Outside the bar, I look back through the window. The bartender shrugs, and pours Paul Kelsey another drink.
SIX
I spend the next evening with the Marcos family. It’s Debbie who lets me in and shows me into the living room. It’s not in much of a state. Susan sits in the same chair as before, and Debbie comes up behind her and puts her arms around her mother. Susan puts a hand on Debbie’s arm without turning her head. There’s a vacancy about Sue’s expression that frightens me. Little Debbie nestles her head against her mother’s, and her eyes are continually flitting to Susan’s face. It’s as if she’s trying to nudge her into life.
The two boys, Peter and Julio, tumble into the room. Debbie jumps at the noise, and turns around. “Have you set the table?” she says. Her voice is edgy. I’d forgotten how quickly children get angry.
“No,” says Peter, the youngest, and gives Julio a shove.
“You’ve got to set the table. I cooked the dinner, you’ve got to set the table, it’s your turn to do it.”
Peter gives her a glare, and stamps at her. Debbie stands between her brothers and her mother and half shouts, “You’ve got to do your share!”
Peter shouts back, “Go to hell, you’re not my mother!”
“Hey, hey, hey.” I get between them. “It’s okay, take it easy.”
Debbie talks to me in an aside, not quietly enough. “I’m sorry you should see this.”
“Suppose I set the table?” I say.
“Peter should do it.”
I check on Peter, who’s only just this side of smashing something. “Yeah, but let’s let him off, eh? I bet I can do it faster.”
She gives me an angry look as I steer her into the kitchen. Together, we find plates and lay them out, pull chairs in line. Sausages are sitting in the pan, potatoes and frozen peas have been cooked. I’m impressed: for a girl Debbie’s age, this is a pretty good meal. There’s a mug in the middle of the table, with thin, bare branches in it that’s she’s picked from somewhere. I watch her bend her head over the table, frowning as she lays the forks in line. All this, and her family is still lying in pieces around her.
“This looks terrific, Debbie,” I say.
“Mm.” She doesn’t look at me.
I go back to the living room. The boys are simmering: Peter is kicking things, and Julio is brooding on the sofa. I sit beside him and give his arm a light punch. “You okay, kid?” I say.
He glowers at his feet.
“Debbie’s cooked a great dinner.”
“I’m sick of her cooking.”
“Well, she’s trying to be nice.”
He kicks the sofa. “You going to try to talk me around? Do the shrink bit like my school nurse? You going to do that?”
“Me? Hardly. I wouldn’t know a shrink if he came up and bit me,” I say. He fidgets, his face twitches. He shuffles to and fro, opens his mouth, closes it. “I remember my school nurse. All she ever did was give us aspirin. You came in with a broken leg, she’d ask if you wanted one or two aspirins. ’Course, my school was pretty poor.”
Julio’s face works and he doesn’t look at me. “She just makes me so mad,” he says.
“Debbie? Why?”
“She thinks if she does all this stuff and bosses us around, it’s like it’ll all be okay.”
I pat his leg and he moves away. “I’m really sorry,” I say. He rolls his eyes and frowns to get the misery out of his features; even to me, it sounds like a pathetic thing to say. “That doesn’t help, does it?” I add.
He shrugs.
“Debbie is trying to help, though,” I go on. “After all, can you cook?” He scowls, he thinks I’m mocking him. I manage a grin. “I’m not much of a cook myself,” I tell him. “Come on, kiddo, let’s go and eat dinner.”
During the meal, Debbie makes efforts at conversation that founder, Julio is terse, Peter bad-mannered, and Sue silent. A dispute arises about who’s going to clear the table, which ends with me doing all the washing up while the children retreat to their various bedrooms. Debbie hasn’t learned yet about cleaning up after yourself as you go, and the kitchen is a mess. I rummage around, looking for cleaning agents: nobody has bought any for some time, and there are only a few containers with dregs in them under the sink. These I water down as best I can, and scrub respect for Johnny into every corner.
Back in the living room, Sue sits inert. I come in, say, “How are you doing?”
She turns her head away. There has got to be some better way to help a grieving widow. I’d give a great deal to know it.
“Have you thought of asking the neighbors for help?”
“For what?” she mutters into her lap.
I pause. This is a non building, bigger flats but otherwise much like mine. With Johnny dead, their staple is gone: they’re a lyco family in the midst of a nest of nons. She’s cut off. Her best bet would be to rely on Johnny’s memory—there can’t be a man or woman in this building who doesn’t know what happened to him. She could put herself in the way of a lot of casseroles and babysitting if she could just get herself together to ask. “Lots of people would be happy to do things for you, Sue. Cook meals for you, help out with the kids—look, I don’t know everyone here, but I bet they would.”
“I don’t know.”
“Listen.” I feel desperate, I want to shake her and shake her until she’s happy. “Look, would you like me to ask around? I’m sure I could find some people willing to help, just to tide you over until you’re—feeling up to it. Shall I do that?”
She sighs, puts a hand over her face. “I don’t know what’s going on anymore, Lola,” she says, and her shoulders shake.
I go over to her, lay my hand on hers. “It’s okay, Sue.”
Her face contorts. “I don’t know what’s going on, I just can’t take it, I—” No sound comes out of her as she sobs.
I don’t know what’s going on either. I squeeze her hand and crouch by her, mute. She keeps on shaking, and I tell her that I’ll call people, I’ll phone around and get people to help her out. I’m still bent double over her unresponding hand when Peter comes in.
He flies at me, shoves me backward, stands between me and his mother like a tiger. “What are you doing? You made her cry, don’t you make her cry!” he wails at me.
“It’s okay, Peter—” I start toward him, and he knocks away my outstretched hand.
“Get out of here!”
“Peter—”
Debbie comes into the room. She runs to her mother and wraps her arms around her, glaring at me. “It’s okay, Mom, it’s okay,” she says in a tone of accusation. I look to the doorway and see Julio is standing there, too, watching the scene with smoldering eyes. What part of it is putting that look on his eleven-year-old face I can’t tell; it may very probably be me.
“It’s okay,” I say, and my voice echoes off the walls.
Peter looks from me to his mother and back again, then gathers all his strength into a shriek. “Go away!”
A better woman would have handled this better, a better woman would know what to do now. All I can do is listen to Peter. It’s advice of a sort, and I take it. I gather my coat, my bag, myself, and leave without a word.
I go into work the next morning, and I fix it. I need a backup man, I need authorization, I need strength of will, and my bare hands. I get clearance without even a question. My first thought is to ask Bride to back me up; she’s busy and gives me Nate instead, her little trainee. I brace myself. Downstairs is my man, the man I want some answers from. Today, if there is to be justice, I am to be a dangerous woman.
“I’ll lead the interrogation,” I tell Nate. We walk down the steps to the cells as I brief him; our feet clatter and the stairs get dimmer and narrower the deeper we go. “You hang back. Don’t say too much. Back me up.” The thought of bright, damaged Marty comes over me as I’m saying this, it leans on me so hard that I actually stop for a second to rest my hand against the wall. Nate rattles on ahead and I shout. He turns,
surprised. I wouldn’t have to shout at Marty; I only needed to say things to him once. He listened to me, God damn it, he listened so well it put him in the hospital from ignoring his common sense. I wouldn’t have to brief him to hang back. Marty was smart. Marty was smart. This sentence claws at me as I stand facing Nate’s blank stare, and I shake myself. Marty is smart. And they may yet mend his voice. And I’m about to have some words with the lune who drank his blood.
“Which part of ‘hang back’ did you not understand?” I say to Nate, and walk on past him, pulling rank to override his offended start.
Darryl Seligmann crouches in a corner of his cell. There’s a bench at the back he could sit on, and a couple of chairs bolted to the floor; instead, he’s back on his heels. Both his thumbs are pressed up against his mouth. His hair hangs down around his face, screening it. He doesn’t look up as I turn the key in the lock. It’s only when I stalk in and bang the door behind me that he raises his head with a jerk.
I stop in midstride. I recognize this man. I’ve seen him before, just a few weeks ago. It was—that’s right, it was the day Leo was born. This man spat at me as I was leaving the building. The spiked hair is trailing down, matted, the fierce eyebrows straggle, but it’s the same man.
“What do you want?” he rasps, and it’s the same voice I heard before saying “fucking skins.”
I pocket the keys, and take a seat. Here, in my power, is the man who tore up Marty. And me. I remember feet on my chest, teeth over my face. My fist clenches. “My friend, you are in so much trouble.”
“What the fuck you got on me?”
He speaks through his teeth; his voice is low. I lower my voice to match it. He’s incommunicado, he’s spoken to no one on the outside, not even the police. I can do anything to him, anything. “Why don’t we start where it starts. What were you doing out in the moon that night?”
His eyes are black. He hunches under the bench and glares at me. There’s something adolescent about his posture, the strained wolfishness of it, knees folded up around his ribs, elbows drawn back, lips in a half-snarl. Other children, lyco children, used to make similar stances at me. His mouth is lackluster, a stage-growl pulled over crooked teeth, but the lines around his eyes burn. I don’t know what he’s saying, I just know that by God he means it.
I speak slowly, softly, my back straightens out like a dancer’s as I lean toward him. “What were you doing out on a moon night?”
His lips barely move. “Fuck you.”
Nate twitches behind me, and I snap my fingers at him to make him stand still. I mustn’t look away.
“No. Not me, my friend. You. You are not getting out of here. You want a phone call?” He looks up. “You can’t have one. You want a lawyer? You can’t have one. Not till we know what we want to know. And you can stay here for your whole life, if we want you to. So fuck me? I don’t think so. You are staying with us, and we are going back to the beginning. Why were you out on a moon night?”
“That’s your song, isn’t it? Sing another,” he mutters.
“Nate, help me get him into that chair.”
I have my hands on him. Seligmann struggles and kicks, but he’s thin, his muscles aren’t bulked up like a luning man’s, and there’s two of us. He isn’t luning now, and he can’t outfight us both. I cover him with a sleeper gun as Nate cuffs his hands to the chair. “This’ll give you a hell of a headache,” I tell Seligmann. “Don’t make me dope you. You’ll fall asleep and we’ll just have to do this again sometime. And I’d rather have you awake.” He lashes against the cuffs. “Hold still. You see over there?” I point. There’s a dogcatcher pole hanging on the wall just outside the cell. “We can keep you still with a collar if you prefer. What would you prefer?”
His eyes stay on me and he doesn’t answer.
I stand up. There’s something black inside me, something coiled. The thought that I can hurt him makes me shake. Do I want to? So much of me does. I draw my hand back. I can feel the cold prison air stroking it, feel every hair on my arm, my hand is bright with life as I swing it hard and slap him.
Cold judders up my arm. Even as my palm touches his face, I freeze in horror at what I’m doing. His head jolts to one side. I did that to him. My palm stings, itches, tingles, what I’ve done is being branded into it.
Seligmann turns his face back to me and bares his teeth. “Weak, pussy,” he says. “You hit like a girl.”
I hit him again before I realize what I’m doing, hook him with a closed fist. Bones in my knuckles knock bones in his jaw, there’s so little skin between our bones to protect him. His head snaps back a little way, only a little, as if a rubber band held it in place. “Better?” I say. I don’t recognize this shaking voice as my own.
The eyes blaze, his voice is steadier, stronger than mine. “Go on,” he says.
I’m shivering, I’ve never been warm in my life. There’s a place on the hand, under the thumb, that never heals if you damage it, an area of almost unprotected nerve. I lean down, half-crouched, almost straddling him. I’m very close to his face as I dig my nail into his hand.
His face clenches, little pants escape him. I lean forward, press my shoulder forward, but I can’t make myself dig hard enough to damage him. Seligmann rolls his head like an animal, trying to move himself out of the path of the pain, and it hits me again what I’m doing. I snatch my hand away, grip it, leaving a white dent in him, white dent that floods with red. Healing blood. The bruise I’ve given him will fade in a day.
I hear him again, a hoarse half-whisper that’s lowered for menace. It should be theatrical, I should be able to see through it. “That’s all you can do, kitten,” he says.
My stomach twists; I’m dizzy. Through an effort of will that almost collapses me, I hit him again, flat-handed, three times, left right left. My arm as it jerks around is stiff, awkward, graceless, the fall of his head as it reels from my blows looks assured and steady in comparison.
Seligmann looks at me again. My hand is raised, and I can’t hit him, I can’t, I physically can’t. I have to do something with my hand, so I place it on his head to turn his face toward me. My fingers twitch at the texture of his greasy hair, I can feel the heat of his scalp through it. All I can see is a human being that I’m hurting, and what I want to do is cradle his head, leave my hand there, stroke him, make him better. I hate him. I push his head back a little, and speak into his face. “Tell me,” I say. “Tell me what you’re doing.”
He doesn’t speak. It’s my own weakness that’s doing this to me, it must be. He can see into me, he can see I can’t do this. How can a man tied to a chair still beat me?
“Answer her.” A voice comes from behind me, and I nearly shriek in shock. It’s Nate, I’d forgotten about Nate; my world had shrunk to me and Seligmann and nothing else alive. Anger at Nate fills me, the graceless oaf, the idiot, the boy who made me jump. He can see me, he can see the impotence that Seligmann has pulled out of me. My weakness lies on the floor at my feet, pink and spidery and twitching, a raw nerve pulled out for the world to see. I’m hulled out, exposed, filthy.
Seligmann leans his head away from my touch. “Go on, baby,” he says, “let’s see what you can do.”
I choke. Nausea overwhelms me, there’s a terrible moment in which I think I may actually be sick, which recedes and leaves me thankful to the point of desperation for my body’s lack of drama. I can’t go on. I turn my back on Seligmann, sit in the chair facing him, and focus all my strength on sounding calm. “You’re not doing yourself any good. What are you expecting? Branding irons? Racks? This isn’t the Inquisition. You can stop dramatizing yourself.” All of this is true, it has to be. He is dramatizing himself. It’s just me that can’t cope with what’s going on, that thinks it’s real and terrible. “Why don’t you drop the hero mask, it’s going to get boring. We’re keeping you till we get some sense out of you. And believe me, martyrdom isn’t exciting. Whatever you think you’re martyring yourself for. Or maybe you just think you’re t
ough. It doesn’t matter.” I have to cut him down to size. He’s got to just turn into an ordinary man. That I’ve hurt him mustn’t give him power over me. I focus on his stagy snarl, the melodrama of it, the contrivance, and I can almost look down on him. “You can be as tough as you like. But you’d be free sooner and save us a lot of trouble if you’d try to make sense.”
He laughs. “Oh, I make sense,” he says. “I make sense.” He tips his head on one side. It almost looks comic as he starts the soft chant.
“I caught a little catcher man
Who tried to collar me.
He chased me with his silver gun,
He chased me with his pole,
I jumped on him, and sat on him,
And bit him full of holes.”
I recognize this, and my muscles pull tight, tension runs up my spine in a wave. I heard it as a child. It should bounce off, but it doesn’t; it’s like hearing an old joke for the thousandth time when it wasn’t funny the first; it’s like the fiftieth punch on an already bruised arm. That he would dare be so stupid. And that this time around, it’s true.
I look at Nate. Nate steps forward. He shifts on the balls of his feet, he moves into boxing mode. The first three punches hit Seligmann over the solar plexus, a place I never even thought of hitting, all I could think of was his face, but Nate’s going in close. His body is inches away from Seligmann’s. My hands pulse, and I remind myself that this is nothing I haven’t seen before. It’s just that I haven’t beaten a detainee before, not really. Breaking my cherry. Nate’s swiftly moving body blocks Seligmann’s view of me, and I bless Nate for that. Now Seligmann can’t see the sickness on my face. I stare hard at Nate’s moving back, and try to keep my mind straight on the reasons why this is all right.
All I can come up with is a memory.
I caught a little rabbit,
I caught a little flea,
I caught a little catcher man
Benighted Page 9