"Oh God."
"All right," she said. "Only first you have to tell me something."
Let this be good, I thought, and let it be quick.
"Just this," she said. "When was the first time you heard the voice?"
I didn't say anything.
"For me," she said, her tone unchanged, "it was only after I started having the dreams. They got so bad that for a while I was afraid to go to sleep. But then, the first time I heard it, I was finally able to give up the ghost. Just like that. I woke up laughing, and I knew the world was mine."
I got up. I sat down. Then I got up again and went around the bookcase to the kitchen. The water felt good on my face. I tried to make it last.
"Well?" she asked. "Will you do it?"
I lit a cigarette. It was getting cold. I wanted to close a window, but none was open.
"You know you've thought about it. Admit it. It could happen anywhere. In the middle of the night, in a place you've never been before, a place where no one knows you. Glendale, Upland, Paso Robles, it doesn't matter. Anywhere at all."
Her voice rose half an octave, like a violin string tightening, winding up. She took a deep breath.
"You're driving down an empty street at three o'clock in the morning, say. All the TV sets are off. The police cars are parked at the House of Pies. You don't know where you're going. You turn corners. Then you see someone, sooner or later you always do. He could be anyone. He's walking alone, hurrying home under the trees, the leaves are cracking under his feet like bones. You cut the lights and as you pass you feel the gun in your hand and your finger on the trigger and—and it doesn't matter.
"Or maybe you wait until he crosses the street. You dare yourself not to hit the brakes, and—and all there is is a sound. And he's gone. He never was. And it doesn't matter."
Her voice was rhythmic, incantatory.
I let her go on.
"Or in an all-night laundromat. And the knife is there in your pocket, the way you knew it would be when you needed it. Or you feel your hands on a throat in the back row of a movie theater. Or standing on a cliff over the rocks. And your hands want to push. Or under a pier with only the waves, and you see him and suddenly you feel the rock in your hand. And it doesn't matter. Somewhere, anywhere, even right here, why not? It doesn't matter. In the middle of the night with no one to see… "
I locked my knees. I dug my heels into the jute carpeting and set my back against the wall.
"So why don't you?" I couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Why don't you?" she said quickly.
The cigarette tip made a track in the air. I watched it.
"Because you've never understood the feeling," she continued, "until now. It's never been verified. You might be crazy. It's easy to think that. One alone is weak. But two is a point of view."
Her words began to lose all meaning. They might have been sounds made by a pointed stick on a fence at midnight.
"So name your price," she said.
"Why?"
"Oh, the money will make it easier the first time. It gives you a reason you can live with. That's only practical."
Practical.
"Five thousand," she said.
"Why?"
"Ten. Oh, I have it, don't worry."
"But why me?"
"Your eyes," she said. "The way you kept looking around every time somebody walked by on the pier. As if you almost expected to see yourself."
I just looked at her. I don't know if she could see me.
"Twenty-five thousand dollars," she said. "I can get it. Everyone has his price. Doesn't he."
I tried to walk. The room moved before me. I saw her as if from a great distance, from the ceiling? The top of the head, the part in the hair like a white scar, the high cheekbones, the bony shoulders, the hands holding the knees, the knees like second breasts, the knuckles like worn-down teeth. I moved past her. Outside, a full moon hung over the water.
"Listen," I heard her say, "you won't even have to choose. That's the hard part, isn't it? Well, I've already found one for you. There's one I always see, a man with his dog, back there between the rocks. You'll know him—the dog's crippled. Always the same time, every night. And he's old. It will be so easy. No one will see. Use anything you want."
For a time, I don't know how long, I balanced there. The white sound was blowing in from the ocean.
"You see?" she was saying. "I need someone. I need to know, to be free and know that I'm free. You will be free, too. We will be the fortunate ones, because we'll know no remorse."
I faced her.
"The voice," she said, "remember the voice."
She reached to touch me.
"Everybody has a price," she said.
I had not realized until that moment how unfeeling she was. Her touch was almost cruel; her words were almost kind.
"That may be true enough," I said slowly.
"How much is it worth, then?"
"Nothing."
Then I just waited.
"And we are?" she said.
I took a long time trying to think of a way to answer her.
Now the circling gulls were gone; only a single kingfisher remained to patrol the waters.
I walked, touching each post on the pier.
At first the sound was so familiar I didn't notice it.
The sound of footsteps.
Without looking up, I stopped by the rail.
The footsteps stopped.
Below the pier, the skin of the sand had been polished to an unearthly sheen. I stood there, looking down.
"You got a light, by any chance?" said a voice.
It was a man I had seen walking the boards earlier.
I told him I didn't.
"Don't ever depend on these throwaway lighters," he said, clicking the wheel uselessly against the flint. "Once they're empty, they're not worth a dime."
He pitched it underhand into the water. It fell end-over-end, disappearing from sight.
"The bar has matches," I said.
He made no move to leave. Instead he leaned his back against the rail.
I shifted and glanced around.
Back at the bar, on the other side of the glass, bodies were moving, rearranging. I couldn't help but notice. The filtered moonlight caught one face out of all the others, at the small table by the hall to the cigarette machine and the pay phone.
I must have stared for a long time. Then I got it, finally.
Kirby.
I said it, I thought it, I don't know which.
"Who?"
"Kirby," I said, snapping my fingers again. He was old enough to remember, so I went on. "A comic book artist, back in the Forties. See that girl in there, the one with the face like a broken moon? She looks like she was drawn by Jack Kirby." A portrait of Poe's sister, in fact, but I didn't say that.
There was no reason he should have answered. He probably thought I was crazy.
I turned oceanward again.
The moonlight had broken up on the surface of the water now, like so much shattered mercury. I watched the edges of the tide foaming around the pilings, bringing a wet, white reflection to the hidden rocks.
His elbow was almost touching mine. He was already off-balance. It wouldn't have taken much to send him backwards over the edge.
I said to the man, "How would you like to set someone free for me." It was somewhere between a statement and a question. "Lean on, snuff. For money, of course. It'll have to be on the installment plan. But for her, I'll come up with a hell of a down payment."
I felt a laugh starting, deep down.
"Come on, come on," I said, "what's your price, man? Everybody has his price, doesn't he?"
"Yeah," he said right off. He had been following it. "Only sometimes," he said, playing it out, "it may not be worth paying."
I managed a look at him. His face was leathery, but the skin around the eyes was still soft. He squinted, and a hundred tiny crinkles appeared.
"Before you say any more," he said, "I ought to let you in on something. I guess I ought to tell you that I'm what they call a private investigator."
I couldn't read his expression.
"I also ought to give you a free piece of advice," he said. "You seem like a decent guy. Do yourself a favor. Drop it right now."
"What?" I tried to get a fix on him. "Is she a client of yours or something?"
"The husband, pal," he said confidentially.
"I think you're trying to tell me something. So who is he?"
He gazed off down the beach. He gave a nod, meaning, I figured, one of the big stilt houses, the ones with the floodlights aimed at the waves.
Then I noticed something moving.
It looked like a man. I watched as the figure passed between the pilings, laying a long, stooped, crooked shadow over the stones.
"He looks old," I said.
"And rich," said the detective, if that's what he was. "Filthy, like Midas. Otherwise I wouldn't be bothered. Domestic surveillance isn't my style. Can't take the hours anymore."
"Wait a minute," I said. "The old man. The husband." It stuck in my throat. "He has a dog, right? And he takes it for walks. Same time, every night?"
"Take a look. Christ, the mutt's only got three fucking legs. Can you beat that?"
I couldn't.
"He's got an idea she's a tramp, you get the drift? So I tail her. Everywhere. I should blush to tell you how much he pays me. But all I got to do is wait and watch…."
"No, I can't beat that, man," I said. "I really can't."
And started walking.
And heard footsteps on the pier, footsteps echoed as from far below, my footsteps, saw shoes falling on the boards, my shoes when I looked for them seemed very far away my shoes, as I watched the water, then the sand under the pier, the cracks between the planks shuttering over the sand, and I saw as from a height, the distance growing, from all angles, directions, lengths, myself there, the sand pocked with breathing holes leading to sand crabs, remains of mussels, clams, oysters, lobster, squid, anemones, puffers, eel, sea snakes, sharks, rays, barracuda, lungfish, trilobites, sea spiders, spiny horrors, sentinels buried in the layered scape, as I approached the bar, footsteps passing the split moorings, the black layers on the roof, drying ropes frayed by the sojourns of rats from out the tumbling foundations, the high tilted windows, their panes pulsing with the passing of the tide, the frames beginning to crack, footsteps, giving in, giving out, my footsteps the laughter and the absence of laughter nearing the wooden buildings, the restaurant, the bar beating like wings against the glass.
And I watched her.
The Pitch
The third floor came down to meet him.
As far as he could see, around a swaying bunch of sphagnum moss that was wired to one of the brass fire nozzles in the soundproofed ceiling, a gauntlet of piano legs staggered back in a V to the Kitchen Appliance Department like sullen, waiting lines of wooden soldiers. C-Note shuddered, then cursed as the toe guard clipped the rubber soles of his wedgies.
He stepped off the escalator.
He turned in a half-circle, trying to spot an opening.
A saleswoman, brittle with hairspray, dovetailed her hands at her waist and said, "May I help you, sir?"
"No, ma'am," said C-Note. He saw it now. He would have to move down alongside the escalator, looking straight ahead, of course, pivot right and weave a path through the pink and orange rows of the Special Children's Easter Department. There. "I work for the store," he added, already walking.
"Oh," said the saleswoman dubiously. "An employee! And what floor might that be? The, ah, Gourmet Foods on One?"
If it had been a joke, she abandoned her intention at once. He swung around and glared, the little crinkles fanning out from his eyes, deepening into ridges like arrows set to fire on her. Her make-up froze. She took a step back.
A few women were already gathering listlessly near the demonstration platform. Just like chickens waiting to be fed. Ready. All angles and bones. May I help you, sir? I'll plump them up, he thought, swinging a heavy arm to the right as he pushed past a pillar. A small ornament made of pipe cleaners and dyed feathers hooked his sleeve. He swung to the left, shaking it off and heading between tables of rough sugar eggs and yellow marshmallow animals.
They looked up, hearing his footsteps. He considered saying a few words now, smoothing their feathers before the kill. But just then a sound pierced the Muzak and his face fisted angrily. It was Chopsticks.
He ducked backstage through the acetate curtain.
"They don't even notice," he wheezed, disgusted.
"Why, here he is," said the pitchman, "right on time." Seated on a gold anodized dining room chair borrowed from the Furniture Department, he was fooling with the microphone wired around his neck and waiting blankly for the next pitch. "All set to knock 'em dead, killer? What don't they notice?"
"They don't notice my hand goin' in their pocketbooks in about fifteen minutes." C-Note sprawled over the second chair, also upholstered in a grained vinyl imprinted with lime-green daisies.
"Ha ha! Well, you just rest your dogs for now," said the pitchman. He spooled out a length of black plastic tape and began dutifully winding another protective layer around the microphone's coat hanger neckpiece.
C-Note saw that all was ready: several cartons marked Ace Products, Inc., barricaded either side of the split curtain and behind the pitchman, leaned against two large suitcases, were lumpen bags of potatoes, a pried-open crate of California lettuce and a plastic trash can liner brimming over with bunched celery and the wilted cowlick tops of fat hybrid carrots. C-Note flexed his fingers in preparation, turned one wrist up to check his watch and pulled a white-gloved hand through his lank hair. He was not worried; it would not fall in his eyes, not now, not so long as he did not have to lean forward on a stool over another scale. Sometimes he had thought they would never end. Up and down, down and up.
"We got fifteen units out there," said the pitchman, "another forty-eight in the box here. I don't think you'll have to touch 'em, though. The locations we do our best is the discount chains. You know."
"Sure," C-Note lied, "I know."
"These ladies—" He overlaid the word with a doubtful emphasis. "—They're all snobs, you know?" The pitchman cut the tape and then paused, eyeing him as he pared dirt from under his fingernails with the vegetable knife.
C-Note stared at the man's hands. "You want to be careful," he said.
"Check, kid. You got to slant it just right. But you can sell anything, can't you? You talked me into it. I believe you."
That was what C-Note had told him. He had come up to the platform late yesterday, hung around for a couple of sets and, when the pitchman had scraped off the cutting board for the last time and was about to pack up the rest of the units in the big suitcases and carry them out to the station wagon, he had asked for a job. You want to buy one? Then don't waste my time. But C-Note had barged through the curtain with him and picked up a unit, covering one of the kitchen chairs as if it had always been his favorite resting place. As he had done just now. And the pitch. The pitch he auditioned was good, better even than the original mimeo script from Ace. If he pitched as well out there today in front of the marks, the head pitchman just might earn himself a bonus for top weekly sales. Of course, C-Note would never know that. The pitchman had agreed to pay him cash, right out of my own pocket, for every sale. And how would C-Note know how much commission to expect? He would not bother to go to the company, not today and not next week, because that would mean W-2s, withholding—less take-home. And the new man looked like he needed every dime he could lay his hands on. His white-gloved hands.
"Here you go," said the pitchman. "I'll hold onto your gloves. Shake out a little talcum powder. That way you won't go droppin' quarters."
"The gloves," said C-Note, "don't come off." And the way he said it told the pitchman that he considered the point neither trivial nor negotiable.
&nb
sp; The pitchman watched him bemusedly, as if already seeing juice stains soaking into the white cloth. He stifled a laugh and glanced aside, as though to an audience: Did you catch that?
"Well, it's two o'clock, pal. I'm goin' up to the cafeteria. Be back in time to catch your act. You can start, uh, on your own, can't—?"
"Take it easy," said C-Note, waiting.
"Don't worry, now. I'm not gonna stick you with no check. Ha ha. Cash!" He patted his hip pocket. "Not every demonstrator's that lucky, you know."
"I appreciate it. But I'm not worried about the money."
"Yeah." The pitchman handed him the neck microphone. "Sure." He looked the new man over again as if trying to remember something more to ask him, tell him. "Check," and he left, looking relieved to be leaving and at the same time uneasy about it, a very curious expression.
C-Note left the microphone on the chair and set to work on the units. He had to prepare them and these few minutes would be his only chance. If the pitchman had not volunteered to go to lunch, C-Note would have had to beg off the next demonstration and remain backstage while his boss pitched out front in order to get to them in time. He tightened his gloves and dug his fingertips into the big Ace carton and ripped the cardboard. They did not hurt at all anymore; he was glad of that, in a bitter sort of way.
"…And today only," droned C-Note, "as a special advertising premium from the manufacturer, this pair of stainless steel tongs, guaranteed never to rust, just the thing for picking baby up out of the bathtub…."
He lifted a potato from the cutting board and plunked it ceremoniously into the waste hole. Most of the ladies giggled.
"That's right, they're yours, along with the Everlast glass knife, the Mighty Mite rotary tool, the Lifetime orange juicer and the fruit and vegetable appliance complete with five-year written warranty and two interchangeable surgical steel blades, all for the price of the VariVeger alone. If you all promise to go home and tell your friends and neighbors about us, extend our word-of-mouth. Because you will not find this wonder product on the shelves of your stores, no ma'am, not yet. When you do, next fall sometime, the new, improved VariVeger alone will list for a price of seven dollars and ninety-five cents. That's seven ninety-five for the shredder, chopper and julienne potato maker alone. You all remember how to operate this little miracle, don't you, so that you'll be able to put it to work on your husband's, your boyfriend's, your next door neighbor's husband's dinner just as soon as you get home tonight?"
Got to Kill Them All & Other Stories Page 3
