Someplace to Be Flying

by Charles de Lint

  He understood the philosophy when it came to the arts—a painting, a book, a piece of music—and even in regard to meeting new people, or presupposing what someone he already knew was going to say or do in a given situation. But Annie seemed to mean it in a more global sense. She was offering up her own version of Plato's rejection of scientific rationalization: Matter wasn't fundamental because material objects were merely imperfect copies of abstract and eternal ideas. Although in her version, the world wasn't so much defined by argument as by remaining mentally open to any possibility.

  She seemed to be saying that, if he looked out at the oak trees lining the street without expecting to see oak trees, he might see something else. That the cab cruising slowly by might really be … what? A wooden streetcar driven by monkeys? A turtle on wheels? His hand was really a paw, a candelabra, a cluster of sausages tied up with twine?

  He lifted his gaze to the dense foliage of the oaks.

  Or maybe that the crow girls were really birds and that was why they lived in a tree?

  In his present mood anything seemed possible, and the whole business was making him light-headed. Finally he went back inside to his apartment.

  The phone rang just as he was putting his empty beer bottle into the case under the sink. He had a moment's panic at the sound—a telephone call this late at night almost always meant bad news. Then he remembered that he'd told Donna she could call him anytime before one A.M. He caught it on the third ring, just before the answering machine would take it.

  "Donna?" he said.

  "Hi, Rory. I hope you don't mind me calling so late, but I only just got back to my hotel room."

  He glanced at the kitchen clock and was surprised to see that it was almost one-thirty.

  "That's okay," he told her. "I was still up. How's your conference going?"

  "The same way these things always go. There are a few bright people you want to talk to, but you never get much of a chance. Mostly you're stuck listening to people who think 'innovative' is putting a new spin on the same old same-old, instead of actually pushing the boundaries, but what else is new?"

  "So why do you go?"

  "Tamarack's not so big that we can afford to miss opportunities like this to promote our books. I mean, we get lost at the ABA. Our booth's always off in some sad little dark corner—you know, wherever Stephen King or Danielle Steele aren't doing a signing."

  Rory laughed.

  "I know, I know," she went on. "I'm making it sound horrible and it's not really. I love working the booth. It's just the schmoozing later on in the evening that wears on me—the dinners and parties. But you must know what it's like. Lily says you've spoken at a few writers' conferences yourself."

  "Except I like the schmoozing."

  "You would," Donna said with a smile in her voice.

  Although he'd only met her on a few occasions when she was back in the city visiting Lily, Donna didn't feel like a stranger to him. Lily talked about her so much that sometimes Rory felt that he'd grown up with the pair of them. Donna had obviously heard just as much about him.

  "So what's happening with Lily?" Donna asked. "Have you talked to her lately?"

  "Not since I emailed you. She's down in Arizona shooting stills for some country band's video."

  "I'm worried about her. I mean, really worried."

  Rory had been, too, but now he wasn't so sure. With this business relating to the crow girls still so fresh in his mind, he wasn't quite ready to dismiss Lily's experience as something she'd only imagined. But he was no more ready to tell Donna that than he'd been to relate Lily's adventure to Annie.

  "I was, too," he said. "But I think it was maybe an overreaction to the stress of what happened. She probably wasn't hurt as badly as she thought she'd been. I saw her the next day and she looked fine. No bruises, nothing."

  "She says some kind of punk angels cured her."

  "Yeah, well … things happen awfully fast in a situation like that. Sometimes it's hard to pinpoint what really happened and what we think happened."

  "Being attacked as she was isn't a laughing matter."

  "I'm not laughing," Rory said. "I got mugged a couple of years ago and I know just how weird and scary it is."

  There was a long moment of silence.

  "So you think she's okay?" Donna asked. "Even with all this talk about angels and miracle healings?"

  "The experience is going to change her," Rory told her. "There's no getting away from that. I was a bundle of nerves for weeks after it happened to me. But you deal with it. Lily's a strong person. She'll get past this."

  "I hope so. Thing that strikes me as weird, though, is that she's not a bundle of nerves. She's so calm about the whole thing."

  That had occurred to Rory, as well, but it wasn't something he'd felt he could ask Lily about. If she'd found some way to help her deal with what had to have been a very scary experience, who was he to burst her bubble?

  "Everybody deals with things differently," he said.

  "I guess." There was another pause from Donna's end of the line. "What about this cabdriver who was with her—do you know anything about him?"

  "His name's Hank. I used to work with him. He always seemed okay."

  "I feel like I'm being a mother hen."

  "You're just being a good friend," Rory said. "Worrying comes with the territory."

  "Thanks for saying that. You're a good friend, too. I feel better knowing you're close by in case … you know, things get any weirder."

  "That's not going to happen," Rory said.

  But later, after he'd hung up, he wasn't so sure that was something he could swear to with any real conviction.

  13.

  "Is it always this slow on a Sunday?" Hank asked as Paris locked up.

  Except for the woman who'd been there when he first arrived, and a couple of punky-looking girls who came in later to check out the flashes on the wall and the ring-bound portfolios of samples on the counter, they'd had the store to themselves for the past hour. The Buzz wasn't exactly buzzing with business this afternoon.

  Paris shrugged. "Later in the day, yeah. But we had a busy morning."

  "You should close earlier."

  "I don't mind. It gives me a chance to catch up on paperwork and stuff." She tucked her arm into the crook of his as they set off for the junkyard. "So when do I get to meet Lily?"

  "It's not like you're thinking."

  "Who says I'm thinking anything?"

  "You're never not thinking something," Hank said.

  She gave his arm a squeeze. "Okay. What I'm thinking is, this could be good, so don't blow it like you did with Emma."

  "Emma's the one who called it off."

  "Only because you never let her behind the wall," Paris said.

  Hank didn't want to get into that.

  "Lily's too uptown for me," he said. "I helped her out of a jam and she's grateful and interested and everything, but it'll wear off fast once she sees that this is all there is to me."

  Paris shook her head. "Boy, are you not with the program or what."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Nothing. But you might be surprised at how many women are interested in a decent guy—for his own sake. Not all of us are looking for a moneyman, or some big shot who knows all the right people. You should try to be a little more trusting."

  "It's hard."

  "I know it's hard. This is Paris you're talking to, Hank. The original hard-luck story. But you've got to take part in the world or what's the point of being in it?" She smiled at him. "Some bright guy I know told me that one time when I was really messed up."

  It had taken Hank and her brother a week to find her, holed up in a squat, crouched in a nest of rags and newspapers in a corner, scabs and collapsed veins covering her inner arms. She hadn't even been able to focus on either him or Terry, but he'd held her and talked to her anyway, just talked and talked while Terry brought the cab around and drove them back to the junkyard. It took her a lon
g time to get through the nightmare of going clean, even longer to really want it.

  "I remember," he said.

  "Don't get me wrong," Paris said. "I know where you're coming from. The people who can't deal with who or what we were are never going to be part of our lives. But if they mean anything to us, we've got to give them a chance. We've got to let them know who we were, who we are now, and let them decide for themselves if they want to deal themselves in."

  Hank had to smile, hearing his own words offered back to him.

  "I'll keep it in mind," he said.

  She squeezed his arm again. "I know I'm being an interfering little busybody, but hey, that's who I am."

  "I won't argue that."

  She punched him lightly with her free hand. "The thing is," she said, "I'd like to see you happy instead of just making do."

  When they got to the junkyard they had dinner with Moth and Benny. Later, Hank took the cab out, dropping Paris off at a girlfriend's over on the east side before tending to the business that Moth had set up for the night. He was busier than he'd been last night, but he still had time to think about Sandy Dunlop's problem.

  The tattoo had been a dead end, but he'd pretty much expected it to be. He could've gotten lucky—he might still, if Paris had any luck when she asked around for him—but that didn't seem to be the way this was playing out. So maybe it was time to work on it from the other end. Philippe Couteau hadn't been in town just to assault Lily or hassle a small-time dope dealer.

  Closing in on six that morning, he found himself heading for Eddie's club by way of Lily's part of town. A storm had gusted in a little after midnight, leaving the street littered with leaves and branches, thrown down from the canopy of oaks overhead. It made a nice change from the usual Styrofoam and litter that the cab's headlights picked out. He wondered how Lily was doing down in Arizona. Maybe Paris was right. Instead of deciding beforehand how it was going to work out, he should let events take their course, stay open to the possibilities for a change. So she was uptown. Didn't mean she wasn't human.

  He had a cut taken from one of Oscar Peterson's Verve Songbooks—the '52 sessions—playing on the tape machine. That old Cole Porter standard "Night and Day." Ray Brown on bass. Barney Kessel on guitar. He thought Lily'd like it. Maybe he'd get Tony to run off a dub for her.

  Hank remembered reading somewhere that Peterson had recorded those sessions in such a simple, straightforward style to make the music more understandable to people who weren't necessarily into jazz. Maybe so, Hank thought, but you'd still have to be deaf to miss what Kellaway had called the "will to swing" that was the backbone of every Peterson trio. Lily would get it.

  By six, he pulled up in front of the club, and Bobby "Hands" Lido, one of Eddie's bodyguards, was walking Eddie out to the cab. Hands was built in a square, head set squat on his shoulders, arms the size of a normal man's thighs, hands like shovels. The story went that he once took three shots in the chest and still got those hands on the shooter and broke his neck. Looking at him today, Hank found himself wondering if maybe the story was true. He touched his shoulder where a small bullet scar puckered his skin. Maybe Hands had himself a visit from a couple of switchblade-carrying punk angels, too.

  Eddie Prio was from the old school. He was in his sixties—Moth's age—and looked ten years younger. Still dark-haired, still in good shape. A sharp dresser—you never saw him out of a tailored suit, tie knotted just right, shoes shined so they'd hold a reflection. He rewarded loyalty and came down hard on anyone who tried to screw him.

  He and Moth went way back. He'd fronted Moth the cash for his first gypsy cab and gave Moth his business right from the start, a way of letting people know Moth could be trusted. It was a favor for a favor. Moth had been on the farm with one of Eddie's cousins and stepped in to help when he got in the line of fire between the blacks and the Aryan Brotherhood. The AB wasn't so organized in those days, but hatred and racism didn't need a tag to be kept alive.

  "Yeah, but why's he still giving you his business?" Terry had asked when he first came on board with the junkyard crew.

  "You don't fix what isn't broken," Moth had told him.

  Hands opened the back door of the cab, closed it behind Eddie, not stepping back until he heard the click of the lock being engaged. He tapped the roof of the cab and Hank pulled away.

  Eddie settled back into the seat, his briefcase beside him. "I like the city after it's rained," he said. "Especially this time of day."

  Hank nodded in agreement.

  "You have a good night?" Eddie asked.

  "Busy for a change. How was the club?"

  "We've got a hardware salesmen's convention in town this week. I don't know where they get the money, but they sure like to spend it."

  Hank smiled. They drove along for a few blocks in silence, then Hank glanced in the rearview mirror.

  "So, Eddie," he said. "You know anything about a guy named Philippe Couteau—works out of New Orleans?"

  "What do you want to know about him for?"

  Hank shrugged. "His name came up in something I'm working on for Marty. He's defending this lap dancer from Pussy's."

  "The one who popped her boyfriend pimp?"

  Hank nodded.

  "If Couteau's involved, you don't want to be."

  "I've seen his sheet. There's not much there."

  Eddie gave him a humorless smile. "That's because witnesses have a habit of dying before anything gets to trial. Thing is, these guys hurt people for fun—you know what I'm saying? You don't have to pay them to drop somebody. All you've got to do is point 'em in the right direction and hope the body count doesn't get out of hand."

  "You're talking about him and his brothers?"

  "I don't know how many of them there are," Eddie said. "There's a whole family of them—father, the three brothers, cousins, uncles and aunts. You seen this one you're asking about?"

  Hank nodded.

  "Well, they all look pretty much the same. Except for their sex, it's hard to tell 'em apart."

  "I hear they're connected," Hank said.

  Eddie laughed. "Yeah, everybody's connected now, you listen to the press. Like it means anything. It's not like the old days. I don't know which is worse, the families or the crews working out of the projects."

  "Couteau was collecting from Ronnie Ellis—the dancer's boyfriend. I'm trying to figure out what kind of business he could have with a small-time loser like Ellis."

  "You think Couteau popped him?"

  "I don't think it was the dancer," Hank said.

  He looked in the mirror again to see Eddie's lips pursed in thought.

  "Who's the prosecutor?" Eddie asked.

  "Bloom."

  Eddie shook his head. "Too bad. He won't back off on her. He's got too much of a hard-on for anyone in the sex trade."

  "But if I could get him looking a little more seriously into Couteau's connection with Ellis—"

  "A word to the wise, Hank," Eddie said, breaking in. "You don't want to get connected to trouble in their minds. If they come looking for you, nobody's going to be able to help you."

  "They're that bad?"

  "Worse," Eddie said. Then he dropped his gaze from the mirror and turned to look out the window.

  Hank frowned. This was getting more complicated now. He'd seen Couteau buy it, but there was no body to I.D. And if the whole family looked the same, then maybe it hadn't been Philippe who'd died in the alley, but one of his brothers or cousins. Which meant there could be more than one of them in the city. Doing what? He had a Couteau connected to Ronnie Ellis who maybe was, maybe wasn't, the same person who'd assaulted Lily. The thing that was making him nervous now was, what if the attack on her hadn't been random?

  Probably the only ones who knew the answers to any of this were those two girls from the alley. Trouble was, he had no idea how to go about finding them.

  14.

  Kerry gave a last scrub along the join where the bookcase's middle shelf met the side
of the unit, then dropped the steel wool onto the newspapers that were covering the floor and sat up. She stretched her back and admired her handiwork with pride. Instead of covering over the garish paint on her new bookcase, Rory had suggested she strip it.

  "I think it's butternut under all that crap," he said. "It'll look really nice once you get it cleaned up and rub some oil into it."

  It did look nice. The wood had a lovely grain and a soft yellowy-brown color, and she was the one who'd made it look like this, all by herself. She'd never done anything like it before.

  Her living room was a bit of a mess at the moment. Newspapers covered the floor around where she was sitting and there seemed to be bits of paint everywhere—long curling pieces that she'd peeled off with a scraper, hundreds of tiny flecks and dried paint dust. But the room felt homey all the same, all her new acquisitions helping to fill it out and make it seem cozier. She now had two plants on the window seat with her books and stuffed animals—a small climbing ivy and another green leafy plant that she'd already forgotten the name of—the hooked rug on the floor in front of it by her chair. In the kitchen she had a real table with chairs. Her new clothes chest was standing in her bedroom, the lid open so that it could air out a bit. The cassette player was on the floor beside the outlet near the kitchen door.

  It was like a real home now, furnished and everything. Maybe she wasn't doing so badly after all. Maybe she really could make a place for herself in this world.

  If only the past would leave her alone.

  Don't think about that, she told herself.

  She'd been playing the cassette Annie had given her and got up now to turn it over. It was funny listening to a professional recording made by someone she actually knew. She'd never heard music like this before. In her old world, it was all sweet soft voices and mushy strings so that no one would get upset. They were intent on not getting people upset there. Annie's music seemed to ask just the opposite of its listeners. It wanted you to question everything. It insisted that you not take anything for granted.