“Sure did. As a matter of fact, I was just writing back to you now.” It’s true; the letter dangles, half-in and half-out of the typewriter. “Found a spot between chapters in my new blockbuster novel, and….”
Wait a minute, he thinks abruptly. What are we talking about? Isn’t she….
“I have to tell you this,” she interrupts, “and I have to tell you now, while my mind is made up. Because if I wait another minute, I might change it again. And I don’t want to change it. Are you listening?”
“Yep,” he says. But a strangeness is kicking at the back of his head.
“I want to come back…christ, that’s putting it mildly. I’ve got to come back! I mean, it’s been six months, and I’ve done everything I could, but I just don’t think that I can stand it anymore! You know what I mean?”
“Yeah. I know. Darlin’, I’ve been so lonesome…,” he says, and at the same time, he is telling himself yeah, it’s been six months. I remember them well. It seems like ages.
But wasn’t she going to be home in an hour? Time be hanged; he feels quite sure that she was. But how could she?
“Do you still want me?” she asks, and it’s such a stupid question that all other stupid questions disappear from his mind. He laughs out loud in her ear.
“Are you kidding?” he demands to know. “Babe, that’s the last thing in the world you’ve got to ask! All I wanna know is: what’s happening? What contingency plans have you got?”
And suddenly there are three of him, three Gary Vaseys, sitting side by side in their identical chairs, with their identical telephones pasted to their identical ears.
And to one Gary Vasey, she says, “Well, I thought I’d just transfer my credits to a school up there….”
And to one Gary Vasey, she says, “Well, I thought I’d get a job, maybe take some night classes….”
And to one Gary Vasey, she says, “Well, I thought I’d drag you into bed for about twelve hours, and then think about it in the morning….”
“…But I don’t care what I do, just so long as I’m with you,” she says. In one voice. Through one phone. To one ear on the head of the one Gary Vasey, sitting alone, in one chair, in his room.
“Holy shit,” he mouths into the receiver.
“What’s the matter?” says the voice from behind him, and he turns around. It’s Jessica: in the light of the farmhouse kitchen, she looks radiantly happy.
She looks easily ten years older.
Older than what?, he thinks distractedly, wondering what great left field that came out of. Then he looks back at the magazine he was reading, and says, “Just this review, honey. Ol’ Maudlin De Kalb. I can’t believe he actually found something good to say about me! Here, check this out….”
He hears her move closer, feels her warmth come to rest against his back, smells her hair and the fresh broccoli in her hand. God, this is good, he smiles, closing his eyes for a moment of settled contentment.
Then he goes to read from the magazine, but it’s no longer there. He sits, puzzled, with her arms still around him, until he remembers the paragraph he’s been stuck on for an hour, and now Jessie’s burst into the room, and she’s crying all over his shoulder, and god damn is he ever going to finish this book?
“Can’t you see I’m trying to write?” he says, peevish. A shudder runs through her. He stiffens against it. “I haven’t gotten a word in all….”
“I know you’re trying to write! You’re always trying to write! You’ve been trying to write for the last five years, but you’ve hardly finished a thing, and what you did finish you never quite managed to sell!” She chokes on the words, as if speaking is the most painful thing she’s ever done. “Gary, you’re drinking too much….”
“Shut up,” he says, something cold and nasty coursing down his spine.
“…And you work’s getting sloppy, and, honey, I don’t think I can support us anymore. I mean….”
“You mean, you’ve found something else to do.” He hates the self-pitying tone in his voice, but he can’t seem to help it. It’s like those dreams, when your legs stretch like Plastic Man’s, and you know there’s no running away. There’s no running away from the fact that he let her go to school without a fight, and she went.
And now she’s never coming back, he thinks. The phone trembles in his hand. Her voice, when she speaks, seems to be coming from so far away.
“You’ve got to see that it just couldn’t work out,” she says. “It’s been a year and a half, Gary, and things have changed. We’re different people. You’ve got your work, and I’ve got my studies, and….”
“You’ve got a boyfriend, too. Am I right?” A pregnant silence. “Am I right?” He can’t believe how calm he sounds.
“Well….”
“Go ahead. It’s alright,” he lies. “Just tell me.”
Jessica sighs. It stretches three hundred miles. “His name is….”
“Alan. Alan J. Tobin. Hottest new writer to come out of this convention, from the looks of it. Makes my stuff look like a pile of old dog hair.”
“Aw, come on, Gary.”
“No, really. It’s true. Uh… why don’t you pull up a chair, Alan? Make yourself at home?”
Alan hesitates for a moment before joining them at the dinner table, a cozy one in the darkest corner of the restaurant. “I’d like you to meet my wife,” Gary continues. “Jessica.”
“We’ve met,” she says, her full lips smiling. “Hello again.”
“Hello again,” says Alan. She proffers her hand. He kisses it, and time stands still.
God, she’s beautiful, Gary thinks, in awe of her in the candlelight. Funny. When we got together, she was 18 going on 25. Now she’s 40 going on 25…. He pauses, hugging himself under the table. …And I’m 45 going on 100.
He doesn’t resent her aging so beautifully, any more than he can resent his own full-speed-ahead deterioration. But, damn it, Tobin, he whispers in his mind, would you mind not feeling her up with your eyes when I’m around? Can’t I have my last gray, measly speck of pride?
And it’s funny that he should think that, because it seems like just a moment ago that he and Jessie were in their seventies, looking back at a good life spent in this farmhouse and in that New York City apartment where they first carved out their happiness.
It seems like just a minute ago, but Alan J. Tobin is still kissing her hand. In the light of the candle, the room starts to spin. He locks his eyes on the flame, the only thing standing still, and he realizes with a flash of transcendent horror that the flame isn’t moving: no licking tongues, no shimmying dance. Stationary as a tombstone, as a flower in no wind, as the room spins around and around and around….
Oh my God, his mind screams. Make it stop! Make it stop! Make….
More bombs go off, uptown this time. In his mind’s eye, he can see Rockefeller Center disintegrating as the planes shriek by overhead. In the street, millions of people: trampling each other on their way to nowhere, or reduced to meat and cinder where the World’s End fires are brightest. Gary Vasey will not join them there.
He dials her number frantically, knowing full well that it’s too late, cursing the assholes of the world. “They finally did it,” he mutters at the walls. “Bastards finally killed us all.” And it wouldn’t be so bad… he’d known in his heart it was coming… except for the scrambled tones that pour from the receiver. They speak of downed lines, of overloads, of a communications system in its final throes of agony.
“DAMMIT!” he screams, hurling the phone against the wall. He reaches toward the heavens with his head tilted back, tears streaming from his eyes. “GOD! WHY, DAMMIT? WHY COULDN’T YOU HAVE LET ME SAY GOODBYE TO HER, DAMMIT? GOD, DAMN YOU! GOD, DAMN YOU….”
“It’s alright, baby.” she murmurs in his ear. They are huddled together in the corner, on the bed, while the explosions march down Broadway outside their window.
“Oh, yeah. This is just fuckin’ excellent,” he gulps. They laugh nervously. “Jus
t what I wanted for our engagement night: to burn alive.”
“I’m glad we put Joni on,” she says wistfully, Court And Spark barely cutting through the din of global destruction. “If I’d had to pick a last album before I died, I couldn’t have picked a better one.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he laughs suddenly, the wildass grin in full bloom across his face. “Can you imagine listening to the Bee Gees when your house blows up?”
She cracks up, burying her face in his shoulder. It’s a second before she can catch her breath. “S-stayin’ alive… stayin’ alive…,” she manages to get out, and then they both lose it entirely, rocking back and forth, laughing till their faces are soaked. “We are so sick!” she exclaims with merry disbelief.
“Isn’t it great?” he answers, hugging her tightly. A bomb goes off, closer. Their eyes meet, and linger.
“It’s been really good,” she whispers.
“Yes, it has.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
They kiss, hungrily, thanking God that it could end this way; in certain respects, it’s the best 30 seconds of their lives. Then the air turns white, and the walls burst inward, and the ceiling caves in on their heads…
… and they are pulling him from the flaming wreckage of the car, sirens wailing, red lights flashing in his eyes. Some parts of him hurt unbelievably bad, and some parts he just can’t feel at all. But he’s so cold. So cold.
“You’ve got to call Jessica!” he tries to explain, but his mouth doesn’t work, and his dying mind is horribly confused. “Call her at 564-1234… or is it area code 202, 758-29….”
The phone rings. Gary wakes up, heart pounding, from a nightmare world of fire. He stares into the darkened apartment, sees that Jessica hasn’t returned yet, shakes the ugly pictures from his mind. That’s probably her, he reasons, mind still foggy. The phone rings again. He answers it.
“Gary?” A man’s voice.
“Who is this?”
“This is Pete, man. Oh, jeezus….” He sounds like he’s crying.
“What is it?” Pete was with Jessie and some other people tonight. It all comes tumbling back now in a cold ball of panic.
“We were coming back from the concert… she fell… it’s… oh, man….”
The sound of struggle, from the other end of the line. A new voice takes over. Janis.
“She’s in emergency, Gary. We’re over at Bellevue. Meet us in the waiting room.”
“But what…?”
“We don’t know, Gary. Just get your ass over here.”
“Alright.” He hangs the phone up, sweating. His mind races over the possibilities. She hasn’t been feeling too well, the last few days. It could be anything.
He starts to pull his clothes on; for some reason, her family pops into his mind. They’re going to kill me, a voice informs him. I promised not to let anything happen to her. But, somehow, that’s the least of his worries.
He finishes dressing and rushes out the door, almost forgetting to lock it, fumbling with his keys for what seems like eternity. Then he is running down the stairs, out onto the street, down the block. He runs, his mind remarkably clear, concentrating on his pace, pushing himself to move faster, move faster…
… until he bursts into the waiting room, where round-faced Dr. Rubin is carrying on with a nurse. They smile as he approaches, and Dr. Rubin pulls his bulk out of the chair.
“How is she?” Gary blurts out immediately. “I flew in as fast as I could….”
“Relax,” says Dr. Rubin. “Everything’s fine. She’s just fine.” He takes Gary’s right hand and shakes it firmly. Gary, dazed, lets his arm flap weakly in that grip. “You’re the father of a beautiful baby girl.”
“She’s so cute, Mr. Vasey,” the nurse gushes. “Five pounds, seven ounces, with a face like an angel.” She pauses, studying his face. “And I’ll bet she’ll even have your blue eyes.”
“Then I bet… she’s already got ‘em!” Gary stumbles over his tongue a little, but they all laugh anyway, and he begins to relax. They lead him down the hallway, jabbering, while his thoughts start to drift.
A daughter. And she’s beautiful. He smiles. To think that I was so scared…. All the way in on the plane, the old fears were playing havoc. The baby would be a stillborn. The baby would be a radiation mutant, or the hideous result of too many drugs. The baby would be fine, but Jessica would die, and he would be forced to raise a tragic reminder.
But everything’s fine, and they lead him into a room, and there’s Jessie with the product of their love snuggled warmly in her arms. She looks weak and flushed… she’s been through a lot… but she smiles, and her husband almost melts into his shoes.
“What a pair,” he whispers, awe-struck. “God, I love it. What a pair.” Before she can say a word, he is leaning over her to kiss her…
… and the kiss is drunken, urgent. It is not a familiar kiss: the lipwork of two people who have not yet learned to synchronize their movements. Gary pulls back for a moment, startled, and then remembers. Sheila Whatsername. From the party.
Gary and Sheila Whatsername spend another minute together, locked in meaningless pleasure, when they hear a key fumble with the front door lock. He almost pushes Sheila out of bed, trying to cover himself, flesh crawling with shame.
Jessica opens the door, flips on the light, and comes into the room. She smiles and starts to say something, then stops. Her features contort with horror and pain.
“Holy shit,” he moans.
“What’s the matter?” says the voice from behind him, and he turns. It’s Rita, his wife; in the light of the Grammercy Park penthouse window, she looks beautiful.
“Oh, nothing,” he answers, turning back to the paper. “It’s just that Jessica finally got married.”
“To Steve?” He nods, playing with his beard. “I’m so glad. I always liked Jessica a lot.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“And Steve’s a great guy.”
“Yeah. I like him.”
“That’s wonderful.”
Gary studies the photograph. It’s funny, how we thought we would never get over it. The Great Love Of Our Lives. We were kids. We were wrong.
Sometimes, things seem to work out for the best, no matter how awful they are to begin with….
The phone rings. He answers. “Do you still want me?” she asks him. That’s the last thing in the world you have to ask, he hears his own voice saying. It seems to be coming from far, far away.
In the bed, next to him, Rita’s eyes are full of frank concern.
“It’s been a year and a half, Jessica,” he hears himself saying…
… and Jessie has her arms around him, and they are right there in their bed, and he is so happy that she decided not to leave….
“Have a light?” she asks. “I think I’d like a cigarette, darlin’.”
“No problem,” he answers, smiling. “Flick a Bic.”
* * *
Jessica stares for a moment at the door buzzer, then decides against it. She digs in her pocketbook while the guys in the road crew offer loud commentary on her dress, her hips, and what they’d like to do with her tonight. Animals, she thinks, finding her keys. How can they think they’re being anything but stupid?
The Italian Stallion of the batch, rippling muscle from his chin to the point of his head, says he’s got a good place for her to sit. Jessie pauses, key already in the door, and turns to stare at him with honest incredulity.
“I bet you get a lot of girls that way,” she says with mock deference.
“You’d be surprised,” he answers, swaggering.
“Yeah. I certainly would,” she counters. Touché. His face sags as his friends begin to beat him around the shoulders in apelike comraderie. Jessica turns, shaking her head, and closes the door on this scene.
“Unbelievable,” she informs the staircase. For the first flight, her head is buzzing with the thought of those bimbos, and the things she could have said if
she had that kind of time to waste.
By the second flight, however, thoughts turn to the discussion that they’re about to engage in. She’s been dreading it all day… very much the same way Gary has… and all the old familiar feelings start to well up again, weighing sickly in her stomach like a loaf of wet bread.
Oh Gary, she moans inwardly. Why does this have to be so goddamn difficult? Why has life thrown us such a curveball? Why can’t we just be happy… oh, I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.
That may be true; but for someone who doesn’t know what to think, she’s certainly thought it all by the time she gets to the third floor landing. Not that she’s any closer to a clear decision. That won’t come until the very last minute. Jessica’s quite sure of that.
That’s why I don’t really want to talk about it, she thinks, closing in on the door to their apartment. There’s nothing to be said that we don’t already know. And the time we have to be sure of is so short, so short….
But Gary wants to talk, so they probably will. Jessica squares her shoulders, resigned to it, and opens the door…
… to see Gary, sitting next to the dinner table with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, a burned-out lighter hissing quietly in his hand. He seems to be in a trance or something, not registering her entrance at all; and a wave of concern rushes through her.
“Baby?” she ventures, the door swinging shut behind her, forgotten. “Baby, are you all right?”
He looks up, slowly, and something in his eyes makes her jump back a step involuntarily. He looks like he’s just had a vision from heaven, like some angel came down and sandblasted his soul. It’s not something she can put her finger on… her finger would go right through it, if she tried… but it’s there.
Jessica walks over to her man and kneels in front of him. She takes his face in her hands, smoothing his hair, and stares deeply into his eyes so strange. “What is it, baby?” her words barely audible. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
Gary stares back into the face of the young woman he loves, and in that moment, he knows that she knows. If every possibility were tattoed on her pupils with a laser beam, they would show no more clearly in her eyes. She knows.
Mister October - Volume Two Page 29