To Sleep Gently

by Trent Zelazny

  The hallway he entered was quiet. He took a moment to visualize where he was. Once fairly certain he understood, he continued, past guestrooms, past a small humming concession area, and he wondered what the hell had gotten into Evan.

  He put his gun away and switched the bag to his right hand.

  I should've known that fucker would go psycho.

  He walked casually.

  Fuck-ups. All of them were fuck-ups.

  He thought about Harold. He saw Harold standing in the lounge telling him what time it was and then Harold was dead on the stairs and blood dripped from his mouth and his dead eyes were looking at him. He wondered if Marie had been telling the truth when she initially said there were others up in the computer room.

  Several people were standing around in the foyer. They looked at him. They saw that he was a janitor.

  "Hey, buddy, what's going on?" a middle-aged man with a southern accent asked.

  His wife nudged him and said softly, "Honey, he doesn't know anything, he's just a janitor."

  Dempster moved on. If the cameras weren't back on yet they would be any second. He turned the next corner. Underneath came a chaotic spree of gunfire. It was loud enough to be frightening if you didn't already know it was probably going to happen.

  Behind him, back in the foyer, a woman with a panicky voice said, "I think we should go back to our room."

  Then all of a sudden he stopped. The kid was running towards him, looking behind himself, unaware of what he was headed for. He turned back just in time to keep from colliding with the very thing he was trying to keep away from.

  Dempster grabbed him by the tie. The kid's eyes widened to coasters, his jaw dropped, and before he knew what was going on he was on his back, unconscious. Dempster, with effort, dragged the kid through the hall, made the last left and entered a set of double doors as he heard the bell of the elevator down the hall.

  Inside the doors the service elevator, for employees only, stood at his right. To his left were two laundry carts, one filled halfway with dirty sheets, the other one empty.

  He put the kid into the empty cart, then stripped out of his janitor's uniform, under which he had on his dark blue blazer and pants and a white shirt open at the collar. He buttoned the collar and from his jacket pocket withdrew a blue and gold striped tie. He removed his glasses and baseball cap, took off the mustache, bundled them with the uniform and stuffed everything into the bottom of the half-filled laundry cart. When he emerged from the room the only thing causing him to stand out was the bag.

  People were coming out of their rooms now. A door opened beside him and a young couple stepped out wearing pajamas. They pulled the door closed behind them, which didn't shut all the way. Without noticing, they walked down the hall to see what was going on. Dempster pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  Clothes were strewn everywhere, mostly the woman's. He strode to the closet, opened it, found a few pieces of clothing on hangars and two suitcases, one a girly looking thing with pink and red hearts on it, the other a black wheeled leather bag with a retractable handle. He took it out of the closet, removed the few items within, then stuffed the laundry bag into it and zipped it up. He exited the room. Nobody gave him a glance.

  "Everybody, please," a cop was saying. "Get back in your rooms."

  "What's going on?" someone asked.

  "Nothing at this time," the officer said, almost disappointed, "but please go back to your rooms."

  Dempster walked briskly past the foyer. He continued down the hall and when the stairway came into view it was blocked by a police officer with a rifle, explaining to a number of people that they needed to go back an lock themselves in.

  He took a couple more steps and glanced into an open door. From what he could tell, the room was empty.

  The cop with the rifle looked at him.

  Dempster stepped into the room and closed the door. It was a fairly small room that smelled like talcum powder, with a large messy bed and a hutch with a TV in it. The TV was switched on to CNN. Beside the hutch was a set of French doors. He opened them and found an extremely small stucco-enclosed balcony with a tiny table and chair and nothing else. From above, the layout of the hotel looked very different. It was multi-leveled, a one-story drop here, a two- or three-story drop there. Above him the building climbed higher. He was mostly at the side of the building but when he looked down, he saw that the balcony was two stories above the roof of the first floor. Fifteen or so feet below and eight or so feet away, there was another roof.

  Someone knocked at the door. It was a hard and insistent knock.

  "Just a minute," he said.

  The knock came again, and a voice said, "Police. Open up."

  Dempster hefted the suitcase and threw it. It landed on the lower roof and bounced twice. He closed the French doors behind him, climbed up onto the uneven surface of the wall as the cop got the door open.

  He jumped, and when he landed he came down hard, rolled and then sprawled out on his back. All the pain he had built up in his body attacked him at once. It was an unbearable pain. His arm came to his face and covered his eyes. He wanted to go to sleep. All he wanted was to sleep. Then he thought he was sleeping. Then a voice woke him up. His arm came away from his face and he opened his eyes. He sat up, blinking. He saw the night sky, the stars twinkling. He saw the police officer on the balcony, rifle aimed.

  A distant metallic voice muttered out of a walkie-talkie.

  Dempster rolled and the man fired. A small but deep chunk of roof disappeared. Withdrawing his .45 the two of them fired simultaneously. As Dempster felt the bullet graze his left side he saw the rifle drop from the balcony and saw the man drop into the room.

  Then the man was up again, first falling forward, then falling back. Then he positioned himself and aimed a pistol.

  Dempster shot again and the man went down again. This time he didn't get up.

  Laboring to his feet, Dempster rose just as another person came onto the balcony. Then the doors opened up on the next balcony and someone was there too.

  He picked up the bag and ran, relying on streetlights and the moon to show him the way. The pain in his left side began to burn. Then came the sound of gunfire. Single shots, here and there. He looked ahead and saw that the end of this roof was connected to the third story, and he stopped before he smashed into a window. A bullet punched the stucco above his head.

  To his left, a narrow wall extended out into space about five feet, then dropped down and down again, like long, precarious, paper-wide steps. They continued out past the roof of the bottom-floor and just ended in mid-air, above the sidewalk.

  The drop from this level to the next was farther than the previous one. He couldn't risk jumping. Too much chance he'd break something. He fired at the balcony on the right and heard the sound of breaking glass. With the suitcase in his right hand and his gun in his left he stepped up onto the wall.

  Another gunshot. The bullet whizzed by his head and he teetered as his eyes took in the sight of the long fall. He caught himself, and made it to the edge. The step was further down than he'd thought. Crouching, he set the bag on the wall, hopped and turned around over it, landed on the next step. He lost his footing but managed to hold onto either side of the suitcase, which acted as a hook over the higher wall. The .45 dangled from his ring finger.

  More gunshots. He couldn't fight back now, just had to get out of there. He got his footing and moved as quickly as he could to the next step, then to the next.

  One at a time, he told himself, just take it one at a time.

  More bullets slammed the wall and whizzed by him.

  He was almost at the edge. He tossed the suitcase to the sidewalk. Then he was at the edge. He lowered himself as far as he could for the drop.

  From above he heard a window shatter. He saw someone come out onto the roof from where he'd started this crazy climb. He heard the gunshot as he fell through the air. Then he landed hard and fiery pain crackled up through his
feet and legs and for a moment everything went black. The streetlights faded. The moon was blind. The darkness seemed to last forever. Then he opened his eyes and hadn't even settled onto the sidewalk yet.

  Aching, scrambling up, he hefted the suitcase and ran with a semi-limp as fast as he could towards the County Clerk's Office, hoping Evan had really parked there and hoping even moreso that the police hadn't yet blocked the area. Not more than ten minutes had gone by since he saw the flashing lights from the lobby.

  There was one gunshot, and then everything went quiet behind him.

  The Pontiac was there. It was also locked. He smashed the driver's side window with the butt of his gun, unlocked the front door and got under the wheel, telling himself "Yellow to red, yellow to red."

  "Hey," he heard somebody say from somewhere high above. "Someone's stealing that car."

  Then came the sound of sirens once more, unrelated to what the voices had just said, but still related to him.

  The Pontiac started. Dempster put it in reverse, backed it around in a half circle, switched to drive and drove as fast as he could in the opposite direction of the original escape route. He drove for a very long time and very out-of-the-way to get where he needed to go, and made a serious habit out of checking the rearview mirror.

  He lifted the left side of his jacket at one point and saw there was blood on his shirt.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sandra was staring out the front window of the bar when he pulled in. Rather than park in a space, Dempster stopped the car out front and waved at her. She couldn't see him through the tint of the Pontiac's windows, though. He hadn't smashed any of the windows on the passenger side, which faced the bar. Leaving the car running, he opened the door and stepped out. When she saw him her eyes lit up. He climbed into the passenger side and waited for her to take care of whatever she needed to in the bar.

  Two minutes later she came out, saw he wasn't behind the wheel, beetled her brow, and got into the driver's seat.

  "What happened?" she asked, and saw his hand at his side.

  "You gotta drive," he told her. "Touch as little of the car as possible."

  She looked down at the instrument panel, confused because the car was running. "Where's the key?"

  "Just drive. Go to the McDonald's and we'll get our stuff. Then we gotta go back to the mall and get your car."

  "Why?"

  "Can't keep driving this thing. It's hotter than hell."

  "Hopefully my car's still there."

  "It's still there, don't worry."

  She put the Pontiac in drive. "You're bleeding."

  "Only a little. Just got nicked by a bullet, ripped some flesh. No big deal."

  "Are you okay?"

  "Just drive."

  "There's broken glass in here."

  "So be careful."

  "Whose car is this? Why don't you have your car?"

  "Things didn't go quite as planned."

  "That much I've figured out," she said, and got onto Cerrillos Road.

  "It's the exact reason I didn't want to keep our stuff in the Civic," he said. "They're probably stripping the thing apart right now."

  "Your fingerprints will be in there. My fingerprints will be in there."

  "I wiped it down, the whole thing. It's taken care of. When we get to the mall we'll wipe this one down too."

  "You might have missed a couple places."

  "I might have," he said, "but I don't think so. Just keep track of what you touch in here."

  Sandra looked cautiously around herself, then leaned low over the steering wheel and brought the car to fifty.

  "Slow down," he told her.

  She threw him a glare, then eased up on the pedal and their speed slackened to forty, five miles over the limit.

  She said, "Did you get anything at all, or was it a complete bust?"

  "I got it all," he told her, and closed his eyes. "I got it all." He saw Harold falling into the stairway. He heard the security guards scream, heard the brekebrekebreke of a fucking machine gun. He saw the front of Clark's body being ripped apart. He heard Freddy tell him, "Please try not to kill anybody...it's gonna be a big deal, we don't wanna make it any bigger."

  The car slowed and made a turn. Opening his eyes he saw McDonald's. Sandra pulled the car around to the back, near the dumpster, and stopped.

  "I don't know how to shut the car off."

  "Don't," he told her. "Just kill the lights."

  They got out, found their stuff behind a box wedged between the rear of the dumpster and the building, right where they'd stashed it. They put everything into the back seat with the suitcase. When Sandra saw the suitcase her eyes lit up, though not the way they did when she saw him at the bar. Rather it was as though she'd just been slapped in the face once more with reality, and she stared at the bag, frozen, transfixed.

  "Let's go," he said, and climbed back into the car. He waited patiently, knew she was debating with herself. Everything had been so romantic to her, getting together with a real life criminal, the idea of living on the run, traveling all over the world. Even seeing him bleed heightened the romantic drama in her eyes; but seeing the suitcase there in the back seat brought home what it was all about, much like when she'd gotten mad at him at the hotel. So much, and in the end, it wasn't about anything important at all.

  "Are you coming?"

  She stood outside the car a couple seconds longer, then got in the driver's seat and closed the door. She slouched, facing the wheel, her eyes directed to the side and back, either at him or at the presence of the suitcase. He didn't know which.

  Finally she said two words: "Stop it."

  He didn't say anything, just waited out the silence.

  She brought her face up and looked at him. "Do you love me, Jack?"

  He thought this might happen. He didn't think it would happen now.

  "Yeah."

  "Do you love me so much that nothing else in the world matters?"

  He looked into her beautiful brown eyes. "Yes."

  "Then stop it," she said. "Don't do this anymore."

  "I don't want to do it anymore," he told her. "I'm done." He allowed her to check his eyes and see that he was sincere. "Let's go switch cars," he said.

  She started to say something, held it back, then turned on the headlights and put the car in drive. There was no talk between them. They didn't look at each other until they pulled up beside the Nissan in the parking lot of the mall five minutes later.

  They made the transfer of personal belongings and stolen goods from car to car, then Dempster spent some time wiping down the interior of the Pontiac, making sure to get everything Sandra had touched. He didn't know what time it was but the stars were fading just the slightest bit. Another hour or so and the sun would be coming up. He got out of the car, thought about taking Evan's, Clark's, and Jimmy's stuff out of the trunk, then decided against it. There wouldn't be anything in there to tie him in with them. The only people at the hotel that got a clear look at him were now dead.

  He was free to go.

  Sandra was sitting on the hood of the Nissan, looking at him. When he approached, she reached out and took his hands. She drew him close, then their lips were kissing, soft and tender, and when they parted she smiled, and her eyes glistened with held-back tears.

  They got into the car.

  "Where am I going?"

  "Get on the Interstate and go south," he told her.

  He watched the buildings dwindle in numbers as they made their way out of town. He felt the heaviness of his eyelids. He yawned. "In about forty minutes look for Exit 242, Rio Rancho and Placitas. Get off there and make a right, then wake me up."

  "You going to sleep?"

  "Maybe," he said. "Or maybe I'll just stare out the window, think about a little cottage in Maine."

  She smiled. She wiped tears from her eyes. "We'll work as grocery baggers," she said. "Or maybe I'll work in a greenhouse."

  "We'll spend our nights reading to each o
ther."

  "We'll drink wine and make love," she said. Her tone was lighter now, more like the girl he'd first met. It comforted him and he needed that comfort very much right now.

  "You can cut up all the sheets," he said, "and you can draw on the walls as much as you want. You don't even have to draw hieroglyphs." His mind faded out, faded back in. "You can use finger-paints, you want."

  "And you'll make me tea while I do."

  He felt his lips shape a smile. "You can write your novel," he told her. Then he yawned again, and slumped further into his seat and closed his eyes.

  "Sleep gently," she told him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  "My father used to pick blackberries out here," Jack said. "Told me when he was a kid a lot of this land was an apple orchard, loaded with apples and blackberries and other things."

  "That's all gone now, I guess."

  "Yeah, I wonder what happened."

  They walked hand in hand amidst oaks, poplars, and maples. The setting sun cut between the leaves and branches in fragmented patterns, broken visuals like a partially completed jigsaw puzzle, half vibrant, half shadow, the light wind playing tricks on the eyes when it fluttered everything about.

  "He and his brother used to spend hours out here playing hide-and-seek and war games and stuff," he said as they made their way up the lush, forested trail.

  "That's cute," Shelley said as a gray rabbit hopped up and stopped a couple of yards in front of them, its nose rhythmically bobbing up and down like clockwork. They took a cautious step forward, and the rabbit hopped away.

  "I've never been hiking here," Shelley said. "It's beautiful."

  "My dad used to take me fishing on the lake," he told her. "And sometimes we'd go fishing in a pond not too far from here, over that way." He pointed. "Mostly we caught bass, but sometimes a good bluegill or pike would come up. People say there's catfish. I never saw one, though."

  The trail veered to the left and sloped down. Deep grooves showed where rain had made paths for itself. A woodchuck zipped across the path and vanished as a hawk circled the sky overhead, and in the far distance ducks quacked.