Dark Duets

by Christopher Golden

  “I think the women have chosen, gentlemen, sorry. Only one lady here has picked a variety of numbers, and she now has the opportunity to visit with some of you.”

  “Pass,” I said.

  “What?” said Swami Saul.

  “I’m that woman, and I’m going to pass. If anyone picked me, sorry. I’m passing.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Well, okay.”

  It was rude, but I really didn’t want to spend a lot of time hanging out with people I didn’t really want to hang out with and had only written their numbers down so as to not be such an outsider. What I wanted to do was follow all the other women over to see Number Thirteen and decide if I had missed something or if the others would get close up and realize he wasn’t really such a hot number.

  The throng of giggling women beat me over there, but I was able to peek between the teeming masses and get a closer look at Thirteen. He had looked better from a distance. I went over to Swami Saul and his assistant.

  “So, one man, huh? And that man? All the women here, except me, are attracted to him? Really?”

  “Really,” he said.

  “What kind of racket is this?”

  “Do they look displeased?” he said.

  I turned and saw they did not. They were mooning all over him, pawing at him, and shifting in closer and closer. He stood in the middle of them, smiling and still like a pillar of salt.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “Me either. And you and I and Mildred here are the only ones that don’t.”

  “You two didn’t look into his eyes. I did. There’s nothing there. I don’t get it.”

  By now my head was pounding and my eyes were watering. My astigmatism had been given a serious work out, eyeballing all those men, and I felt I needed a new set of contacts, something I’d been putting off doing for a year. Maybe with contacts Thirteen would look like an Adonis.

  “Maybe all them women have brain tumors,” Mildred said smacking her gum. “I wouldn’t take that little balding fucker to a dogfight if he was the defending champion.”

  “Now, now,” Swami Saul said. “Remember, you are enlightened now.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Sorry. I forgot.”

  “So what’s the answer?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Swami Saul said, and his voice had lost that deep down-in-the-well resonance. He sounded now like a regular southern cracker. He shook his head and watched the women clamoring after the little man like he was a rock star.

  Standing there, looking first at the women crowding in on the little man, then back at Swami Saul, I got a real sense that he had not rigged a thing and was as confused as I was, as Mildred was. Of course, Mildred struck me as having come into the world confused and having gone through the years without noticeable improvement.

  I noticed that the rest of the men had started filing out, dejected and anxious to go.

  It took some doing, but I finally got Erin pried loose from the crowd. To facilitate an end to the evening, Swami Saul had started gathering up chairs and carrying them out, and Mildred was gathering the baskets. She stored them away somewhere, came back, and flipped the light switch a couple of times, blinking them in warning.

  It took another fifteen minutes to pull Erin out of there, and when she left, she had an address for the little man, but so did every other woman in the room, excluding me and Mildred.

  Erin and I didn’t talk as I drove her home. It was obvious she had yet to forgive me for my lack of agreement on her pick, and frankly, by the time we were out of there and on the highway, I had begun to feel guilty, but also a little spiteful.

  “Look,” I told Erin. “I don’t see it. But I think I could be wrong.”

  “Could be?”

  “Well, you don’t know if something works until it works, do you?”

  “Oh, it’ll work. He told me so.”

  “He told you that?”

  “With his eyes,” she said, “with his eyes.”

  WHEN ERIN WAS dropped off and I was nearly home, I realized I had forgotten my coat. I wheeled the car around and headed back, hoping Swami Saul and/or Mildred would still be there.

  By the time I arrived, it was dark inside and the door was locked, though I kept trying it, tugging like a fool until my arms hurt.

  Of course the right thing to do was to go home and find out who owned the place, see if I could get them to let me in tomorrow, because I was pretty sure Swami Saul, who traveled across the country with his little circus act, had rented it for a night and had decamped for parts unknown with his cape, Mildred, and a small crate of chewing gum.

  It was a good coat and I wasn’t ready to give it up. I went around back and tugged on a door there with the same lack of results. I looked around then, felt the place was tucked in tight by hedges, and decided it wouldn’t hurt anything if I went around and found a window open. In and out, and no one but me and my coat would be the wiser.

  Circling the house, I tried the windows. They were firmly locked. I considered knocking out a pane, undoing the latch, and pushing one up. I liked the coat that much. This was an idea I was floating when the last window I checked moved up with a surprising mouselike squeak.

  I hiked my dress and stepped through the opening without breaking the heel off my shoe, then edged around in the dark. My hip found a piece of furniture that hurt bad enough I made a sound like a small dog barking. I waited until the pain subsided and my eyes were accustomed to the dark. There was the desk I had run into, a few chairs folded and leaning against the wall, and a bit of illumination from the streetlights shining through a window near the front door.

  Able to navigate now, I made my way to the foyer where we first met Mildred. All the knickknacks that had been on the wall were gone. All that was left of them was a kind of dry stink of incense. The closet where Mildred had hung our coats was empty too, which didn’t entirely surprise me. Somewhere tomorrow she would be wearing one of our coats, the pockets full of gum wrappers. I was fit to be tied.

  I had started back toward the open window when my foot banged into the trash can. Nothing serious. No toes were lost. But it made me glance into the can. It was full of papers. I recognized them. They were the pages we had all filled out before the event on the Internet. They had been printed and, after serving their purpose, dumped upon Swami Saul’s and Mildred’s exit.

  I pulled them out of the can and tucked them under my arm for no good reason outside of curiosity, then went out of there through the window and walked to my car. Coatless, I drove home.

  AT HOME I put on my pouting pajamas, which are large enough that I can jump in a full circle inside of them. I sat at the table and had a bowl of cereal and four chocolate chip cookies. I moped around for about thirty minutes, picking crumbs off my front, then decided it was time for bed.

  I tried to go to sleep, but lay in the dark, twisting and turning as if the mattress were made of tacks. I finally went to the kitchen and picked up the stack of papers I had taken from the trash can.

  I felt a little guilty, because at the bottom of each we had been asked to tell something about ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, what we were hoping for in love, and so on, but I didn’t feel so guilty that it stopped me from reading.

  I found mine near the top. I glanced at it. It read: I think it’s everyone else that is messing up. I’m a real catch. Anyone would be damn lucky to have me. I’m handy with a glue gun, can spell like nobody’s business, and some people say I look like that movie star that everyone loves so much right now. Oh, and I got good teeth.

  I always had been proud of my teeth.

  I felt mildly conceited for writing such a thing but still considered the comments accurate. I thought about calling Erin, but as it had passed the midnight mark by now and she had work in the morning, I decided not to. I had work too, but I wrote romance novels, which is ironic, and I was able to set my own hours. I wrote under a pen name and was just waiting for that free moment when I could write th
e great American novel. Susan Sontag didn’t have anything on me. Except true success, of course.

  I decided I’d keep thumbing through the pages, maybe even get some material for one of my books. The women’s pages were on top. I read all the comments at the bottom of each one. Some of them were really sad and desperate. I felt sorry for those women. Only material I was getting was for a suicide letter.

  The papers had everyone’s address and phone number on them except mine, as I had given a false address and my old boyfriend’s work phone number, the one with the animal website. I hoped they’d call. Asking for Jana was bound to make his wife or mistresses unhappy with him.

  At the bottom of the stack I came across the forms the men had filled out, and there it was, Number Thirteen. His address was a place well out of town. I didn’t know the exact spot, but I knew the area. It was pretty backwoods out there, though still within driving distance. Occupation was listed as MIKE TUTINO’S JUNKYARD. Was junkyard an occupation? I guess so.

  Oddly, the man’s name was listed as John Roe, not Tutino. The name was not too far off from John Doe. Either he had an unusual last name, or he thought he was way too clever. The rest of the information about him was vague, and there was a notation that he paid for his eye-gazing service with cash.

  I thought in circles awhile, finally took a sleeping pill. and went to bed.

  WHEN I AWOKE the next morning, I was still irritated about losing my coat. I went to Erin’s workplace, a coffeehouse that has a kind of touchy-feely atmosphere about it and a very good Café Americano, as well as books for sale. You could drink and read and buy a book if you took the urge, though some of the books had chocolate biscotti fingerprints in them, and I admit some of them were mine.

  Erin wasn’t there, and no one knew where she was. She was supposed to have come to work. A friend of hers, another barista I knew a little, said the boss was mad at Erin and she wasn’t answering her cell and she had better show up, and with a good excuse or the best damn lie since Bigfoot.

  I tried calling Erin on my cell but got nothing. I left a message and drove over to her place. It was a condo, which was essentially an apartment traveling under an assumed name. I had my own key that she had given me to feed the cats when she was out of town, and after knocking and ringing the doorbell and noticing her car wasn’t in its spot, I went in.

  Funny, but the minute I was inside I could feel the place was empty as a politician’s head. I looked around. No Erin. I got a Diet Coke out of her refrigerator, and knowing where she hid the vanilla cookies, I had one of those. All right. I had four or five.

  I ate them and drank my drink while sitting on her couch. I tried to figure where she was, and I won’t kid you, I was becoming a little scared. After a bit I had a brainstorm and went to her computer. I used it to examine her search history. And there it was: MIKE TUTINO’S JUNKYARD. I assumed she already had the address from Mr. John Roe, Number Thirteen himself, but she had looked up directions. Could she have gone out there last night and gotten lucky? If you could call bedding down with that little dude lucky. I’d rather have a root canal performed by a drunk chimpanzee.

  I searched on the computer a little more and saw the junkyard was no longer in operation, and that struck me as an odd thing unto itself, an abandoned junkyard for a home. I probed around some more but didn’t find anything spectacular.

  I went home and tried to write, but all I could think about was Erin, and the rerun marathon of Friends. I figured that was just the thing to keep me from thinking silly thoughts.

  It wasn’t. I watched about five minutes of an episode and began to channel surf. I hit a local channel airing a news alert about a missing woman. Then another. And another. I was about to surf on when I thought I recognized one of the photos as a woman at the eye-gazing party, but I could have been mistaken. I hadn’t really paid that much attention to everyone, being more interested in myself, which some might say is a failing. But it could have been her.

  Calling the police was a consideration, but since what I had going for me was that we had all been at the same place last night, and it was an eye-gazing party, it was hard to believe at this stage I would be taken seriously. Frankly, I was a little embarrassed about asking them to go out and harass a junkyard owner who might have acquired a harem of eye-gazing groupies due to inexplicable optical powers, and that I was immune to his loving gaze because of astigmatism. This was a thought that had started to move about in my brain quite a lot, that I was immune due to a natural malfunction. I wasn’t sure how true it was, but I had started to embrace it, started to think maybe Thirteen was something a little different, and for his particular talents nothing could have been more perfectly made for him than such an event.

  I mulled around all day, and just before dark I couldn’t take it anymore. I decided I’d drive out to the junkyard, just for a look. No big deal.

  At least that’s what I told myself.

  THE JUNKYARD WAS way out in the boonies off the main highway, down a narrow road crowded by pines. As I came to a hilltop—the moon up now and bright as a baby’s eye— I could see it. It lay in a low spot, and the junk cars spread wide and far. Fresh moonlight winked off the corroded corpses of all manner of automobiles and the aluminum fence that surrounded them. Behind all those cars was an old house that looked like it needed a sign that said HAUNTS WANTED.

  I coasted down the hill until I came to a barred metal gate that made a gap in the aluminum fence. The gate was about twelve feet wide and six feet high, with a padlock no smaller than a beer truck.

  I sat there in my car in front of the gate, then decided to back up and turn around, and for a moment I was heading safely back to my house, feeling silly and knowing for sure Erin was probably home now, that she would have some logical explanation, like an alien kidnapping.

  I activated the phone on the car dash and called Erin’s number, got her answering machine again. I didn’t leave a message. I got to the top of the hill, turned around, and went back down, but this time not all the way to the gate. I was dedicated to the mission now.

  I parked on a wide spot off the road under a big elm, got out, and took a deep breath. It seemed I had begun a new career in trespassing, and possibly breaking and entering. I hoped I’d find Erin, or the only thing I was going to get was prison time and a close relationship with a tattooed lady with muscles and a name like Molly Sue who liked it twice on Sundays.

  I walked slowly, staying close to the side of the road where the tree shadows were thick, glad I had worn comfortable tennis shoes and a warm sweatshirt parka and loose mom jeans. I pulled up the hood on the parka, and for a moment I felt like a ninja.

  I went along the fence toward the gate but found a gap in the aluminum wall and decided that would be the way to go. I pulled the aluminum apart, slipped through without snagging anything, then crept along between rows of cars that looked like giant metal doodlebugs. The cars were really old, and if there had been any activity in this junkyard, it was probably about the middle of last century. Grass had grown up between the rows of cars and died, turned the color of rust; it crunched under my feet like broken glass.

  Sister, I thought to myself, what the hell are you doing?

  No dogs with teeth like daggers came out to get me. No alarms went off, and no lights flashed on. There wasn’t the loud report of a rifle shot, so I soldiered on.

  The cars were like a maze, and at one point I wound myself into the metal labyrinth and came out near the front fence again. I climbed up on the hood of one of the cars and got my bearings, studying my situation carefully. I did everything but break out a sextant and chart the positions of the stars.

  Finally, with it all firmly in mind, I tried again, and this time, after more trudging, I broke loose into a straight row that led directly toward the house.

  STANDING AT THE foot of the porch steps with only the moon and a dinky key-chain flashlight as my guides, the latter of which would have come in real handy earlier had I remembered it befo
re now, I crept up along the side of the railing, careful of my footing. I had intended only to peek through the windows, where I was sure I would see Erin laughing and sitting on the couch, drinking a soda and having a hell of a time with Thirteen, but before I could, I heard something.

  There was a clang, and when I looked, a possum was hustling away from a pile of old hubcaps it had upset among the death camp of vehicles, and that brought my attention to the side of the house. There, its nose poking out from behind the side, was Erin’s car. I was certain of it. I went over for a closer look and saw the miniature dream catcher she had made the summer before last hanging from the rearview mirror. That served as a final confirmation.

  Glancing around, I saw a number of cars that I had seen at the eye-gazing event. I took some deep breaths to try to calm myself. I could call the police, but it would take them too long. Erin could be in serious trouble right now, and I couldn’t afford to wait on the cops to get off their asses and mosey down to this side of the tracks, and the truth was, the cars were here, but that didn’t guarantee there was a problem. Maybe Thirteen’s appeal had led to an orgy of epic proportions and no one was harmed. I decided I should at least check out the situation a little before throwing myself into a panic.

  I fumbled through my pockets, searching for anything I could use as a weapon. I had an old paper clip, a pencil stub, and the keys already in hand, and that was it. Maybe if I found a rubber band somewhere, MacGyver would appear and help a lady out.