“Whatever the bitch wants,” whispered Little Hitler.
Oh, God. Had he escaped? I thought his room was locked and double bolted from the outside. I tried to warn Beth, but I was buried too deeply inside my own head. Extreme home makeover with a nail gun and duct tape. And the worst part was feeling that I was not alone, that something new lurked in the corners, something darker than dead shadows and colder than graveyard snow.
I watched Little Hitler lift the strands of her hair, golden under the starlight. He was imagining it a scalp.
“So soft, so soft,” Mister Milktoast said, stealing my words, eager to try on her brown hat. “A cornsilk of the heavens, a tassel for angels. Hair hassle.”
Beth laughed. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“Inside story. You know. Still waters run deep like mixed metaphors in the night, as a friend of mine would say. They used to call him ‘The Poet.’”
“You’re a strange one, Mr. Coldiron. And maybe that’s what I like about you.”
“Not so strange,” said Bookworm, and I was relieved, because Bookworm might save her from the others. He alone might afford some tenderness and compassion, even though he’d learned those qualities from works of fiction. Bookworm caressed Beth’s shoulders, and through him, I could feel the burning of her skin, her blood hot from pleasure. At least I had given a gift of pleasure, however fleeting.
That’s what you think, Loverboy called from the front porch. Those squeals were all Loverboy. While you were busy being pleasant, I was busy being busy.
“That was me, you bastard,” I silently screamed.
Who do you think runs this little flesh factory, you or us?
No, I saw, I felt her, I tasted, smelled. I ran hands over her skin that was smooth as talcum. It was the drums of my heart that pounded across the jungle of night. It was my joy that rushed from my insides like an ice volcano. It was me, me, me.
“Richard?” Beth asked, collecting her breath.
“Hmm, Hostess Ho-Ho?” said Loverboy.
“You’re being awfully quiet. What are you thinking about?”
“Just remembering.”
“Remembering what? Are you finally going to tell me the great Coldiron secret, now that you’ve exposed me?”
“No secret, Dollface. Like I told you, what you see is what you get,” Loverboy said.
“What about in the dark, when you can’t see anything?”
“Then you get whatever I give you.”
Do her again, Little Hitler pleaded, anxious for proxy pleasure, hoping it would hurt.
Shut your piehole, Loverboy grunted. I didn’t ask for an audience. Having Richard along is plenty enough company. Don’t need nobody else playing paddycake in my bakery.
“And what do you feel, Beth?” Loverboy said in his false husky voice.
“I feel something.” She laughed, her hands quick as hummingbirds.
Little Hitler was ecstatic, brought to his fullest life by someone else’s passion and the unhappy ending sure to follow. Mister Milktoast and Bookworm fluttered like trapped birds against the glass windows of the Bone House. I watched alone, absorbing sensations through the filter of my Little People. And I felt my shadow behind me, floating up the back of my brain like a manta ray, black wings wide, swimming from some forbidden and forgotten abyss.
I knew instantly that it was somehow drawn by pain. My pain. Not Loverboy’s tawdry diversions, not Little Hitler’s sycophantic eavesdropping, not Mister Milktoast’s polite but gossipy interest, not Bookworm’s intellectual curiosity. Only my anguish and guilt from again being too weak to save the one I thought I loved.
Guilt for food, a feast of failure, victuals of victimhood.
And the shadow hungered.
Even Mister Milktoast noticed it, turning his attention from Beth’s soft wet places.
Lo, what dark through yon window breaks? he asked me.
More worries, old friend, I said.
I’ll protect us, Mister Milktoast said.
No. This isn’t like it used to be. You can’t just send me away, inside, the way you did when the boots came. Because, you see, I’m already inside.
And then Loverboy was inside, too, inside Beth, and the shadow dissolved, perhaps driven away by the bright wall of sensation. And silent bells rang through the night, invisible rockets cut their white arcs, velvet waterfalls ran their course, time swallowed its own ticking heart. But those things were not for me.
Act Two was all Loverboy, and he stole the show until the curtain fell.
The critics raved.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Something smells good,” Beth said.
She stood on the landing, my bathrobe held closed over her body with one delicate arm. I dared a glance at her face and she was smiling, her cheeks faintly pinked. So she didn’t know.
But how could she know? Loverboy looked just like me.
“How do you like your eggs?” I asked. “Scrambled or Freud?”
“Not only good in bed, but he cooks, too. I could get used to this.”
She stepped down the carpeted stairs and came to me. I stared at the eggs, at chickens that would never be born, while the whites and yolks congealed from the heat. Beth kissed the back of my neck.
“You were something else last night. That first time...” she whistled lightly. “That was tender and moving. But the second and third times, you were like a man possessed.”
I stirred the eggs with a spatula. Bacon lay cooling on a plate and a gallon of orange juice sweated by the stove. Grits. This meal needed grits.
“Richard?” Beth asked, worry in her voice. “Is something wrong?”
I gave her the Milktoast smile. “No. I had a wonderful time.”
She pulled the robe more securely over her body. “For a second there, I thought you were ashamed. I know I’m not as pretty in the daylight...”
I turned, dropping the spatula in the skillet. “You’re beautiful.”
It wasn’t her fault—she wasn’t yet a contestant in the Blame Game. She shouldn’t have to suffer for my shortcomings. And if pretending saved her from being hurt, then I would pretend for a thousand years.
Besides, I was used to taking the blame. Hell, they said I enjoyed it, and who was I to argue with them?
I hugged her as the eggs sizzled behind me.
“Why did you sneak off this morning? I wanted to wake up in your arms, Richard.”
Because I wasn’t sure whose arms they would be. And that was why I slipped out of half-forgotten dreams as well. Because while I slept, I knew that something else waded through the marrow of the Bone House. And while I was awake, it dreamed. Terrible dreams, sweat-stained pillows.
We had breakfast and coffee and I drove her to her apartment, concentrating on the road. Beth talked about a test she had tomorrow, biology or some other science. I nodded just enough to keep her talking as the wheels whispered on the asphalt.
I pulled into her driveway. She said she wanted to change clothes before class. She kissed me again and opened the door.
“Phone me?” she said, leaning toward me. Her breasts swayed tantalizingly, but Loverboy didn’t rise to the yeasty treat. But he grinned from his window. Maybe even winked.
“Sure, Beth.”
“Oh, and one more thing. Remember when I said I like to be careful?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I wasn’t careful enough.”
Did she mean careful about not falling in love? And that she now meant...
“Do you mean careful about falling in love?” I asked.
“Why are you so anxious to talk about that?” She frowned. “We don’t need worries right now, remember? That’s not what I meant.”
“What, then?”
She smiled again, eyes squinting. “Birth control. Protection. I got so carried away that I forgot.”
What I fool I was. Unprotected love.
It was a missed conception, Mister Milktoast said.
Shut up, smartass. This is se
rious.
“Hey, Beth, I’m sorry. I assumed—”
“Takes two to tango, handsome. Heat of the moment and all that.”
“I should have...”
She shook her head. “I can take a pill when I get inside. Should be okay. Don’t worry about it.”
Yeah, Loverboy said. Make like a morning-after pill and get the fuck out.
“Well, at least you don’t have to worry about—um...”
“Disease?” She laughed. “The upside of sleeping with a virgin. But remember, good things are worth a little risk.”
Which good thing? Loverboy? I didn’t want to think about that.
And Little Hitler? The very embodiment of unsafe sex.
I looked toward Beth’s apartment, the bottom of a two-story duplex. A curtain parted and I saw half of a face watching us. Loverboy twitched. The face was female.
“Bye, Richard. Call me later.” Beth said. She blew me a kiss and then she was gone. Then I was gone, too, deep inside myself, vacuumed into the dead black throat of my own mind. The car door slammed as if it were a door to another universe.
Loverboy rolled down the window. “When do I get to meet your roommate, Honey Buns?”
“Sooner or later,” she said. Then she smiled again. “Because I plan on having you over in a few days. Maybe to spend the night.”
Loverboy watched as she jiggled up the sidewalk to the door, then she waved and went inside. The pale face in the window stared a moment longer before the curtain dropped. Little Hitler drove to work, ten miles over the speed limit. Bookworm slowed him down when we reached the Shady Valley town limits.
It was my favorite time of morning at the bookstore, when the sun was at just the right angle to shine fully onto the varnished oak flooring. It lit up the three round tables in the reading corner, where the local poets liked to sit and scratch their beards thoughtfully, with the blank paper staring up into their faces as if daring them to make a mark. The poets never sat there in the morning because the light would give away the pallor of their skin and strip away all mystery. They only came at dusk, when the corner was draped in dramatic shadows, where they hunched like toothless ghosts who have returned to an immolated retirement home.
The smell of French vanilla coffee filled the store, settling like dust on the rows of books, seeping into the pages as if to make the words more exotic. Miss Billingsly liked to have the coffee on hand for the customers. She believed it kept them in the store longer and sped them around the aisles. But sometimes they spilled on the merchandise. Two days earlier, Arlie Wesson, an elderly local who always wore a camouflaged hunting vest, had turned jittery. He sloshed his coffee over a stack of self-help books.
I was cradling my own coffee that morning with both hands, leaning over the counter that made a rectangular island in the front of the store. I was thinking about Beth, about skin and sin, about what had happened after Loverboy took over.
What if it was Loverboy she really liked? What if Loverboy was the one who had connected with her on the most intimate and primal level?
While I was thinking, Bookworm came out and slipped into my skin. He was usually on duty at work, the one with the excellent memory that kept track of new releases and International Standard Book Numbers. He found joy in the orderly shelves and the hush of readers and the odor of cream paper and ink. And, of course, the lies inherent in fiction.
He also had the quiet charm that delighted the little old ladies who frequented the store. Loverboy dozed, unless an attractive woman walked in. Little Hitler sulked in his dark corner, plotting revenge for imagined slights. Mister Milktoast hovered, ready to placate unhappy customers. The black shadow behind them stayed silent, sleepy, the most elusive of imaginary friends.
Bookworm looked around the store. A retiree in a fluorescent blue jogging suit was puttering around in the gardening section, and in the back, a middle-aged woman was busy slapping at the hands of her two little children, who kept reaching for the shiny Thomas the Tank Engine books. Satisfied that all was normal, Bookworm gave my body back.
The bell over the door rang. I turned, Loverboy a fraction of a second behind.
She was young. She wore a periwinkle dress with a pattern of yellow flowers. I watched her through the steam of my coffee, trying to fit her into a genre.
She had skin of mystery, lips of romance, and hair of poetry, but her eyes were science fiction.
My heart did a tiny somersault as she headed for the horror section. She smiled as she passed.
Loverboy throbbed to life.
“Good morning,” Loverboy said. “Let me know if I can help you.”
...out of those clothes and onto my weasel meat, he silently added.
“Just looking,” she said.
So am I, Sweetbreads. Just keep moving and shaking.
She walked down the aisle as if through a gauntlet of knowledge, classical literature on the left, philosophy and religion on the right. The flooring creaked under her sandals, but the footfalls were swallowed by the walls of books. She stopped in front of the horror shelves like a worshipper before a dark shrine.
Loverboy watched as she scanned the rows of titles, which were alphabetized by author. Barker, Campbell, Keene, three shelves of King, Koontz, Lovecraft, Nicholson, Rice, Saul, Straub. The great masters who had wrestled their demons, pinning them onto paper. Plus some hacks.
She must have felt Loverboy’s eyes on her, burning and peering and leering and stripping. She looked back with eyes like a kitten’s, quick and gray.
“Looking for anything in particular?” I asked, walking around the counter. I stepped close enough to smell the faint honey of her red hair.
“I’m looking for a present for my boyfriend. His birthday is next week.” She twirled a strand of hair between her fingers. I would have bet she tossed a mean lariat.
Fit to be tied, Mister Milktoast said, sounding scarily like Loverboy.
“Does he like horror?”
“Not really. But I do, sometimes.”
“You go to Westridge?”
“Yeah. I’m majoring in English.”
“Liberal arts, uh?”
“No, not arts. Just, like, reading and stuff.”
A faint whiff of patchouli rose off her neck like a morning mist or a hippie’s hangover.
“We give a five-percent discount to students. When you find what you’re looking for,
I’ll fill you out a discount card. Your boyfriend, what does he like?”
“How-to. Like motorcycles and stuff. And science stuff.” Her lips were in a constant smile, and her science fiction eyes played plot twists.
“We have an excellent science section,” said Bookworm. “I’d be glad to show it to you. Would you like a cup of coffee? It’s free.”
“Sure, that would be cool.”
“Actually, it’s warm. Cream or sugar?”
“Just cream, please.”
Heh heh, she wants some cream, Loverboy said.
Bookworm showed her the how-to section and the science section, and went up front to get her coffee. The other customers were still browsing, like cattle grazing. Janet Evanovich, Stephanie Meyer, the latest bestselling guide to getting rich quick through the marketing of get-rich-quick books. The cream made white coils in the coffee. When Bookworm carried the mug back to her, she was reading the jacket liner of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.
“That would make an excellent gift.” I handed her the coffee. “Unfortunately, it’s fairly expensive. All those color photographs really jack up the price.”
“Steve would really get off on this, though.”
“$49.95, plus tax. That’s what I call real love.”
“Well...he’s sort of like bad habit that won’t go away. You know, like when you scratch when you’re not supposed to. It feels good for a while, but then you have to itch some more.” She looked down at the open book. “But he’d really love this. He freaks out on space.”
She sipped her coffee. I watched her delicious
bicep tighten from the weight of the book. Why was I doing this? I had dipped a toe into the waters of romance with Beth, then dove headfirst without looking into the black river of the heart, and drowned like a rat jumping a sinking ship. Did I still thirst?
No, not thirst.
Hunger.
Hunger that arose from deep inside, away from the cluttered kitchen of the Bone House. Hunger from somewhere beyond, somewhere dark.
Loverboy? Where was that sonovabitch? I swear, he’s the kind of guy you don’t want to turn your back on.
“I don’t think I want to spend that much money,” she said, tossing her hair like a colt tosses its mane. “It’s the thought that counts, you know.”
She slid the book back into its space on the shelf.
“What kind of English Lit do you like?” I asked, as she tilted her head to read the titles.
“I don’t like much of it. I’m up to the American stuff right now. Thoreau is about as dull as watching paint dry, and Twain’s okay but they skip through him real fast, ‘cause he says ‘nigger’ and stuff. Hemingway’s a real asshole. And Faulkner, Jesus, what a joke he is.”
“Look up ‘enigmatic’ in the dictionary, and the definition is ‘a Faulkner scholar,’“ Bookworm said, shyness giving way to interest. “You can analyze his work into circles. I think ‘The sound and the fury, signifying nothing’ sums up his career quite nicely.”
She laughed and pulled out a volume on evolution by Stephen Jay Gould, leaving a gap like a wound on the bookshelf.
“Why are you studying literature if you don’t like it?” I asked, wondering if I should tell her I was a writer. Or was going to be, as soon as I got around to it.
“Well, I wanted to study music, play the clarinet or something, but the practice time sucks donkey. And then if you graduate, all you can do is teach. I guess it’s sort of the same with English, but I already know English. It doesn’t have all these scales, you know what I mean?”
She read the jacket liner of the Gould book. “Huh. This guy says bacteria is the present, past, and future ruler of earth. Bizarre.”
She wrinkled her nose as if an insect had landed on it. “I changed my mind about getting Steve a book. I think I’ll buy something for myself.”
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