I ran back into the house, past my Aunt Sheila who was in the kitchen doing something visceral in a pudding basin, and rang Michelle’s apartment. And – there was a God – she answered the call. I told her exactly how I felt, begged absolution for my behaviour and explained how desperate I was to see her. For a few moments the line went silent as she thought things through. Once more, my honesty won the day.
“Tomorrow night,” she said. “I’ve already made arrangements with friends, but come along.”
“I’ll be there,” I replied, elated. “When and where?”
She said she would be in a restaurant called the Palais Du Jardin in Long Acre until ten-thirty, then at a new club in Soho. She gave me the addresses. “I warn you, Douglas,” she added. “This is absolutely your last chance. If you don’t show up, you can throw away my number because I’ll never speak to you again.”
I swore to myself that nothing would go wrong. Nothing.
* * *
Saturday morning.
It feels like a lifetime has passed, but peering at the cracked glass of my watch I realize that it was just twenty hours ago.
I planned everything down to the last detail. I consulted the weather bureau, then rang all three stations and checked that the trains would be running. “Only connect,” wrote E.M. Forster, but he obviously hadn’t seen a British Rail timetable.
To be safe I left half-hour gaps between each train, so there would be no possibility of missing one of them. I bought a new suit, my first since wide lapels went out. I got a decent hair-cut from a new barber, one without photographs of people who looked like Val Doonican taped to his window. The day dragged past at a snail’s pace, each minute lasting an hour. Finally it was time to leave Rosemount Crescent.
I made all my connections. Nothing went wrong until I reached Warren Street, where the Northern Line had been closed because of a bomb scare. It had begun to rain, a fine soaking drizzle. There were no cabs to be seen so I waited for a bus, safe in the knowledge that Michelle would be dining for a while yet. I felt that she had deliberately kept the arrangement casual to help me. She knew I had to make an awkward journey into town.
The first two buses were full, and the driver of the third wouldn’t take Scottish pound notes, which for some reason I’d been given at the cashpoint. I was fine on the fourth, until I realized that it veered away from Covent Garden at precisely the moment when I needed it to turn left into the area. I walked back along the Strand with my jacket collar turned up against the rain. I hadn’t thought to wear an overcoat. I was late, and it felt as if the city was deliberately keeping me away from her. I imagined Michelle at the restaurant table, lowering her wineglass and laughing with friends as she paused to check her watch. I examined my A to Z and turned up towards Long Acre, just in time for a cab to plough through a trough of kerbside water and soak my legs. Then I discovered that I’d lost the piece of paper bearing the name of the restaurant. It had been in the same pocket as the A to Z, but must have fallen out. I had been so determined to memorize the name of the place, and now it completely eluded me. The harder I searched my mind, the less chance I had of remembering it. I had to explore every single restaurant in the damned street, and there were dozens of them.
I was just another guy on a date (admittedly the most important date I’d ever had) and it was turning into the quest for the Holy Grail. It took me over half an hour to cover the whole of Long Acre, only to find that the Palais Du Jardin was the very last restaurant in the street, and that I had missed Michelle Davies’s party by five minutes.
At least I remembered the name of the club, and strode on to it, tense and determined. The bare grey building before me had an industrial steel door, above which hung a banner reading “blUeTOPIA”. The bricks themselves were bleeding technobeat. In front of the door stood a large man in a tight black suit, white shirt, narrow black tie and sunglasses, a Cro-Magnon Blues Brother.
“Get back behind the rope.” He sounded bored. He kept his arms folded and stared straight ahead.
“How much is it to get in?” I asked.
“Depends which part you’re going into.”
I tried to peer through the door’s porthole, but he blocked my view. “What’s the difference?”
“You’re not dressed for downstairs. Downstairs is Rubber?”
“Ah. How much upstairs?” I felt for my wallet. The rain had begun to fall more heavily, coloured needles passing through neon.
“Twelve pounds.”
“That’s a lot.”
“Makes no difference. You can’t come in.”
“Why not?”
“It’s full up. Fire regulations.”
“But I have to meet someone.”
Just then two shaven-headed girls in stacked boots walked past me, and the bouncer held the door open for them. A wave of boiling air and scrambled music swept over us. “Why did you let them in?” I asked as he resealed the door.
“They’re members.”
“How much is it to be a member?”
“Membership’s closed.”
“You told me the club was full.”
“Only to guests.”
“Could I come in if I was with a member?”
The doorman approximated an attitude of deep thought for a moment. “Not without a Guest Pass.”
“What must I give you to get one of those?”
“Twenty-four hours’ notice.”
“Look.” I spoke through gritted teeth. “I can see we have to reach some kind of agreement here, because the rest of my life is dependent on me getting inside this club tonight.”
“You could try bribing me.” He spoke as if he was telling a child something very obvious. I shuffled some notes from my wallet and held them out. He glanced down briefly, then resumed his Easter Island pose. I added another ten. He palmed the stack without checking it.
“Now can I come in?”
“No.”
“You took a bribe. I’ll call the police.”
“Suit yourself. Who are they going to believe?”
That was a good point. He probably knew all the officers in the area. I was just a hick hustling to gain entry to his club. “I could make trouble for you,” I said unconvincingly.
“Oh, that’s good.” He glanced down at me. “Bouncers love trouble. Every night we pray for a good punch-up. When there’s a fight we call each other from all the other clubs,” he indicated the doorways along the street, “and have a big bundle.”
It was hopeless. My street etiquette was non-existent. I simply didn’t know what to do, so I asked him. “This is incredibly important to me,” I explained. “Just tell me how I can get in.”
I’d already guessed the reply. “You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you had to ask.” He removed his glasses and studied me with tiny deep-set eyes. “You’re up from the sticks for your Big Night Out, but it’s not in here, not for you. You don’t fit.” / At least he was honest. I knew then that it wasn’t just the club. I’d never be able to make the jump, even for a woman like her. Despondent, I walked to the side of the building and pressed my back against the wet brickwork, studying the sky. And I waited. I thought there might be a side exit I could slip through, but there wasn’t. Everyone came and went through the front door. Soon my shirt was sticking to my skin and my shoes were filled with water, but I no longer cared. See Suburban Man attempt to leave his natural habitat! Watch as he enters the kingdom of Urbia and battles the mocking resident tribe! Well, this was one Suburban Man who wasn’t going down without a fight.
But two hours later I was still there, shivering in the shadowed lea of the building, studying the lengthy queue of clubbers waiting to enter. When the steel door opened and she appeared with Pony-Tail and some black guy on her arm, I stepped forward into the light. One look at her face told me everything. I was sure now that she’d known I wouldn’t get in, and was having a laugh at my expense.
I’m not a violent man
, but I found myself moving toward her with my arm raised and I think my hand connected, just a glancing blow. Then people from the queue were on me, someone’s hand across my face, another pushing me backwards. There was some shouting, and I remember hearing Michelle call my name, something about not hurting me.
I remember being thrown into the alley and hitting the ground hard. In movies they always land on a neat pile of cardboard boxes. No such luck here, just piss-drenched concrete and drains. My face was hurting, and I could taste blood in my mouth. I unscrewed my eyes and saw Pony-Tail standing over me. The black guy was holding Michelle by the arm, talking fast. She looked really sorry and I think she wanted to help, but he wasn’t about to allow her near me. I could barely hear what he was saying through the noise in my head.
“I told you this would happen. He got no roots, no family. He don’t belong here. You know that.” He was talking too fast. I didn’t understand. Then Pony-Tail was crouching low beside me.
“Big fucking mistake, man. You can’t be near her. Don’t you get it?” He was waving his hands at me, frustrated by his efforts to explain. “She’s part of this city. Do you see? I mean, really part of it. You hurt her, you hurt – all of this.” He raised his arm at the buildings surrounding us.
I tried to talk but my tongue seemed to block my speech. Pony-Tail moved closer. “Listen to me, you’re cut but this is nothing. You must get up and run. It watches over her and now it’ll fight you. Run back to your own world and you may be able to save yourself. That’s all the advice I can give.”
Then they were gone, the men on either side protecting her, swiftly bearing her away from harm, slaves guarding their queen. She stole a final glance back at me, regret filling her eyes.
For a few minutes I lay there. No one came forward to help. Eventually I found the strength to pull myself to my feet. It felt as if someone had stuck a penknife into my ribcage. The first time I tried to leave the alley, the indignant crowd pushed me back. When I eventually managed to break through, the buildings ahead dazzled my eyes and I slipped on the wet kerb, falling heavily on to my shins. I knew that no one would ever come forward to help me now. The city had changed its face. As I stumbled on, blurs of angry people gesticulated and screeched, Hogarthian grotesques marauding across town and time. I milled through them in a maze of streets that turned me back toward the centre where I would be consumed and forgotten, another threat disposed of.
I feel dizzy, but I daren’t risk lying down. There’s a thick rope of blood running down my left leg, from an artery I think. I’m so vulnerable, just a sack of flesh and bone encircled by concrete and steel and iron railings and brittle panes. A few minutes ago I leaned against a shop window, trying to clear my stinging head, and the glass shattered, vitreous blades shafting deep into my back.
I can’t last much longer without her protection.
The first car that hit me drove over my wrist and didn’t stop. A fucking Fiat Panda. I think the second one broke a bone in my knee. Something is grinding and mashing when I bend the joint. He didn’t stop, either. Perhaps I’m no longer visible. I can’t tell if I’m walking in the road, because it keeps shifting beneath my feet. The buildings, too, trundle noisily back and forth, diverting and directing. I feel light-headed. All I know is, I won’t survive until daybreak. No chance of reaching safety now. London has shut me out and trapped me in.
It’s unfair; I don’t think I should have to die. I suppose it’s traditional when you screw around with the queen. As the pavement beneath my feet is heading slightly downhill, I think I’m being led toward the Embankment. It will be a short drop to the sluggish river below, and merciful sleep beyond.
I wonder what her real age is, and if she even has a name. Or what would have happened had I learned to love her city, and stay within the custody of her benevolent gaze. Does she look down with a tremor of compassion for those who fail to survive her kingdom, or does she stare in pitiless fascination at the mortals tumbling through her ancient, coiling streets, while far away, suburbia sleeps on?
ELIZABETH HAND
Justice
“JUSTICE” MARKS Elizabeth Hand’s third appearance in The Best New Horror. Her short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, and she is the author of the novels Winterlong, Aestival Tide, The Eve of Saint Nynex and Icarus Descending.
Her articles and literary criticism have been published in the Washington Post Book World, Detroit Times and Penthouse, and she is a contributing editor to Reflex magazine and Science Fiction Eye.
The author lives on the coast of Maine with novelist Richard Grant and their children, and she is currently working on a contemporary supernatural novel entitled Waking the Moon.
The gods always come. They will come down
from their machines, and some they will save,
others they will lift forcibly, abruptly
by the middle; and when they bring some order
they will retire. And then this one will do one thing,
that one another; and in time the others
will do their things. And we will start over again.
–CP. Cavafy, “Intervention of the Gods”
I WAS IN A Holiday Inn halfway between Joy and Sulphur, Oklahoma, when the call came about the mutilations.
“Janet? It’s Pete.” Peter Green, head of features at OUR magazine back in New York.
“What’s the matter?” I said wearily. I’d just left Lyman, my photographer, back in the motel bar with a tableful of empty beer bottles and my share of the bill. I was already in bed and had almost not answered the phone. Now it was too late.
“Moira killed the Bradford story.”
I snorted. “The hell she did.”
Clink of ice in a glass: it was an hour later back in New York and two days before the weekly went to press. Pete would be at home, trying desperately to tie up all the loose ends before Moira McCain (OUR magazine was her magazine) started phoning him with the last-minute changes that had given Pete a heart attack last year, at the age of thirty-eight. “Too much fallout from the White’s piece.”
A month earlier I’d done a story on the mass murderer who’d rampaged through a White’s Cafeteria in Dime Box, singling out women and children as targets for his AK-47. Turned out his estranged wife had tried to get a restraining order against him; she was meeting her mother at the cafeteria for lunch that day. A few weeks afterward there’d been another shooting spree. Same town, different restaurant chain, chillingly similar M.O. – girlfriend dumps guy, guy goes berserk, nine people end up dead. Now all the tabloids and networks were catching flack for over-publicizing the killings. Seven families had filed suit against a tabloid program that had presented the first killer – Jimmie Mac Lasswell, an overweight teenage boy – as a sensitive loner. Unbelievably, eight weeks later both killers were still at large. Not even sighted anywhere, which seemed impossible, given the scope of the publicity the killings had received. “Legal says put any kind of killer feature on hold till we find out how many of those suits are going to trial. That means Bradford. Moira’s already called and canceled your interview.”
“Son of a bitch.”
I’d been working on this story for six months, contacting all the principals, writing to Billy Bradford in prison. This was my third visit to Oklahoma: I was finally going to interview him face-to-face. The story was slated to run next week.
“I know, Janet. I’m sorry.” And he was, too. Pete hated Moira more than any of us, and he’d helped arrange any number of my meetings with Bradford’s family and attorneys. Billy Bradford was a forty-two-year-old truckdriver who had sexually abused his fourteen-year-old stepdaughter. When she’d threatened to go to her school guidance counselor with the story, he’d killed her. What made the story gruesomely irresistible, though, was the fact that Bradford was an amateur taxidermist who had then stuffed his stepdaughter and hidden her body at his Lake Murray hunting camp. PSYCHODADDY! the New York Post had called him, and everyone got a lot of mi
leage out of the Norman Bates connection.
But now the story was dead, and I was furious. “So what the hell am I supposed to do here in Bumfuck?”
A long pause. More ice rattled on Pete’s end of the line. I knew something bad was coming.
“Actually, there’s another story out there Moira wants you to cover.”
“Oh yeah? What?” I spat. “It’s too early for the high school football championships.”
“It’s, uh – well, it’s sort of a ritual thing. A – well, shit, Janet. It’s a cattle mutilation.”
“A cattle mutilation? Are you crazy?”
“Janet, look, we’ve got to have something – ”
“What is this, I’m being punished? I won six fucking awards last year, you tell her that! I’m not dicking around with some UFO bullshit – ”
“Janet, listen to me. It’s not like that, it’s – ” He sighed. “Look, I don’t know what it is. Apparently Lyman was talking to her earlier today – this is after she killed the Bradford piece – and he mentioned hearing something on the radio down there about some cattle mutilations, and since you’re both already out there Moira figured maybe you could get a story out of it. Lyman’s got the details.”
“Lyman’s gonna have more than details,” I snarled; but that was it. The Bradford story was dead. If Legal was worked up about it, Moira would never override their counsel. I could be in a room with Elvis Presley and the Pope and John Hinckley, and Moira would be whining with her lawyers over lunch at La Bernadine and refuse to run the story.
“Call me tomorrow. Lyman knows where this ranch is – ” Lyman was from Oklahoma City, by way of a degree in Classics at Yale and a Hollywood apprenticeship – “hell, he’s probably related to them – ”
The Best New Horror 5 Page 24