Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

by Cory Doctorow

sat flush against her back,and as Alan watched, they unfolded and flexed, flapped a few times, andsettled back into their position, nested among the soft roll of fleshthat descended from her neck.

  Involuntarily, he peered forward, examining the wings, which werecovered in fine downy brown hairs, and their bases, roped with muscleand surrounded by a mess of ugly scars.

  "You...*sewed*...these on?" Alan said, aghast.

  She turned around, her eyes bright with tears. Her breasts swung free ofher unhooked bra. "No, you fucking idiot. I sawed them off. Four times ayear. They just grow back. If I don't cut them, they grow down to myankles."

  #

  Mimi was curiously and incomprehensibly affectionate after she hadbuttoned up her dress and resumed walking toward the strip of clubsalong Richmond Street. She put her hand on his forearm and murmuredfunny commentary about the outlandishly attired club kids in theirplastic cowboy hats, Sailor Moon outfits, and plastic tuxedoes. Sheplucked a cigarette from his lips, dragged on it, and put it back intohis mouth, still damp with her saliva, an act that sent a shiver downAlan's neck and made the hair on the backs of his hands stand up.

  She seemed to think that the wings were self-explanatory and needed nofurther discussion, and Alan was content to let them stay in his mind'seye, bat-shaped, powerful, restless, surrounded by their gridwork ofangry scars.

  Once they got to the club, Shasta Disaster, a renovated brick bank withrobotic halogen spots that swept the sidewalk out front with a throbbingpenis logomark, she let go of his arm and her body stiffened. She saidsomething in the doorman's ear, and he let her pass. When Alan tried tofollow her, the bouncer stopped him with a meaty hand on his chest.

  "Can I help you sir," he said flatly. He was basically a block of fatand muscle with a head on top, arms as thick as Alan's thighs barelycontained in a silver button-down short-sleeve shirt that bound at hisarmpits.

  "Do I pay the cover to you?" Alan asked, reaching for his wallet.

  "No, you don't get to pay a cover. You're not coming in."

  "But I'm with her," Alan said, gesturing in the direction Mimi hadgone. "I'm Krishna's and her neighbor."

  "She didn't mention it," the bouncer said. He was smirking now.

  "Look," Alan said. "I haven't been to a club in twenty years. Do youguys still take bribes?"

  The bouncer rolled his eyes. "Some might. I don't. Why don't you headhome, sir."

  "That's it, huh?" Alan said. "Nothing I can say or do?"

  "Don't be a smart guy," the bouncer said.

  "Good night, then," Alan said, and turned on his heel. He walked back upto Queen Street, which was ablaze with TV lights from the open studioout front of the CHUM-City building. Hordes of teenagers in tiny,outrageous outfits milled back and forth from the coffee shops to thestudio window, where some band he'd never heard of was performing,generally ambling southward to the clubs. Alan bought himself a coffeewith a sixteen-syllable latinate trade name("Moch-a-latt-a-meraican-a-spress-a-chino," he liked to call them) atthe Second Cup and hailed a taxi.

  He felt only the shortest moment of anger at Mimi, but it quickly cooledand then warmed again, replaced by bemusement. Decrypting the mysticaldeeds of young people had been his hobby and avocation since he hiredhis first cranky-but-bright sixteen-year-old. Mimi had played him, heknew that, deliberately set him up to be humiliated. But she'd alsowanted a moment alone with him, an opportunity to confront him with herwings -- wings that were taking on an air of the erotic now in hisimagination, much to his chagrin. He imagined that they were soft andpliable as lips but with spongy cartilage beneath that gave way likelivid nipple flesh. The hair must be silky, soft, and slippery as apubic thatch oiled with sweat and juices. Dear oh dear, he was reallygetting himself worked into a lather, imagining the wings drooping tothe ground, unfolding powerfully in his living room, encircling him,enveloping him as his lips enveloped the tendons on her neck, as hervagina enveloped him... Whew!

  The taxi drove right past his place and that gave Alan a much-neededdistraction, directing the cabbie through the maze of KensingtonMarket's one-way streets back around to his front door. He tipped thecabbie a couple of bucks over his customary ten percent and bummed acigarette off him, realizing that Mimi had asked him for a butt butnever returned the pack.

  He puffed and shook his head and stared up the street at the distantlights of College Street, then turned back to his porch.

  "Hello, Albert," two voices said in unison, speaking from the shadows onhis porch.

  "Jesus," he said, and hit the remote on his keyring that switched on theporch light. It was his brother Edward, the eldest of the nesting dolls,the bark of their trinity, coarse and tough and hollow. He was evenfatter than he'd been as a little boy, fat enough that his arms and legsappeared vestigial and unjointed. He struggled, panting, to his tinyfeet -- feet like undersized exclamation points beneath the tapered Ohof his body. His face, though doughy, had not gone to undefinedsoftness. Rather, every feature had acquired its own rolls of fat, rollsthat warred with one another to define his appearance -- nose andcheekbones and brow and lips all grotesque and inflated and blubbery.

  "Eugene," Alan said. "It's been a very long time."

  Edward cocked his head. "It has, indeed, big brother. I've got badnews."

  "What?"

  Edward leaned to the left, the top half of his body tipping overcompletely, splitting at his narrow leather belt, so that his trunk,neck, and head hung upside down beside his short, cylindrical legs andtiny feet.

  Inside of him was Frederick, the perennial middle child. Frederickplanted his palms on the dry, smooth edges of his older brother's waistand levered himself up, stepping out of Ed's legs with the unconsciousease of a lifetime's practice. "It's good to see you, Andy," he said. Hewas pale and wore his habitual owlish expression of surprise at seeingthe world without looking through his older brother's eyes.

  "It's nice to see you, too, Frederick," Alan said. He'd always gottenalong with Frederick, always liked his ability to play peacemaker and tolend a listening ear.

  Frederick helped Edward upright, methodically circumnavigating his hugebelly, retucking his grimy white shirt. Then he hitched up hissweatshirt over the hairy pale expanse of his own belly and tipped toone side.

  Alan had been expecting to see Gregory, the core, but instead, there wasnothing inside Frederick. The Gregory-shaped void was empty. Frederickrighted himself and hitched up his belt.

  "We think he's dead," Edward said, his rubbery features distorted into aGreek tragedy mask. "We think that Doug killed him." He pinwheeled hisround arms and then clapped his hands to his face, sobbing. Frederickput a hand on his arm. He, too, was crying.

  #

  Once upon a time, Alan's mother gave birth to three sons in threemonths. Birthing sons was hardly extraordinary -- before these threecame along, she'd already had four others. But the interval, well, thatwas unusual.

  As the eldest, Alan was the first to recognize the early signs of herpregnancy. The laundry loads of diapers and play clothes he fed into herbelly unbalanced more often, and her spin cycle became almostlackadaisical, so the garments had to hang on the line for days beforethey stiffened and dried completely. Alan liked to sit with his backagainst his mother's hard enamel side while she rocked and gurgled andchurned. It comforted him.

  The details of her conception were always mysterious to Alan. He'd beenwalking down into town to attend day school for five years, and he'dlearned all about the birds and the bees, and he thought that maybe hisfather -- the mountain -- impregnated his mother by means of somestrange pollen carried on the gusts of winds from his deep and gloomycaves. There was a gnome, too, who made sure that the long hose that ledfrom Alan's mother's back to the spring pool in his father's bellyremained clear and unfouled, and sometimes Alan wondered if the gnomedove for his father's seed and fed it up his mother's intake. Alan'slife was full of mysteries, and he'd long since learned to keep hismouth shut about his home life when he was at school.

  He attend
ed all three births, along with the smaller kids -- Bill andDonald (Charlie, the island, was still small enough to float in themiddle of their father's heart-pool) -- waiting on tenterhooks for hismother's painful off-balance spin cycle to spend itself beforereverently opening the round glass door and removing the infant within.

  Edward was fat, even for a baby. He looked like an elongated soccer ballwith a smaller ball on top. He cried healthily, though, and gave heartysuck to their mother's exhaust valve once Alan had cleaned the soap sudsand fabric softener residue from his little body. His father gustedproud, warm, blustery winds over them and their little domestic scene.

  Alan noticed that