The Gypsy

by Stephen Brust

What did I say that for? he wondered. Because I wanted to, came the answer. "Maybe your friend will come back. Maybe she's looking for you." He knew it would be useless to tell her to go home.

  "I don't have any more money for you," she said in a small voice.

  He shook his head. "That was not me you saw."

  She seemed offended. "Yes, it was. You were on the other side of the park, wearing a red coat and playing your tambourine. I put the dollar right in your pocket."

  "No,I don't have a-" he stopped, then her words suddenly made sense to him. A tambourine? Raymond! A sudden joy lilted from his fiddle, and she stepped back, startled by its strength. Then it made her smile, and she was pretty, he could see her prettiness through the cracks in her thick makeup.

  She moved closer, standing almost in his shadow,the smell of her perfume thick in the night. He took his fiddle through a sweet little waltz and saw her comforted by it.

  "Tell me of this tambourine player," he said.

  She frowned, as if wondering if he were teasing her.

  Then she said, "You were playing a tambourine,sitting on a bench, a bus-stop bench. Near Pine, I think."

  "It wasn't me," he repeated. "But perhaps it was my brother. Please tell me about him."

  She blinked. "Well, he played for us, and I gave him a dollar. He was just," she struggled for words."Really nice." She paused, looking up and down the decayed street. "Like you're nice," she said suddenly, honestly. But the next words came after too long a pause, and he knew they were not new with her. Probably, like the clothes, something borrowed from Chrissy. "I've always liked men older than me.They me.They much more sure of themselves."

  He looked at her, letting all his years ride in his eyes. He expected her to falter, but she edged closer,as if drawn to him. She wrapped her arms around herself and huddled deeper into her thin shirt. He turned away and tried to ignore her standing at his back, found that he couldn't. He could feel her sheltering behind him. He glanced back and she looked directly into his eyes. All her fears looked out at him for an instant, and then she looked aside, a modest casting down of eyes that he had not seen in many years. Daniel sighed. Despite all her silly pretenses and false boldness, she was afraid. He'd have to help her.

  He felt her edge closer. This time he turned slightly as he kept on playing, so he could watch her and still see the street. She'd got her courage up again, for this time she met his gaze squarely. Deliberately, she dropped her arms, set her hands on her hips. Thrust one hip out a little, and cocked her head. It reminded him of the pose of a store mannequin; nothing natural about it, no reason to stand that way except to display clothes or body. Especially not on a chill night like this. He deliberately dropped his eyes to her body, then met her gaze again. She almost stepped back, but when he made no other advance, her face grew puzzled. He suspected none of this was going the way her friend had told her it would. She was supposed to taunt, he was supposed to react, then she got to repulse him. A dangerous sort of game for young girls to play.

  It was cold tonight. He could feel her shiver. Not just from the cold, but from this game of dares she played against herself. She challenged herself, to see if she dared face the danger after she'd created it. He didn't see any way she could win.

  "My name's Lore lei," she told him coquettishly,and he heard part of the truth in the name. When he made no response, she twitched her young hips kittenishly and moved closer, so close that he nearly brushed against her each time he drew the bow across the strings.

  "I'm Daniel," he told her, putting no more into the words than a polite exchange of names. A man in a passing car called to the whores on the corner. Lore lei flinched, clutched at his elbow for a second, and then snatched her fingers back.

  Her cheeks, already reddened with cold, darkened further with embarrassment. She had lost face before him; he sensed a sudden hardening of her determination. She'd show him. He tried not to sigh. She took a deep breath, steeling herself, and chose a new line. "I really like your hair," she said. "The blackness, the way it curls. And I like your mustache. I wish more men grew them. I like men that are really,you know, masculine."

  He knew what really masculine was. He was willing to bet she didn't.

  She giggled, nervous and high, pushed herself deeper into her game. "I always wonder, though,how you kiss through a mustache like that. Know what I mean?" Teasing invitation.

  Again, he did and she didn't. He glanced at her.She her.Sheclose now that when his arm moved with the bow, it brushed her upper arm. He breathed out heavily, trying to clear her perfume from his head. So young, this one. He watched her body moving gracefully, unconsciously, to his music. She reminded him of something, of someone so long ago it seemed like another life. Maybe it had been. Had he ever really been that young boy, sneaking away from the fire to follow the girl to the edge of the woods and then into them, or were they just the memories of the music?So long ago. The sweet stirring in his loins was like an old ache, and the music went warm with longing,not for this painted little girl, but for a young girl and boy who had kissed and touched, how may lifetimes ago?

  The music touched her and the night filled up her eyes, edging her one step closer to womanhood, reminding her of something that as yet she had no memories of. The next man who passed sensed it.Danieit. Danield him no heed when he'd slowed down and looked at the whores on the corner, but then he noticed the girl. The man watched her for a moment,a smile quirking the corners of his mouth, then he walked over, threw a twenty dollar bill down into the fiddle case and jerked his head at her. Daniel heard her breath catch as she edged behind him.

  "Your mistake, friend," Daniel said mildly, and nodded at the money, hoping the man would just pick it up and leave.

  Instead his smile changed to a scowl. He stared at the girl, started to walk on, then stopped and stared again. Daniel wished she wouldn't look at the man so. It was the fear in her eyes that was drawing him,that made him lick his mouth wet and ask, "How much, then, damnit?"

  Daniel looked at him: husky, but not too husky;short, reddish hair beneath his cap; wearing a brown vest of some synthetic material that must be warmer than it looked. Daniel shook his head slowly. He didn't want this. His fiddle might get hurt. He stopped playing and lowered it slowly, hoping he'd be able to set it down gently if he had to. "It's a mistake, friend. She isn't for sale, this one. They are,"he said, and gestured toward the whores on the corner, feeling diminished but not knowing what else to do.

  The man didn't move. His eyes went colder. Daniel could almost feel the man's toes curling in his cowboy boots as he tried to decide whether this gypsy was pushing him around, and whether this girl was worth fighting for. The girl moved, gripping the back of Daniel's coat. He felt both her fear and the man's lust growing. Carefully he set the fiddle down in its case,put the bow in its holder, and closed the case. He held out the twenty toward the man, but he slapped it aside. "Damnit, don't fuck with me. Give you fifty for her."

  Daniel tucked the money into the man's shirt pocket. "We are leaving now," he said softly, and stooped to pick up his fiddle case. The man swung at him as he did, and Daniel rose, his knee coming up into the man's crotch as he pushed him backwardbackwards. He parking meter and stumbled into the street.Astreet.A car blared its horn and splashed oily water over him.

  "You sum bitch, I'll kill you, I swear I'll kill you,"the man yelled, but Daniel had his fiddle under one arm and the girl on the other and was walking swiftly away.

  The girl was trembling and clutching his arm; he could feel the soft warmth of her through his sleeve.Hsleeve. He aim around her and walked faster. Three blocks later her trembling was getting worse. She kept tripping on her shoes. Poor little thing. He stopped at the mouth of an alley, set down his fiddle and removed his coat. He wrapped it around her, turning the collar up around her bare neck. But as he did so in all innocence, she stepped into his arms, turned her face up to his and kissed him.

  Despite himself, his arms closed around her. She was so young,
so much innocence, so much wonder,everything was new to her, a child, a woman, and for an instant he believed he could just take her and go somewhere, start again, a life that was not filled with omens and destinies, a life of babies and meadow grass and traveling the land, always as young as she was. A life that belonged to him alone, that was not owed to his brother. Her mouth was very soft in its inexperience, and the cloying perfume seemed suddenly, dizzying sweet. The kiss she had started became something he taught her. And, when that should have been all, she began to respond-to hold him closer than she should have, to feel desires he had no business bringing out in her, or she in him,and yet he knew her passion was as real as his, which should have frightened him more than it did. And it should have frightened her much more than it seemed to.

  Her hand went to her mouth when he stepped back from her, touching her lips as if still feeling the brush of his mustache.

  "So. Now you see. That's how you do it," he told her, and heard the pleased silliness in his own voice.Shvoice. Sheup at him, asking for more, her eyes very bright and shining; shining for him. He felt intoxicated with the girl, the night, and even the perfume.perfume.His thoughts reeled through her scent. She fit under his arm as snugly as his fiddle fit under his chin.Somchin.Somethingously like romance swelled his soul.He soul.He aloud, and when he did, her arm came around his waist. They walked together, he didn't care where, and then they were outside a cafe.

  "I didn't get any dinner," she said, so tentatively that his heart broke over her hunger.

  "I'll feed you," he promised, and opened the door,not caring that he hadn't a cent in his pockets. This was not a night to worry about practical things, it was time to be young again.

  They sat down in a booth together, side by side,Lore lei near the window, and he thought he had never seen anything as lovely as this girl wrapped in his weathered green coat. He took a napkin from the dispenser, and gently wiped some of the paint from her face. Her skin beneath it was beautiful, and she sat still beneath his touch.

  Someone set glasses of water on the table. "Ready to order?" asked a redheaded waitress, and he suddenly realized she had been standing there for sometime. He looked at his Lore lei, smiling encouragement.

  "Burger, fries, and a Coke," she said without hesitation.

  "Coffee," he added, and didn't care about the waitress's grim disapproval as she turned away.

  "Are you warmer now, little sparrow?" he asked her. She nodded shyly, and looked down at the tabletop. He had to put his fingers under her chin and lift her face so he could see those eyes again, and when he did, he had to brush his lips across her forehead,because he couldn't stand not to.

  NOVEMBER SIXTEENTH, EVENING

  The city lights, they hurt my eyes

  And the noises make me wince.

  The Coachman left me here

  Which I've regretted ever since.

  "RAVEN, OWL, AND I"

  There was a raw edge in the wind, threatening as a knife, Raymond walked a little faster, reached up with his hand and held his collar a little closer around his neck. Another twenty steps, and he couldn't deny it anymore. The coldness and the wind weren't all he was feeling. The chill was in his soul, as if a strong wall were falling away, leaving him exposed.

  He put his hand to his chest, felt his wrapped tambourine snug there. He thumped it lightly, felt rather than heard the muted jingle of the zils. As if in counterpoint, his stomach growled. Food and shelter,that's what he needed this night. Something was keeping him from the Coachman and his brothersbrothers. Bute shrugged. Perhaps the best way to fight it was to ignore it. Some food and a night's sleep would leave him better prepared. He had not eaten in sixteen hours, nor slept in twenty-nine.

  On Mount Falcon, when the sun went down, and Denver was no more than a greasy glow on the horizon, the darkness of the night had been a clean and comforting thing. Even when it was blackest and the stars pressed down on the hillside, he had not felt threatened by the night. He could lie in his bedroll and listen to the life in the scrubby brush lands around him, scale on gravelly soil as a snake went by, the wicket, wicket, wicket of owl wings, the tiny pattering as the hunted mouse sought shelter.

  Here it was never night, and the colored lights were like bulbous tumors on the outsides of the buildings. Raymond felt blinded as any owl would be, felt battered by their insistent flickering s, EAT EAT EAT one nagged him, and he felt his mouth stretch in a hard smile. That was exactly what he hoped to do. Soon.ThiSoon. Thiswing wind was cutting through him.Warmhim.Warmthlittle food would be good; he couldn't be oblivious to such things, as his youngest brother was. He wondered, and not for the first time, what it would be like to trade places, to have the power, and the burden that went with it. No matter. His younger brother had it, and it was up to Raymond to find him.If hhim.Ifthers were anywhere in this city, they'd forgotten everything they'd ever known about leaving signs; he'd found no symbols scratched in the dirt near a crossroads, no broken twigs or bits of string to guide him.

  Well, not precisely true, he supposed. There were other kinds of signs. Sometimes he thought he could feel his brothers, that he would step around the next corner and there they'd be, waiting for him, laughing to see him. But at times like this there was just emptiness around him, as he walked through the not-light, not-dark of the city.

  Hungry. Time to eat.

  He was turning toward a bar door, wondering if it were the sort of bar that kept dishes of nuts and crackers on the tables when a car pulled up to the curb behind him.

  "Hey you!" called a girl's excited voice. "Hey,gypsy-man!" Then louder, "Hey, gypsy-man! Wanta party with me?"

  He stepped closer to the big car with a grill like silver teeth. He tried to make out the girl's face in the night's deceptive grey wash. Yes, he knew her. Earlier, she and her friend had stopped to hear him play.Butplay. But been younger then; the night lights had aged her. Her breasts swung free under a black tee shirt with a garish picture on it as she leaned out the window to him. Earlier today, the wind had blown her curly hair into appealing disarray. Now it stood up stiffly around her face, reminding him of the way a horse's coat looked after lather had dried on it.Makeuit. Makeupd all her features, distorting her face into mouth and eyes and lashes, everything wide and wet. He took another step, trying to see where she had gone behind the paint. Which was real and which the lie? His brother, the Raven, would have known at once; he could always tell semblance from actuality. He, too, might have known, he thought, if it were real night: prey or not prey. But he didn't, so it was far better to be safe. And yet, he remembered what the Dove had always said about chance meetings. He would be careful, but he wouldn't walk away just yet.

  She opened the door of the car, slid over and patted the seat invitingly. "C'mon, gypsy-man, come Join the party."

  There were two in back and three in front. There was a young man with a tattoo of a cross on his cheek in the back seat with her. His head was thrown back,lolling on the neck rest. His eyes were closed, his mouth loose, but Raymond did not think he slept.Twslept. Twoys were in the front seat, with another girl wedged between them. The driver had a cigarette dangling low from his mouth, and the good leather of his coat was draped with chain. The other boy was occupied by the girl between them. Her shirt was open, and as the boy nuzzled her breasts she stared out the window over his oddly cut hair. There was no expression at all on her face.

  "Come on, man," the girl in the back seat urged him. "Remember me? We gave you a dollar earlier today. My name's Chrissy. We been looking all over town for you. We got something for you from a friend."

  Could this be a Sign? Yes. Or a Trap. The Raven or the Dove would have known at once. "Who?" Raymond asked.

  Chrissy smiled. "Get in, and I'll tell you, gypsy man. But here's a hint. They told me to watch for an Owl."

  A moment more he hesitated. His brothers were not the only ones who knew him by that name. But the night was cold and the car was warm, and whatever he learned, whether of his brothers or of H
er,must be useful. And that, after all, was what he did:watch, wait, and learn. He edged into the car as the girl giggled delightedly. She pushed the boy further into the corner, as if he were just so much bedding.bedding.She reached past Raymond and pulled the door shut,then continued to lean against him. The car pulled away from the curb.

  "What do you have for me?" he asked, pushing the girl's hands gently away from his chest. But she only laughed and reached over to tap his tambourine through his jacket.

  "Man's got music in his heart," she told the driver,and laughed again, in a way that struck Raymond as witless. The driver was watching Raymond in the rearview mirror. Raymond met his eyes squarely,asking no questions and telling him nothing. After a moment the boy nodded, as if confirming something.

  Paper rustled as he passed a bagged bottle over his shoulder. "Warm up first, man," the boy said. "Then we'll give you the message."

  "No, thank you," said Raymond.

  "Suit yourself," he said, and drank from it.

  "I am looking for some friends," Raymond told the driver's.

  The girl was leaning on him, pawing at his tambourine through his jacket, but he ignored her. She did not smell as if she'd been drinking, but she did not act sober either. "Let us be your friends," she offered, shrilly. She reached up to stroke his hair. He leaned away from her.

  "Knock it off, Chrissy," The driver growled. "Man doesn't wanta be groped, he just wants his message.message.So to him already."

  "Yeah. Sure I will. But, hey, gypsy-man, you hungry? We got some pizza here, somewhere, I think."She reached to the back window ledge, came up with a greasy white box. She opened it for him, presenting him with cheese and sausage melted over bread. He smelled the peppers and grease, and his stomach growled loudly. "Or you wanna burger? We got a burger, here, somewhere, in case you wanted a burger. Hey, Jer, where did we put the burger?"

  "Chrissy-" The driver's voice was edged as broken glass. He glanced at Raymond in the mirror, and tried to smile. "Now be nice to the man. Give him some food and the message."