Mash Up

by Gardner Dozois

  “I like you,” Violet said. “I mean, even beyond pity for your stunted imagination.”

  Rob almost blurted: My imagination is not stunted! But then he remembered all those failed novel openings and looked down at his blanket. Thin and white and shabby. Stunted.

  “Here,” Violet said, with so much unexpected gentleness that he looked up again. “Take this. I want you to have it. But only for a little while – you have to give it back when I come for it. Okay?”

  She unscrewed the thing-a-doody from her pierced nose and held it out to him. Rob hesitated – was this sanitary? – but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings, and so he took it. “Uh… wow. Thanks.”

  “You don’t know what it is, do you?”

  “A piercing… uh, jewelry. But, Violet, I’m not going to get my—”

  “Of course not. Just keep it in your pocket and rub it when your imagination fails, okay?”

  All at once, she didn’t look so young. “Er, okay.” At the moment, in a backless hospital gown, he had no pockets.

  “And remember, you have to give it back when I come for it.” She pulled a shiny bag from her tote, a huge cloth bag emblazoned with paintbrushes. “Want some fruit gummies?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Okay. I’m glad you’re feeling better. Bye now.”

  “Bye.”

  She left Rob feeling dazed, and then stuck her head back into the room. “If you lose my talisman,” she said cheerfully, “I’ll have to kill you.”

  Which would make two women trying to do that. “I won’t lose it!”

  “Good. Bye.”

  Gingerly, Rob examined the nose jewelry, which felt faintly greasy from skin oil or makeup or something. The filigree work really was exquisite, delicate silver tracings of a crescent moon imposed on a rayed sun imposed on a jagged bolt of lightning. Rob put it in the drawer of his bedside table.

  * * *

  He went home the next morning, after promising to see a therapist. Karen went to work each day. Rob spent long hours trying to decide whether she had tried to murder him, whether she might try again, whether he was being paranoid, and why he hadn’t spoken about this to the doctor, the police, or Karen herself. The only one of these questions to which he had an answer was the last, and the answer shamed him.

  If he accused her – rightly or wrongly – she might leave him. And he could not imagine life without her. With few friends and no occupation except for his failed writing, he had anchored his life to Karen’s presence, to Karen’s decision-making, to Karen’s beauty. Without her, he would be adrift.

  Was it really so hard to just shop for and cook all the household food? He had the time.

  What if she moved on to a gun or a knife? But she wouldn’t. Not her style at all – too messy.

  He tried to distract himself by lumbering up to his study. There was still one book left in the B & N bag: Write It, Sell It, Rake in Royalties! He read: “The best thing to do for writer’s block is…. nothing. Just sit at the computer for three hours. Eventually, you will get so bored that you will write.”

  Nothing. Well, certainly Rob could do that. He had been doing nothing for most of his life.

  He sat at the keyboard.

  And sat.

  And sat.

  A squirrel ran across the windowsill.

  The furnace in the basement came on, then went off.

  A spider inched down the wall and disappeared into the baseboard.

  Half of a cracker decomposed quietly under the printer stand.

  And, eventually, Rob began to write. Unfortunately, it was exactly what he had written before.

  It was a dark and stormy night. But it shouldn’t have been.

  “You promised me an evening full fair, and a bright moon,” the queen said evenly. Her rosy bottom lip caught lightly between her small, even, very white teeth. Her—

  Her what? He couldn’t remember even his own pathetic words! Frustrated, Rob stood and jammed his hands into his pockets to keep them from pounding on the computer screen. His left fingers rubbed Violet’s nose jewelry.

  Without hope, he began to type:

  —lover burst into the privy chamber, naked except for a helmet, and carrying a sword. Rob would recognize that back anywhere! It was the blond man from Karen’s photograph. The queen, in a green velvet riding habit with a velvet hat, stared at Seth and yelled for her Master of Horse. Outside the window, a storm howled.

  The naked man turned on Rob. “You promised her an evening full fair!”

  “I… I…” Rob stammered. He what? What the fuck was going on?

  The naked knight lunged. Rob yelped and ducked behind a heavy trestle table. Frantically he fumbled for Violet’s charm. As soon as he rubbed it, he was—

  —back in his study, shaking.

  “I’m home!” Karen called brightly up the stairs. “You up there, Rob?”

  Was he? Where was he? Where had he been? Rob stared at the charm. Karen came up the stairs.

  “I thought it might be fun to eat take-out from that new Thai place everybody’s raving about, so I picked up some on my way home.” She held two white Styrofoam boxes.

  Rob stared at the boxes, then at Karen, then again at the boxes. One gaped open slightly at a corner. Had she put—

  He fainted. But even as he fell, his fist clutched tightly on Violet’s charm.

  * * *

  The next morning, Rob lay in bed as if the sheets were a minefield. Determination stormed through him. Also hunger – he had eaten nothing for a day and a half. (“Must be some sort of stomach flu!” he’d gasped to Karen after his brief faint.) When Karen’s car pulled out of the driveway, he leapt out of bed.

  One box of take-out, the one with the gaping corner, sat in the refrigerator topped with a post-it note: Yummmm! The other box, empty, was in the trash. Rob carried lahb gai upstairs, scraped it onto the windowsill of his study, and waited. In less than five minutes a squirrel dropped from the yew topiary, ate the food, and scampered away. Two hours later he found the animal stiff and dead in the yard.

  He felt no compunction, not for a squirrel. But now he knew.

  She had always been the most determined woman he ever met.

  Back in his study, Violet’s charm in his pajama pocket and his entire body trembling, he first researched on the Internet (Write Your Way to Fame and Glory: “Know your subject thoroughly!”). Then he rubbed and typed and jumped into places that had never existed before he created them. Banal and clichéd places, maybe, with trite characters – but his.

  It was a dark and stormy night. But it shouldn’t have been.

  “What the—” Carson said.

  “Too much bloody wind!” Rob bent closer to the screen, as if that might give a different reading. “You were only supposed to mix the atmospheric layers enough to keep them from separating!”

  “I did!” Carson cried. He was an intern and so vulnerable, and this was not helped by a volatile streak that had worried Rob before.

  Rob reached across him and expertly adjusted the air-mixing drafts within the biodome. He knew just what to do. It was important to keep the atmospheric trace minerals from stratifying at the top of the dome, to keep the trees growing stress wood and thus avoid etiolation, to keep vital free chemicals from locking up. He, Rob, knew.

  * * *

  It was a dark and stormy night, but it shouldn’t have been.

  “Can he hear us?” Celia whispered.

  “I don’t know,” James said.

  “I can hear you,” Rob said, sitting up in the hospital bed. “And I know what you’ve been up to!”

  Celia screamed. James, no naked blond stud capable of sword play, turned pale and trembled.

  * * *

  It was a dark and stormy night, but it shouldn’t have been.

  *KZQQ predicted only a ten percent chance of rain,* 652 Maple Avenue sent to 653.

  *But their accuracy rate is only seventy-three percent,* Rob sent back. It felt odd to be a building, b
ut no odder than his usual life. Just as stationary, just as wind-battered. And when the murderer ran from the lobby, Rob would perform better than 653 Maple Avenue. He’d researched everything the very latest smart tech could do, and he would install it into his story. The killer was toast.

  The most important story, however, would have to wait until Karen got home. All the rest of the day, Rob prepared.

  * * *

  She came with more take-out, but without the bright and sweet smile. This was commanding Karen, to whom he had once been so grateful for taking charge of his life. “Sweet Karen,” he’d called her during their courtship, and she hadn’t even mentioned how hackneyed the endearment was. Not then, anyway.

  “Now, Rob, you have to eat. You need to keep your strength up. Look, I brought your very favorite: lemon chicken from Live to Eat.”

  The chicken smelled wonderful. Rob could picture the crisp slices in their delectable sauce, tart and savory. His mouth watered.

  Strong! He must be strong!

  He had never been strong. Karen had been the strong one, although now he realized that possibly he had mistaken her indifference for strength. It was easy to remain calm and unemotional when you didn’t care much. It wasn’t as if his trust fund had ever been threatened.

  “It smells great, honey,” he told her. “But let me get a bottle of wine from the cellar, to go with it.”

  Instantly she was suspicious. “What are we celebrating?”

  “I wrote part of a story today.”

  “Oh. That.” But she recovered. “Great! Get the wine.”

  When he returned, she was at his computer: reading, scrolling, smiling derisively. Rob held a bottle of very good Josmeyer Pinot Gris by its slim green neck.

  “What do you think?”

  “Isn’t this the same thing you wrote before?”

  “Not exactly,” Rob said, peering over her shoulder, pulling the charm from his pocket and transferring it to the same hand that held the wine.

  It was a dark and stormy night. But it shouldn’t have been.

  “You promised me an evening full fair, and a bright moon,” the queen said evenly. Her rosy bottom lip caught lightly between her small, even, very white teeth.

  “Your Grace… the portents said…” The astrologer quaked in his bedsocks. He had not had time to pull on boots before the page had wakened him – at midnight! – with a summons to the privy chamber. A bright fire glowed on the hearth, the queen’s woman, Emma, waited respectfully in the shadows, and outside, rain pelted down and lightning cracked.

  “I had thought, on the promise of your words, to ride out tonight,” the queen said, and indeed she wore a riding habit of green velvet, striking with her red hair, and a green velvet hat. “You told me to rely on you.”

  “I… the portents….” Where could she have been going at midnight?

  “I will not forget this, Master Astrologer.”

  “None of us will forget this,” Rob said, astonished at his own perfect line of dialogue. Practically Merchant Ivory! He seized Karen from behind, his free hand circling her body and lifting her from the chair. His other fingers rubbed the charm gripped against the wine bottle, and his study vanished.

  Karen screamed. The astrologer screamed. The queen screamed. Her woman screamed. Rob, silent, let go of Karen and smashed the wine bottle against the trestle table. Pinot Gris flew everywhere. Quick as a dancer, Rob moved behind the door just as the naked blond man burst into the room, waving his sword. Rob leaped behind him and slashed the jagged edge of the glass across the back of the man’s neck. Blood spurted out, mixing with the Pinot Gris.

  “Carl!” Karen screamed.

  “Don’t worry,” Rob said. “He’s only fictional.”

  The queen had recovered herself, and so had her woman. Both of them rushed forward, the queen with Carl’s fallen sword. But Rob had been writing all afternoon. He held up his hand and said, “Your Grace, stop. He was a traitor come to ravish and slay you, and I have slain him instead. I am the Master Mage foretold in the Prophecy of m’l’Clerabin!”

  The queen stopped, uncertain.

  “Elizabeth,” he said gently, “wasn’t I prophesied? In the Book of Prophecy that you were reading only today? Look, I bear the mark!” He lifted his tee-shirt to show the tattoo he’d gotten at the county fair when he was sixteen. It had been a skull but had faded to look more like a piece of Swiss cheese.

  The queen had courage (he had written her that way). Her chin lifted and she said, “Have you come for good or evil?”

  Oh, this was thrilling! But Rob didn’t have much time. Her Master of Horse would be here in moments.

  “For good to you, my liege. Your reign will be long and glorious. And I bring you a treasure, my ward, who will serve you long and faithfully. Take care of her well.”

  Karen, who had been looking dazed, said, “Now wait a minute—”

  “Bye, Karen,” Rob said, rubbed his charm, and vanished just as the very muscular Master of Horse burst into the privy chamber and Emma, the queen’s stalwart woman, rushed forward to throw a chamberpot at him. Rob thought that was a great touch: just the sort of gritty detail that lifted his story above the usual sentimental romance.

  The last thing he heard was the crack! of thunder from the storm outside.

  In his study, he deleted the story from his files and burned the hard copies in the fireplace, watching the flames dance and flicker like lightning.

  * * *

  There was an inquiry, of course. There were repeated bouts of questions from detectives, a blitz of press coverage, sideways glances from neighbors. But there was no body, no evidence of foul play, and Rob’s unshakeable story that he had been asleep when Karen came home, had not seen her, and had no idea what had happened. He was a little surprised that he turned out to be such a good liar. Also pleased – what was fiction, after all, but skillful lying?

  “It won’t make you a better writer,” Violet said when she came for her nose jewelry.

  She just appeared in his kitchen as he was making a ham sandwich. Rob gaped at her, and an irrational fear sliced through him. But he had, after all, been expecting her sooner or later, and he’d taken good care not to lose her charm. (“If you lose my talisman, I’ll have to kill you.”) She still wore too much eye makeup, but her hair was now orange and her lipstick cherry-red. She carried a large cloth tote bag with an alternating pattern of butterflies and daggers.

  “I—”

  “I know,” she said, “you want to thank me. But you shouldn’t, really. You still have stunted imagination, poor guy.”

  “I do not!”

  She sighed and held out her hand. Rob took her nose jewelry from his pocket and – reluctantly – handed it to her.

  Violet sniffed. “Why does it smell funny?”

  “I cleaned it for you. With silver polish.”

  She laughed. “Oh, you poor sad man.”

  “I don’t see why you would say that!”

  “No, of course you don’t. Is that ham and provolone? Can I have half?”

  He gave the sandwich to her. She sat on a high stool at his kitchen counter, talking with her mouth full. “Did you clean my talisman because it had blood and expensive wine on it?”

  Rob stared. “Do you… you mean you know…”

  “Of course I know. What do you think I am?”

  Actually, he had no idea.

  “There aren’t many of us in any generation,” she mused around a mouthful of sandwich. “Geniuses, I mean. People with genuinely powerful imaginations. Will, of course. Isaac. Leonardo.”

  Rob took another of the kitchen stools. His legs felt a bit wobbly. Shakespeare? Newton? Da Vinci?

  Violet continued, “And Albert, who was a really interesting case. That’s not my field, of course, but he laid bare the main principle. If imagination is big enough – has enough mass and solidity – it can bend reality. Reshape the usually straight-forward nature of it. All kinds of reality – light, art, consciousness.�
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  “Violet…” Now Rob was really afraid.

  “You didn’t really have writer’s block, you know. Writer’s block happens to writers who have written and then can’t. You just had your poor stunted imagination. Not,” she said with an air of scrupulous fairness, “that you weren’t justified in what you did. She was a bitch and a half. And you were actually kinder than I thought you’d be. Your trite fantasy queen put together out of old movies and other people’s novels – she’ll treat Karen just fine. Actually, I thought you’d kill her.”

  “It—”

  “But you’re not a killer. I should have seen that.” She frowned. “Why didn’t I see that?”

  “Violet—”

  “Well, I’m young yet. Even a genius needs time to grow her talent. Do you have any milk?”

  Rob brought the milk from the refrigerator.

  “I need a glass,” she said patiently.

  He brought a glass. She drank the milk and swiped the back of her hand across her lips.

  “I like you, Rob Carpenter. I liked you right from the start of this. But I have to protect myself. You’re a terrible writer, but you are a writer. Writers are the worst gossips in the world. Well, they get paid for it, don’t they? Eventually you’ll talk about me. I can’t have that.”

  “Violet, don’t—”

  “Here,” she said gently, and pulled a book from her tote. “You’ll need this.”

  A small book, blank cover, with writing so tiny that Rob had to squint to make it out. Names, written in capital letters on the left-hand sides of pages, were easier to read: VIOLA, KENT, ROSALIND, CALIBAN.

  “But this is… is…”

  “I had it photocopied at twenty-five percent of the size and then bound. A real pain in the ass. Here, you need these, too.” From her tote she pulled a clear plastic bag full of crumpled cloth.

  “Violet,” Rob whispered, “don’t—”

  “I have to. Real artists are ruthless, don’t you know that? We’d run over our mothers if it would help our art. In fact, I did! Aww… don’t cry, Rob. It won’t be so bad. You’ll be famous, you know. And I promise you it will be interesting. Don’t you want interesting? And I know you wanted to be a successful writer.”