Sheep Meadow Story

by Jack Ketchum

  "What're these?"

  He pointed to the two dozen long stem roses on the coffee table.

  "Roses."

  "I know that."

  "That's why I do not like to use the machine."

  "Because of the roses?"

  She sighed. Stroup let go of her.

  "I do not want to tell you on the machine. It's not right. I am getting married, Stroup. I am sorry."

  "You're kidding."

  "No, it is truth. I'm sorry."

  "To who?"

  "Raymond. These are Raymond's flowers."

  "Who's Raymond?"

  "A client. A black man. You know I always like the black men. He is in very good shape. Very strong. He proposed to me today. I told him yes."

  "Is he rich?"

  "A little."

  "How can you be a little rich?"

  "Please, Stroup. Do not make this difficult. I am very fond of you, you know. But you know, we have never been, what would you say, exclusive."

  He guessed that was true enough. He was seeing Brauna tomorrow night as usual.

  Still he felt oddly lonely standing there. Maybe it was the abruptness of it all. You go out expecting dinner and a good hard fuck and what you get is walking papers. Or maybe he'd just miss her. The past three months they'd had a lot of laughs-she was a pretty funny woman for a bodybuilder. She thought he was funny. She told him he was great in bed. He knew she was.

  She gave him a hug. A peck on the cheek.

  "I am sorry, Stroup. It's been nice."

  "It has. I'll miss you, Marie."

  It was true. He would. He turned and walked away and down the stairs and out the door.

  He wouldn't miss the herring.

  ***

  The air conditioning at the Food Emporium was doing its impression of late December. He walked up the fresh meats aisle just to see if they had the plate of broiled Italian sausages out and they did. He impaled three on a toothpick and walked over to frozen foods. He got a Swanson Hungry Man dinner out of the freezer and dropped the toothpick on the floor.

  The girl at the checkout counter looked at the Hungry Man dinner and looked at him. Then she scanned the box. You bought a single Hungry Man dinner, they knew you were alone. She handed him his change. Ten on top face-up, singles below, receipt on top of that, and on top of that, the coins. He tilted the bills so that the coins slid off into his hand and pocketed them and reversed the order of the bills and shoved them in his wallet. He threw the receipt on the counter.

  He realized he was growling.

  The Hungry Man dinner was dark-meat chicken, corn, whipped potatoes and apple-cranberry-crumb dessert. The closest thing you could get to KFC in this goddamn yuppie neighborhood. While it was cooking he poured himself a drink and then another. He checked his e-mail. Two distant relatives had sent mass e-mails of a religious nature. He deleted without opening. Ralph had sent more doctor-jokes. He deleted without opening. He had an e-mail from Brauna confirming tomorrow night.

  That was something.

  He ate watching CNN. The Democrats were behind in the polls. The kid with the Glock in Florida said he was only fighting back, that there was an organized plot at school to impregnate his twelve-year-old girlfriend with the child of Behemoth Yuggdoroth Nit. A Cornell research group had just published a paper finding that inept, basically useless people tended to be confident-even dead certain-that they were smart, witty, and always in the right. The truly talented, on the other hand, tended to underestimate themselves. Figured that they were really pretty ordinary, that if they could do it, anybody could. The scary thing, the report said, was that you could always talk to the talented and convince them they were better than they thought. But the inept were intractable.

  When he got up to dump his chicken bones he thought he heard his name mentioned but that couldn't be.

  He poured himself an after-dinner drink and decided to work on the story. He turned off CNN and fired up the Gateway. The story was about a nosebleed he'd had in Florida. The nosebleed had been intractable too. He'd needed surgery.

  The story was a comedy.

  A half hour into it the phone rang. "It's your quarter. Leave a fucking message," his voice said.

  "Stroup?" said Carla. "Pick up, Stroup."

  Jesus. No way.

  "I know you're there, Stroup. Ann saw you walk into the building. Don't make me come over there, Stroup."

  Ann was his upstairs neighbor. A mousy little friend of Carla's and a goddamn snoop who seemed to have no life whatsoever. He'd caught her once going through the landlady's garbage. Maybe it came as a result of being named after an indefinite article. He didn't know. He picked up the phone.

  "What," he said.

  "You know what," Carla said.

  "No I don't. Hurry it up. I'm working."

  "On what."

  "A story."

  "A story. You call that working?"

  "Yes I do."

  "Working is what a person does for a living. Has any story ever made you any money?"

  "This one will."

  "You know why I'm calling."

  "The other money."

  "What?"

  "The other money. The money I owe you. Not the money I'm going to make on the story."

  "Six months back rent, Stroup. Your half. That's two thousand, seven hundred and six dollars and ninety cents. You've owed me now for nine months, Stroup."

  "I know."

  "What do I look like, a credit card?"

  "You should never have left home without it."

  "Goddammit! I need that money. I need it now."

  "Why now?"

  "What?"

  "Why not yesterday? Or last Thursday? Why now?"

  "That's none of your business, Stroup."

  "You want my money it is."

  "It's my money. I carried you for six months, remember? So you could pay off your goddamn medical bills after that stupid nosebleed."

  "What stupid nosebleed?"

  "Don't be funny, Stroup."

  He sighed. So did she. Here they were, sighing together. It must be love.

  "Randi and I want to go on a vacation," she said, "if you must know. We need a vacation. The restaurant is driving us nuts."

  "I hear great things about the calamari."

  "To hell with the calamari. What about my money? You signed a note, Stroup."

  He had. He was drunk. Drunks are stupid.

  "You'll get it."

  "When?"

  "Soon. Tomorrow. Next week. The week after next."

  "WHICH, goddammit!"

  "TOMORROW OR THE WEEK AFTER NEXT. Whichever I say it's going to be, you get it? I put twenty long years into your ass so don't you piss on me for a couple thousand bucks and don't you yell at me again or I'll come over and fry you, you understand me? Now go tickle Randi's titties or whatever the hell it is you two do and don't call again. Goodnight. Goodbye. Fuck off, Carla."

  He hung up the phone.

  It didn't ring again. He half expected it to but it didn't. He wondered if she really needed him to pay her. The business was supposedly doing well but what did he know.

  He went back to the story but couldn't get it down. He had another drink.

  He had no chance at all of getting her the money.

  He was barely breaking even here. He'd have to quit drinking. And smoking.

  No chance at all.

  Turner was running MARNIE. He thought Hitchcock was a crock. THE BIRDS was okay and REAR WINDOW and the first half of PSYCHO but he was also the guy who introduced QUE SERA, SERA into the canon. IFC was running NOSFERATU, THE VAMPIRE so he lay back on the bed and watched that, Isabelle Adjani doing all her silent-movie poses, all beautiful wide dark eyes and melodrama. It was just slow enough to bludgeon him to sleep.

  FRIDAY

  "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

  -John 14:27

  By quarter after four he was ready to e-mail his daily rejections to Cosmodemonic f
or approval. Olgie Lamar from Arkansas after eleven months had finally sent in the last five dollar payment on the one-hundred-fifty bucks for her book about her husband who had been killed by a drunk on a snowplow. Some months she hadn't sent anything at all, she said, because the goats hadn't given enough milk.

  The book was illiterate from the first line. So was the letter about the goats. So were all her letters.

  Stroup encouraged her to try again.

  He had a novel outline from Walla Walla State Prison from Joseph Johnson.

  A small boy at the age of five, who had experience sex with his sixteen year old babysitter.

  A woman get raped and have her hair pulled clean out her head. The main character get in touch with a seven-year-old pimp who get them some girls. Later find out the girls are male foggies.

  One of the main character get tricked into having sex with a corpse.

  Another getting the Blue Ball Claps and his penis grows to length of four feet by two. They cure him by smashing it with a sledge hammer.

  The four main character meet this gorilla guy who they shoot, cut, hit, and run over with their car but he just keep getting up. One of the characters catch lice from a prostitute.

  Another character get kidnapped and his ass raped and get an overdose of heroin. That near the end, the most touching part of the book.

  The novel was called COOL AS SHIT and the author's cover-letter informed him that if he ever wanted to read "a good sexyassed book, which wasn't dirty at all but funny," then COOL AS SHIT was for him. "It's a magnificent book," Johnson said, "all it needs is publisher. Who is daring enough to make a millions of dollars."

  Stroup told him to try again.

  He had a short story collection written from the points of view of a varied group of backyard insects. ANIMAL FARM with an ovipositor.

  He had something called DIARY OF AN ANAL-RETENTIVE HOUSEWIFE.

  Stroup told them all to try again.

  ***

  On the divide in the middle of Broadway half a dozen kids about five or six years old ran around him giggling playing tag or some damn thing like he wasn't even there. Maybe he wasn't. Their twenty-something mother or babysitter or whatever the hell she was looked on and smiled. Except for the fact that he was standing there he could have wished for an out-of-control beer truck to jump the divider.

  The reek of stale popcorn and warm fake butter wafted out at him from the Sony Multiplex on 68th. He vowed he'd never eat that stuff again. The vow sounded very familiar.

  On Columbus a pair of teenage girls, ballet students, duck-walked right into him and damn near knocked him into traffic.

  Lincoln Center was trying to kill him here.

  The End of the World was empty again. Stroup took his usual seat. Liana poured him the usual drink. He was meeting Brauna at eight. They were going to a party. Plenty of time.

  The bar had their radio on and the song was bothering him. Something about video killed the radio star. Who gave a shit about video or radio for that matter. Video killed the radio star over and over. What bullshit.

  "Liana, could you switch stations maybe?"

  She shook her beautiful head. "Sorry, Stroup. Manager says this station only. Light Rock. Easy listening."

  "Easy listening? You call this easy?"

  "It attracts the customers."

  "You don't have any customers, Liana. Just me."

  "We will, though."

  "When? How old am I gonna be then?"

  "How old are you now, Stroup?"

  "Fifty-three. And don't change the subject. What about the CD player?"

  "Out of order."

  "Tape deck?"

  "Busted."

  "Jesus, Liana. You're presiding over a goddamn wake here." The song ended. HARVEST MOON came on. He more or less liked that one.

  "I hear you got dumped last night," Liana said.

  "Jesus, Liana."

  "Marie was in with her boyfriend."

  "Fiancй."

  "Fiancй, then. Sorry to hear it, Stroup."

  "I'm sorry you heard it at all. Can't anybody keep their mouth shut in this town?"

  "It would have been obvious anyway. He's black. You're not."

  "Good-looking?"

  "Very good looking."

  "Shit. You want to pour me another?"

  "Sure."

  Ralph came in and started bitching about his haircut.

  "I don't want to hear about it, Ralph."

  He was right, though. Whoever cut it had let the hair grow over one ear and clipped it short over the other. Ralph was lopsided.

  "You ever eat at Vinnie's?"

  "Where's Vinnie's?"

  "Third and 59th."

  "That's the East Side, Ralph. I don't go there."

  "The food was lousy. Don't go there."

  "I won't, Ralph."

  There was a woman of about thirty on the sidewalk outside talking to a pair of guys who looked ten years younger than she was and the guys with their baseball caps on backwards were standing in his way with their backs to him so he had to shift to try to see around them which he did because the woman was a looker. Long wavy auburn hair which she was primping with both hands smiling brightly at them. V-neck cleavage of the best kind and no bra, tight ass in the jeans, tight shirt over the tits. The woman glanced in his direction a couple of times and seemed aware of him watching. If she was aware of him watching then why didn't she tell these two bozos to move? You just couldn't figure a woman.

  Take Liana now. An ex-model. What the hell was she doing slinging drinks and bowls of goldfish to the likes of him and Ralph? It was like hanging the Mona Lisa from an oil derrick.

  He watched the woman walk away, the hair swaying, the tight ass swaying. The two guys were watching her too, turning to each other, saying something. He knew what they were saying. He could see it in their eyes. My cock right now is the lonesomest sonovabitch in the world is what they were saying.

  He could sympathize.

  A guy walked by with a wide bright swirl-patterned tie, yellow and green and orange.

  He hated wide bright ties. He hated ties in general. He'd see one and want to turn it into a noose then and there.

  Ralph said, "You hear the one about the…?"

  Oh, jesus. Oh, forgive me,god, for I must have heartily fucking offended thee. Oh, shit.

  ***

  On the way up Columbus to Brauna's a delivery boy on a bike going against traffic almost hit him, a kid on a skateboard going against traffic almost hit him, and a rollerblader going against traffic almost hit him. That was only three near-misses over the course of a six-block walk. Stroup figured he was lucky.

  Brauna designed hats for fancy boutiques and lived in a doorman high rise and they knew him there. Nobody even questioned him now. He was King of the Walk one or two nights a week. He nodded to the doorman and the guy behind the counter. They smiled. They could afford to smile. They had a union. They made more than Stroup did just by standing there. At Christmas time they got enough tips to fly to Tahiti.

  He took the elevator up to four and Brauna opened the door. She was wearing a smile and nothing else so Stroup went right at her. He grabbed her wrists with one hand and pulled them over her head and pushed her up against the closet door. She liked to have her nipples pinched, they were already stiff waiting for that so Stroup took one between his thumb and forefinger and pinched and twisted it hard and she gasped against his mouth and then moaned as he put his tongue inside her and rolled her ass against the door on one side and her cunt against his cock on the other. He pinched the nipple until his fingers ached and then let go. He'd get to the other one in a minute.

  He let go of her and unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly and slid his pants and shorts down over his ass and assumed the position. She was already wet so getting in was nothing. She moaned and bucked. Stroup realized he was growling. He cut it out. He pumped her hard and then took both nipples between thumb and forefinger and pulled them until his fingers and her
nipples were nestled in his armpits. She started to scream. He couldn't remember if she'd shut the front door. He looked. She had. She came and he came and Stroup zipped up again.

  "Hi, baby," he said.

  "Hi, baby. You want a drink?"

  He lit up a cigarette. "I sure do."

  She went into the kitchen and poured them each a scotch on the rocks. They sat down on the couch from Bloomingdale's.

  "Thanks, baby."

  "My pleasure. That was good, Stroup."

  "I know."

  "God, my nipples hurt!"

  "They damn well ought to."

  "I love it when you do that. I can feel it run straight down to my cunt. Like it's electric, know what I mean?"

  "We'll have to wire you up sometime."

  She laughed. "Wire me up. I'm already wired up."

  "That you are. Suppose it wasn't me?"

  "Huh?"

  "You came to the door stark naked. Suppose it wasn't me?"

  "I cheated. I used the peephole. I had a robe handy in the closet just in case."

  "Nice surprise."

  "Mmmm." She finished her drink and stood up. "I'm having another. You?"

  "I already had a few. In a couple minutes maybe."

  "Okay."

  He watched her fine dimpled ass vanish into the kitchen. She was shorter than Marie, a brunette, not quite the racing model Marie was but beyond the funny little mole on her chin that sprouted the occasional wiry black hair you couldn't fault her.

  "There," she said. "I'll finish this one and start to get ready."

  "What's the party all about, anyway?"

  He didn't go to parties much. Too many people there.

  "My friend Zia's got herself a new apartment. She wants to show it off."

  "Zia? Your broker?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Jesus, Brauna."

  "You've never met her, Stroup. She's very nice. You'll like her."

  "Where is it? Soho?"

  "The east side. Just off Madison."

  "Jesus, Brauna."

  "Oh, stop bitching." She slapped his arm. "You make it sound like Wisconsin."

  "It is Wisconsin. Dead River, Wisconsin."

  "What are you so grouchy about anyway?"

  "Carla's hitting me up for money again. I may have to kill her."