Dead Lines

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  My name is Marty Swansick I’m a very funny guy were the words that crowded his brain as he landed on the stiffening hound, the sky roiling crazily above. A genuine burst of thunder erupted; when Aberdeen followed, it seemed pale by comparison.

  But the kids; they loved it. They thrived on it. Suddenly, as he stared up into their happy, busy faces, he knew that they knew Suddenly, he knew exactly what the sound meant to them.

  It made him almost glad that he was leaving.

  Almost.

  Then the walls of the castle caved in under a flurry of laughter and limbs, sending sand down to drown him. And Marty fought like hell; he kicked and spat and thrashed with a newfound will to live that might have saved him, a month or a week or a minute earlier. Marty Swansick actually had some edge left, after all.

  Too little, too late.

  More sand tumbled down. Little stones.

  Little shells.

  When the tomb was sealed and the ritual concluded, the children clasped hands and smiled. The Big Voice let out another volley of approval. They were thrilled, of course, although they didn’t dare let on; they had too well mastered the innocent faces that were so much a part of their current roles. The youngest stared out across the water in awe as the eldest explained once more:

  Soon, very soon, they would inherit the earth. The Big Voice told them so. And there would be so very much to do in that brave new world.

  Many exquisite holes to dig.

  Many, many rituals to perform.

  As they left the beach, more thunder erupted. It was louder—maybe even stronger—but the Big Voice was the one that spoke directly to them.

  Soon, it said.

  Very soon…

  ■

  A little while later, the tide rumbled in.

  And the rain began to pour.

  12

  VOLITION

  He was, sad to say, not surprised in the least to find her at his door.

  Oh, bloody saviour on a stick, he thought. Here’s just what I fucking need.

  “Colin,” she said, her voice a high peep that slurred only a trifle, her balance unsteady against the doorframe. “Colin, please. I need to talk to you.” The mingling reeks of gin and heartbreak preceded her with an unsavory zeal, fogging up the corridor.

  “Why?” That seemed direct enough. Just the sight of her was curling the hair in his nostrils, not to mention her unbottled sachet. Evidently, the headache he already had, had been deemed insufficient by the heavenly host.

  “Colin, please…” Ah, the taste of fine whine. Any moment now, he expected that she would fling herself against him. He held the door ready to slam in her face, just in case she decided to prove him prophetic. “Please, I’m scared. You gotta let me in…”

  “Well, that’s not exactly true, though, is it?” he said, letting the words I’m scared sink in subliminally. “Seems to me I don’t ‘gotta’ do any such thing. What are you doing here? What the hell do you want?’

  “I need to talk to you, Colin! Please!”

  “You need to bloody well sober up, that’s what you need. You’re talking in fucking circles, and you’re stinking up the foyer. Why don’t you just stumble back to whoever’s bed you’re flopping in currently and sleep it off?”

  “But I can’t! You don’t unnerstan’…” The first true slur, tripping off of her tongue. “Please!”

  “Please!” He mimicked her tone. “Please bugger off!”

  True to form, she flung herself forward. He pushed the door between them, and she thudded against it. The screech that ensued was a hideous thing, ratlike when compounded by the scrabbling and thwunking. He had not shut the door completely, and it required all his strength just to keep her from forcing her way inside.

  “PLEASE!” she shrieked.

  “Get away from my door!” “OH GOD, COLIN, PLEASE!”

  “Leave my fucking door alone!”

  Pummena-pummena-pummena-SLAM! A flurry of fists and feet, culminating in a full-bodied assault that sent him sliding three inches inward. He countervolleyed, digging in with his heels, adrenaline surging through him as he regained the ground he’d lost. She yelped and shrieked some more, and he was amazed to discover that he’d begun to wildly grin. Just where the grand segue from annoyance to amusement had transpired was beyond him, but there it was. he’d lost. She yelped and shrieked some more, and he was amazed to discover that he’d begun to wildly grin. Just where the grand segue from annoyance to amusement had transpired was beyond him, but there it was.

  A delightful little strategy occurred to him then: a wee, wicked snippet of transcendent slapstick. Since it seemed evident that she would not go away, the least he could do was control her method of entry. Momentarily lamenting the lack of a handy banana peel, he sighed and then stepped back, away from the door.

  At that precise split-second, Katie rocketed inward, an expression of epic surprise on her face. Said face went hurtling toward the floor, the rest of her in close pursuit.

  “Perhaps you’d better come inside, then,” he quipped as she impacted. The door, of its own volition, slipped quietly shut behind.

  Katie just lay there, sobbing rather disjointedly. Evi dently, the humor of the incident eluded her. Ah, well. At her present level of intoxication, it was likely that little in the whole of creation was failing to elude her just now.

  “So,” he said. “You needed to speak with me.”

  “Urmgh,” she replied, between sobs. It raised the faintest flicker of alarm within him.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Uh, Gah… urmgh!” More emphatic. All at once, he understood.

  It was a very short jaunt to the kitchen wastebasket,replete with its scented plastic liner. He traversed the distance with lightning speed, prayed that he wasn’t too late. There were a few fairly foul-smelling items already therein; perhaps she would see them as inspiration. Not that she appeared to require any.

  “There,” he said, placing the basket in front of her face. She struggled to a crouch before it. “For God’s sake, take care how you aim.”

  “OhhhHHHUALP!!!” she exclaimed. A rush of rancid frothing vomit accompanied her statement. Colin winced and stepped back, watching only to ascertain that she’d respected his wishes. Once that much was clear, he retreated to the kitchen and waited for her biological backfire to run its course.

  While he waited, he thought about the little she’d said. I’m scared, I can’t. An atypical approach to rewinning his heart, that much was for certain.

  Perhaps she was sincerely frightened. In fact, knowing Katie, her sincerity was the last thing he had reason to doubt. And it was common knowledge that—present company excluded—she exercised stupendously poor judgment in her selection of partners. Perhaps she’d found yet another tragic psychopath, God help her; and if that were the case, then surely it behooved him to hear her out. At the very least, he could give her the benefit of his counsel before booting her back out into the maelstrom.

  And at most…

  He shuddered to think of it. The temptation was too great. Though she was far from enticing at the moment, what with heaving her guts and all, the truth was that the last two months had found his life wanting for something poignant as well as perverse. And the past had proven, if nothing else, that a vulnerable Katie was a savory morsel indeed.

  And so the wheel turns once again, he mused, warming to his options.

  In the hallway, her retching had tapered to nothing. Perhaps she would achieve coherence soon. If so, perhaps they could proceed apace toward the bottom of things. In a manner of speaking.

  And in those final patient moments, he wondered what sort of trouble she’d gotten into this time.

  And with what sort of man …

  GENTLEMEN

  TO BE A MAN.

  The words are carved on the sweat-smeared oak of the bar’s surface. They’re the only four that never seem to change. Like the troll at the taps, the regulars that surround him, the TVs and the black velve
t painting of the Hooter Girl that hangs in sad-eyed judgment over all.

  TO BE A MAN.

  As if that were all there is.

  I always hated Bud. He loves it. We drink it. One after another, we pour them down, while Ralph Kramdon bellows about trips to the moon.

  And the guys all laugh. You’re goddam right.

  They know about being a man.

  And now, at last, so do I.

  I remember the night that my edification began. Every nuance. Every shade. The phone started ringing at 12:45, precisely. It was LeeAnn, of course. She’d just crashed and burned with another asshole relationship, and she needed to talk. And drink. Right now. I knew all this by the first ring. No one else ever called this late. No one.

  “Damn,” I muttered. “Not again.”

  There were a lot of good reasons for not answering. It was a shit-soaked night outside, cold rain falling in thick sheets. The steam heat had finally kicked in, and I was down to my jeans. I was halfway into a lumpy joint of some absurdly good Jamaican. Star Trek would be on in fifteen minutes. Seeing LeeAnn would make me miserable, and I’d just wind up sourly wanking off when I got home. Yep, a lot of good reasons. I took another toke and settled back in my chair.

  The phone rang again. I choked. The smoke exploded in my lungs. I began to cough violently, great redmeat wrenching hacks. The phone rang again. I roared back at it, defiant, my eyes tearing and my throat desperately lubing itself with bile.

  The phone rang again, and I got out of the chair. What was the point? The phone would ring forever. The night was already completely ruined; LeeAnn’s face had control of my mind. I snubbed the joint and placed the butt in my pocket, for later. The phone rang once more before I caught it. I coughed a little bit more at the receiver as I brought it to the side of my head. What did it matter? I already knew what the first words would be. First, my name. No howdy, stranger, no long time no see.

  Just:

  “David?”

  Then:

  “David, I need you …”

  Like clockwork. I gave brief, fleeting audience to the idea of just hanging up, of pitching the receiver into the cradle without so much as a whimper. But then her voice, so characteristically vulnerable, spoke the final two words in the equation:

  “David, please… “

  I was slaughtered.

  “Where are you?” I asked. Coughing had made me roughly twenty times more stoned in a matter of seconds; the air seemed thicker, my head felt muddier, and the crackle over the phone line raked like needles in my ears.

  She let out a laugh I recognized: the resigned and barely-in-control one. I coughed. She laughed. I spoke.

  “I still don’t know where you are.”

  “I’m at this place called…” She paused; I could almost hear her neck craning, “…dammit, I can’t tell. It’s at 48th and Eighth. The beer is cheap. The guys are all jerks. It’s my kind of place. Can you come?”

  “Shouldn’t the question be, ‘How fast can you get here?’”

  “Jesus, I really am predictable.”

  “You’re not the only one,” I assured her wearily. “Give me some time, okay? I don’t have any clothes on.”

  “Hubba hubba.”

  “Don’t tease me, LeeAnn. I’m not a well man.”

  “Aw, poor baby.”

  I closed my eyes, and LeeAnn was behind them: leaning against a bar with brass rails, china-doll lips pouting, green-eyed gaze languidly drifting as her T-shirt slowly hiked its way past her breasts and over her ash-blonde head. Never happen, my rational mind reminded me flatly. It sounded barely in control, too.

  LeeAnn must have heard it. The teasing stopped. “Please hurry,” she said. “I need you.”

  “I’m on my way. Stay there.”

  The phone went dead. LeeAnn never said goodbye anymore; it was too commital. I set down the receiver and caught a glimpse of myself in the bureau mirror. Gaunt, sensitive features. Aquiline nose. Deep-set eyes. Quietly receding hairline. An interesting face: not handsome, certainly not repulsive. I smiled. Loads of character. The face of a poet, even …

  Who was I kidding? I thought. It’s the face of a fool. The reflection nodded in sad affirmation. I looked at the piles of dirty clothes on the floor, and grabbed up a dirty sweatshirt. Dress for success, I always say. Or said, rather.

  Whatever.

  At any rate, i was suited up and out the door before manly Captain Kirk had pronged the first of this evening’s deep-space bimbos, way out where no man had gone before. The last three words from her lips echoed through me like a curse.

  I need you.

  Sure.

  ■

  The cab ride was long and wet, cold rain pounding on the windows like a billion tiny fists. The whole way up, I brooded about LeeAnn. The whole way up, I hit alternately on the dwindling vial of blow in my jacket pocket and one of the two jumbo oilcans of Foster’s lager that I’d scored just for the trip. The irony of getting wasted as a prelude to meeting a friend for drinks was not lost on me, but what could I say? LeeAnn made me crazy: the same kind of crazy that would inspire me to tromp out into a maelstorm on a moment’s notice and woefully underdressed, from my army-surplus field jacket down to a pair of battered

  Reeboks with a dime-sized hole in the right sole. She unnerved me that thoroughly. I snorted and watched the passing streets slip by: each one rain-slicked and on the verge of flooding. Each one dark and bleak and utterly depressing.

  Any of them an escape route: infinitely preferable to where I was going.

  If I’d been stronger, maybe, I’d have taken one. Sure. Of course, the same line of inarguable reasoning could be applied to any other quarter of my world, from my unpublished short stories to my unfinished novel to my utterly unrequited love life, with exactly the same results. The gross total of which, combined with fifty cents, would buy me a packet of Gem safety blades.

  The better to slit my miserable fucking throat with.

  The thought deflated as quickly as it came. Of course I would never really do that. Neither, of course, would I tell the cabbie to turn around and take me home, or just grab LeeAnn by the hair and force her to my heap big masculine will, or do anything but what I always, always did. Which was to go to her: whenever, wherever her next whirlwind sortie ended. In tears, in disaster. In rain, sleet, or snow. Good Ol’ Dave would be there, day or night, with the right words and the right drugs and a shoulder to cry on. Good ol’ Dave was never more than a phone call away. I hated myself for being such a stooge to this endlessly cyclical farce, for being so hapless in the face of my own flaccid desire.

  The cab sploshed indifferently onto Tenth Avenue, heading uptown. The beer sploshed in my roiling guts, heading south. And the memories came boiling up…

  We went back a little ways, LeeAnn and I. Long enough to count. Worked for the same messenger service: humping the bullshit of the business world by day, pounding at the walls of our dreams at night. She was in the office, I was on the streets. She was sharp and funny and smarter than anyone else in the whole fleabag organization; I was the only one in the entire company who would talk to her without staring incessantly at her tits. No easy task, let me tell you. But I did it, because I valued her trust almost as much as I hungered for her touch.

  So there we were, sharing in the adventure of being young and piss-poor in New York, trying desperately to make it in our respective careers: clone of Kerouac meets fledgling Bourke-White. Came to spend a lot of time together; scrutinizing my first drafts and her black-and-whites over a dinner of ravioli and Riuniti; wandering the streets and parks in search of inspiration and free entertainment. We grew very tight. Very close.

  With one rather glaring exemption.

  You see, for all that deep meaningful contact it never quite gelled for LeeAnn and I. It was ridiculous, yes. I mean, I’d heard the most heartfelt feelings she’d ever cared to offer without blushing or batting an eye; I would have taken a bullet or thrown myself gleefully into traffic to save
the tiniest hair on her head.

  Sure. I could do all that. But somehow I couldn’t bridge the safe, comfy distance between friend and lover. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her how I felt, to grab her and give her the kind of kiss that would make her reciprocate my passion, my love.

  In retrospect, I realize that I was waiting for her to do it. I cringe to think of it now, but it’s true. Part of my heart sincerely believed that she would wake up one day with the realization that no one would ever love her like I did. No one else could be so tender, so compassionate, so understanding. No one else would bear with her through her tragedies and madnesses, be so selflessly and completely devoted to her needs.

  She would wake up one day, I told myself, kicking herself for her foolishness. And she would throw herself, weeping, into my arms. And I would tell her that it was okay, it was over now. And we would be swept away into a love that not even death could destroy.

  One day, I knew, she would realize just how much she was saying when she said the words Dave, I need you.

  That was the bullshit I believed. I preferred it to the cold hard truth.

  As for LeeAnn, well…

  LeeAnn preferred a different kind of guy.

  A guy like Rodney, for example. I grimaced as his sneering pug loomed up like the answer in a magic Eight-ball toy. Rod the bod, punk hunk par excellence. Took her on a three-month nightmare tour of the Lower East Side, every nook and alley and rathole club that charged four bucks a beer. Rod, the artiste. Rod, the super-intense. He was inspiring her, giving her photography a whole new edge. Sure. Asshole inspired her, alright: eventually O.D.’d on crack and went nuts in her apartment, damned near inspiring her to death before heading off to be shot by the police.

  I upended the first can, draining the dregs, and popped the second in a ceremonial toast. Rot in hell, Rodney.

  If they’ll have you…

  After that it was Willis, the far side of the pendulum. I think she met him at a Soho gallery opening. Willis of the shining white mane, who was strong and stable and financially secure and about old enough to be her father. Willis wined and dined her like a princess; my god, he even proposed to her. And she actually accepted, to my unending shock and horror, though I think it was more political than emotional. He had connections. He could help her. That is, until she found that her Svengali absolutely forbade her to work after the wedding. Not a woman’s place, you understand. LeeAnn shouldn’t worry her pretty little head with thoughts of careers. LeeAnn should worry about tending to Willis’s earthly needs.