The Boy Who Could Draw Tomorrow

by Quinn Sinclair

  "Cat here got a juicy black dick for you, honky bitch! Come on, mama, time you has some real pipe laid in you! Hey, white mama, you catching up on you reading, bitch?"

  She heard the roar of an uptown train, but when she faced around, she saw it was an express. It passed through the station like a thundering curtain drawn aside to reveal the three teen-agers busy at the body that lay on the bench.

  "Let that person alone!" Peggy shouted.

  One of the boys turned around.

  "Shut you face, whitey!"

  She saw the other two boys roll the body onto the platform. When it hit, it was the sound of meat falling against concrete.

  She ran to the turnstile, shouting for the attendant in the token booth.

  "Over there!" Peggy screamed, pointing.

  But the man kept his face turned away. From where she stood, it looked as if he was reading something.

  "There's someone in trouble over there!" Peggy shouted. "Call the police!"

  The man in the booth turned around and stared at her.

  "Do you hear me?" Peggy shouted. "Over there!"

  She pointed. And when she faced around to look herself, she saw two of them pulling off the clothes, and the boy who had called to her was holding a cigarette lighter close to the hair, its tall spout of butane flame shooting up as the lighter moved like a wand.

  "Do something!" Peggy shouted at the man in the token booth. She was about to shout again when she heard a train coming in behind her.

  She turned. It was an uptown. A local.

  Sam, she thought.

  When the doors opened, she got on.

  ***

  She looked up, her eyes livid in the strong light of the hallway. Behind his locked door, Sam was now as silent as Val. Her nose sniffed at the air, and beneath her thin upper lip slight protuberances seemed to appear, as if small tusks were budding from her gums. At Sam's locked door, she lifted her hand to knock gently.

  "Samuel?" the woman said. "Dear fellow, this is really quite absurd. Now open up."

  It was silent, save for the breathing she could hear on the other side of the door.

  "We're all alone now, Sam, and there's no need for us to play little games any longer. I know all about your power—just as you know all about mine. Your father's on my side, you know. He wants you to do as I say. Believe me, he's been rewarded handsomely for the help he's given me. Now you don't want to go and spoil everything by refusing to cooperate, do you? Come on, Sam, let me come in and have you draw a picture for me. Just to prove we're friends."

  First she put her ear against the wood paneling, and then the woman reached her hand to the knob, her eyes so crimson it looked as if they bled, while from under her upper lip two worn, brown growths appeared.

  ***

  Rain blasted into her face as she came out from underground at Ninety-sixth. Across the way she could hear the wind thrashing at the trees that bordered the west side of the Park.

  She fled under the plastic shelter for the cross-town bus, but the wind drove the rain in after her, drenching her through her coat.

  She looked west and tried to study the traffic for the high, wide headlights that would signal the approach of a bus, and then she stepped out onto Ninety-sixth with her arm held above her head, waving it back and forth.

  Cars passed her, their spray wetting her through to the skin. Two free cabs went right by her, and then a third cab with its "call" sign lit.

  It was when she turned around to step back onto the curb that she saw the pay phone on the corner. No booth, but it wasn't protection from the rain that Peggy wanted.

  She opened her purse and dug her fingers in for her wallet, praying. She was in luck.

  She dropped the nickels in and dialed the number.

  She counted the rings. When she reached twenty, she heard the operator come on and announce the obvious.

  "I'm sorry, that number's not answering."

  "Operator, operator," Peggy cried. "Please don't hang up. That's my own number. My name is Mrs. Cooper and that's my own telephone and I know there's someone there, operator. Please keep ringing it. My father and my son are there and they must be asleep. Will you please let it ring, operator? Please?"

  This time she counted the rings to thirty, and then she gave up.

  She looked west. Nothing.

  She ran out into the intersection, the rain slapping her in the face as she waved her arms overhead—but the cars simply swerved around her, and the best she did was slow down a driver who yelled for her to get out of the street before she got herself killed.

  She stepped back onto the curb, checked west again. But there were no headlights at all now, just the shining asphalt and the silvery rain that blew across it in sinewy pulsations, like sheets of radiant pebbles skidding over ebony glass.

  She turned to look back at Central Park, her attention fixed on the road that cut across it at Ninety-sixth. If she ran, how long would it take? Ten minutes, fifteen?

  The number made her think of a telephone ringing and no one answering. How many times had it rung?

  Enough. Enough to make even someone like Val—a heavy sleeper—wake up.

  ***

  She let go of the doorknob, and when she did, the faceted glass spun back with a small, ratchety noise.

  "I can hear you, young man," the woman called, her lips up close to the wood. "Can you hear me?"

  There was nothing, just the boy's muffled weeping.

  "Very well, then," the woman murmured into the wood.

  She turned away from the door and went back down the hallway, kicking at the empty suitcases that still lay along the floor. In the kitchen she pulled open the drawers until she found the right one: pads and thumbtacks, rubber bands and balls of string, food coupons piled along one side. She reached her hand in and felt beneath them. First she touched the hammer, then the thing she wanted.

  She lifted the screwdriver from the drawer and held it to the light to see if it was an acceptable size. Then, after a moment's pause, she selected a meat cleaver from a wooden rack on the counter. He would draw what she told him to draw—or she'd see to it that he didn't draw at all. Cutting off the hands would be simple enough—once she'd gotten him unconscious.

  She got down on her knees in front of the boy's door and aimed the screwdriver into the oval of greenish brass. It took no more than seconds to pinion the screws by their slots and twist them free of the wood. When the key plate fell away from the door, she caught it in her hand and lowered it quietly to the floor. She raised the screwdriver to the hole that was exposed and pushed it through, penetrating just far enough to feel the lever pressing against the vertical plane of the steel.

  She held the screwdriver level and touched her cheek to the door, snout swollen, the curve of one small tusk steadying the tool's handle as it turned.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  She picked the side that faced against the traffic. But there were no cars when she started out along the narrow walkway, and none came until she'd made it to the first tunnel, their tires throwing the pooled rain against her like sudden curses, as if her presence was an insult, a loathsome trespass in the night.

  She ran when she could, her feet slipping and tearing on the cobblestones, and when she could bear it no more, she slowed to a ragged trot, hurling herself against the wall whenever headlights blazed up in front of her, the vehicles then slashing past her, the only lone person in a city of safe millions.

  It was madness, but as she stumbled along she counted the jagged complaints of a telephone ringing. How many? Thirty, forty, fifty? Peggy counted because it was a comfort, because it made a noise in her head loud enough to drown out everything else. Again and again she turned to see if the echoing noises behind her were footsteps. But when she strained to look back up the tunnel, all she saw was her own bloated fear sneering back at her and the stone walls running black with seepage.

  ***

  "Sam!" she called sternly, and then, in one fluid movement,
like a length of silk swiftly splitting along the fibers, the woman pushed the door wide and presented the cleaver.

  The room was empty. Both windows were closed.

  But then she saw where one of the Levelor blinds was raised halfway up and the window latch lay meaningfully open.

  She advanced across the floor and put her fingertips to the sill, trailing them back and forth through the sooty droplets of rainwater.

  She shoved against the frame. When it lifted, wind blew against the soft grey wool of her jumper, and the Peter Pan collar fluttered wildly and then stood up against her hairy, matted throat.

  She looked down and then up before she squeezed herself out onto the grating. When she stood—her great height erected against the lights of the city—it was like a four-footed creature trained to stand aloft, the fire escape the carnival grid on which the beast had learned to balance himself.

  ***

  When she saw the lighted windows of the buildings along Fifth, she quickened her pace until she was running again, running past the gaping doormen watching from their lobbies as she raced against the rain that fell crashing to the street between the apartment houses on East Ninety-sixth. At Madison she turned right and cut across partway down the block, two busses nearly colliding when the first one had to swing wide to miss her. She tumbled headlong as she rounded the comer onto Ninety-fifth, her knees ripping open where they scraped along the cement. She clambered to her feet and was running again before she realized she'd dropped her purse. She kept going, counting the whines of a telephone that never stopped. But at Park Avenue she turned around and, gasping, quickly walked off her course back along the windswept block, her eyes searching the blowing shadows for her handbag, for the pair of housekeys she'd need to get inside.

  ***

  She started up the iron steps, sometimes calling for him, sometimes humming to herself, the Mongol 482 back in place now so that both hands might be free to make the slippery ascent. At each landing, she stopped and tried the window, fitting the bulb of her knobby shoulder in against the frame and heaving. When the window would not give, she pressed her snout to the wet glass, her bristled nostrils quivering as they sought to catch the scent.

  She went all the way to the top and, still calling him, climbed off onto the roof.

  It was here that she smelled him, and readied the meat cleaver.

  ***

  She sprinted the rest of the way, almost falling again just as she staggered in under the canopy. She banged at the door and waved her hands. The doormen turned and looked in her direction. But neither of them moved from his place on the wainscot chairs that stood to either side of the mantelpiece.

  "Help me!" she screamed.

  Through the glass she could hear one of them shout for her to get away before he called the police.

  "Please!" she screamed. "It's Mrs. Cooper!" But neither of them seemed to hear.

  She had her hand in her purse and her head down as she scooped blindly for her keys when she felt the door push against her.

  She stepped back and looked up.

  "Thank God," she sobbed before she saw who it was.

  He had his arms reaching for her and he was stepping out under the canopy to enclose her inside.

  "Pegs baby," he said, and when she moved to fight her way past him, he punched her in the face.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  She circled the roof, making her way stealthily, skirting the places where the rain had collected in small black lakes, her lips parting to show her furry tusks as she paused to call out after him.

  "Sam, you have only to do as I say, and I won't harm you."

  Again she circled the roof, crouching to sniff beneath the racks of pipe, behind ventilators, around skylights, her snout thrusting in front of her like a foot testing a hot bath.

  She stood erect again and backed toward the guard rail, her sow's face slowly lifting to regard the heights that lay above.

  She saw the penthouse—and then, higher still, perched atop the tower of wet scaffolding that held it like a massive throne, the gigantic, shingled cylinder of the building's reserve water tank.

  She saw the water tank, its gross immensity blotting out a sector of the sky, and then she saw the steel ladder leading straight up its side.

  ***

  She heard his voice first, and she listened for a time before she opened her eyes.

  "Just a family squabble," he was saying. "Honestly, you must forgive us. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Honey, wake up and tell them. Hey, Pegs baby, cut it out now, okay? All right, I lost my temper, and I'm honestly and truly sorry. I just popped off, okay? But just look at her—you guys can see for yourselves. She jumped out of the cab and started running around like a crazy woman, and then she ran away. I mean, I had to quiet her down. You can see that, can't you, fellas? It was for her own good. Hey, Pegs, honey. Tell them, baby. Tell them it's really all right."

  When she looked, she saw him bending over her, and beyond him, the faces of the doormen looking back down into her own.

  "It's not all right," she said. "Let me alone."

  "Here," the older doorman said, and shouldering Hal aside, he helped her scramble to her feet and put her purse under her arm.

  "Easy now," he said when she pushed herself away from him and made for the elevator. "You're bleeding, Mrs. Cooper."

  "I'm all right," she answered. "Just keep him away from me."

  "As you say, missus," the younger doorman said, turning to Hal to block his effort to cut her off, ordering him to shut up when Hal shouted after her.

  "Pegs!" he shouted. "I tell you it's all right. Just stay out of it! She's not going to hurt anybody, I swear! You interfere and it'll blow the whole deal!"

  She pressed the button and saw the light go off behind the B and then come on behind the L. The doors parted, and the operator stood staring.

  "Jesus, ma'am," he breathed.

  "I'm fine," Peggy said. "Just hurry."

  ***

  She went hand over hand, her impossible face wincing in the flooding lash of the wind, the cleaver slipped through the belt of her jumper.

  She hummed as she climbed into the roaring sea of the night, her throat grunting beneath the sinuous melody of the ancient music that drained from her pallid lips.

  The boy listened. He listened from where he hung against the ladder inside the tank, his torn feet clinging to the last strip of metal, his fingers locked over the bar that lifted off the hatch.

  Beneath him the water spread wide and black. He watched it as she climbed. He saw its surface ripple, registering each pounding step of the beast's steady, patient ascent.

  ***

  She screamed when she found the man, and the elevator operator came running back. When he made it to the entrance to the hallway, he saw the scattered suitcases and the woman bent over the man. He followed her into the room. But by then she was out the window.

  He leaned into the rain. He warned her to come back. He might even have reached for her, tried to grab her legs. But he was afraid.

  ***

  "Sam!" the woman shrieked, and then another woman called his name, the second voice closer and much gentler than the first.

  He heard the woman screaming, a voice so far away, and then, right after it, the nearer voice, a dreamy female purring that crooned his special name.

  "Old scout, are you in there, dear? Mama's here at last."

  He felt like swooning, or maybe just going to sleep.

  "Sammy, darling. Mama's here. Up above your head."

  He felt the bar in his hands moving.

  "Up here, my precious. Can you turn your head and look?"

  He thought he'd fall if he tried. But wouldn't she dive in after him and save him if he did?

  He threw back his head and looked. He saw the smoking fingernails, the steaming female snout.

  "Baby,'' the first voice whispered from a dream so far away. "Draw a circle. And her. Draw her falling off.''

 
He looked back at the clangorous liquid that shivered beneath his feet. He thought, I will die if I dare to draw her. But a child could let go. He could slip endlessly into the water because the water was only a dream, ceaseless, forever and forever, until you decided the sleep was over.

  "Baby," the first voice whispered. "Draw her falling off."

  With one hand, he let go of the bar, and felt along the waistband. His special pen. It was there, right where he'd stuck it, held fast by the stretched elastic.

  He raised it to his lips. He used his teeth to pry the cap off. He lifted one foot to the next rung up, and lowered the nib to the thin white cotton.

  He could smell it as he worked—like corn burning, only with sugar in it, something that smelled both ways at once.

  He felt the hatch pulling away from his fingers, and when he looked again to see, he saw the black crescent of the plunging sky, and in it, grunting longingly, he saw the nightmare that was real—Miss Putnam's spectacles ringing the belching eyeballs, and below them the muzzle of a maddened swine, its blistered tongue slavering a veil of wormy saliva onto the lacy scallops of a Peter Pan collar.

  He worked by feel, drawing against the easel of his leg, his execution never swifter, his skill never more artful.