FSF, April-May 2009

by Spilogale Authors

  He looked over his shoulder. Fifth Avenue traffic crawled behind a gray veil, almost invisible. The cement walkway blended seamlessly into brown earth.

  Norm approached the store. Another sign, this one taped crookedly in the window: Big Going Out of Business Sale!!! He used his hand to shade his reflection in the glass. The shop was empty—except for a comic book in the window display. The Shadow, 1940s vintage, with a great Charles Cole cover and a dead fly beside it on the dusty drop cloth. Vol. 5, issue 6: “The Death Master's Vengeance."

  He knew that comic.

  It had been part of his father's collection. Something about the pulp hero especially appealed to Norm's sense of injustice avenged. Two years after Norman's father disappeared in Korea, Norman's mother remarried. His stepfather, Steve, had soldiered with Bernie Helmcke. He came, ostensibly, to console the widow. Steve was hell on defining his territory. He showed Norm a picture of Norm's mother, a wallet-sized studio shot that Bernie used to keep tucked behind his driver's license. When I was over there, Steve said, this picture kinda kept me going.

  How did you get it? Norman wanted to know.

  Steve just smiled. He burned all the comics, Norm's and his father's. With the ashes cooling in the fireplace (the flames had turned colors, fed by the alchemical ink of glossy covers), Norman had lain awake staring at the ceiling. It was The Shadow he remembered, the bold avenging hero.

  A figure moved out of the gloom at the back of the shop, reached into the display and snatched the comic book.

  "Hey—"

  Norman slapped the plate glass with the flat of his hand. The figure retreated to the rear of the shop. Norm ran inside. His head immediately began to throb. He rubbed his eyes, squinted at the man standing at the back of the shop. The man was holding up the comic book.

  "Doesn't feel so good in here, does it, kid?"

  Norman pointed at the comic.

  "That's mine. Give it to me."

  "Naw. You want it, you'll have to come and get it."

  Norman lurched across the empty shop, the pain in his head growing more intense, almost blinding him. He stopped, pressing the heels of his hands against his temples.

  The man, now a vague, pulsating shape, reached back and opened a door.

  "You have a choice,” the pulsating shape said. “It's fair I tell you that. You can stay here, or try to go back, or follow me. You know what's back. Stay here and you're finished. If you follow me, there's another story. I don't guarantee you'll like it."

  Norman lurched toward the shape, and found himself plunging over the threshold into darkness...

  * * * *

  ...to land on a broken tongue of pavement, wet after a recent rain.

  It was night.

  The yellow moon warped into black puddles. He heard the hissing of rolling wheels on wet paving. His heart was pounding. Norman pushed himself up on his knees and waited, catching his breath. After a while, he turned his head and looked back. The sidewalk ended a couple of feet behind him in jagged vacancy. The shop was gone, the jungle was gone. It was as if the sidewalk—maybe the whole world—had been bitten off by some unimaginable thing that had then recoiled into space, stranding Norman and whatever else remained to drift in a void.

  Norman stood up and faced—the dark city.

  Neon blinked and shifted, making paint-splash patterns on the wet street. Towers twisted into the sky, their points tearing at scudding carbon paper clouds. Norman tilted his head, trying to get his mind around the architecture.

  A dog appeared. It stood at the mouth of an alley between a diner straight out of Hopper and a pawn shop. It was an undersized, scruffy thing, a Puli. There was a red scarf tied around its neck.

  The dog started walking in his direction. Norman watched it. The dog halted before him.

  "Good boy,” Norman said.

  "I'm good,” the dog said in a female voice, “but I'm not a boy."

  "I don't believe it,” Norman said.

  "Check under the hood, if you want."

  "I don't believe you can talk."

  "I can't. It's telepathy. I'm projecting the words inside your head. Try not to look so stupefied. I'm thinking about getting a bite to eat. Let's sit down, and I'll give you the big picture. I'm Scout, by the way."

  The dog turned and started toward the diner. Norman stood where he was.

  "Come on,” Scout said. “I can't open doors by myself."

  After a moment he followed the dog to the diner and opened the door. The inside was long and narrow, like the inside of a rail car, and bright with fluorescent tube lighting. The counterman was Norman's age, beefy and balding, a blue tattoo of a Marine anchor-and-world like a stain on his hairy forearm.

  "They let dogs in here?” Norman said.

  "Please. The rules aren't the same as what you're used to."

  Scout jumped onto the red leather bench seat of a booth. Norman hesitated, then sat opposite the dog.

  "Just where is ‘here'?” Norman asked.

  "You wanted to catch a thief,” Scout said. “this is where the thief currently dwells."

  "Yes, but where are we?"

  "The best diner in town. You want to read the Night Owl Specials to me? I can't quite manage the menu. Old war wound, you know."

  "What?"

  "That was a joke."

  "Hilarious,” Norman said. He was looking at Scout's scarf. It bothered him. “Who tied that thing around your neck?"

  "A former companion."

  "What happened to him?"

  "Nothing good. Night Owl Special?"

  Norman glanced at the menu. “Hobo Scramble...."

  "Say no more."

  "I know that scarf."

  "Do you."

  Norman stared over the top of the dog's head at nothing in particular. “I've had a stroke or something."

  "Welcome to non-sequitur theater,” Scout said.

  "My neurons are misfiring. This is some kind of hallucination."

  "I can't decide on a beverage,” Scout said. “I'm thinking cranberry juice."

  Norman stood up. “It isn't real,” he said.

  "Do you want the Hobo Scramble, too?” Scout said.

  "You can't die in dreams, and that probably goes for hallucinations, too. I'll walk off the edge, and that'll wake me up."

  Scout yawned and when she shut her mouth, her teeth clicked like billiard balls.

  "I wish you could keep your mind on breakfast."

  The voice was centered in Norman's head, even though he was already at the other end of the diner stiff-arming the door. Thought projection. Once outside he headed straight for the edge. He didn't slow down when he reached the jagged, broken-off place. His vision hazed over briefly, and his stride carried him forward—in the opposite direction, back toward the diner. He stopped, looked over his shoulder, turned and tried again, attaining the same result.

  When he returned to the diner a plate of steaming hot scrambled eggs and a cup of coffee was waiting for him. A second plate was set before Scout. There were chopped onions, crumbled bacon and cheddar cheese mixed in with the eggs, all of it heavily peppered.

  "Have a nice walk? I waited for you."

  Norman picked up his fork. He didn't want to be, but he was starving. The Hobo Scramble smelled almost orgasmically delicious. Naturally he wasn't allowed to eat anything like it, not since his surgery.

  "You don't get to go back,” Scout said. “You made the choice, remember that."

  Norman slipped a bite of scrambled eggs into his mouth, washed it down with coffee, and said, “I know who you are. And your name isn't Scout."

  "Isn't it?"

  The dog started lapping and chewing at her plate of food, making wet-slurping sounds.

  "That's disgusting,” Norman said, though he didn't really care; the Hobo Scramble was igniting his pleasure centers.

  Scout looked up. “Maybe the way you eat disgusts me, ever think of that?"

  "No. Why'd you change your name, anyway? Your name was Mon
a when I was a kid."

  "Scout,” the dog said, “was your private name for me. You don't remember, do you."

  "Everybody called you Mona, including me."

  "Sure, while I was alive. I'm talking about after I died."

  Norman put his fork down.

  "You used to pretend I was still around,” Scout said. “I was like your imaginary friend. And you called me Scout, after the girl in that movie. Really, you wanted a father like Gregory Peck. Instead you got Steve."

  Norman rubbed his forehead. All his life he'd had a picture in his mind of Mona dying. He had watched from the front yard, paralyzed. His mother sat in the middle of the street in her green housedress, the little dog cradled in her lap, Mona coughing up blood in thick gouts, as if she were expelling whole organs. And, of course, Norman had forgotten the rest. The way he used to imagine Mona still existed as an invisible dog that only he could see. And in her new state of being, she had been named Scout. Norman had been smarter than the other kids, and he made sure they knew it. So Mona had been his only friend, and the same situation obtained with Scout.

  "The thing is,” the dog in the diner said, “I wasn't an imaginary friend. I was really there, and I was really invisible. Life is strange, huh? It's whatever you believe it is, even if you stop believing later on."

  * * * *

  They caught a yellow cab in front of the diner. It looked pre-World War Two vintage, a Hudson or something. But it wasn't that normal. The windshield was so narrow that it was barely more than a slot. Climbing in, Norman noticed the driver's side wing mirror looked like a big human ear cast in silver. The driver wore a visored cap pulled snug over his eyebrows. He stared at his lap while he drove.

  "So, you know who the thief is,” Norman said to the dog. They were sitting together in the back seat.

  "Yes."

  "Well?"

  "It's one man."

  "Who is he?"

  "You'll know him when you see him."

  "When I see him I plan to knock his teeth down his throat. That is, after he gives me back my property, my memories."

  "It isn't memories that he's stolen. Look inward. There are no gaps in your memory."

  It was true. Norman remembered everything about his first love, for instance. Nevertheless she was gone.

  "Well he took something. A lot of somethings. And I want them back. My mind is full of holes."

  "I know. But really there's only one thing missing, trust me.” Scout barked twice and the driver tucked the cab into the curb. “This is the place,” Scout said in Norman's head.

  Norman leaned over and looked out the passenger window on the dog's side of the cab. A brick hotel, six stories high, loomed over the sidewalk. A sign above the lobby entrance said: The Midtown. Norman threw the door open, and Scout hopped out ahead of him. They stood together on the sidewalk. The Midtown leaned so much it appeared in danger of tumbling its bricks into the street.

  "Top floor,” Scout said. “Room 606. Lots of luck."

  "You're not coming?"

  "Confrontations give me a runny stool. Also, I'm a pacifist at heart."

  Norman looked up the cockeyed face of the hotel. A raft of clouds drifted under the moon.

  "I won't really hurt him,” Norman said, “not if he returns what's mine."

  "I'm not worried about you hurting him. Watch yourself, Norm. This is a rough town."

  Scout started walking away, nails clicking on the paving.

  "Hey, where are you going?"

  "Lady's Room, sugar. I'll be here when you get back."

  "You mean if I get back, is that it?"

  "Fiddle-de-de."

  * * * *

  The lobby smelled like boiled cabbage. The desk clerk had a Poe forehead and dirty cuffs. He leaned on his elbows, reading a newspaper, and never looked up. A ficus drooped on the brink of death in a cracked terracotta pot. Dry, crumbled soil littered the carpet. An Out of Service sign hung on the elevator cage. The door to the stairwell bent noticeably to the right. Norman regarded it, head tilted. He entered the stairwell. It appeared to corkscrew into infinity. He started up, counting floors as he went. On the sixth he stopped, even though the stairwell continued.

  Standing outside Room 606, Norman hesitated, then knocked.

  Nothing.

  He knocked again, harder. Waited. He could hear movement on the other side. A minute passed, then the door opened. A man in a sleeveless white undershirt and suspenders stood before him. The man's huge gut stretched his undershirt out like a beach ball.

  "What?” he said around the dead stub of a cigar. Behind him a ratty easy chair angled toward a television set with a screen that bubbled out like a fish bowl. The current program was a distorted test pattern.

  "You have something of mine,” Norman said.

  "What is this, a gag?” the man said.

  And that's when Norman noticed the comic book rolled up in his fist. Norman couldn't see the cover, but he knew it was “The Death Master's Vengeance."

  "Let me see that,” Norman said, pointing.

  The man acquired a cagy look. “Who says I got to?"

  "I'm a lawyer,” Norman said. “You can be charged with receiving stolen goods. Did you know that?"

  "This ain't stolen goods, shyster!"

  Norman, who stood several inches taller than the man and besides was now in full possession of his most reliable rage, grabbed the comic book and unrolled it with a snap. It wasn't The Shadow; it was Betty and Veronica. The issue was titled “The Sirens of Riverdale” and featured a cover illustration of a nude, dog-collared Veronica Lodge reclining on a golden throne reading Sartre's Being and Nothingness.

  The fat man snatched the comic back.

  "I told you I ain't got your Shadow,” he said, and slammed the door in Norman's face.

  Or tried to. Norman blocked it with his foot, then shoved it open with both hands, sending the fat man reeling into the room.

  "Who said anything about The Shadow?” Norman said.

  "You got nerve busting in here!"

  The room smelled of ancient farts. A fly-specked fixture dimly illuminated the mess of beer bottles, dirty clothes, newspapers—and comic books. The comics were the only neatly arranged objects visible, stacked in orderly piles on a gateleg table in the dining alcove. Norman strode over. On the top of the first stack was The Shadow, vol. 5, issue 6: “The Death Master's Vengeance.” Norman's fingers trembled over the cover.

  "Not so fast!"

  Norman spun around in time to block the fat man's attempt to brain him with a beer bottle. He knocked the bottle away and grabbed the man's undershirt in his fists and gave him a hard shake. The man's face bunched up, red cheeks popping out like cherry apples all webbed with an alcoholic's burst capillaries.

  "I don't know from lawyers, mister, but I'd say you're a thief, for sure."

  Norman pulled him close, nose to nose. “We'll see who the thief is."

  He released the man and picked up the comic. “My father wrote his initials in every book he ever owned."

  "So?"

  Norman peeled back the cover of “The Death Master's Vengeance.” On the first page, in the upper right-hand corner, in blue ink faded into the ancient paper: B. H.: Bernie Helmcke.

  And Norman felt ... nothing.

  Holding the impossible artifact in his hand, a comic book from his father's lost collection, burned by his stepfather more than forty years ago, Norman felt absolutely nothing. Whatever hole its absence had made in his psyche remained unfilled. Norman rolled the mag up in his fist and started for the door.

  The fat man grabbed his arm. “Hold on—"

  Norm jerked his arm loose and shoved the man over the back of his chair. His legs stuck up in a V framing the fish bowl picture tube, where a blurry Indian Chief's head wobbled.

  * * * *

  Scout was sitting in front of the hotel licking her asshole when Norman came out. She stopped, and stood up on all fours.

  "I see you survived."
<
br />   "Yes."

  "And you got your Shadow."

  "Right."

  "But you don't feel any better, do you?"

  "Look, Mona—"

  "Scout."

  "Look, Scout. Do you know something I don't know? And besides that, what made you think that fat nitwit was going to hurt me?"

  "I just like to keep you on your toes, Norm. Also I didn't know he was going to be a fat nitwit; this is a very dangerous place, generally. And yes: I know something you don't know."

  "Would you like to share that information?"

  "Perhaps."

  "Has anybody ever told you how annoying you can be?"

  "Is that what you're telling me?"

  "Perhaps."

  Scout put her nose up in the air. “Well. I'm glad to see your sense of humor is showing at least feeble signs of recovery."

  "There's never been anything wrong with my sense of humor."

  "On the contrary, it's been dead as a crate of door nails, as Dickens might have said. What you refer to as your sense of humor has really been bottled vitriol. Would you like me to tell you why the retrieval of your dad's comic book failed to fill in any of the gaps in your windy head?"

  "You talk too much."

  "I'm not talking at all, if you want to get technical. Anyway, the reason you can't fill gaps with comic books, or anything else, is that there is only one absolutely essential element, and without it, all you are is a gap. Everybody has a portion of the essential element. In your case you decided to bury it deep. Hey, nobody's blaming you; you got a rough shake. It was this element that the Thief had been after from the very beginning. He only took all that other stuff because he couldn't find the damn thing."

  "Are you going to get to the point one of these days?"

  Scout started walking. She tossed her head and thought-projected: “Love."

  Norman caught up with her. “What about love?"

  "Without it, nothing is vitalized—that's what about it."

  "Bon Nuit,” Norman said. The comic book crackled in his fist.

  "The perfume doesn't matter. It's about your ability to experience love at all."

  Norman halted at a bus stop, inspected the bench for filth, sat down. He unrolled the comic book and opened it again to the first page. His father's initials were barely visible in the cold glow of the street lamp. The Shadow. His dad had been a collector, but not like the fat man in the Midtown Hotel. As a small child, Norman had longed to be a hero. A mysterious one, of course. Striking down Evil and injustice wherever he encountered it. Instead Evil struck down his own father. MIA. No one knew how he died. In Norman's mind the death wasn't real, not like Mona's bloody end. He had seen Mona die. Years later Norman read a Life Magazine article about American G.I.s who had defected to the North. He knew his father hadn't done that, he knew it. But the idea grew bitter roots in him, from a seed planted by Steve.