Cage of Night

by Ed Gorman

  Schroeder's turned out to be a depressing place to work. Most of the clerks didn't like me because they were being forced into early retirement with about half the benefits they'd been promised. Old man Schroeder was able to hire me for minimum wage and no benefits whatsoever. I guess they saw me as a kind of scab.

  The other thing that was depressing was the store itself. Schroeder hadn't repainted in years. In memory, Schroeder's was this really neat place where Mom and Dad would take me to pick out birthday and Christmas gifts. Every bicycle, every atomic ray gun, every rock and roll album you ever wanted could be found at Schroeder's. It was a magical place.

  But not anymore.

  Now it was just this old dusty building where the paint was scaling off the walls, and where some of the mannequins had the wrong arms and legs screwed on them, and where the toilets didn't flush so good, and where everybody who worked there seemed old and slow and sad and resentful.

  Time crawled in Schroeder's and I was always hoping I could find another job, but I never did.

  I was working in the shoe department the first day Cindy Brasher came into the store.

  My customer at the moment was a middle-aged guy who was trying to decide if he wanted cordovan or black wing-tips.

  Despite what you may hear, men are generally harder to sell than women. Women buy shoes all the time so one more pair isn't a big deal. But men buy shoes only once every few years or so, so they take their time. This guy had been there nearly an hour now. He'd try on the black ones then the cordovan ones then the black ones again, then he'd tell me the colors of his three suits and ask me to help him decide which shoes would be most useful to him.

  After I saw Cindy, I didn't give a damn about the guy or his fashion decision.

  These days Josh was always kidding me at the dinner table about Cindy. He'd told Mom and Dad that he thought I was in love because every chance I got I managed to ask him a question about her. A lot of the times, I got embarrassed, and Mom would pat my hand and tell Josh to quit picking on me like that. Dad just kept saying, "But she's only eighteen, and you're practically a man."

  I hadn't seen her since that night at the kegger.

  This afternoon, she wore a fawn-colored winter coat, and her dark hair was tied back with a red ribbon, and she just broke my fucking heart. There's no other way to say it. When I saw her there I felt love, fear, lust, sorrow, joy. I wanted to laugh and come and cry all at the same time. Her fading shiner made me feel protective of her.

  "Maybe the cordovans would be better," the man was saying.

  I wanted to get rid of him. Fast.

  "I'll tell you what," I said. "Why don't I charge these both to you then you take them home and try them on with your different suits. You keep one pair and bring the other one back."

  "Hey, that's a great idea."

  I got him up to the cash register, and had his shoes sacked and his charge slip all made up in under a minute. Then I handed him the shoes and walked over to the edge of the department where Cindy was looking at a pair of Capezio flats.

  I got right up behind her but then I didn't know what to say. I just sort of froze there.

  She smelled beautiful. Some kind of perfume or something. It made me dizzy and horny and melancholy. I was overwhelmed. I had to will my hands not to grab her.

  "Aren't you going to say anything?" she said.

  She didn't turn around. She just knew I was there.

  "Uh, hi."

  Then she turned around and she was smiling and she broke my heart for the second time that day.

  "I guess I need some new flats."

  "Great. We've sure got flats. A lot of them."

  I was grinning. I was babbling.

  "Would you like me to go over and sit down?"

  She could see where she had me and she was nice enough to be sweet about it.

  "Yeah," I said. "That's a great idea."

  I can't tell you about the next few minutes because I can't remember much about them. Somehow I was able to control myself enough to measure her foot, note the three different styles she wanted to try on, and find my way back to the stockroom. I remember watching

  my hand take down a Capezio box. It was trembling visibly, like a junkie's hand in a bad movie. Then I realized that my whole body was trembling. And that I was covered in this icy sweat. I wondered if I smelled. God, what if I smelled, or my breath was killer-bad, the way it sometimes got?

  I did a Shemp on the way out, tripping over a shoebox I'd carelessly left in the aisle.

  I stumbled forward, the three boxes flying out of my hands and skidding down the floor.

  I imagined that she heard it, was sitting out there when this explosion came from the stockroom, and she thought, "What a dweeb this guy is."

  But if she did, she didn't let on.

  I came out and sat on my little stool and took the first flat from the first box.

  She offered her slender ankle and small foot almost daintily, and when I touched her ankle, I almost broke into tears. I know that sounds phoney and fake but it was true. When I touched her ankle, thin and vulnerable as the ankle of a scrawny colt, I felt I'd never touched anything more precious or sacred in my life.

  I slipped the shoe on and she got up and walked around in it and looked at it in the foot mirror and then came back and said, "Would you mind if I tried on the other pair?"

  "No problem."

  I slipped on a shoe from the next pair.

  I was bent over, just taking my horn from the back of her shoe, when she said, "I forgot how gentle your hands are."

  I didn't know what to say.

  She got up and walked around in the shoe.

  I couldn't stop watching her. She'd taken her coat off. She wore a fawn colored sweater, almost the color of her coat, and a chocolate brown skirt. Her legs were unimaginably beautiful. Her wrists were just as delicate as her ankles. Her smile was girl and woman at the same time.

  "I think I'll take these but I guess I should probably try on that other pair. You're not in a hurry, are you?"

  "No hurry at all."

  She'd just sat down again, and I was just taking the top off the third box, when I saw her look up and let out a short sigh.

  She didn't say anything but I knew something had disturbed her.

  "Hey, now there's a real macho job," David Myles said. "Selling ladies' shoes."

  She looked flustered and embarrassed as Myles plopped himself down in the chair next to hers.

  Myles smirked. "You probably take home some high heels and wear them around the house yourself, don't you, lover boy?"

  "If you say one more word, David, I'm really going to get angry. Do you understand me?"

  I expected him to say something. No big swaggering football hero was going to let a slender girl talk him down.

  But suddenly he looked whipped, silent, and even a little bit afraid of her.

  I wondered about the dynamics of their relationship. He wasn't adverse to punching her. Yet she could silence him with just a few sharp words.

  "Now I'd like to try on the third one," she said.

  I nodded.

  I slipped the shoe on.

  Before, I'd let my fingers linger on her artful ankle. But not now. Myles was watching me. I hated him, but hated myself more for being a dweeb and a coward. It was sort of like with Josh. With three years in the Army behind me, I should have been the tough, confident one. But I wasn't.

  She got up and walked around and we both watched her.

  He caught me watching her and I looked away from her.

  She was his, not mine.

  At least, that was his feeling.

  She came back and sat down and said, "I think I still like the second ones I tried on better."

  "Great."

  "Will you take a check?"

  I wanted to make a joke about not knowing if I could trust her but when I saw Myles glaring at me, I knew better.

  I got her written up and sacked up and handed the shoe
s over to her.

  "If they're a little tight, may I bring them back and have you put them on the stretching machine?'

  "Be glad to."

  "I really appreciate you being so patient and all."

  "My pleasure."

  This time, I glared right back at Myles when I spoke.

  "Well, take care of yourself," she said, then picked up the shoes and walked out of the department.

  They disappeared around the corner. I saw them again when they were outside, walking past the front window.

  They were arguing.

  She looked very angry.

  He looked whipped.

  My fingers still burned from touching her ankle. I had never held anything so dear in my life.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next day, I was sitting in a chair in the shoe department waiting for customers to show up.

  I sensed somebody behind me suddenly and then a male voice said, "Mirrors are the world, Kull. Gaze into my mirrors, and be wise."

  I laughed. I couldn't help it. Only one guy I knew would be crazy enough to quote from a Robert E. Howard story this way. I mentioned that in my high school days the only people who asked me to hang out with them were the kids out at the mall who spent most of their time playing video games and reading comic books. The only kid I liked especially was Mike Garrett. Like me, he was a dweeb who didn't want to be a dweeb. All the others pretended to be arrogantly proud of being a dweeb, as if it had been a choice they'd made. One other thing Garrett and I shared was a stone fanaticism for Robert E. Howard stories. We practically memorized the damned things. The passage about the mirrors was from "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune." Garrett always argued that Kull was a greater Howard creation than even Conan.

  I knew I was going to see Garrett when I stood up and turned around.

  What I didn't know was that I was going to see Garrett in a policeman's dark uniform.

  I guess my first reaction was that it was a gag, that he was all got up to go to a costume party or something.

  But then I took more careful note of his Sam Browne belt and the Magnum riding his hip. If this was a joke, it was a damned elaborate one.

  I guess the big thing was he was so young. He looked like a kid in his dad's uniform.

  "I heard you were back from the Army," Garrett said. "I just got back to town myself yesterday. I called your mom and she said you'd be here."

  "Wow, you're really a cop?"

  He grinned. He had a kid face except for solemn gray eyes. He was a lousy poker player because you could read him so easily. Right now, his face showed pride.

  "Just got out of the police academy in the state capitol," he said. "Graduation was two days ago."

  "Wow."

  "Even managed to get myself a black belt in karate."

  "God, Garrett," I said, "Kull would be proud of you."

  He laughed. "Yeah, and so would Conan."

  All this was a surprise because Garrett had always been the most cowardly kid I'd ever known. He'd walk blocks out of his way to avoid the local bullies. The only time I'd ever seen him fight, he'd taken one punch, started crying, and fell to the ground.

  He wasn't the old Garrett.

  He'd beefed up maybe twenty pounds and the gray eyes hinted at a ferocity now. Even the hands looked bigger somehow, more purposeful.

  "You working now?" I said.

  Shook his head. "Start tonight."

  "Bet you're excited." I smiled. "I got it. Why don't you go hassle some of the creeps that used to give us so much grief?"

  He didn't return the smile.

  In fact, he shook his head.

  "That's the one thing I learned at the academy. You can't let your feelings get in the way. Had an old cop tell me that and it made a lot of sense. He said if you let anger get in the way, then you start to bully people. And if you let greed get in the way, then you start getting corrupt. And if you let pride get in your way, then you're never able to admit that you made a mistake on a case. He said the best cops are the ones who are strictly professional. Let their heads tell them what to do, not their emotions. And that's just the way I'm going to be." Then he gave me the kid grin again. "Of course, if one of those old bullies should ever get out of line with me—"

  "—hit them a few times for me."

  "Exactly."

  He looked around the store. "This used to be some place, didn't it?"

  "Sure did."

  "I remember my mom always bringing me here at Christmas time. One year I pissed on Santa's lap."

  "Nice kid."

  "So how'd you like the Army?"

  "It was all right."

  "Your mom says you're going to the community college?"

  "Yeah, next spring."

  "Great."

  I think it was about then that we both started realizing that the old friendship wasn't quite there any more. We were different people now. Quoting Kull and talking about the old days could only take you so far.

  We fell into an uncomfortable silence and then he said, "Well, I'd better head over to the station. Got a lot of things to do before tonight."

  "It was really great seeing you, Mike."

  "Yeah, it was. We should go get a pizza sometime."

  "Right. Talk about Conan."

  "And Kull." He frowned. "My mom got rid of all my paperbacks."

  "Mine did, too," I said. "When I was away in the Army."

  "I'll bet some of those old ones with Frazetta covers are worth a lot of money today."

  "Man, they were beautiful, weren't they?" I said.

  "Yeah," he said, "yeah, they really were." And for a moment there, he sounded as sentimental as I felt at the moment. It's funny how you can get melancholy about the person you used to be, as if that person were a separate person from you.

  "Let's have that pizza," I said.

  "I'll give you a call," he said.

  And then I wanted to smile but I knew better.

  I couldn't help it.

  He still looked like a kid in that uniform, the pug nose and freckled face.

  Even with the Sam Browne and the Magnum, he looked like a kid.

  CHAPTER SIX

  About twenty minutes before closing time, everybody in the store would start to get bundled up for the trip outside into early winter. Halloween had barely passed and now jolly snowmen with cocked top hats and knowing smiles kept sentry duty all over town. Yellow road graders with big yellow insect eyes roared through the night. And young people who were in love had snowball fights up and down the nighttime streets.

  After I counted the money and took it upstairs to the accounting department, I finished closing up the shoe department for the night.

  I was just pushing the fitting tools underneath their chairs, so the cleaning lady wouldn't have to bother with them when she was vacuuming, when the stout and unfriendly woman who worked in women's apparel came over to me.

  She was sixty going on thirty. When I was little she'd been the local femme fatale. She and her husband used to drive around in big ass cars like local celebrities. They still had that air about them, being special and important. She had hair that had been peroxided so much it had the dead, dry texture of a wig. She usually wore cream colored suits meant to hide her bulges. And she effected a kind of Marilyn Monroe gush when she spoke, all dramatic whispers. I managed to hate her and feel sorry for her at the same time. Her feelings for me were much simpler. She just hated me.

  "You had a visitor. I forgot to tell you."

  "A visitor?"

  "A girl."

  "A girl. Did she have a name?"

  "That cute one who was Homecoming Queen."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I don't like that tone of voice."

  I sighed. There was no point in arguing with her.

  "When was she here?"

  "Over your dinner hour."

  "What did she say?"

  "That she was looking for you and would I give you that message." A coy smile: "I'm kind of
surprised she'd stop by, knowing the kind of guys she could get."

  She'd always be in high school, this one, where the popular kids never had truck with the unpopular ones. I walked away.

  It was cold in the parking lot.

  I spent two minutes scraping rough ice from my windshield. In the meantime, I let the motor run so the car would get warm. Dad had loaned me enough money to buy an old junker Chevrolet. It'd get me back and forth to college. If the heater never exactly warmed up, I had an old blanket on the back seat I could throw over my legs when the thermometer hit zero.

  The seat was cold on my butt and legs, and the motor kept dying, but I got out of the parking lot and onto the street. Though the plow had been down here, the wind was blowing snow hard enough that I had to use windshield wipers. The mercury vapor lights gave the downtown a flat, sterile look. With all the empty storefronts, it resembled one of those places in the rust

  belt where towns just collapsed after the steel mills shut down.

  I fishtailed to a stop at every light. There wasn't much traffic. I passed a cop car parked at a corner. I could see a cop-shape inside but I couldn't make out the face. I wondered if it was Garrett. His first night.

  I didn't want to go home. I had absolutely no place else to go but ever since I'd heard that Cindy had stopped by, a terrible restlessness had come over me. I wanted to tell somebody about her. I'd never had a girl come and ask for me before, and certainly never one as beautiful as Cindy.

  But where would I go?

  I passed a Pizza Hut. The parking lot was crowded with the kind of cars kids drive. I pulled in. In high school, I never went to the places where the popular kids hung out. It always embarrassed me to sit in a booth and watch the golden ones having their fun, as if I'd do anything just to be near them in some way. I was pathetic enough then.

  But Cindy had stopped by for me. That gave me a kind of prestige, even if nobody else knew about it.