The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 13 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  ‘I realize that, sir, so I only ask for a moment of your time.’

  ‘We’re having a business meeting,’ Emmet says, with such concentrated vehemence that the man actually takes a step backward.

  ‘Hey, it’s okay,’ Phil says, and reaches out for the book - the man must have bought it in the hotel shop, the price sticker is still on the cover - uncaps his pen, asks the man’s name.

  The man blinks slowly. ‘Just your signature, sir, would be fine.’

  He has a husky baritone voice, a deep-grained Southern accent.

  Phil signs, hands back the book, a transaction so familiar he hardly has to think about it.

  The man is looking at Emmet, not the signed book. He says, ‘Do I know you, sir?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Emmet says sharply.

  ‘I think it’s just that you look like my old probation officer,’ the man says. ‘I was in trouble as a kid, hanging about downtown with the wrong crowd. I had it in my head to be a musician, and well, I got into a little trouble. I was no more than sixteen, and my probation officer, Mr McFly, he straightened me right out. I own a creme doughnut business now, that’s why I’m here in Washington. We’re opening up a dozen new franchises. People surely do love our deep-fried creme doughnuts. Well, good day to you, sir,’ he tells Phil, ‘I’m glad to have met you. If you’ll forgive the presumption, I always thought you and me had something in common. We both of us have a dead twin, you see.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Phil says, when the man has gone. The last remark has shaken him.

  ‘You’re famous,’ Emmet tells him. ‘People know stuff about you, you shouldn’t be surprised by now. He knows about your dead sister, so what? He read it in a magazine somewhere, that’s all.’

  ‘He thought he knew you, too.’

  ‘Everyone looks like someone else,’ Emmet says, ‘especially to dumb-ass shit-kickers. Christ, now what?’

  Because a waiter is standing there, holding a white telephone on a tray. He says, ‘There’s a phone call for Mr Dick,’ and plugs the phone in and holds the receiver out to Phil.

  Even before Emmet peremptorily takes the phone, smoothly slipping the waiter a buck, Phil knows that it’s the White House.

  Emmet listens, says, ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ listens some more, says, ‘He’s not calm at all. Who is this Chapin? Not one of - no, I didn’t think he was. Haldeman says that, huh? It went all the way up? Okay. Yes, if Haldeman says so, but you better be sure of it,’ he says, and sets down the receiver with an angry click and tells Phil, ‘That was Egil Krogh, at the White House. It seems you have a meeting with the President, at 12.30 tomorrow afternoon. I’ll only ask you this once, Phil. Don’t mess this up.’

  * * * *

  So now Phil is in the White House - in the ante-room to the Oval Office, a presentation copy of Voices from the Street under his arm, heavy as a brick. He’s speeding, too, and knows Emmet knows it, and doesn’t care.

  He didn’t sleep well last night. Frankly, he didn’t sleep at all. Taking a couple more tabs of speed didn’t help. His mind racing. Full of weird thoughts, connections. Thinking especially about androids and people. The androids are taking over, he thinks,no doubt about it. The suits, the haircuts, the four permitted topics of conversation: sports, weather, TV, work. Christ, how could I not have seen it before?

  He scribbles notes to himself, uses up the folder of complementary hotel stationery. Trying to get it down. To get it straight. Waves of anger and regret and anxiety surge through him.

  Maybe, he thinks in dismay, I myself have become an android, dreaming for a few days that I’m really human, seeing things that aren’t there, like the bum at the airport. Until they come for me, and take me to the repair shop. Or junk me, the way you’d junk a broken toaster.

  Except the bum seemed so real, even if he was a dream, like a vision from a reality more vibrant than this. Suppose there is another reality: another history, the real history. And suppose that history has been erased by the government or the corporations or whatever, by entities that can reach back and smooth out the actions of individuals that might reveal or upset their plan to transform everyone and everything into bland androids in a dull grey completely controlled world . . .

  It’s like one of the weird ideas he used to write up when he was churning out sci-fi stories, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Maybe back then he was unconsciously tapping into some flow of greater truth: the truth that he should deliver to the President. Maybe this is his mission. Phil suddenly has a great desire to read in his pirated novel, but it isn’t in his jacket pocket, and it isn’t in his room.

  ‘I got rid of it,’ Emmet tells him over breakfast.

  ‘You got rid of it?’

  ‘Of course I did. Should you be eating that, Phil?’

  ‘I like Canadian bacon. I like maple syrup. I like pancakes.’

  ‘I’m only thinking of your blood pressure,’ Emmet says. He is calmly and methodically demolishing a grapefruit.

  ‘What about all the citrus fruit you eat? All that acid can’t be good for you.’

  ‘It’s cleansing,’ Emmet says calmly. ‘You should at least drink the orange juice I ordered for you, Phil. It has vitamins.’

  ‘Coffee is all I need,’ Phil says. The tumbler of juice, which was sitting at the table when he arrived, seems to give off a poisonous glow, as of radioactivity.

  Emmet shrugs. ‘Then I think we’re finished with breakfast aren’t we? Let’s get you straightened out. You can hardly meet the President dressed like that.’

  But for once Phil stands his ground. He picked out these clothes because they felt right, and that’s what he’s going to wear. They argue for ten minutes, compromise by adding a tie Emmet buys in the hotel shop.

  They are outside, waiting for the car to be brought around, when Phil hears the music. He starts walking, prompted by some unconscious impulse he doesn’t want to analyse. Go with the flow, he thinks. Don’t impose anything on top of it just because you’re afraid. Because you’ve been made afraid. Trust in the moment.

  Emmet follows angrily, asking Phil what the hell he thinks he’s doing all the way to the corner, where a bum is standing with a broken old guitar, singing one of that folk singer’s songs, the guy who died of an overdose on the same night Lenny Bruce died, the song about changing times.

  There’s a paper cup at the bum’s feet, and Phil impulsively stuffs half a dozen bills into it, bills that Emmet snatches up angrily.

  ‘Get lost,’ he tells the bum, and starts pulling at Phil, dragging him away as if Phil is a kid entranced beyond patience at the window of a candy store. Saying, ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘That it’s cold,’ Phil says, ‘and someone like that - a street person - could use some hot food.’

  ‘He isn’t a person,’ Emmet says. ‘He’s a bum - a piece of trash. And of course it’s cold. It’s March. Look at you, dressed like that. You’re shivering.’

  He is. But it isn’t because of the cold.

  March, Phil thinks now, in the antechamber to the Oval Office. The Vernal Equinox. When the world awakes. Shivering all over again even though the brightly lit ante-room, with its two desks covered, it seems, in telephones, is stiflingly hot. Emmet is schmoozing with two suits - H.R. Haldeman and Egil Krogh. Emmet is holding Haldeman’s arm as he talks, speaking into the man’s ear, something or other about management. They all know each other well, Phil thinks, and wonders what kind of business Emmet has, here in Washington, DC.

  At last a phone rings, a secretary nods, and they go into the Oval Office, which really is oval. The President, smaller and more compact than he seems on TV, strides out from behind his desk and cracks a jowly smile, but his pouchy eyes slither sideways when he limply shakes hands with Phil.

  ‘That’s quite a letter you sent us,’ the President says.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Phil starts to say, but the President doesn’t seem to hear him.

  ‘Quite a letter, yes. And of course we ne
ed people like you, Mr Dick. We’re proud to have people like you, in fact. Someone who can speak to young people - well, that’s important isn’t it?’ Smiling at the other men in the room as if seeking affirmation. ‘It’s quite a talent. You have one of your books there, I think?’

  Phil holds out the copy ofVoices from the Street. It’s the Franklin Library edition, bound in green leather, his signature reproduced in gold on the cover, under the title. An aide gave it to him when he arrived, and now he hands it to the President, who takes it in a study of reverence.

  ‘You must sign it,’ the President says, and lays it open like a sacrificial victim on the gleaming desk, by the red and white phones. ‘I mean, that’s the thing isn’t it? The thing that you do?’

  Phil says, ‘What I came to do—’

  And Emmet steps forward and says, ‘Of course he’ll sign, sir. It’s an honour.’

  Emmet gives Phil a pen, and Phil signs, his hand sweating on the page. He says, ‘I came here, sir, to say that I want to do what I can for America. I was given an experience a day ago, and I’m beginning to understand what it meant.’

  But the President doesn’t seem to have heard him. He’s staring at Phil as if seeing him for the first time. At last, he blinks and says, ‘Boy, you do dress kind of wild.’

  Phil is wearing his lucky Nehru jacket over a gold shirt, purple velvet pants with flares that mostly hide his sand-coloured suede desert boots. And the tie that Emmet bought him in the hotel shop, a paisley affair like the President’s, tight as a noose around his neck.

  He starts to say, ‘I came here, sir,’ but the President says again, ‘You do dress kind of wild. But that I guess is the style of all writers, isn’t it? I mean, an individual style.’

  For a moment, the President’s eyes, pinched between fleshy pouches, start to search Phil’s face anxiously. It seems that there’s something trapped far down at the bottom of his mild gaze, like a prisoner looking up through the grille of an oubliette at the sky.

  ‘Individual style, that’s exactly it,’ Phil says, seeing an opening, a way into his theme. The thing he knows now he needs to say, distilled from the scattered notes and thoughts last night. ‘Individualism, sir, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Even men in suits wear ties to signify that they still have this one little outlet for their individuality.’ It occurs to him that his tie is exactly like the President’s, but he plunges on. ‘I’m beginning to understand that things are changing in America, and that’s what I want to talk about—’

  ‘You wanted a badge,’ Haldeman says brusquely. ‘A federal agent’s badge, isn’t that right? A badge to help your moral crusade?’

  Emmet and Haldeman and Krogh are grinning as if sharing a private joke.

  ‘The badge isn’t important,’ Phil says. ‘In fact, as I see it now, it’s just what’s wrong.’

  Haldeman says, ‘I certainly think we can oblige, can’t we, Mr President? We can get him his badge. You know, as a gift.’

  The President blinks. ‘A badge? I don’t know if I have one, but I can look, certainly—’

  ‘You don’t have one,’ Haldeman says firmly.

  ‘I don’t?’ The President has bent to pull open a drawer in the desk, and now he looks up, still blinking.

  ‘But we’ll order one up,’ Haldeman says, and tells Emmet, ‘Yes, a special order.’

  Something passes between them. Phil is sure of it. The air is so hot and heavy that he feels he’s wrapped in mattress stuffing, and there’s a sharp taste to it that stings the back of his throat.

  Haldeman tells the President, ‘You remember the idea? The idea about the book.’

  ‘Yes,’ the President says, ‘the idea about the book.’

  His eyes seem to be blinking independently, like a mechanism that’s slightly out of adjustment.

  ‘The neat idea,’ Haldeman prompts, as if to a recalcitrant or shy child, and Phil knows then, knows with utter deep black conviction, that the President is not the President. Or he is, but he’s long ago been turned into a fake of himself, a shell thing, a mechanical puppet. That was what I was becoming, Phil thinks, until the clear white light. And it might still happen to me, unless I make things change.

  ‘The neat idea,’ the President says, and his mouth twitches. It’s meant to be a smile, but looks like a spasm. ‘Yes, here’s the thing, that you could write a book for the kids, for the, you know, for the young people. On the theme of, of—’

  ‘ “Get High on Life”,’ Haldeman says.

  ‘ “Get High on Life”,’ the President says. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ and begins a spiel about affirming the conviction that true and lasting talent is the result of self-motivation and discipline; he might be one of those mechanical puppets in Disneyland, running through its patter regardless of whether or not it has an audience.

  ‘Well,’ Haldeman says, when the President finishes or perhaps runs down, ‘I think we’re done here.’

  ‘The gifts,’ the President says, and bends down and pulls open a drawer and starts rummaging in it. ‘No one can accuse Dick Nixon of not treating his guests well,’ he says, and lays on the desk, one after the other, a glossy pre-signed photograph, cuff links, an ashtray, highball glasses etched with a picture of the White House.

  Emmet steps forward and says, ‘Thank you, Mr President. Mr Dick and I are truly honoured to have met you.’

  But the President doesn’t seem to hear. He’s still rummaging in his desk drawer, muttering, ‘There are some neat pins in here. Lapel pins, very smart.’

  Haldeman and Emmet exchange glances, and Haldeman says, ‘We’re about out of time here, Mr President.’

  ‘Pins, that’s the thing. Like this one,’ the President says, touching the lapel of his suit, ‘with the American flag. I did have some . . .’

  ‘We’ll find them,’ Haldeman says, that sharpness back in his voice, and he steers the President away from the desk, towards Phil.

  There’s an awkward minute while Egil Krogh takes photographs of the President and Phil shaking hands there on the blue carpet bordered with white stars, in front of furled flags on poles. Flashes of light that are only light from the camera flash. Phil blinks them away as Emmet leads him out, through ordinary offices and blank corridors to chill air under a grey sky where their car is waiting.

  ‘It went well,’ Emmet says, after a while. He’s driving the car -the car Phil hired - back to the hotel.

  Phil says, ‘Who are you, exactly? What do you want?’

  ‘I’m your agent, Phil. I take care of you. That’s my job.’

  ‘And that other creature, your friend Haldeman, he takes care of the President.’

  ‘The President - he’s a work of art, isn’t he? He’ll win his third term, and the next one too. A man like that, he’s too useful to let go. Unlike you, Phil, he can still help us.’

  ‘He was beaten,’ Phil says, ‘in 1960. By Kennedy. And in 1962 he lost the election for governor of California. Right after the results were announced, he said he would give up politics. And then something happened. He came back. Or was he brought back, is that what it was? A wooden horse,’ Phil says, feeling hollow himself, as empty as a husk. ‘Brought by the Greeks as a gift.’

  ‘He won’t get beaten again,’ Emmet says, ‘you can count on that. Not in 1976, not in 1980, not in 1984. It worked out, didn’t it - you and him?’ He smiles, baring his perfect white teeth. ‘We should get you invited to one of the parties there. Maybe when you finish your book - it’ll be great publicity.’

  ‘You don’t want me to finish the book,’ Phil says. He feels as if he’s choking, and wrenches at the knot of his tie. ‘That’s the point. Whatever I was supposed to do - you made sure I didn’t do it.’

  ‘Phil, Phil, Phil,’ Emmet says. ‘Is this another of your wild conspiracy theories? What is it this time, a conspiracy of boring, staid suits, acting in concert to stifle creative guys like you? Well, listen up, buddy. There is no conspiracy. There’s nothing but a bunch of ordinary g
uys doing an honest day’s work, making the world a better place, the best way they know how. You think we’re dangerous? Well, take a look at yourself, Phil. You’ve got everything you ever dreamed about, and you got it all thanks to me. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be no better than a bum on the street. You’d be living in a cold-water walk-up, banging out porno novels or sci-fi trash as fast as you could, just to keep the power company from switching off your lights. And moaning all the while that you could have been a contender. Get real, Phil. I gave you a good deal. The best.’

  ‘Like the deal that guy, the guy at the hotel, the doughnut guy, got? He was supposed to be a singer, and someone just like you did something to him.’

  ‘He could have changed popular music,’ Emmet says. ‘Even as a doughnut shop operator he still has something. But would he have been any happier? I don’t think so. And that’s all I’m going to say, Phil. Don’t ever ask again. Go back to your nice house, work on your book, and don’t make trouble. Or, if you’re not careful, you might be found dead one day from vitamin poisoning, or maybe a drug overdose.’