundlouder than a grunt. Quieter than our sex noises. *Now* I wanted toscream, *wanted* to wake up Link and Natalie, but I couldn't get abreath.

  "I worked one hand free and I reached for the erection that I could feeljust below my tits, reached as fast as a striking snake, grabbed it,grabbed his balls, and I yanked and I squeezed like I was trying to tearthem off.

  "I was.

  "Now *he* was trying to get away and I had him cornered. I keptsqueezing. That's when he kicked me in the face. I was dazed. He kickedme twice more, and I ran downstairs and