Vapors: The Essential G. Wayne Miller Fiction Vol. 2

by G. Wayne Miller

  The trial lasted a month. Nothing about Honey Love came out during it — and why should it have? Who would have believed? Freddy could afford to hire the best lawyers, and he did, and they were damn fine barristers, but still the best they could do was get his sentence down to 40 years. With good time, he might — might — look forward to seeing daylight again in 25 years.

  The trial pushed Freddy the last inch left to go completely over the edge, and by the time they packed him off to the federal pen in Danbury, Connecticut — they sent me there, too — he was a basket case. A withdrawn, mumbling, prematurely gray man who was on a daily dose of some heavy-hitting antipsychotic drug.

  “She’s coming,” he confided to me on day in mess hall.

  ‘Who?”

  “Honey Love.”

  ‘No, Freddy,” I whispered. “Honey’s not coming.”

  “She’s coming.”

  “Honey Love is dead.”

  “Oh, no,” he said, his voice excited and bubbly. “She wrote me a letter. Gave me an alias and told me to put her on my visiting list, that she’d be here. I did.”

  And he had. I asked the captain, and sure enough, he had. “Ginger Martin,” was the name she — whoever she was — had used.

  The evening she came I was in segregation, doing ten days for lipping an officer. Seg mod was across the yard from Freddy’s cell, behind a wall and an inner perimeter of alarm-wired chain link — they took no chances with seg inmates — so I didn’t see what happened. But I heard. And I read. It was in all the papers, on all the news broadcasts, all over the Internet, and it sent the prison rumor mill into warp factor ten. She was a Mob hit man, disguised as a woman. She was the bionic woman. A government experiment gone bad. A hired killer let in and out of the prison on the orders of the warden, in cahoots with bad guys Freddy had crossed. Norman Bates in drag. Satan. The bottom line was this: an attractive blond who signed Ginger Martin on the visitors’ sheet, as it was later confirmed, came to see Freddy and decapitated — decapitated — him in view of a dozen other guards and inmates. She escaped by busting down a door, then scaling two razor-wire fences. It happened in under ten seconds, which may explain why the guards were too flabbergasted to do more than sound the general alarm.

  A few months later, I got out. I’d only caught ten years, seven suspended, and despite some problems in the can, I made parole in 26 months. There was nothing any more for me on the outside, of course. The old Mob connections — gone, all of them. I was just too low on the pole to be worth anything after prison. Had burned too many bridges by appearing to cooperate with the prosecution. Hell, I was lucky they weren’t gunning for me. And who these days hires an ex-con? No one, believe me. I found that out the hard way.

  So I drifted, working two-bit jobs where your past is your business and nobody else’s. Short-order cook. Gas jockey. Convenience store clerk. Even washed dishes for a spell. Moving from YMCA to flophouse to efficiency apartment in the worst sections of town. I had a lot of time to think about Freddy, think about the unspeakable crime we’d committed that night. If I could have done it over ... I would have bucked him, I know I would. I wouldn’t have been so greedy, or so cowardly, or whatever else you want to call what I was. I thought a lot about how Freddy had met his end — how it had all come crashing down so fast. I thought what a fickle mistress fate is, how quickly the winds of life can change, a bunch of philosophical crap like that. Like most inmates, I assumed Freddy had been hit. By whom — I guess I was desperate not to believe it was Honey Love. The Mob is clever, I rationalized, something always up its sleeve. I let it go at that.

  It wasn’t until I read about Reinhard’s death that I knew there could be no question.

  Reinhard was in Washington at a medical conference when he got nailed. No robbery — $2,500 in travelers checks were found in his room — just a quick snuff, not prettily executed. I wouldn’t have had much more than passing curiosity if it hadn’t been for the description of the suspected killer, seen leaving his hotel room by a porter at 2 in the morning: tall, blond, female. With another distinguishing feature: a shaved spot at the rear of her head, as if she recently had brain surgery.

  Those were the exact words in the police report “as if she recently had brain surgery.” It was the same observation a guard made about Freddy’s assailant.

  And Reinhard had been decapitated.

  As preposterous as it was, I knew then Freddy hadn’t been kidding — that somehow Mother Nature had played a terrible trick on us, and Honey Love hadn’t really died.

  Or had died and still lived. Or whatever.

  I remember McMaster, how I automatically assumed he’d been rubbed for not keeping his mouth shut. I remembered Reinhard and something he’d said that despite being used in medicine so long, all the way back to that lady, what’s her name? — Madame Curie? — the full potential of radiation remained a great unknown. If I needed further proof, it came three weeks later, when Freddy’s two hit men got it. Decapitated, of course. There were no witnesses, but the detectives found a clump of blond hair at the scene, a warehouse in Hoboken, New Jersey.

  That left me.

  I was in New Hampshire by then, working for eight bucks an hour as a night guard in a warehouse, sleeping my days away in the cheapest motel I could find. My brother was visiting. The rest of my family had long since begged off on me — but me and my kid brother, two years younger, we’ve always been close. Since my parole, he’d been sending money once in a while, and we’d been talking by phone periodically, and since business was taking him to New Hampshire, he thought it might be nice to get together.

  It was great to see Roddy. We spent hours drinking beers and talking old times. We talked new times — everything but Honey Love. I didn’t tell him about her, or the fact that as soon as he left, I had to hit the road again. I didn’t tell him not because he wouldn’t have believed me — that went without saying — but because I didn’t think she’d find me so soon. I’d only been in New Hampshire two weeks, and I’d been keeping a low profile, and...

  And I was working the late shift the night she got him.

  He was in the motel, watching cable TV, waiting for me to return. Maybe it was a case of wrong identity — Roddy and I have always been mistaken for each other, like we were twins. But I don’t think so. I think she killed him out of anger because she didn’t find me. Like any good hunter, I think she is cunning before the kill. And when she finally has the scent of blood, I think she becomes a mad, uncontrollable thing. When she’s like that, I think any blood will do.

  I left New Hampshire as the police were taking Roddy away in little plastic baggies. Ziplocs, I believe they were.

  For a year, I’ve been on the run.

  Boston. Portland, Maine. Syracuse, New York. A bunch of dinky little places with names you’ve never heard.

  Every time, she’s followed me.

  Every time, I’ve managed to elude her. I’ve had my close scrapes, like tonight, but I’ve been lucky.

  Others have not.

  My brother, God bless his soul. Two drifters in the room across from me in the Boston Y. A kind old widower who had the misguided compassion to take me in when I came knocking on his farmhouse door one wintry evening. A motel clerk. Eleven in all, not counting tonight — and judging by the sounds, I think tonight Honey Love’s hit the jackpot. I could have warned them, should have — but what would I have said? Watch out for the zombie? If you see a beautiful blond-haired woman outside your window — run?

  I look at the boarding house and I hear screaming and that soulless howling and moist, wrenching sounds I swear are human heads being ripped from torsos — I hear all that and I have the wildest urge to run back in. An almost overpowering urge to see Honey Love, touch her neck, stroke her face, maybe stare into her eyes the way I used to a million years ago when she was Barbara and I drove a Corvette and we made love so hard our heads would spin.

  I have this ridiculous idea all she wants from me is a good, sincere apolog
y, and then she will go away ... forever. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe she wants to apologize for leaving me so long ago. Maybe she never wants to leave again. Maybe she wants to possess me, the way I once did her.

  I am tempted.

  You see how crazy she has made me. You see what women can do.

  I must be off.

  They are pouring out of the rooming house now, half-drunk and half-dressed, the poor bastards, and in the distance, I hear sirens. There’s not much the cops can do; they’ve filled her with lead before, and she’s barely skipped a beat. Because you can’t kill someone already dead, can you? It’s really that simple, isn’t it?

  No, there will be gunfire and amazement and Honey Love will disappear into the night, like me.

  God of Self

  “Now, Mr. Wilson,” entreats Sally, the one with the droopy breasts and short hair.

  Sally smiles only for visitors. Nonetheless, he would not object to her disrobing and passing those breasts slowly by his face. Even so far gone, he is entitled to his fantasies.

  ‘We’re never going to get any better if we don’t eat our dinner, now, are we?” she continues. “Just one eensy-teensy bite? Be a good boy for Sally?”

  He lets his mouth fill to overflowing with saliva and then he puckers up. That much motor control, he still has. It dribbles over his lower lip, down his chin, along his neck, onto his Johnny top, already soaked. For the past week, his spittle has been tinged with crimson. Finally, this most promising sign. Blood. Welling up from deep inside him, where everything must begin.

  “Fucking pig,” she mutters disgustedly.

  He has decided he can let them be like this, so damned intrusive and rude. He has far weightier matters on his mind.

  Not cancer. They think that’s what this game is all about: the ravages of a terminal disease. How misguided.

  He doesn’t have cancer.

  He has religion, and the glorious moment of his transmogrification is approaching. His transubstantiation, he is tempted to think, but he doesn’t. It is too early to be so confident. In the final hours, there are still critical hurdles to clear. Still some great unknowns, a roll or two of the dice.

  But he is certain he no longer needs their food. He has successfully passed through . that stage. The Lord he is creating will satisfy his hunger, purely spiritual now.

  Sally covers the plate, makes a note on his chart about the impending necessity of a stomach tube, then clears the mess away. She snaps the steel rails of his bed back into place. She changes his Johnny and checks his diaper, but it is dry. For over a day, it has been dry, and although his mottled skin is unusually flaky and dry, he does not appear dehydrated. Curious. She will have to ask the doctor later in the week; she makes a note to this effect, too. Then she arranges his rag-doll body against the pillows and layers a fresh sheet over him. They run a very meticulous establishment here in the White Mountains, a very expensive and exclusive one, and they take enormous pride in having everything perfectly spic and span for the visitors.

  His visitors this afternoon are two of his grandchildren. He forgets their names. He doesn’t have the energy to bother himself with such trivia any more.

  “Merry Christmas, Grandpa,” one of them, the man, says. Wilson can see how painful it is for him to look at Grandpa. How very easily he could vomit, looking at his wasted form, misshapen and twisted like a baby suctioned crudely from the womb.

  “We drove all the way from Boston,” the woman says in a forcibly cheerful voice. “Made good time. Less than four hours. We’ve missed you very, very much.”

  He looks at her, not knowing if she can see the acid in his stare.

  “So how are you feeling?” the first one asks.

  He can’t answer, of course. He can’t say, “I’m doing very well... terribly, extraordinarily well, thank you for your interest and your concern. I’m coming along nicely, everything seems to be - right on target, and by tomorrow, the Savior’s Day, I expect to have some mighty big news. Mighty big news, indeed — involving you and the whole rest of the family, if all goes as planned. Until then, why not just go fuck yourselves?”

  No, he can only drool, and he does. He can pee, and he does that, too, — a great relieving flood that saturates his diaper and seeps down to the mattress cover. He wonders if they will visit long enough for the ammonia reek of his chemical-laced piss to reach their nostrils. Even now, so far into the transcendent phase, so close to abandoning forever all worldly pursuits, that would tickle him enormously.

  One last chuckle. Yes, he is allowed that.

  “Mother sends her greetings and says she’ll be up next weekend,” the first one says. He has a vague memory of this man. Something about a clandestine inquiry into the will.

  “She says she’ll bring Grandma.”

  She, he remembers, but he sincerely doubts they will bring her. His poor wife can’t bear to see him any longer. His decline, to use her euphemism, appears to have been so unexpected. So rapid. So bafflingly radical. The doctors are at a complete loss to explain it — and that pleases him to no end. In less than half a year, to go from a robust man of 71 who’s never had a cold in his life to... to this caricature of a human being. This semi blind, incontinent, jaundiced mockery of a man who drools and pisses and sweats and seemingly not much else, the essence of him now only the most basic of bodily functions, digestive and excretory tracts and not much more. The doctors say it’s some rare form of cancer, but in the very next breath, they admit they can’t be sure.

  Yes, it pleases him.

  Of course they can’t be sure.

  It is part of the plan, but they do not know that some things a man must keep to himself.

  “Poor thing,” one of his grandchildren is whispering to the other.

  ‘It would be better for him if ... it would just be better.”

  They are out in the hall, and they believe they are out of earshot. That is not so. Since setting in motion the process that has brought him here, his hearing has become progressively acute.

  Like the bleeding, a very promising sign.

  “How much longer do you think he has?”

  “It can’t be long now.”

  They are right, although not for the right reason. It is Christmas Eve, and he is exactly on schedule. With any luck, a few short hours and he will be there.

  Christmas. Baby Jesus’ birthday, a holy day he chose deliberately. Even in this most solemn of ventures, he is not without a sly little sense of humor.

  “So sad to see him like this.”

  “After all he’s done.”

  That, at least, is true.

  Not long ago, he was wildly successful, at least in the eyes of the world. On the very top of his game, which was the import-export business. He had more money than he could ever possibly spend. He had cars. He had world-renown art. He had summer homes and winter retreats. And in every city he passed through — there were more than he could count — mistresses willing to do the filthiest things imaginable in exchange for an evening’s whiff of wealth.

  Ten or so years ago, mortality came knocking.

  It was not a loud or insistent rap — a debilitating disease, say, or the sudden loss of a loved one ... if indeed he could claim any of those. It was there fleetingly and then gone, but it was enough to shake Bobby D. Wilson to the bottom of his soul.

  This is what happened. He was driving to his Manhattan penthouse one night, an exceptionally rainy April night, when he lost control of his Audi. It jumped the median strip, skidding across the oncoming lanes before stopping on the shoulder. There were no other cars anywhere in sight. He escaped — trembling but uninjured. His Audi was unscratched. He’d been very lucky.

  But in that microsecond when he was sure the car was going to flip, or a tractor-trailer was going to appear out of nowhere, or he was going to hurtle off that shoulder into the rocky ravine below, or he was going to be catapulted through the windshield, or any of the hundred other dire possibilities that arced
through his mind like a jolt of executioner’s juice, it hit him as never before: I’m going to die. Maybe not today, or next week, or 15 years from now ... but eventually, I’m going to die.

  A decade or two younger, and things might have ended there with a sinking realization of futility and inevitable defeat. But a man of his caliber at his age could not let such things end there.

  He became preoccupied, then obsessed, with the notion of his mortality. Beside it, his other obsessions — the cars, the fine art, the women — were mere child’s play.

  He vowed not to submit. Not without a fight

  He would draft a plan, just as he’d drafted the plan to build a financial empire.

  At first, he considered cryonics, but any fool could see the potential pitfalls. No contract, no amount of promises or cash could dictate what some slob with his fingers on the switch might do 25, 50, 100 years down the line. What if they shut off the electricity? He’d heard of such things, frozen corpses thawing, warming, becoming fit only for maggots, not blessed resurrection.

  He considered a life-extension potion sold at a clinic in Gstaad. He investigated treatments at a hospital in Acapulco. He had his staff look into vitamins, pure oxygen tents, superoxide dismutase, enough supplements and tonics and elixirs to fill a quackery text. But he had not gotten where he had in life without being able to sniff out the rats, and the odor of rodent was very strong from every one of these promised fountains of youth.

  Then, his epiphany. It was not the body with which he should be concerned. It was the inner being, the essence of Wilson.

  So he’d done what men in his station have done since the species dwelled in caves — he’d turned to religion. Not organized religion. No. He’d been through that as a youth, courtesy of a domineering mother who idolized dead popes and a virgin mother. By his teens, he’d discarded that kind of faith as a colossal hoax, an opiate intended for losers. It was, coincidentally, the only issue on which he and Karl Marx would ever see eye-to-eye.