by Ed Gorman
"You like that?"
"Yeah. It's really spooky. I saw it on cable."
"The man who produced it was named Val Lewton. He made some great horror pictures."
"Could we see that, Cat People, I mean?"
"Simone Simon? You bet."
"How come she had the same first name and last name?"
He laughed loudly at that one. "I'm afraid that's one of those great Hollywood mysteries that we mere mortals will never know."
She took down Cat People and handed it over to him. He flipped across the hardwood floor and put the tape in. "They really screwed it up when they remade it," he said. "Lots of blood and guts. And for no good reason. Did you ever see it?"
"I wanted to. This was back when I still living at home. But my dad wouldn't let me. He thought it would be too sexy." Greg Wagner looked at her, hitting the pause button on the VCR. "When's the last time you saw your sister?"
Denise felt sad. Whenever she thought of her sister, all she could imagine were stark white walls and bars on the windows and long, long hypodermic needles and people in small rooms lying on beds and sobbing and sobbing.
"They took her to a mental hospital. I've only been there a couple of times."
"How come?"
"Rochester's a long way away, I guess."
"Would you like to see her?"
"Sure."
"Good. Why don't we go up there next week?"
"Are you serious?"
"Sure, I've got this friend who's got spina bifida, too, except he's got this big Buick specially laid out so he can drive it. He loves to drive. He'll give us a ride. How would that be?"
"That would be great!"
"Good, consider it done." He turned back to the VCR and punched up the tape. "And now," he said, "for the mysteriously-named Simone Simon."
Denise plopped herself down in the recliner again and prepared herself to watch one good movie.
20
THE MOTEL WAS out past the University, where Washington Avenue intersects with University Avenue. It was modern and brick, with more than a hundred units, and designed to resemble an apartment house. On the west side was a small bar where a sing-along piano (which told you something about the age and
the inclination of the clientele) was played five nights a week by a chunky woman in a sequinned gown and at least five huge costume jewellery rings. She preferred songs of the forties (having always had a mad crush on Dick Haymes), but usually relented and played stuff from the fifties, Fats Domino ballads such as "Blueberry Hill" being the most popular.
He knew all this because he'd been inside a few times himself.
That night, however, he was standing in the shadows beneath the overhang by the parking lot. In the blowing snow, the red neon sign over the bar's door was blood red. He had been there fifteen minutes, waiting for her, the hooker who came there on the nights when she wasn't working. The people inside didn't know she was a hooker, of course. They were too respectable even to think about things like that except in a joking way. No, they spent more time contemplating dentures and trusses and support hose than they ever did hookers.
Around nine-thirty she came out. She was tall, and she was drunk, which made for an interesting combination, because instead of just walking, she tottered, like a too-tall building that was soon going to fall over. She'd be just the kind of driver you'd want on slippery roads. She'd probably kill half a dozen people, including herself. Hell, he wasn't going to commit murder. He was going to perform a public service.
He left the shadows of the overhang and fell into step with her. "Slippery out here, isn't it?" he said, taking her elbow.
She had tried dutifully to cover her age with makeup, but the eye pouches were getting too pouchy, and the cheeks too cheeky for that. For somebody as drunk as she was, she sure looked sad. What the hell had ever happened to happy drunks anyway, the sort who wore lampshades and kissed everybody in sight?
"Am I s'posed to know you?"
"I'm just a gentleman trying to help a lady."
She stopped, sliding a little before coming to a complete stop in the icy parking lot. He knew which car was hers, the ten-year-old Ford over in the east corner beneath the purple glow of the sodium lamp.
"I'd like you to take your hand off me," she said. "Like you said, I'm a lady."
"Oh, yes, you are. A lady. A very special lady. A lady for hire."
"Wha's tha s'posa mean?"
From inside his coat he took the crisp new hundred-dollar bill. Even in the blowing snow-which was now beginning to freeze on both their face-she could see what it was. If you drove a car like hers, you obviously weren't used to seeing crisp new hundred-dollar bills very often.
With a gloved hand she made a pass at the hundred. "I get the money first."
"Of course." He nodded to her car. "Why don't we walk over there?"
She eased up a little. Apparently knowing what he actually wanted made her more trusting. "You shoulda come inside."
"Oh, why's that?"
"Doris was playin' a buncha Hawaiian songs. You know, like a lotta songs Elvis sang in Blue Hawaii. Stuff like that. You like Elvis?"
"Very much."
They reached her car. Even from there you could hear the piano bar. From this distance the red neon sign looked even bloodier through the tumbling snow.
She leaned over to open the door, and once again she almost slipped and fell.
He grabbed her by the hips. By now his face was frozen. He had the sniffles.
"Why don't you let me do that?" he said.
" 'S my car."
He didn't pay any attention; He put his hand on the door handle and opened up the car. "Why don't you sit down? I'll clean off the windows for you."
"I ain't knockin' nothin' off. Full price."
She was such a dignified woman. "I wouldn't expect you to knock anything off."
She glared at him and got inside, cracking her head on the door frame as she did so.
He smiled to himself. Maybe he wouldn't have to kill her.
Maybe she'd kill herself.
At first he tried to scrape her windows off with just his glove, but that didn't work because the snow was freezing into clumps of ice.
"Excuse me," he said, leaning in past her and grabbing a scraper-brush she had on the back seat.
He went back to work. It took him five minutes to do all the windows. When he was done, he was breathless and freezing.
He went around and got in on the passenger side of the car. She had the heater going. It was as loud as a B-52. She had Jerry Vale on the radio. She was smoking a cigarette. Despite the freezing temperature the car smelled damp and mildewy. He suspected it had been burned once and then tricked up to sell on the used car market.
"This is some beast," he said.
"You don't like it, you can always get out."
"Just making a joke."
"Well maybe I don' fin' your jokes so funny."
"My apologies."
"You wan' me to blow you or what?"
"Just like that, huh?"
"You wanna fall in love or somethin'?"
"Here."
He guided her hand to his crotch. Or almost did.
She put out her hand, palm up. "Cash, buster."
He stared at her for a long moment. Cash, buster. Jesus. Did people still really say stuff like that? He reached into his coat and took out a ten.
"Hey," she said. "That was a hunnerd when we were outside."
"Inflation."
The interior of the car was dark. He couldn't see anybody anywhere in the parking lot. The wind was a pisser. It was like being on the tundra. He wished he was with somebody he really wanted to hump. It would be fun to snuggle up and do it with your clothes on and then get really sweltering from body heat.
He came up very quickly with the knife and put it exactly in I he centre of her right eye.
She cried out and writhed as if she were a madwoman that no number of men could hold down. When he jer
ked the knife out, she covered her eyes with her hands but blood was gushing so fast and hot that it ran through her fingers.
He next put the knife where he judged her heart to be, twisting the blade as he put it in her. His gloves were already soaked. A smell of hot metal-the taint of dark red-brown human blood-filled the car. He thought she might also have already started evacuating her bowels, too. This was no fun at all. He wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.
She grabbed him by the shoulder and sank her teeth into his neck, shrieking as she did so.
My God, he wondered as he turned around to get some leverage and push her away, what was this bitch anyway, a vampire?
She broke the skin.
He knew this right away.
Broke the skin. My God. He thought of all the diseases he could get.
He grabbed her by the hair and tried to yank her head back, get her teeth out of his flesh. But no matter how hard he yanked, her teeth were still in there.
Pain now started radiating from his neck down through his shoulder and into his arm.
Frigging bitch.
It was difficult to get any purchase in the cramped car but after wriggling around, he was able to cock his arm and then land a strong one right on the side of her head.
She slumped over instantly, and he knew she was dead. Biting him had taken all her waning life force.
The stench was incredible.
Jesus.
He was about to open the door and flee when the headlights swept over him, coming up on his side of the car. His first impression was that the big-ass Cadillac was going to slide right into him, unable to stop on the ice.
He braced himself for the collision. Then he started thinking of all the implications of a crash, even a fender-bender. Police reports being chief among them.
The Caddy came seven, six feet away. Still sliding. He could see faces inside it. Two fat guys wearing Shriner fezzes. Two fat women in the backseat shouting warnings to the driver.
Four, three feet. Still sliding.
He closed his eyes and looked straight ahead, waiting for impact.
He counted to five and opened his eyes again.
The Caddy had stopped maybe a foot from his door.
He could see the people really well. They looked even fatter and even drunker. The men looked even sillier in their fezzes.
Their headlights, on downbeam, still splattered a warm gold glow over the side of the dead woman's car.
On the edge of that glow he could hear a car door opening, and see a tall, portly man come struggling his way across the ice up to the car.
"Darn close call there," the man said. He looked to be in his fifties. He was loud. "Darn close. Sorry if I scared you."
Now that the man was leaning in a little ways, he had to sit just so, so that the man couldn't see the dead woman in the front seat.
"It's all right," he said.
The man nodded to the bar. "Why don't you come inside? We'll buy you a drink."
"Not necessary."
He could see that the man was sniffing around. The dead woman reeked. Maybe he couldn't see her, but he could smell her.
The man sniffed once more and then stood up straight.
His fez clung to his balding scalp at a precarious angle.
Through the opaque effect of the snow, the man resembled Oliver Hardy. Maybe he wasn't a Shriner at all but a son of the desert.
"You sure fella? Hell, we'll probably buy you a lot more drinks than one. We really shook the girls up in the backseat. Our wives, I mean."
"No, thanks. That really won't be necessary."
"Up to you." He gave a jaunty fat-handed salute off his fez. "Night, then."
"Night."
He took his fez and went back to his Caddy.
The Caddy was moved down closer to the entrance of the bar. Four of them stepped out and went inside. When they opened the door, the piano bar sounded very loud on the snowy mid-western night
His breathing came in ragged knots. He was saturated with her odours. He wanted to vomit. He reached a gloved hand up and touched the part of his neck where she'd sunk her teeth in. It hurt badly. He was worried about infection.
When he could see that nobody was coming, he got out of the car and walked around to the driver's side.
When he opened the door, he could see in the dim light from the overhead that her blood had soaked through the seat cover entirely on the driver's side. He pushed her over and then slid behind the wheel. It was like sitting in a puddle. My, oh, my.
His original plan had been to leave her and the car right there in the parking lot. Nobody would have seen him. But the stupid bastards in their fezzes had changed all that. He would have to park the car in an alley somewhere and walk back to get his own car.
Before he forgot, he took the cuff link and tossed it on the floorboard on the passenger side. It was platinum, and it had on its plain surface the inscribed initials FB. Frank Brolan.
He put the car in gear and drove carefully away from the parking lot
21
"DID I EVER TELL YOU that I wanted to be a nurse?"
"No."
"When I was in high school."
"Oh."
"I suppose you can't imagine that, can you?"
"It's not that."
"It's all right. I know how you think of me."
"How do I think of you?"
"You know."
"No. How?"
"A stereotype yuppie. A lot of cunning and greed but no scruples."
"That isn't how I think of you."
"It really isn't?"
"No."
"Then, how do you think of me?"
"As confused about what you want."
A pause. "Maybe I am. But I don't want to start talking about us again. I'm tired of it, Frank. I can't help it. I'm just tired of it."
"Believe it or not, so am I."
For a time neither of them said anything. They were in the master bedroom upstairs. In keeping with the Victorian motif of the house, the room was filled with such things as a canopy bed, a George III kingwood inlaid Pembroke table, and a nineteenth century mahogany display cabinet in Chinese Chippendale style. Not a graceful man, Brolan was always warned by Kathleen to be careful in the house.
Wind rattled the windows; a faint silver light from the street painted one wall, cross-hatched by the intricate shadows of tree limbs.
"I really did want to be a nurse, Frank."
Whenever they argued, whenever he implied that she couldn't be faithful to anybody, that she wanted too many material things and not enough spiritual things (though who was he to talk?), she found a way to work into the conversation proof of what a good person she was. That was always her justification for herself for whatever she did-something she'd learned in six struggling months of analysis shortly after she left college. That no matter what she did, however many men she might fuck over, she was basically a "good person."
Kathleen was the fourth daughter of a dumpy little man who'd owned his own dry-cleaning business, one that was never quite successful. He managed to put his girls through college, Kathleen being the last-and shortly after that dropped dead of a heart attack while pressing trousers for some impatient customer who stood waiting in the shabby fitting room.
Whenever Kathleen spoke of her father, it was with great anger and bitterness. Not directed at him but rather at the world that had treated him so badly. She often said "They never gave him a chance." Well, it was obvious she was going to get her chance from the world. She wanted to be the best-looking, most successful woman anywhere she went. And she was well on her way.
Most of the time Brolan felt sorry for Kathleen. Hers had been a harsh and unloving background. Her mother had pushed and pushed her father constantly, almost never being gentle or tender with the man. Kathleen often recalled how, when her father had suffered an early heart attack, she had run alongside the stretcher that the ambulance attendants carried her father on. As she ran along
, her mother said, "Well, he'll miss two weeks of work over this. I'll have to go in and run the place." About all Kathleen's mother ever did was watch soaps, smoke Kools, drink Cokes, and talk on the phone with her girlfriends about how pretty she used to be back when she was young ("Before I met Chester") and what a limp-dick Chester was in the sack ("He doesn't even know how to fondle my breasts; it's like he's kneading dough").
It was no wonder that such a marriage had produced such a sad, confused, and angry little girl. One who had a great deal to prove to the world at large. One who had a great deal to prove to herself.
But what Kathleen couldn't seem to understand was that she was crushing Brolan, just as her mother had crushed her father.
Kathleen rolled over and kissed him. "I really like you, Frank."
"But you don't love me."
"I-I've tried."
"You really think we should be friends instead of lovers?"
"I really do."
He was tired of supplication, of hearing his whining. She owed him nothing. If she chose not to have a relationship, that was her choice alone to make. He had no right to ruin her life.
He lay next to her, his eyes open.
"Need to pee," she said. "Be right back."
He saw her naked backside in the faint light from the window. She was a beautiful, beautiful woman.
He wanted a cigarette, had in fact bought a pack earlier. Given the situation he was in, worrying about his health did not seem like much of a consideration.
He reached through the gauzy curtain hanging down from the canopy top and got his cigarettes. He found a package of matches next to them. The matches must have been there all along. He'd forgotten his in his sport coat. As he lighted his cigarette, he idly noted The Paramount Motel signature on the red, fancily embossed match cover.
Then he realized what he was looking at.
Kathleen, a jogging fanatic, didn't smoke.
The matches belonged to one of her recent guests. A man who'd obviously been staying at the Paramount Motel.
Jealousy struck him with the force of a seizure. He felt all sorts of irrational, self-pitying, violent things.
He was glad for both their sakes that she wasn't there at that moment. Nothing would be served by his blowing up once again. He'd humiliated and debased himself enough already.
