The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1)

by Mark Reynolds

  But the sincerity in her stare killed his humor. Her answer was neither jest nor exaggeration.

  She leaned forward, one hand still covering his, and set her beer on the floor beside the bench. Then she placed her hand on the armrest he was leaning back against, trapping him inside of her embrace. She was so close that he could smell her, the intoxicating aroma that was sweet and spicy and indefinable and arousing—oh yes, it was definitely that! Above and beyond everything else, it was definitely that. “You can’t take anything with you but your memories,” she insisted softly. “So you have to do everything, or else it’s lost.”

  Alex felt his heart slamming in his chest, blood rushing hotly through his veins. She took his hand, guiding it slowly to her bare stomach and holding it there, her skin hot beneath his fingers. Her face dipped suddenly towards his ear, and she whispered, “What would you do if it was your last day, Alex?”

  He swallowed, his throat suddenly very dry. Her hair smelled sweet, the ends brushing lightly against his neck. He tried to put his own beer down on the floor near hers, misjudged the distance, and tipped the bottle over. It rolled haltingly across the smooth, lacquered planks, half-full of beer that spilled out along the way as it disappeared under the bench and was forgotten. The song played on in the main room in endless repetition. And more distantly, he thought he heard the nervous clatter of typewriter keys clicking away furiously in the night.

  “What would you do?” she repeated, a soft cooing sound in his ear that she kissed unexpectedly. It was a gentle kiss, warm and passionate, soft lips lingering upon his earlobe and nearly driving him over the edge. Her hand guided his palm slowly up her middle until his fingers were laid against the swell of her breast.

  It was fear more than nobility that restrained him. “Oversight … there’s something you should—”

  But she shushed him gently. “It doesn’t matter, Alex. All that ever mattered is here and now. There isn’t anything you can do about anything else.” Her guiding hand splayed his fingers across one breast, nipple hardening beneath his touch. Her other hand unzipped the jacket, the sound exaggerated in the emptiness. She leaned over him, exposed in the flickering glow of the maniacal machine, doe-eyed and flushed, lips eager, willing.

  But still the fear. It wasn’t passion that made him breathe in short, useless gasps, but an overriding sense of panic that reared up in the back of his mind, screaming. “The thing is, I’ve never… I mean I’ve never done…”

  “Pretend this is our last day,” she whispered, and kissed him full on the lips. “What do you want to do?”

  The dread thing in his mind was screaming at him, loud hysterical wails of warning and naked terror. He cared about her, more than he was willing to admit up until this moment. In only a day, he had decided that he could very easily love her for the rest of his life if she would let him, and he didn’t care if that turned out to be a century or a single day. But the experience that she yearned for was not his to give. It was a simple fact of life that the first time you rode a bike, you probably fell off. No shame in it. It was simply a fact. And the fact was—

  “This is my… my first…” His voice was so low, so dry, that for a moment he actually thought no sound had come out at all, that the words existed only in the insecurities of his own brain.

  “It doesn’t matter, Alex. There has to be a first time for everything.”

  He heard more than saw the zipper of her leather jeans opening.

  “Do you mean … what I mean is, are you … is this—”

  She stopped his question with a long kiss that blew his thoughts apart like wind through autumn leaves.

  “Ask me again,” she whispered, “… another time.”

  BETRAYALS

  When Alex woke up, he was alone.

  He lay upon the floor, half-naked, his skin blue-white in the moonlight, the candy machine reduced to occasional hiccups of light in one corner of its otherwise dark interior, as if the machine itself had drifted into a fitful sleep.

  Oversight was gone.

  He stretched contentedly, listening to the satisfying pops in his shoulders and spine. The room smelled faintly of spilled beer and the sweet, spicy aroma that he associated with Oversight, and he wondered where she might be.

  There is no way to describe sex to someone who has never had it. An extraordinary boast he was pleased to admit was one hundred percent correct. It was one thing to know about it, to have it explained in school by an embarrassed health teacher, to see it done in movies, even experimented alone with a nudie magazine. But until you actually did it, you had no way of knowing how little you really knew.

  He hoped Oversight liked it as much as he did. He took his time, or tried to anyway; he thought the second time went better than the first. He even made an effort to stay awake with her afterwards, hoping that she would talk, tell him about herself.

  But sleep—an almost ludicrous notion at first—settled over him like the darkness, inescapable. He lay there on the floor, breathing deeply, and allowed his mind to empty of everything except her. She was all that mattered. Propped up on one elbow, Oversight ran her fingers gently through his hair, and said nothing. And it was this simple touch that undid him. He let his eyes drift shut, yielding to her ministrations, and within moments she scattered his thoughts and sent him drifting away on dreams, her delicate fingers weaving a clever spell.

  And now she was gone.

  She had said she didn’t sleep at night. Maybe she was off sitting somewhere, an insomniac counting away the hours. Maybe she would like some company, someone to talk to. Or maybe there was some other way to wear away the night.

  This last thought crept slyly into his head, a simple suggestion that he politely dismissed, but not before a moment’s consideration. Maybe. And repeating that one word over and over in his mind, he untangled himself from the blanket and pulled on his jeans. He had to use the bathroom, and while he was up, he would look for Oversight.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe…

  Alex walked through the silence, the night air cool against his skin, his way lit intermittently by lonely machines: the Wurlitzer, the Pepsi machine outside, even the candy machine which guttered to life in the waiting room behind him. Nothing else moved. Moonlight poured through the windows, lighting the top of the stairs and showing him the outlines of doors: the closed door to Leland’s room, the open ones to the bathroom and the room where Ellen and Lindsay were sleeping. Through the bathroom door, he saw moonlight shimmering off tiles and bone-white sand. So frightening and enormous by day, the Wasteland was now a sea of azure, the small saloon adrift in the vast oceans of night. Alex closed the door behind him, relieved himself, and got a drink of water from the tap, cold and clean and satisfying. He wondered, staring at his own reflection in the dark mirror, if he would ever see the world the same way after tonight. He didn’t think so.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe…

  When he opened the door, a faint odor greeted him in the hallway like a week-old cat box that people hid somewhere in their apartment, believing somehow that if you couldn’t see the tub of kitty litter and cat turds, it wouldn’t smell as much or as bad. He looked over his shoulder, wondering if the Saloon’s plumbing had gone south, some crucial part of the drain disappearing like the gumball machine. But the more he concentrated on it, the more convinced he became that it originated from Mr. Quince’s room. The businessman’s door, closed when he came up the stairs, now stood half-open, a light from inside the room soaking the landing in a sickly amber glow that leeched at the moon’s blue-white luminescence.

  Curious, Alex peered inside.

  Standing at the foot of Leland’s bed was Oversight, arms folded across her breasts. She was completely naked!

  Alex’s feet backpedaled reflexively, trying to keep him from seeing what he had already seen. But it was too late. Oversight simply stood there, her exquisite body revealed to Leland Quince, the businessman sitting up in bed wearing only a sheet. And both of them seemed so perfectly
calm, so perfectly at ease.

  And all the while, Alex’s reality was imploding.

  It was that calm in her face as she turned that made his heart stop, his limbs go numb, a feeling like he was being transformed into wood, into stone. It crept up from his extremities and through his limbs like poison. His eyes danced helplessly upon her, enamored and repulsed. Not to him, he pleaded, hoping their lovemaking had opened some kind of psychic channel between them. Not to him. You gave yourself to me. To me! Please don’t give yourself to him!

  Oversight looked at him, her expression empty. Not self-conscious or sad. Not angry or contemptuous. There was no intent by her to make him the fool, but neither was this anything of which she was ashamed. This simply was.

  And it was that blankness more than anything that cut through his heart like a blade of jagged steel. “Oversight…?”

  His single utterance was little more than a half-sensible gurgle in his throat, the last sound before it seized tight, a stone wedge behind his Adam’s apple.

  She took a single step towards him, and for just a moment, he saw something in her eyes, something soft and familiar, something he recognized from their talks about Spanish moss hanging from the trees, something he recognized from the shadowed light of the waiting room.

  “Stop right there.”

  Oversight froze at the sound of Leland’s voice, hands hanging limply at her sides, the look in her eyes vanishing. Leland Quince stood up, perfectly ready, perfectly calm, looking as if he had expected this, even planned this. He walked up behind Oversight and pressed his naked body against hers, hand reaching around to rest between her legs. To both Leland’s indecency and Alex’s growing horror, Oversight gave only indifference.

  “But—”

  “I already told you what I want,” Leland said quietly. “And now you know what you want.” The hand between Oversight’s legs squeezed lightly, a half-smile creeping across the businessman’s lips. Maybe it was Alex’s shock that amused him. Or maybe the involuntary breath Oversight drew through clenched teeth, the expressionless wince that would be her only reaction, her singular protest. “You help me get what I want so that I can go home, and I’ll get you what you want.”

  Without realizing it, Alex felt his hands curl into fists so tight that the bones and joints in his fingers screamed. There was a mad rush of thoughts in his brain, insensible and hideous, and his eyes seemed to cloud in an ugly haze of red, sharp details stabbing his eyes like white-hot needles, a spray of sparks. But all he did was stand there, doing nothing, his brain slowly being crushed in a vice and him helpless to stop it.

  Quince leaned over, nuzzling Oversight’s neck. “Now close the door.”

  Her hand reached out tentatively, and Alex felt his last hope—she’ll resist, she’ll free herself and come to me—die, Oversight closing her hand around the edge of the door, and pushing it shut.

  For the second time that night, Alex was alone in darkness.

  * * *

  Kreiger stood, hands clasped loosely behind his back, toes at the edge of the barrier. If he tried very hard, he could just make out the edges as it reflected back the moonlight. He waited there, hearing the night sounds of the once-quiet Wasteland, smelling the wind that held only dust and emptiness before, and the occasional stink of a carcass being picked clean by the scavengers.

  It would not be long now. He’d read the constructs, new their strengths, their weaknesses, their flaws. And he knew just where to push. This time would be different.

  * * *

  Blind with rage, Alex stumbled down the darkened stairway, knees threatening to unhinge and tumble him down the steps like a sack of old laundry. But each step grew a little more certain, a little bolder, a little faster. He took the last four in a single, vicious leap, hand catching the corner and spinning himself into the waiting room, his own inertia—coupled by his complete lack of control—nearly propelling him into the wall.

  Not that he would have noticed; the rage did not feel pain—at least, not on the outside.

  The station door banged open, the glass nearly smashing in the frame, and he leaped from the platform at a run, never looking back, only losing himself in the darkness and the cold sea of blue-black sand.

  He hadn’t intended to go anyplace in particular, only as far from the saloon as possible. But in the end, he found himself exactly where he knew he would. There were no accidents. Only unacknowledged fate. Sometimes, you did what you had to do, not because you wanted to, or because you thought it was best or right, or even because you agreed with it. No, sometimes you did what you had to do because it was the only thing you knew how.

  “I’ll get you the tickets on one condition.”

  The leader of the Tribe of Dust stood toe to toe with the Caretaker’s barrier, a grim smile touching his lips as he looked in the young man’s face. “And what might that be?”

  “Oversight,” Alex said quickly, not realizing that his hands were again clenched into tight, agonizing fists. “Send her to the real world with me. And send Jack and Ellen and Lindsay home, too. Quince stays behind.”

  “Such venom. Has something happened?”

  “That’s my condition. Take it or leave it.”

  “But Mr. Quince already promised me the tickets. Why should I deal with you?”

  “It’s my deal or no tickets!” Alex spat. “I’ll go straight to Jack, otherwise. Together we’ll beat Mr. Quince senseless and leave him out here for you to deal with all you like. But he’ll never lay hands on the tickets. Never.”

  “Never is a very long time.”

  Alex felt himself trembling with rage. “You’ll be the one to find out if you don’t take my offer. Mr. Leland-Call-Me-Fucking-Sir-Or-Mister-Quince will never leave the Saloon with your tickets. I’ll see to that personally.”

  “What on earth’s gotten into you?” Kreiger asked with feigned interest. “Or is it you who has gotten into something?”

  “That has nothing to do with it,” Alex snarled, teeth clenched tight over his lie. “Those are my terms. No strings. No tricks. If you can’t deal with ‘em, say so. I’ll walk back now, and you can pray to whatever god still listens to the likes of you that Jack is as big a failure as you claim. ‘Cause if he’s not, you’ll spend the rest of eternity stuck out here pissing about how close you nearly came to getting what you wanted.”

  Kreiger smacked his tongue doubtfully against the roof of his mouth. “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I accept your conditions, Alex. Bring me the tickets, and Oversight’s yours. No strings. No tricks. Go wherever you choose.”

  “Do that and I’ll bring you the tickets.”

  Kreiger nodded in the darkness, his expression unfathomable. “It’s the strangest thing, but you remind me of another young man I knew. His name was Judas.”

  DESPERATE TIMES

  Alex slowly eased the door closed behind him, no creaking hinges or click of the latch as he slipped quietly back into the Saloon using the door under the bathroom overhang. Get in; get out. Get the tickets, get Oversight, and get the hell out of here.

  He had never actually seen the tickets; no one had. No one except Jack, and there was no telling what he’d done with them: shoved them in his pocket, stashed them in his room, hid them under a floorboard? Only Jack knew for certain.

  He would start there.

  Staring into the darkness, Alex waited for his eyes to adjust. He could make out the pale outline of the sink, the gleam off the maze of plumbing, the great valve wheel, the small DO NOT TURN sign legible even in the dark. Wedged into the Gordian knot was a broom, a mop and bucket, and behind them both, a thick bar of blackened steel nearly invisible in the darkness.

  It was not a part of the patchwork plumbing, he realized, but a tool left behind like the mop and broom. But he remembered the mop and broom from before, permanent fixtures to the solidified madness of the Sanity’s Edge Saloon. Not so the three-foot pry bar. That was new. And anything new suggested something; something important
.

  Alex slowly picked up the heavy piece of steel, both ends flattened to a wedge and notched for pulling nails. One side had a slight curve to it for driving under an edge and prying something apart.

  Prying something apart…

  Alex hefted the bar, feeling its weight. Heavy; fifteen pounds, maybe twenty. With the proper swing, a pry bar like this could cleave a person’s skull in two; even a thickheaded prick like Leland Call-Me-Sir-Or-Mister Quince. He nodded, storing the information away for future reference like a business card you have no intention of using, but refuse to discard because you never know; in a world of possibilities, Alex was quickly discovering that this was invariably the case: you never know. Never.

  Never is a very long time.

  He would only get one chance. Once Leland found out that he’d turned, that he’d burned the man’s deal with Kreiger, there was no telling what he’d do. It was imperative he get the tickets first.

  And then he saw it, something too ridiculous to believe yet too obvious to deny. Near the waiting room doorway was a tall, worn box like an old telephone booth, its front a cashier’s window with a protective wire mesh and a narrow half-circle cut out near the counter. The sign at the top of the booth read simply TICKETS.

  Could it be that simple?

  Pry bar in hand, Alex walked to the booth. He had been here two days, but never really noticed the ticket booth before. He had seen it, sure, but he had never really taken note of it. The Saloon was a train station, the ticket booth just a leftover artifact of that function.

  Only now…

  TICKETS, the sign promised.

  TICKETS!