The streetlights and Fate guided him. The important thing was to keep moving. Where the crosswalk commanded him to walk, he walked. When he encountered a white flashing hand telling him to wait, he turned on his heel and went another way, letting the path of least resistance take him. Like a shark, he had to keep moving to live.
The rain had driven most people indoors, leaving the city to him. It was a calming feeling at first, but when he closed his eyes he saw a row of neat bales with blood spreading out from them in a gory Rorschach. That drove him on, pushing himself to walk faster until his shins ached and he knew he would soon give in to his cravings. It was inevitable. A dam cannot hold forever.
He slipped into a bar and made his way through the crowd. They were a young bunch and he felt out of place, like he had returned to a old house that was now someone else’s home. He took his time getting to the bar, making eye contact with several young women, letting his eyes linger and letting them see his hunger. Not one returned his look and by the time he got the bartender’s attention he felt old. His suit, which had made him feel so sharp and dangerous a short time ago, now felt too tight and too formal. As he surveyed the room, he realized he was the oldest man and the only one in a suit. He downed a beer in three gulps and fought his way back out to the street and the cool air to see where Fate took him next.
The next bar’s patrons were slightly older. Returning to the nightlife, he felt out of practice, like doing the butterfly stroke after not swimming for years. He ordered a drink and surveyed the bar. The music was some kind of warmed over ’80s west coast rock-a-billy. Lyle Lovett pulled this shit off with clever lyrics and the force of his intelligence and personality. Whoever sang the stuff now had none of those attributes. There didn’t seem to be any women who had come alone. An earnest clutch in splashy dresses sat in one corner, their heads together, but their circle faced inward. The group’s message was clear: “We’re here to talk to each other. All others keep out.”
Nonplussed, he turned to ask for a Glenfiddich. He hadn’t paid attention to the bartender. As he caught the eye of the man behind the bar, he realized he knew him. It was Joey. Older, but Joey. It seemed impossible, but there he was. He even wore the stupid mint-green bow tie he had worn with his matching suit to the junior prom.
“I said, what’ll you have, sir?”
It wasn’t Joey. He had been Joey. Now he wasn’t. He wore a bow tie — bright red — but the bartender was bald and wore an earring. He had a crooked mouth with not quite enough teeth and a blue vein pulsed prominently at his temple. His nose, pushed to one side, suggested he had once worked as a bouncer before wising up and learning how to mix drinks.
“Sir?”
“Glenfiddich.”
He watched the bartender’s hands as he worked. What had he been thinking? Red was a primary color, but so what? It still looked nothing like green. It must have been the bow tie that set off the memory. Joey looked stupid in that mint bow tie, his ears sticking out and his pants hemmed a couple of inches short to expose white gym socks. The last time he had seen Joey, they were both sixteen. Joey didn’t get any older.
He didn’t look at the bartender’s face again. He left him a twenty and didn’t take any change and downed the scotch on the way out the door. He craved fresh air, but he heard himself say, “Country air is what I need.”
He steamed down the street and tacked right through a small park, ignoring the sign that told him no one was allowed into the park after dusk. There was still enough orange city shine in the sky to light the path. A silhouette of a man leaning against a tree spoke up in a gravelly voice, taking him by surprise. “Evening, Chief!”
“Hey,” he said and kept going, staring straight ahead. The silhouette emerged from the gloom and fell into step with him. “Gimme a dime, man.”
“No dimes, no change,” he said.
“Nothin’ changes, huh? No change at all?”
“I have nothing for you.” The man was shaggy and it seemed to take him a lot of effort to match the quick pace. A sickly sweet smell wafted on his breath.
He recognized that smell. “You’re a diabetic. You drink too much to be a diabetic.”
A startled intake of breath. “You magic? Are you a magic man, changeless man?”
“Go somewhere and sleep it off and don’t bother strangers.”
The man continued, undeterred. “That’s good advice, changeless man. Strangers can be dangerous. I know all about that. I’m a stranger and I’m dangerous. Suppose you give me that dime and spare me your white boy bullshit.”
The temperature changed between them. He could feel a crawling sensation under his skin. An animal wriggled under his muscles and it repeated one word: “Yes! Yes! Yes!” The trees parted above them a little and a cast from office buildings at the edge of the park suddenly illuminated their faces. He was glad he didn’t see Joey. The man had a rugged face. He spent all his time outdoors, no matter the weather.
“I said gimme that dime, white boy. Don’t say no just ’cause I’m Indian.”
Yes! Yes! Yes!
He took one step forward and punched the larger man in the throat. The trick, he knew, was not to try to hit the target, but to move without hesitation and hit a spot behind the target. You had to throw your weight, shoulder and hip, behind the punch.
The man collapsed in a heap, grabbing at his throat and uttering a sickly, gargling sound. He watched the man writhe, twisting and drumming his heels on the pavement, a wicked horizontal dance.
“The last two people I killed were white guys,” he said. With a faint smile on his lips, he watched the man struggle for air. “It’s not about your race.”
The mugger went quiet, though probably not dead.
He didn’t stoop to check. Instead, he merged with the shadows behind a massive tree trunk and listened for a full minute, straining his ears and vision to make sure he was alone. His pulse was steady, which pleased him. He still had that special something…or lacked that special something. It was fascinating to him how quickly a man could become a thing. Still, he felt cheated. There had been no planning or joy of anticipation. Making the man who asked for a dime suffer had been a taste that, instead of slaking his thirst, had merely whet his appetite. He had controlled his impulses for years and now this idiot had come along, a gift of Fate, and it wasn’t nearly enough.
He moved when he heard voices at the far entrance to the park. A loud, drunk couple were attempting, and failing, to sing a melody he thought vaguely familiar. He was several blocks away before he realized their futile wailing was an old Mariah Carey song he liked. Somewhere from farther uptown he heard church bells: 12 a.m.
He quickened his pace and midway down the next block he found a little basement jazz club that looked promising. A huge black guy dominating a small stage played the saxophone. Behind him, a drummer worked a lackadaisical rhythm with brushes and a bass player plucked, a cigarette with a long ash plugged the side of his mouth.
The paltry audience was a scattered array of depressed people whose lives were orchestrated with a soundtrack that always played the blues. None of the men look like they owned a suit. The women were all paired up, except for one beautiful redhead in a red dress at the end of the bar. She wore unflattering cat eye glasses. The frames were bright red as well.
She watched him in the mirror behind the bar. Why not? Fate had delivered him the gift of a homeless guy harassing him for a dime and now, traffic lights and crosswalks had sent him to find her.
He sat in a stool two seats down from the redhead. A harried, older woman dressed like a waitress but working the bar said, “Kitchen’s closed but the drinks are all night long,” she said.
“This doesn’t look like a place I’d eat, but I’ll have a Mojito.”
“This isn’t the sort of place that serves a Mojito. No mint leaves.”
“Rum and Coke?”
“Rum and Coke.”
He got his drink, put a fifty
on the bar and watched the big black guy blow. He had an ear for music so he knew the guy working the sax was good, really good. The big man, his face made blacker by the luminous white of his dress shirt under hot lights, finished his set on a high note. Before the saxophonist left the stage he announced the band — Louis with an ‘S’ — would be playing again in twenty minutes. The musician’s smile missed several top teeth. He watched Louis with an S leave the stage. The drummer seemed to have trouble getting up and the bassist grabbed him by one wrist and pulled him along, stumbling.
He thought of the man in the park. If he was really in control, he could have just knocked out a few teeth. That alternative hadn’t occurred to him at the time. He could feel the pressure building in his chest and head. It had been so careless of him to strike the mugger’s windpipe. The fight, if anyone could really call it that, was over too quickly and the event had passed too casually. It was like knocking back a fine wine instead of savouring the moment and making it last.
He had played trumpet in high school, but on graduation he tossed the trumpet over the bridge rail and into the river as he walked out of town. He had liked playing the instrument but he had made two quick decisions. First, the trumpet was too heavy to carry along with his sleeping bag and rucksack. Second, he needed a gesture that said he wasn’t coming back and his high school days — and everything else that entailed — lay behind him.
It might have been more fulfilling, but when he tossed it over the rail, careful to look care-free as he did it — there was no splash. A particularly hot spring brought the water levels low and the trumpet case smacked into a brown island of mud beside an rusted overturned grocery cart.
“You haven’t offered to buy me a drink yet.”
He didn’t turn all the way to look at her but instead turned just enough to speak to her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes shone green, which contrasted with her red hair so well it occurred to him the hair color must come from a bottle and her contacts were too bright to be real. Except for the cat-eye glasses, she was too good to be true. Wearing the green contacts just for the look and compounding that with fancy glasses smacked of trying too hard. With her body, she didn’t have to try at all. Her pleasant, sing-song voice suggested English wasn’t her first language but the accent wasn’t identifiable.
He looked her over in the mirror for some time, watching to see if she would look away. She held his gaze. She bounced one crossed leg in a way that suggested she was impatient, not fidgety. “You haven’t offered to buy me a drink, either,” he said finally.
“Have you just arrived on the planet? That’s not how these things usually work here.”
“Yep, just fell off a turnip truck from Planet Zoof.”
She gave him a smile. Her red lipstick was painted on shiny and thick in a way that mothers don’t approve and men love. With lipstick on her teeth, she looked like she had been drinking blood. Perfect.
“How does a man treat a lady on Planet Zoof?”
“Ladies, I don’t know. But you? We’ll find out in a few minutes, I guess.”
“You don’t mind pissing me off, even though I’m your only shot at the only 21-year-old in this bar?”
“I’m a risk taker. Women respect that.”
“I don’t know whether to kick you in the nuts or — ”
“Kiss me in the nuts?”
She laughed. Her laugh sounded unpracticed, like his own. “You a comedian? You’re in the wrong club if you are.”
“Bond trader.”
“Slumming tonight? Does the wifey know you’re out here trolling?”
“No wifey.”
“Odd,” she said, looking him over carefully. “You don’t look flamboyantly gay but maybe you’re in het mode tonight.”
“No wifey, no husband-y.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Bond, Bond Trader.”
He raised glass in a salute but gave her nothing more. She looked impatient again, like she’d found out she wasn’t as good at something she’d thought herself expert. “What if I told you I manage the band, that I’m not just hanging out looking for action? This is a pretty unlikely meat market,” she said.
“It is an unlikely meat market, or maybe you just like coming to a market where there’s no other competition.”
“You’re not talking like a newfound friend.”
“I don’t want to be your friend. That’s for guys who don’t say what they really want.”
“Which is?”
“That’s a question for a woman who pretends she doesn’t know what the biological score is. But you know the score.”
“You’re really starting to piss me off,” she said with a smile.
“Really? I thought I was paying you a compliment, letting you know I think you’re too smart for the ordinary mating rituals. Maybe you aren’t that smart.”
He turned to look at her and lowered his eyes to her breasts and then up to her eyes and gave her his best predatory smile.
Her eyes narrowed as she twisted a red curl around long fingers. “How do you treat a smart woman who knows what she really wants and is tired of average schmoes?”
“How she wants to be treated once we get past the bullshit dancing around, I guess. How do you like it, Red?”
“Does this approach ever work, even on your Planet? I assume you reproduce asexually, like plants or something.”
He gave her a smile to show his white, even teeth and to let her know he was unflappable. “You approached me. I just put myself close enough to give you the option so you wouldn’t have to get your ass off that barstool. Otherwise, we’d be here all night playing coy games. And yeah, this works very well, Red. I’ll tell you why. A woman like you with all that red hair and legs up to there and cleavage down to there? You aren’t here to go home alone. The crowd looks pretty thin tonight but I’m guessing you’ve already shot down seven guys.”
“Eight.”
“Okay, eight. Bravo. They all buy you drinks?”
“Mostly, but I started early. I’ve been doing business here since four.”
“So are you ready to be serious about leaving with me or are you just trolling for another free drink? I don’t like going to bed with a sloppy drunk. Lack of inhibition is great. I’m a huge fan of losing inhibitions. I want to lose my inhibitions every day. However, if you’ve had so much you’re going to throw up on my dick, maybe you should get your band to call you a cab.”
“I’m not really their manager,” she said. “I sell the drummer hash.”
“That explains why he can’t keep time worth shit. If you’re really friends with anybody in the band, you should get them to lose Ringo.”
She picked up her clutch purse and rose from her stool. “You coming?”
“I will be soon. Is your place far?”
“You’ve got money for a cab?”
“I guess I didn’t piss you off too much, after all.”
“You interest me, like an ugly bug in a jar.”
“So this is charity, huh?”
“Let’s not fight. Let’s say I’m curious. Your mouth’s writing big checks for an old guy.”
“Ouch. That’s your first real jab.”
“Now that I’m taking you home, you’re going to act nice?”
“Why not? Now that I know the bullshitting is over, I feel my mood lifting. See, I just wandered in for the Blues.”
He slammed the door behind them and groped her breasts before he kissed her. She grabbed his hands and slowed him down. “Easy! Easy,” she said. “You can only read a book the first time once. You can only unwrap Christmas presents once.” He acquiesced. He understood savouring anticipation.
They undressed each other, going slower as each piece of clothing hit the floor. They took their time getting to the home stretch and then it was a sprint and then it was a tie as they came together. He hadn’t done that before. It made him feel close to her, like there was something different about her comp
ared to all the others. Maybe if she lost the stupid cat-eye glasses, he would keep her around. Maybe there was a way out of the cycle, after all.
“Not bad for an old guy?” he said.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “It was okay. I am used to younger guys, though. Have you got another ride in you tonight or is the well dry?”
“Are you getting even for earlier or are you just a bitch after?”
“If you got to know me better, you’d find I’m a bitch before and after.”
“Then I look forward to catching you again at the only time when you’re at your best.”
She laughed, but it sounded real this time. He thought it was pretty sound, something he’d like to get used to. “You’re very clever, Mr. Bond, but too old for me. What are you, forty-five? Fifty?”
“Jesus! I’m only thirty-eight!”
“My God! My dad has friends your age!”
“Oh, hell. You’re messed up,” he said. “I’m the mean one. You’re the silly bitch who wears red like you’re a brand of soup.”
“Ouch. You are a nasty old man, aren’t you?”
“I’m not old.”
“Too old for me,” she said.
“Is this buyer’s remorse?” He got out of the bed. On impulse, he took one of her cigarettes from the top of the cluttered dresser.
“Mr. Bond. Let me share with you why you’re here.” She sat up in bed and held out her hand, demanding the pack. She let the sheet fall to her waist as she lit up and hit him with a smile that was ruined by a curled lip.
“You wanted to get laid and that’s why I’m here,” he said.
“No. You’re here because you pissed me off and you had your moment.”
“You were there, too. I’m sure you were the moaning chick under me, bent over and begging me to pound you harder.”
Murders Among Dead Trees Page 21