“Right.”
Diane elbowed him in the ribs. “Win, stop being a jerk and let the man in. We don’t want to alienate the neighbors on the first day.” Winston exhaled and opened the door.
“Hello, Lucas,” he said.
“Hello again,” Lucas said and grinned wide. His bottom teeth were crooked in front, and his breath smelled of cinnamon.
“Come in. Lucas, this is my wife, Diane.”
Lucas offered his hand and Diane took it in hers. “A pleasure, madam,” he said, then bent down and kissed her knuckles. Winston’s cheeks burned briefly. “I brought over some lovely mead to apologize for my abrupt behavior earlier. I was hoping we might toast your first evening in a brand new apartment.”
“I think I know where we put a few glasses,” Diane said, and hurried into the kitchen. Lucas stepped through into the living room and looked around at all the opened boxes and unpacked detritus that covered the floor. Winston closed the door just as Diane walked back in, holding three plastic cups. “Looks like these are all we have at the moment,” she said.
“That will do fine.” Lucas pulled a bartender’s corkscrew out of his pocket. He stabbed down, then rotated the corkscrew five times clockwise, so fast that his hand became a blur. There was a wet plop as he yanked out the cork. Lucas took one of the cups from Diane and poured an amber-colored liquid into it.
After the cups were distributed, Diane and Winston sat on the couch, and Lucas perched on the edge of the coffee table. The room filled with the almost imperceptible aroma of spring, of sweet honeysuckle and jasmine and apple blossoms. “Welcome to the building,” he said, and they thwacked the cups together. The mead was unlike anything Winston had ever tasted. It was sweet with a tang, and went down smooth as milk. His jaw muscles contracted involuntarily. As the alcohol hit his stomach, he felt a supreme warmth, as if he’d just taken a shot of brandy. He looked over at Diane and could see sweat beading on her brow and in the hollows of her collarbones, though the air in the apartment had cooled after sundown. Diane spoke first.
“Wow, Lucas, this mead is amazing. Where did you get it?”
Lucas drained his glass and said, “It’s from my own private collection. I have five bottles left, and I only bring them out on special occasions. I think this qualifies.”
“Well, it’s phenomenal,” Winston said. “I’ve never tasted anything quite like it.”
“Or likely will again,” Lucas said. “My five bottles are the last anywhere in this country. The mead is Scandinavian, and is difficult to acquire.” Lucas picked up the bottle again. “Have another glass.”
“So what do you do?” Diane asked, handing her cup back to Lucas.
“An interesting question,” he said, filling the cup and passing it back, full almost to the top. “We spend our lives learning many different things, broadening our cultural horizons, soaking up as much as we can. We take interests that often have nothing to do with our day jobs so that we will not be defined as a draftsman or receptionist or technical writer. And yet, invariably, the first question we ask strangers is what they do.”
“That’s a complicated answer,” Diane said and drank deeply. She swayed slightly on the couch, her cheeks flushed.
“It’s a complicated question. Do you want to know what I do for a living? Or do you want to know that I keep a pet ocelot, or collect expressionist paintings, or write epic poetry that no one will ever see? Because all of these things are a part of me, yet no one thing defines me. You are a dancer, yes?” He motioned with his head to the top photograph on the nearest floor stack, an action shot of Diane in a leotard and tutu, captured in mid-flight across the stage, a gazelle in black and white. “But I can see from the paintbrush in your hair that you also dabble in watercolors. So would you call yourself a dancer or a painter? In truth, you are both, and much more, I am sure. Another glass?”
Diane had emptied her second cup of mead, and Winston could tell she was well on her way to getting hammered. Lucas plucked the cup from her hand and grinned at the contented smile on Diane’s face. She leaned against the couch, stretched her arms over her head and arched her back, her breasts thrust forward. Winston took the cup from Lucas’s hand before he could pour, and placed it down on the coffee table.
“Honey, we don’t want to drink all of this man’s extremely rare mead, do we?” Winston said. Diane finished her stretch and shrugged. He turned to Lucas in time to see the smile falter and something strange come into the man’s eyes, only for a fraction of a second, and then the smile was back, but a clipped one without showing any teeth.
“That’s all right, Winston,” Lucas said, rising from the coffee table. He corked the bottle and moved to the door. “It was lovely to meet you both, and I hope we’ll get together again soon.”
“Sure,” Diane said. “We’ll have to all go out together sometime.”
Winston got up off the sofa and walked Lucas to the door. The room tilted slightly to the right, and Winston stumbled a bit before catching himself. The mead had done a number on him as well.
“Oh hey,” Diane said as he opened the door. “You never said what you do for a living.”
Lucas grinned again and his eyes gleamed. He winked at Winston and said, “Women pay me to have sex with them,” then stepped out the doorway and disappeared down the hall.
~
“Wow,” Diane mumbled into Winston’s chest, her arms wrapped around his midsection. They lay tangled up in the sheets of their bed, the sweat from strenuous lovemaking cooling on their bodies. She had been more aroused than usual, and the sex had been wild and primal. He breathed heavily and stroked her shoulder.
“I know,” he said, and kissed her on the forehead. “That was amazing. You’ll wear me out.”
He could feel Diane’s smile against his chest. She ran a finger down his side, from armpit to hip. The faint light of the room wavered in and out of focus as he breathed, and the air itself seemed to shimmer. Stripes of yellow were painted on the ceiling from the glow of the streetlight outside. She rubbed her foot against his shin and he hugged her tightly.
“So Lucas didn’t seem like such a bad guy,” she said, and pulled back to look at Winston. Flecks of light caught in her hazel eyes and sparkled.
“That’s because he was trying to get you drunk.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” she said, making a fist and chocking him lightly on the nose. “Why would he do that? He could see that we’re happily married.”
“Maybe it’s just something intrinsic to his profession.”
“Oh, man,” she said, tracing a lopsided figure-eight on his ribcage, “that was so weird. Do you really think he’s a gigolo?”
“I don’t know,” Winston said, thinking about how Diane had warmed automatically to Lucas, as if she couldn’t help it. “Somehow I don’t doubt it.” He stroked her spine with the tip of his index finger. She purred and arched her back, pressing hard into him, rolling him onto his shoulder blades. Her lips still tasted of the honey mead as she pushed her tongue into his mouth. He wriggled underneath her and ran his hands over her smooth back and shoulders. Just as she was settling on top of him, he looked past her and saw Lucas standing in front of the armoire in the corner of the room, arms crossed, grinch smile stretched all the way to his ears. Winston jerked up into a sitting position, reflexively clamping Diane in a bear hug.
There was no one in front of the armoire.
“Win?” Diane said, cradling his head. “What is it? You’re trembling.”
“Nothing,” he said, lying back down. “It was nothing.” Diane rolled off and hugged him tight. Winston closed his eyes and breathed in her scent, the musky sweet smell she emitted after sex. He opened his eyes and looked back to the corner of the room, but apart from Diane’s armoire, it was empty.
~
Both of them slept in the next morning. Upon waking they snuggled and talked in low voices, finally getting out of bed around noon. Winston chalked up the vision the previous night to exhaustion and an overactiv
e imagination, and thought no more about it. They had a quick lunch of salami, wedges of cheddar, and wheat crackers—thoughtfully placed in the welcome basket that had been left in the kitchen by the landlord—then got to work. After some more unpacking, and assembling both their computers in the office, he went downstairs to the U-Haul still parked outside to return it. Since the rental place was a walkable distance away, he told Diane not to bother following him in the Civic.
He drove the five minutes down Murphy Street to the U-Haul place, then turned off the engine and got out. The young guy at the counter wore a grease-stained shirt and was engrossed in a copy of the Hemisphere Confidential Report. Winston cleared his throat, and after several seconds, the guy put the broadsheet down and looked up. His eyes were yellow and rheumy, and his sparse brown hair was plastered to his skull with sweat.
“What kin I do fer ya?” he slurred. An invisible cloud of mint wafted over the counter, as if he’d been eating Altoids non-stop and was now sweating the aroma out of his pores.
“I just need to return this van,” Winston said. The U-Haul guy stared for a few moments before turning to look at the moving van outside.
“Ah-ight,” he said, and shambled in the direction of the back. “Gossum forms fer ya tasign.” He moved like an old man, shuffling his feet across the tiled floor instead of picking them up, his posture slightly stooped, though he looked only to be in his late twenties. Winston followed him into the back office and sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair. The rheumy U-Haul guy puttered around, looking under papers and moving aside boxes. “Knowiss roun dear somere.” He edged around Winston’s seat and Winston could hear a cardboard box being lifted and put back down.
“Ah,” the guy said. “Herewego.”
A blinding pain exploded behind Winston’s eyes as something hard smashed into the back of his head. As he fell to the floor, a wave of nausea rolled over him. He somehow fought the gorge rising in his throat, and heard footsteps hurrying away. The air sloshed heavily in his lungs, and his skull felt stuffed full of cotton. The spots in front of his eyes eventually faded away, and he was able to tell that his attacker was no longer there. He put a hand to the back of his head, and it came away bloody.
Winston got to his feet on shaky legs for three seconds before a powerful dizziness sent him crashing back down against boxes and papers. It took several more tries to stand up and lean against the wall. All the strength in his body had been sapped with the head-blow, and he wasn’t even sure he could walk back home. He made his way to the small prefab desk, using its surface for support, and picked up the phone to call Diane. The connection was dead.
He wanted more than anything to sit down, but he had the feeling that if he did, he might never get back up. He slapped himself hard to stay awake. He’d heard somewhere, perhaps in Boy Scouts, that you’re never supposed to let a concussion victim fall asleep. They could slip into a coma and die from a torn blood vessel. Winston breathed deeply, which seemed to help a little. He noticed the phone in his hand and put it to his ear. There was no dial tone, no static. The connection was dead. He returned the phone to its cradle.
Nausea surged over him again, and he vomited for what felt like a very long time. The sour aftertaste of bile lingered in his throat and nostrils. He thought he remembered seeing a water cooler in the reception area, but couldn’t be sure. He turned to look out the doorway, but his vision took slightly longer to catch up to him, as if in slow motion. Objects were multiplied, overlaid and onion-skinned, different layers wavering around and on top of each other. Nothing would stay in focus for long. Winston started to wonder if he had permanent brain damage. There was a telephone on the desk in front of him, but when he picked it up, the connection was dead.
He stood in the middle of the reception area. A sour taste filled his mouth, as if he had been vomiting, and he noticed a water fountain in the corner of the room. He moved slowly toward it, leaning on counters and racks of tires and shelves of New Car Smell. His skull throbbed with his heartbeat. He put a hand to the back of his head, and it came away bloody. After several long minutes, he reached the fountain and rinsed his mouth out with the coolest, sweetest water he had ever tasted. He drank greedily, washing the bilious taste away, then blinked his eyes.
He leaned against the U-Haul he had tried to return. The metal van had heated up in the afternoon sun, and was painfully hot against his skin. Winston pushed off from the van, and staggered out of the parking lot. At the chain-linked gate, he overbalanced on one side and went spilling into the fence. Traffic was almost non-existent on the road in front of him, and the cars that did pass ignored him. No one offered to help or call an ambulance. He slowly picked himself back up and headed in the direction of his new apartment. He blinked.
He was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, his back to a telephone pole, watching a fuliginous black cat chew on something small and dead. Winston leaned forward and retched again, splashing the front of his shoes and the back of the cat, which hurried a few feet away with its prey, then hissed loudly at him around the dead thing in its mouth. It stared at him for a moment longer, then slunk down the sidewalk. He blinked again.
Afternoon abruptly turned to evening. He was standing again. The Krispy Kreme across the street displayed Hot Doughnuts Now in orange neon from the front window, bathing the empty parking lot in sickly ochre. Diane must have been so worried by now; it should have taken him only twenty minutes to walk home, but it appeared that whole hours had gone missing. He blinked.
Winston stood in the entry door of his apartment building; it was night now. Cool air leached past and bled into the humid darkness behind him. He stepped into the foyer and stabbed the up button for the elevator, hitting it on the third try. The doors opened, and he noticed the strange iron key he’d seen Lucas use, turned to the “on” position above the button for the ninth floor. On impulse, he touched the button for 9, an irrational feeling telling him that his wife wasn’t in their apartment. The image of Lucas kissing Diane’s knuckles rose in his mind, along with the man’s confident predatory smile.
The doors slid open, not onto a hallway, but onto large anteroom. The dim light in the room looked as if it had been filtered through red cellophane, throwing even the most benign objects into a foreboding relief. Or it could have been that Winston’s brain had decided to compress all colors into scarlet duotone. He heard voices coming from somewhere further in the apartment, and followed the sound.
The penthouse apartment apparently took up the entire top floor of the building. Winston walked through a living room decorated in fine art and expensive furniture, a rec room occupied by a snooker table and a large glass cage occupied by a sleeping ocelot, a home theater with a full-sized projection screen and thirty seats. Every dozen steps, his equilibrium would fail, and he would have to stand in place until the dizziness passed. After winding through room after room, following the vague murmurs of a male and female voice, Winston ended up in the bedroom.
On the four-poster bed, completely naked, his wife Diane knelt on her hands and knees, taking it from behind from an equally nude Lucas. She’d always deflected the idea of that position when Winston had suggested it, preferring to see his face during sex. To the side of the bed, in a plush leather chair sat the rheumy guy from the U-Haul place, watching. A second leather chair was empty. The only sound in the room was the slap of flesh against flesh; Lucas wasn’t even breathing hard. On Diane’s face was an expression of utter bliss. The room was permeated with the smell of sweet honeysuckle and jasmine and apple blossoms.
“Ah, Winston,” Lucas said with a relaxed grin. “About time you showed up. I was beginning to wonder. Have a seat. Enjoy the show. Don’t blink, or you might miss it.”
Winston had the momentary dislocated feeling of hovering above his own body, watching his actions but unaware he was actually doing them. He shuffled over to the empty chair and settled into it, leaning back against the comfortable leather. A black cloud intruded into the corners of his vis
ion, and the top of his skull buzzed, as if the seams that converged there were coming loose. His wife uttered a small cry of passion. Everything went dark, and Winston welcomed the oblivion.
~
Winston woke up from his coma three weeks later. According to the doctor, he was very lucky to be alive. They hadn’t had to operate. When the nurse came in to check his IV and jab him in the ass with a syringe, she mentioned that Diane hadn’t left his side the whole time he was unconscious.
Later that day, two detectives paid a visit, told him that he’d been found in the penthouse, sprawled out on the floor, his wallet missing, with a can of black spray paint in his hand. Scrawled over and over on every surface of the empty penthouse was the word GRENDEL. Did Winston know anything about that? He had to admit that he didn’t. Did he know what it might mean? Other than remembering the monster he’d read about in Beowulf back in high school, he could offer no opinion. Did they say the penthouse was empty? Yes. Not even furniture? No sir, no furnishings at all. But there was a man living there, Lucas something. They didn’t know anything about that, sir. What about the guy at the U-Haul place? The owner knows no one of that description, sir. Don’t leave the state for a few days, in case we have further questions.
Diane had waited at the foot of his bed while the police asked their questions, and resumed her seat next to him once they left. She held his hand and looked in his eyes, and Winston could see such pain there. Even as she smiled at him, tears tracked down her cheeks. He reached up and wiped a tear away with his thumb. “S’okay, Dee,” he said. “I’m all right.” At this, she leaned down to put her face on the bed, muffling her sobs with the blanket. Winston stroked her head and made reassuring sounds.
“Oh god, Win,” she said between hitching breaths. “I didn’t know where you were, what happened to you. I thought I’d lost you forever.” She raised her head and attempted a smile. “But you’re okay. You’re awake and all right and you’re here.”
“Tha’s right, hon. Right here.”
Strange Mammals Page 3
