Mostly he wanted answers. And the Saloon had none of those. Outside the large window at his back, Oversight stood like a dusty, black statue alone in the barren sands, surveying everything and seeing nothing. Alex slammed his hands down on the bar.
“Girl troubles?” Quince remarked absently, moving another chess piece.
Alex scowled. “No.”
“You’re a bad liar.” The businessman’s eyes never left the chessboard, seemingly indifferent to the conversation he had instigated.
“What do you care?”
“I don’t much,” Mr. Quince answered, studying the board. “But if it helps, she’s interested in you.”
“Why do you say that?” Alex asked.
“You’re the only one she tries to be indifferent to.”
“And that’s supposed to help?”
Leland moved one of the chess pieces, a white knight advancing on the black queen, vulnerable. “She doesn’t care about the rest of us enough to even try.”
Alex pulled a chair from the large poker table, straddling it opposite the businessman. “Are you sure?”
“I make deals for a living; I know when someone’s interested the way I know when someone’s lying. No matter how much they argue otherwise, there’s always a tell that gives them away. You want to know what interests her?” Mr. Quince picked up the black queen, rolling it delicately between his thumb and forefinger as if it held value beyond measure. That he would not look up convinced Alex that Mr. Quince’s indifference was deliberate, a ploy to bring him over, gain his trust. Worse, knowing did not make him any less interested in what he had to say. And where was the harm in hearing him out?
The answer would have surprised him.
“I’m listening,” Alex said.
Leland looked up from the chessboard, setting the small piece of plastic aside. “Are you? Because I’m not in the habit of repeating myself or wasting my time. If you’re serious, I can help. If you’re not, go away. I’m not your wingman, and I’m not a pimp. But if you really care about her—”
“I do. She’s … she’s a friend.”
“A friend?” Leland looked surprised. “I have lots of friends; I wouldn’t die for any of them, and I wouldn’t kill for them either. I’m not sure you appreciate the gravity of the situation.”
“What do mean?”
“Well far be it from me to point out the obvious, but so far everyone has been talking about five tickets. The only way out of this place is to have the five tickets. Only there are six of us in the Saloon now, so the question you have to ask yourself is who stays behind while the rest of us go free?”
Alex did not answer—could not answer—his head still wrapping itself around a premise that, once spoken out loud, seemed so obvious he didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it already.
“Forget that for the moment,” Mr. Quince said. “Let’s focus on another question: who wanted to come here, and who came here against their will?”
When Alex didn’t immediately answer, Mr. Quince looked at him, head bent, studying him. “It wasn’t a trick question. Who got here first? Who had a job to do here, a purpose that gives him the power over all of the rest of us?”
“You’re talking about Jack?”
“The Caretaker himself. The rest of us are just poker chips in a game he’s playing with Kreiger and the rest of his insane lot. Each is betting everything they have on being the one to control the outcome. But people like you and I don’t have a say. Jack wins, he goes home, sending you, me, Lindsay and Ellen on our way. Kreiger wins and the Cast Outs take over the Saloon and kill us all. I suggest you enjoy your time with her while you can because it won’t last, and when it’s over, one of you will be dead.”
Alex remembered Oversight saying something similar.
“There may be another alternative,” Leland said contemplatively. “One that neither the Cast Outs nor the Caretaker considered.”
“What would that be?” Alex asked.
“Consider this. Jack is blinded by ignorance. He only knows what he’s been told. He has to complete the five tickets and send you, me, Lindsay, Ellen and himself back to the world. He doesn’t know any other way. Kreiger and his cohorts don’t even want to go back because they want this place. They think it will turn them into gods. And who knows, maybe they’re right. But the only way they can get it is if Jack fails, and they take the Saloon from him. So they don’t want Jack to finish the five tickets, but they don’t care about the tickets either because they don’t want to leave. That means Kreiger would have five tickets, but he doesn’t care who goes home on them. What does that suggest to you?”
When Alex didn’t answer, Mr. Quince pressed on. “We could deal with Kreiger directly. All we need are the tickets, and we could negotiate our own terms. Me, you, Oversight, Ellen and Lindsay, we could all go home. Five passengers, five tickets. Jack wants to stay behind, so let him stay.”
“The Tribe of Dust would kill him.”
“As I said, Jack wants to stay behind, let him stay. There are only five tickets. You get bumped from this flight and it’s all over. No one goes home on stand-by.”
Alex was slowly shaking his head. “But—”
“Someone has to be sacrificed, Alex. Jack wanted to come here. He accepted this risk. But not you and not me. Not Ellen or Lindsay or even Oversight. Let the Cast Outs and the Caretakers play their games; we shouldn’t be a part of it.”
“But how do we do that?” he asked, the question turning over and over in his head, the results unpleasant.
The businessman closed the magazine and placed it down upon the table, the chess game forgotten. “We take the tickets and make our own deal with Kreiger.”
Alex jerked back at the businessman’s suggestion of betrayal. Beneath the clean-cut, calculating exterior, Leland Quince’s true nature, self-serving and remorseless, was that of a killer.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Leland said leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, the coach before the big game: Do it for the team, Alex. You understand? It’s the team we’re talking about here. The team! “But hear me out. Five tickets. You. Me. Lindsay. Ellen. Oversight. Kreiger will deal because he wants the Nexus, and that’s all. None of us asked to come here—except Jack. Jack came here because he wanted to, just like the Cast Outs living out there. They all want this place. So, let them have it. Let them kill each other over it. Not our problem. We’re the bystanders caught in the crossfire. The five of us should be allowed to go on with our lives, to make them better. And with the tickets, we can force that outcome.”
“Why should Kreiger agree to any of this?”
“He will,” Leland said confidently, a bit of the mask slipping away to reveal something unnerving. “He told me he would.”
* * *
Lindsay stood outside the bathroom door, half-expecting Ellen to reappear. But she did not. There was no sound from inside. The little girl waited, Frisbee in hand, wondering why everyone was so unhappy. The Saloon wasn’t so bad. It could have been worse. It could have been cold and wet, and smell …
… like the sour rot of wood, damp mildew of pine needle floor pricking the bare skin of her back and legs, and darkness under the smothering canopy of trees, tall and uncaring and cold…
Lindsay swallowed, wishing the bathroom door would open so she could get a glass of water. She wished Ellen would come out and say she was all right, offer to play catch instead of looking all pale like she was sick and wanted to puke. Lindsay remembered being sick well enough to know that it wasn’t any fun. Once she was even so sick she had to go to the hospital. Her mother told her she had ammonia, or something like that; she didn’t really remember. She just remembered being sick. She remembered being in a small white bed in a big white room, being alone, being scared. She didn’t like hospitals. They were definitely no fun at all. Everything was white, and lonely, and cold, and smelled like…
… moldy leaves rotting in blackened mud, the stinging pine-smell that pricked th
e nose, a stink of sweat…
No, hospitals did not smell like that at all. They smelled like—
She stopped the thought sharply. There was that smell again, an actual smell in the air, vaguely warm and swampy like a parking lot in the summer time after a thunderstorm. All the worms would come out of the ground, gathering together in sodden, ratty piles. They smelled bad. They smelled like mud and rotting leaves and pee. She remembered once picking one of the worms up, thinking it was dead. It wriggled in her fingers, and she shrieked, dropping it back into the puddle in the driveway where it squirmed and flinched. She watched it writhe there for a time. When it finally stopped, she knew this time it was really dead.
That was what it smelled like in the hallway. Dead worms. Dead things.
The smell was coming from Mr. Quince’s room.
She looked at the closed doors: first the bathroom, then Mr. Quince’s room, then back. The one would not open. The other she was afraid might. It would open and show her what was concealed inside, the source of the dead worm smell. There was something in Mr. Quince’s room that wasn’t supposed to be there; something that had not been there before.
Pinching her nose closed, she ran down the stairs, Frisbee ring in hand. Alex would play Frisbee with her. And Alex would know what to do about the bad smell in Mr. Quince’s room. Alex was her friend. He never talked down to her the way grownups sometimes did, the way they talked to a pet or a little baby. She wasn’t grownup like Ellen or Oversight, but she wasn’t a dumb, little baby either. And Alex knew that. He wouldn’t be too busy to play catch, and then she would tell him about the smell behind Leland’s—No, Mr. Quince’s—door. He would know what to do.
She stopped at the foot of the stairs, caught by the sound of voices, Mr. Quince and Alex.
“Jack and I don’t get along. That’s no secret. But he trusts you, Alex. He has no reason not to. You’re the one who has to get the tickets from him.”
“That’s crazy,” Alex answered.
“No, Alex. Crazy is sitting around drinking flavored coffee and eating pop tarts while someone else decides your future for you; decides who deserves to live and how well, and who deserves to suffer and die. We’re not a part of this. None of us are. It’s the Caretakers against the Cast Outs, and we’re just pawns to be bartered and sacrificed.”
Lindsay didn’t hear anything else. She slipped unnoticed around the corner and into the waiting room. It was an innate talent all children shared and eventually outgrew; the ability to slip away unnoticed—not unseen, simply unnoticed, below the scope of concern for those of the adult world. Alex was sitting with his back to her, blocking Mr. Quince’s view, so neither saw her slip around the corner and sneak up to the glass door. She could also be very quiet when she wanted to be. And just now, she very much wanted to be. She did not like Mr. Quince, and he didn’t seem to like any of them. She had not forgotten the way he smashed his glass against the wall yesterday. If it was necessary to avoid Alex just now in order to avoid Mr. Quince, then that was exactly what she would do. Later, maybe, she would tell Alex about the smell in Mr. Quince’s room.
She turned the knob quietly and pushed the door open, slowly so the glass wouldn’t rattle in the frame. She opened it a few inches, enough to slither through, then eased it shut again. As simple as that.
She went down the steps and across the tracks, avoiding the edge of the cliff a little to the left. If the Frisbee flew that way and went over … Well, she knew full well what that would mean. Lost was lost, and anything that went over that edge was lost for good.
She gave a practice toss, the red ring wafting a slow, gentle arc that carried it up, then up a little higher, then off to the left; off towards the Wasteland and the trio of tents and—
“Well, hello there,” Reginald Hyde said.
Lindsay couldn’t help but stare at him, the enormous fat man in his strange pajamas, his smooth white skin tattooed and riddled with bones like bizarre jewelry. He wasn’t scary, she thought; funny-looking and strange, but not scary.
But she still knew better than to talk to him.
“It’s all right,” he assured her. “My name’s Reginald. But if you like, you can call me Reggie. Are you out here playing catch all by yourself?”
“No,” she said, but that was a fib. “Alex is coming out to play catch with me.” Fib number two.
“Is he?” Hyde asked, then stood up on tiptoe to look over Lindsay at the Saloon, as if to suggest that Alex was somehow hiding behind the little girl, and that was why he missed him initially. After a moment of searching, comically shading his eyes with one hand like a desperate explorer, he looked back at her. “I don’t see him. But I tell you what. Why don’t you and I play catch until he comes out? I’m pretty good, you know?”
Lindsay shook her head.
“Is that no, I’m not good at catch, or no, you didn’t know I was?”
Again, she shook her head. Reggie liked to talk, and when he talked, he seemed to go in confusing circles.
“Here, let me show you.”
He sailed the Frisbee ring gently across the distance separating them, the saucer ring floating directly at her. She didn’t have to reach or chase it or anything; if she hadn’t caught it, it would have bounced right off her. Reggie was pretty good with a Frisbee.
“There,” he declared triumphantly. “Now throw it back.”
She didn’t. She had not forgotten the previous morning. Reggie was friends with the other two, the scary ones. One of them shot Jack. The other threatened them and sent the monsters after them. Reggie might be fat and silly, but if he was really as nice as he claimed, he wouldn’t be with them. That he was made her think that Reggie was just pretending.
“I have something for you, Lindsay,” Reginald Hyde said, reaching behind his back. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy it very much.”
“How do you know my name?”
He stopped, looking up into the air somewhat uncomfortably, a small boy caught in the beginnings of a bad lie. “Well,” and a smile spread across his face like a clown’s greasepaint. “It is your name, right? Your name’s Lindsay?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there you have it then. You look like a Lindsay. And I have just the thing for a little girl who looks like the Lindsay that she is.” From behind his back, Lovebone produced a squirming, whimpering ball of fur.
“A puppy?”
“Yes,” Reginald declared proudly. “A puppy.”
He crouched down upon the sand, letting the small animal wander aimlessly about in his enormous shadow. Lindsay watched, delighted as the dog snuffled and spun around the sand, nose moving every direction at once. It would sniff something upon the ground, wag its tail, and pounce upon it. Only then did it seem to realize that there was nothing there to pounce upon. Then it would reinvent the game over another patch of Wasteland sand.
“What’s his name?” she asked.
“Whatever you like. He’s yours if you want him.” She looked up at him, delighted. “I’m afraid we don’t have very much food out here in the Wasteland,” Hyde continued, “and I’d hate to think of this little guy going hungry. So you should take him.”
“You mean it? I can really have him?”
“Sure. He’s all yours. Come on over here and take him.”
Lindsay stared at the puppy, the gap between herself and Reggie somehow magnified. He made it a point to keep a distance from her—or from something. There was something about that; something about how he was staying away, and about the barrier which kept out the scary men and the monsters in the sand.
She pursed her lips and whistled a couple times. It was not a very good whistle, but her mouth was dry. “Here boy. Come here.”
The puppy stopped and looked at her, tail thumping ecstatically. But when she did not move any closer, just standing there giving short whistles and offering her hand, the puppy turned back to the game of attacking his own shadow.
“Why won’t he come?”
“He
’s just a puppy. He needs someone to train him.” Hyde shrugged indifferently. “You’ll have to come here and get him. I’m sure it will be all right if you come over and go right back. Jack won’t mind. He’s a very nice man, Jack. And you could probably train the puppy to come and fetch and roll over. I’ll bet you can roll over, can’t you, Lindsay?”
She nodded hesitantly, watching the puppy play its strange little game.
“Come on. It’ll be okay. Jack won’t even have to know. It’ll be our secret.”
She started forward. Reggie was right. And Jack would understand. If she didn’t take the puppy, it would starve to death. She didn’t think Jack would want that.
The distance between her and Reginald Hyde diminished.
“I don’t suppose you happen to know anything about where Jack is keeping those tickets of his, do you?” Reggie asked. “It’s not for me, you understand. I was just wondering.”
The puppy was sniffing and whining at the same time, eager to have someone to play with as the game of pouncing upon empty dust grew tiresome. It watched her walking closer, tail wagging furiously.
“There’s a ticket booth in the saloon,” she answered absently. “I guess the tickets could be in there.”
“Really?” He seemed pleased, squatting down to stroke the small dog, the animal all but disappearing in the enormity of his shadow. “And could you, by any chance, get these tickets? Just curious.”
“Lindsay!”
She stopped just short of Lovebone’s reach, the hard sound of Oversight’s voice gluing her feet to the sand.
Reginald Hyde looked away, breathing a low, exasperated curse.
The tall woman in black leather was immediately behind her. “Lindsay, what are you doing out here by yourself?”
“I was…” And her answer died away. What had she been doing? she wondered. The sharpness in Oversight’s tone had startled her, and sent every thought from her head like a flock of frightened sparrows. She looked down, her mind a blank, and saw the red ring still clutched in her hands. “I was playing catch.”
The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) Page 24
