The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  May led him up the stairs and beyond a door he had never been through before. Even though they were out, her parents’ bedroom smelled strongly of grownup, especially the closet, where the dark lines of suits swung gently on their hangers. Bobby was reasonably tall for his age, as tall as many grownups, May’s father included.

  The suit trousers itched his legs and the waist was loose, but not so loose as to fall down. He knotted a tie over a white shirt, pulled on the jacket. May got some oily stuff from the dresser, worked it into his hair and combed it smooth. Then she stood beside him as he studied himself in the mirror. Dark and purposeful, two strange grownups gazed back. He glanced down at himself, hardly believing that it was true. He pulled a serious face back at the mirror, the sort you might see behind the counter at a bank. Then he started to chuckle. And May began to laugh. It was so inconceivably easy. They were doubled over, their bellies aching. They held each other tight. They just couldn’t stop.

  An hour later, May closed the front door and turned the dead bolt. Heels clipping the pavement, they walked to the bus stop. Perhaps in deference to their new status as grownups, the next bus into town came exactly when it was due. They traveled on the top deck, which was almost empty apart from a gaggle of cleaning ladies at the back. They were busy talking, and the driver hadn’t even bothered to look up when he gave them two straight adult fares (don’t say please, May had whispered as the tall lights of the 175 had pulled into the stop, grownups don’t do that kind of thing). Dressed in his strange grownup clothes, his back spreading huge inside the jacket shoulder pads, Bobby felt confident anyway. Like May said, the grownup clothes changed you inside.

  They got off outside Albee’s Quick Restaurant and Take Away. For some reason, May wanted to try visiting a place where they were actually known. Bobby was too far gone with excitement to argue about taking an unnecessary extra risk. Her manner was smooth; he doubted if anyone else would have noticed the wildness in her eyes beneath the makeup. Rather than dodge the cars across the road, they waited for a big gap and walked slowly, sedately. The lights of Albee’s glowed out to greet them. They opened the door to grownup laughter, the smell of smoke and grownup sweat. People nodded and smiled, then moved to let them through. Albee grinned at them from the bar, eager to please, the way the teachers were at school when the principal came unexpectedly into class. He said Good evening Sir and What’ll it be. Bobby heard his own voice say something calm and easy in reply. He raked a stool back for May and she sat down, tucking her dress neatly under her thighs. He glanced around as drinks were served, half expecting the other grownups to float up from their chairs, to begin to fly. They’d been here after school a hundred times, but this was a different world.

  It was the same on a dozen other nights, whenever they hit on an excuse that they had the nerve to use on their unquestioning parents. Albee’s, they found, was much further from the true heart of the grownup world than they’d imagined. They found hotel bars where real fountains tinkled and the drinks were served chilled on paper coasters that stuck to the bottom of the glass. There were loud pubs where you could hardly stand up for the yellow-lit crush and getting served was an evening’s endeavor. There were restaurants where you were offered bowls brimming with crackers and salted nuts just to sit and read the crisply printed menus and say Well Thanks, But It Doesn’t Look As Though Our Friends Are Coming And The Baby Sitter You Know.… Places they had seen day in and day out through their whole lives were changed by the darkness, the hot charge of car fumes, buzzing street lights, glittering smiles, the smell of perfume, changed beyond recognition to whispering palaces of crystal and velvet.

  After changing at May’s house back into his sweatshirt and sneakers, Bobby would come home late, creeping down the hall in the bizarre ritual of pretending not to disturb his parents, whom he was certain would be listening open-eyed in the darkness from the first unavoidable creak of the front door. In the kitchen, he checked for new bottles of bitter milk. By the light of the open fridge door, he tipped the fluid down the sink, chased it away with a quick turn of the hot water faucet—which was quieter than the cold—and replaced it with a fresh mixture of spirit vinegar, lemon juice, milk, and flour.

  The summer holidays came. Bobby and May spent all their time together, evenings and days. Lying naked in the woods on the soft prickle of dry leaves, looking up at the green latticed sky. Bobby reached again toward May. He ran his hand down the curve of her belly. It was soft and sweet and hard, like an apple. Her breath quickened. He rolled onto his side, lowered his head to lick at her breasts. More than ever before, her nipples swelled amazingly to his tongue. But after a moment her back stiffened.

  “Just kiss me here,” she said, “my mouth,” gently cupping his head in her hands and drawing it up. “Don’t suck at me today, Bobby. I feel too tender.”

  Bobby acquiesced to the wonderful sense of her around him, filling the sky and the woods. She’d been sensitive about some of the things he did before, often complaining about tenderness and pain a few days before she started her bleeding. But the bleeding hadn’t happened for weeks, months.

  They still went out some nights, visiting the grownup places, living their unbelievable lie. Sometimes as he left the house, or coming back late with his head spinning from the drink and the things they’d done, Bobby would look up and see Mum’s face pale at the bedroom window. But he said nothing. And nothing was ever said. It was an elaborate dance, back to back, Mum and Dad displaying no knowledge or denial, each moment at the kitchen table and the rare occasions when they shared the lounge passing without question. A deception without deceit.

  The places they went to changed. From the smart rooms lapped with deep carpets and chrome they glided on a downward flight path through urine-reeking doorways. This was where the young grownups went, people they recognized as kids from assembly at school just a few years before. Bars where the fermented light only deepened the darkness, where the fat uncles sat alone as evening began, looking at the men and the women as the crowds thickened, looking away.

  Bobby and May made friends, people who either didn’t notice what they were or didn’t care. Hands raised and waving through the chaos and empty glasses. Hey Bobby, May, over here, sit yourselves right down here. Place for the old butt. Jokes to be told, lips licked, lewd eyes rolled, skirt hems pulled firmly down then allowed to roll far up again. Glimpses of things that shouldn’t be seen. They were good at pretending to be grownups by now, almost better than the grownups themselves. For the purposes of the night, Bobby was in town from a university in the city, studying whatever came into his head. May was deadly serious or laughing, saying my God, you wouldn’t believe the crap I have to put up with at the office, the factory, the shop. Playing it to a tee. And I’m truly glad to be here and now with you all before it starts again in the morning.

  Time broke in beery waves. The account at the bank that Bobby had been nurturing for some unspecified grownup need sunk to an all-time low. But it could have been worse—they were a popular couple, almost as much in demand as the unattached fat uncles when a few drinks had gone down. They hardly ever had to put in for a round.

  The best part was when they came close to discovery. A neighbor who probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place, a family friend, a teacher. Then once it was Bobby’s brother Tony. Late, and he had his arms around a fat uncle, his face sheened with sweat. He was grinning and whispering wet lips close to his ear. There was a woman with them too, her hands straying quick and hard over both of their bodies. It wasn’t Marion.

  “Let’s go,” Bobby said. There was a limit to how far you could take a risk. But May would have none of it. She stared straight at Tony through the swaying bodies, challenging him to notice.

  For a moment, his eyes were on them, his expression drifting back from lust. Bobby covered his hand with his mouth, feeling the grownup clothes and confidence dissolve around him, the schoolkid inside screaming to get out. Tony made to speak, but there was no chanc
e of hearing. In another moment, he vanished into the mass of the crowd.

  Now that the danger had passed, it was the best time of all; catching Tony out in a way that he could never explain. Laughter bursting inside them, they ran out into the sudden cool of the night. May held onto him and her lips were over his face, breathless and trembling from the sudden heightening of the risk. He held tight to her, swaying, not caring about the cars, the grownups stumbling by, pulling her close, feeling the taut rounded swell of her full breasts and belly that excited him so.

  “Do you want to be like them?” she whispered. “Want to be a fool and a grownup?”

  “Never.” He leaned back and shouted it at the stars. “Never!”

  Arm in arm, they swayed down the pavement toward the bus stop. Incredibly, Tuesday was coming around again tomorrow; Doc Halstead would be pulling up the drive at home at about eleven, washing his hands one more time and saying How Are You My Man before taking best-china coffee with Mum in the lounge, whispering things he could never quite hear. May’s eyes were eager, gleaming with the town lights, drinking it all in. More than him, she hated this world and loved it. Sometimes, when things were swirling, she reminded him of a true grownup. It all seemed far away from that evening in town after biology, leaning on the bridge alone after leaving Albee’s and gazing down at the river, May saying I won’t go through with it, Bobby, I’m not just some kid acting funny. As though something as easy as fooling around with the bitter milk could make that much of a difference.

  Doctor Halstead arrived next morning only minutes after Bobby had finished breakfast and dressed. In the spare bedroom, he spread out his rubber and steel. He dried his hands and held the big syringe up to the light before leaning down.

  Bobby smeared the fresh bead of blood over the bruises on his forearm, then licked the salt off his fingertips.

  Doctor Halstead was watching the readouts. The paper feed gave a burp and chattered out a thin strip like a supermarket receipt. The doc tore it off, looked at it for a moment, and tutted before screwing it into a ball. He pressed a button that flattened the dials, pressed another to make them drift up again.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  The printer chattered again. He tore it off. “You’ve still got some way to go.”

  “How many weeks?”

  “If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked that question.…”

  “Don’t you know?”

  He handed Bobby the printout. Faint figures and percentages. The machine needed a new ribbon.

  “Us grownups don’t know everything. I know it seems that way.”

  “Most of my friends have gone.” He didn’t want to mention May, although he guessed Mum had told him anyway. “How long can it go on for?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “What if nothing happens?”

  “Something always happens.”

  He gave Bobby a smile.

  Bobby and May went out again that night. A place they’d never tried before, a few stops out of town, with a spluttering neon sign, a shack motel at the back, and a dusty parking area for the big container rigs. The inside was huge, with bare boards and patches of linoleum, games machines lining the walls, too big to fill with anything but smoke and patches of yellowed silence on even the busiest of nights. Being a Wednesday, and the grownups’ pay packets being thin until the weekend, it was quiet. They sat alone in the smoggy space for most of the evening. They didn’t know anyone, and for once it seemed that no one wanted to know them. Bobby kept thinking of the way Doctor Halstead had checked the readouts, checked them again. And he knew May had her own weekly test the following afternoon. It wasn’t going to be one of their better nights. May looked pale. She went out to the ladies room far more often than their slow consumption of the cheap bottled beer would explain. Once, when she came back and leaned forward to tell him something, he realized that the rain had gone from her breath. He smelled vomit.

  At about ten, a fat uncle crossed the room, taking a drunken detour around the chairs.

  “Haven’t seen you two here before,” he said, his belly swaying above the table, close to their faces. “I’ve got a contract delivering groceries from here to the city and back. Every other day, I’m here.”

  “We must have missed you.”

  He squinted down at them, still swaying but now seeming less than drunk. For places like here, Bobby and May wore casual clothes. Bobby dressed the way Dad did for evenings at home, in an open-collared striped shirt and trousers that looked as though they had started out as part of a work suit. May hadn’t put on much makeup, which she said she hated anyway. Bobby wondered if they were growing complacent, if this fat uncle hadn’t seen what all the other grownups had apparently failed to notice.

  “Mind if I…” The uncle reached for a chair and turned it around, sat down with his legs wide and his arms and belly propped against the backrest. “Where are you from anyway?”

  Bobby and May exchanged secret smiles. Now they were in their element, back in the territory of the university in the city, the office, the shop, the grownup places that had developed a life of their own through frequent retelling.

  It was pleasant to talk to an uncle on equal terms for a change, away from the pawings and twittering of other grownups which usually surrounded them. Bobby felt that he had a lot of questions to ask, but the biggest one was answered immediately by this uncle’s cautious but friendly manner, by the way he spoke of his job and the problems he was having trying to find an apartment. In all the obvious ways, he was just like any other young grownup. He bought them a drink. It seemed polite to buy him one in return, then—what the hell—a chaser. Soon, they were laughing. People were watching, smiling but keeping their distance across the ranks of empty tables.

  Bobby knew what was happening, but he was curious to see how far it would go. He saw a plump hand stray to May’s arm—still covered by a long sleeved shirt to hide the bruises—then up to her shoulder. He saw the way she reacted by not doing anything.

  “You don’t know how lonely it gets,” the uncle said, leaning forward, his arm around Bobby’s back too, his hand reaching down. “Always on the road. I stay here, you know. Most Wednesdays. A lot of them sleep out in the cab. But they pay you for it and I like to lie on something soft. Just out the back.” He nodded. “Through that door, the way you came in, left past the kitchens.”

  “Will you show us?” May asked, looking at Bobby. “I think we’d like to see.”

  The motel room was small. Someone had tried to do it up years before, but the print had rubbed off the wallpaper by the door and above the green bed. The curtains had shrunk, and Bobby could still see the parking lot and the lights of the road. A sliding door led to a toilet and the sound of a dripping tap.

  The fat uncle sat down. The bed squealed. Bobby and May remained standing, but if the uncle saw their nervousness he didn’t comment. He seemed more relaxed now, easy with the drink and the certainty of what they were going to do. He unlaced his boots and peeled off his socks, twiddling his toes with a sigh that reminded Bobby of Dad at the end of a hard day. He was wearing a sweatshirt that had once said something. He pulled it off over his head with his hands on the waistband, the way a girl might do, threw it onto the rug beside his feet. He had an undershirt on underneath. The hems were unraveling, but he and it looked clean enough, and he smelt a lot better than Uncle Lew did at close quarters, like unbaked dough. He pulled the undershirt off too. His breasts were much bigger than May’s. There was hardly any hair under his arms. Bobby stared at the bruised scar that began under his ribcage and vanished beneath the wide band of his jeans, slightly moist where it threatened to part.

  “You’re going to stay dressed, are you?” he said with a grin. He scratched himself and the springs squealed some more. “This goddamn bed’s a problem.”

  “We’d like to watch,” May said. “For now, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Th
at’s great by me. I’m not fussy … I mean…” he stood up and stepped out of his trousers and underpants in one movement. “Well, you know what I mean.”

  Under the huge flap of his belly, Bobby couldn’t see much of what lay beneath. Just darkness and hair. Every night, he thought, a million times throughout the world, this is going on. Yet he couldn’t believe it, couldn’t even believe it about his parents with Uncle Lew, even though he’d seen them once on that hot afternoon.

  “Tell you what,” the uncle said. “It’s been a long day. I think you’d both appreciate it if yours truly freshened up a bit.” He went over to Bobby, brushed the fine hairs at the back of his neck with soft fingers. “I won’t be a mo. You two sort yourselves out, eh?”

  He waddled off into the bathroom, slid the door shut behind him. They heard the toilet seat bang down, a sigh, and the whisper of moving flesh. Then a prolonged fart. A pause. A splash. Then another.

  May looked at Bobby. Her face reddened. She covered her mouth to block the laughter. Bobby’s chest heaved. He covered his mouth too. He couldn’t help it: the joke was incredibly strong. Signaling to Bobby, tears brimming in her eyes, May stooped to pick up the sweatshirt, the shoes, the undershirt. Bobby gathered the jeans. There were more clothes heaped in a corner. They took those too, easing the door open as quietly as they could before the laughter rolled them over like a high wind.

  They sprinted madly across the parking lot, down the road, into the night.

  * * *

  Next morning, the sky was drab. It seemed to Bobby like the start of the end of summer, the first of the grey veils that would eventually thicken to autumn. Downstairs, Mum was humming. He went first into the kitchen, not that he wanted to see her, but he needed to re-establish the charade of them ignoring his nights away from the house. One day, he was sure, it would break, she’d have a letter from the police, the doctor, the owner of some bar, a fact that couldn’t be ignored.

  “It’s you,” she said. Uncharacteristically, she kissed him. He’d been taller than her for a year or two, she didn’t need to bend down, but it still felt that way. “Do you want anything from the supermarket? I’m off in a few minutes.”