He’d spent weeks doing his diplomatic, frantic best to repair the damage, accepting the blame openly, settling fears, filling cracks. Though most of his clients had accepted his position, Athland had refused, and continued even now to grumble wherever he thought he might have a receptive defector, a suspicion to fuel, a doubt to nudge and prod.
Bruce fought, and fought still, and at night wished he were ten years younger so he could summon the energies he thought he used to have.
Tired now; he was so tired.
And he still didn’t know if all he’d done had been enough.
His reflection shrugged wearily, and he closed his eyes for a moment, and he was startled when he saw Nancy looking at him sideways, the way she used to, back when he knew he was going to live forever — that sweep of red hair curled on her shoulder, that mouth upturned in a faint sardonic smile. Photograph, he thought, of a young woman in high school, though in those days they were girls, and she had to suffer the inevitable nickname Nancy Straight Arrow. Because she was. He had known her since grade school, their clique seldom changing, her company safe because he knew nothing about sex or the opposite sex and she was just like having a guy for a buddy.
Until they were seniors and he had seen enough magazines on the sly in the corner store to realize that she was more than pink and pearled sweaters and pleated skirts. A second look, then, and a third, and by graduation he fancied he was actually in love, because he knew her so well, and the comfort he felt.
They had kissed that night after the ceremonies were over and the parties were done and sunrise was only a few minutes away; and he had walked all the way home with a sappy grin on his face. Two weeks later he’d finished packing to head west for his education. He only saw her over Christmas holidays after that, though they’d written every week until his junior year, the spring he met Cora, and proposed, and was so deliriously happy that he’d told Nancy about her.
Not, he’d finally understood, the most tactful of letters.
Nancy had never answered, never called, became a memory, and became less.
A knock on the door.
“Yeah?”
“Dad!” It was Betsy.
He shook the image away, wondered at the not unpleasant chill in his stomach, and opened the door. Leaned against the jamb and folded his arms across his chest.
His daughter had her hands on her hips. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well for god’s sake, are you going or what? I — we have to catch a train, remember? It’s almost nine o’clock.”
Something moved behind her in the family room, on the far side of the pool table. He shifted her with one hand, but there was nothing there, just the TV. Her reflection in the screen. He rubbed his eyes lightly.
“Dad, c’mon, huh?”
He felt his hands close, looked at them and saw the fists they made, looked at his daughter without raising his head and saw Cora looking back, impatient, disdainful, and when Betsy’s eyes widened a bit and she stepped away from him, he finally smiled.
“Go,” he told her. “With my blessing.” He took out his wallet and pinched out some bills. “And this.” She grabbed them, counted them, and hurried toward the stairs. “You split that with your sister, hear?”
“Right, Dad.”
No kiss, no wave.
Right, Dad.
Nancy Arrow.
That evening after supper, the girls not expected back until after dark, Cora went to the movies with a few of her friends, and Bruce, unable to settle on anything else to do, grabbed a rake from the garage and worked on the front lawn, dragging for the leaves the wind had knocked down that morning.
It was quiet.
It was warm.
The sound of the rake’s teeth, the sound of crunching leaves, relaxed him, and he thought with a satisfied smile that there was a certain balm about being able to glance at the house as he worked — the overhanging second story, the two chimneys, the slate roof — and know that it was his. Nearly paid for.
And ready, he realized, for the family to begin leaving. One by one. Doubling the size. Tripling the silence.
Christ, he scolded at the almost maudlin thought; you ain’t old yet, y’know, you ain’t senile, you jerk.
Maybe not.
But something sure wasn’t the same.
He worked on without thinking, the rake digging in just a little too deeply.
He wore a T-shirt and cutoff jeans, sneakers without socks, and a wedge of perspiration darkened his back. Shouts from a gang of kids playing in the woods behind the houses across the way; down the street someone racing an engine in a driveway, and stopping, and starting again; Helen Yorr walking by with her three Yorkshire terriers on red, white, and blue leashes.
“Evening,” he said pleasantly as the woman paused to examine his work. She wore a lilac print dress without definition, a floppy straw sun hat, sunglasses, white gloves. A straw purse swung from the crook of one arm.
“Mr. Kanfield,” she said with an aristocratic nod.
“You labor too hard, I think.”
He looked around at the yard. “It isn’t really work. I kind of enjoy it.”
Pale lips pursed. “Health,” she declared firmly.
“One must watch one’s health when one gets to a certain age.” And she walked on, the terriers yapping painfully at a squirrel eyeing them from a bole.
A certain age? Holding the rake to one side, he looked down at his stomach. Not flat, slightly bulging around the waist, and he’d sure as hell never run a mile again without collapsing. But honest to god . . . a certain age? He was tempted to run after her, either to argue with her or throttle her, or tell her that at least he’d lived longer than poor Caroline Edlin, a pitiful suicide at thirty-something, the house still empty, the yard tending toward overgrown.
“Bullshit,” he said when a leaf fluttered to his feet, and he dragged the rake back to the garage. For several minutes he stood in the entrance, his gaze shifting from the Edlin house to Rimer Nabb’s, down to the left. No music tonight, and for that he was grateful. As it was, what they played was older than he, and suddenly he didn’t want to know how old that was.
“Shit.”
He sniffed, dried his face with his forearm, and decided that he needed something to drink. By the time he got inside, however, he’d changed his mind about drinking alone. He showered, dressed quickly in slacks and shirt, and left a note on the refrigerator in case anyone returned before he did, and gave a damn where he was. Then he locked up the house and turned right at the sidewalk, walked up to the end of the street, where Northland Avenue began, and turned right again.
The blocks here, like everywhere in the Station, were long and heavily shaded, street lamps merely gas lamps with bulbs instead of wicks. The houses were set back on large comfortable lots, veiled behind century-old trees, trimmed hedges, fences or stone wall, with lawns and gardens that were well kept without the fanatical grooming of a suburb. Houses, in Oxrun, weren’t torn down, they were repaired, which gave the village its anchor in age, and often made newcomers uneasy because they had no notion of the time.
The setting sun, nothing but mottles on the sidewalk, drew with it all the heat the day had fostered, twilight heading to dusk, vision somewhat strained. Occasional wisps and slips of ground fog drifted over the yards, coiled in the streets where they were scattered but not broken by the occasional passing car, sometimes rising high enough to surround him for several steps before retreating again.
He wished with a shudder he’d brought his jacket. A certain age; what a crock!
Across the street a teenage couple strolled in the opposite direction, hand in hand, giggling, their footsteps muffled.
What the hell’s the matter with forty-four, for god’s sake? It isn’t the end of the world.
Right, he told himself; god damn right.
The sky wasn’t dark enough for all the stars yet, but dark enough for all the shadows; a drifting twilight breeze touched h
is hair, a woman’s fingers caressing; the next street was Poplar, and when he looked down its length he saw nothing but shades of dark and darker, and started when the street lamps abruptly buzzed on and were immediately hazed by the fog that gathered its courage and rose.
Damn, he thought, hunching his shoulders, hands in his pockets, head lowered; damn.
Forty-four; and he winced when it came to him: your life’s more than half over.
And: you don’t want to sleep because that’s what it’ll be like when you’re dead.
“Oh, give up,” he whispered scornfully.
But at Woodland Avenue he didn’t look; he kept on walking.
And nearly bumped into a woman who had stepped out from under a tree.
“God, hey, I’m sorry,” he said, half turning as he walked on, smiling an apology.
“That’s all right,” she said. “It’s all right, Bruce.” He gave her a quick wave, a quick smile, and hurried on, rolling his eyes at himself for being so stupid, anxious now to get to the bar at the Chancellor Inn. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to walk straight in front of a car, and where the hell would his girls get their money then?
He grunted then, surprised at the bitterness of the thought, and told himself he was nuts, was almost halfway along the next block before he realized that the woman had called him by name.
He stopped and turned.
She was gone.
Nothing left of her but the night fog more like gauze, more like mist.
A shrug, and he moved on, and smiled when he reached the Inn, a farmhouse once, now a fine restaurant and watering hole owned by a lean aristocratic man named Peter Lee. Not many people saw him, fewer still ever spoke with him except when they called for reservations; he was one of Bruce’s clients. Bruce had only seen him twice.
Another glance behind him as he hurried up the steps, and then he was inside and gasping at the warmth, not realizing until now how really chilled the night had grown. A cheerful greeting to the hatcheck girl in her alcove on the left, and he rubbed his hands together briskly, thinking the chill queer considering the sun that afternoon, turning his attention to the voices that filled the building-quiet, though not whispered, without making him uneasy. The hallway, thickly carpeted and dimly lighted, ran back to narrow carpeted stairs that led to the restaurant’s second-floor rooms, more intimate than the public rooms on the first. The bar itself, on the right, had two entrances, one near the door, one back by the staircase, and he chose the first one, stepping into a large room walnut-paneled, lamps on the tables, the chairs leather-padded. The bar was at the back, mahogany and long, divided by squared post, backed by the inevitable etched mirror.
He was pleased at the patrons who raised greetings as he passed, and he greeted them all in turn.
Smoke. Talk. No music. Much laughter.
The way, he thought, God meant such things to be; and none of them, he was sure, whispering about him behind his back.
At the bar he found a place near the outside wall. Almost instantly the stool next to him was taken by Corbin Vanders, a beefy man with beard and mustache a startling white against the solid black of his thinning hair.
“You’re batching it?” the attorney asked, one liver-spotted hand raised to order from an expressionless bartender who seemed to have multiple arms.
“Cora’s at the movies.”
Vanders snorted his disgust. “Too much money for too little time, if you ask me. Trust me, Bruce. Saturdays should be spent wenching and eating, with time out for some booze that won’t stop you from the first two.”
Bruce shrugged and accepted a bourbon he held in his hand, watching it, turning it, sipping at it and sighing. Vanders said nothing, but Bruce could feel him watching. “Y’know,” he said, looking at but not seeing the tiers of bottles in front of the mirror, “a lot of people these days seem to think I’m getting old.”
A burst of laughter from a far table.
Vanders chuckled. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. The way things are going, if I’m not careful, they’re going to have me in my grave before Monday.”
Vanders twisted sideways and closer as two women and their escorts made room for themselves beside him. “It’s that Athland stuff, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. The man has a mouth I’d love to staple shut.”
Vanders guffawed, clamped a hand over his mouth and looked guiltily around. “Kanfield, you do something like that, this town’ll make you a hero.”
They toasted the thought.
Vanders watched for a second over the top of his glass before lowering to the bar. “Bruce, you’re not going to tell me you think that way, too? About the old stuff, I mean.”
“Hell, no.”
The attorney leaned forward and said, “Liar.”
Bruce tilted his head back to keep the larger man in focus. “The hell I am.”
Vanders grunted. His free hand stroked the white beard thoughtfully, mockingly so. “Forty?”
“Four.”
“Ah.” Another stroke. A half-closed eye. A negligent wave to a man who tapped his arm as he passed. “I’ll bet . . . no, don’t tell me . . . I’ll bet you started feeling sorry for yourself and broke out the old college yearbook, didn’t you? You looked for your senior class picture and couldn’t find it. You couldn’t recognize yourself.” He nodded sharply. “Am I right, or am I right?”
Bruce finished his drink and said, “Wrong,” while he signaled for a refill. “Actually, Corb, I had the damnedest vision today.”
“Oh Jesus, spare us,” Vanders said, crossing himself. “You’re not getting religious.”
“No, not that kind. It was dumb, but for some reason, I started thinking about an old sweetheart, that’s all.” And as soon as he said it, he felt incredibly foolish.
“How old is old?” Vanders asked, grabbing a handful of peanuts from a crystal bowl on the bar. “College? First job? What are we talking here, ten years or twenty?”
“High school.”
“Oh, Christ.” He popped the nuts into his mouth one by one. “I don’t even know if my high school’s still standing. And if my high-school sweetie came up to me this minute, 1 wouldn’t know her from Adam.” He blinked and chewed slowly. “Eve.” He blinked again. “Whoever.”
Bruce emptied his glass.
Vanders grabbed some more peanuts.
A third drink offered and accepted, and Bruce laid a bill on the bar, shaking off Vanders’s reach for his wallet.
They drank in silence.
And after the fourth one, he felt the weight of the room on his back, and the heat, the dampness, heard the shrill cry of the women laughing and the snorting of answering men. He was getting drunk. He knew it. He labored to turn around, and winced when he saw someone who used to be a client, one of those who had left him because they feared he’d err again.
Part of him, that part that had driven him since college to the house and the bank account and the decent clothes and his children’s schooling, told him setbacks weren’t always a blade across the throat, that he wasn’t, for the love of god, perfect: but in his chest he felt the question: after all these years, is this all you’ve done?
A man’s high-pitched laugh drew his attention to a table near the front. He squinted. He leaned back. It was Ian Johns, one of his assistants, sitting with a woman he’d never seen before. She was grinning at him, bobbing her head, reaching out suddenly to push back a lock of rusty hair. Johns took her wrist, leaned over, and kissed the thumb.
Bruce looked away.
The man seemed too young, and the woman couldn’t be long out of her teens.
He looked back.
Johns waved and mouthed hi, Bruce, nice to see you, and whispered something to his date, who waved in turn and blew him a loud kiss.
“Wise-ass,” Vanders muttered beside him.
“He’s all right,” Bruce answered absently. “A little raw, but he’ll be good.”
“Da
mn kid, that’s what he is.”
“No.” Yes, he thought: Ian’s a damned kid.
old man
And: okay, that’s it, pal, on your way. Keep thinking that way and you will be dead by Monday.
He rose.
Vanders slapped him a good-bye on the shoulder. A glass broke behind the bar, and there was laughter, some applause.
Johns was invisible, caught in haze and shadow. For several seconds he looked across the room and finally knew he’d never make it between the tables without stumbling into someone, upsetting someone’s glass, so he made his way along the bar stools, touching arms and backs to guide him as if blind, until he reached the fresher air of the hallway. A deep breath. A roll of his eyes for so much drinking. A glance back at Vanders, and he moved carefully outside where the air stung his cheeks, the fog rose to greet him, and as he walked across the street a van nearly ran him down.
He woke past midnight, snapping stiff as though bracing for a fall. Cora slept on beside him. The girls slept on down the hall.
He wiped the back of a hand across his eyes, placed a palm on his chest to be sure his heart was still beating.
He was cold.
Chattering cold, yet he didn’t want a blanket. He’d been dreaming he was dead, and the dark was so deep and the silence so vast and the touch of air so absolutely flat that he was more terrified than if he’d found himself walking through hellfire.
“I don’t want to die,” he whispered. Cora moaned in her sleep.
“Oh Jesus.”
And he lay awake until dawn, afraid that he’d learn more about what he was, what he’d become.
On Sunday afternoon, Lisa went out with her current boyfriend, and when she returned, long after nine, he was standing in the backyard, looking up at the stars, listening to the fiddle play his song.
The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant Volume 3: Dialing the Wind (Neccon Classic Horror) Page 7
