The Forgotten

by Tamara Thorne

  8

  “So, Will,” Kevin said, a coconut shrimp poised on his fork. “What would Sigmund Freud say if he knew you named your pussycat after him?”

  “He’d probably be complimented. After all, sometimes a pussycat is only a pussycat.”

  “And Jung?” he persisted. “What would he think of his namesake?”

  Will sipped his ale. “He’d be pleased to be associated with such a noble creature, I’m sure.”

  “And Rorschach would say the same thing,” Maggie said before Kevin could ask.

  “Thank you, Mags.” Will tipped his glass toward her and enjoyed her grin. “I wonder where the Terrible Trio is.” He’d been trying to keep track of the cats. Ever since Elfbones’s visit they’d been a little jumpy.

  “They’re down here,” Gabe rumbled, looking at the floor between him and Kevin.

  “Yeah,” Kevin said. He bit a small shrimp in half and dangled a piece in his fingers until a big orange paw came up and snagged it away.

  “Good thing you have wood floors.” He looked at his mate. “Stop feeding them, Kev.”

  “You’re spoiling them,” Maggie pointed out in her best veterinarian voice.

  “Wait,” Will said. “First give the other ones pieces, too.” Kevin smiled and bit another shrimp, his attention back on the Orange Boys. Gabe and Maggie both looked at Will, making him feel like an overindulgent parent. Which he was. Sort of. “We have to be fair,” he said, and cracked too much pepper over his rice. “Damn it.” Sham dignity in place, he returned to his meal.

  “I still don’t know how you tell these three cats apart,” Gabe said. “They’re identical.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Kevin said. “As a straight man, Will knows pussy, Right, Will?”

  Will chuckled, ashamed that Kevin’s bouts of pussy jokes—they seemed to come on him every month of two, ever since the Boys were kittens—still amused him. “Freud has a long nose and is very kingly and royal, Jung’s coat is slightly paler than the others’, and Rorschach has that little white blaze on his nose. His face is a little flatter, too.”

  “Flatter?” Gabe laughed. “Long nose? On a cat?”

  “Flatter,” Maggie said. “A little more Persian. And Freud’s long nose makes him look more like a lion. But all three of them look like Maine Coons. With a whiff of Angora.”

  “A whiff—” Kevin began.

  “They’re huge, luxurious felines,” Will said quickly. “With similar but different personalities. You can even tell them apart by their body language. Rorschach likes to head butt, but Jung and Freud usually prefer touching noses.”

  Maggie nodded. “The ways they habitually hold their tails—”

  “Stop!” Kevin cried, then glanced accusingly at Gabe. “See what you did? You turned on their parental things again.”

  “I did no such thing. They do it to each other,” Gabe said, a twinkle in his eye. “You two need to have some kids.”

  “They already have them,” Kevin said as a white-socked orange paw and fluffy head briefly appeared and neatly snagged a whole shrimp from his fingers. “And they’re brats. Imagine what they’d do to human children?” He grinned like a mad elf.

  Will felt himself blush, but it wasn’t so bad because Maggie was at least as red as he felt. They made brief eye contact and glanced away quickly. “They’re not brats,” Will said pointedly, “except when Kevin encourages them.”

  Kev dropped two more shrimps, then picked up his wineglass. “Just being fair. So, these guys don’t look very upset.”

  “No, they’re fine tonight. Maggie? What were your patients like today?”

  She considered. “I’m still seeing more stressed animals than usual. Birds, in particular.”

  Will shook his head. “That’s just so weird. Most of my two-legged patients are edgier than normal, too. I can’t help but think it’s connected. But to what? Apparently, we’re not going to have an earthquake. It would have happened by now.”

  “Military activity,” Gabe suggested. “Airborne radars, things like that, are supposed to upset some animals. Why not humans?”

  “The birds would be especially susceptible to something like that,” Maggie said. “Something that upsets the magnetite in their brains.” She looked at Will. “I wonder if the sea life was affected. Fish have lots of magnetite, too.”

  “Interesting idea.” Will drained his glass. “What about us, Gabe? Do humans have much?”

  “Not like some animals. Until recently, it was believed we lacked it, but that never made a lot of sense to me. As I told Will the other day, I think direction is a sixth sense.”

  “Why?” Kevin asked.

  “I don’t know about any of you except you, Will, but when I lose my sense of direction, I feel something physical for an instant.”

  “Queasy?” Will asked.

  “Yeah. You could call it that.”

  “Panic,” Maggie said. “That’s what I feel. In my stomach. It’s like the world tilts. Sometimes it’s strong, but other times, it’s barely noticible. We already know the birds’ radar, or whatever you want to call it, went south, so to speak. It’s the only explanation we have now for that kind of behavior. An electric storm—”

  “But the day was clear,” Kevin said.

  “Military equipment.” Will pushed his plate back. “Do you think they’ve reactivated Fort Charles?” The fort, sixty-some miles north, was built in the thirties and had been closed down for seven or eight years.

  “Makes sense,” Maggie said.

  “Even if it isn’t active—and I haven’t heard that it’s in use again—there are plenty of other bases along the coast.” Gabe’s face turned solemn. “Certainly, they’re patrolling more, and the power plant at Avila Beach isn’t all that far away. They’re really watching that. Lord only knows what kind of equipment they’re using up there.” He glanced skyward.

  “Wasn’t Pete in the Navy?” Kevin asked. “You could call him. Maybe he still has friends.”

  “Kevin!” Gabe’s reprimand was quiet but the younger man stopped smiling instantly.

  “Sorry, Will.”

  Whenever his brother’s name was mentioned, Will felt one of those little twinges, not so different from the queasy feeling of disorientation they were talking about a moment before. Pavlovian response. It wasn’t so hard to fend off anymore, though. Pete had been nothing but friendly to him for quite a while. Friendlier than Will ever felt toward him. “It’s fine, Kev. A good suggestion, but he was in the Navy, and he’s been out for quite a while—since before Fort Charles closed down.” He glanced at Maggie, saw empathy, and smiled. “If he happens to call me, I’ll ask him. But Kevin?”

  “Yes?”

  “You know how you like to play games on the computer when you think I won’t notice?” He spoke gently, but Kevin reddened. Will enjoyed it.

  “I don’t—”

  “Shhh. Tomorrow, when it’s quiet, spend some time on the Internet instead and see what’s up with the military bases around here.”

  “Will,” Gabe said, his voice deep and easy again. “You know Kevin. If he does a military search, he’s going to order gay soldier porn and have it sent to your office.”

  “Gabriel Hannibal Rawlins, you take that back!” Kevin put on his I’m-outraged-but-I’m-cute face.

  Maggie laughed heartily. “Hannibal? Really, Gabe? That’s your middle name?”

  Gabe nodded and Kevin did a tiger growl. “He’s a real maneater.”

  9

  Caledonia Cable’s satellite and attendant equipment sat within the chain-link confines, crowned in razor wire, on top of Felsher Hill, land of antennas, a little northeast of town. Pete Banning loved to look at his equipment. And more than that, he liked getting a blow job while he looked at his equipment. So, at this moment, he was in heaven. The only thing that might make it even better would be if the Boobsie Twins were on the dish doing each other like they did in Cable Hookers #5. God, he loved that series. In all the movies, the twins p
layed cable installers who liked getting plugged by their customers, but CH#5 had a long kinky scene involving just the twins, a roll of cable wire, and a remote control—that scene gave new meaning to the term “laying cable.” The thought set him off and he grabbed his secretary’s ears and hung on tight while he painted her tonsils.

  “Man, just look at that system,” he said, while she used a Wet Nap to clean him up before tucking him away and neatly zipping his fly. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

  “Mmmph,” was her reply. Evidently, he’d given her a real soaking.

  He grinned. Jennifer Labouche was the archetypal dumb blonde and he’d convinced her that swallowing sperm would make her tits grow. All he had to do these days to get a quick B.J. was tell her he wasn’t positive, but he thought her tits might look just a little bigger.

  While Jennifer continued to clean up, he walked around the dish, admiring the smooth lines, relishing the extra little bits of technology hidden here and there.

  “Want to see something cool?” he asked Jennifer. She nodded. He unlocked a white cylinder beneath the dish and flipped a lever. “Watch.”

  Thirty seconds passed. “What—”

  “Shhhh. Just wait.”

  Suddenly mockingbirds screeched and several appeared from different directions, landing on the dish. A few more came.

  “How’d you do that?” Jennifer asked. “How’d you call the birdies?”

  “Magic,” he said. Shielding her view with his body, he pressed another button and a miniature keypad and screen slid out of the cylinder. Quickly, he called up the map he wanted, entered coordinates and bits and bytes of data. He hit enter then had the keypad slide back out of view. “Watch,” he repeated, as he locked up the cylinder.

  “Watch what?” She was putting gum in her mouth. What goes in long, pink, and hard and comes out limp and sticky?

  “The birds. Watch the birds.”

  “Watch them do what?”

  Ten mockingbirds took off suddenly, their little bird brains having received a strong suggestion to take a joyride on the night wind. They all headed southwest.

  “Where they goin’? How’d you do that?”

  “Why do good blow jobs and bad grammar inevitably go together?”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.” He paused, then lied. “I don’t know where they’re going.” Opening the gate, he gestured for her to exit the enclosure. Following, he locked up after casting one last loving glance at his equipment. “Come on, hurry up. My wife’s keeping my dinner warm.”

  10

  “I wish Gabe and Kevin would give it up,” Maggie said after the couple had left.

  Will opened the living room drapes, revealing another view of the sea. “Give up what?” He opened the white-paned windows and stood in the bracing breeze. A wind, actually, and brisk enough to carry a trace of salty mist. Below, on the horizon, he could see smooth blackness and a short strip of reflected moonlight that abruptly disappeared against the ragged black silhouette of the Crescent.

  “Trying to fix us up,” Mags said, coming to stand beside him. “They’re not very subtle.”

  Will laughed. “They gave up subtlety a long time ago.”

  “I guess so.” She chuckled. “They’re such romantics. We must frustrate the hell out of them. Oh!” She grabbed his arm as a cat landed on her shoulder from behind, then she let go and reached up and touched the beast. “Bad cat! Which one is it?”

  Will looked. “Rorschach.”

  “Well, lift him off, will you?”

  Will complied.

  “You know, Gabe’s right. These cats really are spoiled.”

  “I taught them to jump.”

  She snorted. “No, you just taught them that if you give a signal, you’re going to catch them when they jump.” She took the cat from Will and hugged it close. Rorschach trilled and purred madly at the same time, which made him sound like a tribble from Star Trek. “They already knew how to jump.”

  “They’re cats.”

  “That’s my line.” She put the cat on the floor.

  “I know. It’s a good line, so I stole it. It’s useful at my job, too, you know. Now, when a patient tells me about other people’s strange behavior, I just say, ‘They’re people. That’ll be eighty dollars, please.’ ”

  Comfortable, familiar silence filled the space between them. Will inhaled summer wind, cooled and moistened by the sea. The dinner party had been just what he needed; he had even forgotten, for a while, what day it was. The anniversary. Michael had died a day after his own seventeenth birthday, twenty-six years ago today, the victim of a stupid shooting accident.

  Will remembered little of that day. It was a hot afternoon, even here on the coast, and he, Michael, and Pete had taken their shotguns and spent a couple hours plinking cans and bottles over on the backside of Crackle Hill. The hill was private property, but Old Lady Anthem and her mate, who lived in a little house on top of the hill, (most of the family lived in a spooky-looking Victorian three-quarters up the front of the hill) let them take target practice as long as they asked first, same as she’d let Will’s father when he was a kid. Today, the old lady and her equally old companion were still alive and kicking, and were still alleged to be witches. If so, they were good witches.

  Will, only ten, had a .410 gauge, but Pete, fourteen, had a 12, and Michael had their grandfather’s 12 gauge. They were old side-by-side shotguns, lovingly kept. Their grandfather had shot rabbits with the .410, had brought down bigger game with the 12. He hunted for food, supplementing butcher-shop beef and pork and the home-grown chickens with wild game, even though Grandma, at the age when Will knew her, made the old man dress out the kills. She used to call him an “old throwback,” in a fond but annoyed tone when he tried to foist off something on her that needed skinning or worse.

  The other 12 gauge was newer, their father’s own gun, a present from Grandpa. It was never used for hunting, just skeet and plinking, much to Grandpa’s displeasure. Dad preferred to shoot his game with a camera. He’d died only a couple years after Michael’s accident, and Will felt a hard pang of longing for him, too. Goddamned cigarettes. Goddamned lung cancer.

  “Will?” Maggie asked softly.

  “What?” Grateful for the interruption, he smiled gently at her. She was long and lean and still tomboyish with thick, wavy, golden brown hair bobbed in a way that made him think of the flapper era. The same bright green eyes that had captured him the first time they met, when they were four years old and her family moved in across the street, held his. A few light freckles left over from girlhood still sprinkled her cheeks, and her nose still wrinkled when she laughed.

  “Do you want to take a walk? Work off dinner?”

  “Sure.”

  11

  “This is Coastal Eddie, coming to you from KNDL, Candle Bay, on the cool California coast. Well, not too cool, friends and neighbors. After all, it’s a warm August night where I’m sitting, and if you’re ten or twenty miles inland, it’s a hot night. A dog day night. Here at the Candle Bay boardwalk, the fog is hiding from the heat, and the amusement park is going full-tilt boogie even as we approach the witching hour. The Caledonia Philharmonic is at our own ampitheater tonight playing Bach for our pleasure. I wonder if the horn section sweats more than the string. Or vice versa.”

  Will reached over to turn off the bedside radio then withdrew his hand when the deejay added, “Right now, I’ve got a caller on the line in Caledonia who wants to tell us about some avian antics. Danny, are you there?”

  Danny? Not Hatch. Please not Daniel Hatch.

  “I’m here, Eddie.”

  “Turn down your radio, Danny.”

  “Oh, oh yes. Sorry.” Fumbling sounds. “Okay.”

  “So, Danny, you were attacked by some birds?”

  “I sure was.”

  “Tell me about it. Was it like in Hitchcock’s movie?”

  “Yes. Kind of. I knew it was going to happen.”

  It’s him. Damn. Whe
n no news reporters picked up on the crow attack, Will had been overjoyed at the notion of the story dying a quiet death.

  “How’s that?” persisted the deejay. “Did someone tell you it would happen?”

  “Yes, well, no. Yes.”

  “Make up your mind.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Danny, did anything really happen or are you just trying to make up a story for me?”

  “It happened!”

  “Details, then Dan, or I’m going to have to hang up. For instance, who told you it would happen? Start with that.”

  “My, uh . . .”

  Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.

  “My penis told me.”

  “You have a talking penis, do you, Danny?”

  “Yes. It’s pretty talkative.”

  It was like listening to a train wreck. Will didn’t want to hear it, but he couldn’t turn it off.

  “You’re putting me on, man,” said the deejay in a buddy-buddy voice.

  “Uh, no. It’s true.”

  “Well, so what does he say? I assume it’s a he?”

  Yes! Will smiled to himself. You could count on human nature to be more interested in genitals than birds.

  “Yes, uh, he’s male,” Daniel stuttered.

  Eddie chuckled. “They usually are. So does he talk about the ladies?”

  “Um, yes.”

  “What does he say about them?”

  “Oh, uh, ah, things.”

  “Thank you, Danny from Caledonia, but we’re out of time. Next time have your penis phone in—maybe he’ll be more talkative! And now here’s a word from Fur D’Grease, the easy way to clean your dog.”

  As Eddie extolled the virtues of fur cleaner for dogs, Beethoven’s music played softly in the background. Will realized he was rolling his eyes at the tacky advertisement even though no one was there to see him do it. Wondering if eye-rolling was a learned or inborn response, he clicked off the radio and lay in the dark on one side of his king-sized bed. The cats, who had been indulging in a mutual grooming orgy on the foot of the bed, moved around his body, going for their usual positions. One near each hand, in case, he supposed, he had a terrible yen to pet them in his sleep. Freud, always dominant, curled up next to his left shoulder and nuzzled his head up against Will’s cheek and ear. None of his wives had ever been so affectionate.