by Rich Horton
“I miss the martini, So & So,” she said at last, her dress falling off her shoulder, sequins dripping from her hem. “And I miss Such & Such. I miss the way he tended.”
I tried to kiss her. She turned her head. I tasted a new spirit.
“What’s that?” I asked her, and she looked away.
“Dry vermouth,” she said, and looked at me, with her liquid eyes. “He gave it to me.” Something had changed in her. She wasn’t an Old Fashioned anymore. She’d been mixing.
She swizzled out the door one morning early, and I knew she’d returned to Bee’s.
I cleaned out the cupboards. I quit drinking, cold turkey. I became a cop and tried to forget.
But soon the bar was back on my radar again. Trouble there all the time. It was a blood-on-the-tiles known failure point, and the boys at the precinct knew it well.
And now, the call, the murder. I had a feeling I knew who it might be, but I didn’t know for sure.
“Pull over,” I said to Gene. Glitter, shining in the headlights.
“You sure you wanna do this?” he asked. “I know you got a soft spot for Gloria, but we gotta arrest that broad, we gotta do it, no matter your old flames.”
“That fire’s out,” I said. It was.
I saw the cat then, his tuxedo shining. I saw his tail, the letters reading NO. I saw him run out the door of Bee’s Jesus, and into the street, and then I saw Glo, right behind him. She shook her shoulders back, and looked at the cruiser, like she didn’t care. She walked over to the window and looked at it until I gave up and rolled down.
“You got no business here, Jimmy,” she said. “Somebody called in a false alarm.”
She looked at me with those same acid eyes, and I felt etched. Nothing like a long ago love to bring back the broken.
“Stay here,” I said to Gene. “Do me a favor. One.”
Gene sighed and set a timer, but he stayed in the car.
I walked down the alley behind Gloria, and Gloria held out her fingers to me for a second. Just one. We were the old days.
I saw him shining, his white and silver leg, dumped in the alley like the caller had told me he would be. I knew who the caller had been. I knew her voice. I knew her muddles. She couldn’t let a guy stay in the street. She wasn’t all bitter, and she had a soft spot for martinis.
I saw the cat, and I saw the band. All of them out in the street, like I’d never seen them. The pit bulls and the bull hounds.
The cat looked up from what he was doing, his teeth covered in blood. Red all over the white front of his tuxedo shirt.
“Sadsack,” he said. “You knew this place, but it’s gone.”
I could hear his purr from where I stood, appalled, as he bit into the gin. The dogs and the cats. All of them on top of the martini, making it go away. There was a pool on the cobbles, and I could smell juniper berries.
“Another one back in the shaker,” said the cat, then shook his head, gnashing. “Hair of the dog,” he said, and spat.
Something caught the light at the end of the alley. Golden-brown sequins. I tasted ice. I could see her mouth, cherry red, shining out of the shadows, and then she stalked away.
Gloria looked up at me, and shrugged. The whites of her eyes were red. Her hands shook. The sun was rising.
“He used to be clean,” she said. “You remember, Jimmy, you remember how he was. You remember how he was. But he got dirty. I’m getting away from this town. This bar. I shut things down in there.”
A cocktail walked out the door of Bee’s Jesus, and I watched her come. All in crimson, her perfume spiced and salty. She knelt beside the remains of the gin martini, and stretched her long green-painted fingernails over his face. She lay down on top of the corpse, and as I watched, the gin dissolved into the Bloody Mary.
“No chaser,” said Gloria, and smiled sadly. “She’ll take him away.”
The Bloody Mary stood up in her stilettos, wiping her hands on her dress, and took Gloria’s hand in hers.
“See you, Mister Nice Guy,” said Gloria. “Bar’s closed. I have a plane to catch. Somewhere sunny. Somewhere I can get a drink with an umbrella.”
I watched Gloria and her new drink walk away. As she went, I saw her unfasten something from her wrist. A leather cuff decked in long chains. She dropped it in the gutter. I watched her turn the corner, away from the glitter, and then I watched the sun rise, shining on the mountain of ice outside the former door of Bee’s Jesus.
“No dead body,” I said to Gene. “Just ice and glass. What can you do?”
I took myself to the cleaners. Blood all over my shirt front, hair of the dog on my knees. I smelled bourbon and cherries, juniper and regret. Gloria and her gin.
“Ah, it’s Such & Such,” said the martinizer. I was no longer an Emperor, if I’d ever really been. “I cleaned your dirty laundry,” he said. “But some stains don’t come out.”
He handed me a white shirt not mine. He waved me out the door and back into the brittle light of the morning.
Grizzled Veterans of Many and Much
Robert Reed
The First Drop
There were test subjects, hundreds of them, and scores more secretly went through the process before it was approved. But from my point of view, Grandpa was the first person in the world to Transcend, and the world spent the rest of my life coming to terms with that event.
I was eight, and we were having Christmas in Aspen. We always went to Aspen for Christmas, but there was a special afternoon where nobody was allowed to snowboard. The entire family had to show up at the main house. No excuses. I didn’t understand, and I doubt if any adults appreciated the situation either. Both of Grandpa’s wives were there. My mother sat with her twin brothers and Grandma Joyce while Lucee claimed the opposite end of the conference table, doing her best to keep the little kids under control. I always liked Lucee. She was young and pretty, but the woman also had a tough streak that made her even more fascinating. Our big family was waiting for the meeting to begin, and all at once her two little boys, tough in their own right, decided to use fists to settle some problem nobody else could see. I watched them swinging and kicking, which was kind of fun. Then with a big voice, my mother said, “Lucee.” She had this way of stretching out the vowels, making it sound like a little girl’s name. She said, “Luuuceeee, can’t you keep your beasts under control for one goddamn minute?”
With that, Lucee was ready for war—which would have been an epic battle. And the only reason I bring this up is that while I loved my mother, for some reason I wanted Lucee to win. Half a foot shorter than Mom and pregnant with Grandpa’s sixth kid, yet even as her little gems traded blows on the floor, that one-time Miss America was ready to charge down our way, bashing a few heads into more charitable moods.
But that didn’t happen. Of course it didn’t happen. Grandma Joyce cleared her throat once, and everybody remembered where they were, and everybody got back into their chairs, pretending to be nice.
That’s when Grandpa walked in. He was in his early sixties, and except for the cancer, he was healthier than anybody. Muscle always liked Grandpa, and he still had the shoulders and legs that made him a champion in college football. He always carried a big smile that might mean something good or might mean nothing, but it was a winner’s grin, and I was as happy as anybody to see him.
Grandpa had a chair waiting for him at the midpoint of the long table, strategically dropped between the two halves of his cantankerous family.
He didn’t sit. He rarely sat. Big hands massaging the back of his chair, he looked as if he was keeping the furniture from jumping off the floor. The smile enjoyed itself for another moment while smart eyes read every face. Then he decided that things weren’t stirred up enough, so with a big voice accustomed to commanding billions of dollars, he told all of us, “I’ll be dead before New Year’s.”
I wish I could describe the surprise hitting those faces. But I can’t. The man’s silence had gotten boring, and when the announc
ement came I was gazing out the nearest window, watching snow fall, wondering when this silliness would be finished and I could get out on the slopes again.
What did he just say?
I finally looked around. Everybody was shocked, and some of them were furious, and a few probably assumed this was a cruel joke.
Grandpa and his chair stood in the middle of craziness, saying nothing.
My grown-up uncles jumped up and looked at their sister, my mother. “The cancer isn’t that bad,” they insisted. “Did you know it was bad? Is it spreading? Why didn’t you tell us it had grown?”
“I didn’t know anything about this,” Mom insisted.
So my uncles turned to Lucee. “What aren’t you telling us?”
But the pregnant woman was as stunned as anyone. Turning to her husband, she used her softest voice to ask, “Is it your heart?”
“What’s wrong with his heart?” Mom asked.
“I don’t know,” Lucee insisted.
Grandpa remained silent, and he was silent in a certain way. One of the man’s strengths was on display: Mom claimed that her father was exceptionally smart but never let people see him that way. It didn’t matter who was in the room, business partners or dog trainers. He would drop a few words to get conversations rolling and then let other people talk, and when they ran out of words, he’d throw out a question or two that were just a little bit dumb.
The man made our fortunes by being the third-smartest guy in any room, and that’s the kind of genius that he was using just then.
My uncles were talking about aneurysms and cancer treatments, pretending they were doctors instead of whatever it was that they did with their days. Their wives assured each other that their father-in-law looked just fine, looked spectacular. Then Grandma Joyce sat up straight, laughing in a big way. “Oh, this is silly,” she said. “Harold is just having some fun with the rest of you.”
My mom said, “I don’t think so.”
“Just look at him,” said the old woman. “He’s testing you, seeing which of his dependents loves him the most.”
Grandma Joyce might have been the ex-wife, but she still had feelings for the alpha male, and she was practically a goddess when it came to tolerance and calm, forgiving thoughts.
My mom was a different kind of creature.
The second wife was crying, and not quietly, either. Glaring at Lucee, Mom snorted once and said, “Oh, that’s just the hormones flaring.”
“Be nice,” Grandma Joyce warned.
Wrapping herself inside her own arms, Mom squeezed and rocked fast.
In my case, I felt nothing but sorry for Lucee. But then the snot ran out of her nose, and pretty as she was, something about that crying face made me uneasy. So I looked at Grandpa again, and when he glanced my way, I said exactly what was in my head. I said, “I’m going to miss you, Grandpa.”
Gunfire might have quieted the room faster.
Then again, maybe not.
The old man stared at me. Then he gave his hands a brief study, something about them or the circumstances pleasing. And with everyone else holding still, he looked at me again, saying, “Come over here, Bradley. Let’s have a little chat.”
Like that, I was the most important person in the room.
Grandpa pulled out his chair. “Sit now. Sit here.” Then I was down, and he knelt beside me, winking a couple times before saying, “Transcendence.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what the word meant, but I nodded.
Then one of my uncles said, “Jesus, is that what this is?”
“Shut up,” Mom said.
“Yes, please,” Lucee added.
I sat quietly, waiting for the first words that made sense.
“There is a process called Transcendence,” Grandpa said. “It’s very new, and it is not easy. But the people who undergo it . . . well, they gain certain benefits. Blessings. Skills nobody else in the world can enjoy.”
“Like Spider-Man,” I said.
My uncles snarled.
But Grandpa said, “Exactly. When you Transcend, your mind is improved in so many ways, and you turn superhuman, and nothing is ever the same again.”
Superheroes had physical gifts. But even an eight-year-old kid can see the benefits in being a whole lot smarter than before.
“I’m going into the hospital tomorrow,” he said.
Most of the room groaned.
“It’s a special clinic where doctors and their very smart machines will put these tiny, tiny hair-like tubes inside my blood. It won’t take the tubes an hour to join up in the brain. I might have a headache, but I probably won’t. And once those tubes piece themselves together, I’ll be tied into computers and some very special software.”
Mom reached toward the two of us, asking someone to stop doing something.
I was the one who shooed her hand away.
“What happens then?” I asked.
“Well,” Grandpa said. Then he paused before saying, “For the rest of you, nothing will happen. You’ll live exactly as you did before this. You, Bradley . . . you’ll grow up strong and be a fine person and hopefully you won’t be too infected by the curses that come to the likes of us.”
What curses? I thought, but I didn’t ask.
“And meanwhile, I’ll live another hundred years,” Grandpa said. “My new mind will think wondrous fancy original thoughts, and maybe some of my ideas will make life better for all of you. Though that’s not why I’m doing this. I’ve already done plenty for everybody, in my family and beyond.”
I nodded again. And again, I didn’t have any clue what the old man was talking about. But one problem made itself obvious. “Then how come you’ll be dead in . . . in how many days?”
“Nine,” said an angry uncle.
“You said a hundred years,” I told Grandpa.
“That’s how it will feel to me, Bradley. The supercharged brain works so many times faster than normal. Those tiny tubes make that happen. And the same tubes are what bleed away all the heat that comes from the extra work.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“The brain cooks itself to death,” said an uncle.
Mom was crying. Lucee was crying, and that’s who I watched for a moment. But at least she wiped the snot off her lip.
“Many things can go wrong,” Grandpa allowed. “But that’s true for people living normal lives, which is why this risk is acceptable. I can spend the next ten or twenty years in diminished health and senility. Or worse, some hidden ailment kills me next year, cheating me of this opportunity.”
I shrugged and looked out the window again.
“Bradley,” he said.
“I’m called Brad,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re the only person who calls me ‘Bradley.’ ”
“Well,” Grandpa said, “I won’t do that anymore.”
“I know,” I said. “You’re going to die.”
My grandfather flew to Havana on the day after Christmas, accompanied by assistants and his doctors and my uncles, but not Mom. And not Lucee, either. My uncles didn’t agree with this craziness, but they claimed that they went along because the family had to send somebody. Both were loud about their decency, and each promised that he would convince the old man to give up this ridiculous scheme. Maybe they believed they could do it, but Grandpa’s young wife and oldest child shared a clearer assessment of the man, and they happened to be right. Both women loved him—hopelessly, eternally loved him—but they understood that this Lord of Business cared first about himself and second about his own burning needs.
Mom planned to go to Cuba after the “procedure” and then angrily sit at his bed. Several times she mentioned that intention to me, and maybe she would have seen it through. But thirty-three minutes after the Transcendence was declared complete and successful, the messages started to arrive. Grandpa’s body was comfortably encased within a special supercold gelatin bed, while his fierce mind—the mind that used to
play stupid—became a godly beast full of noise and piercing focus. From his deathbed, he read and studied and contemplated. The man who never willingly consumed one novel had fallen in love with Herman Melville. During a ninety-minute sprint, he wrote a scholarly book about whales and quests, and years later, in college, that same volume would be quoted to me by my American Lit professors. Grandpa also delved into his first love, which was engineering. Fourteen patents and plans for a new robot-ruled factory were given to his complicated family and his grateful corporation, fueling a last burst of economic vitality for both concerns.
But what mattered most, at least to me, was the time spent crafting birthday cards and random messages that sought us out wherever we were in the world. The idea factory left behind essays for grandsons and middle-aged daughters, and later, in the final day of his life, he taught himself to compose songs and then sang them to us in a voice that was exactly like his old voice, except for the little improvements.
Grandpa never quite died, what with all of the digital leftovers.
Yet he didn’t survive as many days as predicted, either. The uncles came home, and in some pact of mutual misery, Lucee and Mom boarded the same Gulfstream to fly down to Cuba. But his heart burst before they left U.S. airspace, and the bad news came from the old man himself: A video message where the avatar, forty years younger in the face and wearing filthy football gear, appeared before them. Following some set of deeply ingenious protocols, that contrivance of light and noise said, “I know you’re both pissed.” Then he surgically described each woman’s feelings and their tendencies. “But this is for the best, darlings. You’ll see. The life you know is tame and safe. There is a great bold life that I have been living over the last few days and hours, and it matters more than you can appreciate, at least on this one day and in these newborn circumstances.
“Let time pass before you judge,” he told them. “Let yourself understand the promise of this technology.”
Then the dead man made a poetic, deeply self-absorbed prediction:
“One way or another, everybody will follow me. What I am is just the first drop of moisture in what will be a soft, nourishing rain.”
