Dead Lines

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  Not for the first time, Glen swore a pox on Jamie Morgan. Most succulent receptionist in New York City history, without a doubt, and still the most miraculous one-shot lover in all of his considerable experience. But at moments like this, with the miracle of twenty-twenty hindsight and humiliating agony at his disposal, he most assuredly wished he could trade that night in for a lifetime free of genital dysfunction. He wished that he could wish it away, turn back the clock and start all over, like in that simple dumb-ass story…

  But he didn’t really want to think about that.

  Glen opened the medicine cabinet and searched for his little tube of Zovirax. All things considered, maybe it really was for the best that Mia was away, after all. He hadn’t had an outbreak since well before they’d started seeing one another, and he was a little scared to tell her; she was about the most understanding woman he’d ever met, but he didn’t know if her understanding went quite that far. Trust is hard to come by.

  By the time he’d ministered his affliction and wandered back out toward the kitchen, the messages had started their playback. The first two were from Geffen and lndieprod, respectively, relaying updates on the latest production schedules. Good news: Geffen loved his cover shots for Human Stew’s new album, Bring the Bucket, and lndieprod had gotten the green light on “Pretense of Innocence,” their film project. Glen grabbed a Lowenbrau from the fridge, popped a lysine caplet, and swished it down.

  The third was from Mia, cooing sweetness from three thousand miles away. Glen’s knees went rubbery; he could barely stand upright when she cooed. Hell, he could barely stand it when she so much as changed facial expressions, she was that beautiful. On the tape, her gorgeous voice informed him that she’d be back by Sunday, barring disaster. She missed him tremendously, hug, smooch, squeeze.

  After a night with Clenched White Flesh, these were exactly the things he needed to hear. He afforded himself the luxury of a very tired smile and prepared to kick back. Relax. Live a little.

  Then the next message came up, and dispensed with that notion entirely.

  He’d only met her that once, a little over a year ago, but he remembered her voice distinctly. The agitation behind it only amped its recognition factor. It brought back memories.

  It brought home the undeniable power of ghosts.

  “… Glen, hi, you may not remember me but my name is Katie, I met you a long time ago and I’m sorry to bother you like this but I got your number from directory assistance and called it and got a message saying you were out there in L.A., so I called but you’re not in and I’m sorry if I’m bothering you but I need to know what happened…”

  beeeep.

  Glen flopped down on the couch, cradling his beer in one hand and his crotch in the other, staring blankly into the pale blue wash of the encroaching dawn. Goddamn; he hated being up this late. Just hated it. It had to be the saddest time he could think of, that elastic moment between night and morning when tired eyes could see the ghosts of a lifetime in the shadows to which they were forever consigned. Already, it was rushing back; and, sonofabitch, it would have to choose this time of day to hit him.

  (I need to know what happened)

  “.. . Glen, this is Katie again.” More reserved this time: reining in, almost on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry, but I need to talk with you, bad. Please call me…” Pause, fight for control, come back hushed.

  “.. . it’s about Jack.”

  He listened as she recited the number, saw them drifting before him like wraiths in the wan morning light.

  (I need to know what happened)

  “I wish I knew what to tell you, Katie,” he murmured. “I wish I knew myself.”

  He had thrown up walls to shield himself from the memories. They were jerry-rigged structures, not built to take a pounding. Her last words came at them like a wrecking ball…

  “Glen, please…” Her voice was tremulous; in the battle for control, the tears were winning. “I’m scared.”

  And his walls came tumbling down…

  The scene that Katie’s image conjured to mind was, of course, the McSorley’s Massacre. He could still itemize the steps it had taken, like the amplified tick tick tick of a cinema time bomb taped under the hero’s table, like a musical piece he’d memorized by playing it over and over. It was three, four months before Jack died; and even then, Glen had seen it coming.

  He just hadn’t known what it was.

  That night, as always, the place was packed, with the ubiquitous collegiate line out front. It took Glen twenty minutes to get inside, another ten to push his way to the bar for a round, another five to locate his friend in the roaring crowd.

  Jack and Katie were tucked in the back, near the nominal kitchen. Somehow, they had weaseled actual seals at a table they shared with six sloppy-drunk college boys. There were thirty or more empty mugs on the table, at least that many full ones. Quite a few of each belonged to Jack. He was already lit. This was not a surprise.

  But he and Katie appeared to be fighting, and that actually was surprising. To hear Jack tell it, the last several months had been nothing but seamless and heavenly bliss. Either this was a first-time-ever schism, or Jack was deep in his bullshit again.

  Jack slapped on a cracked happy mask as Glen sidled up to the table. It wasn’t too convincing. “Hidey-ho, bro!” he hollered expansively. In McSorley’s, you hollered if you wanted to be heard. “I want you to meet the great love of my life!”

  Glen took that moment to size her up, and what he saw was distressing as hell. She was every bit as lovely as Jack had said, but that was where the similarity ended. There was no ecstasy on that face, despite the smile she affected for him, and no evidence of the legendary psychic bond, the much-heralded absolute coupling of souls. There were tears in her eyes, and painful embarrassment lurking behind the cheery facade. She looked like she’d rather be sucking on rust.

  “Hi!” Glen yelled, extending his sympathy with his eyes. She mouthed an identical response that never reached his ears and looked away.

  “We’ve just been discussing our future!” Jack continued, voice tremulous. “Actually, we’re discussing our family! Katie doesn’t seem to think that we’re ready yet, but I’m not quite so sure! What do you think: Ward and June. Cleaver material, or what?”

  The words punched through Katie like hollow-point bullets, and Glen felt black oil start to churn in his gut. The situation was clear. The situation was ugly. He didn’t know whether to slap some sense into the boy or just go home and let it slide.

  One thing was for certain: this was not the man he knew. This was a tortured and unreasonable facsimile. The Jack Rowan he knew and loved for the last seven years didn’t treat people like this. The Jack Rowan he knew didn’t evoke such unpleasant pity.

  And, of course, Jack had picked up on that right away. Glen hadn’t even needed to say a word. From there, it was a short jaunt to the men’s room, where Jack broke the mirror with his fist and set the Massacre into motion. In the resulting chaos, as Jack was escorted rather violently off the premises, Glen and Katie had managed a few quick words.

  He remembered the pain, and the concern, in hers.

  “I’m scared,” she said…

  That was the beginning of the slide, as he knew it. Glen had been mercifully absent for the end, and the aftermath, when they first found the body. It was hard to believe it had actually happened, until he arrived back home. Once there, there was no denying it.

  The stench was unbearable. It seemed to permeate the place: walls, rugs, furniture, everything. He cleaned, he scrubbed, he hired professional cleaners and scrubbers, to no avail. The stink hung, cloying, beneath buckets of pine-scented Lysol.

  He ended up tossing a lot of stuff—the leather sofa’s departure, in particular, was cause for mourning—all in the hope of ridding the place of it. But it was no use. The loft was ruined.

  Jack had poisoned it.

  Glen ultimately abandoned it altogether, settling for something on the Up
per West Side that was half the size and half again the price and transferring the bulk of his major operations to L.A. All told, he figured that he was out one home, a few thousand in durable goods. And one best friend.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that he’d known all along: there was no way to forestall John Paul Rowan’s downward slide. Not then, not ever. Jack had flamed out before, jettisoning from the latest wreckage his life had become and crashing in Glen’s guest room; after Katie he ended up there on a more or less permanently temporary basis: one week becoming two weeks becoming six weeks becoming an easy double-dozen.

  But never like this.

  Jack had thrown himself into his work then; not sleeping, not eating, drinking way too much, writing obsessively, and refusing to let Glen see so much as a word “until it was ready.”

  In retrospect, Glen wished that there was something he could have said, or done, to make a difference, to help chill him out. But there wasn’t. The fire was part of what made them tight. Jack and Glen both burned for their art, and they always had.

  But with one glaring difference. Glen had learned to channel it, to focus on one thing, or set of things, until it paid off. Glen had figured out that it was only then that you could ever hope to buy the leverage to survive, and branch out, and connect with more creative people, and do more diverse things. Only then could you hope to buy the time to work it all out.

  Jack, on the other hand, only knew one way to burn.

  Up.

  And out.

  (I’m scared)

  By the time Glen finished his beer, it was full dawn on the coast; back east, it was pushing toward noon.

  (please call me)

  He thought about it real hard, for about ten seconds.

  (I need to know)

  “So do.I, Katie,” he sighed.

  “So do I.”

  And he reached for the phone.

  20

  A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION

  By his own admission, Colin Bates had a handful of less-than-savory peccadillos to his nature. One of them, which he reserved wholeheartedly, was the right to be just as swinish and cruel as he pleased if awakened before the God-appointed hour of noon.

  However, in the event of being met by a lovely apparition such as now stood before him, he also reserved the right to rein in his baser impulses a trifle. Just a trifle, mind you; a wee little buffer on behalf of the meek and unwitting. It seemed the appropriate thing to do, given her personal appearance and all.

  “What the fuck do you want?” he inquired with just a touch of puckish good humor.

  Alas, the poor dear girl didn’t seem to grasp his subtle wit. Indeed, her dark eyes seemed rather like coals in their keen and off-putting intensity.

  “I want to see Katie,” she said, as if this were news somehow guaranteed to awe and humble him.

  “Well, isn’t that a shame,” he countered. “It appears she’s not at home just now.”

  “Where is she?” the girl insisted, annoyingly so.

  “If I may be so bold: who the fuck wants to know?”

  “I’m Katie’s roommate, that’s who the fuck…”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?” he interrupted, feigning delight. “Meryl, my dear, I’m so pleased to meet you! Katie’s done nothing but gush about you; and now, of course, her reasons for doing so are radiantly clear.”

  “Colin, you’re so full of shit…”

  “And a refreshingly deft command of the language, as well. I just knew we’d hit it off!”

  He watched her little hands and teeth clench and tremble with menace. It was a delight, almost better than sleeping. He suspected, however, that it might be best to assuage her somewhat, lest she spontaneously burst into flames and alarm the neighbors. The terrible price of civility in a savage, untamed world.

  “Ah, well,” he continued. “Perhaps you’d like to venture in and wait. I’m quite certain she won’t be gone forever. You might enjoy a cup of tea in the meantime. Or a toot? Why not?”

  He stepped back, held the door open wide, motioned her inward. She glared at him suspiciously; it was difficult not to grin in response. He so enjoyed the face of animal cunning at work.

  “Come along,” he insisted. “Don’t worry. I won’t bite, I assure you. My teeth are giving me problems at present.”

  “I knew there had to be some explanation,” she muttered as she muscled rather daintily past him. He could tell that she was mightily impressed by the snappiness of her retort.

  “Touche, love. Touche,” he mouthed in simulated good sportsmanship. It was not a habit that he intended to cultivate. Still, as he watched her pert little bum sashay toward the living room, he speculated that a slightly lighter touch might serve him well in the end.

  “So,” he continued, following her in and pointing her toward his favorite chair. “Refreshments?”

  “No, thanks.” Rather curt, that dismissal. Nor did she seem inclined toward the seat he proffered. She stood leaning against the dense bookcase, arms crossed beneath her tiny breasts, making a grand display of her pique. If not her peaks. “How long do you figure before she’s back?”

  “That depends,” he said, “upon her level of concentration. It’s quite possible that an attractive window display could detain her for… what? Three hours? A month?”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Like the weather, that girl. Utterly unpredictable…”

  “Has anyone ever pointed out,” she cut in, with a most unpleasant curl to her lips, “what an unctuous little pisswad you are?”

  “Well, no,” he replied, somewhat taken aback. “Though I admit that it’s a fairly well-turned phrase. Why do you

  ask?”

  “Because you are.” Her face had hardened into a marble mask, mottled flecks of rising red against the rigid pallor. “You make me sick. You always have. You’re so fucking condescending.”

  “Oh? Have we met before?” He was genuinely confused now. Her face was not in the least familiar.

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “That’s odd. My only recollection is of our little chat the other night, with regards to the magnificent swinging hack…”

  “Shut up!” she hissed with surprising vehemence. Her eyes had narrowed to feral slits. “I mean it!”

  “Why?” Now this was an odd development, indeed. It seemed that the subject was rather touchy. Always good to spot the pressure points. “Did you know him, as well?”

  “That’s none of your goddam business, ” she spat.

  “Well, no, of course not. I’m just surprised.” Yes, definitely a touchy subject. Best to poke about at it, see what turned up. “And curious. Were you another of his adoring fans? He had so many of them, you know.”

  “Colin, you shut your fucking mouth…”

  “Ah! Now I understand.” He narrowed his own eyes, gave a wee conspiratorial wink. “What was it that drove you mad about him? Was it his unique and deeply sensitive perspective? Or perhaps his Olympian yet enigmatically down-to-earth sense of connectedness with the whole of human suffering?”

  She didn’t speak, this round, opting instead to inhale loudly through her small clenched teeth. Her eyes, however, were glazing over; they did not appear entirely sane. He dragged his own gaze heavenward for a moment, as if something remotely more enlightened might be up there somewhere, and listening.

  On the credenza, the telephone rang.

  “Or were you one who saw through all that?” lie conlin ued, ignoring the phone, closing in on the coup de grace. “Were you the one out of his vast legion of insipid bovine followers who understood that he was really just an evil, self-indulgent little shit with a poetic streak…”

  The phone rang again. All things considered, the timing was perfect. Nothing like the tinkling of New York Telephone to ring the curtain down.

  Given the luxury of hindsight, he would have been the first to admit that he never should have turned his back on the little twitch. But he did, i
n a rather grand display, as if to say you are dismissed.

  And she hit him.

  With his bust.

  Of Einstein.

  The blow landed squarely at the base of his skull, simultaneously fracturing the atlas vertebrae and propelling his forehead into brutal contact with the cut glass panels of the credenza’s upper doors. The glass fractured into long, knife-edged fragments upon impact, slicing through the thin skin of his scalp and sending freshets of blood cascading down to blind him. He wheeled, stunned and off-balance.

  And she hit him again.

  The second blow caught him in a full roundhouse across the face, smashing both the right side of his jaw and the bony ridge around his eye socket, shattering most of his upper bridgework in the process. Any witty repartee remaining in his mind took flight on wings of purest pain as Colin tumbled to the floor, a spraying fountain of blood and crushed enamel.

  He hit the floor hard and badly, his full body weight coming down on the floating knob of bone that was his left knee. It cracked and dislocated at once, sending an agonizing overload of shrieking pain up and down the thumb-thick ganglia of his leg. Blind, primordial instinct prompted him to crawl—anywhere, nowhere, as far away as possible, to hell and back, to the slime from whence he came. This he did: without thinking, without reason. Twenty-three million, twenty thousand, five hundred and twenty-four minutes along, and Colin Bates had virtually nothing to say.

  And then she hit him again.

  The phone stopped ringing on the sixth or seventh try. For a long time after, the only sound in the room was the rasp of her hyperventilating breath. An ugly sound. The best he could do.

  Inside her head was another story.

  Because Jack’s mind was alone in there, at least so far as he could tell, and it was working overtime: manufacturing excuses and explanations, why it was an accident and how he didn’t mean to and it wasn’t his fault, spinning mile upon mile of webbed rationalizations to keep the gibbering panic-voices at bay.