Ring Game

by Pete Hautman

  “Just a little sunburn.” The teakettle began to whistle. “What people?”

  “I know where you were,” Chip said.

  “Oh? And where was that?”

  “The water’s boiling.”

  “Where is it you think we were?”

  “You and Mr. Chandra went to a plastic surgeon.”

  “Yes? So?”

  Chip glowered.

  “Do you think there is something wrong with that, Chip? With trying to look good?”

  “It’s a lie.”

  “So? How is it different from you sneaking up on us, looking into my bedroom window? Spying on us. Who are you spying for, Chip?”

  “I wasn’t spying.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “I was reconnoitering.”

  “For who?”

  Chip said nothing.

  “Chip, if you were me, and someone wouldn’t answer your questions, what would you do to get them to answer? Think about that.” Polly stood up, put a teabag in the ACO mug, and filled it with boiling water from the teakettle. “Are you sure you don’t want a cup?”

  “What kind of tea is it?” Chip asked.

  “Earl Grey. You scare me, Chip. Looking in my window. Keeping secrets. I’ve been watching you. I know you liked Hyatt. You always liked him. Are you working for Hyatt, Chip?” She had come in close to him again; the sharp aroma of the brewing tea swirling into the sour, soapy smell of her body.

  “Chip?”

  She reached down. He thought for a moment that she was going to unbuckle his belt. Instead, she dumped the mug of hot Earl Grey onto his crotch.

  45

  The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

  —Tertullian

  THE SOUND OF BLOOD droplets falling changed as the fluid level rose. Now that there was an inch or two in the champagne bottle, the sound was more of a ker-plop, about two every second. Before, it had been more like plip, plip, plip.

  Hy had been quite apologetic after hitting her.

  “Look, Carm,” he’d said, leading her back toward the makeshift altar. “You gotta understand, I’ve been working on this for a long time. This is my shot, Carm. I gotta take my shot. And it’s your shot, too. It’s our shot.”

  She’d said, “I know it, Hy. I understand,” not wanting him to hit her again.

  “This is where we’ve gotta pull together, trust each other. We go forward, follow the plan as best as we can and believe in it all the way. You start having doubts, that’s when things fall apart. You gotta trust me on this one, Carm.”

  She’d said, “Don’t hit me anymore, Hy.”

  “I said I’m sorry. Here, sit down. Are you okay? Okay. Look, you got a little cut on your chin. That’ll look good, like you put up a fight. Trust me.”

  “I do trust you, Hy. But doesn’t it matter I’m pregnant?”

  “Yeah, it matters. It matters a lot. It’s good. It’s a good thing. I mean, the whole virgin bride thing takes on a whole ’nother slant. Pregnant virgin bride. They gotta love it. You know how far a guy like Drew Chance can run with something like that? We’ll probably get invited to the White House.”

  That was when Carmen had decided that Hy was not simply a stupid fucking asshole. He was an insane stupid fucking asshole.

  She’d said, “If we’re gonna do it we ought to make it look really good.”

  “It’s gotta look good.”

  That was when she’d swung the champagne bottle and hit him on the nose and took off running. She’d have got away, too, if she hadn’t been half drunk and fallen down before she even got out of the chapel. Hy had been genuinely pissed after that, but at least he didn’t hit her again, not right away. He’d just dragged her back in and tied her up, and this time she didn’t resist. He tore open the bag containing the phlebotomy setup, a piece of clear plastic tubing with needles at both ends.

  “Which needle goes in your arm?”

  “Neither one.”

  “One of ’em’s going in, Carm.”

  “Okay then. The small one.”

  “They’re both the same.”

  “So what are you asking?”

  When Hy finally found a vein, the blood had squirted out quickly, all over his shirt. Carmen had laughed. He must’ve hit her a good one then, because she didn’t remember him taping the phlebotomy tubing to her arm. Next thing she knew he was shaking her awake.

  “Carm? Listen to me, Carm. I gotta go. You listening?”

  She was listening.

  “If Chip shows up, tell him to get lost, okay? Tell him I had to leave.”

  “Take this tube out of my arm, Hy, or I’ll kill you.”

  “Just hang in there, Carm. And remember our story. Remember all that money we’re gonna make. You’re gonna be on TV, Carm.”

  “Hy, I could bleed to death here.”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s coming out a drop at a time.”

  “I’m serious, Hy.”

  And then he was gone. She heard the limo start and roll away, and the only sound left was the plip, plip, plip of blood droplets falling from the other end of the phlebotomy tubing into the Freixnet bottle.

  Carmen strained against the ropes. Hy had done a good job. She tried to twist her arm, to dislodge the needle, but it was securely taped in place—ker-plop, ker-plop, ker-plop—the sound was almost soothing. She wondered how long it would take for her to lose consciousness. A part of her—a rather large part, she realized—was looking forward to it.

  She dreamed she opened her eyes and saw two nostrils, headlights in negative, coming at her, and behind them she saw a beautiful woman with a glowing pink face; the angel of death.

  Officer Rob Grunseth, three-year veteran of the Prescott Police Department, had been working the dogwatch three months now, and it was killing him. The gallons of sugary coffee and the half dozen or so Hostess Fruit Pies he consumed during each eleven-to-seven shift had pretty much ruined his digestive system, not to mention his waistline. A few days back, at his wife’s insistence, he’d gone to see a chiropractor. The guy had cracked his spine a couple times and told him that, in time, his biological clock would reset itself; his body would adjust to working nights. The chiropractor had told him to quit drinking coffee, quit smoking, and avoid snacks, especially sugary snacks. He had prescribed a sour-tasting Korean ginseng tea—Grunseth was on his fourth cup—and a one hundred fifty-watt full-spectrum lightbulb, which was now shining directly in his face from the desk lamp. The visit had cost him a hundred and six bucks, including the lightbulb, and he still felt like shit, like he was gonna fall asleep sitting at the desk.

  The chiropractor had told him to listen to his body. At three-thirty in the morning, way past the time anything interesting was likely to happen in Prescott, Grunseth’s body was making a powerful case for a fruit pie, a Winston, and a cup of something that didn’t taste like wet grass clippings. His body was saying screw this Korean tea. And screw this job, too. His wife’s brother, up there in St. Paul, making a clean forty a year at the Ford plant, building pickups. No kids calling him Barney Fife. No listening to that fart-ridden Amundson’s theories about crime in small-town America—where the hell was Amundson, anyways? The guy says, an hour ago, says he’s got to run home for five minutes to pick up some prescription pills. Probably givin’ it to the wife, what he was probably doing. Leaving Rob Grunseth, Mr. Reliable, chained to the goddamn phone, all alone with his goddamn ginseng tea. And then his wife calls, crying about their eighteen-year-old niece Daphne who apparently got herself impregnated by a guy works stocking produce over at the IGA. Like he needed one more thing to think about with this ulcer or hiatal hernia or stomach cancer or whatever the hell it was he had. What the hell. He’d smoke a goddamn cigarette is what he’d do, and that chiropractor and that Chief Becker could just stick their antismoking talk right up their self-righteous butts. Becker was the worst. He had his way, smoking would be a capital offense. He liked to brag that not one Prescott cop smoked. Most of th
em did, of course—just not around Becker.

  Grunseth walked out the back doors, leaving one of them cocked open so he could hear the phone. It had started to rain. He ran out to his patrol car, the only car in the quarter-acre parking lot, and got the half pack of Winstons out of the glove box. Nothing he hated more than rain. He ran back to the entryway and lit a match. He was about to touch it to the tip of the cigarette when a pair of headlights rounded the end of the long building and some big white thing, a goddamn limousine, came sliding around the corner, the back tires skidding on the rain-slick pavement. The driver locked up the brakes, causing the rear end to slue around and smash into the grill of the only car in the quarter-acre lot, which happened to be Grunseth’s patrol car.

  Grunseth felt a burning sensation and noticed that the match he had lit was broiling the tip of his thumb. He blew it out and dropped the smoking match, shaking the pain out of his hand.

  A man in a maroon tuxedo jumped out of the driver’s seat of the limo and ran up the steps. He fell to his knees and grabbed Grunseth’s trousers. “Please help me! Oh my God! They’ve taken her!”

  “Just you take it easy now,” Grunseth said, stepping back from the man’s clutches. A drunk, an escapee from some wedding reception or class reunion. Blood on his face, his nose all swollen. Maybe got himself beat up.

  “You gotta help me,” the man said. “We have to save her. Please!”

  “Save who? Was there an accident?”

  “Yes! I mean, no! We were kidnapped. I got away. They have my fiancée. They kidnapped us. The Amaranthines!”

  “Amaranthines?” That sounded familiar. There was a bunch called themselves something like that, building a big place up on the bluffs, a few miles down river. But something about this guy was wrong. He was bleeding and his tux was torn up, but he didn’t have that stunned look. He looked nervous and excited, but that was it. Like a kid doing a fraternity prank, only this one was too old for that.

  “You have to come with me. We have to save her!”

  Grunseth said, “Mister, nobody’s going anywhere until you start making some sense. Now just you come on inside out of the rain and sit down and tell me what happened, okay? Meantime, I got to fill out a report on that police car you just punched in the front of.”

  The man followed Grunseth into the police station, looking at the empty desks.

  “Hey,” he said. “Where is everybody?”

  “You’re looking at him,” Grunseth said.

  The next time Crow woke up he was alone; his thoughts ran clear and cold. Staring up at the acoustical tiles. They looked close, as if he could reach up and touch them, feel their texture. But he didn’t want to move. His thoughts flicked from one memory to another, clicking like a slide projector. Sam. Sam and Axel. For one frightening moment, he thought he understood his father. Sam, Axel, Sophie—the whole social dynamic suddenly made sense, including his own place in it. He moved to the next thought quickly, not wanting to get stuck there, and clicked on—Carmen and Hyatt? The limousine. The Clark station. Asking for Marlboros. That was all.

  He heard feet in the hallway, two people walking, and voices. Getting louder, then fading as they moved past his room.

  He closed his eyes and watched a parade of faces. Debrowski. He realized with a silent jolt that she was angry at him. Not pretending to be angry. Really angry. She was furious, and not just because he’d hurt himself. She’d been mad before that. Ever since he’d picked her up at the airport. Maybe even before that. Ever since Paris.

  Well, he was mad at her, too. What had she been thinking, staying in Paris for three months? Treating him like the Ugly American and then, waiting for the Metro, when he wondered out loud how his cat was doing, just making small talk, she jumps on him, telling him maybe he should go home and check. Fly four thousand miles to make sure his cat didn’t have a damn hairball? Was she trying to get rid of him?

  How could she be angry at him? He hadn’t done anything. He was the one that should be mad at her. He was the injured party.

  Crow rolled onto his side, hoping the movement would reroute his thinking. It didn’t work. He was still back in Paris, still fuming. That whole thing with that band had got to him worse than anything. They were supposed to be taking a vacation, spending money, and getting to know each other, eating cheese and visiting museums and taking walks along the Seine. It wasn’t supposed to be a business trip. All of a sudden she’s spending half her time with a bunch of French generation Xers, hanging out in bars listening to a parade of godawful postpunk Johnny Rotten wanna-bes. Crow had met René. The guy was a prick. He tried to tell that to Debrowski but all she wanted to talk about was the way the guy looked on stage, how he had the makings of a rock and roll idol.

  Crow wondered if she’d—no! He heard himself groan and felt the sheets dragging across his hip as he turned over again. He wasn’t ready for the image of Debrowski with that scrawny, cocky little frog-eater. The concept was too disgusting to bring into focus. Crow pushed it down, pushed it out, buried it in a storm of mental static.

  How could she be mad at him?

  46

  It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.

  —Publius Syrus

  THE PLAN HAD BEEN to arrive at Stonecrop with the entire Prescott police force. To storm the chapel, guns drawn. Rush to the altar to save the virgin bride. The pregnant virgin bride. The image was powerful and magical and would make great TV. Hyatt had spent many hours fantasizing the climactic scenario. He saw himself striking a dramatic pose, sweeping his bleeding bride into his arms, rushing her to the hospital escorted by a phalanx of bluejackets.

  The reality did not quite measure up. The rain had not been a part of Hyatt’s vision, nor had the phlegmatic Officer Rob Grunseth. It had never occurred to Hyatt that there would be only two cops on duty at night in this small town, and that one of them would happen to be gone, and that the other one would refuse to leave the station unattended. It was almost as though Grunseth didn’t believe his story.

  Grunseth had kept him sitting there for an hour, asking questions, even making him touch his nose and recite the alphabet. The harder Hyatt worked to convince the cop that they had a genuine emergency, the stupider the cop became. Grunseth kept repeating Hyatt’s story back to him.

  “So, you say you and your fiancée got kidnapped on the way to your wedding, right?”

  “That’s right,” Hyatt said.

  “And you say it was those folks building that place up top, on the bluff, right?”

  “The Amaranthines.”

  “And they hauled you up there and tied your girlfriend to an altar and proceeded to drain the blood out of her.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You say that these Am-ran-theens are violating your girlfriend … why?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you this? Carmen could be dying!”

  “I just like to hear you say it, son.”

  Hyatt sighed. A hundred thousand cops in the country and he gets the densest one of the crop. “They want to be immortal,” he explained for the third or fourth time. “They think if they drink her blood, the blood of a virgin, they’ll live forever.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Grunseth said. “They’re like—”

  “Vampires,” Hyatt said.

  “Vampires! That’s what I thought you said. You see any of ’em turn into bats?”

  “They aren’t that kind of vampire.”

  “Uh-huh. And these vampires, they were going to drink your blood, too?”

  “I don’t know what they had planned.”

  “You a virgin?”

  “Look, we really don’t have time for this. Can you call somebody? We have to get up there and save her. I’m not kidding around here.”

  “I’m just trying to get this straight. So then you escape from the vampires’ clutches, jump in your limousine, and come barreling down the bluff road and smash into my car. Have I got that right?”

  Hyat
t nodded. Hearing his own story told back to him—he had to admit, it was a little far-fetched. But wasn’t that what made it sexy? Wasn’t that what made it powerful? What about Moses hearing voices from a burning bush? What about God saying to Abraham, “Kill me a son?” Did anyone believe them at first? Hyatt didn’t think so.

  He said, “You know, you could call up to Minneapolis. The kidnapping must’ve been reported. Can’t you call up there?”

  “Well now, I could. But if I call there and no such thing ever happened, I’m going to be very upset, son. So let me make sure I got this straight. You and your fiancée were on your way to the church—”

  “American Legion Post.”

  “Right! I knew I had something wrong. So you’re riding along in your big white limousine …”

  The other night-shift cop showed up then, a tall, lanky young man with a lot of pink in his face.

  “’Bout time you got back,” Grunseth said. “You feelin’ better now?”

  “I feel great,” said the cop, looking curiously at Hyatt. “What happened out there? Where’d that limo come from?”

  “This here is Mr. Hyatt Hilltop, vampire fighter.”

  “Hilton,” said Hyatt.

  “Vampire fighter?”

  “Mr. Hilltop is going to take us to his missing bride, aren’t you, son?” said Grunseth. He grinned at Amundson. “What do you say, Vince? Want to take a ride up the bluff?”

  “Sure,” said Amundson uncertainly.

  “Let’s go, Mister Hilltop. On the way there you can tell Officer Amundson all what you told me.”

  The rain was coming down thick and hard. They had pulled in as close to the chapel as they could get, which still left fifty feet of downpour to negotiate. Officer Grunseth did not look happy. “All I got to say, son, if I’m gonna get soaked, there better be a bleeding bride in there.”

  “She’s in there,” Hyatt said. “Let me out.”

  “You keep your ass on that seat, mister,” Amundson said. He turned to Grunseth. “What do you think, Rob? We just go knock on the door?”

  “You sure you can’t get us any closer?”