"What's starting?" He stared at her blankly.
"It. You know. When... you get older...." Penny cleared her throat. "And your mind starts to go...."
He stared at her, appalled. "You think I'm going senile?"
"Mom is afraid—"
"Is that what you think?"
"Dad, it's not about what I think. It's about Mom and what she—"
"I don't care what she thinks!" Bronsky said, his voice rising. He was on his feet now.
Penny stood as well, and there was fear in her voice, but also iron determination. "Well, you'd better, Dad! Because she's the one who's here, and she's the one who has to plan for it, and she can't go through it again! You know what I'm talking about."
Bronsky did indeed know. His wife's mother had passed away, leaving behind her only daughter—Bronsky's eventual wife—to be the primary caretaker for her father. Her father's mind had started to go in very short order, and she had described it like being in a rowboat going over a waterfall very, very slowly, watching disaster unfolding before her and only being able to hold on without being able to affect the outcome. Little more than a teenager at the time, she had watched him slip away, dying by degrees, until he had no idea who she was and expressed outrage every time she came near him. She'd come in one morning to find him dead, having choked on his own vomit, and she was grief-stricken and also relieved.
And Bronsky understood instantly what his daughter was saying.
"She wants to put me away," Bronsky said softly.
"No, Daddy, she doesn't." She sounded like her voice was about to crack. "Neither of us does. But she's terrified because of all the things you've been talking about. It was bad enough when you couldn't even answer a simple question, like, 'How are you?' without saying you were getting ready to die, but this whole thing, it's just... it's too much. She's lived in terror of this happening, and now it is, and—"
"I need you to stop talking now," said Bronsky.
"Daddy—"
"I thought you, of all people, would understand. I thought you...." He shook his head. "I tried, Penny. I really tried. But I am what I am. I say what I say, and if others can't deal with it—"
"We're just scared for you. Mom has a place she wants you to look at; it's very nice, and—"
"I don't care how nice it is. Go back to Minnesota. Go back to your good life. I'm sorry you had to come all this way." He turned and strode away from her, his hip screaming at him to slow down. He ignored it.
"Daddy!" she called, and she started to run after him.
He shouted back over his shoulder, " Don't follow me! I mean it! "
She stopped in her tracks, stunned by the tone of voice that her father had taken shouldorTor with her. A voice that was filled with fury and tragedy and betrayal and hurt, so many roiling emotions that it served to freeze her. Bronsky kept walking and didn't look back.
He reached the sidewalk, taking big strides, and his hip began to complain in a way that would no longer be ignored. Bronsky slowed out of necessity, but his mind was still whirling with so many emotions. He had distanced himself from Penny because he knew he would not be able to control himself, and he had no desire to say to her all the things that he was thinking, because that was not going to end well for anyone.
He didn't know how long he was walking, or where he was going. All he knew was that life was becoming an unendurable agony, and he could not wait for Death to take him.
A honk from a car parked at curbside startled him and he reflexively began to move away from it. But then a soft voice called from within, "Get in, Bronsky." He looked more closely at the car. It was a pale Ford Bronco.
The passenger's side door had opened. He couldn't see the driver clearly; he seemed cloaked in shadow even though it was sunny out.
"Death?"
"Yes."
"We're doing this again? I told you, I can't change."
"You've told me nothing. You haven't met me before. Get in."
Bronsky wasn't sure what he was talking about, but then he remembered what Death had warned him about. That there was another Death that Bronsky really didn't want to meet.
Apparently he was going to meet him now.
"Uh-kay."
Bronsky didn't hesitate. He climbed into the car and automatically buckled himself in.
From the shadow of the driver's seat, Death said, "You buckle in? You, of all people, taking safety measures?" He spoke in a whispery monotone.
"It's the law," Bronsky said primly. Then he leaned forward. "Wait a minute. You look familiar to me."
Death leaned forward out of the shadows. "I look familiar to everyone."
"Brando?" Bronsky wanted to laugh, but he was also appalled. "You made yourself look like Marlon Brando? For me?"
"You said it yourself: it's how you see me." He turned on the car and it rolled out of its parking space onto the street. Death handled the wheel with confidence.
"So... you're a different Death than the one I was talking to before?" Bronsky had to shake off the impulse to tell Death how much he loved his work in On the Waterfront.
"I'm the enforcer. I'm the one who handles the aberrations from the way things are supposed to go. Suicides, martyrs... and the occasional off-the-beaten-path problems such as yourself." Death shook his head. "What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully?"
"I can't help it. It's my brain—"
"No, it's not. You've been saying that for years, believing that for years. It's an excuse, a crutch," said Death. "Your brain is fine. You've convinced yourself that you have no means of restraining yourself so that you can say whatever you like. The fact is that you could control yourself if you want. But you like the freedom from responsibility. You're hardly unique in that respect. I see it all the time. Usually it's movie stars or people in power. Celebrities who believe that they control every aspect of their world. And their arrogance convinces them that they can even control Death. They do the same thing you do: They keep talking about how they welcome it, that they're not afraid of it. And they're usually surrounded by Yes Men who nod and smile and don't tell them to stop talking about it. And the same thing happens with them that happened with you: My brethren show up and warn them to stop. And they won't, because they're used to doing things their way. That's when I'm called in."
"And... what do...." Bronsky hesitated, strangely afraid to ask. "What do you do? I mean, how do you handle it? Do you just—" He made a throat-cutting gesture across his neck.
"Yes, but... not them. I tell them I'm going to take other people like them subsequentborTor. People whose time isn't actually up yet, but I have some leeway."
"People 'like them'?"
"Other celebrities. I tell them who is going to die, and then I take them. And sometimes they still don't believe, and so I tell them again and take another. Then they believe. Then they show fear. Then they shut up. That's why famous people seem to die in threes. The third one is the one who was really supposed to go; the first two were just warning shots."
"Oh," said Bronsky, who didn't quite know what to make of that. He was only half-listening, actually, trying to reassess the entirety of his life. Was Death right? Had he really been deluding himself all this time into thinking he physically had no self-control? His thoughts wandered, and Death said nothing to fill in the silence until finally everything Death had said began to sink in. Suddenly he turned to Death and said, "Wait. Are you saying you're... you're going to start killing famous people in order to get me...?"
Death came as close to a laugh as he was capable. It sounded like the creaking of a coffin hinge. "You may have some renown within limited circles, Isadore," he said, and Bronsky suddenly felt naked with the speaking of his first name, "but famous? You? Hardly. Hardly that. No... I think that, in order for you to understand the gravity of your situation, we're going to have to hit you a bit closer to home."
He was staring straight ahead, and Bronsky turned to see where Death was looking. His eyes widened in
horror and for a split instant his heart forgot to beat.
Penny had just emerged from the deli. She was holding a small white bag filled with assorted groceries. There was a bag of flour, which indicated that Bronsky's wife was probably going to bake cupcakes, Penny's favorite, that evening. Penny looked distracted and even from this distance, Bronsky could see that there were tearstains on her face.
Then Bronsky heard the engine roar to full strength. Death slammed his foot on the pedal and drove the car straight at Penny.
Penny turned, saw it, froze, her mouth opened in a perfect "O" of surprise.
With a scream of horror, Bronsky lunged for the steering wheel. The seat belt held him back. He unbuckled and grabbed at the wheel, struggling furiously with Death as the pale Bronco bore down upon his daughter.
And for that instant—just for that instant—death was the most terrifying thing that Bronsky could conceive. The notion of it horrified him, terrified him, and pain slammed through his chest like a meat cleaver and he prayed to hold on, just for a moment, just long enough, please, Oh God, please, I don't want to die, I don't, don't take me, not yet, give me one more month, one more day, one more minute of life, and he lurched the wheel as hard as he could while still in the passenger seat. The car swerved, so close to Penny that she could feel the breeze of it passing by and the heat of its exhaust, and then it slammed at full speed into the deli. A foot to the right and it would have crashed through the front display window. Instead it struck the brick face and collapsed like an accordion.
It took emergency services twenty minutes to get there with the Jaws of Life to extract Bronsky from the wreck. He was gone long, long before that.
There was no one else in the car.
VI.
PENNY HAD BEEN lost in thought, replaying the entire scene with her father over and over in her mind, trying to figure out how she could have handled it better. Nothing was occurring to her, which bothered her, because Penny had always considered herself a problem solver. She resolved right then and there that she was going to find some way to square things with her father. She didn't know how, but she would find a way to make things okay.
Screams from people nearby alerted her and she stopped in the middle of the street and looked up.
She saw her father, in the passenger side of an oncoming car, leaning over and struggl shouldorToring furiously with the wheel. She had absolutely no idea what in God's name her father was doing in this strange vehicle.
Interestingly, under the circumstances, that wasn't her primary concern. What stunned her into immobility was the driver of the car.
At first she thought it was some sort of madman in a Grim Reaper costume. He had a face that was a death's-head skull with eyes that seemed to burn right into her soul, and a black hood, and she wasn't sure but she could have sworn he actually had the tops of what appeared to be black wings behind him.
Barely had she recognized the driver for what he was supposed to be dressed up as when she recognized him for what he actually was.
She went totally numb, her legs turning to frozen blocks of ice.
She saw the terrified look in her father's face and then, just like that, the car wasn't there. There was a screech of tires and it took her a few seconds to realize the car was no longer in front of her, because she was still looking fixedly in front of her. Then the heart-rending crash jolted her from her paralysis.
She ran to the car, screaming her father's name.
He wasn't there to hear it.
She sagged back against a lamppost. No one seemed to notice her; they were far too fixed on the car itself. Half a dozen people were dialing 911 simultaneously.
"Miss? I think you dropped this."
Penny turned and her vision took a few moments to focus on the young, nerdy-looking guy who was holding up her small shopping bag. She looked down at her own hands as if she expected to see it still there. Then, wordlessly, she nodded.
He placed the bag at her feet. "People are coming. It's going to be all right."
"No," she whispered. "It's not all right. It's...." She couldn't form thoughts, much less articulate them. She looked at the kindly-faced young man and it seemed such a non sequitur that she could not comprehend it. He looked like that actor from the film about the pregnant girl... the one who played the young dorky friend who knocked her up....
"I'm not him," he said, as if reading her mind. "But I get that a lot."
She looked from him to the car, and then away. What was visible of her father's mangled body was so horrible that she couldn't watch. She didn't want it in her mind. She just wanted to erase it for all time.
She turned back to the young geeky guy.
He was gone as if he hadn't been there.
There were many questions afterward, investigations into what had actually transpired. The initial thought was that Bronsky had somehow snapped, becoming so angry at his daughter that he had stolen a car and tried to run her over. Penny put a quick end to that speculation, swearing that there had been another man at the wheel and her father had been fighting him. This was buttressed by the fact that Bronsky had been in the passenger seat, his feet firmly planted on that side, making it incredibly unlikely that he had had the slightest thing to do with controlling the forward motion of the vehicle. The driver's whereabouts were a mystery. It was generally conceded that he must have somehow leaped out of the car just before it hit and made a fast getaway. Granted, no witnesses were able to corroborate that scenario, but it was the only thing that made any sense.
Any further answers—who the man was, how Bronsky had wound up in the car with him, why the man would have tried to run over Penny—all these remained a mystery.
Penny's mother never remarried. She did remain around long enough to see her daughter marry and provide her with a granddaughter who was named Isadora, or Izzy for short. Grandma passed away some time after Izzy's arrival, complaining about death the entire time.
Penny lived the rest of her life with regrets, as all of us do, but the greatest was that her last conversation with her father—which she had not realized it was going to be—had been so terrible. That she could have hurt him so badly with that final encounter subsequentborTor settled into her and festered, and there would be nights where she would sob uncontrollably. Her husband eventually grew tired of telling her that she needed to get over it and left her for a younger model with very little baggage or brains to go with it.
And eventually, many years later, Penny was lying on a bed in a hospital, with more tubes sticking out of her than an old-style television set, her hair gone from chemo that hadn't gotten the job done. The cancer had worked through her incredibly quickly, so much so that she hadn't even told Izzy—who was working in Tokyo for a year—about it. She had reached the stage called "acceptance," but had come to realize that all that meant was that one accepted the inevitability of it, but was still determined to fight it for as long as humanly possible.
She lay there, staring at nothing, and then she was staring at something.
Bronsky smiled down at her.
"Well, look at you," he said.
She had thought that the radiation had sucked the moisture from her, but she still felt tears welling in her eyes. "Daddy," she whispered, "I'm so sorry."
"For what? For worrying about me? For acting with what you thought were my best interests at heart?" He blew air dismissively through his lips. "It's okay—"
"It's not. I hurt you so badly—"
"I got over it pretty quick. I got a new job. I get to talk about death constantly and no one tries to shush me about it. The guy who had all the problems with taking me? I took over his old route. He seemed glad to be able to move on to other things."
"That's... that's good." She winced. "Is it going to hurt?"
"Nah. It's like...." He smiled. "Like when you were little. And you almost rolled off my chest, remember?"
Penny tried to laugh, but couldn't. "I was maybe a month old, Dad. But I remember you t
elling me about it. And you caught me."
"It's the same thing. Heart to heart," and he touched his and then hers, "and then you just roll over, ever so gently, and I'll catch you."
"Okay."
Bronsky chuckled. "Hey... can I interest you in some time-shares?"
She chuckled back, a whispery, paper-thin sound. "Actually... I think I'm finally ready to listen."
She rolled over...
...and Bronsky caught his little girl.
* * *
The Witch of Corinth
By Steven Saylor | 12182 words
Steven Saylor says that he was reading mostly Heinlein and Tolkien at age 14 when he submitted a story to Accent on Youth magazine. The story's acceptance made him twenty-five dollars richer and he was on his way. His next sale, sixteen years later, ran in our Dec. 1986 issue. So why haven't we seen Mr. Saylor in our pages since then?
Well, muses are unpredictable and Mr. Saylor's led him to ancient Rome by way of a crime-solver named Gordianus who has starred now in ten historical mystery novels and two volumes of short stories. But just as villains return to crime scenes, that muse has brought Steven Saylor back to the realm of the fantastic, and thus to our pages. This story is part of a series, set in 92 B.C., that features Gordianus and his traveling companion Antipater as they make their way to the Seven Wonders of the World.
ON OUR JOURNEY TO SEE the Seven Wonders, Antipater and I saw much else along the way. As a poet, and a Greek, Antipater wished to pay homage to his great predecessors, so we stopped at Lesbos to visit the tomb of Sappho, and at Ios to see where Homer was buried. (Had we wished to see where Homer was born, we would have had to stop at almost every island in the Aegean Sea, according to Antipater, since so many claimed that honor.)
We saw many remarkable places and things. None could compare with the Seven Wonders, though some came close. The Parthenon in Athens was certainly a marvel; but, having seen the Temple of Art how things are goingoolab. all me backemis at Ephesus, I understood why it was on the list instead.
F&SF July/August 2011 Page 9
