Shadows 4

by Charles L. Grant (Ed. )

  "The building superintendent, a scrawny man with a huge black mastiff snarling at his knee, told me that Brower had moved out on April third—the day after our game. I asked for a forwarding address and he threw back his head and emitted a screaming gobble that apparently served him in the place of laughter.

  " 'The only forradin' address they gives when they leave here is Hell, boss. But sometimes they stops in the Mission Districk on their way there.'

  "The Mission District is the same now as it was then: the home of the homeless, the last stop for the faceless men who only care for another bottle of cheap wine or another shot of the white powder that brings long dreams. I went there. It's near the docks, and there are dozens of flophouses, a few benevolent missions that take drunks in for the night, and hundreds of alleys where a man might hide an old, louse-ridden mattress. The salt stench was always in the air, and the screaming gulls whirled endlessly over the gray and peeling warehouses that clustered at land's end. I saw scores of men, all of them little more than shells, eaten by drink and drugs. No names were known or used. When a man has sunk to a final basement level, his liver rotted by wood alcohol, his nose an open, festering sore from the constant sniffing of cocaine and potash, his fingers destroyed by frostbite, his teeth rotted to black stubs—a man no longer has a use for a name. But I described Henry Brower to every man I saw, with no response. Bartenders shook their heads and shrugged. The others just looked at the ground and kept walking.

  "I didn't find him that day, or the next, or the next. Two weeks went by, and then I talked to a man who said a fellow like that had been in Devarney's Rooms three nights before.

  "I walked there; it was only two blocks from the area I had been covering. The man at the desk was a scabrous ancient with a peeling bald skull and rheumy, glittering eyes. Rooms were advertised in the flyspecked window facing the piers at a dime a night. I went through my description of Brower, and the old fellow nodded all the way through it. When I had finished, he said:

  " 'I know him, young Mister. Know him well. But I can't quite recall . . . I think ever s'much better with a dollar in front of me.'

  "I produced the dollar, and he made it disappear neat as a button, arthritis notwithstanding.

  " 'He was here, young Mister, but he's gone.'

  " 'Do you know where?'

  " 'I can't quite recall,' the desk clerk said. 'I might, howsomever, with a dollar in front of me.'

  "I produced a second bill, which he made disappear as neatly as he had the first. At this, something seemed to strike him as being deliciously funny, and a rasping, tubercular cough came out of his chest.

  " 'You've had your amusement,' I said, 'and been well paid for it as well. Now, do you know where this man is?'

  "The old man laughed gleefully again. 'Yes—Potter's Field is his new residence; eternity's the length of his lease; and he's got the Devil for a roommate. He must've died sometime yesterday morning, for when I found him at noon he was still warm and toasty. Sitting bolt upright by the winder, he was. I'd gone up to either have his dime or show him the door. As it turned out, the city showed him six feet of earth.' This caused another unpleasant outburst of senile glee.

  " 'Was there anything unusual?' I asked, not quite daring to examine the import of my own question. 'Anything out of the ordinary?'

  " 'I seem to recall somethin' . . . Let me see . . .'

  "I produced a dollar to aid his memory, but this time it did not produce laughter, although it disappeared with the same speed.

  " 'Yes, there was somethin' passin' odd about it,' the old man said. 'I've called the city hack for enough of them to know. Bleedin' Jesus, ain't I! I've found 'em hangin' from the hook on the door, found 'em dead in bed, found 'em out on the fire escape in January with a bottle between their knees frozen just as blue as the Atlantic. I even found one fella that drowned in the washstand, although that was over thirty years ago. But this fella—sittin' bolt-upright in his brown suit, just like some swell from uptown, with his hair all combed. Had hold of his right wrist with his left hand, he did. I've seen all kinds, but he's the only one I ever seen that died shakin' his own hand.'

  "I left and walked down to the docks, and the old man's last words seemed to play over and over again in my brain like a phonograph record that has gotten stuck in one groove. He's the only one I ever seen that died shakin' his own hand.

  "I walked out to the end of one of the piers, out to where the dirty gray water lapped the encrusted pilings. And then I ripped that cashier's check into a thousand pieces and threw it into the water." Tremain shifted and cleared his throat. The fire had burned down to reluctant embers, and cold was creeping into the deserted game room. The tables and chairs seemed spectral and unreal, like furnishings glimpsed in a dream where past and present merge.

  "I only saw him once," Tremain said, "but once was wholly enough; I've never forgotten it. But it did serve to bring me out of my own time of mourning, for any man who can walk among his fellows is not wholly alone."

  * * *

  Robert F. Young has been a favorite storyteller for a number of years, most of his work appearing in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He is equally adept in both genres, but when he puts his mind to it, his excursions into dark fantasy can put more power into a single last word than most of us dare dream of.

  * * *

  YOURS,—GUY by Robert F. Young

  The postcard came in Friday's mail. Squires read it while he was waiting for dinner:

  Hiya Partner!

  I'm back in the old home town for a few days, revisiting old haunts. Am staying at the Maplecrest. Hope you can find time to drop in and see me.

  Yours,—Guy

  Squires read the words again. He couldn't remember ever having known anyone named Guy.

  The card was the pictureless kind carried by the post office. It bore a local postmark and had been mailed the day before. Both the address and the message had been printed in uneven block letters with a soft-lead pencil. The name "Guy" was similarly printed.

  Some crank, probably.

  He consigned the card to the part of Friday's mail that was destined for the wastebasket. At once it vanished from his mind and did not return till early Monday morning when the phone rang. His wife, Adeline, answered it; he was in the upstairs bathroom, shaving. "It's for you, Nick," she called from the downstairs hall. "Someone named Guy."

  He took the call on the bedroom extension. Oddly, he'd guessed it was Guy. "Hello."

  "Nick? Guy. How are ya, partner?"

  The voice was that of a total stranger. Squires was tempted to hang up. But he didn't. He'd sold cars all his adult life and had come to regard everyone he met as a potential buyer, not to be offended until proved otherwise. His recent acquisition of the local Chevrolet dealership had reinforced his attitude.

  "Guy? I'm afraid I don't—"

  "Now don't try to tell me you don't remember me. That you've forgotten those good old days at the old dirt track!"

  Dirt track? Squires scoured his mind. He could find no trace of a dirt track—not even in the back where things that no longer interested him were relegated.

  "What I was thinking, Nick," the speaker at the other end of the line went on, without waiting for a response, "was that, well, you're a busy man, a successful businessman and all that, and you probably don't have a helluva lot of time to spare, so what I was thinking was that maybe you and me could get together for lunch today, here at the Maplecrest. That way, your schedule won't be interfered with and I won't feel guilty about taking up your valuable time. What d'you say, partner?"

  "Well, I—"

  "You don't have another lunch engagement, I hope."

  "No. But—"

  "Great! One o'clock be okay? I'll be in the bar. We'll have a couple of drinks first—get to know each other again after all these years. See you, Zip."

  After replacing the receiver Squires stood by the bed for a long time, staring at the wall. No one had called him "Zip" since
he was ten years old.

  Surely he must know Guy. Obviously Guy knew him.

  Should he keep the engagement that had been forced on him, or not?

  In the end, he didn't keep it. He might have, but at quarter after twelve Elton Cready of Edgewater Industries dropped into the showroom to talk Caprice. Cready was an every-other-year customer who refused to deal with any of Squires's salesmen, fancying that Squires gave him a better deal. He would have gotten the same deal regardless, but you don't argue with every-other-year customers, especially when they're of Cadillac caliber and do business with you only because you're local, a fellow Mason, and the nearest Cadillac agency is thirty miles distant.

  Naturally he asked Cready to lunch. At Anthony's, of course. Anthony's catered to Cadillac-caliber people, and Cready would have been insulted if he'd asked him anywhere else.

  He should have called the Maplecrest, he supposed, driving home from the showroom that afternoon. It was true he didn't know Guy's last name, but all the desk clerk would have had to do was consult the register. For that matter, all he'd have had to do was stick his head in the bar and holler, "Guy, you're wanted on the phone." There weren't that many guys named Guy.

  "That Guy person called again," Adeline said when he came in the door. "He left a number for you to call back."

  The number was jotted down on a memo pad next to the hall phone. Squires glanced at it as he walked past, heading for the kitchen. He got a bottle of Lowenbrau out of the refrigerator, opened it and carried it upstairs, sipping from it on the way. He set it down on the dresser while he showered. He'd never joined the scotch-and-soda clique or the martini-before-dinner haute bourgeoisie. He disliked scotch and he hated gin. What a man was shouldn't dictate what he drank, but what he liked. Squires liked beer. He'd drunk a lot of it in a lot of bars on his way up. Cheap stuff in the beginning. Now he drank the best.

  He didn't dial the number Guy had left. He didn't go near the phone. All through dinner he kept listening for it to ring, but it didn't. After dinner he worked in the yard. Raking up leaves still sodden from the April rains. Picking up twigs and broken branches winter winds had torn from the trees. It was still too wet on the Edgewater Links for golf, and he needed exercise. Come warmer weather he'd give old man Hendriks, his regular gardener, a ring, and tell him to take over.

  The phone rang when he was putting the rake away in the tool shed. "It's that Guy person again," his wife called from the patio. "He sounds like he's drunk."

  "Tell him I'm not home."

  "I already told him you were."

  The voice at the other end of the line was slurred. "Zip, old buddy—how goes it?"

  "About lunch," Squires said. "There was no way I could have made it." He went on to explain. "By the way, what's your last name?"

  "I borrowed the name 'Oldfield.' I don't have one of my own. You never gave me one."

  Irked, Squires almost hung up. Curiosity stopped him at the last second—curiosity, and a strange tingling along the length of his spine.

  Finally he decided to play along. "What've you been doing all these years, Guy?"

  "Racing—what else? Still at it, too. Trouble with me is, I never grow old."

  "Racing?"

  "Stock cars mostly. Daytona Beach, Atlanta, Rockingham, Charlotte—you name it, I've raced there. I've always wanted to drive in the Indy Five Hundred—I go there every year—but hell, who'd back a bum like me? It'd be different, maybe, if I ever won, but I never do." The voice at the other end of the line took on a whining note. "I've worked on cars all my life and I don't even qualify as a mechanic, to say nothing of a driver. All I'm good for is running errands for A. J. Foyt and the Unser brothers. And it's all your fault, Zip!"

  "If you're no good, it's your fault—not mine!"

  "Aw, Zip—I didn't mean to make you mad. I don't really blame you for my shortcomings—honest I don't. Hell, you were just a kid then! And I don't hold it against you either for not showing up today and leaving me standing here at the bar with nobody to talk to but myself. I know you're a busy man with all sorts of things on your mind. But geez, Zip, all I'm asking is for you to have lunch with me. Is that so much to ask? Is it?"

  "No, of course not, but—"

  "One o'clock tomorrow, then? Same place? Great! See you then, Zip. I'll be in the bar."

  Click.

  Squires wiped his forehead. He was still sweating from his exertions in the yard. But why was the sweat so cold?

  He went to bed early. Lying in the darkness, he found himself speculating on what Guy looked like. His staying at the Maplecrest indicated that he was a long way from being well-off. All right, then—a seedy suit, no tie probably, and discount-store shoes slightly run-down at the heels. If he'd worked on cars all his life, as he claimed, there was probably grease ingrained in his palms and embedded in his fingernails. Maybe he had that dead-white complexion mechanics sometimes acquire. Probably needed a haircut, although that was hard to tell these days. A nest of blackheads, probably, on the back of his neck, perhaps half-hidden by his hair. His voice was that of a young, or fairly young man; but boozing the way he did there was bound to be at least the beginning of telangiectasis on his face.

  Not a particularly prepossessing person. But commonplace. Commonplace enough, anyway, to allow Somnus, who had been waiting in the wings all this while, to come into the room.

  "My guy just heard if you go slow you can save gas. See how slow he's goin'?"

  "My guy heard if you go fast you can save gas. Whoom!"

  "Bet you my guy could beat yours at the Indy Five Hundred, Zip."

  "Bet you he couldn't!"

  "Let's pretend this is the Indy Five Hundred. Here's the starting line. Right over here by the tree. Line up!"

  "My guy's lined up. Shoot off the starting gun, Ted!"

  "Here she goes! Ready?"

  "Ready."

  "BANG!"

  "Zoom!"

  "Zoom!"

  At breakfast, Adeline said, "You've got something on your mind, Nick. Is it that Guy person?"

  For a moment he was tempted to tell her about the dream. About the way reality seemed to be slipping through his fingers. But only for a moment. He knew that underneath she didn't give a damn about him any more than he gave a damn about her. The only difference was that she pretended to herself that she did, and he didn't.

  The house was a compartmented stage on which they continued to act like husband and wife after, other than in a legal sense, they had ceased to be either. Maybe the kids marrying and moving away was partly responsible, but he didn't think so. The mere passage of the years would have been enough in itself to reveal that their marriage had been an empty shell to begin with, a shell they had filled with false kisses and ersatz endearments because doing so was comme il faut. A shell neither could fill with love, because the emotion they evoked in each other had, in the beginning, hinged wholly on sex, later, on a mutual concern for their offspring, and, eventually, on nothing at all. The shell had always been empty. It had only seemed full.

  From the coign of vantage of the hilltop of the years, the view as seen from below was no longer visible.

  The dream rode with Squires all the way to the showroom. It accompanied him into his office. He could not break free from it. At ten o'clock he told Merritt, his sales manager, that he had business in town, got in his Caprice and drove out of the lot. He drove through the business section and turned right at the light onto Central. He drove down Central to Sycamore Street, and turned left. After his mother died (his father had predeceased her) he'd remodeled the house and rented it to a family named Allerton. When he came opposite it he drove into the driveway and turned off the motor. Except for his Caprice, the driveway was empty. Allerton worked and his wife worked too, and the kids of course were in school. Good; he wouldn't have to invent excuses. He got out of the car and walked around the house to the backyard. The apple tree was gone—his father had cut it down years ago—and green grass grew right up to the back p
orch, or would when May shook the last of the long winter out of her hair. Right now the grass was drab brown. There was no sign of the old dirt track. Of course there wasn't. He hadn't expected there to be. He'd only wanted to look at where it had been, to see the site of the old "Indy Five Hundred" where, through a long and dreamlike summer, he and Ted had raced their tiny toy racecars. "My guy can beat your guy any day!" "Like heck he can!" "Zoom!" "Zoom!"

  He walked over and kicked aside an abandoned baseball bat that lay where the starting line had been. The impression left in the grass by the bat made it all seem real again, and for a split second he glimpsed the two small figures hunched above the "old dirt track" pushing their silly little racecars back and forth in the dust. "Zoom!" "Zoommmmmmmmm!" . . .

  When Ted died last year, had his guy died with him?

  With an effort Squires braked the irrational train of thought that was overriding his common sense. Then he walked rapidly back around the house, got behind the wheel of his Caprice and drove back to the showroom.

  The Maplecrest was old and run-down—a dilapidated monument to the pre-throughway days when the local tourist trade was thriving. This was the first time Squires had really looked at it in years, and he was amazed at how old and run-down it had become. He parked his Caprice partway down the block and sat behind the wheel. In the rearview mirror he could see the big bay window of the lobby and the weather-beaten wooden sign above the sidewalk that read: The Maplecrest Arms. You walked into the lobby past the desk, and on your right was the doorway that led to the bar and on your left was the doorway that led to the dining room. Between them was the wide stairway that led up to the second, third and fourth stories. He used to hang out in the bar, years ago when he was a fledgling salesman. He'd swung many a deal there. It was long and narrow and windowless, and a lack of adequate lighting had lent both the patrons and the ambience a grayish cast. Factory workers hung out there now, he'd heard, and transients, drunks and bums.