Bills Williams moves over to stand by the table. Jim and McCoy look at him and shrug.
“How you doing, wordsmith?” says Bills.
Front-Page shakes his head. “Not well,” he says, the words sticking partway out.
McCoy and Jim take their seats and pull their chairs into the table. Edgar says to Jack Fedogan to bring over a pitcher of beer and four glasses. When he sees Bills Williams pulling another chair across, he tells Jack to make that five glasses.
Over at the table, McCoy asks what was bad luck.
“Bad luck,” Front-Page agrees enthusiastically.
“No,” McCoy says, raising his voice like he’s talking to someone who speaks a different language to the one he uses, separating out the words. “What. Did. You. Mean. About. Bad. Luck. When. You. Shook. My. Hand?”
Front-Page nods. “Bad luck.” And then he leans forward, raps the table with his knuckles, puts his head on his arm and commences to let out the most fearful noise.
“He’s really lost the plot,” McCoy Brewer observes.
Edgar Nornhoevan looks down at his hands and notes, with some surprise, that they’re shaking. “I’m not even sure he recognized me . . . or any of us,” he says, more to himself than to anyone else.
Jim Leafman taps Edgar on the shoulder and nods in the direction of Front-Page McGuffin. “He having some kind of attack?”
“He’s crying,” Bills Williams says quietly.
“Crying?” says McCoy. “That’s crying?”
The sound that the one-time star reporter of the New York Times is making is a noise that’s a little bit like nails being dragged across a blackboard, a little bit like the busted air conditioning in Edgar’s apartment, and a little bit like the whine of the loose fan-belt on Jim Leafman’s aged Plymouth. And with every new expulsion, Front-Page’s back arches like a mad cat.
Bills reaches across and takes hold of Front-Page’s hand, raises his eyebrows. Then he shifts his hold to the wrist.
“He’s cold isn’t he?” says McCoy. “He’s one sick man.”
“He’s worse than that,” says Bills.
Edgar frowns. “What’s worse than being sick?” he asks.
Front-Page lifts his head and that eyelid has stuck down again. He lifts his hand and adjusts it, this time a little easier. “I do . . . I do remember you guys,” he says, the words sticking here and there, coming out croaked, and then raps the table with his knuckles.
“You eating, Front-Page? You gotta eat you know,” says Edgar, sounding like he’s talking to a child. “Keeps your strength up.”
“Not hungry,” says Front-Page, rapping his knuckles on the table again.
“Ask him when he last ate something?” Jim whispers to Edgar.
“Two weeks, maybe three,” says Front-Page without waiting for Edgar to pass on the question. He raps his knuckles again. “Don’t remember. Just remember the pain.”
Edgar says, “Pain?”
Front-Page slaps a hand heavily against his chest. “Pain,” he says, “right here. Fell over in the street . . . down near Battery Park. Late night. Nobody around.” He pauses and makes a wheezing sound. When he speaks again, the lips barely come apart, cracked and discoloured. “Just lay there for a time. Thinking of Betty.”
“Oh God,” Edgar says, hanging his head.
“Then what happened?” asks Bills.
“Pain went away. Got up . . . went somewhere.”
“Where’d you go, Front-Page? Did you go home?”
Front-Page looks at Jim and tries to shrug. “Doanmumber.”
“He doesn’t remember,” Bills translates for the frowning Edgar. He hands his glass of beer to Front-Page and watches him take a long slug.
Jack Fedogan strolls across and places the pitcher of frothy beer on the table, puts a glass in front of each person. “How’s he doing?”
“Not good,” says Edgar.
“He’s worse than not good,” says Bills. “He’s dead.”
Nobody speaks.
Front-Page looks from one wide-eyed face to another while in the background, from Jack Fedogan’s bar speakers, Ellis and Branford Marsalis play a haunting version of “Maria”.
“I think,” says Front-Page, “he’s right.” The words come out straighter and coherent and he looks as surprised at that as everyone else looks as a result of Bills Williams’s revelation. “It happens sometimes,” Front-page says. He gives the table a single knock with his knuckles.
“It happens sometimes that people die and walk into a bar to see their old friends?” Edgar says, his voice getting higher with each word.
Front-Page shakes his head. “My voice,” he says. “Sometimes it sounds almost normal. The beer helps.”
“But, yes, Edgar, it does happen sometimes that people walk around after they’ve . . . passed on,” Bills says. “I seen it once before, down in New Orleans.” He reaches across to Front-Page’s open shirt-neck, pulls a silver chain there until he exposes a circular medallion depicting an old man carrying someone on his shoulders. “Saint Christopher,” Bills says.
“Who’s he?” asks Jim Leafman.
“Patron Saint of travellers,” Front-Page says. “Protects anyone on the road . . . looks after them.”
“Why did you not shake McCoy’s hand?” Bills asks. “When you came over to the table.”
“Bad luck to shake hands across a table,” Front-Page answers. “Everyone knows that.” He looks around at the blank faces. “Don’t they?”
“Why’d you keep rapping the table,” Edgar asks, making it sound like he already knows the answer.
“Knocking wood,” Front-Page says. “Keeps from tempting fate.”
McCoy Brewer says, “Keeps from tempting fate to do what?”
Front-Page shrugs. “From exercising irony. You say something is this way – the way you want it to be – then you knock wood to make sure it keeps on being that way.”
“You very superstitious?” Bills asks.
Front-Page seems to be settling into his chair more now, though he keeps flexing his mouth, opening it wide like he’s in pain. “No more than the next guy,” he says.
“Tell us about Betty,” Bills says to him.
Front-Page McGuffin visibly winces. He closes his eyes and shakes his head slowly. “She’s not here anymore, Bills . . . and I miss her. I surely do miss her.”
“I know you do,” Bills says. “Tell us about the time she was in the hospital. Is that when the superstitions started?”
“I guess so.”
“What did you do?” Jack Fedogan asks, crouching down by the table. He’s checked the counter to make sure nobody’s waiting for drinks. In the background, the Marsalis father-and-son team is playing “Sweet Lorraine”.
“She had a tumour.”
“I know that,” Bills says. “Tell us how the superstitions started.”
“Number 13,” Front-Page says. “They wanted to put her in Room 13. I remember now. That’s when it started.”
“You weren’t superstitious before then?” Jim asks.
“They – the doctors – they told me wasn’t anything going to help Betty now. Then this other one, nice guy, he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says to me, ‘You can try praying’.” Front-Page leans onto the table, knocks it a couple of times, and continues.
“So I tell him I’m not a religious man. Wouldn’t know how to even begin talking to God . . . even if I thought he did exist. And this guy, he looks at me with this sad smile, and he says to me, ‘That’s all you have now, Mr McGuffin. That’s all your wife has.’ He says to me, ‘Whyn’t you give it a try?’
“So, that night – the first night she was in hospital – I got down on my knees in the bedroom, right alongside her side of the bed, and I prayed. I cried like a baby – and that’s something else I don’t do – and I prayed.” He raps the table and shifts his weight in the chair, looking like he’s uncomfortable.
“Next day, I go into the hospital and they tell me Betty’s
had a good night. But they tell me they’re moving her into another room.” He looks across at Bills and gives a single nod. “Room 13.
“‘I take it you’re not superstitious, Mr McGuffin?’ this nurse says to me, all sweetness and light. Anyway, I think to myself for a minute; and I think about how Betty has had a better night and how – maybe coincidentally, but hell, who knows? – how I did all that praying. And I wonder if maybe it did have an effect. And if it did, how maybe I should try to avoid anything that could work against her. So I say to the nurse that I don’t want Betty in Room 13.”
“What did they say?”
Front-Page looks aside at Edgar and says, “They did it. They found her another room. They weren’t happy about it, but they found her another room.”
Edgar snorts a Way to go! snort, chuckles and pats Front-Page on the hand, which feels very cold just lying there on the table.
“Then,” Front-Page says, sounding kind of tired, “everything started to get really intense.
“I went home and started to think about all the little superstitions and sayings folks use to get them through one day into the next. Totems and talismans they employed to keep them well and happy.”
Suddenly remembering the pitcher, Jack gets to his feet and pours beer into the glasses.
Watching the beer froth up, Front-Page says, “I knew a few but I wondered how many there really were . . . wondered if I really went to town on these things that maybe Betty would be . . .” He lets his voice trail off and takes a long slug of beer.
“So,” he says, setting the glass back on the table, “I went down to the library and I read up on them. You wouldn’t believe how many books there are on superstition.” He takes hold of the medallion about his neck and rubs it gently between his thumb and forefinger. “Got this from a book titled Dictionary of Saints by D. Attwater, 1965. Got another one from M. Trevelyan’s Folk-lore of Wales, 1909.”
“What was that one?” McCoy asks.
“That told how a posthumous child could charm away a tumour by putting his or her hands over the appropriate spot.”
“What the hell’s a—”
“It’s a child born after its mother has died,” Bills Williams says to Jack Fedogan.
“You found one of these . . . posthumous children?” Edgar says.
Front-Page nods. “Guy in the newsroom knew somebody.” He waves his hand. “You don’t want to know the details. It’s a depressing story. Anyway, he arranges for this guy’s daughter to visit Betty with me.” There’s a strange sound from Front-Page’s throat that could be a chuckle, although there’s no sign of amusement on his face. “Betty didn’t know what the hell was going on – she was in a lot of pain, mind you. So I kept her talking while this girl – she was a woman actually . . . the tragic events surrounding her birth having taken place some time ago – she rubs Betty’s stomach.
“And, you know . . . I think it helped her. Course, it could just’ve been the rubbing that helped but I didn’t think so. Anyway, I wasn’t taking any chances. So the girl came with me to the hospital another couple of times and then she didn’t want to come any more. I can’t say as how I blamed her. Hospitals can be downbeat places at the best of times and I was bad company to go with.”
McCoy takes a slug of beer and rests his glass on the table. “So what did you do then?”
“By this time I had gotten so many of these folk-stories, sayings, homilies, and who knows what else that I was taking a whole bunch of stuff in there every day . . . and I was visiting with Betty morning, afternoon and evening, each time with something else to slip under her pillow or in her bedside cabinet.”
“Things like what?” Jim asks.
“Oh, good luck coins – pennies with her year of birth printed on them – taped-up saltpot, a model of a black cat, piece of wood from an altar, rabbit’s foot . . . there were so many I kind of lost track what I was doing there for a while.” Front-Page shakes his head and altar the table. “And I had started doing things by myself, too.”
Jack is back down on the floor and he shifts his weight from one knee to the other. “Like what?” he asks.
“Knocking wood all the time,” he says, rapping the table to demonstrate, even though no demonstration was necessary, “spitting when I saw the back of a mail-van, spinning around when I inadvertently walked across cracks in paving stones, moving one hand in an arc to join the other hand when I saw a nun or a priest – you’d be surprised how many nuns and priests you see when you’re doing this kind of stuff.”
“It’s a wonder they didn’t lock you up,” Jim observes and then winces when Edgar kicks him in the shin.
“That’s okay,” Front-Page says, and he raps the table just to make sure.
“But Betty . . . Betty didn’t make it,” he says quietly.
There’s a world of regret in that simple statement and, even though Front-Page’s voice is low, the two guys at the bar look around, just for a second, not knowing why they’re looking around but simply responding to the sudden sense of loss that permeates the bar and mingles with the sound of Art Pepper’s alto on “Why Are We Afraid?”.
Edgar and McCoy and Bills and Jack and Jim just sit there, taking it in turns to nod, Edgar and Bills squeezing Front-Page’s shoulders.
Front-Page shakes his head. “By then, I was too heavily into this stuff to back off. Even tried to change her burial day.”
“Why?” asks Jack.
“I read that, in County Cork in Ireland, it’s bad luck to be buried on a Monday and that’s when . . . when Betty was scheduled. They wouldn’t change it. Said that it wasn’t as simple as just changing days. I was devastated. There was a whole lot of spitting and knocking and turning the night after I found out, I can tell you that for nothing! But then I read someplace else that it was okay to be buried on a Monday so long as at least one sod was turned on the grave-site a day or two beforehand. So I went down to Lawnswood and dug over a small section. Then I was . . . heh, I was going to say happy – I was placated.”
“How come you never told us any of this?” Edgar asks. “We saw you the night after Betty died and you seemed . . . well, you seemed normal. I mean, you were upset – hell, that was obvious – but I didn’t know about any of this other stuff.” He turns to the others. “Anyone know about this?”
There were several shakes of heads and a few grunted “No’s”.
“Well, I’m pleased to hear that,” Front-Page says. “I tried to keep it to myself . . . though I’m pleased that nobody happened to see me when I could see a nun!”
Sometimes it happens that a conversation just naturally takes a pause and this one does right here. A time to take a drink and to watch the guy at the bar throw a couple of bills on the counter before making his way to the stairs and up to the waiting streets of New York; a time to nod to the music, like you were listening to it all along; a time to take a drink.
“So,” Jack Fedogan says, his voice kind of lilting, phrasing the question like he’s asking what Front-Page thinks to the new album by Jimmy Smith, “what took you down to Battery Park?”
“Just walking,” comes the reply. “I spent the past three years just walking . . . walking and thinking . . . and rapping, and spitting, and turning, and who knows what else. And I just fell right over, felt like a truck ran over my chest. Then I got up. Went somewhere . . . like I say, I don’t remember. Wasn’t until a couple of days later, after I’d stopped eating and sleeping and drinking, I felt for my pulse and there wasn’t one. Put my hand on my chest—” He puts his hand on his chest to demonstrate. “—No heartbeat.”
Front-Page opens his mouth wide. The inside is grey and dry and, just for a second, before he turns his head away, Jim Leafman thinks he sees something wriggle across the back of Front-Page’s mouth, down near the top of the throat. “No saliva,” Front-Page explains. “Gets so I can hardly open my mouth sometimes. The drink helps though . . . I think,” he says as he takes a slug of beer and swishes it around his mouth, then s
wallows.
“So why’d you come here?” Jack asks. “I mean, why’d you wait until tonight?”
“Well, for a time there, I didn’t want to see anybody who would remind me of what I had and don’t have any more. Kept myself to myself. Lived out on the streets . . . down in the subway tunnels sometime. Met some strange people. Met some nice people, too. It’s like I say, there’s good and bad everywhere.
“Then, when I’d . . . you know; when I’d died . . . I met this guy in an alley and I told him pretty much everything I just told you guys. And he says – after we’d established the fact that I was dead . . . and he was mighty surprised at that, I can tell you – he says maybe I need to do it again.”
“Huh?” says Jim, a thin trickle of beer dribbling down his chin. “Do it again? Do what again?”
“Die.”
The five men stare at Front-Page McGuffin wondering if they heard him right.
“He says to me – this guy I met – he says that maybe, every once in a while, it doesn’t take the first time and I need to do it again. So—”
Edgar Nornhoevan shakes his head and pushes his chair back. “Hey, do I want to hear this?”
“No,” says Front-Page. “It’s okay. Really.
“So, we think of ways I can do it. He says, why don’t I throw myself under a car or onto the subway under a train. Now I don’t want to do that because it’ll maybe mess up the driver of that car or train. But I say, yes, I’ll try the subway track because it’s electrified, but only when the train has been through.
“So we go down onto 42nd Street, buy the token, the whole business, and we wait until a train comes through. Then when it leaves, I climb down onto the track and lie against the third rail. Nothing happens. I mean, I took hold of that thing and there was nothing. By the time I’m climbing out, commuters are coming onto the platform for the next train. They look at me and the other guy like we’re scum of the earth and we high-tail it out of there as quickly as we can, with folks shouting after us, calling us names.
“So then he suggests I go up somewhere high and jump down. This sounds like a good idea to him – I mean, what could be more final, right? – but I always had this fear of heights and, well, I just couldn’t do it. And another thing was that if it didn’t work, and I was still conscious but with every bone in my body mushed to pulp, I wouldn’t even be able to get around.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20 Page 13
