by Barry, Mike
Conlan slept. He slept in the secured room and he dreamed of junk. Junk was everywhere; it was all through the nation. The country was a huge vein and the dealers and businessmen were shooting it up. The junkies were hooked into that vein, they were deep to the center of the country, but the dealers and businessmen were not what you would call slouches either. Everybody was getting theirs. Everybody was getting theirs off the system while the junkies died and the cities wept. The system was paying everybody off in kind, the suppliers were getting one kind of return and the enforcers another, and the pimps in the administration creating jobs for themselves at ten to the minute were picking up the pieces and only the junkies were paying any kind of price. They kept the whole thing going by dying. The cities did their share by collapsing. But that only meant that you could appoint experts to study the fate of the cities so that part was all right too. Nobody was paying except people who, if you had enough money to wall yourself off from, you didn’t even have to look at….
In the middle of the dream of the devastated country, Wulff was awakened into what seemed, for a moment, to be another dream. There was a girl against him and she was holding him tightly. Her clothes were off, she was naked to the bone and he could feel her skin, her hair, her breasts, take in the rising smell of her. The girl was touching his cheek with her lips and she was talking to him. Wulff struggled against the shell of the dream, trying to shatter it open so that he could clamber out, and then he found that he was not dreaming and that Tamara was against him.
“You came back,” she said.
He felt her against him. He had taken off his own clothes to sleep and the pressure of her body was maddening. He could feel her then, and despite himself, could feel his own response. With it there was a kind of horror because he remembered another girl who had died in a room. “No,” he said, “no.”
“Quiet,” she said, “it’s all right.”
“No. It isn’t all right.”
“Yes it is,” she said. She moved her lips down his cheek to the panels of his neck and began to stroke him below. “Quiet,” she said.
He thought of the other girl in that room of months past and the coldness started to run like fire from his belly, moving up and down, gripping him in fingers of shame. “Please,” he said, “no.”
“I want to,” she said. “I want to, it’s all right, stop it, lie back, sleep, do what you were doing,” and he could not struggle against her any more. Her fingers, soft, were insistent as well. She gripped him.
The grip brought back to him feelings that he thought had perished in New York. He was a dead man. Had he not told this to all of them? He was dead and could not be killed again, yet here was this girl and she would not let him die. He battered like a bird against the wall of self. Against himself, he felt himself rising.
“Yes,” she said, “yes, yes, it’s all right.”
“It isn’t all right,” he said again, “it isn’t, it isn’t,” but in command all day he felt control slipping from him now, felt the situation heave and then like water draining, felt the initiative pass from him to her. He was struggling, but no longer with conviction; she was working on him, but no longer with doubt. He felt her breasts against him; saw them for the first time, full, pouting, contrite, the breasts of a woman, and he reached for them. He could no longer stop himself. She turned and suddenly he was inside her.
“Slowly,” she said, stronger than he. “Slowly.”
And so he worked on her slowly; feeling the engorgement which was at first merely a memory but then took him to the present time; so quickly the months fell away like ash and he was once again locked into present time, seeking her. Seeking this other woman. He pressed himself into her and felt himself being drawn slowly through and out the other side of her. She was wringing him dry.
“Slowly,” she said again. Her eyes fluttered underneath him. He reared over her and found himself looking at her, eye to eye, as if from a great distance and he broke his rhythm, arched himself, followed her will, let her lead him. He reached his hands to her breasts and stroked them. It was at first like a foreign substance; he had not touched a woman’s breasts in so long that he had forgotten the feel of them, the soft, gelatinous wobble, but then memory and the present moment intersected and he found himself at last ready to function. He leaned down, bit at her breast, felt her rhythm increase.
“Now,” she said, “you can do it now. Do it, do it,” and very expertly, carefully, began to curse to excite him. She said every foul expression that he had ever heard looking up at him through those carefully ingenuous eyes. “Come on,” she said, “come on.”
He was there, he was almost there, he was getting close, he felt himself unbidden leaping to fall into her and then orgasm overtook him finally. Like gears finally meshing on a car that had lain abandoned for months. He poured into her, furious and gasping, and reciprocally she came back at him. He felt her muscles tense and then she was open and free, plunging, her teeth biting into his cheek. Her words broke into little empty moans and sounds and he held her shoulders tightly, rode with her.
Finally it was done.
He rolled from her, curiously contented. He had not thought that he would be; it was surprising how good he felt. With the ease was a spreading pool of guilt, because he did not think, could not have thought, that he would have been able to have a woman after being dead. Dead men did not fuck. Nevertheless he had. It was an interruption in his calculations and might change the situation. But he would not worry about that now. For a few moments in the dead-center of what was going to happen to him he would permit himself to be at peace. There was enough time to think about this later.
“That was good,” she said. “That was the first time I’ve come in months, do you know that?”
“If you say so.”
“I thought that I could never come again, but it was very easy. Maybe it’s just being off speed for a day. Do you know this is the first time—”
“All right,” Wulff said. Unbidden, his mind was already racing ahead. He had an appointment to keep, things were happening almost out of control. And he would need a good deal of equipment to take down to the Bay….
“I don’t even know your name,” she said. “I still don’t know your name.”
“Yes,” he said, “all right.” He wanted to lie with her in this bed, talk with her, tell her who he was and even, unreasonably, what he was doing, but his instincts were against it. He could feel the instincts thrashing like snakes underneath the surface.
“No time,” he said. He sat on the bed. “Later.”
“Later?”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Wulff said, “it’s not safe anymore. I tell you—”
She looked at him, her mouth opening. “What’s wrong?” she said, “is something going to happen now?”
“I don’t know. I think so.” He thought of Severo, of letting Severo go, of the Mercedes on the freeway, of men beginning to come out of the corridors now to take their shots at him, one by one and then in groups. Open season. Open season on the wolf. “Get your clothes,” he said.
She came alert against him immediately. Give her that, this girl was no fool. In fact, out of the haze of drugs, her purpose and sense of self-preservation might have been as significant as his. “All right,” she said.
“Quickly,” Wulff said, “quickly,” filled with a desperate sense of urgency which sex had only heightened. He bolted from the bed, seized his own clothing, began to get dressed with the same fury and economy of motion with which, not five minutes before, he had possessed her. Tamara was already into her pants, pulling them up, walking awkwardly within them across the room to seize her sweater.
“What happens now?” she said.
“I don’t know,” Wulff said, seizing the pistol and then putting it near him on the bed as he pulled on his shirt. “Do you understand that? I just don’t know.”
“You’re in a lot of trouble, aren’t you?” she said.
“More than
you think.”
He heard a clattering sound on the staircase. Someone was moving up very quickly, very quietly but you couldn’t trust these old rooming houses, something unsteady on the staircase, he had slipped. They were closer than he thought. No time to order himself, he lunged for the pistol—
And the door burst open.
Two men came in, holding guns, plunging on them. The accident on the staircase had probably made them decide to discard caution; they had made their presence known so they might as well make their move. They were short, heavy types. Wulff was sure he had never seen either of them before. One of them raised his gun. He aimed at Wulff and fired.
Tamara screamed. As pointless as his own ducking motion. If the man had been on target that would have been the end of it right there. But anxiety, haste, shortness of breath from the climb, any one of a number of things had thrown him off. The bullet struck into the wall above Wulff’s head with terrific force. He felt the plaster sifting down on him, coating him.
He raised his gun and fired just as the other man, the one who had come in second rushed him full out. The tactic succeeded. Wulff felt himself hurtling over the shoulder, striking the floor hard, a jolting contact that almost blew the gun out of his hand. But it did not. He held onto the gun and shot the first man, the one with the poor aim, in the leg.
The man screamed and went over. Tamara screamed again, her hands rising to her face. She was trying to cover herself. Assertion had given way to panic. Wulff levelled his gun at the man who had rushed him. He had a pure, blank second to level; this man apparently had forgotten that he was holding a revolver. His rush through the door meant that he wasn’t comfortable with a gun in his hand. That gave him a little time.
He shot this man in the forehead. He went down instantly, circuitry of blood sprouting from his head. For one instant he seemed to be in inexpressible pain; he seemed to be trying to say something. Too late. He died.
Wulff went back to the one on the floor. But that one had moved. Injured leg and all he had staggered to his feet and embraced Tamara. He was holding the girl tightly against him now and with an extended arm was trying to point his gun.
Wulff shot the gun out of his hand. The target was too easy to miss. It smashed against the wall and came spinning to a point underneath the window. But the man held on. He had Tamara clutched against him now in a desperate bear hug. The girl was beginning to discolor.
“Help,” she said weakly. Her eyes rolled. It had all happened too quickly for her. She looked as if she was about to faint.
“Let her go,” Wulff said.
“Are you crazy?” the man said in a thick, foreign-sounding voice. “She’s my ticket out of here.” He must have moved his leg then; he screamed in a surprised, feminine-sounding way. “You hurt me you son of a bitch,” he said, “now drop your gun.”
“Let the girl go. She has nothing to do with this.”
“Fuck you,” the man said. He clutched her more tightly. Tamara’s cheeks puffed. “You son of a bitch, you killed Willie.”
“Willie was going to kill me.”
“You dirty bastard,” the man said almost as if he were complaining. “This was supposed to be an easy job. Where did you come from?”
Wulff concentrated levelled the gun. But the man was clever; he had the girl flat and hard against him like a plank of wood. There was simply no area at which he could risk a shot. She was taller than he if not as wide. He could try to squeeze off a shot into his ribs but one anticipatory flick and the girl would take it in the heart.
“Let her breathe,” Wulff said, “let her breathe or I’ll shoot anyway. You’re going to suffocate her.”
Understanding seemed to penetrate the man’s eyes. Subtly he relaxed his grip on Tamara. He felt the rasping intake of her breath more than he heard it and color seemed to return. She was crying.
“I’m going to take this girl out of here,” the man said, “her and me down the stairs.”
“With that leg? Are you kidding? You take one step and it’ll go out from under.”
“You shot me in the leg,” the man said. Like the issue of Willie’s death, it seemed that he was rediscovering it. The only reason that Wulff was here was because both of these men were profoundly stupid. Couldn’t Severo find better personnel than this? Or were they free-lancers, looking for a bounty? Everybody was going to come at him now.
“You need help,” Wulff said calmly. He felt edges retract, felt suddenly in control. The worst that could happen was that all of them in this room were going to die. It was too bad that Tamara was part of it but this had been her decision. “That’s a fast-flowing wound. You could bleed to death.”
In confirmation, the man looked down at his leg. The blood was coming out of a vein in the calf like milk being wrenched from a container; staining rivulets of it already flowing into the panels of the floor. “You son of a bitch,” he said.
“Please help me,” Tamara said, breath back in her. She sounded as she had the first time he had seen her; in that other damned room. “He’s hurting me. He’s—”
“I’m trying,” Wulff said quietly. “I’m doing what I can. You have to stay calm.”
“Your cunt,” the man said, his face twisting. “Tell your cunt to stay calm.”
“Quiet,” Wulff said. He felt a shroud of detachment settling over him. He had literally nothing to lose. Tamara was dead, the man was dead, all of them were gone anyway. Anything that happened was a benefit.
“I’m going to walk this cunt over to the stairs,” the man said, “and I’m going to take her downstairs and into a car and you’re going to let us go. She’s going to be wrapped around me all the time, just like she was wrapped around you.”
“I can’t be hurt anymore,” Tamara said, “I just can’t be hurt; I’ve had too much.”
“Do what he says, Tamara.”
“You’re going to let him take me out of here?”
“We’re in a bad position. I have no choice.”
“You can’t do this to me. You can’t.”
“Yes he can,” the man said. He began to lead her with difficulty toward the door, stumbling. “He’s going to go along with me because he has nothing else.”
“That’s right,” Wulff said soothingly. He allowed the gun to fall, let the man’s eyes follow it, “I have no choice.”
“We’re going to get into that car and drive away,” the man said, “if you try anything I’ll kill you.” He extended an arm behind him, pulled the door open, the maw of the hallway seeming to leap toward them, “and then I’ll figure out what to do with you.”
“I thought you cared,” she said. “I thought you cared for me.”
“He doesn’t care for anyone, cut. He doesn’t even care for himself. All he wants to do is to get out of this alive. You shot Willie. You shot him down. You’re going to pay for this.”
The man backed Tamara into the frame of the door. Wulff let the pistol hang by his side. He felt the weight of it dragging him clear up into the neck muscles. The girl’s eyes were open, desperate. She was right. She had not been lying to him. She had been hurt too much; she could not take any more. And the odds were that she would never get in or out of that car alive.
“Come on, cunt,” the man said. He increased the pressure; Wulff could see the blackening start in Tamara’s face again. He was cutting down her wind. Her physical reserves were almost exhausted; he saw her begin to slide toward unconsciousness again. No. Do not warn him.
He stepped her into the door, retreated toward the hall. The man was in even worse shape than Wulff had figured; the leg bleeding more freely now with the slight motion, his balance precarious. He would probably never make it down those steps, not carrying the girl. He would stumble, pitch and fall before he ever got to the street. What would the difference be, however? The fall could kill Tamara as easily as a gunshot. The odds were only slightly improved.
Her face convulsed, mouth fell open. Her eyes seemed to hang from her head. She col
lapsed in the man’s arm, unconscious, slumped forward slightly.
The weight pulled him off balance. That and the leg were too much, he could not handle the alteration. He stumbled, shifted a leg, grabbed for purchase on the floor. Tamara’s leg locked behind him.
He swayed. She slid forward exposing an open area of his chest.
It was enough. Wulff raised the revolver and fired.
The man died slowly. First he weaved like a dancer in front of him. Tamara, his partner fell away, fell away, hitting the rug in a heap. The man clutched at his chest as if stricken by heartburn. He began to babble.
Wulff did not have the patience to watch him die slowly. He fired the gun again and hit the man in the forehead. Powder spilled from the gun. He smelled kerosene at the center of the report.
The man groaned, made a watery sound, flipped backward over the staircase. He fell straight down, a plummet. Wulff heard him hit on the next landing, bounce and begin to roll.
He left the stairs as he had mounted them, then, off-balance, scattering.
He knelt over Tamara. There was no sound within the rooming house. There never was when anything like this happened. Rooming houses were for the kind of people who had long since adapted to their lives, if they had adapted at all, by denying anything outside of them. They were people who had found surviving difficult, either because they could not come to terms with the world at all or because the coming to terms had hurt them terribly at sometime in the past and now they simply wanted no part of it.
Either way, Wulff guessed, he could set off a bomb in his rooms and as long as it failed to bring down the quarters of the various roomers, they would stay inside.
He knelt over the girl. Once again her respiration was smoothing out. She was coming around. Healthy, vigorous, for all the abuse that this body had taken, she would get it started again. Wulff at that moment felt all of his thirty-two years. Thirty-two was not so much older than twenty-three, not really, but it was at another stage of life altogether. He just could not take what he used to, what these children were routinely taking now. Maybe it was a kind of evolution. The drug culture was breeding, by elimination, a frame which before it ran out all together could hold up almost anything. He could never have taken, even in his twenties, what this girl had. He knew that.
