“I thought you hated me,” I said, pinning her down with one arm while I slid urgently out of my jeans with the other.
“I do,” Jenny said, wrapping her legs around my waist, her thighs damp and strong. “You know I do. I can’t sleep, though, Preston. I can’t ever sleep.”
Jenny sunk needle-sharp teeth into my arm and I howled, then grabbed a handful of her hair and twisted it until she let go. I had to hold her wrists to keep her nails from shredding me. She swore, cursing me and everything in general, forcing me to pry her legs apart and find my own way inside her.
The sun was invading the eastern sky by the time I fell back onto my bedroll, scratched and exhausted. I woke a few hours later to the pale light of dawn.
Under a sky turning the color of lemons I watched rooftop windmills make lazy revolutions and thought about little other than the girl next to me; how close she was sitting, skinny legs splayed in the crab grass, the morning light bringing out highlights in her blond hair. The wind moved the brush around her camp, leaving a faint taste of the sea on my lips, the distant black water on the horizon. The morning bloomed around us, charming and lazy, like a pretty girl rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“It’s nice down here, under the bridge,” I remarked. “I can see why you like the troll lifestyle.”
“Don’t try and be cute,” Jenny warned, sounding tired. “It doesn’t suit you.”
“What?”
“Being all sentimental,” she said, pitching a pebble into the river. “Given what you are, the way you fuck people over. If you’ve got another con in the works you can count me out. I am officially done with you, Preston. This time I mean it. You turn up bleeding at my feet again, I’m not even gonna bother checking your pockets for change.”
“You’re one to judge…”
“I’m not judging, you lying piece of shit,” Jenny said, shaking her head. “I’m warning you. For your own good.”
I smiled at her hard face, pragmatic before it ever had a chance to stop being young. She complained the entire way through, but she had done a decent job putting me back together last night with some superglue, wadded cotton, and duct tape. She gave me some little white pills to help me sleep. She gave me different pills this morning; blue for pain, red to stay awake.
Without a word, she disappeared down to the river. I waited for her, still too tired to do much more than sit beside the culvert. Jenny grimaced when she returned and saw me there.
“You never cease to amaze me, Jenny. Don’t you ever lie? Even to yourself?”
“Sure. I’m here, aren’t I? Must be a little full of shit to wake up next to someone like you in a place like this. But, as a rule, no. Lying is for overcomplicated types like you. I see the world the same way Fenrir does.”
“How is that? In black and white?”
Jenny leaned close, as if she was going to kiss or bite me, but instead she just grinned and poked me in my uninjured shoulder.
“Sort of. There are times when I’m bored, and times when I’m not. And I hate being bored. That’s pretty much all there is to it.”
“And I’m not boring?”
That wasn’t an attempt at humor or some sort of verbal jab at Jenny. It suddenly seemed rather imperative that I know, so that I could... well, I’m not exactly sure. It was probably too late to run.
“I hate you, Preston,” Jenny said, smiling as she zipped her sweatshirt closed and pulled the hood up. “You’re a lying bastard. But you sure as fuck aren’t boring, I will give you that. And that’s why I’m letting you walk away. For now.”
“Wait a minute,” I protested to her back, already receding down the path along the river. “You aren’t coming with me?”
“Does it look like I am? You lied to me, Preston,” Jenny said, raising one hand in farewell, not bothering to look back. “I am going to make you regret that. You owe me big-time, asshole, and you can be damn sure I’m going to collect.”
“Would it help if I said I was sorry?”
“You aren’t, not yet. And I wouldn’t give a fuck, even if you were,” Jenny said, stopping briefly by the edge of the river to splash her face with water. “I promise you that before this is over you will wish you never met me. Everyone does.”
I threw pebbles into the murky river while I watched her red hood recede. Once she was completely out of sight, I stood up, brushed the dead grass from my jeans, and started my walk back to the Estates. After all, I’m the best friend anyone could ever want – assuming there is something I need.
It didn’t matter much that Jenny left. It might have been for the best, actually. I was pretty much done with her, and keeping her around longer would have been dangerous. And she wasn’t the only remarkable girl that I knew.
I suppose it was a bit like a walk-of-shame, my slow progress down Leng Street, my head throbbing as if I’d had too much to drink the night before. While I’m not saying I felt guilty – not exactly, wouldn’t want to lie – it wasn’t the best possible place for me to encounter Sumire. She was standing by the decrepit remains of a forgotten bus stop in a long-sleeve t-shirt and jeans, her hand wrapped in white bandages.
“You look like shit,” Sumire remarked pleasantly, falling in beside me. “What have you been doing?”
“Bad things to people who deserve it,” I said, refreshed by my own honesty. “Nothing you would want details on. What you might want to know is what I found out last night.”
“Oh, really?” Sumire huffed, and turned her face from me. “Why would I care?”
“Because,” I said confidently. “It’s about April.”
Sumire grabbed my arm. I was pretty beat up, but I was still shocked by how easy it was for her to stop me.
“Did you find her?”
“No. But I found it where she is going to be,” I said, aware on some level that I was grinning like a lunatic. “And that’s good enough.”
“Uh, Preston? That doesn’t make sense…”
“Just wait,” I said reassuringly. “It’s going to get a whole lot weirder from here.”
Sumire released my arm, but the look of concern on her face only deepened.
“Are you hurt?”
“Oh, yes,” I assured her. “Pretty badly. I could fall over at any moment. I am giving the matter serious consideration. Nothing would make me happier than to die right now, except that I have so many things to do.”
Sumire bent forward so she could see my face, but she must not have liked what she saw there, because she hurriedly found something else to look at it in the dismal architecture that surrounded us. I was in such a bad way that the pools of yellow light cast by the streetlights looked like islands to me, the dark between them fluid and velveteen. My teeth chattered and I shivered uncontrollably, but my body was drenched in sweat, my heart pounding like I was running.
“I think maybe you should lie down, Preston.”
“I agree, but that isn’t going to happen. Not until April is home. And Sumire,” I said, turning abruptly to grab her by the shoulders and lean in too close, “I will need your help.”
She had to think about it. Sumire was probably considering whether to drag me off to a hospital, either the mental sort or the garden variety, and I don’t blame her. But everyone wants to help April, no matter how they feel about me. I knew that Sumire would come around, just not for my sake. And that’s understandable. I don’t do a lot of favors myself.
But people like April.
“Please. Whatever you want from me, it’s yours, Sumire.”
Sumire sighed.
“Oh, come off it. You don’t have to bribe me to get my help. All you had to do was ask in the first place and you know it.”
Of course I did. I learned a long time ago not to ask for things I wasn’t sure that I would get. Sumire kicked a can from the sidewalk as we walked with more vehemence than was necessary. The aluminum crumpled into something the size of a coaster against the wall of the building across the street.
“Tell me s
omething, Preston…”
The wetness on my shirt expanded, a reminder that my side had started bleeding again. My vision blurred and the world around me looked as if it had been rendered in watercolor. I gritted my teeth and kept my eyes on the roof of the Estates peeking out from behind the shorter buildings on our block. At the gate to the apartment, Lovecraft paused on his way across Leng Street to look at me with what, in my delirium, I imagined as concern.
“Okay. What do you want know?”
“Why you went to her for help,” Sumire said, stopping me in my tracks and grabbing me by the lapels of my jacket. “Jenny Frost. Why?”
I shrugged my way out of her grip, almost falling over in the process.
“I wanted to keep you out of it,” I said, so out-of-sorts that the truth came bubbling up. “I was trying to protect you. From her.”
That shut her up long enough for us to get home. Of course, Sumire thought I meant that I was protecting her from Jenny. I let her think that.
***
“Wake up, Preston, you selfish bastard,” Holly said cheerfully, looming over me like a monument. “I let you sleep for five hours and I think I’ve got the bleeding stopped. Which is more than you deserve.”
My senses returned slowly. It took quite a while for me to work out that I was lying on Holly’s couch, the damned stuffed bird offering me nothing more than my own reflection in the black marbles that replaced its eyes. Holly was wearing a long white dress, improbably printed with brilliant images of fruit, her hair tied up in a bandana as if she had been cleaning.
One look around her cluttered apartment cured me of that notion. Lovecraft gave me a knowing, amused look, and then stalked off to the kitchen, stiff-legged and arthritic.
I tried to speak, but accomplished little more than a cough and few random croaking sounds. Fortunately Holly’s pity extended as far as providing a cup of black, hopefully not drugged tea. I could barely grip the mug my hands were shaking so badly, and the first sip I took I almost coughed back up.
“Thanks,” I offered, careful to avoid meeting Holly’s eyes.
“You are a liar and a jerk, Preston,” Holly sniffed, seating herself on a couch opposite me, across a low table groaning under the weight of innumerable knick-knacks. “You went straight to Jenny Frost. Sumire told me all about it, and what she didn’t know I had Josh dig up while you were sleeping. Some of the other things that you’ve been keeping from us, too.”
I laughed. I didn’t mean to, but the idea of someone having found out my secrets was just so ridiculous. Digging into my past wouldn’t get you anywhere besides a deep, dark hole. Luckily, the laugher turned to a coughing fit before Holly got upset with me.
“I’m glad you didn’t drug the tea this time.”
I risked a glance in her direction and Holly’s glare was fierce.
“Don’t patronize me, Preston. You abused our hospitality here at the Kadath Estates repeatedly. You took the information I gave you to Jenny Frost, didn’t you? Did you ask her for help, Preston?”
Something about the way she kept saying my name was starting to get to me. Or maybe I was simply tired and in pain. Either way, I had enough with the lecturing.
“What would you have preferred that I did? That was some dangerous shit yesterday, in case you couldn’t tell from my sorry state. Would you rather I’d brought Sumire along instead? She’s invulnerable, you know.”
Holly’s eyes narrowed. I must have been tired because I should have seen the slap coming a mile away. Instead, I literally spat tea on the carpet, clutching my cheek and gasping in outrage as Holly proceed to batter me about the head.
“You bastard, we should have never let you in the first place! If it wasn’t for April…”
If it wasn’t for April. I could say that about everything that happened to me since the first time I spoke to her. I put my arms up to protect my head from Holly’s ineffectual strikes. Eventually she worked out her anger or grew tired, and sat back down, pouring tea into my half-empty cup as if nothing had happened.
“Don’t you ever mock Sumire again. You have no idea who she is or what she can do, what she pits herself against, night after night…”
I laughed again, unable to choke it down. I couldn’t help myself.
“Moon beasts, right? She told me.”
Holly hit me some more, legitimately furious.
“You are awful!”
Women look better when they pout and Holly was no exception. Why else would they do it so often? It’s evolution in action. I melted like a glacier; slow to thaw, then I came apart in one big flood.
“Holly,” I said, taking her gently by the shoulders. “I am a coward. I am an absolute and total coward. I came to Jenny for help because I was worried about the danger involved in what I had planned and I thought she might get killed, helping me. That would have been good, because I had already fallen into her debt. Instead I owe Jenny Frost even more, and they still have April.”
Holly wrapped me in a firm hug that smelled of lavender and for some reason made me feel a little like crying. This must be what it was like to have a mother, I realized with a flash of intuition, and to be comforted by her. I buried my face in her chest and breathed in her scent and felt safe. I briefly considered crying, but I having no experience, I thought it might be a bad idea.
“Didn’t I tell you, stupid? Didn’t I tell you to stay away from her?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding my head as if I were falling asleep. “You did. I was wrong.”
“Preston. Are you trying to get April back? Or are you trying not to lose her?”
I didn’t need to think about it.
“I’m not going to lose,” I said, as if the decision were mine to make. “She’d never let me.”
“Good,” she said, reaching up to pat me on the head. “Do you still have the present I gave you? Then let me tell you what you need to know.”
***
“Preston?”
Eyes closed, hoping she will think I’m asleep.
“Hey, Preston?”
Ignore the elbow poke. Hold on to the act though I know it’s futile. She’s the very definition of an irresistible force.
“Preston? Are you listening to me? Hey, Preston?”
Surrender was inevitable.
“What is it?”
I cracked one eye. Sumire was nervous as hell, and beneath her vagrant coat was dressed as if she planned on playing volleyball later.
“Are you nervous?”
“My eyes were closed. I was halfway asleep. How nervous do you think I am?”
“’Cause I’m nervous. Way nervous. How can you not be worried, Preston? Why aren’t you freaking out right now?”
A quick check of the platform revealed nothing had changed. No eighty-ton trains had managed to slip by us yet.
“Because you’re invulnerable, Sumire,” I countered sourly. “What the hell do I have to worry about as long as I hide behind you?”
She hit me, fortunately picking my uninjured shoulder. Because when Sumire hit me, it actually hurt quite a bit.
“Don’t be an asshole. I am doing you a favor.”
“Well, actually, you are doing April a favor. Me, you’re bugging the shit out of.”
She scuffed her sneakers against the concrete floor like a child, making squeaking noises that echoed throughout the deserted, subterranean platform, the bench rocking gently every time she kicked it with the heel of her shoe. We were huddled under second-hand jackets, hoping to pass as homeless, close enough on the bench to be mistaken for lovers, trying to fend off the cold of the underground.
“I’m gonna tell her you said that when we rescue her.”
“You do that.”
The air moved in waves, pushed by the passage of aging trains through decaying tunnels, bringing the smells of iron and dust, mildew and exhaust, and the distant sounds of the subway cars rattling like tired metal bones. According to city records, this station hadn’t been used in decades and I’
d been forced to clip the padlock at the entrance, five lonely stories above us. According to the data Josh found, a certain terrible train would be making an arrival in this station in the near future.
Sumire looked around the platform in the entirely obvious way people use when they are being subtle, one quick pan across the space, her neck rigid with tension, and then her eyes fell too rapidly back to the ground. Fortunately we were still alone, and I had picked out a bench directly beneath and therefore out of the view of the one functioning camera in the disused station.
Paranoid Magical Thinking (Unknown Kadath Estates) Page 21
