Gordon doesn’t want any vitamins and has no intention of purchasing them. But he lets Andrew continue. He even asks questions when he’s done, keeping him on the phone as long as possible and pretending that Andrew is a friend who has called to chitchat. It helps him to forget about the homeless man. It helps him to forget about everything.
Finally realizing what he’s gotten himself into, Andrew terminates the call.
Gordon hangs up. He glances at the spent pipe and sighs.
The rain keeps falling.
I’m going out there, he thinks. I’m going out in the rain. I can’t stay here anymore. Not in this apartment, not in this city. Maybe not even in this world. I’m going out there and I’m never coming back, not ever.
But his eyes slowly close, and before he knows it, Gordon is sound asleep.
TWO
This is not a dream. This is real. No matter how hard Gordon wishes it so, this is not something he can force himself to awaken from, because he is not asleep.
In the rain, the city looks like it’s melting all around him. A liquid sky lords over distorted reflections in a filthy puddle, ripples and moves in a way only living things can. Living things capable of feeling pain, surface things hiding all that reside and conspire in deeper, darker waters. And through the rain, a premature afternoon darkness begins to swirl, black blood from wounds that will never heal.
Chin tucked, Gordon hurries as best he can through the downpour, hands stuffed in the pockets of his raincoat. The others around him rush about as well, with their briefcases and shopping bags, newspapers and umbrellas, hi-tech gadgets and designer phones. Monkeys in makeup and heels, suits and Father’s Day ties, they run for cover across cement plains, seeking shelter in caves and trees of steel and plastic, iron and brick, cages of false security in a facile world of primal fear and delicious madness. Pain and joy, horror and beauty, it’s all hidden in plain sight.
An empire of chaos…
There, in the rain.
With his demons awakening, coming up out of that long slumber to stagger after him, Gordon crosses over onto a side street, his shoes splashing puddles as he goes. He is short of breath—he can’t remember the last time he walked this far without stopping for a while—his legs are sore and his back aches. This damp weather only makes it worse. Every joint aches in wet or cold weather, and this is both, but he is determined to reach his destination without interruption.
The street is narrow, the wet pavement reflecting the dark and dreary buildings lining either side, looming over him like phantoms. Visions flash across his mind’s eye, but he ignores them. He must. Otherwise they’ll gain power. He hurries over to an awning above the front door of a small bar sandwiched between a condemned four-story walkup and a pawnshop.
Once inside, he feels a burst of hot air. It takes the edge off his chill, but he’s still cold, his hands like ice. Goddamn circulation. His body slows more and more each day, betraying him little by little. Even his blood is dying, congealing in his veins like molasses. His is a slow death, a free fall into gradual darkness. He shakes the rain from his coat, removes his hat and lets his eyes adjust to the dim lighting. He’s been here before, but not for several months. He doesn’t recognize the bartender; he must be new, a thirtysomething guy in a sweatshirt and jeans, with a robust build, a shaved head and diamond studs too big to be real in both ears.
“Still coming down pretty good out there, huh?” the bartender says through a wide smile.
Rather than answer such an idiotic question, Gordon orders a black coffee. There are no windows here, and the only light is from small candles encased in red glass along the bar and on each of the tables at the back of the place, which casts everything—even the shadows—in a sinister bloodshot glow.
Gordon sees Harry sitting alone at a table along the back wall and gives him a subtle nod. But for the bartender and them, the place is empty.
After paying for his coffee, Gordon joins his friend at the table. He puts his mug and hat down, then removes his raincoat and puts it over the back of the chair. Wearily, he sits across from Harry and puts a hand on either side of the mug, which helps to warm them.
Harry is Gordon’s oldest, dearest friend. He has known him for nearly fifty years, and he is the closest thing Gordon has ever had to a brother. He is the best of Gordon, and also the worst.
“Wasn’t sure you’d come,” Harry says. Despite fifty-some-odd years in America, he still possesses a slight trace of British accent.
“I told you I’d be here, didn’t I?”
Harry sips his scotch and soda. “Coffee this time of day?”
“I’m cold.”
“I’m always cold.”
“You and me both.”
“It’s horrible to be old, isn’t it?” Harry smiles, flashing long, nicotine-stained teeth, but it’s difficult to see much more of him because he remains largely cloaked in shadow. “What I wouldn’t give to be able to go back and have another twenty, ten—hell—even five more years of youth.”
“Can’t live forever, Harry.”
“So they say. But then the future’s not what it used to be, is it?”
Gordon tastes his coffee. It is strong and harsh and so hot it burns his lips. “Was it ever?”
Harry never answers. After a moment, Gordon tells him about the homeless man who was assaulted outside his apartment earlier.
“The one with the natty beard that lives in the park? He must be ten years older than we are.”
“A good five or six, anyway.”
“Pukes. They could’ve killed him.”
“They very well may have. He left in an ambulance, I don’t know.”
Harry runs an arthritically ravaged hand through his thinning silver hair, which he combs straight back and away from his angular face. “Christ.”
“Yeah.” Gordon drinks more coffee. Warmth is beginning to return to his extremities. “Just as easily could’ve been me.”
“Or me, Gordo, my neighborhood’s no better.” He smiles again, but it seems more an expression of pain than joy. “At least you could give them a fight.”
“Maybe years ago. Not anymore. I can barely get out of my own way.”
Harry looks away and to his right, as if he’s seen something move across the floor between the nearby tables. “I’m ashamed to say it, but there are days I’m afraid to leave my room.”
“Don’t be ashamed. There are days I’m afraid too.”
Harry downs the rest of his drink, then stifles a belch. “At least there was a time when you were tough. Me, I’ve never liked physical confrontation. I always shied away from it. Stuck to my books and my plays, my paintings. I was never much of a tough guy.”
“No one in their right mind enjoys violence, Harry. You were always better than that foolishness, above it.”
He stares down into his empty glass. “Maybe I was just scared.”
“We’re all scared.”
“But you were in Vietnam, Gordo, you—”
“I was just a soldier, nothing special. Besides, that was a lifetime ago.”
“Not quite that long.”
“It was a whole other life, trust me.”
Harry sits forward, breaking through the shadows. In his wrinkled trousers, tweed jacket and wool scarf, he could pass for an elderly college professor from a quaint old movie, but his pallid skin bathed in the eerie red glow from the candles gives him an unsettling, almost demonic look. “The point is you experienced it.”
“Experienced what?”
“Well, you…killed people. Before, in combat, you—”
“Harry, I don’t like talking about these things.” A pain stabs at Gordon’s temple. He winces and pushes his coffee aside. “You know that.”
“I’m sorry.” He sits back, allows the shadows to better conceal him. “I had no right to…”
Gordon signals the bartender, orders Harry another scotch and soda and one for himself as well. “Look,” he says evenly, “you know yourself th
at when I met Katy that was years behind me, but I was still lost. She changed all that. She washed away all the pain and fear and guilt, and after a while it became something else, something different than memories or the past. In a way, it died.”
“Love killed it.” Harry raises an eyebrow, pleased with his assessment.
“Yeah,” Gordon says. “I guess it did.”
The bartender appears with their drinks, offers to run a tab, then leaves them.
Harry raises his glass. “To Katy.”
“To Katy.”
They click glasses, and drink. Gordon feels badly for Harry. Unlike he and Katy, Harry was married twice, and both ended in divorce. His first wife died a few years ago, and his second wife remarried and has had no contact with him in decades. He has two grown children he hasn’t seen in years either, and several grandkids he’s never even met. “It’s good to see you, Harry. I…needed to see you.”
“You too. I was getting worried, hadn’t heard from you in a while. At the risk of sounding like the pathetic old fool I am, I’m afraid you’re my only friend, Gordon.”
“Then we’re both pathetic old fools, because you’re the only friend I’ve got too. Except for Katy, you’re the only real friend I’ve ever had.”
The two men drink in silence awhile. The bartender sits on a stool reading a paperback novel, a dog-eared copy of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby. Outside, the rain keeps on. They cannot see it, but they can hear it striking the walls, as if angry it cannot get in.
“Since I lost my Katy,” Gordon says hesitantly, “strange things have been happening, Harry.”
“Like what?”
“Sometimes at night, when it’s very quiet, I’d swear I can hear someone in my bedroom whispering to me. But I turn on the light, and no one’s there.”
“What do they say?”
“My name. Over and over again.”
“Do you recognize the voice?”
“No,” he says, eyes growing moist. “But I know who it is.”
“Nonsense.” Harry waves a hand, as if to clear the air between them. “You’ve got to stop smoking so much pot. You’re not a kid anymore.”
Somewhere far off in the distance, or perhaps only deep within Gordon’s mind, comes the ethereal strain of a saxophone playing a slow, sensual, dreamlike tune. He takes another sip of his drink, then closes his eyes.
White and black balloons falling…people in formal dress celebrating and laughing as champagne flows…and there, across the room…a vision…the most beautiful woman he has ever seen…watching…watching him…before looking away with a coy smile…
He opens his eyes and it’s gone, all gone. His hands are shaking. “I’m sorry, Harry. For everything, I…I’m sorry.”
“Stop it. You’ve always been there for me. I was there for you.”
Blood sprayed across a cracked bathroom mirror…
“You’ve been a better friend to me than I ever was to you.”
“We all make our own decisions, Gordo. You know that better than most.”
“It’s been more than forty years, and we’ve never once discussed that night, Harry. Not once.”
Muffled screams echo down a dark corridor…
“Why would we?” Harry fidgets in his chair. “Nothing to discuss. It was a long time ago.”
“Sometimes I think the whole thing was just a dream. Do you ever do that?” Gordon looks at him hopefully, helplessly. “Do you ever think it was just a drunken, drug-fueled, hallucinogenic dream?”
“Of course. Doesn’t that seem far more reasonable, far more likely?”
“But do you believe it?”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re old men now. Either way, that clock’s ticking. It has been for a very long time, and it’s starting to wind down.”
“We’re just pretending, aren’t we?” Gordon asks softly. “There’s no way out.”
“We’re living on borrowed time. But isn’t everyone?”
Blood…so much blood…
Gordon wipes his eyes and finishes his drink. The visions fade but his hands continue to tremble. “Think this rain’s going to stop anytime soon?”
Harry leans back into the thick crimson shadows. He never gives an answer.
But Gordon knows he has one.
THREE
Somewhere nearby, a phone is ringing. An old rotary phone with a bell-type ring, it is there but very faint, very far away. It rings forever, it seems, and no one ever answers. Perhaps no one can hear it but him.
Blood. There’s so much blood. Everywhere. On the floor and the walls, on the ceiling, on the windows. How can there be this much blood? It hardly seems possible. But it is. His nude body is spattered with it, his hair stained and clumped with it, and his hands coated and dripping with it, looking like he plunged them into a can of dark red paint.
As the ringing fades to silence, a whisper slips free of the darkness. “Gordon…”
Beyond the blood-spattered windows, the city waits. Unseen things perch on rooftops and hide in alleyways, crouch atop parked cars and watch from the gutters. He knows this now. He can feel them. The veil has become transparent. But soon all these things will return to the world unseen, to the shadows, and they will no longer be his concern. Not anymore. Not for now…
A horrifying scream shatters the silence. And then…tears…great heaving sobs of agony and pain, of realization…
“Gordon…”
“What have I done?” Another scream, this one his own. “God in Heaven, what have I done?”
The phone again begins to ring, swallowing the cries and dragging them back to the impenetrable darkness from which they came…
“Gordon?” Katy’s voice now, not a whisper like the other but very soft, very faint… “Are you all right?”
The visions bend and ripple like water, slowly fade and reveal the street and a hard, steady rain. Gordon stands huddled in a deep doorway to an abandoned building, taking shelter under the overhang. Water gushes from the roof above, splashing the pavement with a loud slapping sound and blurring the street and buildings beyond. He focuses, remembers where he is.
There is another sound, just barely audible above the rain. Singing…music…
Across the street, a run-down but functional building that was once a warehouse has been converted into a makeshift church. As if for his benefit, two large barnlike front doors swing open, revealing the interior of the church. Gordon remains where he is and watches a moment. An old woman emerges, her head covered with a plastic kerchief tied under her chin. Clutching her handbag tight, she slogs through the rain and hobbles off down the street.
The congregation is small, and appears to consist primarily of senior citizens and street people, but they are all quite jubilant, dancing and singing a high-octane gospel tune. The preacher, a round little man with a Larry Fine hairdo and a powder blue leisure suit, prances about on a small riser. An enormous wooden cross hangs on the wall behind him, and there is a podium nearby, but he seems oblivious. His is a dance of total abandon. Overcome with the spirit, Gordon’s mother used to call it when he was a child. Gordon prefers Bad Theater. Religion gives him the creeps, but he continues to listen and watch the festivities anyway, at once repelled and strangely drawn to them.
The famous quote from Sophocles, in Oedipus Rex, comes to him just then…
“Alas, how terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the man that’s wise! This I knew well, but had forgotten it, else I would not have come here.”
Something in the corner of his eye catches his attention. Afraid of what he might find there, Gordon very slowly looks to the right, away from the church and to the far corner at the end of the block.
The old woman in the plastic kerchief stands in the rain, watching him.
He cannot make out her eyes or facial expression, and she never says a word. Even if she does, between the distance, rain and raucous church service, he wouldn’t hear her anyway. But she speaks to him nonetheless. He can hear it in hi
s mind, feel it to the depths of his being.
I see you…I see what walks with you…beside you…within you…
Gordon steps through the curtain of rainwater rolling off the roof, turns and hurries off in the opposite direction. The gospel singing—dizzying and growing in intensity—chases after him, until he reaches the corner and slips into a nearby alley.
Then, there is only the rain.
The far end of the alley empties onto another narrow avenue consisting of mostly abandoned, condemned and fire-gutted buildings. One of the few still in use occupies the community center he’s come looking for. He is still in neither a good nor particularly safe neighborhood, but this is where his group meets, and he plans to be gone from the area well before nightfall.
Just as Gordon reaches for one of the large double doors, the wind picks up, blowing trash and debris about along the street. One gust slams into his back with such force it nearly causes him to lose his balance, but he manages to get inside without falling.
Leaning back against the door, Gordon takes a moment to catch his breath. Before him is a long and dimly lit corridor, the floor a cheap and badly worn industrial tile, the walls a faded beige and the ceiling fitted with occasional small light fixtures dulled by age and filth. His legs ache, his back hurts and his lungs burn each time he takes a breath. Too much, he thinks, I’m doing too much without resting. Shaking the rain from his coat, he pushes off and away from the door and follows the corridor down past several offices and meeting rooms, the doors closed. Usually this run-down state services building, which was once, many years ago, a public elementary school, is drab and gloomy, but on this day it seems as if there’s something more here. Something…else.
Gordon has never before felt fear here. Today he does.
Still, he continues down the corridor, passing two more closed doors before reaching the meeting room. Normally open prior to the meeting, its door stands closed as well. Gordon checks his wristwatch and finds he’s roughly five minutes late. For a moment he contemplates leaving, skipping it altogether. What the hell is he even doing here anyway?
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