Sweeter Than Wine

by L. Neil Smith

  A soft voice said, “Do you like that one? I have another, very similar.”

  The voice, of course, was feminine, low and a little breathy, with just the faintest brush of tongue and teeth on the esses, not quite a lisp, which for some reason I’d always found very attractive. It was also accented: eastern European of some sort, but not Polish. I’d met quite a few of them, attached to my battalion: exiles helping us to free their country from the murderous fascist horror that had engulfed it.

  But she wasn’t Polish, she was something else. Right now, I didn’t really care what. Still holding onto her in that odd manner, I was thinking that, whatever happened now—even if she just shot me—a little wine would go great with it. Then I realized what that aroma had been: girl-breath garnished with just a trace of alcoholic grape juice.

  Sally and I had been getting into her father’s winter-aged hard cider that night in rural Illinois. Nowadays I guess behavioral scientists would call that an imprinting experience. For some reason, still sitting there on the cellar floor, I let go of her breast (temporarily, I rushed to assure myself), reached around the back of her neck—I still remember the sensation of feeling the soft, silky short hair back there where the rest had been combed up into a French braid or something—pulled her invisible face to mine and kissed her.

  It was just like somebody had pushed a dynamite plunger. Clothing exploded from our bodies in every direction and I was on her, riveting our bodies together with no thought for the implacable foe outside, the dirty cellar floor beneath us, or much of anything else. I’d never felt that way before and I haven’t since, but it happened every single time we came together. She was long-legged and lithe and at the same time seemed to be composed entirely of curves. She was smooth, but very firm beneath that feminine softness, and she just plain smelled right.

  Like the pie table at a county fair.

  Then there was another explosion, and I saw the white light that the mystics blather about. As we lay there together afterward, both of us wishing we had cigarettes, she said, in her low, breathy, aromatic, and unidentifiably accented voice, “Now we will take our time, lovely man. We certainly have no lack of it. The Germans aren’t going away soon.”

  Lovely man. Nobody had ever called me that. Nobody has since then. “My name is J. Gifford. The J doesn’t stand for anything, see, because—” Actually, I had told her my real name which I haven’t used in years.

  She placed a finger on my lips. “I am Surica. Your Surica, at the moment.”

  And she was.

  THE TRAVELER: ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  “No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.”—George Eliot

  The witching hour.

  The traveler shook hands with the driver, exchanged a few parting pleasantries with her, shouldered the canvas bag, and climbed from a tractor that might otherwise have been exited easily with a casual hop.

  Appearances were important at the moment. True nature could come later.

  Likewise, it would have been convenient and pleasant to feed right here and now, in the privacy of a vehicle that was almost a rolling apartment in and of itself. But cross-continental operators like this one perceived themselves as part of a culture set aside from the rest of the nation-state, and they were astonishingly protective of one another.

  This much the traveler had learned from the driver, apparently a rather lonely woman, recently widowed, who had required only a modicum of persuasive pressure before offering transportation—illegally, as it developed, or against her company’s regulations (it had never been entirely clear)—from a place in Charleston almost exactly like this one, a “giant food and fuel plaza”, to this specimen, located at the western edge of Atlanta, Georgia. Free shower with every fill-up, long distance telephones, and multidenominational church services every Sunday. A woman, the traveler had reasoned, would be safer to travel with.

  Along the way she had regaled the traveler with stories of a life on the road with her husband, with whom she had had many adventures—at least she considered them so—until he had succumbed suddenly to heart attack in the fairly recent past, nearly taking her and a load of self-sealing stem bolts with him. The traveler told her stories, too, of a long life in Europe, Asia, and Africa, not all of them made up.

  Now, walking all the way around the enormous main building—fuel desk, restaurant, half a dozen shops of various kinds—to the back, the traveler waited patiently in a deeply shadowed corner of a huge area otherwise lit as brightly as daytime. Patience was rewarded in a little while when a young woman wearing the uniform of a waitress came through a back door with a large full plastic trash bag in her hands, headed for one of the dumpsters that ubiquitously dotted the American landscape.

  In a moment, the traveler had her and, unwilling to feed in the unaesthetic pen around the garbage disposal facilities, laid a hand over her mouth and, ignoring her desperate flailing, zigzagged from the shadow of one semi-tractor to the shadow of another, carrying her to a grassy field at the edge of the asphalt where a drainage ditch had been visible as the truck from Charleston had pulled into the big lot.

  The ditch grew deeper into the soil until it ended at the mouth of a culvert, a concrete tube at least four feet in diameter, running all the way under the interstate. It was obstructed by heavy screening—wire the diameter of pencils arranged in eight centimeter squares—at both ends, almost certainly to prevent indigents from sleeping in it.

  Effortlessly, the traveler took the girl into the culvert, never said a word to her, but without prelude tore the side of her throat open, and as the highway traffic passed over their heads at 100 kilometers an hour, bathed them both in what escaped the predator’s maw. It was possible, the traveler knew from centuries of experience, to feed lightly this way, making up the deficit with human food, but why bother when the fare at hand was alive and hot and sweeter than wine?

  For many a lifetime, the traveler had carefully chosen clothing that could be bled on and only show it minimally. This was necessary when there was much traveling to be done or business with the humans who were stupid, for the most part, but amazingly inventive and productive. Later there were fabrics available that could be easily cleaned. The traveler almost loved humans for making everything so easy.

  Abandoning the dead and emptied waitress, the traveler was inside the truckstop swiftly, purchased a ticket for a shower from another tasty-looking young woman behind a counter who would retain no memory of the transaction (perhaps she would do for breakfast if they were still here), found the shower room, hung up the bag, and stepped into the enclosure fully clothed, allowing the evidence to swirl down the drain.

  According to the guidebook, Atlanta has a humid, subtropical climate, so it was necessary to dry everything electrically, passing a dangerous and vulnerable hour wearing only a towel. Fortunately, it was a slow night at the truck stop, and even slower at this end of the building. The time was spent listening to “Your Cheatin’ Heart”, “Hey, Good Lookin’”, and other, similar selections on the overhead music system.

  Drinking reasonably decent coffee in the truck stop restaurant—in here, the musical selections appeared to range from “Jambalaya” to “Cold, Cold Heart” (the traveler examined the jukebox carefully, wondering exactly who this Hank Williams was and why he was obsessed with hearts; had he had vampire tendencies, himself?)—it was fairly easy to find another ride headed further west. Clearly, North America was not at all like tiny, cozy Europe. There was still a long way to go.

  This time the driver was a middle-aged male, unshaven, unshowered, and reeking of cigar smoke. The man, the traveler thought, seemed to have bit of a mean streak not very well hidden underneath. He had to be offered money and gaped like an illiterate peasant at the pair of gold coins the traveler proffered. Perhaps the trucking brotherhood would not protect this one so assiduously. Perhaps the thing to do was order something now—what in the name of all eternity was a chic
ken fried steak?—and do the important feeding at the other end of the line.

  And get the gold coins back.

  And perhaps find a source of some decent music. The traveler had always enjoyed Mozart until the fellow had given up too much blood and died.

  3: ACCIDENTAL TRUTH

  “Evil is always possible. And goodness is

  eternally difficult.”—Anne Rice

  Captain Anton Varick and I go back quite a way. He’d been a fuzzy-cheeked rookie beat cop in beautiful downtown New Prospect when he and I first met. I’d just moved into town, trying to figure out what to do with myself. Now he was Chief of Detectives for the small force, and I am...

  Well, whatever I am.

  It was the next morning. I’d come downtown, as promised, to sign off on some paperwork for the patrol guys who’d taken Charlene off my hands. While I was there, I’d decided to visit my old friend Anton. The building was old, brick and stone, probably built by the W.P.A. in the 1930s, like a lot of civic architecture across this part of the country.

  Anton’s office had a hardwood floor, high ceiling, and windows to go with it. There was an air conditioner stuck into one of them, but I’d never seen it operating. The old building was just naturally cool. In winter, a pair of big cast iron radiators with so many layers of paint you could no longer make out the decorative details made hissing noises.

  “Come on in, Giff,” he told me when he saw me standing at his open office door. He was the only one who called me that. Good guy that am, I let him, “And close the door behind you. Had your morning coffee yet?”

  As a matter of fact, I had, courtesy of Starbuck’s, but I didn’t say so. Instead I let him pour me a paper cup from the carafe of his Mr. Coffee—I take mine black—and sat down across from him at his desk. I took a sip. It was the only decent coffee I’d ever had inside a police station. The virus just loves caffeine, and I could almost hear the little guys going “Whoopee!” and doing cartwheels in my blood vessels.

  “How’s it going, Anton?” I was the only one who called him that. To all others, including his wife, Priscilla, a nice lady and a great cook—except for those who called him “sir”—he was Varick or just “Vare”.

  “Not too well, I’m afraid.” He was tall and lean, what they call “rangy”, and no suit off the rack was ever going to fit him right. His big face was long and sort of pleated, flesh punctuated by vertical ridges and gullies. At the moment, Anton looked terrible, as if he’d been up all night, crying. He said, “Pris had a routine exam a couple of weeks ago. I insisted on it. They found something, Giff, something really bad. She’s in the hospital overnight tonight, doing more tests. But it’s cancer, ovarian cancer. They say she doesn’t have much time left.”

  I knew she’d been sick. I had no idea she’d been that sick. The bad news chilled me right through to the bottom of whatever I use for a soul. These people were the closest thing I’d had to a family since France.

  In a way, Anton was the reason that I do what I do. When I first arrived in New Prospect, looking to put down roots after wandering for years, Ronald Reagan was the President, William Powell—the “Thin Man”—had just passed away, and I was between cars. It was a cloudy, overcast day in late March. Mostly, I’m active at night, but I can go out in daylight, especially if it’s cloudy, with protective clothing, sunblock, and my big, floppy hat—one reason I’d moved west to the Denver area is that nobody looks at you funny if you wear a big floppy hat.

  Indoors, or at night, I prefer well-worn jeans, cowboy boots, and aloha shirts depicting sunny tropics I will never see for myself. Sometimes I think I should move to Seattle where it’s cloudy all the time.

  I’d been sitting on a bench at a bus stop, thinking about cars and houses. An old man sat at the other end of the bench, sort of twisted away from me, muttering something into the fraying lapels of his dirty topcoat.

  Almost without thinking, I asked, “What did you say?”

  The old man turned, compelled by my question. I have that effect on people. It isn’t hypnosis. I don’t know what the hell it is. I just ask folks, straightforwardly and in a perfectly normal voice, to do things, or to tell me things, and they always seem happy to comply. Admittedly, it’s a pretty handy skill for an investigator, but I have to be extremely careful never to use it when I consider it unethical to.

  Like on a date.

  At any rate, the old man proceeded to tell me, in the most loving, gut-curdling detail, about a pretty young woman he’d murdered with a flensing knife in Wales in 1917. And then another one he’d killed in 1918. And then in 1919. And then 1920, the year I’d been born. His story took a long, long time to tell. He was a monster who remembered each and every organ he’d cut from his helpless victims’ still-living flesh.

  He was sickeningly eloquent about the way it had smelled.

  Making it sound more like a resume than a confession, once the stopper had been pulled on secrets he’d been keeping inside for almost 70 years, there wasn’t any way to shut him up. Eventually relocating to Canada, and then on to America after the First World War, he’d managed, or so he informed me, to mutilate and butcher at least one attractive female victim every year until the late 1960s, when one of his potential targets had shot him in the groin, and he’d only barely managed to get away. Now, at 90, he was too old and crippled to have any more fun—that’s just how he described it—and he was deeply bitter.

  If it was true, at least four dozen mangled corpses in at least three countries made this old son of a bitch a world-class serial killer. I’d have gladly finished him off myself, on the spot, or made him commit suicide (I’d never done anything like that before, but I was pretty sure I could), but it would have been too easy. He was in a lot of pain from arthritis and other stuff. I wanted him to stay that way, maybe with a heaping helping of humiliation and defeat for good measure. I considered asking him to feel more pain, but restrained myself.

  Of course it could all turn out to be utter bullshit. On my way to the bus stop from the real estate office where I’d been exploring housing possibilities that morning, I’d noticed a young policeman on foot patrol, one I’d seen before over the past several days exploring beautiful downtown New Prospect, and now had a nodding acquaintance with.

  Glancing around, I saw him again, across the street. Turning to the old man, I said, “Stay put!” I crossed the street, a grassy median where there were still iron trolley tracks, and then the other half of the street. The cop noticed me coming toward him and raised his eyebrows.

  “Officer,” I said, once I was within earshot, my voice growing quieter as I got closer. “That old man over at the bus stop is saying some amazing things. I think you’d better come over and listen to him.”

  The nametag on the cop’s pocket flap said “Varick, A.”

  4: UNETHICAL ALTRUISM

  “I have a strong moral sense—by my standards.”—Rex Stout

  There wasn’t really anything to say, but you try, anyway.

  “I’m sorry, Anton.” I’d known Priscilla Varick for twenty-five years. She was from some tiny town in Indiana, so I identified with her. She’d come here to Colorado to attend the state university in Boulder.

  Anton had been writing her a parking ticket and she had decided to argue with him. That’s how it starts, sometimes. First time I’d seen her she’d been eight months pregnant with their first kid and cute as a kitten, herself. In her mid-forties now, Priscilla was still more than merely an attractive woman. “Is there anything at all that I can do?”

  My big hat and long coat lay across the other hardbacked office chair. His office was furnished with great big oak filing cabinets with brass fixtures, scrounged from the county school system when they switched to the ever-so-much-more-aesthetically-appealing gray sheet metal. Add a clutch of oak chairs, including the old swivel thing he sat in, and a big refinished oak table instead of a desk, where he could spread photos and other evidence. The place smelled like First Grade.

  A n
eat little Sony laptop sat on the table. The desktop image showed the family in the right field seats at Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies: Anton, Priscilla, their son Patrick, currently a sophomore at the Air Force Academy and sister Amber, away at college in Vermont. Turns out that time flies whether you’re having fun or not.

  I’d also taken off the gloves I wear to protect the vulnerable backs of my hands. Anton’s family believed I had lupus, or porphyria, or something like that. Over the years, I had deliberately left it vague.

  Anton shrugged. “Not a thing, Giff. Not a thing anybody can do. Not a single. God. Damned. Thing.” He sat quietly for a minute, fists closed tight atop his chair arms. “The absolute hell of it is in spite of myself, some part of me has already started imagining life without her, although what that part can’t imagine is why I’d want to live it.”

  My old friend reeked of fear, of anger, and of resignation.

  I nodded, indicating sympathy more than understanding. I’d never really loved anybody that way, myself, although given more of a chance—more than a few weeks, for example, in some Frenchman’s hidden wine cellar—I very likely could have. In my life, it was a lot less like being in love and a lot more like being haunted. That’s just one of many reasons those dates I theorized about are kind of few and far between.

  But Anton had it wrong. There was something I could do about Priscilla, something that nobody else I knew about could do. If necessary, I could drag Anton’s wife back from the very brink of death. But there was more than a chance that I couldn’t heal her without bringing her over. So the question was, would either of them thank me afterward? I liked living my life. Would they like living my life?