Five World Saga 01 Hornets and Others Read online

  She now saw that the machine was on.

  As she closed the door behind her and turned, she saw its blinking Christmas-color display and her heart gave a skip as that something, that red formless shadow, moved back and away from her on the screen.

  She moved closer, and the screen remained perfectly flat to her, glowing soft ruby.

  Again the shadow moved toward her, away.

  "Carl?" she said, barely controlling her voice. "Carl, can you speak to me?"

  That shadow again, an outline with a dark nebulous center, there and gone.

  "You have to talk with me!"

  Leaning over, she hit a gem-like button.

  Nothing happened, and she hit another and another.

  The screen abruptly changed, showing an out-of-focus outline of a figure that wavered and then broke up into static.

  "Carl, talk to me!"

  The ruby screen returned. The shadow moved across from right leisurely to left, then disappeared.

  Suddenly in her mind she saw Tanny get on the bright bus that morning again and she knew what had been strange about him: He was wearing his red and white checked sport shirt, the one he had been wearing the day of the accident; in her mind's eyes she saw the torn fabric on the arm falling open as he stepped up into the bus, looking back at her with that odd look...

  She knew what Tanny was going to do. A boy without a father. "Carl!"

  She hit the gem-filled console with her fists.

  The screen went gray, and then green, and then as from down a long tunnel, moved closer to her and became large and then became defined. The edges filled in, replacing green with the hardness of bones. Around the bones wrapped muscle, and then the fine lines of vessels carrying pumping red blood, and then a fine taut layer of skin and clothing and fine features.

  The figure began to laugh, a fine, low, melodious sound impregnated with sadness and sharing.

  It was her own laugh, her own face.

  "Well, Tanny," her own image said to her from the screen, the face she used to wear in the summer, the clothes the blue and yellow summer clothes she used to wear, the hair, the fine fresh-washed and perfume smelling hair she used to have. "Have you thought any more about it? Do you still think this is what you have to do?" The figure gave out a warmth and an understanding that bathed the room.

  The figure waited for an answer that didn't come.

  "We'll talk about whatever you want," it went on, after a moment. "I know how lonely you feel. You know I try to help as much as I can. Though I may not know how to fix a bicycle very well, or how to make a puppet or put on a magic show, you know I'll try to help you with whatever you need." The figure brightened. "After all, now that your father is gone and there's only the two of us, we're all we've got, right?" Again the figure waited for an answer and then went on in a more soothing, infinitely sad tone. "Are you really sure you have to go back to your father? Aren't the two of us enough?"

  Out in the street there was a sound, the stopping of a bus and then the unmistakable scream of locked brakes. She fell across the machine, her thin hands caressing it as though it was a child. She knew that someday someone would come, opening the door very quietly so as not to make the screaming start in her ears, not knowing that it was there always now, to find the two of them.

  The Coat

  Here's what happens: Harry puts this coat on, he thinks, God, I hate women. Not only that: he wants to kill them. No kidding. He finds the coat neatly folded in a deep open box, tissue paper folded back, by the service entrance of the SeaHarp Hotel. Drunk as Harry is, nobody pays much attention to him anyway. Wandering Harbor Road, half in the world and half out, unshaved, unwashed, thinking about Noreen and hoping she'll come out of the SeaHarp and let him explain why he said all those terrible things to her, that it's not like when they were children, why he told her to go to hell, to leave him alone, to stop loving him...

  It's a pretty nice coat, actually. New, good wool, not phony polyester crap, frays that tear like cardboard, wet snow and damp air from the Harbor coming in where the nylon stitching pulls out, flapping, ice cold on his back. This is good, long, down past his knees, deep warm pockets, big brown buttons that slip into their holes like hands into perfect gloves, hand-tailored, maybe.

  Man, this coat is warm. He stumbles out onto Harbor Road, the late big sun on this winter day hitting him square in the eyes from between buildings. He squints like Dracula for a second, bringing his hand up to shield his eyes, and at that point this coat, which is so friggin' comfortable, talks into his head and says, Get rid of the wine, Harry.

  He's startled, but only for a second because he's so damn zipped and the voice sounds so damned reasonable, smooth, cultured, and who cares if it's coming from the coat, he doesn't care if it makes him jump like a kangaroo-- he was so cold before he found it. He remembers shivering like mad, even the wine not helping, lurching from alley to alley, trying to forget the past four days, hoping Noreen would stay away, hoping at the same time he would see her, let him explain...

  Get rid of the wine, Harry.

  The voice is gently insistent. Harry still shields his eyes with his right hand, doesn't know where the wine is, then looks down to see the Chablis bottle weighing down his left hand.

  Get rid of it.

  "Sure," Harry says, shrugging, and then he hoists the bottle up to his mouth, tilting it up. Down goes the wine, sour smooth. The bottle stays ass-up, dark green cheap glass in the orange sunlight, and then the white wine is gone and Harry turns abruptly and throws the fat bottle over the high wall of the SeaHarp and out into Birch Street.

  "Home run!" Harry shouts as it shatters loudly. "We win!"

  He laughs, and then he makes his way along the wall and walks out of the entrance of the SeaHarp and down the six steps to Harbor Road, walking down toward his part of town.

  The girls are at it now. They're always at it. Early morning, bright noon, late afternoon, midnight, three in the morning. Ply the trade. He knows them, they know him, just like they know his buddies Jimmy and Wax, and all the other bums. They're all part of the landscape, like salt spray, tall brick, dog shit mashed into the curbs, sidewalks cracked up and down like snakeskin, dirty, boarded-up windows.

  Here they are, ladies of night and day. Part of the terra-firma, just a "Hi, Harry" as he stumbles by, a lush's wave of his hand. "Hi, gal," too high to get it up if he wanted to, as if he'd rather spend what little he has on that instead of Chablis.

  But he tracks in on the few of them out on day patrol, the coat wants him to watch, the skirts hiked up to here, a scant inch showing under leatherette jackets, Halloween hair, dark orange, frightful yellow, hoop earrings, skinny asses, puckering mouths, Marlboro stains on teeth. Shivering cold, most of them. Harry feels the wool-warmth of the coat, and laughs. "Sorry, gals," he says to himself, "but I got mine."

  Let's go, Harry, the coat tells him.

  Harry shrugs, turns away up Linwood Avenue. "Where we going, chief?" he says out loud, like any other drunk. Then he adds, "Wish I had some more wine."

  Forget the wine. Walk.

  They walk, up to Colony Avenue, over to Port Boulevard, turning left, passing cold faces, giving dirty Harry and his coat a wide berth, and then suddenly they're there.

  Stop.

  Somewhere over by the hospital. Wide, high store window, bright white and chrome inside. Rows of medical stuff. Stethoscopes, tongue depressors, wheelchairs. Old gent behind a glass-topped counter, telling a woman in a walker why she doesn't want to trade it in. Or why she does. The woman shakes her head vigorously, turns, walkers away from the counter. Harry hears the little bell over the door tinkle. The woman moves like a humping snail past him.

  The old man in the store disappears through a small door into the back.

  Look, the coat tells him. Harry's eyes roam over the store through the window. Little doodads with mirrors on the end, tiny picks and shovels, catheters, bloodbags.

  That, the coat says.

  There in
one corner, glass shelves, rows of instruments, surgical masks, roll out leather cases, and a long scalpel.

  Now, the coat orders.

  He's in before he knows it. Holds the little tinker bell as he presses open the door, lets it go gently when he's in, over to the counter, reaching behind, hands steady—

  The old man reappears from the back, his balding head ducking under the low eave of the doorway.

  Quick, the coat says, and Harry is grabbing the scalpel, shoving it into the deep pocket of the coat, turning and walking quickly, tinkling the bell over the door as the bald man begins to shout, "You punks! Not again!" the coat pulling him like a hand tugging his lapels, three blocks away before it lets Harry stop, sure the old man's not following.

  "Christ," Harry says, regaining his breath, and then he feels something clutched in his hand and looks down wanting to see a big green bottle but instead there's only this knife, half as long as his arm.

  And then the coat says, Let's go, and Harry very much wants to have a drink that he knows the coat won't let him have.

  Night now. The boardwalk. Not the tourist end, with the shrimp shops, gew-gaw stands, postcard racks, pay telescopes mounted on the railing for looking out at the foggy harbor that as often as not take your dime and either stay blind, or open their shutters to show the lenses so blotched with seagull droppings and dried salt as to be blind anyway. Not that end. The other end of the boardwalk, where the slats aren't swept and the railings are oiled black by the weather and bum piss. Where the ladies are.

  The coat makes Harry study them again. They look like Martians to him; day-glow colors, shaking behinds, lipstick, dull eyes with dark painted blue circles—gum chewers, knees cocked away from each other, doing the walk, the lean, smoking, talking in twos and threes, walking, walking...

  That one, the coat orders.

  Alone, or about to be, two friends shuffling off to turn a corner. Classic lamplight pose. Harry's seen her around: blonde hair, up a little on top, shag cut, lips not as red as most, fishnet stockings. Young.

  "I don't—" Harry begins.

  Go, the coat insists.

  She looks up slowly as he's up to her, then away. "Don't have any spare change, Harry," she says.

  "Excuse me," Harry says, embarrassed, but then the coat takes over his mouth and he's smiling, saying it again with a rakish knowing edge in the voice.

  "You hear me?" Still the cow eyes, the dim animal glow, gum in her cheek.

  "Would you like an escort?" Harry asks, barely knowing the word. It's obvious the word isn't too big with her, either.

  "Would you like to go somewhere?" Harry says, still that suave manner coming through.

  She looks him over more closely. He knows what he looks like, he hasn't had a bath in four days, but the swagger the coat has given him must come through because she doesn't walk away.

  "Fifty, Harry," she says, testing him.

  "Fine," he says.

  The smile goes away, then comes back, wider. "You got that much? What about your wine, Harry?"

  The coat makes him wink. "I'm thirsty for other things."

  "Why, Harry." She puts her hand on his arm, her eyes and mouth smiling, her whole body loosening. She leans into him, rubbing at the fabric of the coat. "Got a lot of money in those pockets?" she asks coyly.

  "Oh, I have lots in there," Harry says, the coat making him speak, and the way he says it is so assured she laughs, and he laughs too.

  And then, up in the clapboard hotel room, with even the harbor outside smelling cheaper, dirtier here, the coat makes Harry kill her.

  She takes him up there, the top floor, a crack in the ceiling so wide and deep he feels night air coming through the roof, off comes the jacket, the sweatshirt, nothing underneath, the silver boots, the short skirt, the fishnet stockings. The room is chilly but she doesn't show it except with little goosebumps all over her. "Want to take the panties off yourself?" she offers.

  The coat makes Harry shrug and smile. "You do it."

  She says, "You gonna pay me before?" and when the coat turns Harry around and he smiles, she smiles too, pushing herself up on her hands and arms, showing off her breasts. She puts all her weight on her back and one stiff arm, holding the other hand out. "That's fifty, Harry," she says, and the coat makes Harry put his hand gently on hers, leaving the long scalpel there.

  "What—?" he says, and the coat makes Harry put his hand gently on hers, leaving the long scalpel there.

  "What—?" gets out of her mouth but the coat says Now and he closes her hand on the smooth cold handle of the scalpel and thrusts it toward her chest. She goes back with a huffing little gasp and her eyes go wide; then real pain reaches her and she starts to thrash, trying to scream through his hand over her mouth. Expertly, the coat makes Harry pin her back against the mattress, knees straddling her ribs. She fights, then a light pulls away from her eyes and she goes limp. He lets up his pressure but as he does so she rears up, nearly fighting out of his grasp. In a moment she is down again, and then the scalpel works and there's no doubt about it this time.

  Harry's shaking, and what remains of the sour white wine in his stomach is boiling up into his throat, but the coat says, Stop. Harry stops. Not only that, but he finds himself tidying up, running his scalpel under the water from the tap in the bathroom, rusty and barely warm, cleaning the bloodstains from his clothes and himself.

  Then the coat says, Go, and he's making his way out and down the back steps, newspaper sheets sleeping in the corners of the stairwell, the smell of cat crap, and out into the morning.

  Wake up.

  "Noreen?" Harry says, coming out of sleep, almost feeling her hand in his as he sits across from her at the little table on the porch of the SeaHarp, a candle flickering between them like faerie light, that first sober summer night enfolding them, the slight ocean chill, salt-smell, her telling him, as the wine he had soaked in for years evaporates out of him into the suddenly magical night, that she loves him and wants to help him, that she has loved him since they were children, that she knows, has always known, that he has greatness in him, how much pain it has caused her to see him this way, that he can still be great, that she will take care of him, that night, when, for just a while, it seemed it all might just work...

  But that's dreamland, this is real, and he wakes up curled inside the concrete wall of the SeaHarp, and the coat says, Get up.

  "No," Harry says out loud, suddenly scared, his head perfectly clear of wine and not liking the memories of last night flooding in on him. Suddenly he wants a lot of alcohol to make him forget, to make him forget everything, last night, Noreen, the whole enchilada.

  In answer, there's laughter in his head and the coat commands, Move.

  It's near night again. By the SeaHarp everything's quiet, and, as he struts down to the boardwalk, at the far end of Harbor Road, it's as if nothing ever happened the night before. He wonders where Jimmy and Wax are, his drinking buddies, maybe they've got some wine, then he wonders about the girl. Maybe they never found her. Maybe they did, and no one cares. Maybe right now she's feeding the sharks out at the mouth of the harbor, a hundred and twenty pounds of bloody fish food, too much paperwork for her pimp or the Greystone police to bother with...

  Suddenly he goes stiff. Two Greystone policemen appear, walking toward him on the boardwalk. They must have found the girl after all. He freezes, the coat putting a semblance of a smile on his face, waiting for them to stop, search him, find the long scalpel in his pocket and club him to the ground, handcuffing him behind his back—

  But they brush by him, not seeing Harry at all, one saying to the other, "Goddam garbage dump. You ever see anything like that before? Friggin' bums..." and then walking on.

  And suddenly everything is back to normal, and the ladies of the night are walking, and the coat makes Harry look them over.

  Her.

  Older than the first. He knows this one, her name's Ginny, she's hit on him once or twice, even offering to do it for wine.<
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  "Want to go someplace, Harry?" she asks, smiling. She runs her hands up around his neck, pulling his head down. He feels the tip of her tongue in his ear, touching, then running down and up his neck before her mouth stops by his ear again. "I'm real good," she says, and when he looks into her eyes something about them—the color, or maybe the pride in them, the absolute knowledge of herself, her mission in life, that she is good at what she does—reminds him of Noreen. He remembers Noreen's self-assurance, her absolute certainty that she could turn him from a walking wine bottle back into a man, her willingness to fight the alcohol for him, for both of them, to fight her brother Victor, manager of the SeaHarp Hotel, who thought she had lost her mind when she took him in, feeding him, letting him sleep his drunks off in a vacant guest room on the fourth floor. He remembered the first time she had taken him to her apartment in the attic, the tender way she had treated him, like a mother as much as a lover, the soft look of unmasking love in her eyes...

  "Real good," the hooker repeats, smiling, looking at him with those Noreen eyes of hers.

  Harry tries to talk to the hooker, to yell at her to go away before something bad happens, but the coat cuts in, making his mouth say, in that cultured tone, full of fatherly playfulness, "I bet you are, my dear."

  "We'll see, Harry," she says, and then she laughs and turns and leads him into the night.

  In her room, in another weathered building overlooking the sea-dredged rot of Greystone Bay, Harry tries to fight the coat. There's a bottle of French wine she insisted on buying, looking up at him coyly in the dim light of the liquor store to tell him that it's her birthday and she feels like being nice to herself. And to him. The bottle sits on a table by the window, and Harry wants to run to it, tilt it back against his mouth and drown himself out. But the coat won't let him. "We'll save it for later," the coat makes him tell the girl.

  "I'm flattered you think more of me than the wine, Harry."

  The coat makes him smile. Harry wants to cry, because she's so much like Noreen. But the coat won't let tears come. He remembers now how much he hurt Noreen when he was with her, how he drove her away because he couldn't stand her looking so hurt anymore, couldn't stand her love for him, couldn't make her see that he was no longer a schoolboy with valentines and big dreams, and couldn't face the thing he'd turned into; a wine-sucking mouth with no feelings attached, no heart. He had driven her away because he couldn't stand himself...