Sleepeasy

by Wright, T. M.

  Sam reappeared. He was in the same position, at the bow of the boat that he'd been in before he jumped. And he was still grinning. "I was right," he said. "My God, I was right."

  "What did you see?" Harry asked.

  "See?"

  "When you went in? Did you see anything?"

  Sam's grin faded. "Yeah, I did," he said. "I saw the bottom of a boat."

  "This boat?"

  "I don't think so. It was bigger. It was white."

  The ensign on the Coast Guard cruiser motioned frantically for the cruiser's pilot to cut the engines. The pilot obeyed and the cruiser came to a very slow halt in the still, cold water. The ensign called, "Come around, dead slow."

  "Did you see something?" the pilot called back.

  The ensign nodded. "I think so. A man."

  The pilot brought the cruiser around very slowly, aware that if there was a man in the water, the cruiser itself was a hazard to him now.

  The ensign ran from port to starboard, looking for the man he'd seen, however briefly, just below the surface. A grinning man. A man with red hair.

  Kennedy Whelan's partner, Ian, was pissed off. "Goddammit, Ken, would you get your car phone fixed! I've been trying to reach you for forty-five minutes."

  Whelan sat at his desk, put his cup of coffee down and patted his pocket to see if he had a cigar. He didn't. He frowned. "C'mon, Ian," he grumbled, "you know I need my quiet time." He grinned sardonically.

  "Yeah, yeah, don't we all." Whelan had hung his green sports jacket and his overcoat on a coat rack nearby. Ian retrieved them both, handed them to him. "Ken, someone else has gotten their throat cut."

  "Wonderful," Whelan said. "Maybe it's the beginning of a trend."

  "Yeah, maybe it is," Ian said.

  Sydney needed a new tie. The one he'd worn here was beginning to attract attention. There were four diagonal red slashes on it, and although only the desk clerk at the Ritz Carlton had actually said anything, other people had given the tie curious, incredulous looks, as if they weren't sure they were seeing what they knew they were seeing—a wide, silver tie with diagonal slashes of blood on it.

  He had taken the tie off, folded it neatly, put it in an inside pocket of his black suit jacket and was browsing in the men's department at Bergdorf Goodman's.

  A clerk came up and asked if he could be of service.

  Sydney was fingering ties on a revolving rack. They were in various tasteful, understated shades and widths. "My good man," Sydney said to the clerk, "these won't do at all. I need a wide tie. Don't you have any wide ties? And it must be silver. These"—he flipped a few of the tastefully shaded ties with his fingers—"make no statement whatever. Do you understand?"

  The clerk was offended, not only by what Sydney was saying but by his odd smell too. "Perhaps Woolworth's could be of greater service to you, sir. Or Kmart, perhaps."

  "Are those establishments close by?" Sydney asked.

  The clerk grimaced and said, "I'm sure they're close enough," and then fluttered away.

  Sydney thought, He's next.

  A Stranger's Dreams

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Amelia watched sullenly as a heavyset, bearded man in his mid-forties, dressed in a Ren and Stimpy T-shirt and a pair of white boxer shorts, trudged from the lake. He looked confused, at first, though only marginally so. It was as if he'd merely gotten on the wrong bus and wasn't sure where the next stop was.

  Reluctantly, Amelia waved at him. He caught sight of her, hesitated, waved back. He was a good fifty yards away from where she sat, on her park bench. "Where the hell am I?" he called.

  Amelia sighed. Silver Lake was being overrun. She stood, made her way down a set of cement steps to the beach and waited at the bottom for him to reach her.

  When he did, he extended his hand. She shook it and said, "My name's Amelia, and I guess I'm Silver Lake's official welcoming committee." She attempted a congenial smile, but it came off badly.

  "Jack," said the heavyset man.

  Suddenly, they heard a scream.

  Amelia jerked her head toward it. Jack did too. "I guess it ain't quite as peaceful here as it looks," he said.

  Another scream. Louder. As if someone were in incredible agony.

  Kennedy Whelan could barely resist the urge to poke his finger into the gaping wound in Jack South's throat.

  From behind him, Ian said, "I don't understand why a grown man would wear a T-shirt like that. What is it—a couple of cartoon characters?" There was a lot of blood on the T-shirt and the colorful imprinting was obscured.

  Whelan nodded, eyes still on South's wound. "Yeah," he said. "Cartoons."

  South's apartment was a mess. Beer cans littered the place, ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts, the gray wall-to-wall carpeting was splattered with all kinds of stains—where it wasn't stained with South's blood—and the windows were cloudy with grit. The smell in the place was a noxious mixture of sweat, beer, cigarette smoke and, underlying all of this, an odd, cloying odor that stung the nostrils.

  Ian sniffed the air. "Smell that, Ken?"

  "I'd rather not," Whelan said, and reached toward South's wound.

  "You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of being in school. Second grade. Miss Fisher's art class."

  Whelan glanced around at him, finger poised over South's wound. "Miss Fisher's art class smelled like beer?"

  "No. Not the beer smell. That other smell. Like clay"

  "Yeah, well, I don't smell nothin' but beer."

  There were a number of people gathered around the late Viola Pennypacker's cottage. Amelia had given the cottage to Freely, which had pleased her. "What a gorgeous little house," she'd said.

  The people gathered there seemed very concerned. Leonard, who was dressed in olive-green Speedos—he was always dressed in olive-green Speedos—turned to Amelia as she and Jack approached and said, "There appears to be something very wrong here."

  June Alexander, standing nearby, turned to Amelia as well. "A lot of pain, I would think, Amelia," she said.

  "Pain?" Amelia said. The idea of actual pain here, in her idyllic little community, was ridiculous. No, it was obvious that Anna Freely had at last accepted the bald and distressing fact that she—like Amelia herself, and like this man who called himself Jack, and like the others who had trudged up from the lake recently—was dead, and she was simply reacting to that fact. With tears.

  The old woman who called herself Gilly looked at Jack South and said, "Who's this, Amelia?"

  "A visitor," Amelia answered.

  "One of many, it seems," Gilly replied petulantly.

  Amelia gave her a curious look—Dilly was showing some signs of independence and ill temper. That was unlike her, and it took Amelia by surprise.

  Amelia went up the little flight of porch steps to Viola Pennypacker's screen door and knocked.

  "Anna?" she called, and heard only weeping from within the house.

  She sensed someone just behind her, on the porch, turned her head and looked. Jack South grinned at her. "I don't know where I am or how the hell I got here," he said.

  "Later," Amelia said, and pointed at the group of people gathered at the bottom of the steps. "Wait down there. This is personal."

  Jack nodded enthusiastically. "Personal. Sure. No problem," he said, and went and joined the group. They moved away from him, as if he were an un-welcome intruder, and this too took Amelia by surprise.

  She knocked again on Anna's door, but got only agonized weeping in response.

  She opened the door and stepped inside.

  Freely sat in shadow in a rocking chair across the small front room. She had stopped weeping as soon as Amelia entered the house.

  Amelia said, "Is there a problem?"

  Freely answered at once, "Yes. I believe that there is."

  Amelia sighed. "I'm sorry. I know personally how. ... agonizing it is to face up to the face of ... one's own death."

  Anna shook her head. "No. I accepted my death
some time ago. And I was dealing with it. This is a wonderful little community you've put together, and I saw myself spending lots of time here." She sat forward in the rocking chair. She was still in shadow. "No, Amelia," she went on, voice trembling. "What I've discovered, what has become very clear to me in these past few minutes, is that I am dying—really dying." She stood and moved halfway across the room, into the light.

  Amelia gasped.

  "Shit, Harry," Sam shouted over the white noise of the wind and waves, "you don't need to hold on. There's nothing to worry about." Sam was sitting at the bow of the little boat. He had his fingers laced over his stomach.

  But Harry, despite what he knew, gripped the little boat's gunwales as if his very existence depended on it and closed his eyes tightly. Which meant that he wasn't able to see Sam flickering, like a light going rapidly on and off, as the wind and waves tossed him from the boat, into the great, airy ocean, and as the powers-that-be, whatever they were, put him back into the boat at once, because it was, after all, a part of him and he was a part of it.

  Much of Freely looked as if she were made out of dots, the way a newspaper photograph is made out of dots. Her hand: a dozen irregularly shaped gray dots. Her midsection: gray dots. Her head, her right pajama leg, her right foot, her nose, cheeks, lips: all dots. The rest of her was whole. Her green eyes, the creamy white skin of her forehead, her flowing, auburn hair, the area above her cheekbones, her left foot.

  Amelia said breathlessly, "What in the hell is happening to you?"

  Freely's voice crackled, as if her throat too were disintegrating. "I'm dying, as I said."

  "But that's impossible—"

  "Because I'm already dead?" She laughed quickly, harshly. "Clearly, Amelia, you're using a term that is not operative here. It may have been operative on . . . the other side. But not here. I would think you'd have figured that out by now. I didn't think you were a stupid woman." She said this with ill-disguised anger. "You know what I thought, after I'd come here? I thought, Isn't this incredible! Isn't this wonderful! A whole new existence. A new beginning. New people to meet, amazing new places to go and marvelous things to see. But that's not the way it's turning out, is it? I'm dying, Amelia! I'm dying here, because I'm alive here! And this time, I won't get a second chance. I know that."

  Amelia knew it too. She could see that it was true. She wanted to reach out to the woman, hold her, assure her that everything would be all right. But she stayed where she was, as if what was happening to Freely was somehow contagious. She said, "But… why is this happening to you? Why didn't it happen to me?"

  "Who knows? Maybe because this place, this little community and these people all constitute your dream, not mine. And how can we live inside a stranger's dreams?"

  Amelia didn't know what to say.

  Freely slumped back into the rocking chair.

  Amelia stared at her for a long moment, then announced, "We'll leave."

  Freely chuckled grimly. "How can we do that?"

  "I don't know." She cast about for an idea. "Harry's car."

  "Harry?"

  "My husband . . . former husband. He's got his car here. We'll get in it . . . all of us, you and the others—and we'll leave. I'll take you away from Silver Lake."

  Sam asked, "Do you really think that your Sydney is the first one to go over?"

  "I hadn't thought about it," Harry answered tersely. The ocean was calm, but he still gripped the gunwales and kept his eyes closed tightly. "I really hadn't thought about it, Sam. I'd rather not think about it!"

  "You can open your eyes," Sam told him. "There's nothing to see." He chuckled. "Do you know how ludicrous you look? Trench coat, black fedora, snub-nosed .38. Mr. Macho PI, and you're acting like a three-year-old who's getting on a roller coaster for the first time."

  "Snub-nosed .38?" Harry said.

  "Sure. It's what you were pointing at me back in the village. And there it is now."

  Harry opened his eyes and looked down at himself. His trench coat was open and he could see the gun peeking out at him from its shoulder holster. "Good Lord," he whispered. "My coat . . ." he said. "It was buttoned."

  "Yeah? So?"

  "So, it was buttoned, now it's unbuttoned. Sam, are you turning stupid on me?" He sighed. "Sam, I couldn't even pull my coat sleeve back to look at my watch before. Now my coat's unbuttoned. How did that happen?"

  "I don't know. The storm?"

  Harry hesitated, then grabbed hold of the gun and pulled. It stayed put. "Shit!" he muttered.

  "Do you really think it's important?" Sam asked.

  "Of course it's important." He gave Sam a quick once-over. "How about you? Are you exactly the same as you were before the storm?"

  Sam held up his arms, looked at his legs, his torso. "I think so."

  "I think so too. Look at you. Even your hair is unruffled."

  "Yours looks wet," Sam said.

  Harry put his fingers through his hair. It was like putting his fingers through briars, because the hair didn't move. "Is it?" he said.

  "Well, it looks wet. So does your coat."

  "Yours doesn't."

  Sam looked at himself again. "You're right."

  Harry leaned forward as if to speak confidentially. "Sam, I crossed over. I think I crossed over. Or, at least, I began to cross over."

  "I think you did too. But why?"

  Harry shook his head in confusion. "I'm not sure. What was ... different about us? What is different about us?"

  Sam looked at him a moment, sized up the situation. Then he said, "Well, Harry, you're a little taller. Not much taller. An inch, maybe. You're a few years older. You said you were forty-eight. I'm forty-four. You died accidentally. I didn't. I was murdered—"

  "Oh?"

  Sam nodded. "It's a long story. Some other time."

  "Sure."

  "And—I'm not being judgmental about this, believe me—but you appear to be a wimp when it comes to water, Harry—"

  "That's it," Harry cut in. "And you're right. I'm afraid. I'm fearful." He smiled.

  Sam's face lit up. "And what," he said, "is more mortal than fear? That's it. That's the key."

  Harry sat back. He looked suddenly glum. "Maybe, maybe not."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it still doesn't explain how Sydney got over."

  "Did you ever think that there may be more than one road to Cleveland, Harry?"

  "Why would we want to go to Cleveland?"

  "It was a figure of speech. Jeez!"

  Little whitecaps appeared on the calm ocean. "Dammit to hell, here we go again!" Harry said.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Sydney was very single-minded. Money, power and murder were what interested him. He didn't think about the weather, or the plight of the whales, or what the latest fashion trends were. He thought about money, power and murder. He thought about the acquisition of money, which would give him power, and about the act of murder, because it piqued his libido. He didn't equate sex with murder. For Sydney, murder was sex. He did not stop on the street to watch a beautiful woman pass by. He stopped on the street to think about what a satisfying thing it would be to end this person's life or that person's life. Male or female, young or old, ill or well, it didn't matter.

  He had been waiting for several hours for the Bergdorf Goodman's men's department clerk to appear, and he was becoming impatient. He looked at his watch: 5:30. He scowled.

  "It's my cat," he heard. He looked up. A woman was standing in front of him. She was thin and hatchet-faced, and her black hair hung in greasy strips down to her skinny shoulders. She was dressed shabbily. "My cat is all the powers of darkness!" she proclaimed, hand raised, index finger pointing at the gray sky. She had a gleam in her small eyes that Sydney liked. "My cat has come with his devils and minions to claim spaces on the earth and he is brown and white and bears three toes on both feet. He breathes clams!"

  Sydney smiled crookedly at her.

  The woman smiled crookedly back, then
skittered off.

  The Bergdorf Goodman men's department clerk, just coming out of the store, passed her, apparently didn't notice her, then looked Sydney in the eye and apparently failed to notice him too.

  Sydney followed him.

  "But I just got here," Jack South protested. "Why do I have to leave?"

  Amelia took him by the arm and ushered him away from the late Viola Pennypacker's cottage and toward Harry's monster Buick, parked not far away. "Because, if you don't leave," she said, "you'll die."

  Jack thought this was very strange. "Is there something toxic here? Is that what you're telling me? Was this place built on a chemical dump or something? God, Love Canal and ... now this place. What did you call it? Silver Lake? Maybe that's why the lake is silver. Jesus, how awful."

  "Yeah," Amelia said, "that's why you have to leave. A chemical dump."

  The group that had gathered outside Viola Pennypacker's cottage was following them, even though Amelia had wanted them to stay where they were. It was all right, she thought. Obviously she'd given them a little more free will than she'd supposed, which meant that they could act with some limited independence. That wasn't so bad. It made them less predictable. They'd be more fun to have around, now that it was clear that Harry—if he ever returned—wouldn't be able to stay.

  "Where are we going?" Jack South asked, as Amelia opened the passenger door of the Buick and nodded for him to get in.

  "I don't know," she answered. "I'm not sure. Wait here."

  "Wait here? Why?"

  "It's safer."

  He got in. "Maybe I could listen to the radio while I'm waiting?"

  "The radio? Sure. Turn it on."

  "I can't do that without the keys."

  "Oh, shit," Amelia whispered. She hadn't thought that she'd need the keys.

  "Oh, wait a minute," Jack said. "Here they are. In the ignition. Bad habit to leave your keys in the ignition."

  Amelia breathed a sigh of relief. "Yes," she said. "My husband's always doing that. He's forgetful sometimes."