Are You There and Other Stories

by Jack Skillingstead

  “This ain’t stolen goods, shyster!”

  Norman, who stood several inches taller than the man and besides was now in full possession of his most reliable rage, grabbed the comic book and unrolled it with a snap. It wasn’t The Shadow; it was Betty and Veronica. The issue was titled The Sirens of Riverdale and featured a cover illustration of a nude, dog-collared Veronica Lodge reclining on a golden throne reading Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.

  The fat man snatched the comic back.

  “I told you I ain’t got your Shadow,” he said, and slammed the door in Norman’s face.

  Or tried to. Norman blocked it with his foot, then shoved it open with both hands, sending the fat man reeling into the room.

  “Who said anything about The Shadow?” Norman said.

  “You got nerve busting in here!”

  The room smelled of ancient farts. A fly-specked fixture dimly illuminated the mess of beer bottles, dirty clothes, newspapers—and comic books. The comics were the only neatly arranged objects visible, stacked in orderly piles on a gate leg table in the dining alcove. Norman strode over. On the top of the first stack was The Shadow, vol. 5, issue 6: The Death Master’s Vengeance. Norman’s fingers trembled over the cover.

  “Not so fast!”

  Norman spun around in time to block the fat man’s attempt to brain him with a beer bottle. He knocked the bottle away and grabbed the man’s undershirt in his fists and gave him a hard shake. The man’s face bunched up, red cheeks popping out like cherry apples all webbed with an alcoholic’s burst capillaries.

  “I don’t know from lawyers, mister, but I’d say you’re a thief, for sure.”

  Norman pulled him close, nose to nose. “We’ll see who the thief is.”

  He released the man and picked up the comic. “My father wrote his initials in every book he ever owned.”

  “So?”

  Norman peeled back the cover of The Death Master’s Vengeance. On the first page, in the upper right hand corner, in blue ink faded into the ancient paper: B.H.: Bernie Helmcke.

  And Norman felt . . . nothing.

  Holding the impossible artifact in his hand, a comic book from his father’s lost collection, burned by his stepfather more than forty years ago, Norman felt absolutely nothing. Whatever hole its absence had made in his psyche remained unfilled. Norman rolled the mag up in his fist and started for the door.

  The fat man grabbed his arm. “Hold on—”

  Norm jerked his arm loose and shoved the man over the back of his chair. His legs stuck up in a “V” capturing the fish bowl picture tube, where a blurry Indian Chief’s head wobbled.

  *

  Scout was sitting in front of the hotel licking her butt when Norman came out. She stopped, and stood up on all fours.

  “I see you survived.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you got your Shadow.”

  “Right.”

  “But you don’t feel any better, do you?”

  “Look, Mona—”

  “Scout.”

  “Look, Scout. Do you know something I don’t know? And besides that, what made you think that fat nitwit was going to hurt me?”

  “I just like to keep you on your toes, Norm. Also I didn’t know he was going to be a fat nitwit; this is a very dangerous place, generally. And yes: I know something you don’t know.”

  “Would you like to share that information?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Has anybody ever told you how annoying you can be?”

  “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Scout put her nose up in the air. “Well. I’m glad to see your sense of humor is showing at least feeble signs of recovery.”

  “There’s never been anything wrong with my sense of humor.”

  “On the contrary, it’s been dead as a crate of door nails, as Dickens might have said. What you refer to as your sense of humor has really been bottled vitriol. Would you like me to tell you why the retrieval of your dad’s comic book failed to fill in any of the gaps in your windy head?”

  “You talk too much.”

  “I’m not talking at all, if you want to get technical. Anyway the reason you can’t fill gaps with comic books, or anything else, is that there is only one absolutely essential element, and without it all you are is a gap. Everybody has a portion of the essential element. In your case you decided to bury it deep. Hey, nobody’s blaming you; you got a rough shake. It was this element that the Thief had been after from the very beginning. He only took all that other stuff because he couldn’t find the damn thing.”

  “Are you going to get to the point one of these days?”

  Scout started walking. She tossed her head and thought-projected: “Love.”

  Norman caught up with her. “What about love?”

  “Without it, nothing is vitalized—that’s what about it.”

  “Bon Nuit,” Norman said. The comic book crackled in his fist.

  “The perfume doesn’t matter. It’s about your ability to experience love at all.”

  Norman halted at a bus stop, inspected the bench for filth, sat down. He unrolled the comic book and opened it again to the first page. His father’s initials were barely visible in the cold glow of the street lamp. The Shadow. His dad had been a collector, but not like the fat man in the Midtown Hotel. As a small child, Norman had longed to be a hero. A mysterious one, of course. Striking down Evil and injustice wherever he encountered it. Instead Evil struck down his own father. MIA. No one knew how he died. In Norman’s mind the death wasn’t real, not like Mona’s bloody end. He had seen Mona die. Years later Norman read a Life Magazine article about American G.I.s who had defected to the North. He knew his father hadn’t done that, he knew it. But the idea grew bitter roots in him, from a seed planted by Steve.

  Plenty of guys defected, kid. They were scared, and they loved their chicken asses more than they loved their country. I’m not sayin’ that’s your old man for certain. Hell, Bernie seemed like a decent guy. But there’s plenty of guys living up there north of the dmz with gook wives that left more than their country behind. All I’m saying is, I never saw Bernie go down. All I saw was him running.

  *

  When Steve kissed Norman’s mother he liked to squeeze her ass. The first time Norman witnessed this he almost started crying. Almost. Even then, at age eight, he was past crying about anything. It stuck in his head, though. Steve’s big ape’s paw grabbing a handful of his mother’s ass, the way her housedress bunched up. And Steve looked right at Norman, letting the kid know who owned what in that house. Who was boss. It was the comic burning thing all over again, but worse.

  *

  Norman wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands. The buildings leaned and twisted over the sidewalk. Brassy jazz issued from nightclub doorways. Mutated simulacrums of vintage Detroit steel rounded city blocks, headlights aimed at unaligned angles, as if searching for something. A girl screamed his name, and Norman stopped. He squinted, listening. Scout looked up at him.

  “Was that real?” Norman asked.

  “The girl? Absolutely.”

  “Where—”

  “What am I, your guide dog?”

  “Where?”

  “Okay, okay. Sheesh. Follow me.”

  Scout turned and trotted back to the last nightclub they’d passed, Norman stepping quickly after her. Red neon tubing pretzeled into a symbol unrecognizable to Norman. A black man of sumo proportions lounged in the doorway with his arms crossed. He wore a leather vest and small, round, perfectly black sunglasses.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  The girl screamed again. She screamed, and Norman knew who she was.

  First love.

  He started to go inside, but the bouncer or whatever he was stepped in front of him.

  “You aren’t on the list.”

  “What the hell’s going on in there?”

  “Nothing of interest to you.” The bouncer dropped a huge han
d on Norman’s shoulder and squeezed, not too hard, but hard enough to indicate it wasn’t a friendly gesture.

  Norman slugged him.

  It was a reflex, and his rage was behind it, and it surprised him as much as it surprised the bouncer, who fell back clutching at his gut. His face clenched in an ugly knot. He started to reach out, and Norman side-kicked his knee. The bouncer hit the ground and did not bounce. Norman stepped over him. Scout followed at his heels, thought-projecting:

  “Nice work.”

  The interior of the club was dark. Smoke layered the air in noxious strata. It wasn’t all cigarette smoke, either. The trio on stage were smoldering, the trumpet player in particular. Or was it a quartet? The chanteuse in a black dress lay sprawled at the front of the stage, and she was the smokiest of them all, like a thing burned out of the sky by lasers. Norman pushed forward between the crowded tables. When he got closer he saw that the chanteuse was just a kid, a teenager. In fact she was the girl he used to hold hands with in high school. Connie.

  Somebody grabbed his arm and yanked him around.

  “You’re not on the list.” It was a different guy, but he shared dimensions similar to those of the toppled sumo, not to mention the same one-track mind. Before Norman’s new-found reflexes could assert themselves, sumo number two slapped him hard across the jaw with an open hand that felt like a mahogany plank. Norman staggered back, upsetting one of the dinner plate-sized tables. A glass tumbler broke on the floor. A man sitting at the table yanked on Norman’s lapel and snarled an obscenity. Scout bit the man’s ankle. The man yelped, and Norman pulled free.

  “That dog’s not on the list, neither,” the new bouncer said. He was now holding an automatic.

  Norman hit him squarely on the nose. The bouncer dropped the gun and spun away, spraying blood through fingers cupped over his face. Norman retrieved the automatic and tucked it in his belt.

  The trio kept playing.

  Norman approached the stage. It was Connie, all right. Around the girl’s neck there hung on a fine gold chain a vial of amber liquid. Norman glanced up at the trumpet player, who continued to blow, his round face streaming sweat, whiffs of smoke lifting from his hair, his shirt collar, even the bell of his trumpet. His eyes, rolled down to meet Norman’s, seemed to be mostly egg-white sclera. Norman looked away, back to the fallen chanteuse, his lost first love, from whom he now derived only righteous anger. He closed his hand around the vial and tugged it once, breaking the delicate chain.

  Connie wavered, like a body seen through disturbed water, and then she vanished.

  The music stopped. For a moment the musicians looked confused, directionless. The horn player wiped his mouthpiece on the sleeve of his white jacket. “That kid was good,” he said, then caught a new tempo with his snapping fingers, brought the horn to his lips, and resumed something bluesy, sans smoke.

  “What have you got there?” Scout said.

  Norman twisted the stopper out and sniffed. “Bon Nuit.”

  “Naturally.”

  Norman replaced the stopper. He slipped the vial into the inside pocket of his overcoat next to the comic.

  “You!” someone shouted.

  He turned, his London Fog sweeping over the crowded tables like a cape but never upsetting a glass. The bouncer with the squirty nose had found some friends. One looked like a stick figure in black tie. The stick figure was smoking a cigarette in a long, onyx holder. He gestured, briefly, and one of the big boys next to him pointed a gun at Norman. The music halted for the second time, and patrons evacuated tables. Norman grinned. He snatched the automatic from his waistband and triggered it rapidly. The big man’s gun sparked and spun out of his hand. A second slug struck his gun arm. Norman glided across the room. The unwounded bouncer made a grab for him, and Norman chopped at his windpipe, sending him gasping to the floor.

  The stick figure casually removed the cigarette holder from his thin lips. “I could use a man like you.”

  “I bet.”

  “I assume there is some purpose in your chaotic visit to my establishment.”

  Norman produced the vial of perfume. “This. Don’t lie. I can see you recognize it.”

  “I do indeed.”

  “Well?”

  “A trifle purchased from a military gentleman. I thought it might improve the band. It did.”

  Scout lunged past Norman and latched onto the throat-chopped bouncer’s arm. At the end of the arm the recovered automatic went off, sending a slug into the ceiling. Norman twisted the gun out of the man’s hand, tucked it away next to the other gun, then moved in on the stick figure, lifting him up and throwing him back against the wall. He knocked the cigarette holder away then pulled one of the automatics and pressed the barrel against the little man’s very pale forehead.

  “This military gentleman. Where can I find him?”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “Where?” Norman pressed harder with the barrel. The manager grimaced.

  “He used to run a shop on the outskirts. Now he does business out of the Bijou on 52nd Street. That’s what I understand. Now please leave.”

  Norman put his gun away. There was a red circle third eye in the middle of the manager’s forehead.

  “Come on, Scout.”

  *

  “We shot that place up pretty good, and I still don’t hear any sirens. You’ve got lazy cops around here.”

  “They aren’t lazy,” Scout thought-projected. “They don’t even exist. This is a lawless place. No attorneys, either, by the way. Except in comic books. There’s the theater.”

  At the end of the block, golf ball-sized light bulbs raced each other around a marquee: RONALD COLEMAN in LOST HORIZON. Smaller letters crawling along the bottom of the marquee spelled out: open all night, continuous shows plus news reels.

  “They’re a little behind around here,” Norman said.

  “Progress is relative.”

  “Let’s get this over with,” he said, striding toward the Bijou. “I want to go home.”

  *

  The ticket window was unmanned but the doors stood open. Norman and Scout entered the lobby and discovered it empty and redolent of hot buttered popcorn.

  “Will you kill him?” Scout said.

  Norman gave the dog a dirty look. “Hell no.”

  “Because you could get away with it here.”

  “I said no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.” Norman swallowed. “Because I’m the good guy.”

  “I’m sorry,” Scout said. “I just thought you should say it out loud.”

  It was easy to spot the thief. There was only one head visible in the sea of theater seats.

  “Wait here,” Norman said.

  “Check.”

  Norman walked down the center aisle and stopped at the end of the thief’s row. On the big screen Ronald Coleman desperately searched a frozen wasteland for signs of Shangri-La.

  “Do you even know who I am?” the thief said, without looking at Norman.

  “Yes.”

  The thief turned away from the screen. Bernie Helmcke’s face was young and smooth, the face of a man in the last blush of youth. Movie light shifted over his features. Norman collapsed a little inside but fought not to show it. At that moment he realized he had been fighting his whole life not to show it.

  “Why’d you do it, Dad?”

  “I was compelled. Do you know what the most valuable commodity in the universe is? The greatest binding force? The Universal Integument? Do you know what it is?”

  Bernie had to raise his voice to be heard over the swelling musical score as the end credits began to roll. Norman stared at him.

  “Love,” the thief said.

  *

  They walked up the aisle together. Bernie was wearing an olive drab infantryman’s uniform. Norman was taller than his father, but he felt reduced, a child. He tried to make his hands into fists, but his rage had deserted him at last.

  “Come on,” Bernie
said, patting his back, “I’ll buy you breakfast.”

  “No, thanks. I already ate with the dog.”

  *

  Norman, his dead father, and his imaginary dog walked toward the edge of the world.

  “What time is it?” Norman asked.

  “There isn’t any time here.”

  “What about the dawn? When—”

  “There is no dawn. Don’t ask me how that’s possible. All I know is this. We’re here to serve the ultimate proliferation of love, which vitalizes the universe. There are beings who see to this. I don’t know what they are. I wouldn’t call them angels. They look inside us, and they spin out these worlds. They tell stories, give us roles, harvest the vital end product; I believe they must be insane. I mean, look around. You see, son, death isn’t what we thought it was.”

  They arrived at the edge of the world. Beyond the jagged paving, stars suggested themselves out of the void.

  “I’m going home,” Norman said.

  “Son—”

  “Look, I don’t believe it. I can’t. And if this is a dream I want out. I want to feel normal again.”

  Norman stepped off the edge, blurred briefly, and found himself walking toward his dad and his dog. He stopped.

  “Bottom line, Norm,” Scout projected, “the way you feel is normal.”

  “True,” his father said. “This is the place that hurts, son. The place where love resumes.”

  A car that looked like a De Soto with great, oval headlights on flexible stalks screeched around the corner and braked sideways in the middle of the street. The doors flung open, and men with guns piled out.

  “Dat’s him,” the biggest one said, pointing at Norman. Norman’s reactions were unconscious and lightning quick. He filled his hands with the twin automatics and brought down two of the armed men before either of them could get a shot off. Unfortunately the third man was fast enough to fire a Tommy gun burst before Norman could drill him.

  The Tommy burst stitched across Bernie Helmcke’s chest.

  The De Soto squealed away, leaving bodies behind like bales of newspapers.

  Norman dropped his guns. He sank to his knees at his father’s side.

  “I’m finished,” Bernie said. “Again.”

  Norman felt it coming—the flood he’d dammed a lifetime ago.