To Sleep Gently

by Trent Zelazny

  "I thought I'd never see you again!" Her voice was so filled with enthusiasm it almost frightened him.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked.

  "Locking my keys in the car, what does it look like?"

  "You just shouldn't be allowed around automobiles," he said, and took the coat hanger from her. Eighteen seconds later he opened the door, reached in and removed the keys from the ignition, and handed them to her.

  "My uncle was right, you really can do anything. Merci beaucoup, vous le bel Homme."

  "De rien, la belle femme."

  "Ooh-la-la." She put her keys into the pocket of her jeans, winked at him, and said, "How can I ever repay such a gallant act?"

  "I'd appreciate it if you didn't," he told her. "I think it would take some of the thunder out of the whole chivalry thing."

  She smiled. "Well in that case, would you like to get a non-repaying cup of coffee?" She gestured to the coffee shop behind her. "I promise to make you pay for your own."

  A laugh escaped him—a bigger laugh than the joke warranted, and for a brief moment he felt like he was fifteen again. "All right," he said. "You got a deal."

  "But to be honest, you might not want to trust me," she said. "I might have no choice but to break our deal when we get inside."

  He smiled. "I guess I'm willing to take that risk."

  #

  "Where did you get that car?"

  "I bought it from this Native American welder up in Taos. It's old and falling apart, but so far it's taken me where I want to go." She sipped her mocha. "It got me from there to here."

  "And how was there? It didn't last very long."

  "It was a big dull dud," she said. "A land full of emptiness. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. I'd been around the entire town twice within the first day, and found little that stimulated me in any conceivable way. It was beautiful, don't get me wrong; but I guess I was hoping for a livelier environment, not that it's Taos' fault. As Dylan Thomas said, 'Someone's boring me. I think it's me'. So I bought my little car the next day, spent a bit more time with my parents, and got here this morning."

  "And you already managed to lock your keys in the car."

  "I told you before that I wasn't interested in being a genius. I never said I was bright." She paused, started to reach for his hand then thought better of it. "I've also already run into you. What are the chances of that?"

  "You would think they'd be pretty damn poor, but maybe the odds were better than we thought."

  "Did you think about it? I mean, did you wonder if we'd ever run into each other again?"

  He studied her delicate face, those beautiful eyes, such beautiful eyes. He said, "'It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.'"

  "George Bernard Shaw," she told him.

  "I guess I'm fairly stupid," he said, and nodded.

  "Maybe I'm crazy," she said, "but I can't help wondering if fate is somehow playing a role in all of this."

  "I don't think it's any crazier than ships passing in the night and then finding each other three days later."

  Her face brightened.

  "How are your aunt and uncle?" he asked before things went any further.

  "They're fine, still in Taos with my parents." Then she giggled. "My uncle just loved you. Wouldn't stop talking about Jack Driscoll and how amazing he thought you were. Jack this and Jack that, praising you left and right until my aunt finally asked him if he was hoping to become Mrs. Jack Driscoll."

  Dempster laughed. "I thought they were pretty terrific too."

  "My parents were a little hurt that I'd just arrived and had already decided to move on. Told me they hadn't seen me in ages, and could I just settle down, even for a month. I love them, but I'm a grown-up now. There's so much I wanna do, and time doesn't slow down."

  "How old are you, Sandra?"

  It was the first time he'd seen her face take on caution. "Twenty-four," she said.

  "You still got plenty of time," he told her.

  "I know. I know that I'm young. But even when I was very small, I was somehow acutely aware of how quick time passes. I was always one of those kids that tried to do everything at once because I didn't want a single thing to pass me by."

  "It can't be helped," he told her. "Things passing you by, I mean."

  "I know, but I wanted to experience everything. I wanted to live life the way I think it's meant to be lived. I still want that."

  "And how is life supposed to be lived?"

  She shrugged. "However you want it to be, I guess." She sipped her drink, set it down, and stared at the table. "When I was seven, I was walking along Eighth Street with my mother. Eighth Street is a business district in Woodward, Oklahoma. We had been shopping and it was just going on evening when a car turned the corner and tore up the street, zigging and zagging, looking like it was about to lose control. Which it did. It hopped up onto the sidewalk and missed us by about two feet. We watched it crash into a lamppost and some newspaper boxes behind us. It also killed two women, who were buying a newspaper. The person behind the wheel was a twenty-one-year-old kid who had stolen a car and was driving intoxicated. His blood-alcohol content was almost three times the legal limit. He wound up being charged with two counts of first-degree manslaughter."

  Dempster drank some coffee. "Pretty scary."

  "That's when it really clicked for me, I think. I realized that, at some point or other, life is going to kill you. You never know when and you never know how." She sighed. "I think that's when I truly became aware of how fast time passes, and I figured I better take as much of it in as I could. Really do my best to enjoy however much time I have remaining."

  "A little morbid," Dempster told her, "but nice."

  She looked away and then back. "What about you? How are things going? How's work treating you?"

  "Much like Taos treated you. Only instead of being bored out of my mind, I find myself trying to juggle about twenty different things at any given moment. For want of a better trite phrase, I feel like a chicken with its head cut off."

  "Are you juggling right now?"

  "In my mind," he said, "but no, I don't have much going on today, other than stopping by and visiting a friend, which I should probably do pretty soon." He looked into her eyes and then grabbed his coffee. "What about you?"

  "Just wandering around," she said, "wondering where I'll be and what the hell I'm doing. You know, just trying to enjoy it and take things in."

  "So it sounds like your day is fairly open."

  "Yeah, I guess you could say that."

  They looked at each other. Something inside him fluttered again. He wanted to reach over and take her hand but didn't. Instead he slid his coffee away, grabbed a napkin, removed a pen from his pocket and wrote down his cell number.

  "Call me in a couple hours," he told her.

  She took the napkin. "Don't think I won't."

  "And don't you think I think you won't," he said. "I don't just give that number out to anyone. You're a special case."

  "Do you mean special in like, you like me, or special as in you think I'm a retard?"

  "I'll let you know when you call me."

  She laughed. It was a very girlish laugh and it made him not want to leave. He thought about staying, sitting and talking with her all day, drinking cup after cup of coffee until his entire body rattled. Going for a walk, possibly, maybe up Canyon Road to check out the galleries, letting their hands join again, their fingers intertwine. Stopping by the river, drawing her close, maybe even kissing her.

  He rose from his seat.

  "Call me," he said, and left, buzzing, feeling as though he'd known her for ages, but still wanting to know more. He barely knew her, but felt she truly was something special—something that, if the cards dealt out right, maybe he could believe in.

  She makes you feel like you're better than you are. You're not though. It's an illusion. You're no better than you were fifteen minutes ago, or yesterday, or six months ago, and you're not go
ing to magically change. And don't forget how much you've already lied to her.

  Of course I can't just magically change, he thought, not overnight. That's stupid. But people do change. They change all the time, and if you're willing to work at it, just about anything can happen.

  He got back to his car, and wondered how much he had just lied to himself.

  2

  Angela had just laid out slabs of clay for a new project when Dempster rang the doorbell.

  "I didn't mean to disrupt you."

  "No problem," she told him. "I have to let these slabs dry out a little before I can really do anything with them anyway." She offered him a seat. "Would you like something to drink?"

  "No thanks, I just wanted to talk for a few minutes."

  Uncertain of the subject, Angela sat down on the couch quietly. From the look of her, she was putting up defenses. "What's on your mind?"

  "I wanted to talk about Mike," he said. "About what he's doing." When it became obvious that she wasn't following, he went on. "It's none of my business, and I know I'm certainly not a prime example of a good human being and therefore pathetic to even wanna stick my nose in at all, but I'm wondering why Mike has stopped painting."

  Taken aback, though clearly relieved from some mental anguish or other she had created for herself, Angela sighed and nodded her head. "Yeah, he hasn't done much lately. I guess he really stopped a couple years ago, after he'd met this couple from New York."

  "He told me that story. Sounded like a couple of fruitcakes."

  "I think he's just tired of trying, y'know? Sure, he'd always had his ups and his downs, but those two cretins picked him up so high and then just let him fall."

  "The straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak."

  "Right, but it was more like an anvil, I think."

  "He told me over lunch the other day that he would paint no matter what, but he'd lost interest in the career aspect. Said that the paintings he'd done were just going to stay in the closet. I assume that means he's just gonna throw them away eventually."

  Angela looked at him then looked away. "There aren't any paintings in the closet," she said. "I think he's maybe picked up a brush three times in the last two years. If he ever produced anything, I never saw it."

  "Do you think that's what it is? Do you think it's as simple as that? Too many disappointments?"

  "I dunno, Jack. You know how he can be. On one side he's got all the personality and more, then he has this other side that seems to be holding a million secrets and I'll be goddamned if he's ever gonna share a single one of them."

  Dempster nodded. "I guess I'm concerned," he said, "mostly because, even during his downs, he'd always had an optimistic outlook. Granted, almost a decade has passed since I've last seen him, but there's an angry bitterness to him now that I've never seen before. I know I'm sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna let him just work in that store and not even have any other goals."

  "Okay," Angela said, "so what do you suggest we do?"

  "I dunno. Maybe nothing other than tell him he's an asshole. All I know is his one goal in life has always been to be an artist, and we can't just let him give up and throw it all away for no damn good reason."

  There was quiet for a moment.

  Then: "Jack?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Forgive me for my past judgments of you."

  "Nothing to forgive, they're understandable"

  "You're the best friend Mike could have."

  "That goes the same on this end."

  Chapter Ten

  Sandra didn't call.

  It was six o'clock and he'd been in his room for the past two hours with a paperback he'd read nearly all the way through but hadn't absorbed more than a couple sentences of. If one were to ask him what the book was about, he probably couldn't have explained it, even if he looked at the cover again and reread the back.

  He felt tired and groggy. It was hot and the place was stuffy and dry, and every once in a while he closed his eyes in hopes of sleeping through the worst of it. Each time he began drifting off, an image or thought popped into his head and jolted him back to the hot, stuffy dryness, and the fact that she hadn't called him.

  Maybe she saw through you. Maybe you let something slip that you didn't realize, and she figured out who you really are. Or maybe she just came to the conclusion that you're a fucking loser who's too goddamn old for her anyway, and she discovered that she'd be doing nothing with you other than wasting her time.

  He opened the book, read a sentence, didn't pay attention, and closed it up again.

  The girl has a life, you know. Her world does not revolve around you. Maybe she got busy, wrapped up with something or other—or maybe she lost your number or couldn't read your sloppy handwriting. The fact is she's thrilled to be out and about, to see a new part of the world, and there's nothing to indicate that she doesn't like you. So just let it go; she'll call. And if she doesn't, then oh well.

  It was true and he knew it. He also knew that he shouldn't be giving a damn any which way, given his current situation, with everything that was going on. It was messing with his head, and he couldn't allow that. He didn't allow that. He never allowed that.

  "Hell with it," he said, tossing the book aside.

  He stretched out on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The heat began getting the better of him, and slowly his eyelids grew heavier and heavier, until they finally closed.

  #

  It was dark when he woke up to the sound of his cell phone ringing. He fumbled for the bedside lamp, switched it on, hopped off the bed and snatched the phone from its charger.

  "What's going on, man?" It was Clark.

  Dempster looked at the 9:05 glowing on the clock. Had he really been asleep for three hours? Shit. "I was sleeping," he said, and rubbed his eyes.

  "Sorry, I'll let you go."

  "I'm up now. What do you want?"

  Clark was quiet for a couple seconds. Within the pause Dempster heard background commotion, people laughing, glasses clinking. "Jimmy and Evan and I—we're just hanging out, having a couple drinks."

  "Didn't you do that last night?" He was still too tired to give his voice the strength he wanted.

  "Weren't going to," Clark told him. "Just stopped for a quick one and then figured to give you a call, see if you'd like to join us."

  "No."

  "Look," Clark said, "none of us are gonna be best buds with you. We can all agree that's a given. Just thought it might be a good idea, y'know? Boost morale or some such thing."

  "You thought it would be a good idea." He was waking up now.

  "Well," Clark said, "you think it's a bad idea?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "So you wanna come hang out?"

  Dempster thought about it a minute. He didn't really want to get to know these guys too well. He wasn't very fond of them in the first place, and the closer he got to them, he didn't want to invest more than necessary, didn't want more than a professional relationship with them.

  While on the other hand, it might do all of them some good. Might ease some of the tension brewing between them, especially between him and Evan. It seemed it might be worth it, just for that alone. And hell, he had just slept three hours—he was going to be up for a while.

  "All right," he said. "Where are you guys?"

  2

  The bar was very busy. It was also very loud. In the weak light swarms of college kids, most of them frat boys or rejects of a different nature, staggered and raced about with beers in their hands and crossed eyes in their sockets. There were six pool tables, all of them occupied, two big-screen TVs, one showing a baseball game, the other a bad vintage Charlie Sheen movie. Pop music blared, though it wasn't loud enough to be clear and merely added to the cacophonous atmosphere. To the left was a small stage. On it, musical equipment sat with no band at the ready to play. The place was foggy with cigarette smoke. It smelled like stale beer.

 
; Dempster sat, sipping a scotch and soda, listening to Clark and Jimmy, who had done most of the talking so far. It was clear that all three of them had already had more than they should have.

  Clark shifted in his chair. For the second time in three minutes he pointed over to a sandy haired woman wearing a light blue tank top. "I gotta meet her," he said.

  "You said that a couple minutes ago," Jimmy told him. "And all you've done since is had more beer and stared at her nervously."

  "She's something," Clark said. "Exactly the kind of girl I go for."

  "So are you gonna go say something to her," Evan asked, "or are you gonna sit there all night wishing and hoping?"

  "Haven't decided yet." He smiled, took another swig of beer. "Man, she's something."

  "So go talk to her," Jimmy said. "I mean, your dick ain't gonna suck itself."

  Evan laughed. "Yeah, you should go and tell her just that."

  Clark drank some more beer. Then his eyes bulged. "You see that?" He shifted again. "She just looked at me."

  "She glanced casually in our general direction," Jimmy said. "I don't think that counts."

  Dempster watched Clark sag sideways. He hoped and prayed that Gardner wasn't going to be getting in touch with them tomorrow to tell them it was time. They would have to postpone it if he did, and who knew how long it might be before things would be right again.

  "This is the last time we're doing anything like this," he said. "No more partying until after the job."

  The waitress came by to check on them. Dempster ordered four waters.

  Jimmy finished off his beer, tapped the glass a couple of times on the table, and said, "Can I ask you something?"

  Dempster shrugged. "Ask away."

  "What was it like? I mean, inside?"

  He laughed, and leaned back in his chair. "Not as nice as it is out here," he told him.

  "No, really, I'm curious."

  "Isn't that what killed the cat?"

  "I just wanna know. That is, if you don't mind."

  Dempster drained his scotch. "I guess I just don't really know what to say. It was kind of rough at first. You know, for the most part people suck and all of that; but actually, the place was pretty posh, all things considered. I had my own cell, a concrete bed, a sink, a small desk and a toilet all to myself. There was a day room where you could read or watch TV or play cards or board games with other inmates. There was a small though pathetic library, where I spent much of my time. I think I read everything they had in there at least once. There was an exercise yard with a basketball court and—blah blah blah, I don't know what the hell to tell you. I'm much happier to be out." He knew it wasn't what Jimmy meant when he asked. He just didn't feel much like going there at the moment.