Songs of Love & Death

by George R. R. Martin; Gardner Dozois

  She leaned in, hand on his chest. He stood still, body tense. She felt his heart racing—much faster than a normal person’s. Faster than Dorian’s. He still smelled like rain. She brushed her lips against his, which trembled in response. Barely a kiss. More like an apology.

  Then she walked home, and nobody tried to mug her. She was almost disappointed.

  CHARLOTTE AND DORIAN split up. Dorian prosecuted the jewel thieves and talked to the press about putting in for DA in a couple of years. He started dating a painter whose gallery shows were making news.

  Charlotte finished the next play. Otto liked it. Marta liked it. It needed some work. She would have been worried if it hadn’t.

  This one was straight realism, which was a departure for her, and which meant not stringing the wires with lights when they flew the heroes in and out. She still had to have heroes, but this time she imagined what they said to each other when they sat on rooftops looking for jewel thieves. She imagined they talked about the weather and the girls they liked and how to avoid getting ID’d by the cops. The only non-superhero character in the play was the cop who was trying to figure out who they were. She never did.

  A week into rehearsals, she sat on a chair at the edge of the stage, watching Otto block actors, listening to lines, following along in her copy of the script, making notes when she thought something else would sound better. She’d think something else would sound better long after the play had had its run and closed.

  Otto had been on the same page for half an hour and was on his fourth try, arranging actors, repeating lines. In a minute he’d do something off the wall and unexpected and that would be the version that worked. All she had to do was wait, and wonder how it would all turn out.

  Leaning back in her chair, she looked up into the rails, ropes, chains, and lights of the fly system, distant ladders and rafters lost in shadow, and saw a masked face looking back at her, smiling.

  M. L. N. Hanover

  New writer M. L. N. Hanover is the author of Unclean Spirits and Darker Angels, the first and second in the Black Sun’s Daughter sequence. An International Horror Guild Award winner, Hanover lives in the American Southwest.

  In the hard-edged story that follows, Hanover shows us that not only can obsession persist through a lifetime, but can perhaps sometimes last a little longer than that…

  Hurt Me

  There weren’t many three-bedroom houses that a single woman could afford. 1532 Lachmont Drive was an exception. Built in the 1930s from masonry block, it sat in the middle of a line of houses that had once been very similar to it. Decades of use and modification had added character: basement added in the 1950s, called “finished” only because the floor was concrete rather than dirt; garage tacked on to the north side that pressed its outer wall almost to the property line; artificial pond in the backyard that had held nothing but silt since the 1980s. The air smelled close and musty, the kitchen vent cover banged in the wind, and the air force base three miles to the north meant occasional jet noise loud enough to shake the earth. But the floors were hardwood, the windows recently replaced, and the interiors a uniform white that made the most of the hazy autumn light.

  The Realtor watched the woman—Corrie Morales was her name—nervously. He didn’t like the way she homed in on the house’s subtle defects. Yes, there had been some water damage in the bathroom once. Yes, the plaster in the master bedroom was cracking, just a little. The washer/dryer in the basement seemed to please her, though. And the bathtub was an old iron claw-footed number, the enamel barely chipped, and she smiled as soon as she saw it.

  She wasn’t the sort of client he usually aimed for. He was better with new families, either just-marrieds or first-kid types. With them, he could talk about building a life and how the house had room to grow in. A sewing room for the woman, an office for the man, though God knew these days it seemed to go the other direction as often as not. New families would come in, live for a few years, and trade up. Or traffic from the base—military people with enough money to build up equity and flip the house when they got reassigned rather than lose money by paying rent. He had a different set of patter for those, but he could work with them. New families and military folks. Let the other Realtors sell the big mansions in the foothills. Maybe he didn’t make as much on each sale, but there were places in his territory he’d sold three or four times in the last ten years.

  This woman, though, was hard to read: in her late thirties and seeing the place by herself; no wedding ring. Her face had been pretty once, not too long ago. Might still be, if she wore her hair a little longer or pulled it back in a ponytail. Maybe she was a lesbian. Not that it mattered to him, as long as her money spent.

  “It’s a good, solid house,” he said, nodding as a trick to make her nod along with him.

  “It is,” she said. “The price seems low.”

  “Motivated seller,” he said with a wink.

  “By what?” She opened and closed the kitchen cabinets.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Motivated by what?” she said.

  “Well, you know how it is,” he said, grinning. “Kids grow up, move on. Families change. A place maybe fits in one part of your life, and then you move on.”

  She smiled as if he’d said something funny.

  “I don’t know how it is, actually,” she said. “The seller moved out because she got tired of the place?”

  The Realtor shrugged expansively, his mental gears whirring. The question felt like a trap. He wondered how much the woman had heard about the house. He couldn’t afford to get caught in an outright lie.

  “Well, they were young,” he said. “Just got hitched, and they had all these ideas and plans. I don’t like selling to newlyweds. Especially young ones. Too young to know what they’re getting into. Better to go rent a few places, move around. Find out what you like, what you don’t like.”

  “Bought it and didn’t like it?”

  “Didn’t know quite what they were getting into,” he said.

  The sudden weariness around the woman’s eyes was like a tell at a poker table. The Realtor felt himself relax. Divorced, this one. Maybe more than once. Alone now, and getting older. Maybe she was looking for someplace cheap, or maybe it was just the allure of new beginnings. That he was wrong in almost every detail didn’t keep him from playing that hand.

  “My wife was just the same, God rest her,” he said. “When we were kids, she’d hop into any old project like she was killing snakes. Got in over her head. Hell, she probably wouldn’t have said yes to me if she’d thought it through. You get older, you know better. Don’t get in so many messes. They were good kids, just no judgment.”

  She walked across the living room. It looked big, empty like this. Add a couch, a couple chairs, a coffee table, and it would get cramped fast. But right now, the woman walked across it like it was a field. Like she was that twenty-year-old girl with her new husband outside getting the baggage or off to work on the base. Like the world hadn’t cut her down a couple times.

  He could smell the sale. He could taste it.

  “Lot of rentals in the neighborhood,” she said, looking out the front window. He knew from her voice that her heart wasn’t in the dickering. “Hard to build up much of a community when you’re getting new neighbors all the time.”

  “You see that with anything near the base,” he said, like they were talking about the weather. “People don’t have the money for a down payment. Or some just prefer renting.”

  “I can’t rent anymore.”

  “No?”

  “I smoke,” she said.

  “That’s a problem these days. Unless you’ve got your own house, of course.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The Realtor had to fight himself not to grin. Here we go.

  “Wrap it up,” she said. “I’ll take it.”

  MR. AND MRS. Kleinfeld had lived at 1530 Lachmont Drive for eight years, making them the longest-standing residents of the block. To t
hem, the U-Haul that pulled up on Sunday morning was almost unremarkable. They ate their toast and jam, listened to the preacher on the radio, and watched the new neighbor start unloading boxes. She wore a pair of old blue jeans, a dark T-shirt with the logo of a long-canceled television show across the front, and a pale green bandana. When the breakfast was over, Mrs. Kleinfeld turned off the radio and cleaned the plates while Mr. Kleinfeld ambled out to the front yard.

  “’Morning,” he said as the new woman stepped down from the back of the truck, a box of underpacked drinking glasses jingling in her hand.

  “Hi,” she said with a grin.

  “Moving day,” Mr. Kleinfeld said.

  “It is,” she said.

  “You need a hand with any of that?”

  “I think I’m good. Thanks, though. If it turns out I do…?”

  “Me and the missus are here all day,” he said. “Come over anytime. And welcome to the neighborhood.”

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded amiably and went back inside. Mrs. Kleinfeld was sitting at the computer, entering the week’s expenses. A trapped housefly was beating itself to death against the window, angry buzzing interrupted by hard taps.

  “It’s happening again,” Mrs. Kleinfeld said.

  “It is.”

  IT TOOK HER the better part of the day to put together the basics. Just assembling the new bed had taken over an hour and left her wrist sore. The refrigerator wouldn’t be delivered until the next day. The back bedroom, now a staging area, was thigh-deep in packed one-thing-and-another. There was no phone service except her cell. The electricity wasn’t in her name yet. But by nightfall, there were clothes in the closet, towels in the bathroom, and her old leather couch in the living room by the television. She needed to take the U-Haul back, but it could wait for morning.

  She walked briskly through the house—her house—and closed all the blinds. The slick white plastic was thick enough to kill all the light from the street. The new double-glazed windows cut out the sounds of traffic. It was like the walls had been suddenly, silently, transported someplace else. Like it was a space capsule, a million miles from anything human, cut off from the world.

  She turned on the water in the tub. It ran red for a moment, rust in the pipes, and then clear, and then scalding hot. She stripped as the steam rose. Naked in front of the full-length mirror, she watched the scars on her legs and elbows—the tiny circles no bigger than the tip of a lit cigarette; the longer, thinner ones where a blade had marred the skin—blur and fade and vanish. Her reflected body softened, and the glass began to weep. She turned off the water and eased herself into the bath slowly. The heat of it brought the blood to her skin like a slap. She laid her head against the iron tub’s sloping back, fidgeting to find the perfect angle. She had soap, a washcloth, shampoo, the almond-scented conditioner that her boyfriend, David, liked. She didn’t use any of them. After about ten minutes, she turned, leaning over the edge to reach for the puddle of blue cloth that was her jeans. A pack of cigarettes. A Zippo lighter with its worn Pink Martini logo. The click and hiss of the flame. The first long drag of smoke curling through the back of her throat. She tossed cigarette pack and lighter onto the floor, and lay back again. The tension in her back and legs and belly started to lose its grip.

  Around her, the house made small sounds: the ticking of the walls as they cooled, the hum of her computer’s cooling fan, the soft clinking of the water that lapped her knees and breasts. Smoke rose from her cigarette, lost almost instantly in the steam. The first stirrings of hunger had just touched her belly when the screaming started, jet engines ramping up from nothing to an inhuman shriek between one breath and the next. Something fluttered in her peripheral vision, and she scrambled around, dropping her cigarette in the tub and soaking the floor with water.

  Something moved in the mirror. Something that wasn’t her. The condensation made it impossible to see him clearly. He might have had pale hair or he might have been bald. He might have jeans or dark slacks. The shirt was white where it wasn’t red. The movement of balled fists was clearer than the hands themselves, and somewhere deep in the airplane’s roar, there were words. Angry ones. Corrie yelped, her feet slipping under her as she tried to jump clear.

  The noise began to fade as suddenly as it had come. The rumbling echoes batting at the walls more and more weakly. The mirror was empty again, except for her. She took a towel, wrapping herself quickly. Her blood felt bright and quick, her heart fluttering like a bird, her breath fast and panic-shallow. Her mouth tasted like metal.

  “Hello?” she said. “Is someone in here?”

  The floor creaked under her weight. She stood still, waiting for an answering footstep. The water pooled around her feet, and she began to shiver. The house had grown viciously cold.

  “Is anyone here?” she said again, her voice small and shaking.

  Nothing answered her but the smell of her spent cigarette.

  “All right, then,” she said, hugging her arms tight around herself. “Okay.”

  “MOM. Listen to me. Everything’s fine. We’re not breaking up,” she said, willing her voice to be more certain than she was.

  “Well, you move out like this,” her mother said, voice pressed small and tinny by the cell connection. “And that house? I think it’s perfectly reasonable of me to be concerned.”

  Corrie lay back on the couch, pressing the tips of her fingers to her eyes. Sleeplessness left her skin waxy and pale, her movements slow. She had taken the day off work, thinking she would finish unpacking, but the boxes were still where they had been the day before. Afternoon sun spilled in through the windows, making the small living room glow. The refrigerator had arrived an hour before and hummed to itself from the kitchen, still empty.

  “It’s just something I need to do,” Corrie said.

  “Is he beating you?”

  “Who? David? My David?”

  “People have habits,” her mother said. She raised her voice when she lectured. “They imprint. I did the same thing when I was young. All my husbands were alcoholics, just like my father was. I like David very much. He’s always been very pleasant. But you have a type.”

  “I haven’t dated anyone seriously since Nash. I don’t have a type.”

  “What about that Hebrew boy? Nathaniel?”

  “I saw him a total of eight times. He got drunk, broke a window, and I never talked to him again.”

  “Don’t turn into a lawyer with me. You know exactly what I mean. There’s a kind of man that excites you, and so of course you might find yourself involved with that kind of man. If David’s another one like Nash, I think I have a right to—”

  Corrie sat up, pressing her hand at the empty air as if her mother could see the gesture for stop. The distant music of an ice-cream truck came from a different world, the jaunty electronic tune insincere and ominous.

  “Mother. I don’t feel comfortable talking about the kind of man that does or doesn’t excite me, all right? David is absolutely unlike Nash in every possible way. He wouldn’t hurt me if I asked him to.”

  “Did you?” her mother snapped.

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you ask him to hurt you?”

  The pause hung in the air, equal parts storm and silence.

  “Okay, we’re finished,” Corrie said. “I love you, Mom, and I really appreciate that you’re concerned, but I am not talking about—”

  “You are!” her mother shouted. “You are talking about everything with me! I have spent too much time and money making sure that you are all right to pretend that there are boundaries. Maybe for other people, but not for us, mija. Never for us.”

  Corrie groaned. The quiet on the end of her cell phone managed to be hurt and accusing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I understand that you’re scared about this. And really, I understand why you’re scared. But you have to trust that I know what I’m doing. I’m not twenty anymore.”

  “Did you or did you not ask
David to hurt you?”

  “My sex life with David has been very respectful and loving,” Corrie said through gritted teeth. “He is always a perfect gentleman. The few times that we’ve talked—just talked—about anything even a little kinky, he’s been very uncomfortable with including even simulated violence in our relationship. Okay? Now can we please drop—”

  “Is that why you left him?”

  “We’re not breaking up.”

  “Because that’s the other side, isn’t it?” her mother said, talking fast. “You find someone who isn’t your type, and you put yourself with him because he’s good and clean and healthy, and then there you are being good and clean and healthy. Like eating wheat germ every meal when you really want a steak.”

  “All right, I’m lost now,” she said, her voice taking on a dangerous buzz. “Are you saying that David’s an abusive shit, or that he’s too good for me? What’s your argument?”

  She could hear her mother crying now. Not sobs. Nothing more than the little waver in tone that meant tears were in her eyes.

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this,” her mother said. “Why you moved out of David’s apartment. Why you’re in that house. I’m afraid you’ve gone to a very dark place.” The last words were so thin and airless, Corrie had to take a deep breath.

  “Maybe I have,” she said, drawing the words out. “But it’s all right. I’m not scared anymore.”

  “Shouldn’t you be? Is there nothing to be frightened of?”

  Corrie stood. It was only four steps to the bathroom door. With the lights off, the full-length mirror showed her in silhouette, the brightness of day behind her, and her features lost in shadow. There was no other shape, no man with balled fists or knives. No promises that the damage was a sign of love. No cigarette burns or dislocated fingers or weekends of sex she was afraid to refuse. It was just a mirror. She was the only thing in it.

  Is there nothing to be frightened of?