The Gypsy

by Stephen Brust

  "Who has an animal like that?"

  For a long time, Chrissy didn't answer. And when she did, it was in an odd, breathy voice, and she didn't close her mouth between the sentences. "The Fair Lady. Sue finally took me to see Her. She lives,well, in a place like an elevator stuck between floors,only it's a whole world. So the floor is blue, like a sky under your feet, only cold and hard. But sometimes it seems like you're standing in it, instead of on it.And the ceiling is like rocks and dirt and roots hanging down. Only not natural, not uneven like in a cave,but all polished, like someone made it that way. It's like columns in some old temple or something. And the walls are like-I don't know, banks of stone, with these fossils in them, only the walls aren't always in the same places. There was this window, only Sue said maybe it was only a painting, because it looked out but only into the sky, and all you could see from it was half a sun and half a moon. Sue said it was only a painting, but when Sue wasn't watching, I saw Her throw the skinned kitten out of it. It looked so much littler without fur." Her eyes grew even more unfocused. "It was like that man said, that gypsy guy. There wasn't much left when She was through with it." Chrissy's face went a shade paler, and she talked faster. "It's always warm there, even hot, but She has all these fireplaces, and some of the fireplaces have chimneys that go down instead of up. And She has these… things. Like people made of animal parts… or something."

  "Chrissy," Laurie objected tentatively. This wasn't like her. She'd never been into imaginary games or stories of any kind. "Are you-are you doing drugs with Sue?"

  She gave that giggle again. For a moment she didn't answer. Then she looked directly at Laurie and blinked her eyes a few times. "Drugs? Naw. No one needs drugs around the Fair Lady. She can make you feel so good. Sooo good." Chrissy stood vacant-eyed,idly rubbing her wrists together. It was an odd movement. "No one can make you feel so good as She can," Chrissy said softly. "Or so bad," she added in a tearful whisper. "But what's going to be left when She's through?" She cowered suddenly, like a small animal swept by the silent shadow of an owl's wings.

  Laurie reached to put an arm around her, like they had used to do when they were best friends and one of them was crying. But at her touch, Chrissy gave a sudden start and backed out from under Laurie's embrace with a contemptuous hoot. "Hands off, Laurie!You turning into a lezzy on me?"

  It was like a punch in the stomach. Laurie turned aside, fixed her eyes on the tapestry animals as if suddenly fascinated by them. Get it under control, she told herself, wishing her eyes could suck back the tears that welled in them. She and Chrissy had never said things like that to each other, not even jokingly. She stared steadily at the tapestry animals but they wavered before her. She didn't lift a hand to wipe at her eyes; that would have given her away. Instead,she said, "I got a bitch of an algebra test tomorrow.I'd better start studying now if I'm going to pass it."

  Still without looking at Chrissy, she crossed to where she'd dumped her bookbag on the floor when they came in and began digging into it. With her head bent forward, her hair came forward too, hanging like curtains on either side of her face. She blinked quickly, hoping it would disperse the hanging tears.

  "Like, you want to go with us some time? Sue and me, I mean?" The voice was almost like Chrissy's old voice, almost apologetic. But the old Chrissy would have been over beside her, saying she was sorry for saying such a rotten thing. Still.

  "My mom would never let me go," she said. Laurie found the algebra book, dragged it out of the bag.She opened it and pretended to be looking for a certain page.

  "Well?" Chrissy demanded suddenly. "So what?Do you want to go with us to the Fair Lady's place,or not?"

  "I'm not supposed to go to houses of people she doesn't know unless she has a phone number and has talked to them first." The words came up out of her throat like rough-edged rocks, but she forced them out. It was the rule and she was stuck with it.She couldn't break it without hard consequences; not like Chrissy's mom, who hardly noticed anything she did anymore.

  "Well," Chrissy paused. "So Mommy won't let you. Well, the Fair Lady probably wouldn't let me bring you anyway. You're not at all what She's looking for."

  "I guess not," Laurie said in a disinterested voice.

  "See, the Fair Lady, She's going to change the world. But She has to have faithful followers to help Her do it. People who can do what She says, right now, without asking questions. Later, they'll be rewarded."

  "Sounds like a comic book," Laurie said in a low voice. She was dragging out her binder, scuffling in the bottom of the book bag for a pencil. She'd show Chrissy. She'd actually go ahead and start doing her algebra homework right in front of her. Chrissy was only in pre-algebra.

  "Go ahead, make fun of it. But don't blame me when you miss out later because you were afraid to take a few chances." Chrissy paused, to allow Laurie a chance to plead for more information. Instead, Laurie picked up her binder and book and took them over to her desk.

  "See, it's like a war, right now," Chrissy suddenly resumed. "And, we're like Her spies and stuff. And some of us do even harder stuff, like being ninjas for Her, or something. See, there are people out there who know about Her and would do anything to keep Her from carrying out her plans. Because once She comes to power, well, everything's going to change.People who used to push us around are going to be real sorry, because we'll belong to Her and they'll have to do what we tell them. She's going to make them crawl for us."

  There was great satisfaction in Chrissy's voice. Laurie glanced sideways at her through the curtain of her hanging hair. She was staring off through the wall, a look of petulant gloating on her face. Just the way she used to look when she'd talked about running away,and how her Mom and Dad would be really sorry they'd been so mean to her once she was gone. Only then she did run away and hid out at the shelter for two days, and her parents never even called the police. She glanced at Chrissy again. It suddenly struck her how dumb she looked, with her bangs starched up stiff over her forehead, almost like a rooster's comb, and one shaved spot over her ear. It was a tough punk hairdo, but she still had that fat, round little face she'd always had. Laurie's dad had always said Chrissy looked like a Cabbage Patch Kid with too much stuffing in her. She still did. Cabbage Punk,Laurie thought to herself, and giggled.

  "So what's funny?" Chrissy demanded, instantly suspicious.

  "Nothing," Laurie muttered. "I was thinking about something else."

  "Listen, Laurie. You want in on this or not? Because if you do, you're gonna have to take some chances, and not worry so much about what Mommy and Daddy say." Chrissy thrust one hip out and put her fists at her waist. Like that one rock poster. Laurie wondered if she'd been practicing in front of the mirror.

  "I don't know," she muttered. She didn't. The way she was acting, she didn't even know if she wanted to be friends with Chrissy anymore. Except, if she wasn't best friends with Chrissy, then she wasn't best friends with anyone. Heck, she was hardly any kind of friend with anyone. "I gotta think about it, okay?"she amended. She finally let her eyes meet Chrissy's. But there was no understanding there. Chrissy only shrugged.

  "Well, don't take too long," she said flatly."There's stuff going on. Big stuff. You wait too long,you won't be in on it. You'll be one of them."

  Laurie just stared at her. Waiting for her to say something else, to add something that wouldn't make it sound so flat, so final. But she didn't. Finally, she turned away from Chrissy's unsmiling face.

  "I got an algebra test tomorrow. You know?"

  "Yeah. I know. Hope you get a hundred percent and Mommy sticks a gold star on your forehead."

  Laurie didn't look up again until after the door slammed. Then she stared at the space where Chrissy had stood, trying not to let the tears loose, and vaguely wondered where Chrissy had gone. And how long it would be before she gave in and followed her.

  NOV. FIFTEENTH, AFTER WORK

  Watch the trail, now, it's coming to an end;

  The river speaks the terms of my f
ate.

  I can hear the laughter of the falcon and the wren;

  I fear my repentance comes too late.

  "LANNAN SIDHE"

  Not even the stupid waitress uniform could make her look bad. She still had her hair pinned up out of the way, but that couldn't stop the streetlamps from snapping copper highlights off it. Durand looked at her, and felt angry at Step all over again. How the hell could that idiot look at a woman like Tiffany and still remember some stupid mess she'd gotten into as a kid?

  She spotted him and came over to the car, opened the door and slid in, just as if she'd been expecting him. She leaned over and hugged him and gave him a quick hard kiss before she said, without malice,"You stood me up last night, you asshole."

  "Couldn't be helped," he told her. "Cop stuff doesn't stop at five o'clock."

  She sat looking at him with those huge eyes of hers.If any other woman had called him an asshole, he'd have told her to take off, find someone else to abuse. But coming from Tiffany, it didn't even bother him.Sometimes, when he wasn't around her, he wondered why. He knew all the stuff Step had told him was true, and always before he'd had a rule against dating women who had any kind of trouble in their past, divorce or illegitimate kids or smoking pot, or anything. Sometimes he tried to tell himself she'd been a whore and he shouldn't like her so much. But when he was with her it didn't matter. So he'd broken his own rule, to date her, and she kept right on breaking all his rules of how he thought a woman should be. Like now.

  After two seconds of thought, she shrugged and forgave him. "Next time, try to call," she said, and settled in beside him.

  "Buckle your seat belt," he told her, as he always had to.

  Reluctantly, she slid back to her side of the car. As she dragged down the shoulder harness, she observed, "You ought to install a seat belt in the middle, so I could sit next to you instead of clear over here."

  "In my spare time," he promised her, in the joke they shared about him never having any spare time.

  "What would you like to do? Dinner and a movie?"

  "Okay. But I got to go home and change first. You mind?"

  "Nope." He pulled away from the curb, the old Chevy's clutch slipping. That was another thing he was going to have to fix in his spare time.

  Durand was content to drive in silence, just smelling the faint trace of perfume that Tiffany brought with her, feeling her left hand rest on his shoulder as he drove. But Tiffany asked, "Aren't you even going to tell me about it?"

  "About what?"

  "About what kept you last night?"

  "Oh. Cop stuff." He always hated to talk to her about anything to do with Step. He was the one thing they could never agree on. It was ironic, because if it hadn't been for Step, they never would have met. He was the one who had introduced them, on Durand's first day on the job. Of course, it had been Tiffany who'd followed up on the introduction, and called him at work to say she'd like to see more of him. No woman had ever done that before.

  "It's Mike again, isn't it? What did he do to you this time?"

  He drove two more blocks before answering, and she let him have his silence Then he said, "I'm starting to think he's mixed up in something dirty."

  "Oh," she said. That was all. Waiting to hear the rest before she said anything more. Probably only he knew her well enough to hear the tiny chill in her voice.

  Durand sighed. "It's like this. You know, I told you about that gypsy guy we busted, and how he got turned loose somehow. And the murder at the hotel and everything. Well, Step's been talking to me like it's over, homicide gets to handle it now, forget it.But yesterday I noticed he didn't change out of his uniform after work. So I kind of followed him, and saw him go to the park and talk to this guy with a carriage. And after he'd left, I go talk to the guy, and it turns out Step's been asking him all kinds of questions about a gypsy and a knife."

  "I don't see how that means Mike is doing something wrong. I mean, don't cops do that all the time,follow up on cases?"

  "Yeah," Durand admitted uneasily. "Only usually they let their partners in on it. And this bit about the knife; I think I remember that the gypsy had a knife when we busted him, but I don't ever remember Step turning it in. And the hotel murder was done with a knife. See?"

  "Not really." Her tone flatly denied that Mike could be mixed up in anything he shouldn't be.

  "Look," Durand amended. "I'm not saying he's done anything wrong. But I think he's bending the rules, a lot. And no cop can afford to do that, even a little. My dad taught me that, when I was real small.A cop always has to play by the rules, whether he likes it or not. A cop without rules is nothing."

  "Rules without common sense are stupid," Tiffany said flatly.

  Durand was silent for three blocks. This was as close to a fight as they'd ever come, and he didn't want to get any closer.

  "So," he finally said as the Chevy idled roughly at a stoplight. "What would you do? Ignore it?"

  "Of course not! For crying out loud, you're partners! Come right out and ask him about it."

  "And of course Step will tell me the whole story,"Durand observed with heavy sarcasm.

  "He will, if you ask him right," she said quietly,He glanced over at her. She was staring straight ahead, and he knew that, in some odd way, he'd hurt her. It bothered him a lot more than he'd have thought it would. Especially since her left hand had never left his shoulder. He tried to find words to apologize, but it didn't seem like apologizing was the thing to do either.

  The Chevy crept out into the intersection, clutch complaining all the way. "Okay," Durand said quietly. "I'll do my best to ask him right."

  "Thank you," Tiffany said, just as quietly. Durand was left reflecting on why it was that the times when he understood her least were also the times when he loved her most.

  FALL, 1989

  If there's more to making choices

  Than luck and happenstance,

  I hope I do it right

  Next time I get the chance.

  "NO PASSENGER"

  The bus hissed like a tired snake as the door opened.The Coachman was the first man off. He leapt to the ground and pirouetted, smiling. "Welcome to Lakota," he said.

  Daniel climbed out, buttoning his heavy green coat.He followed the Coachman out to the street, and looked up at the glass skyscrapers. "A city," he said."Is a city."

  "Not so," said the Coachman. "Each has its own rhythms. You'll see."

  Daniel snorted. "If you like. In any case, we're here. What now?"

  "Now? Well, it is Wednesday. Tomorrow, we will begin looking around. If we haven't found anything,I'll try to borrow a coach on Friday. I'm sure to get it on Sunday, if we haven't had any luck before then."

  "What will we do with a coach?"

  "Ride around the city. If your older brother has arrived, and your younger brother hasn't let himself be killed, I will find them, and pick them up, and then we will see what happens. Or maybe not. I don't know as much about this as you may think I do."

  "Well,1 know even less. As I said, what now?"

  "Have you any money?"

  "Some."

  "Good. Let us find a place to sleep. It would be good to stay out of sight, if we can."

  "Whose sight are we staying out of. Coachman?"

  "The Wolf's, of course," said the Coachman,smirking, and hailed a taxi.

  EIGHT

  The Wolf, the Badger,and the Old Woman

  15 NOV 22:00

  Old woman, I hate too much.

  I must give it vent.

  Old woman you are hiding

  here inside your tent.

  Old woman, how much more

  will I have to repent?

  Old woman will I have left a mark

  When my days are spent?

  "BLACKENED PAGE"

  "Mike!"

  At the shout, Stepovich jerked awake. Reflexes rolled him off the couch and onto his feet as he scrabbled for a gun that wasn't there; shoelaces tied together brought him down just as
swiftly. He caught himself painfully on one elbow, managed to avoid hitting the coffee table more than a glancing blow.

  "You son of a bitch," he said with great feeling.

  Ed laughed. "Works every time," he observed cheerfully, even though it was at least four years since he had pulled the same stunt. He turned his back on Stepovich and headed for the apartment's tiny kitchen. "'You want coffee?" he called back over his shoulder.

  "That dead bolt cost me fifteen dollars. If you've screwed it up, I'm gonna feed it to you."

  "Me?" Ed stuck his head back around the corner."Thing wasn't even shot, Stepovich. Door wasn't locked. I just waltzed right in."

  "Uar," Stepovich muttered, working at his knotted laces. He'd never been able to figure out how Ed did it. The man was overweight and clumsy as an ox,but there wasn't a lock he couldn't slip, and Stepovich couldn't count how many times in the years of their partnership that Ed had taken him unawares. When he was a rookie, Ed had almost convinced him that he,Stepovich, just wasn't alert enough to be a good cop. It had taken him a long time to realize that the big man could walk softer than a cat, and could take damn near anyone by surprise. Grabbing cat burglars from behind had been one of his favorite tricks, once upon a time.

  Stepovich retied his shoes and got up to make his way into the kitchen. Ed had half the stuff out of his cupboard stacked on the floor. "Where in hell are the coffee beans?" he demanded as Stepovich came around the comer. Sneaky bastard didn't even bother to turn and look at him. Just knew he was there.

  "Don't have any." Stepovich reached up to the shelf over the stove, took down a jar of instant. "Coffee's right here."

  "That shit?" Ed stepped casually away from the mess he'd made. "Let's skip it, then. We can grab some on the way." He glanced back once at the packages and cans he'd rummaged through. "Pretty sorry haul, Mike. Nothing there I'd feed the neighbor's cat. When's the last time you went shopping, anyway?"