The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  In February I celebrated her birthday by myself with a bottle of champagne. I couldn’t even properly toast her because I didn’t know her name for today.

  In April I was home at ten on Saturday night, when the phone rang. “Win,” she said, “Aunt Bett died Monday, and we buried her Wednesday. I left. I’ll be all right. I wanted you to know. Thank you, Win. Thank you.” That was all. The line buzzed and hummed and I stared at the wall behind the telephone stand.

  Within the hour Kersh was there. “Who is Aunt Bett?” he demanded. I told him. He regarded me for a time, his face closed, the hard glint in his eyes. “You turned her into a street walker, Seton. She’s in New York. It’s little girls like her that grease the wheels that keep the city rolling. How many guys you suppose she’ll have to blow tomorrow to make enough bread to stay alive?”

  I wanted to kill him.

  Winter into spring, spring into summer, the pace set in time immemorial; so it went. I put her out of mind; how big was she, how mature, how was she living, was she surviving, had they found her…? There were hours at a stretch that I didn’t wonder what her name was today.

  August, a heavy sultry month, with thunderstorms and windstorms and heat curtains rising from wet pavement, and visible steam at arm-length distance. Kersh came to see me. He was carrying a light-weight jacket, his shirt moist, his face moist. “You’re selling out here?” he asked on the front porch.

  I motioned him inside where the air conditioner failed to squeeze the humidity out of the air, merely reduced it somewhat. It always felt good for a couple of minutes. “So?”

  “Heard you had a tempting offer,” he said, and followed me to the living room, where he sank down into a leather-covered chair and sighed. “Can’t take the heat,” he explained.

  “What do you want?”

  “Nothing.” He held up his hand. “Honestly, Seton, nothing. Just heard you might be selling the business, wondered.”

  “I might be. Haven’t decided.”

  “You’re not exactly what they call a quick decision maker,” he commented. “She’s still out there.”

  I shrugged. “You want some iced tea?”

  “Yeah, that would be good.” He followed me to the kitchen and watched while I prepared two glasses of tea. “We don’t want you to get out of touch,” he said easily. “You know, keep up the friendship, that sort of thing. Tired of the business?”

  Tired to death of it, I thought, and did not respond. I squeezed a lemon and added a dash of juice to each glass, handed one over to him. Tired of deadlines, bad photographs, delayed orders. Irritable with incompetence. Sick of dealing. Tired. Over the last two years I had had three tempting offers, the one he had got wind of, God alone knew how, the most tempting of the lot. The conglomerates couldn’t start companies for shit, but they liked to acquire them after they were up and running.

  What I wanted to do was load up the T-bird and drive, and drive, and drive. Take a picture now and then, sketch something or other now and then, and drive again.

  Very politely I waited until he had finished his tea before I asked, “I assume you came to deliver that message? Stay in touch? Anything else?”

  He drained the glass and set it down. “I figure, one, she’s dead. Six weeks for an inexperienced kid like that is a lifetime in the Big Apple. Or, two, she’s hooked on something. They like to hook them young. They never stray after that. Or, three, she’s sick, infected already with half a dozen baddies. The morgue, the hospitals, the jails, they’re keeping an eye out. We figure she’ll turn up in one of them. But in case she doesn’t, we still think she might want to renew old acquaintances with you. When she’s sick enough, or broke enough, or hurting enough. That’s the message. Just stay in touch. Be seeing you, Seton. I think I can find the front door again.”

  I let him find it alone. I hadn’t told anyone about the newest offer, yet they had found out. What else? What else was there to learn? I asked myself bitterly. His three possibilities seemed all too real, and they would be the first to know.

  August, hurricane month, a hurricane hanging off the coast, bringing torrential rains inland. Atlanta had two inches within six hours, and there was flooding, as usual, and stalled transportation, grounded planes. I stood at the office window watching the wakes being left by cars leaving work before the floods got worse. Gracie had gone already, Phil had left, the building was emptying fast. And the telephone rang.

  I never used the official answering procedure; I never remembered what it was. I merely said, “Hello.”

  “Win, darling, is it you? I thought I’d never find anyone I knew.”

  “Who is this?” I asked, irritated at the whispery promise of the voice.

  “Darling, and you said you’d never forget! It’s Francie, Win, darling. I’m stranded out at the airport.”

  Francie. I closed my eyes hard and clung to the telephone as if it were saving me from the abyss below.

  “I thought maybe you knew a way to get out here,” she went on, husky, suggestive. “I mean, we’re grounded, and they don’t know when they’ll fly. I got a room at the airport hotel, but I’m lonesome.”

  It’s Francie, she said. Sassy Francie? I asked. Just Francie.

  “If you can’t,” she said, “I mean, really can’t, that’s all right, sweetie. I just thought how nice it would be to get together, since I’m here. You know. Talk over old times.” She laughed a low dirty laugh. “You never got back to New Orleans, did you?”

  “Never did. Look, I’ll be out there as soon as I can get through. It will be good to see you after so long.”

  She laughed again and told me the bar she would be in, and hung up. I had broken out in a sweat and my hands were shaky.

  I took a deep breath and tried to think. They would have listened, they would be right there with me even if I didn’t know who they were. They would pick up a glass she touched, take away the table or chair, lift fingerprints, match them.… I told her to stay away from me, I thought furiously.

  This was exactly what they had waited for. But they wouldn’t connect her with that voice, I argued with myself; she sounded just like a New Orleans whore. They would be looking for a little girl, an adolescent girl. And they knew how long it had been since I had been with a woman. It would look even more suspicious if I didn’t go; she had practically undressed by phone. Maybe I could smudge any prints she might have left, find out what she was after, send her packing again.…

  I got there faster than I expected; most people were heading for town not the airport, since all flights had been grounded. The wind was gusting around forty to fifty miles an hour, and the rain was coming down hard enough to put another two inches on the ground before midnight. Her timing, her excuse for calling, everything she had done had been perfectly planned, and when I saw her, the deception seemed total. She looked like a high-priced New Orleans call girl. She had on black lace stockings, gloves to match, a narrow shiny black miniskirt, low-cut frilly blouse, and her hair was long, thick, and black. She fluttered fake eyelashes as she slipped off a bar stool. Every man in the place watched her slithering walk as she came to greet me.

  I felt as awkward as if I had entered a cathouse to find it full of Sunday-School teachers who all knew me. She laughed and took my arm. “Relax, honey. Let’s have a little drink and then go someplace quiet where we can … talk.” One of the men nearby laughed and turned back around; he said something to his companion, who also laughed, and Francie and I found a table.

  The bartender came over and called her doll and she called him handsome and ordered Perrier and then said, “Let’s see if I remember, Win, darling. It used to be a very dry gibson, vodka gibson. Am I right?”

  I nodded and she laughed at the bartender, winked, and said, “I never forget the important things.”

  As soon as he was gone I leaned forward and whispered, “We’ve got to get out of here. I’m being followed.”

  She kissed the tip of her finger and touched it to my lips, smiling. “Y
ou northern businessmen are always in such a hurry. So impetuous. Let me tell you about the flight, Win darling. I was never so scared in my life when that plane began to rock back and forth, up and down. Why, you couldn’t get me back on an airplane with a stick, not until the storm’s all the way gone, and the sun’s shining and all. And I believe it could go on raining all night, into tomorrow. You know?”

  She was perfect, I had to admit. She had the accent down, the flirtatious glances at other men, the way she flirted outrageously with the bartender, her chatter.… She had even thought about fingerprints. I drank the gibson, and she sipped her water, and eventually we were ready to leave. She took my arm and held it hard against her when we walked out. Perfect.

  In her room I hurried to close the drapes, and she turned on the radio and fiddled with it until she had loud rock, and then we sat on the side of the bed. Slowly she pulled off the black wig, and then peeled off her fake eyelashes. Her hair was brown and short with deep waves. Her eyes were golden brown.

  “Why did you come here?” I asked in a low voice. “Is anything wrong?”

  She shook her head. “I had to see you, let you see me, know it’s finished. I don’t know. Aunt Bett died, Win.”

  “I know. Where did you go? How did you live?”

  “She gave me most of the money you had been sending, and I had the other money you sent. It was a lot. She said to tell you thank you. She made me promise to say thank you for her.”

  I wanted very much to put my arm around her, draw her close and comfort her, but this was not the child I had found in Atlantic City. I couldn’t touch this young woman and I knew it. We spoke in low voices, sometimes hers was hardly audible as she told me how she had managed. “There was a school for girls, you know, with uniforms. I bought a uniform like theirs and no one paid any attention to me around there. And there was a big building where a lot of people slept in the halls, under the steps, and I did too.” I shuddered, and she said quickly, “It wasn’t bad. I bought some toothpaste, the kind without any smell or taste, and I would chew it up a little, mix it with spit, and then make little bubbles at the sides of my mouth, and no one came near me. I learned to roll my eyes funny too. Like this.” She rolled her eyes and looked demented.

  “Christ,” I muttered and ducked my head.

  She put her hand on my arm, then hurriedly pulled it away again. “It was okay,” she said softly. “Honest, it was. When I grew a little more I got other clothes and then I hung out around the university, I even got a room near there, and after that it was really all right. I went to the library and read a lot. I kept changing, though; you know, growing. Not taller. Just getting more mature. And I began to think about you, and how much I wanted to see you again.…” Her voice trailed off and stopped.

  After a moment I pointed to the wig at the foot of the bed. “Where did you learn that act?”

  She laughed deep in her throat. “Wasn’t I good! I read things, and saw movies, and I watched the women on the streets, how they walked, how they talked to men.”

  And never forgot a thing, I finished silently when she stopped again. I stood up and walked to the window and pulled the drape open a bit. The rain was pelting down harder than ever. No doubt the airport road would go under water within the hour. I pulled the drape shut and turned back to her. “Now what?” She obviously no longer needed help. Maybe a little money, but no more than that. She could go anywhere, be anyone she chose.

  “I don’t know,” she said in a voice so low that this time I couldn’t hear her over the loud radio, but read her lips, and remembered how she had moved her lips sounding out words less than a year ago.

  Abruptly she stood up and came across the room to take my hand. She headed for the bathroom with me in tow, and there she closed the door and turned on the shower full blast. “The radio was driving me batty,” she said with a faint smile. Almost instantly she was somber again. “I know how different I am, Win. It is possible that my mother used a drug that caused chromosomal damage, scrambling, breaks, something of the sort, and this difference will be self-limiting. I won’t breed true. But it is also possible that I am a true genetic sport, something new, and my children will be also. In either event, those people who want to study me won’t rest until I am dead. They will hunt and hunt. Intellectually, I don’t blame them; I would do the same in their place. But I’m not in their place, and I don’t know how it would feel to be like them, like you, like anyone else. This, how I am, feels natural. I don’t feel like a freak or a monster.”

  “God,” I whispered. “Oh, God, Francie. You’re not a monster. You’re a beautiful woman.”

  “Make love to me, Win. Please. You’ve taught me so much. Will you teach me that?” She touched my cheek.

  I reached past her and turned off the shower, then I picked her up and carried her to bed and taught her about love.

  “What I would like,” she whispered that night, “is to live on a mountainside with trees all around, and a fresh little brook with fish. And no people. But what would you do in such a place?”

  “Oh, I’d keep the house in good repair, cut wood for the fires, and I would paint and take pictures.”

  “Good,” she said with a nod, as if that were settled. “And I would teach the children the way Aunt Bett taught me. I would teach them the names of the flowers, and which plants you can eat, and how algebra works, and how to make biscuits, and where the Serengeti Plains are located. The girls would go out and meet men and pick carefully which ones, and then come home to have their babies.” She laughed softly. “Grandparents.”

  When she slept, I studied her face in the dim light from the bathroom. How very beautiful she had become, such fine bones, such soft skin. This, I understood finally, was why I had helped that child on the beach, why I had hidden the girl from the world; to get to this moment I had to do those things, this moment had been determined. I smiled at how foolish that sounded, but I believed it. I touched her cheek as she slept and she smiled and moved closer without waking up. Tomorrow I would send her away. I would make her promise never to come near me again, never to call, or write. She could make it now by herself. I was the only menace for her, and eventually I would betray her. I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to look at her, to touch her cheek now and then, to see her smile, but I dozed, and when I woke up she was moving around the room with a towel.

  “What are you doing?”

  She came to the bed and knelt by me. “Wiping off my fingerprints. I just thought of it,” she whispered.

  I pulled her into the bed and made love to her again, and I did not tell her that no prints would be as much a giveaway as finding a full set of clear prints. When I woke up again it was nine in the morning and she was gone.

  I knew it as soon as I opened my eyes. Last night her presence had filled the space, and now it was just a bleak and empty hotel room.

  * * *

  September. October. I decided to sell the business the day I stared at spotted photographs and didn’t give a damn. I told my lawyer and my accountant to take care of it, my only real demand was that those who wanted to keep their jobs would be allowed to. Not a big stumbling-block. For a few days I expected Kersh to come calling, but he didn’t; maybe he was walking the streets of New Orleans looking for a black-haired hooker in a shiny tight skirt.

  I wanted desperately to hear her voice, to know she was well, and, more desperately, I wanted her to stay away, not to call, not to write. One day I found myself sorting books, stacking some, boxing others, and I realized that I had made the decision to sell the house as well as the business. I had to move away so she could not find me.

  November. The Thanksgiving homecoming weekend party was to be held at the Carlton Hotel; as it was every year. Our team, win or lose, rah rah. I was home when she called. “Hey, Win,” she said in a bubbly voice, “it’s Rosalee. You’ve been hiding out long enough, bubba. Come to the party Saturday. Duck away from the mobs and hit the little parties in eight twenty, six fourteen, and
ten thirty. See ya!”

  Numbly I hung up. She was insane, coming back, calling. She knew they were monitoring my line. She knew they watched me day after day, night after night. I wouldn’t go near the Carlton, I thought, and rejected that. She was in town, and might call again, suggest something else, and at least at the homecoming party there would be hordes of young people. Would she come as a cheerleader? A football groupie? Whatever it was, she would blend right in, I knew.

  I had been shopping for gifts for everyone at the office; now I shopped for just the right present for her. Something I could keep at hand without arousing suspicions. Something I could pass over when I told her I was leaving the city, leaving the state. I tried to figure out what she had meant by the numbers she had given me, and failed. There were always private room parties, always jammed; she wouldn’t be planning to meet me in any of them, and I could not recombine the numbers in any way to make sense. I stalked through stores searching for the gift, and worked with the numbers, and looked at more stuff. Just stuff. Not for her.

  Then I found it. A gossamer sheer kimono in gleaming white silk, as soft as a cloud, with a single red rose embroidered on the back, and a delicate gold-thread edging on the front. I passed it up, went back and felt it, and bought it. The box was too big to carry around a party, but it was hers. It looked as if it had been made for her alone, had been there waiting for me. I had it gift-wrapped and carried it home in a shopping bag.