Dreamsongs 2-Book Bundle

by George R. R. Martin

  They make love, he and she, slow and sensuous, locked together in a loving embrace that goes on and on. Two bodies move flawlessly in perfect rhythm, each knowing the other’s needs. Trager thrusts, and his other body meets the thrusts. He reaches, and her hand is there. They come together (always, always, both orgasms triggered by the handler’s brain), and a bright red flush burns on her breasts and earlobes. They kiss.

  Afterwards, he talks to her, his love, his lady. You should always talk afterwards; he learned that long ago.

  “You’re lucky,” he tells her sometimes, and she snuggles up to him and plants tiny kisses all across his chest. “Very lucky. They lie to you out there, love. They teach you a silly shining dream and they tell you to believe and chase it and they tell you that for you, for everyone, there is someone. But it’s all wrong. The universe isn’t fair, it never has been, so why do they tell you so? You run after the phantom, and lose, and they tell you next time, but it’s all rot, all empty rot. Nobody ever finds the dream at all, they just kid themselves, trick themselves so they can go on believing. It’s just a clutching lie that desperate people tell each other, hoping to convince themselves.”

  But then he can’t talk anymore, for her kisses have gone lower and lower, and now she takes him in her mouth. And Trager smiles at his love and gently strokes her hair.

  Of all the bright cruel lies they tell you, the cruelest is the one called love.

  REMEMBERING MELODY

  Ted was shaving when the doorbell sounded. It startled him so badly that he cut himself. His condominium was on the thirty-second floor, and Jack the doorman generally gave him advance warning of any prospective visitors. This had to be someone from the building, then. Except that Ted didn’t know anyone in the building, at least not beyond the trade-smiles-in-the-elevator level.

  “Coming,” he shouted. Scowling, he snatched up a towel and wiped the lather from his face, then dabbed at his cut with a tissue. “Shit,” he said loudly to his face in the mirror. He had to be in court this afternoon. If this was another Jehovah’s Witness like the one who’d gotten past Jack last month, they were going to be in for a very rough time indeed.

  The buzzer buzzed again. “Coming, dammit,” Ted yelled. He made a final dab at the blood on his neck, then threw the tissue into a wastebasket and strode across the sunken living room to the door. He peered through the eyehole carefully before he opened. “Oh, shit,” he muttered. Before she could buzz again, Ted slid off the chain and threw open the door. “Hello, Melody,” he said.

  She smiled wanly. “Hi, Ted,” she replied. She had an old suitcase in her hand, a battered cloth bag with a hideous red-and-black plaid pattern, its broken handle replaced by a length of rope. The last time Ted had seen her, three years before, she’d looked terrible. Now she looked worse. Her clothes—shorts and a tie-dyed T-shirt—were wrinkled and dirty, and emphasized how gaunt she’d become. Her ribs showed through plainly; her legs were pipestems. Her long stringy blond hair hadn’t been washed recently, and her face was red and puffy, as if she’d been crying. That was no surprise. Melody was always crying about one thing or another. “Aren’t you going to ask me in, Ted?”

  Ted grimaced. He certainly didn’t want to ask her in. He knew from past experience how difficult it was to get her out again. But he couldn’t just leave her standing in the hall with her suitcase in hand. After all, he thought sourly, she was an old and dear friend. “Oh, sure,” he said. He gestured. “Come on in.”

  He took her bag from her and set it by the door, then led her into the kitchen and put on some water to boil. “You look as though you could use a cup of coffee,” he said, trying to keep his voice friendly.

  Melody smiled again. “Don’t you remember, Ted? I don’t drink coffee. It’s no good for you, Ted. I used to tell you that. Don’t you remember?” She got up from the kitchen table, and began rummaging through his cupboards. “Do you have any hot chocolate?” she asked. “I like hot chocolate.”

  “I don’t drink hot chocolate,” he said. “Just a lot of coffee.”

  “You shouldn’t,” she said. “It’s no good for you.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Do you want juice? I’ve got juice.”

  Melody nodded. “Fine.”

  He poured her a glass of orange juice, and led her back to the table, then spooned some Maxim into a mug while he waited for his kettle to whistle. “So,” he asked, “what brings you to Chicago?”

  Melody began to cry. Ted leaned back against the stove and watched her. She was a very noisy crier, and she produced an amazing amount of tears for someone who cried so often. She didn’t look up until the water began to boil. Ted poured some into his cup and stirred in a teaspoon of sugar. Her face was redder and more puffy than ever. Her eyes fixed on him accusingly. “Things have been real bad,” she said. “I need help, Ted. I don’t have any place to live. I thought maybe I could stay with you awhile. Things have been real bad.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Melody,” Ted replied, sipping at his coffee thoughtfully. “You can stay here for a few days, if you want. But no longer. I’m not in the market for a roommate.” She always made him feel like such a bastard, but it was better to be firm with her right from the start, he thought.

  Melody began to cry again when he mentioned roommates. “You used to say I was a good roommate,” she whined. “We used to have fun, don’t you remember? You were my friend.”

  Ted set down his coffee mug and looked at the kitchen clock. “I don’t have time to talk about old times right now,” he said. “I was shaving when you rang. I’ve got to get to the office.” He frowned. “Drink your juice and make yourself at home. I’ve got to get dressed.” He turned abruptly, and left her weeping at the kitchen table.

  Back in the bathroom, Ted finished shaving and tended to his cut more properly, his mind full of Melody. Already he could tell that this was going to be difficult. He felt sorry for her—she was messed up and miserably unhappy, with no one to turn to—but he wasn’t going to let her inflict all her troubles on him. Not this time. She’d done it too many times before.

  In his bedroom, Ted stared pensively into the closet for a long time before selecting the gray suit. He knotted his tie carefully in the mirror, scowling at his cut. Then he checked his briefcase to make sure all the papers on the Syndio case were in order, nodded, and walked back into the kitchen.

  Melody was at the stove, making some pancakes. She turned and smiled at him happily when he entered. “You remember my pancakes, Ted?” she asked. “You used to love it when I made pancakes, especially blueberry pancakes, you remember? You didn’t have any blueberries, though, so I’m just making plain. Is that alright?”

  “Jesus,” Ted muttered. “Dammit, Melody, who said you should make anything? I told you I had to get to the office. I don’t have time to eat with you. I’m late already. Anyway, I don’t eat breakfast. I’m trying to lose weight.”

  Tears began to trickle from her eyes again. “But—but these are my special pancakes, Ted. What am I going to do with them? What am I going to do?”

  “Eat them,” Ted said. “You could use a few extra pounds. Jesus, you look terrible. You look like you haven’t eaten for a month.”

  Melody’s face screwed up and became ugly. “You bastard,” she said. “You’re supposed to be my friend.”

  Ted sighed. “Take it easy,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “Look, I’m fifteen minutes late already. I’ve got to go. You eat your pancakes and get some sleep. I’ll be back around six. We can have dinner together and talk, all right? Is that what you want?”

  “That would be nice,” she said, suddenly contrite. “That would be real nice.”

  “Tell Jill I want to see her in my office, right away,” Ted snapped to the secretary when he arrived. “And get us some coffee, willya? I really need some coffee.”

  “Sure.”

  Jill arrived a few minutes after the coffee. She and Ted were associates in the same law firm. He motioned her to a s
eat, and pushed a cup at her. “Sit down,” he said. “Look, the date’s off tonight. I’ve got problems.”

  “You look it,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  “An old friend showed up on my doorstep this morning,” he said.

  Jill arched one elegant eyebrow. “So?” she said. “Reunions can be fun.”

  “Not with Melody, they can’t.”

  “Melody?” she said. “A pretty name. An old flame, Ted? What is it, unrequited love?”

  “No,” he said, “no, it wasn’t like that.”

  “Tell me what it was like, then. You know I love the gory details.”

  “Melody and I were roommates, back in college. Not just us—don’t get the wrong idea. There were four of us. Me and a guy named Michael Englehart, Melody and another girl, Anne Kaye. The four of us shared a big old run-down house for two years. We were—friends.”

  “Friends?” Jill looked skeptical.

  Ted scowled at her. “Friends,” he repeated. “Oh, hell, I slept with Melody a few times. With Anne too. And both of them fucked Michael a time or two. But when it happened, it was just kind of—kind of friendly, you know? Our love life was mostly with outsiders, we used to tell one another our troubles, swap advice, cry on one another’s shoulders. Hell, I know it sounds weird. It was 1970, though. I had hair down to my ass. Everything was weird.” He sloshed the dregs of his coffee around in the cup, and looked pensive. “They were good times too. Special times. Sometimes I’m sorry they had to end. The four of us were close, really close. I loved those people.”

  “Watch out,” Jill said, “I’ll get jealous. My roommate and I cordially despised each other.” She smiled. “So what happened?”

  Ted shrugged. “The usual story,” he said. “We graduated, drifted apart. I remember the last night in the old house. We smoked a ton of dope, and got very silly. Swore eternal friendship. We weren’t ever going to be strangers, no matter what happened, and if any of us ever needed help, well, the other three would always be there. We sealed the bargain with—well, kind of an orgy.”

  Jill smiled. “Touching,” she said. “I never dreamed you had it in you.”

  “It didn’t last, of course,” Ted continued. “We tried, I’ll give us that much. But things changed too much. I went on to law school, wound up here in Chicago. Michael got a job with a publishing house in New York City. He’s an editor at Random House now, been married and divorced, two kids. We used to write. Now we trade Christmas cards. Anne’s a teacher. She was down in Phoenix the last I heard, but that was four, five years ago. Her husband didn’t like the rest of us much, the one time we had a reunion. I think Anne must have told him about the orgy.”

  “And your houseguest?”

  “Melody,” he sighed. “She became a problem. In college, she was wonderful; gutsy, pretty, a real free spirit. But afterwards she couldn’t cut it. She tried to make it as a painter for a couple of years, but she wasn’t good enough. Got nowhere. She went through a couple of relationships that turned sour, then married some guy about a week after she’d met him in a singles bar. That was terrible. He used to get drunk and beat her. She took about six months of it, and finally got a divorce. He still came round to beat her up for a year, until he finally got frightened off. After that Melody got into drugs, bad. She spent some time in an asylum. When she got out, it was more of the same. She can’t hold a job, or stay away from drugs. Her relationships don’t last more than a few weeks. She’s let her body go to hell.” He shook his head.

  Jill pursed her lips. “Sounds like a lady who needs help,” she said.

  Ted flushed, and grew angry. “You think I don’t know that? You think we haven’t tried to help her? Jesus. When she was trying to be an artist, Michael got her a couple of cover assignments from the paperback house he was with. Not only did she blow the deadlines, but she got into a screaming match with the art director. Almost cost Michael his job. I flew to Cleveland and handled her divorce for her, gratis. Flew back a couple of months later, and spent quite a while there trying to get the cops to give her protection against her exhubby. Anne took her in when she had no place to stay, got her into a drug rehabilitation program. In return, Melody tried to seduce her boyfriend—said she wanted to share him, like they’d done in the old days. All of us have lent her money. She’s never paid back any of it. And we’ve listened to her troubles, God, but we’ve listened to her troubles. There was a period a few years ago when she’d phone every week, usually collect, with some new sad story. She cried over the phone a lot. If Queen for a Day was still on TV, Melody would be a natural!”

  “I’m beginning to see why you’re not thrilled by her visit,” Jill said drily. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Ted replied. “I shouldn’t have let her in. The last few times she’s called, I just hung up on her, and that seemed to work pretty well. Felt guilty about it at first, but that passed. This morning, though, she looked so pathetic that I didn’t know how to send her away. I suppose eventually I’ll have to get brutal, and go through a scene. Nothing else works. She’ll make a lot of accusations, remind me of what good friends we were and the promises we made, threaten to kill herself. Fun times ahead.”

  “Can I help?” Jill asked.

  “Pick up my pieces afterwards,” Ted said. “It’s always nice to have someone around afterwards, to tell you that you’re not a son-of-a-bitch even though you just kicked an old dear friend out into the gutter.”

  He was terrible in court that afternoon. His thoughts were full of Melody, and the strategies that most occupied him concerned how to get rid of her most painlessly, instead of the case at hand. Melody had danced flamenco on his psyche too many times before; Ted wasn’t going to let her leech off him this time, nor leave him an emotional wreck.

  When he got back to his condo with a bag of Chinese food under his arm—he’d decided he didn’t want to take her out to a restaurant—Melody was sitting nude in the middle of his conversation pit, giggling and sniffing some white powder. She looked up at Ted happily when he entered. “Here,” she said. “I scored some coke.”

  “Jesus,” he swore. He dropped the Chinese food and his briefcase, and strode furiously across the carpet. “I don’t believe you,” he roared. “I’m a lawyer, for Chrissakes. Do you want to get me disbarred?”

  Melody had the coke in a little paper square, and was sniffing it from a rolled-up dollar bill. Ted snatched it all away from her, and she began to cry. He went to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet, dollar bill and all. Except it wasn’t a dollar bill, he saw, as it was sucked out of sight. It was a twenty. That made him even angrier. When he returned to the living room, Melody was still crying.

  “Stop that,” he said. “I don’t want to hear it. And put some clothes on.” Another suspicion came to him. “Where did you get the money for that stuff?” he demanded. “Huh, where?”

  Melody whimpered. “I sold some stuff,” she said in a timid voice. “I didn’t think you’d mind. It was good coke.” She shied away from him and threw an arm across her face, as if Ted was going to hit her.

  Ted didn’t need to ask whose stuff she’d sold. He knew; she’d pulled the same trick on Michael years before, or so he’d heard. He sighed. “Get dressed,” he repeated wearily. “I brought Chinese food.” Later he could check what was missing, and phone the insurance company.

  “Chinese food is no good for you,” Melody said. “It’s full of monosodium glutamate. Gives you headaches, Ted.” But she got to her feet obediently, if a bit unsteadily, went off towards the bathroom, and came back a few minutes later wearing a halter-top and a pair of ratty cutoffs. Nothing else, Ted guessed. A couple of years ago she must have decided that underwear was no good for you.

  Ignoring her comment about monosodium glutamate, Ted found some plates and served up the Chinese food in his dining nook. Melody ate it meekly enough, drowning everything in soy sauce. Every few minutes she giggled at some private joke, then grew very serious ag
ain and resumed eating. When she broke open her fortune cookie, a wide smile lit her face. “Look, Ted,” she said happily, passing the little slip of paper across to him.

  He read it. OLD FRIENDS ARE THE BEST FRIENDS, it said. “Oh, shit,” he muttered. He didn’t even open his own. Melody wanted to know why.

  “You ought to read it, Ted,” she told him. “It’s bad luck if you don’t read your fortune cookie.”

  “I don’t want to read it,” he said. “I’m going to change out of this suit.” He rose. “Don’t do anything.”

  But when he came back, she’d put an album on the stereo. At least she hadn’t sold that, he thought gratefully.

  “Do you want me to dance for you?” she asked. “Remember how I used to dance for you and Michael? Real sexy … you used to tell me how good I dance. I could have been a dancer if I’d wanted.” She did a few steps in the middle of his living room, stumbled, and almost fell. It was grotesque.

  “Sit down, Melody,” Ted said, as sternly as he could manage. “We have to talk.”

  She sat down.

  “Don’t cry,” he said before he started. “You understand that? I don’t want you to cry. We can’t talk if you’re going to cry every time I say anything. You start crying and this conversation is over.”

  Melody nodded. “I won’t cry, Ted,” she said. “I feel much better now than this morning. I’m with you now. You make me feel better.”

  “You’re not with me, Melody. Stop that.”

  Her eyes filled up with tears. “You’re my friend, Ted. You and Michael and Anne, you’re the special ones.”

  He sighed. “What’s wrong, Melody? Why are you here?”

  “I lost my job, Ted,” she said.

  “The waitress job?” he asked. The last time he’d seen her, three years ago, she’d been waiting tables in a bar in Kansas City.

  Melody blinked at him, confused. “Waitress?” she said. “No, Ted. That was before. That was in Kansas City. Don’t you remember?”