The Best of the Best, Volume 1

by Gardner Dozois

  “We should ask the cops there what they think.”

  “You don’t understand. That had some grace to it. But what you did was inelegant. Worst of all it was not gratuitous. You stole those clothes for yourself, and I hate that.” I was shaking.

  “Who made all these laws?”

  “I did.”

  She looked at me with amazement. “You’re not just a Conservative. You’re gone native!”

  I wanted her so much I ached. “No I haven’t,” I said, but even to me my voice sounded frightened.

  Ruth got out of the bed. She glided over, reached one hand around to the small of my back, pulled herself close. She looked up at me with a face that held nothing but avidity. “You can do whatever you want,” she whispered. With a feeling that I was losing everything, I kissed her. You don’t need to know what happened then.

  I woke when she displaced herself: there was a sound like the sweep of an arm across fabric, a stirring of air to fill the place where she had been. I looked around the still brightly lit room. It was not yet morning. The chain was across the door; her clothes lay on the dresser. She had left the aspirin box beside my bottle of Scotch.

  She was gone. Good, I thought, now I can go on. But I found that I couldn’t sleep, could not keep from thinking. Ruth must be very good at that, or perhaps her thought is a different kind of thought from mine. I got out of the bed, resolved to try again but still fearing the inevitable. I filled the tub with hot water. I got in, breathing heavily. I took the blade from my razor. Holding my arm just beneath the surface of the water, hesitating only a moment, I cut deeply one, two, three times along the veins in my left wrist. The shock was still there, as great as ever. With blood streaming from me I cut the right wrist. Quickly, smoothly. My heart beat fast and light, the blood flowed frighteningly; already the water was stained. I felt faint—yes—it was going to work this time, yes. My vision began to fade—but in the last moments before consciousness fell away I saw, with sick despair, the futile wounds closing themselves once again, as they had so many times before. For in the future the practice of medicine may progress to the point where men need have little fear of death.

  The dawn’s rosy fingers found me still unconscious. I came to myself about eleven, my head throbbing, so weak I could hardly rise from the cold bloody water. There were no scars. I stumbled into the other room and washed down one of Ruth’s megamphetamines with two fingers of Scotch. I felt better immediately. It’s funny how that works sometimes, isn’t it? The maid knocked as I was cleaning the bath-room. I shouted for her to come back later, finished as quickly as possible, and left the hotel immediately. I ate Shredded Wheat with milk and strawberries for break-fast. I was full of ideas. A phone book gave me the location of a likely country club.

  The Oak Hill Country Club of Florissant, Missouri, is not a spectacularly wealthy institution, or at least it does not give that impression. I’ll bet you that the membership is not as purely white as the stucco clubhouse. That was all right with me. I parked the Citation in the mostly empty parking lot, hauled my new equipment from the trunk, and set off for the locker room, trying hard to look like a dentist. I successfully ran the gauntlet of the pro shop, where the proprietor was telling a bored caddy why the Cardinals would fade in the stretch. I could hear running water from the showers as I shuffled into the locker room and slung the bag into a corner. Someone was singing the “Ode to Joy,” abominably.

  I began to rifle through the lockers, hoping to find an open one with someone’s clothes in it. I would take the keys from my benefactor’s pocket and proceed along my merry way. Ruth would have accused me of self-interest; there was a moment in which I accused myself. Such hesitation is the seed of failure: as I paused before a locker containing a likely set of clothes, another golfer entered the room along with the locker-room attendant. I immediately began undressing, lowering my head so that the locker door hid my face. The golfer was soon gone, but the attendant sat down and began to leaf through a worn copy of Penthouse. I could come up with no better plan than to strip and enter the showers. Amphetamine daze. Perhaps the kid would develop a hard-on and go to the John to take care of it.

  There was only one other man in the shower, the symphonic soloist, a somewhat portly gentleman who mercifully shut up as soon as I entered. He worked hard at ignoring me. I ignored him in return: alle Menschen werden Brüder. I waited a long five minutes after he left; two more men came into the showers, and I walked out with what composure I could muster. The locker-room boy was stacking towels on a table. I fished a five from my jacket in the locker and walked up behind him. Casually I took a towel.

  “Son, get me a pack of Marlboros, will you?”

  He took the money and left.

  In the second locker I found a pair of pants that contained the keys to some sort of Audi. I was not choosy. Dressed in record time, I left the new clubs beside the rifled locker. My note read, “The pure products of America go crazy.” There were three eligible cars in the lot, two 4000s and a Fox. The key would not open the door of the Fox. I was jumpy, but almost home free, coming around the front of a big Chrysler.…

  “Hey!”

  My knee gave way and I ran into the fender of the car. The keys slipped out of my hand and skittered across the hood to the ground, jingling. Grimacing, I hopped toward them, plucked them up, glancing over my shoulder at my pursuer as I stooped. It was the locker-room attendant.

  “Your cigarettes.” He looked at me the way a sixteen-year-old looks at his father; that is, with bored skepticism. All our gods in the end become pitiful. It was time for me to be abruptly courteous. As it was, he would remember me too well.

  “Thanks,” I said. I limped over, put the pack into my shirt pocket. He started to go, but I couldn’t help myself. “What about my change?”

  Oh, such an insolent silence! I wonder what you told them when they asked you about me, boy. He handed over the money. I tipped him a quarter, gave him a piece of Mr. Graves’s professional smile. He studied me. I turned and inserted the key into the lock of the Audi. A fifty percent chance. Had I been the praying kind I might have prayed to one of those pitiful gods. The key turned without resistance; the door opened. The kid slouched back toward the clubhouse, pissed at me and his lackey’s job. Or perhaps he found it in his heart to smile. Laughter—the Best Medicine.

  A bit of a racing shift, then back to Interstate 70. My hip twinged all the way across Illinois.

  I had originally intended to work my way east to Buffalo, New York, but after the Oak Hill business I wanted to cut it short. If I stayed on the interstate I was sure to get caught; I had been lucky to get as far as I had. Just outside of Indianapolis I turned onto Route 37 north to Fort Wayne and Detroit.

  I was not, however, entirely crowed. Twenty-five years in one time had given me the right instincts, and with the coming of the evening and the friendly insects to sing me along, the boredom of the road became a new recklessness. Hadn’t I already been seen by too many people in those twenty-five years? Thousands had looked into my honest face—and where were they? Ruth had reminded me that I was not stuck here. I would soon make an end to this latest adventure one way or another, and once I had done so, there would be no reason in God’s green world to suspect me.

  And so: north of Fort Wayne, on Highway 6 east, a deserted country road (what was he doing there?), I pulled over to pick up a young hitchhiker. He wore a battered black leather jacket. His hair was short on the sides, stuck up in spikes on top, hung over his collar in back; one side was carrot-orange, the other brown with a white streak. His sign, pinned to a knapsack, said “?” He threw the pack into the backseat and climbed into the front.

  “Thanks for picking me up.” He did not sound like he meant it. “Where you going?”

  “Flint. How about you?”

  “Flint’s as good as anywhere.”

  “Suit yourself.” We got up to speed. I was completely calm. “You should fasten your seat belt,” I said.

 
“Why?”

  The surly type. “It’s not just a good idea. It’s the law.”

  He ignored me. He pulled a crossword puzzle book and a pencil from his jacket pocket. “How about turning on the light.”

  I flicked on the dome light for him. “I like to see a young man improve himself,” I said.

  His look was an almost audible sigh. “What’s a five-letter word for ‘the lowest point’?”

  “Nadir,” I replied.

  “That’s right. How about ‘widespread’; four letters.”

  “Rife.”

  “You’re pretty good.” He stared at the crossword for a minute, then rolled down his window and threw the book, and the pencil, out of the car. He rolled up the window and stared at his reflection in it. I couldn’t let him get off that easily. I turned off the interior light, and the darkness leapt inside.

  “What’s your name, son? What are you so mad about?”

  “Milo. Look, are you queer? If you are, it doesn’t matter to me but it will cost you … if you want to do anything about it.”

  I smiled and adjusted the rearview mirror so I could watch him—and he could watch me. “No, I’m not queer. The name’s Loki.” I extended my right hand, keeping my eyes on the road.

  He looked at the hand. “Loki?”

  As good a name as any. “Yes. Same as the Norse god.”

  He laughed. “Sure, Loki. Anything you like. Fuck you.”

  Such a musical voice. “Now there you go. Seems to me, Milo—if you don’t mind my giving you my unsolicited opinion—that you have something of an attitude problem.” I punched the cigarette lighter, reached back and pulled a cigar from my jacket on the backseat, in the process weaving the car all over Highway 6. I bit the end off the cigar and spat it out the window, stoked it up. My insects wailed. I cannot explain to you how good I felt.

  “Take for instance this crossword puzzle book. Why did you throw it out the window?”

  I could see Milo watching me in the mirror, wondering whether he should take me seriously. The headlights fanned out ahead of us, the white lines at the center of the road pulsing by like a rapid heartbeat. Take a chance, Milo. What have you got to lose?

  “I was pissed,” he said. “It’s a waste of time. I don’t care about stupid games.”

  “Exactly. It’s just a game, a way to pass the time. Nobody ever really learns any-thing from a crossword puzzle. Corporation lawyers don’t get their Porsches by building their word power with crosswords, right?”

  “I don’t care about Porsches.”

  “Neither do I, Milo. I drive an Audi.”

  Milo sighed.

  “I know, Milo. That’s not the point. The point is that it’s all a game, crosswords or corporate law. Some people devote their lives to Jesus; some devote their lives to art-work. It all comes to pretty much the same thing. You get old. You die.”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

  “Why do you think I picked you up, Milo? I saw your question mark and it spoke to me. You probably think I’m some pervert out to take advantage of you. I have a funny name. I don’t talk like your average middle-aged businessman. Forget about that.” The old excitement was upon me; I was talking louder and louder, leaning on the accelerator. The car sped along. “I think you’re as troubled by the materialism and cant of life in America as I am. Young people like you, with orange hair, are trying to find some values in a world that offers them nothing but crap for ideas. But too many of you are turning to extremes in response. Drugs, violence, religious fanaticism, hedonism. Some, like you I suspect, to suicide. Don’t do it, Milo. Your life is too valuable.” The speedometer touched eighty, eighty-five. Milo fumbled for his seat belt but couldn’t find it.

  I waved my hand, holding the cigar, at him. “What’s the matter, Milo? Can’t find the belt?” Ninety now. A pickup went by us going the other way, the wind of its passing beating at my head and shoulder. Ninety-five.

  “Think, Milo! If you’re upset with the present, with your parents and the schools, think about the future. What will the future be like if this trend toward valuelessness continues in the next hundred years? Think of the impact of the new technologies! Gene splicing, gerontology, artificial intelligence, space exploration, biological weapons, nuclear proliferation! All accelerating this process! Think of the violent reactionary movements that could arise—are arising already, Milo, as we speak—from people’s desire to find something to hold on to. Paint yourself a picture, Milo, of the kind of man or woman another hundred years of this process might produce!”

  “What are you talking about?” He was terrified.

  “I’m talking about the survival of values in America! Simply that.” Cigar smoke swirled in front of the dashboard lights, and my voice had reached a shout. Milo was gripping the sides of his seat. The speedometer read 105. “And you, Milo, are at the heart of this process! If people continue to think the way you do, Milo, throwing their crossword puzzle books out the windows of their Audis all across America, the future will be full of absolutely valueless people! Right, MILO?” I leaned over, taking my eyes off the road, and blew smoke into his face, screaming, “ARE YOU LISTENING, MILO? MARK MY WORDS!”

  “Y-yes.”

  “GOO, GOO, GA-GA-GAA!”

  I put my foot all the way to the floor. The wind howled through the window, the gray highway flew beneath us.

  “Mark my words, Milo,” I whispered. He never heard me. “Twenty-five across. Eight letters. N-i-h-i-l—”

  My pulse roared in my ears, there joining the drowned choir of the fields and the roar of the engine. Body slimy with sweat, fingers clenched through the cigar, fists clamped on the wheel, smoke stinging my eyes. I slammed on the brakes, down-shifting immediately, sending the transmission into a painful whine as the car slewed and skidded off the pavement, clipping a reflecting marker and throwing Milo against the windshield. The car stopped with a jerk in the gravel at the side of the road, just shy of a sign announcing, WELCOME TO OHIO.

  There were no other lights on the road, I shut off my own and sat behind the wheel, trembling, the night air cool on my skin. The insects wailed. The boy was slumped against the dashboard. There was a star fracture in the glass above his head, and warm blood came away on my fingers when I touched his hair. I got out of the car, circled around to the passenger’s side, and dragged him from the seat into the field adjoining the road. He was surprisingly light. I left him there, in a field of Ohio soybeans on the evening of a summer’s day.

  The city of Detroit was founded by the French adventurer Antoine de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, a supporter of Comte de Pontchartrain, minister of state to the Sun King, Louis XIV. All of these men worshiped the Roman Catholic god, protected their political positions, and let the future go hang. Cadillac, after whom an American auto-mobile was named, was seeking a favorable location to advance his own economic interests. He came ashore on July 24, 1701, with fifty soldiers, an equal number of settlers, and about one hundred friendly Indians near the present site of the Veterans Memorial Building, within easy walking distance of the Greyhound Bus Terminal.

  The car did not run well after the accident, developing a reluctance to go into fourth, but I didn’t care. The encounter with Milo had gone exactly as such things should go, and was especially pleasing because it had been totally unplanned. An accident—no order, one would guess—but exactly as if I had laid it all out beforehand. I came into Detroit late at night via Route 12, which eventually turned into Michigan Avenue. The air was hot and sticky. I remember driving past the Cadillac plant; multitudes of red, yellow, and green lights glinting off dull masonry and the smell of auto exhaust along the city streets. I found the sort of neighborhood I wanted not far from Tiger Stadium: pawnshops, an all-night deli, laundromats, dimly lit bars with red Stroh’s signs in the windows. Men on street corners walked casually from noplace to noplace.

  I parked on a side street just around the corner from a 7-Eleven. I left the motor running. In the
store I dawdled over a magazine rack until at last I heard the racing of an engine and saw the Audi flash by the window. I bought a copy of Time and caught a downtown bus at the corner. At the Greyhound station I purchased a ticket for the next bus to Toronto and sat reading my magazine until departure time.

  We got onto the bus. Across the river we stopped at customs and got off again. “Name?” they asked me.

  “Gerald Spotsworth.”

  “Place of birth?”

  “Calgary.” I gave them my credentials. The passport photo showed me with hair. They looked me over. They let me go.

  I work in the library of the University of Toronto. I am well read, a student of history, a solid Canadian citizen. There I lead a sedentary life. The subways are clean, the people are friendly, the restaurants are excellent. The sky is blue. The cat is on the mat.

  We got back on the bus. There were few other passengers, and most of them were soon asleep; the only light in the darkened interior was that which shone above my head. I was very tired, but I did not want to sleep. Then I remembered that I had Ruth’s pills in my jacket pocket. I smiled, thinking of the customs people. All that was left in the box were a couple of tiny pink tabs. I did not know what they were, but I broke one down the middle with my fingernail and took it anyway. It perked me up immediately. Everything I could see seemed sharply defined. The dark green plastic of the seats. The rubber mat in the aisle. My fingernails. All details were separate and distinct, all interdependent. I must have been focused on the threads in the weave of my pants leg for ten minutes when I was surprised by someone sitting down next to me. It was Ruth. “You’re back!” I exclaimed.

  “We’re all back,” she said. I looked around and it was true: on the opposite side of the aisle, two seats ahead, Milo sat watching me over his shoulder, a trickle of blood running down his forehead. One corner of his mouth pulled tighter in a rueful smile. Mr. Graves came back from the front seat and shook my hand. I saw the fat singer from the country club, still naked. The locker-room boy. A flickering light from the back of the bus: when I turned around there stood the burning man, his eye sockets two dark hollows behind the wavering flames. The shopping-mall guard. Hector from the hardware store. They all looked at me.