McClendon's Syndrome (v1.1)

by Robert Frezza

  Clyde stopped giggling. “Uh, Lieutenant. Are you telling me I’m eating lizard?”

  “I thought you knew,” Piper said defensively. “I thought that’s why you picked this place.”

  Clyde turned a delicate shade of green and hurriedly left the table.

  “Iguanas are herbivorous. They’re actually much cleaner animals than chickens,” Piper said to nobody in particular. She grilled a sliver and popped it into her mouth.

  “I didn’t notice a vegetarian platter on the menu,” I remarked to Catarina.

  “I just told them that I was on a special restricted diet, which is perfectly true, and I mentioned that if I ate any meat or fish I would probably get violently ill and sue them. They were very understanding. I plan to leave a large tip.”

  I shrugged. “You want to pass Clyde’s plate over here? It seems a shame to let it go to waste.” I speared a couple of pieces. “I was planning on talking to Clyde about Wyma Jean. I guess that now is not a good time.”

  “Probably not. He seems to have other things on his mind,” Catarina agreed. While Beam and I were finishing off Clyde’s dinner, she stood up and took some money out of her belt purse to leave on the table. “Ken, Beam, I have some work to do tonight, and I really should get to it. Don’t wait up for me.” She crooked her little finger and flexed it. “Good night.”

  I looked at Piper. “And that was...?”

  She nodded. “A microwave.”

  “Well, that was the quickest dinner-date I’ve ever been on,” I said, realising about three seconds too late that I’d just set myself up for more abuse.

  Piper chewed some vegetables and winked at me.

  After we paid the waitress, we pried Clyde out of the bathroom and called it a night. By then, I was feeling sympathetic tremors. I guess you shouldn’t mix gerbil with your iguana.

  When I crawled into the office the next morning, Catarina was out, but there was a note on my terminal which said that a Mr. Ted E. Baer had called about lattices and wanted me to call back. I dialled the number, which turned out to be the number for an animal-husbandry station. After a long and tedious discussion, I found out that they didn’t know anyone named Ted E. Baer, they didn’t know anything about lattices, and today was the local equivalent of April Fool’s Day.

  Everybody in the building except Hiro was in on it.

  Piper and I finished our reports, Hiro chopped off on them, and we wired them to Fast Eddie, who took off for Dennison’s World with Cheeves. Mission accomplished, we took the afternoon off, so I changed out of my uniform and stopped by the Rodent embassy to see how Bucky was faring.

  He answered the door wearing a yellow smoking jacket, knee breeches, a pink ascot, and enormous red carpet slippers.

  “Bucky, are you all right?” I asked, allowing concern to edge into my voice.

  “In the pink, friend Ken! How good of you to come! Come in, come in!” He appeared enormously pleased with himself.

  I stepped inside, momentarily at a loss for words.

  “Care for a honeyball?”

  “Uh, no, thanks.” I gestured toward what he was wearing. “About your clothes... you look different.”

  “Oh, yes. What do you think? It’s me!” He did a little pirouette.

  “Well, yes,” I admitted.

  “Cheeves would positively flinch if he saw me wearing these. You won’t tell him, will you? I so hate to upset him.”

  “My lips are sealed,” I told him solemnly.

  “What a charming phrase.”

  “Sure. Why the, uh, clothes?”

  “These are just a few favourites of mine that I couldn’t bear to part with, so I hid them in the back of the closet. Cheeves is a dear, but he’s so particular about what I wear. I think he feels it reflects badly on him if I’m not dressed suitably. He doesn’t come out and say anything, mind you, but you can sense his disappointment.” Beaver pushed aside some dishes so that we could find a place to sit down. “I pulled some of the old things out. What do you mink?”

  “Clyde’s got a dashiki you might want to borrow.”

  “I shall consider it. Oh, did you know that Cheeves has taken an interest in your attire?” Beaver asked, planting himself on the divan.” He confided in me just the other day that his greatest ambition is to place you in matching socks.”

  “I have matching pairs of socks,” I protested. I pulled up my pants legs. I had on one black sock and one blue one, and I was sure I had another pair just like it somewhere.

  Beaver tugged at his whiskers. “Perhaps it would be nicer if you had matching socks on at the same time.”

  “I’ll have to work on it,” I mumbled.

  “That’s the spirit, Ken! As Bucky says, ‘Every defeat requires earnest application to remedy.’ “

  “Uh, right.”

  “Friend Ken, I was just about to make an excursion to the Prancing Pony. Would you care to join me?”

  “You mean in public? Uh, right. I have a few errands to attend to—how about if I meet you there a little later?”

  “Capital! I’ll be waiting for you.”

  I went back to Clyde’s place and called some people to install deadbolts, motion sensors, and a surveillance camera on credit, which appeared to be a good idea. I couldn’t find Clyde, so I took a quick look at his wardrobe to restore my self-esteem and went to find Bucky at the Prancing Pony.

  When I got there, Dinky was trying his hand at Chopin and Annalee McHugh was working the bar. Both of them were presumably aware that God had intended them to do other things. Annalee greeted me with a scowl. I gave her a casual wave. Spotting Clyde, I went over and sat down with him.

  “Oh. Hello, Ken. Bucky told me you’d be here.”

  “Where is he?”

  Clyde blinked a couple of times. “I think he’s in the bathroom. You know, the funny one with the round door. I think that’s where he went.”

  “Right. What are you drinking?”

  “Pink squirrel.” Clyde shifted one shoulder. “Bucky liked the name.”

  “It figures.” I looked up at the mushroom baskets gently swaying in the current from the air ducts. “You want to talk about Wyma Jean?”

  “No,” he said, slurring his speech a little. “Of course not. She thinks, excuse me, she thinks I lied to her just to get her in the sack.” He waved his finger. “That wasn’t the only reason. I mean, I like her. Excuse me, love her.” He seemed to sober up. “She’s got me pretty upset.”

  “No problem. Look, I’m pretty sure you two could patch it together somehow.”

  “No way.”

  “I thought you got along pretty well. I remember you were teaching her thieves’ cant.”

  “That’s another thing she blames me for. Excuse me. I pretty much made it up as I went along.”

  “How imaginative?”

  “Uh, I think I told her a caboose was a fat lady in a tight dress. She thinks I made a fool of her.” He took a very deep breath. “I’ve been working on some poetry.”

  “Catarina told me.”

  “I’ve got a couple poems finished. Want to hear them?”

  “Not really,” I admitted.

  “ ‘Leaves falling softly/Quickly presaging winter/Frost rimes windowpanes,’ “ he rattled off.

  “I need to think about it. What was the other one?”

  “ ‘Morning cherry twigs/Icicles melting brightly/Thin frozen fingers.’ That’s my best one.”

  “Look, Clyde, I don’t mean to criticise your taste in romantic poetry, but how is this going to help you mollify Wyma Jean?”

  “Don’t you see, the winter images, the frost and the icicles, represent blighted love, and... and...”

  “Oh, yeah. I didn’t catch that the first time around,” I said quickly. “Why not go with some Shakespeare?”

  “She’d think I was faking that, too,” he said, disconsolately.

  I looked around the room to see if there was any woman in the place who could take Clyde’s mind off Wyma Jean, but the
Prancing Pony usually leaves something to be desired in that respect. The last time Harry tried a wet T-shirt contest, his patrons voted to have the contestants wear more clothing.

  A familiar shadow blotted out the sky. “Hey, Admiral.”

  “ ‘Lo, Harry. How’re they cooking?”

  “All right, I guess.” He reached out and spun a limewater in front of me. “It’s on the house. I feel like doing something for the navy.”

  I looked over at Clyde, who was beginning to drift. “You can start by not feeding him any more pink squirrels. What’s been wrong with you lately, Harry?”

  “I don’t know, Ken. I’m getting tired of tending bar. Night after night, you see the same faces, you toss the same people out on the street. I told you I was in the navy myself once, didn’t I?”

  “Only about a million times.”

  “I heard from Clyde that there’s going to be a war with the Macdonalds.”

  “Could be.”

  “That’s where I should be,” he said eagerly. “Instead, I’m here. Tending bar.”

  “Lighten up a little, Harry. You’re a good bartender. That’s worth something, isn’t it? I’ve never seen anybody bounce a drunk the way you can.”

  “But it’s not what I want to do anymore, Ken,” he said, very softly.

  The pleasant sound of splintering chairs drifted to our ears from the corner of the room, and McHugh yelled out, “God damn it, Harry, will you quit jabbering and get over here before these two bozos murder each other?”

  Dinky started playing “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Harry rose from his chair with a thoughtful look and wandered off to wreak mayhem.

  Bucky sauntered over, tiptoeing past the struggling combatants. “Friend Ken, you were able to come after all!”

  “Hi, Bucky. What kept you?”

  He seated himself and tugged at his whiskers. “I seem to have misread the signs and walked into the wrong restroom facility. I expressed my most sincere apologies.”

  Clyde lifted his head.

  “Peculiar anatomy your human females have,” Bucky observed.

  McHugh shouted, “Who ordered the extra-large Tropical Surprise pizza?”

  Bucky raised his paw. “Over here, please.” Annalee slid the thing in front of us and departed. “Ken, would you care to join us?”

  “What’s on that thing?” I asked politely.

  “Let me see, papaya, guacamole, heart of palm, Japanese mushrooms, crushed pineapple, bell peppers. Friend Clyde, did I omit anything?”

  Clyde laid his head back down on the table. “And anchovies.”

  “Oh, yes. I forgot about those.”

  “I’ll try one piece.” I managed one bite. The anchovies weren’t anchovies. Nibbling politely at the crust, I said, “Well, I hate to eat and run, but I really have to call it a night.”

  I left Clyde a set of keys for the deadbolts and found out that pizza with guacamole affected me about the same way iguana did.

  The next morning was Saturday, and Catarina called to ask about Clyde and woke me from a reasonably sound sleep. I explained about the pink squirrels and asked her about Wyma Jean.

  “I spoke with her. It was not a particularly productive discussion.”

  “Should we be meddling like this?”

  “What else are friends for? Oh, by the way, Wyma Jean is pretty annoyed at you for telling Cheeves he could take the cat.”

  “Cheeves took the cat? I didn’t tell him to take the cat.”

  “That’s what he told Wyma Jean.”

  “As far as I can recall, the subject never came up. Maybe he just likes cats. I hope not. He seemed okay.”

  “Wyma Jean was afraid he might hurt Sasha.”

  “I wouldn’t worry. Cats almost never get what they deserve. I wonder if it was a spur-of-the-moment thing on his part.”

  “I don’t think so. Wyma Jean said he brought a carrying cage.”

  “It sounds pretty strange, but he’ll be back next week, so it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll ask Bucky what he knows. I just wish we’d stop accumulating mysteries faster than we can dispose of them.”

  “I’ll second that,” she said.

  “Anyway, I was thinking that if you and Beam didn’t have plans, maybe we could get together.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve really been pushing myself, and I really need to rest. Tonight, if you’re interested, there’s a Catholic church with an evening mass over on Seneca Street. I plan on attending, and I’ve talked Beam into coming.”

  It had been a few years since I’d seen the inside of a church. “Well, okay, as long as you’re sure they won’t have to rededicate the place if they have us both in there together.”

  “Trust me. I don’t plan on vanishing into a pile of dust. How about if we meet you at six-thirty in front of the church?”

  “Six-thirty it is.” I thought for a second and told her, “Somehow, I didn’t think of you as the Catholic type.”

  I heard her chuckle. “I used to be an occasional Lutheran, but I converted. Recently. Talk to you later.”

  “Bye.”

  After I checked Clyde for vital signs, I spent the day looking over the paperwork on the Scupper and working through some projections on runs. Then I grabbed something to eat and met Piper and Catarina for mass. It was pretty nice. They had a woman deacon doing the service, and she did a dynamite sermon. She was hell on sinners, of which Schuyler’s World apparently had an inordinate share.

  After it was over, Catarina managed to excuse herself with indecent haste and left me standing there with Piper in front of the church.

  Piper stared at me uncomfortably. “Ken, Catarina still thinks that somebody might take another crack at you, so she asked me to walk you back.”

  “Thanks, Beam.” As we headed down the street, I asked, “How far is Catarina going with this religious kick?”

  “I don’t really think it’s a ‘kick,’ Ken. Catarina hasn’t said much about it, but one thing she did say was that being a vampire tends to make you take the long view on things. You also have to remember that the Catholic Church is a pretty diverse organisation. I know she hasn’t made her mind up about what to do when the navy kicks her out, but I get the feeling from talking to her that some of the contemplative religious orders provide the right kind of physical environment for a vampire, and a few of the smaller ones may have a lot more experience with vampires than they let on.”

  That jolted me. “Hold it, are you hinting that Catarina’s thinking about becoming a nun?”

  “I obviously don’t know anything, but it’s at least a possibility. When you think about it, Father Damien ministered to the lepers, and he was a leper. I would think that the best person to minister to vampires would be another vamp. And it’s not as if Catarina would have to make her mind up right away. She could spend a year or so and see what kind of vocation she has for a religious calling.”

  I looked at her. “Beam, what is going on with Catarina?”

  “What do you mean, Ken?”

  “Well, I’m not real sure what I mean, but I mean about me and Catarina specifically. It feels like she never has time for me anymore. I know she’s working nights and that’s got to be part of it, but it just doesn’t seem like she’s interested. You’re the only person I know she talks to. What gives?”

  Piper coloured very slightly. “Well, I’m not sure how much I can say...”

  I stopped and leaned my back against a handy awning to make my point. “Beam, look. You’re the only person I can think of who can give me a straight answer on this.”

  She stopped next to me and hesitated. “Let me tell you what I can. Catarina’s navy through and through. She’s pretty broken up about having to leave. She really doesn’t want to talk to people right now.”

  “Well, I understand that, but I really thought for a while there that I wasn’t just ‘people’ to her. Right now, I feel a considerable distance between the two of us. About two parsecs’ worth, which even I would notice.” />
  Piper hesitated again. “Well, that’s part of the problem. Be realistic and try to look at this from her point of view. Where’s the future in letting anything develop with you? I mean, she’s regular navy, and you’re not. You’re going to have a ship, and she’s about to get medicaled out and be a groundhog for life...”

  “She’s a vamp, and I’m not,” I interjected.

  “There’s that, too,” she admitted. “Look, Ken, let it lie for now. Let Catarina get her thoughts sorted out.”

  “It doesn’t look like I have too much choice, does it? Do you think she’s letting this vampire thing get to her? I mean, I’ve looked in her closet, and everything she owns is black.”

  “No.” Piper shook her head. “She’s always dressed like that.”

  When we got to Clyde’s place, I thanked Piper for getting me there and went on in. Clyde was waiting up for me.

  “Hi, Clyde. What’s up?”

  “Well, I talked with Wyma Jean again.” He was hanging his head a little, which didn’t look promising.

  “What did she say? You don’t look too happy.”

  “Well, she said she forgave me, and she understood why I had to do what I did. That’s the good part. Lieutenant Lindquist must have talked with her. But she also said that we’d have to be just friends.”

  “ ‘Just friends’? She said that?” I looked at him. “That’s the absolute kiss of death.”

  “That’s about what I thought,” he said dejectedly.

  A Guarded Response

  Piper called me in to work Sunday morning. The Fleet had sent a requirements survey with Fast Eddie to see what Schuyler’s World could supply in the event that war did break out with the Macdonalds. Piper and I spent four days on that. It turned out that from the navy’s point of view, factoring in distance and tooling-up costs, Schuyler’s World was absolutely worthless. Some of these things you realise instinctively, but it’s always nice to have objective evidence.

  The remainder of the week was pretty quiet. I got out to see the tourist attractions around Schenectady, including The Wonderful World of Miniature Horses, and I stopped looking under my sleeping bag.