The Radio Magician and Other Stories

by James Van Pelt

  “Where were you at lunch?” Dorian asked. “I waited for an hour.”

  Stephanie’s inhalation still sounded shaky. “I was in the wrong restaurant. When you didn’t show up, I went back to the room. But you didn’t come, so I started looking for you. That’s when I went through the transitions. Dorian, it was all so beautiful. I lost track of time.” She frowned. “They brought a man who looked like you, but he wasn’t you. I’ve never been so frightened before.”

  “I know.”

  Dorian pulled her even tighter. It didn’t matter why they’d been apart, as long as they were no longer lost. He loved the feel of her walking beside him. He loved that he could match strides with her so they wouldn’t jar each other. Twenty years of marriage, and he loved that she still surprised him with her laugh.

  They reached the room. Dorian slid his plastic key into the lock, but it didn’t work.

  “Let me,” Stephanie said. The door recognized her key and let them in. “I’m so tired, I could sleep for a week.” She leaned against the wall, looking at him.

  “Me too. I haven’t slept since yesterday.”

  She headed for the bed, and Dorian was glad because she couldn’t see the change in expression on his face. He hadn’t slept since yesterday, he’d said, but that wasn’t true. He’d slept in the moon room, where he’d dreamed of Stephanie. “You’re so far away,” she’d said in the dream.

  How long had he slept?

  Stephanie pulled back the sheets. Dorian watched. Was that exactly the way Stephanie unmade the bed? Didn’t she always wash her face first?

  She walked past him into the bathroom. Her fingers touched his as she rounded the corner. “You look like you swallowed something gross.”

  The sink turned on. Water splashed. Dorian backed up to the edge of the bed, but he didn’t sit down. Stephanie had left the door open. She always closed the bathroom door, even to brush her teeth, even to blow her nose. Her shadow moved on the carpet in the light of the open door.

  How long had he slept?

  Much, much later that night, long after the woman had fallen asleep, Dorian lay with his eyes wide open, listening. Straining. What did his wife sound like when she breathed? Could this possibly be her beside him, and what if it wasn’t? How long would it be before she noticed? A year? Ten years? Never?

  Or could she wake up right now and know? Would she lever herself up on one elbow and look at him in the dark? “You’re not Dorian,” she’d say. Her breath wouldn’t smell like Stephanie’s. Her voice wouldn’t be Stephanie’s. Not quite. Not exact. Not real.

  She stirred slightly. Every muscle in Dorian’s body tensed, but she didn’t wake up.

  Not then.

  THE ICE CREAM MAN

  Keegan chose a song from the truck’s jukebox after he crossed 6th Street going south on University Blvd.: “You are My Sunshine.” It was his Thursday route. The music boomed through the loudspeakers, echoing from the late 19th Century houses. Within a minute, doors opened, people wandered down their sidewalks and waited for him on the street. He muted the song as the truck slowed to a stop. Even through his dark sunglasses, the sun was too bright. Every reflective surface bounced the light in painful intensity. He squinted against the intrusions.

  An old lady in a broad-rimmed hat that shadowed her face and a lacy blouse that covered her neck to her chin looked up at him. “Do you have strawberry today?”

  He handed her a cone with a single scoop.

  The tip of her tongue touched the treat. She closed her eyes and sighed. “Best strawberry ice cream in the world.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Overripe strawberries are the secret. They’re sweeter. You’re lucky they’re in season.”

  The lady put a pint of bourbon on the counter. “Will this do?”

  Keegan held it to the sunlight, where it glowed like golden honey. “That’s a couple weeks worth, darling.”

  She blushed. “I need a box of .22 longs if you have them. Something’s been in my back yard the last few nights.”

  Keegan searched below the counter. “Short rounds, short rounds, short rounds.” He moved the small boxes aside. “Ah, here we go, .22 longs. That would make us even.”

  Behind her frowned a middle-aged man with a tiny black mustache like a charcoaled thumbprint below his nose. “Where do you get the ammo, hairlip?”

  Keegan resisted the urge to cover his mouth. He smiled instead. “It’s all in trade. I have something someone wants. Somebody else has something I want. What do you want?”

  “Nobody trades bullets. They horde them.” He looked suspiciously at the truck. “And how do I know your ice cream is any good?”

  Another man a couple folks back in the line said, “Are you going to order, Rich, or are you going to be a pain in the ass? Doesn’t matter if it’s good or not. You can’t get ice cream anywhere else.”

  The man scowled. “Vanilla.”

  Keegan turned his back to get another cone from behind him. He rubbed his nostril with his thumb, and as he scooped the ice cream he pressed the thumb firmly into the frozen ball before plopping it into place. “There you go, mister,” he said. “Since it’s your first time, it’s on the house.”

  The next customer wanted a double scoop of chocolate, which Keegan let him have for a nearly full bottle of powdered cinnamon.

  “Can’t get enough good spices,” said Keegan to the man who’d defended him. “How are you doing, Laird?”

  Laird leaned on the counter, his tanned arm a sharp contrast to the polished aluminum, liver spots sprinkled across the top of his hand like the map of an island chain. “Pretty good, Keegan. You put a booger in his ice cream, didn’t you?”

  Keegan grinned. “I didn’t charge him.”

  “Maple-walnut for me, if you have it.”

  The ice cream rolled smoothly into the scoop. Keegan liked the cold air caressing his wrists. It felt better than the waves of heat rising from the asphalt outside the truck, and it was only 11:00. Good for business. Hard to work in.

  Laird licked a drip off the cone before it reached his hand. “Can’t really blame the guy for his bad temper. He moved in a month ago. No territory. No prospects. Some muta-bastard broke into his house and tore up most of his stores, so he’s feeling pinched.”

  “Is he thinking of scavenging north of Colfax Avenue?” Keegan closed the freezer lid. No need to let the product melt, and the truck used less fuel if the refrigerator unit wasn’t working the whole time. “I wouldn’t recommend going alone.”

  “You don’t seem to have trouble.”

  Keegan swept a damp rag the length of the counter, keeping his eyes down. “I know the area.”

  “Speaking of that, did you find the item I asked for?”

  “It’s rare. Really rare.” The rag swung loosely in Keegan’s hand as he leaned against the cabinets, squinting through his sunglasses at the sunlight outside the truck’s dark interior. The last two people in line, a middle-aged couple he’d served several times before, wiped their foreheads in unison. Like most folks, they didn’t look at his face. He wanted to cover his mouth again.

  Laird sighed. “All right. I can double the sugar for next month.” He leaned forward to whisper, “I found a cache you wouldn’t believe. Geezer who’d filled a double-car garage with goodies before kicking off.”

  “Great.” Keegan pulled two boxes of 12-gauge shotgun shells from under the counter. He rattled them before putting them down. “Got a project?”

  Laird pocketed the boxes. “Nope. The boys on the Colfax fence say they’re having breakthroughs every night. I want more punch for my dollar. Whatever tore into Rich’s house went through the bars on his window. Something new south of the fence, evidently. One of these days I’m afraid I’m going to stumble on a mutoid that’s all teeth, scales, tentacles and bad attitude, and I don’t want to face it with a popgun.”

  “You could move to the country like everyone else.”

  Laird turned to look down the street. Many of the hou
ses were boarded up, their windows staring into the street like blind eyes. On other houses, bars covered the windows and doors. Barbed wire separated them from their neighbors. “What, and leave all this? There’s still a lot of scavenging to do before I start scratching dirt for a living. Besides, farms have mutoid problems too.” He licked the last of the ice cream out of the cone. “Could you sweeten this up?”

  Keegan dropped another scoop on the cone.

  Laird said, “The ammo question was dumb. You know the one I want answered?”

  Keegan looked at him through his sunglasses.

  “Where do you get the cream? The last true cow died twenty years ago.”

  “I have good freezers.”

  Laird laughed. “See you next Thursday.” He walked away, waving as he went.

  The last couple both wanted raspberry, but Keegan didn’t have any. They settled for a scoop each of chocolate macadamia nut. He placed the set of four sundae glasses they’d brought on the floor. The woman looked suspiciously at her cone.

  “Just ice cream in that one, ma’am,” he said.

  When he drove away, he flicked the music back on, “Little Brown Jug.” A couple blocks later, a new crowd gathered. By 1:00 he was sold out.

  Driving the ice cream truck had been Keegan’s first job out of high school. In the dispatch office, Old Josh Granger had handed him the route and an inventory sheet along with the keys to the truck. “Drive slow in the neighborhoods,” he said. “Nothing sadder than a little kid who can’t catch the ice cream truck.”

  Keegan nodded.

  “Not that there’s kids anymore.” Granger sat heavily on a stool, cupping his hands over his knees. “God, I remember when the five-year-olds would chase me down. Scads of them. Couldn’t even get their change up to the counter. Little hands holding money. Do you remember kids?” Granger looked out the window onto the lot where the trucks were parked. Canvas covered six of them. “You’re what, eighteen? No, you wouldn’t. You’re one of the last batch.”

  Keegan ground the toe of his sneaker into the cement. “They’ll find out what’s causing it. I heard the news the other night. They’re making headway.”

  Granger sighed. “Do you have a girl?”

  Keegan blushed. “They don’t seem to take to me.” He scratched his nose, covering his mouth.

  “Humph! Sorry, son. Maybe it’s for the better. Save you the heartache. No ultrasound horror show. No little bundled buried in the back yard for you…” He trailed off. A muscle in his arm twitched, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Nobody gives you guff about it, do they?”

  “No, sir. They’re all real nice.” Keegan thought about the whispers in the school hallway. Once he’d heard an entire conversation. “Do you think he’s a mutation?” someone had said. “Nah,” said someone else. “Cleft palate. It’s just a birth defect.”

  Granger said, “Don’t they have operations to fix that?”

  “I had it. You should have seen it before.”

  For the rest of the summer, Keegan drove the truck. Kids his own age and older waited for him. In the shadows, they hardly noticed his face. “I want a bomb pop,” one would say. “Ice cream sandwich,” said another. For a summer he drove the town, music filling his ears: “Home on the Range” and “London Bridge” and “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” calling, calling, and the folks came out, remembering in the music what it must have been like to be five. He imagined them as children, running after him, their eyes on fire, laughter in their throats. It was the best summer of his life. Then, in August, the company went under, and he had to turn in his keys.

  When he left his last inventory in the dispatch office, Old Man Granger sat unmoving on his stool, staring off into an unfocused middle distance.

  “Here’s my paperwork, sir. I filled everything out.”

  Granger didn’t speak.

  “I rinsed out the freezer wells too. The truck’s clean.” Keegan resisted an urge to pass his hand in front of the old man’s eyes. “Well, I got to go.”

  When Keegan turned back to close the door, Granger finally spoke. “Don’t ever drive too fast.” He could have been talking to himself. “You don’t want to leave the kids behind.”

  It was thirty years before Keegan would drive an ice cream truck again.

  The University Blvd. and Colfax Avenue enclave ended south of Cherry Creek, about fifteen blocks from Colfax. Keegan drove through the empty neighborhoods, his music turned off, the ice cream gone, and the boxes of traded goods packed securely behind him. He rested his wrists loosely over the top of the wheel, avoiding road debris with long, sweeping curves. Here the remains of homes sat back from the sidewalk on top of short, weeded slopes. The frame houses that weren’t burned to the ground sagged forlornly, holes gaping in their roofs, an occasional glass shard still clinging to a window, catching the sun. The brick homes fared better, though their roofs swooped to black holes too. Nothing worth scavenging in them now, unless there were secrets buried in their basements. Too close to University. Inside, all the drawers would be pulled out, the sheet rock rotted, wallpaper hanging in ragged folds, their owners either dead or moved to the country to raise crops.

  Keegan sighed, checked the fuel gauge, and turned north. A slinky, black form, ten feet long, flowed across the road on short, powerful legs, before vanishing behind some bushes. The sun was still high in the sky. Keegan whistled. Most of the mutoids were nocturnal. He hadn’t got a good look at it, but it moved like a predator. Either it had broken through the Colfax fence, or it came out of the Platte River wastes a couple miles west. Keegan slowed the truck.

  It appeared again, beside a house, placed a foot high on the worn wood, then pulled itself up. When its front paws reached the gutter, its hind feet were still on the ground. Then, without a break in rhythm, it poured onto the roof, defying gravity in its sinuous path. Before it disappeared over the peak, it looked at Keegan, small eyes buried in a broad, black skull, like a bear’s. That high, poised in the sun, it no longer appeared black, but a deep, regal purple.

  Back on University, two fence men pushed the barrier aside to let him through.

  “Saw something big on the road back there,” said Keegan.

  “Like a low-riding black panther?” asked the fellow hoisting a scoped rifle.

  Keegan nodded.

  The man shaded his eyes to look up into the truck. “I got a shot at him yesterday, walking bold as brass in front of those shops on 6th Street. Nothing to eat in the enclave except us, so we’ve organized a hunting party for tomorrow. Find him and then go north for a bit. Clean out the worst of them.”

  “About time we went north,” said the man’s partner, wearing thick glasses and a cowboy hat. “The leave-them-alone and they’ll-leave-us-alone policy sucks.” He hefted his rifle, a military issue weapon with a curved magazine. “We need as much replacement ammo as you can get us when you come next week. If we’re going to clean the area out, we’ll be jacking quite a few rounds.”

  “Tomorrow, you’re hunting?” Keegan wondered if they heard the quiver in his voice.

  “Couple hours before sunrise. We’ve got forty rifles. Figure we can make a sweep as far north as 30th Avenue. Some hotheads on the committee wanted to burn everything in that direction, but we figure a lot of the best stuff is up there.”

  Keegan tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. University Blvd. stretched in front of him. The tops of trees in City Park a couple blocks ahead waved in a breeze that didn’t touch them on the street. “No need to go beyond the fence, is there? The majority aren’t dangerous.”

  Rifle-scope man looked at him curiously. “Us or them, buddy.”

  Keegan nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The afternoon routine was the same as always. First he unloaded the truck in the converted bank building’s garage, putting the consumables in the steel-doored storage room, then placing the rest on the shelves except for the glasses he took into his living quarters to add to his display, two rooms of ice cre
am art under the lights. His favorites were ruby glass banana-split plates, casting red shadows beneath them. Then there were the tall sundae glasses, fluted sides and pouty lipped tops. Fine ice cream bowls of delicate china. Scoops by the dozens, some mechanical (one with a heating element for ease in carving hard-frozen treats), another of ivory, another with knuckle protectors, another with mother of pearl inlay in the handle. In the next room he had the pictures: ice cream trucks from all over the world. Psychedelic ones, and plain ones, and ones that looked like motorized tricycles, and ones shaped like cones or ice cream men or hot dogs or popsicles. Today, though, he didn’t pause to admire the collection. The men were coming!

  But what could he do? He spent a couple hours in the ice cream room, beating eggs, adding sugar, stirring in cocoa powder and cream and vanilla. All the variations: chocolate almond, blueberry, mango sorbet, cinnamon, and a triple batch of plain vanilla. Pouring the mixture into the ice cream makers. Turning them on. His hands smelled of chocolate. The air smelled of sweet cream.

  He checked the diesel generator and the diesel tanks. Finally, he made a round of the building. All doors bolted. All windows barred. The last shred of afternoon light cast lines across the bank’s lobby, dust an inch thick on the counters where the tellers used to sit. His heels clicked loudly as he walked from window to window.

  By the time night had fully fallen, Keegan had restocked the truck, opened the garage, and pulled onto the street. Lights off, he headed north.

  He liked the city better at night. The shadows grew velvety, and reflections were soft moonlight or starlight. At 24th Street, ten blocks north of Colfax, he turned the music on. Not nearly as loud as he did during the day. In the dark the sound seemed to carry farther. “Popeye the Sailor” he played, then “Rock-a-bye Baby.”