Trader

by Charles de Lint

  Julie gave her an amused look. "Probably the same thing our parents did when we were teenagers.”

  "But that girl looked like a freak. I was never that bad.”

  "Not from your perspective.”

  “Be serious,” Lisa said.

  “I am being serious.”

  “But...”

  Lisa let her voice trail off. She glanced in the side mirror again, watching the girl continue down the block.

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “It’s just...it seems so extreme.”

  “I saw a girl with ‘Nine Inch Nails’ tattooed on her cheek the other day,” Julie told her. “Now, that’s extreme.”

  Lisa nodded in agreement. She’d been very lucky with Nia, she realized. At least up until now.

  After Julie had spoken to her niece Anna-Leigh, they’d set out on a tour of hangouts where they might find Nia, working from a list of Anna-Leigh’s suggestions. To look more inconspicuous, they’d both changed into casual clothes—jeans and T-shirts, Lisa at home, Julie at her own apartment when they went by to get her car. They were glad they did, for while they didn’t fit in much better, dressed-down and driving Julie’s old beat-up Honda, at least they didn’t look like they were worth mugging.

  Their search took them into some of the rougher parts of the city, areas where neither of them would have gone alone, clubs on unfamiliar backstreets, abandoned buildings where runaways squatted. Most of the time they didn’t even leave the car, cruising slowly by congregations of hostile teenagers, most of whom returned their scrutiny with unfriendly expressions. Often the promise of violence lay thick in the air, directed at each other as much as at Lisa and Julie. Twice they’d seen minor scuffles, once a serious fight.

  Many of them were still children, Lisa found herself thinking, but not any kind of children she’d ever known. They gave off a very real sense of danger—like once-domesticated animals gone feral. It was as though the punk scene had returned, but more menacing, its nihilism less a fashion statement, more a way of life. The longer they drove by their various hangouts, the less Lisa expected to find Nia among them. She didn’t know why Nia had run away, but she couldn’t believe that overnight her daughter had turned into such a stranger that she’d suddenly seek out the company of people such as this.

  “What’s next?” Julie asked.

  "Maybe we should call it a night,” Lisa said.

  “How many places do we have left?”

  “One. But it’s way up in Lower Foxville.”

  Julie nodded. “That’s right. Your Second Home.” She smiled. “How could I forget?”

  “What’s so funny?” Lisa asked.

  “I used to hang out there when I was a teenager. They had the best bands.”

  “According to your niece, I guess they still do.”

  “I always thought the kid had taste.”

  “So is it in the Tombs?” Lisa asked.

  “Right on the borderland between civilization and the wilds,” Julie said. She shot Lisa a look. “Don’t feel nervous. It’ll be perfectly safe.”

  She took the next street heading west, then worked her way across town until they reached Lee Street, which would take them north, all the way up to where the club was situated on the corner of Lee and Gracie Street. The sign on the marquee read TONITE! LIVE! BLOODFRUIT! Lisa guessed they were a metal band from the small pool of black leather, chains and jeans that was waiting to get in. The age of the crowd seemed to vary between high school and college, though from the extreme clothing and hairstyles an exact reckoning of years was hard to figure and she couldn’t tell which might be which. The threat of violence lay in the air here as well, but it didn’t seem as strong. Or at least it wasn’t so strongly focused on them. Lisa still wouldn’t have described the place as safe.

  “Boy, this brings back some memories,” Julie said as she pulled up to the curb.

  Lisa scanned the crowd for Nia, but with this band playing at the club tonight, and the audience it had drawn, she was only going through the motions. This really wasn’t Nia’s scene.

  “I don’t see her,” she said.

  “I’m not surprised. It’s hard to see anything from this vantage.”

  She opened the driver’s-side door as she spoke and got out before Lisa could tell her there was no point in looking closer. Then she realized that Julie probably wanted to get a closer look at an old stomping ground, drawn by the same curiosity that brought people back to houses they’d once lived in or high-school reunions. Lisa joined her on the sidewalk. Julie turned and smiled at her.

  “I can’t believe it hasn’t been condemned yet,” she said. “It looks exactly the way it did in the seventies when I used to hang out here.”

  “You’re right,” Lisa said. “It doesn’t look like much.”

  “But the music was great. Punk and rock bands at night, a place for unemployed blue-collar workers to drink away their welfare checks during the day, and weirdly enough, everybody pretty much got along. I’ll bet it looks exactly the same inside.”

  Lisa felt nervous enough out here on the pavement—they were already drawing more attention than she cared for. She couldn’t imagine actually venturing inside.

  “You’re not going in,” she said.

  Julie laughed. “No—though I won’t say I’m not tempted. Any sign of Nia?”

  “It’s not really her kind of crowd,” Lisa said.

  “And if I remember what it was like when I was a kid, half of the attraction of going to see a band in a place like this was who you’d be seen with. Or by.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, we tried,” Julie said. “All we can do now is go back to—”

  She broke off when a young man detached himself from the general crowd and blocked their way back to the car. Half his head was shaven, revealing a snake’s head tattoo; on the other side, long black hair, dyed so often it had taken on the texture of straw, hung to his shoulders. He wore motorcycle boots, jeans that were stiff with grease and dirt, and a black leather vest to show off the gallery of other tattoos on his chest and arms. He seemed a little older than the rest of the crowd—mid-twenties, perhaps—but still young enough that either of them could have been his mother.

  “Hey, ladies,” he said, his voice a slur. “Wassup?” He gave them a grin that seemed to say that even he couldn’t believe his own charm and wit. “Not leaving, are you?”

  Oh shit, Lisa thought. This was exactly what she’d been afraid of. She shot a quick glance toward the crowd to find no help there. This was merely entertainment for them, something to pass the time until they could get into the club.

  “Actually, that’s precisely what we’re doing,” Julie calmly told him.

  “That’s hard, man. Dissing us before you even know us.”

  “Please,” Lisa began.

  “Please?” he repeated in a high-pitched voice, mocking her. “Please what?” He cupped his hand around his crotch. “Please can you suck my cock?”

  “Okay,” Julie said. “That’s enough of this crap.”

  She stepped forward, moving to one side to go around him. Lisa quickly followed suit, but he shifted his position, blocking them once more.

  “We haven’t started nothing yet,” he said.

  When Julie started forward again, he lifted a tattooed arm, grabbed her by the shoulder.

  “Relax,” he told her. “We’re just having ourselves some fun.”

  “I’m not having fun,” Julie told him.

  Lisa didn’t know how Julie could stay so calm.

  “That’s because you’re not trying,” he said, the grin never leaving his face.

  Behind them the crowd made appreciative noises.

  “Yo. Tell ’em, Taxman,” someone called.

  “Tell ’em you got this urge to breed.”

  The comment woke a general laugh.

  “Taxman?” Julie asked.

  He shrugged. “I’m the Taxman. People know, they got to pay me what’s due.”r />
  Julie tried to shake off his hand, but he wouldn’t budge and Lisa was really starting to get scared now. The Taxman caught Julie’s jaw with his free hand and pulled his face in close.

  “So you ready to pay?” he asked. “You ready for some fun?”

  Julie smiled sweetly. “How’s this for fun?”

  She jerked her knee up into his crotch with so much force that he dropped his hands and stumbled back, bent over, good humor evaporating into pain.

  “Let’s go!” Julie cried.

  Lisa didn’t need to be told twice. She bolted for the car. Behind her, she heard someone in the crowd yell.

  “Taxman, no!”

  Lisa couldn’t help herself. She turned to look, saw the Taxman straightening up, pain written across his face, anger blazing in his eyes. The knife in his hand didn’t register at first, didn’t register at all until she saw him lunge forward and stab Julie in the back with it. A horrible wheezing cry escaped Julie’s lips, her eyes opening bird-wide from the shock of the sudden pain.

  Lisa’s mind seemed to close down, refusing to accept what she had just seen. Everything went still—her own breathing and heartbeat, the crowd around the theater, Julie and her assailant. The awful tableau held for an eternity; then the Taxman pulled the knife free and Julie began to fall to the pavement.

  “Oh, shit,” Lisa heard someone say.

  Her own stasis evaporated and she stepped forward to break Julie’s fall, buckling under the sudden load. She sank slowly to the pavement, supporting Julie’s limp weight. Her hands grew slick with Julie’s blood and panic quickened her heartbeat into overdrive. Looking up over Julie’s head, she saw the Taxman staring at the knife in his hand as though he was as surprised as anyone else at what he’d done. His gaze lifted to meet hers and he took a step forward—whether to help or continue his attack, Lisa didn’t know.

  “T-touch her again and I’ll kill you,” she heard herself say, barely recognizing her own voice.

  She held Julie protectively against her chest and knew she looked about as capable of hurting him as a puppy, all bluster and no real bite. But something stopped him all the same. He hesitated for a moment, then turned and ran down the street, turning in to the blocks of abandoned buildings that made up the Tombs. In the far distance a police siren could be heard. It was too soon for someone to have phoned the police, too soon for a cruiser to be on its way here, but the crowd broke up at the sound all the same, bolting in all directions until there was only a boy left, no older than seventeen, but as rough-looking as the Taxman, all leather jacket and jeans, dirty blond hair, black T-shirt, a small mandala tattooed on one cheek.

  “Put your hand on the wound,” he said.

  Lisa looked blankly at him.

  “She’s losing too much blood. You’ve got to stanch the flow until help gets here. I’ll get them to call for an ambulance.”

  Lisa did as he said, wincing at how Julie moaned and stiffened in her arms when she pressed against the wound. The boy hammered on the door of the club, yelling through the glass to the man summoned by the disturbance for him to call 911. Then he ran off as well.

  The police cruiser arrived first, with the ambulance a close second, but they still took forever to come. Julie was so still in her arms by then that Lisa feared the worst. When the paramedics crouched beside her she was reluctant to let go. Scared now, so scared. Even more than she’d been during the attack.

  “Is...is she going to die?” she asked as the medics took over.

  One of the men shot her a sympathetic look. “Not if I’ve got anything to say about it, lady.”

  The police wanted to question her, but all she could do was shake her head. She followed the stretcher into the ambulance and crouched beside Julie, clutching her hand as they sped toward the hospital.

  19 TANYA

  Jilly was so easy to talk to that Tanya found herself telling her everything, from how she was feeling about Johnny and the stupid argument she’d had with Zeffy to the growing dissatisfaction she had for how her own life was going. They sat at a window table in The Black Bean Dream on Lee Street, nursing café lattes and sharing one of the café’s famous huge chocolate-chip cookies, while it all spilled out. She was sure that she sounded like the most hopeless, whining loser anybody’d ever heard, but once started, she couldn’t seem to stop, and Jilly gave no indication that she thought the same.

  “So you don’t agree with Zeffy, then?” Jilly asked when Tanya circled back to start in again on Zeffy’s visit to Max Trader.

  “What, about this guitar guy? I’ve no idea. I’ve never met him and I don’t know a thing about him except for what Zeffy’s told me. I just know there’s something seriously wrong with Johnny.”

  “And you’re mad at Zeffy because she won’t take you seriously?”

  “I suppose. That, and for not telling me how she’s been feeling about Johnny herself.”

  “This is going to sound like I’m taking Zeffy’s side,” Jilly said, “but she hadn’t seen you all day. Telling you when she did was the first opportunity she had.”

  “I know. But it’s like, when I was with him it was always, what’re you doing with that loser?, but now she’s interested in him and everything’s different. I’ve got bad judgment, but she’s been tricked.”

  “Do you still care about him?”

  Tanya shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. Not like before.” She sighed. “How do you do it, Jilly?”

  “Do what?”

  “Live by yourself. Go through life without a regular boyfriend.”

  Jilly gave her a rueful smile. “It’s not exactly out of choice. I’m just not really good with relationships. I get along really well with people, but whenever I’m with a guy and things become intimate, he either turns out to be married, or a jerk, or I get all screwed up and closed up inside and tend to blow it.”

  “Really? You?”

  “Really, me. Now you know my secret side. I’m actually Jilly, the Amazing Messed-Up Lady.”

  “But how do you stand being alone?”

  “Well, I’ve got my friends...”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Jilly nodded. She broke the last piece of the cookie in two and dipped the half she took in her coffee.

  “It’s so unfair, when you think about it,” she said around a mouthful of cookie. “I mean, the warped way society looks at us. Single guys are called bachelors and there’s this whole mystique about them—you know, the older they get, the better they get and all that crap. We, on the other hand, get called spinsters or old maids and if we’re not married off, or at least a part of a couple before we’re thirty, it’s like we’re losers or something. We have no meaning, we’re defined only by the guy we’re with. Or not with.”

  “But I like being with a guy,” Tanya said. “I like being in love.”

  “Well, sure. Who doesn’t? But the point is, you’re still a worthwhile person if you’re not. What gets to me is the perception that’s pushed at us from the minute we’re born: that we need a man to give our lives meaning. Never mind the women’s-rights movement. Never mind plain common sense. The perception’s still there. The propaganda’s waiting for us wherever we turn.”

  “So how do you deal with it?”

  Jilly shrugged. “I learned to be happy with myself. I figure if I can’t be happy with who I am, with my own company, then how can I expect anybody else to like me? Or maybe more to the point, how could I respect them?”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “It’s not. And if I didn’t have the support of my friends, I probably wouldn’t be able to keep it up, because let’s face it. We’re social animals, right? We need people to talk to, to confide in, to be close to.”

  Tanya nodded. “Zeffy’s like that, too. Except I think she uses her music as a substitute.”

  “I can understand that. It’s like a kind of therapy. I use my art the same way.” She smiled. “Mind you, I don’t really get much of a choice. I have to pai
nt. If I don’t, I go crazy.”

  “I just thought you guys were so...you know, focused.”

  “I can’t answer for Zeffy, but I know art’s something I have to do. It’s what keeps me sane. Truth is, it saved my life. When I was a kid growing up, drawing was the only thing that let me escape from all the horrible things going on around me. I wasn’t any good, mind you. I made the same mistakes over and over again—screwing up my perspectives, everything coming out flat—but it didn’t matter. The hours I spent drawing took me into a safe place where no one could hurt me. It was only later I learned to do it properly— learned the language of what I was doing, how to put down on paper what was in my heart. I doodled as a kid, now I do art, but the impulse and need to capture the images hasn’t changed.”

  “I guess that’s my real problem,” Tanya said. “I don’t do anything. I can’t do anything.”

  Jilly shook her head. “Everybody carries the gift of the creative impulse. Some people just find it easier to access, that’s all. Or can access it in ways that are more traditionally recognizable.”

  “I don’t know if I believe that. I mean, I know I can do things. I have done things. My problem is that I don’t have this burning need to do anything—not the way you and Zeffy have to paint or play music.”

  “Passion doesn’t have to come from creating art. You can be just as passionate in your appreciation of it.”

  “That’s what Geordie said.”

  “Well, he was right. I can’t write stories, but I love to read. I couldn’t play an instrument for the life of me, but I don’t think I could live without music.”

  “But it’s not the same.”

  “No,” Jilly agreed. “But that doesn’t make it bad. Personally, the thing I admire the most in a person is their goodness and decency, not whether or not they can paint or carry a tune.”

  “I suppose. But I want that passion. It’s like I have this hole in me and since I can’t fill it up with something creative the way you or Zeffy do, I fill it up with men. I leave Johnny, so right away I want to hook up with Geordie.”