More Tomorrow: And Other Stories

by Michael Marshall Smith

  ‘Oh, quite some distance away. Miles and miles. I’m not sure your chaps have even found it yet.’

  Connie swallowed. ‘Do you look as gross in your dimension as Fran did?’

  ‘Hardly,’ the female one laughed. She had a neat blond bob, and was slim and pretty. ‘Actually we look exactly the same as we do here, but a couple of inches taller. No idea why.’

  Eddie nodded. ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘Well basically,’ the male one said, glancing at his watch, ‘we’re all free to get on with our evenings. The invasion threat’s been averted and, well, the night is yet young. Sorry to have involved you in so much trouble. Wished we’d known Fran was the spy. Could have sorted the whole thing out last night—though to be honest we were a little tipsy by the stage it all went off.’

  ‘What are you?’ Connie asked.

  The woman shrugged. ‘Police, angels, inspectors,’ she said. ‘Pick your metaphor. We sort things out. Though to be honest, at the moment what I mostly am is starving. It’s probably about time for some dinner, isn’t it darling?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ the male one said. ‘Now: the gatekeepers have been told not to mess around with this whole abduction nonsense any more, but of course they won’t listen. Incidentally, Eddie, you shouldn’t really have been doing what you’ve been doing without a license.’

  ‘Well, you know how it is, out here in the sticks,’ Eddie said. ‘We don’t always do things by the book. But we generally get by.’

  ‘Quite. Well…’ The man dug around in his pocket, and pulled out a thin black piece of paper. ‘Here’s a license. With our thanks.’

  Eddie took it, turned it over. It had no writing on either side. ‘This is it?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. I suppose you could get it laminated it you wanted. One final favour: we’re thinking of zipping up the coast tonight, Gulf side, maybe Sarasota and its environs, checking out some new restaurants. Any recommendations?’

  ‘You could try Tommy Bahama’s,’ Eddie said, eyeing them carefully. ‘That’s pretty good.’

  ‘What kind of food is it?’

  ‘They specialize in a Floridian/Caribbean cuisine. Kind of a “Floribbean” thing, I guess you’d call it.’

  The man frowned. ‘Which is?’

  ‘American. But with fruit in it.’

  ‘Sounds perfect,’ the woman beamed. ‘Thanks awfully.’

  The two aliens thanked Eddie and Connie once more, took each other’s hand, and then vanished into thin air with a quiet pop.

  Eddie and Connie stood in silence for quite a while.

  Then Eddie coughed quietly. ‘Sorry about Fran,’ he said.

  ‘She was a good waitress.’

  ‘You didn’t…?’

  ‘Actually, yes, we did, a couple times. I’d rather not think about that right now.’

  Eddie nodded for a while, and let quiet settle once more. Then: ‘Can I buy you a beer?’

  ‘Hell no. I’ll buy the beer. What you’re buying me is food.’

  ‘Crabby Dick’s?’

  ‘You read my mind.’

  They climbed down into the boat, took one look back at the island before it disappeared, and then set off across the calm, flat water towards Key West and food and drink and the things we do so well. They figured they might as well make a night of it. It was only just after eight o’clock.

  Couple of weeks later, Eddie was standing on the upper deck of the Havana Dock early one evening, bathed in soft peachy light and waiting for the sun to go down. Even after seven months on the Key, he liked to watch it, and for the time being he liked living there too.

  All around were couples and small groups, dressed smart casual for the evening, sitting in warm expectation and sipping at fruity drinks. Many were tourists, but there was a sprinkling of locals, come to enjoy a thing of beauty because living with it hadn’t staled them to its charm. There was a hum of loose chatter, but mainly it was quiet, largely because the female synth player was taking one of her all-too-infrequent breaks. Eddie hoped that by the time she came back, and discovered that someone had removed the fuses from each and every one of her keyboards, they would all have been able to watch the sunset in peace.

  He was sipping his Margarita, which was punishingly strong because the woman who made them had a frightening crush on him and was also in his debt because he’d sorted out a problem she’d had involving the most psychotic of her many ex-husbands, when he saw a young woman walking up the way. She had long brown hair and was pretty, but her eyes were watchful and there was something in the set of her shoulders which said she wasn’t here for the sunset but rather because she was worried and afraid and had heard in a bar there might be a man on the dock who could help do something about it.

  Eddie lit a cigarette, and settled down to wait for her to find him.

  Enough Pizza

  I first saw him in the lobby on the Friday afternoon. I was sitting sipping the last of my tepid Coke, leafing through the convention brochure and planning when to attack the book dealers’ room. I’d decided that Saturday morning would probably be the best time, swaddled in what I assumed would be my first hangover of the convention. I like buying books when I’m hungover. It’s very comforting.

  I was running through an internal checklist of the items I’d be looking for when I happened to catch sight of a small group of people who had just entered the hotel through the unpredictable revolving door. An elderly guy in a good suit, a tall and fluttery young woman holding a sheaf of folders, and a porter carrying a single battered suitcase. The old guy came to a halt for a moment, looked around the foyer with a practiced eye, and then set off at a decent clip towards the registration desk on the other side of the room. The woman followed somewhat chaotically, eyes darting in all directions as if expecting an air attack at any moment. The porter waited impassively, waiting to be told where to go.

  For a moment I wondered why I was noticing all this, and then with a rolling feeling in my stomach I realised I had just seen the man who was my reason for being here in the first place.

  ‘Here’ was Smoking Gun IV, a crime fiction convention being held at the Royal Britannia in Docklands, a hotel so appalling I imagine the only group of people who actually enjoy attending events there are sadomasochists. More likely simply masochists, because the hotel’s staff are drawn from species so far down the evolutionary ladder I doubt it’s possible to make them feel any real pain, as we understand it. If the barman in the lounge had greeted my earlier request for coffee with just an ounce more insolence, I might have tried to find out. Instead I’d rather meekly settled for the Coke.

  Crime fiction is my passion. I have an insanely dull job in computing, and there are times when the knowledge that I can go home in the evening and immerse myself in a fictional world is the only thing that prevents me from seeing how far I can push a hard disk up a client’s arse. I’m not obsessive—I don’t stand in my bedroom in an old mac and tilted hat, firing my finger into the mirror and quoting lines from old movies in which people get over-excited about stealing sums of money which wouldn’t pay off my overdraft. I don’t even go to conventions very often. They’re all the same: you go to some anonymous hotel, listen to people talk and launch books, meanwhile drinking glasses of cheap white wine and eating small slices of free pizza while wondering who everyone else is. This convention was different. The very morning I received the flier and read the guest list (I’m on a couple of mailing lists, from specialist bookstores), I wrote a cheque and put it in the post, even though I’d been to the Royal Britannia before and knew what I was letting myself in for.

  The man who was now standing at the registration desk, favouring the sullen woman behind it with a raised eyebrow which would have sent most people into a decline, was Nicholas Price. Chances are you won’t know the name, but believe me—thirty years ago you would have done. Without Price’s novels, most of the crime fiction people read nowadays wouldn’t even have been possible. Back in the 1990s he plunged a big
stick into the genre and gave it a stir which changed the flavour forever, bringing crime into the mainstream in the way Stephen King had done with horror twenty years before. For two decades Price was one of the biggest wheels in crime, never quite achieving true pre-eminence or stellar book sales, but very much the man in form. And, judging by the small press biography I’d read, rather a handful as well. The author of the booklet had discretely referred to him as a ‘bon viveur’, but the real story was there between the lines: he and his group of cronies, between them making up most of the big names of the age, had drunk a good many bars dry before they’d even got into their stride for the evening. A representative anecdote tells how Price and his wife Margaret had once been discovered in the ornamental fountain outside a convention hotel in Houston at half past nine in the morning, having retired there only two hours before. The fountain was in full working order, and the pair was somewhat wet. Half an hour later, after a change of trousers and with a small scotch in front of him, Price was on a panel concerning techniques for using flashbacks in crime narrative. History does not relate how telling or otherwise was his contribution to the debate.

  That was half a century ago. Later his novels became less frequent, and began to feel like reworkings of earlier material. Younger guns came to the fore, unknowingly building on foundations Price had laid. It doesn’t matter how good you are; sooner or later you’re going to be yesterday’s man.

  There hadn’t been a new Nicholas Price in twenty years—in other words, since I was ten and not reading any books, crime or otherwise. But now there was a new novel. The Days was to be launched at the convention, and I was going to be first in line to buy a copy and get it signed. I’d discovered Price six years ago, through an awed reference to him in an introduction to a book by a contemporary writer. I tried one of his early novels—not easy to get hold of, but then neither were the later ones—and I was hooked. I read everything I could find, and I’m here to tell you Price was the best. The absolute best.

  The tall young woman with the folders was involved in a heated discussion with the girl behind the hotel’s registration desk. I could guess the subject. Despite the fact that check-in time was three o’clock, and it was now past four, Mr Price’s room wasn’t ready. I’d been through the same thing myself, and my bag was currently stowed in the room the porter was now carrying Price’s suitcase towards. Price himself had evidently lost interest in the dispute, and was gazing serenely into space. His minder fired one last salvo at the apathetic troll behind the counter, then turned to Price and gesticulated apologetically as she led him in my direction.

  I held up the convention brochure again, feigning deep interest in its contents, and watched from behind it. Price walked slightly ahead, the woman consulting notes from her file. By now I’d worked out that she was from his publisher’s PR department, and something told me this was her first experience of author-wrangling. She looked nervous and distracted, as if her head was so full of things she was reminding herself not to forget that she couldn’t remember what any of them were. Price looked far from nervous. It wasn’t so much that he exuded confidence, more that he could have been anywhere. Walking down a street, on a stroll in the park, crossing his own living room. He didn’t look left or right as he walked, checking out the delegates standing and sitting all around, as most people would have done. He headed straight for the bar. His suit was charcoal grey, of modern cut, and fit well, and he was wearing a white shirt and a dark tie. For an old guy he looked pretty sharp.

  But he also looked old. He had every right to. He was eighty-four, and if I’m still moving around under my own steam at that age, and doing so with a publishing person at my side rather than full medical backup, I’ll feel I’m doing better than okay. Price’s eyes were clear, his grey hair was neat and his tie was knotted immaculately.

  But his skin was pale, and papery, and despite his best efforts to hide it, he was heavily favouring one leg. It was hard to believe this was the man whose mind had mapped the brutal worlds of China Sofitel, Bill Stredwick and Nicole Speed—not to mention the countless minor characters who had moved through his fiction with damaged grace. Apart from what I’d gleaned from the thin biography, everything I knew about Price had been intuited from between the lines of his fiction—as if his narration placed him in a permanent present tense in the company of wild people in dangerous places. Now he stood at a characterless and danger-free bar in a Docklands hotel, a couple of fat and bearded members of the convention’s organising committee converging on him from behind, and a blank-faced barman in front.

  ‘I’d like a coffee,’ Price said, reaching in his pocket for his cigarettes. The barman immediately embarked on the kind of dismissive dumb show he’d used on me earlier.

  Price ignored him, and turned to his PR person. He asked if she’d like a coffee. She shook her head.

  Price winked at the barman. ‘Just one then.’

  The barman, provoked to speech, said that coffee was impossible.

  Price raised an eyebrow. ‘Impossible? How so?’

  The barman looked away. The exchange was obviously over, as far as he was concerned. The two convention organisers stood sheepishly behind Price, knowing they ought to do something but evidently realising they’d have no better luck. I empathetically shared their embarrassed fury at being pushed around by someone who’s supposed to be serving you.

  ‘Listen, Jean,’ Price said mildly, evidently having read the man’s name off his tag. The barman turned to him, ready to be affronted, but his face turned to caution as he caught Price’s eyes. ‘This is a bar. Behind it I see all the paraphernalia of coffee production, namely a coffee machine, milk and sugar. I notice that many of the bar mats bear the name of a prominent coffee manufacturer, and that a price for a “cup of coffee” is displayed on the badly-punctuated sign behind your alarmingly bulbous head. Coffee is clearly not only not “impossible”, but a noted feature of this establishment. So serve me a cup.’

  Jean, full of injured innocence, explained how it simply wasn’t feasible that he do so, on account of the fact that he had no cups, that the cups were in the restaurant on the other side of the lobby—a journey of about ten yards—and he had no backup to prevent a riot in his absence. He was sure the customer saw how it was.

  ‘I do,’ Price agreed. ‘And this is the way it is. You’re going to get out from behind that bar, and go fetch a coffee cup. Bring a couple, so the problem won’t arise next time. Then you’re going to pour my coffee into one of them, in return for which I will give you some money. The alternative is I stand here waiting until the queue gets so long it stretches out the front of the hotel. Eventually it’s going to go across the road, and when it gets dark, someone’s going to get run over, and their relatives will hunt you down and avenge their kin with fire and pointed sticks. I have all afternoon. It’s your call.’

  Jean stared at him. Price smiled gently, lit his cigarette and looked away.

  Jean lifted the hatch and walked stiff-backed out from behind the bar. ‘And don’t be a slowcoach,’ Price advised, ‘Or when you get back this bar won’t be anything more than a few broken bottles and an empty till.’

  Shouldn’t have worked from a man in his eighties. But it did. Jean scooted across the lobby.

  I turned away from the bar, to hide the broad grin on my face.

  The highlight of the afternoon’s programme was Price in conversation with the convention’s Chairman. I sat about four rows back. I had a slew of questions I wanted to ask, mainly about the China Sofitel series, but also about some of the short fiction.

  I didn’t get a chance, but I didn’t mind. Most of my questions got answered anyway, in a fascinating, often hilarious conversation that overran by half an hour. Price lounged in his chair on the stage, whisky glass in one hand, a cigarette usually in the other, and turned the Chairman’s carefully planned questions into a freewheeling discussion of crime-writing that, a few days after that weekend, led to me starting my first short story.


  I wish I’d taken a tape recorder into that session, and preserved it for posterity and myself. It was Price’s last convention panel. He died three months later.

  Midnight found me back in the lobby bar. In the meantime I’d been to dinner with a gang of acquaintances, drunk an awful lot of red wine, and had a long and mildly flirtatious conversation with an American fan I’d never met before. She was called Sheryl and came from Kansas, and at eleven had abruptly announced that she needed to go to bed. I was still buoyed up by the way I’d dealt with the waiter in the pizza restaurant, and said I hoped it wasn’t my company which was provoking her departure. She explained that it wasn’t, but that she’d consumed too much wine and had to go throw up, and we arranged to meet for coffee the next morning.

  I wandered into the part of the bar that overlooks the water, and sank heavily into a chair. I had most of a pint left, and intended to drink it. There weren’t many people around, and none that I recognised, but I didn’t mind. I’d had a good day, and it was nice to be out of the normal rut. I didn’t need company to enjoy that feeling, and when I realised that someone was standing behind me I didn’t turn and bid them a cheery hello. Everyone I knew had gone to bed, and you can get into some very dull and mood-destroying conversations with strangers at conventions.

  I heard the sound of a cigarette being lit. Then:

  ‘Mind if I sit here?’

  I turned. Standing behind me was Nicholas Price.

  ‘Christ yes,’ I said, completely flustered. ‘I mean no, go right ahead. You’re very welcome.’

  ‘You may change your mind. I’ve had a certain amount to drink.’ Price sat gingerly in the chair opposite me, and placed his glass and cigarettes within easy reach.

  I stuck around wildly for something to keep the conversation, such as it was, going. ‘Impressed to see you’re still smoking.’

  Immediately I regretted it. It sounded like I thought he was old. All I meant was that it was good to see someone who’d resisted society’s moral and emotional pressures to give up: and to give up for their own good, of course, though it’s strange that people don’t feel able to order complete strangers to give up fatty foods or alcohol or hang gliding—for their own good.