Serena’s laughter was like musical notes. “Oh, Arnold, I do like you.”
Arnold Prosser smiled a bit uncomfortably. “Heh, about that…” His eyes darted quickly about the room, alighting on anything but the shop’s proprietor, her smooth forehead, her auburn hair. Nervously, he lifted his teacup and finished the contents in one long, even swallow. And no sooner had he done it then he realized his mistake and regretted it. Sullenly, he stared down into the empty cup, its features dwarfed by his large fingers, nothing left behind but his own private regrets.
“Can I get you a second cup?” Serena asked, knowing what his answer would be.
“No,” he said, then somewhat belatedly added, “But thanks. I should really be getting to my rounds. I’ve got some things I gotta sort out over the next couple o’ days.”
He rose awkwardly, the teacup and saucer still in his hands. He looked distractedly at them then hurriedly placed them down. “I meant to ask you, Serena. What do you know about Frederick Kohler?”
Serena stiffened, feeling the hair on her neck prickle. If he doesn’t know, at the very least, he suspects. “A psychiatrist. Local. He works uptown. Some of my customers speak of him.”
“Do they?” Arnold asked, voice edged with that dangerous potential she had sensed earlier. “He died last night. Unexpectedly.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Massive cerebral aneurysm while jerking off in his office. You heard anything about that?”
“You’re the first one to mention it,” she said, then thought that maybe she had selected her words too carefully. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s probably nothing really. I’m just trying to figure out the connection between an uptown shrink and four junkyard derelicts, also unexpectedly dead. But nothing you’ve heard, eh?”
“No, Arnold, I can’t say as I’ve heard anything about that.”
Prosser nodded, but his eyes remained curiously fixed, not shyly ducking away like before. He doesn’t know, but he knows that you know.
“I’ll show myself out, Serena. Don’t trouble yourself further.” Arnold Prosser turned suddenly and headed towards the backdoor. “I’ll be in town for a couple of days while I resolve things. I hope I can see you again.”
“I look forward to it,” she lied.
The door closed behind him and she was left alone, standing perfectly still, listening to the garbage hauler grumble down the alley and back onto the street like a lumbering dinosaur. She listened as it disappeared then she listened deeper: soft voices, hidden sounds, turning wheels, spinning gears, the pluck and strum of a thousand, thousand tiny, tightly woven threads.
Serena walked the cups and saucers back behind the counter and set them beside the sink. Then she picked up the phone and called the Riverside Dreamery, canceling tomorrow’s dairy delivery. Business was slow, she remarked, being summer and all, but could they bring her usual order the day after. The woman at Riverside Dreamery said it would be no problem and wished her a good day. Serena offered a simple good-bye.
She didn’t like to lie unnecessarily.
Then she removed all the milk and cream from the refrigerator, took their containers to the sink, and opened each one in turn, pouring their contents down the drain. When she was done, the only cream that remained was what sat in the lone pitcher on the serving station. This she placed by the large front window where it sat in the sun for the rest of the day.
CONSPIRATORS
Jack migrated to the edge of the junkyard past an enormous skeleton half-buried in the sand, only the skull, shoulders, ribs and spine still visible. It might have belonged to some kind of whale or aquatic dinosaur, or maybe something entirely unknown. He wasn’t sure, and it didn’t really matter anyway.
He ventured across the remains of the railroad tracks, ties splintered with time, rails bent and rust-pitted, twisted apart where Kreiger and the Tribe of Dust had nearly succeeded in derailing the train—the operative word being nearly; their efforts proving both exhaustive and fruitless. It didn’t matter. Not then. Not now. Reality’s machinery would not be derailed; it adapted and moved forward, leaving a wake of fools and corpses. The once endless rail that ran from the open stretch of madness across the Wasteland and back into reality had fallen into disuse and decay.
The Wasteland would reclaim it eventually the way it reclaimed everything. The skeleton. The tracks. Everything. Soon. Very soon.
Jack sat cross-legged atop the hood of an old Chevy Impala, the sky-blue finish faded and eaten away, burnt through to the white primer coating by the relentless Wasteland sun, its surface now soft cumulous clouds on a sky of metallic blue. Bare metal on parts of the hood glinted through like deep wounds. Jack sat there with his computer on his lap, using the shadow of the Buck Rogers rocket to shade the screen. The rocket was good for that, but little else: a carnival ride, or maybe just a sad roadside attraction. Ride the rocket for twenty-five cents. A distraction, but no more.
Things were moving very fast now. It would not be long.
The windmill clacked behind him, catching the wind from the unbounded chasm of madness and dreams that lay to the Café’s north side, the place of dead roads, the place where the sidewalk ended, where the last pretenses of the real world fell away to imagination.
For a moment, a sad strange moment of silence when the only sounds came from the wind and the songs playing over and over in his own head, Jack felt the sting of tears. Loss and despair, maybe, or the cautionary tears of guilt: Are you doing the right thing? What right do you have to do what you plan? You are not a god, and she is not your salvation. You are Jack Lantirn. She is Ellen Monroe. Nothing less, and nothing more.
Or was that the point? Maybe that was all there was. Man and woman. Mortality. No more illusions of forever in paradise. Maybe there was only reality at the end of all this, sensible and plain, solid and consistent. Maybe that was all there ever was.
He pushed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets until the pain was replaced by another, one more physical in nature and more easily assuaged. When he took his hands away, the pain ceased and his vision cleared.
Then he placed his fingers on the keys and let them do their work.
* * *
“I can’t believe I forgot my lunch,” Ellen said.
It was not the first time she had made the same complaint. Nicholas Dabble thought she might be trying to find a rationale through repetition. Good Luck.
“Are you sure you don’t mind me going home to get something to eat?”
Nicholas Dabble sat on a stool in the corner of the store pretending to pore over ledgers and paying Ellen only half of his attention. In truth, she held his complete and undivided notice of late in everything she said or did. Already she had apologized three separate times for having to leave him to go get some lunch, as though his world was empty without her, would cease to exist the moment she left.
As if that isn’t exactly what you’re afraid of, eh, old man?
“I assure you, I’ll be fine. Your lunch hour is your own. Frankly, I should count myself lucky that you are kind enough to spend it here at all.”
“Maybe I could get something real quick and come back,” she suggested, and Nicholas knew that it was his dour expression, his morning-long frown and pinched face, that generated such concern.
Ever since the morning—since the arrival of the Garbageman—he had been out of sorts. And his Ellen, his Ellen with a secret, with the heart and soul of Mary and the body and mind of something a little more earthly, was empathetic for him. The fucking irony of it would have made him laugh to piss fire except he wasn’t feeling very funny just know. No, not very funny at all.
“Get yourself some lunch. I’ve managed this place by myself long enough. It won’t kill me to manage it alone for an hour today.”
But it might well kill you to keep her around for too much longer, isn’t that what you’re thinking? The game’s stepped up a notch, and suddenly the stakes are a lot higher than you original
ly dealt in for. Am I wrong? Am I?
No.
“Okay, then,” she said. “I’ll be back shortly. Do you want me to pick you up anything?”
He forced a smile in her direction, her sweet, dreaming eyes that seemed eager to please—too eager. What is she hiding from me? What has happened? What is going on that I am not aware of?
You mean what else?
“Thank you, no. Have a good lunch, Ellen, and I’ll see you in a bit.”
Ellen Monroe nodded back pleasantly before pulling the door shut behind her. In the ensuing silence, Nicholas Dabble tried to remember exactly when things had gotten so far out of hand.
There was Ellen Monroe, of course. It had all started with her and that ridiculous book of hers, his sweet Ellen with her pure heart and her impure body, and her twice-weekly appointments with Dr. Frederick Kohler, another page in the story. Kohler had been busily working out his own Freudian dysfunction, all the while harboring deep-rooted issues of guilt and pleasure over his long dead cousin—yes, he knew; Nicholas Dabble knew a great many things that most thought were secrets hidden in the darkest corners of their hearts. Any shrink worth his salt would know the actions of the child he was then could not be revisited by the man he had become, not for lessons to be learned, or pleasures to be regained. But Kohler didn’t see that. Kohler was causing Ellen quite a few problems; he was perhaps even getting out of hand with her. You could hardly say it wasn’t crossing his mind.
But events were moving very fast; things were changing.
Dr. Frederick Kohler was dead.
Ellen—his sweet Ellen—was dreaming again, a wayward spirit with a renewed sense of purpose and direction. Dangerous thing, that. Sooner or later, she would realize what she was truly about, and where she needed to be. Or maybe she already knew, the notion clutching at his chest with something akin to heartburn, were the idea not so completely preposterous.
The derelict they called Mumbling Shepherd, the one who stalked Ellen from the first moment Dabble set eyes upon her, had gone into hiding, abandoning his rounds and secreting his thoughts away, making the bookstore owner wonder if he had ever truly known this strange, secretive derelict at all.
And the smell of tea, rosehips and mint, both secretive and alluring, pervaded everything. Serena’s hand was in this.
Damn her!
And the cherry on top of it all, Arnold Prosser, the Garbageman, back in town, offering up his usual diatribe about universal harmony and order, this time with five unscheduled pick-ups that were all somehow connected. Connections were Serena’s area of expertise, not his, so what started with himself and his little secret had grown suddenly and irrevocably beyond his scope and reach, snatching up players all along the way like a raging torrent crashing headlong through a dry riverbed. Prosser. Serena. Kohler. The derelicts. Mumbling Shepherd—who was obviously more than your run-of-the-mill schizophrenic wino. And there in the middle was Ellen with her strange book by her mystery writer who did not exist and whose soul had no taste but who was nevertheless connected to all of this. She walked without a care in the world, a carefree spirit moving as if one with the wind. And yet she was inextricably tied to every thread in his universe, her every move entangling him more and more, a hapless insect in a spider’s web.
Damn her!
It was pointless to note that he should have jumped off when he had the chance. The train was moving too fast now; his only option was to hang on and ride it out.
Stewing over possible futures and the chance that he might not figure in them, Nicholas Dabble was startled by a light, purposeful knock at his backdoor.
* * *
Serena waited until noon, until Ellen Monroe left to get the lunch she had forgotten to make for herself that morning because she overslept, lost in dreams of Jack Lantirn.
Her special blends never failed to do as they were intended.
She crossed the street and discretely circled behind the bookstore, her calm belying the urgency of her visit. This was something best kept between them, something that required subtlety. Nicky would understand.
The door opened, and Nicholas looked at her, his expression a mix of relief, disappointment and resignation. If there was surprise at all, it was fleeting, and ran from his face before she could completely register and relish the sight.
Not that she took any pleasure in this visit. She had allowed things to move of their own accord for too long, and events were now in danger of flying out of control.
“How long did you think you could keep her from him?” Serena asked pointedly, dispensing with greetings and polite rhetoric, both. And that bothered her more than anything else; the spiral of chaos was forcing out grace and subtlety. It was unbecoming and it would have to end. And Nicky would help her, willing or no.
“Come inside,” Nicholas Dabble replied. “We can talk about this.”
She scowled, mostly because he expected it, and stepped past him as he held the door. She walked forward into the store-proper then waited for Dabble to catch up. He still had not answered her question, and she was not about to let him off the hook. There must be some act of contrition to demonstrate that he had knowingly and stupidly engaged in this foolishness.
He was not alone in this, she reminded herself, and felt the furrow in her brow smooth slightly, making way for her own shame. It was for the sake of this that she was allowing him to atone, to make his confession, to free himself from the burden which, by rights, she could allow to sink him like the millstone that it was. Arnold Prosser would not be deterred in this matter; at least, not easily.
Besides, she liked Nicky; she liked the harmony and consistency he leant to her reality, even as he fought to overthrow these very principles. Change was inevitable, well she knew, but it saddened her all the same to see it brought on by something not of her own devising.
“When were you going to tell me about Ellen Monroe?” she asked.
“I didn’t think there was anything to tell,” Dabble said, hands fidgeting like restless rodents. “By the time I learned otherwise, I … I thought you would have already known.”
Clever, Nicky, but not good enough. “I might ask why you bothered working so hard to keep from me that which you assumed I already knew. That would be a fair question, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I would say it was rather harshly worded—”
“Do not complicate matters further with your dissecting of the truth, Nicky. You and I both know what has happened, and we both know the consequences. I don’t discount my part in all of this. I was aware, and still I chose to allow it to follow its own course. And now Arnold is in town.”
“I had hoped that this would be between him and me, and that no one else need get involved.” His eyes searched the floor, embarrassed by the admission.
“Oh, Nicky. Hope?” Serena shook her head gently. “You should know better than anyone the folly of that emotion. Is this what she’s done to you? Is that why you keep her? Because she gives you emotions you’re incapable of? Do you lick them off her like a lover’s sweat, or does this actually ooze from your own pores.”
Dabble raised his eyes, indignant. “Do not judge me for that, Serena. You have not the right. I may have been wrong to try and keep her, certainly for trying to conceal her when I knew what she represented, but I am not wrong about her. Let us be very clear on that matter. She is a conundrum, and you know it as well as I. You have felt it. You have tasted it. Do not lie to me and pretend otherwise. I can smell your handiwork in this soup as well.” Serena turned a little; not much, but enough to let Dabble know that she had conceded a certain validity to his claim. “So now Arnold Prosser is here, and he is asking questions about things that have tromped into his domain, and you and I are both to blame for not having acted earlier. Is my assessment of the situation fair?”
“You forget yourself, Nicky,” Serena remarked coolly. “Arnold may have questions that I can answer, should I choose, but it was you who tried to hide Ellen from him. And it is you wh
o will be held accountable. Make no mistake; it is you standing on the gallows this day.”
“You know what he will do with her,” Dabble said, turning and moving a step away. “She upsets his order, his precious universal harmony—
“Be careful the tone you use in that regard, Nicholas,” Serena warned.
“—And he has only one means of restoring that balance. You know as well as I, he is an unimaginative animal, single-minded of purpose and brutal in execution. And you also know what the impact will be on this world if he is allowed to do this.”
And there is that, she thought. If Arnold does what is in his nature to do, he will not restore the harmony to the universe as planned. Instead, it will be shaken so savagely as to be unrecognizable. His efforts to rectify the situation would rebound on him a thousand-fold and end in catastrophe.
“You are correct that Arnold’s methods are too … indelicate for this situation,” she conceded. “In trying to fix things, he would only make them worse by such a degree as to make all that has gone before seem trivial. This situation requires subtlety, a trait not in Arnold’s nature.”
But subtlety was Serena’s handmaiden, and Nicholas knew that. Serena hated him just then, not for what he did, but for being right about doing it, about manipulating them all into this situation; she hated being bested in her own arena. But if she could not hold Arnold Prosser to blame for doing what was in his nature to do, she could hardly blame Nicholas Dabble for the same. He was a manipulator and a conniver, a keeper and user of secrets, but he was true to himself.
Serena let out an exhausted sigh. “It seems that we are at odds with one another, and only disaster will come of it. We should meet to discuss this, all three of us, before it gets completely out of hand.”
Nicholas looked surprised; this was not the outcome he had been hoping for. Good, she thought. If he imagined he could get away with causing all of this then slipping quietly back into the shadows, he was very much mistaken. You put your hand in this, Nicky, she thought. Either gnaw it off, or stay for the duration. “You’ll have to make yourself available. I’ll let you know when.”
The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) Page 28
