Jensen's eyes were huge and glassy. He looked like a sleepwalker. Wind blew through the room. It swirled his hair. A picture fell from the wall. Jensen pistoned out the hand holding the can of pepper spray and triggered the plastic nub. There was a hiss, then he leaped to his feet, screaming. He tried to turn, probably to flee after Tonya, but stumbled and fell to his knees. Although Kat felt too dumbfounded to move--to even stir a hand--part of her brain must still have been working, because she knew what had happened. He had gotten the can turned around, and instead of pepper-spraying the thing that was now oozing through the unconscious Reverend Rideout's hair, Jensen had sprayed himself.
"Don't let it get me!" Jensen shrieked. He began to crawl blindly away from the bed. "I can't see, don't let it get me!"
The wind gusted. Dead leaves tore free of the tree branch that had come through the window and swirled around the room. The green thing dropped from the nape of Rideout's creased and sunburned neck onto the floor. Feeling like a woman underwater, Kat swiped at it with the bristle end of the broom. She missed. The thing disappeared under the bed, not rolling but slithering.
Jensen crawled headfirst into the wall beside the doorway. "Where am I? I can't see!"
Newsome was sitting up, looking bewildered. "What's going on? What happened?" He pushed Rideout's head off him. The reverend slid bonelessly from the bed to the floor.
Melissa bent over him.
"Don't do that!" Kat shouted, but it was too late.
She didn't know if the thing was truly a god or just some weird kind of leech, but it was fast. It shot out from under the bed, rolled along Rideout's shoulder, onto Melissa's hand, and up her arm. Melissa tried to shake it off and couldn't. Some kind of sticky stuff on those stubby little spikes, the part of Kat's brain that would still work told the part--the much larger part--that still wouldn't. Like the glue on a fly's feet.
Melissa had seen where the thing came from and even in her panic was wise enough to cover her own mouth with both hands. The thing skittered up her neck, over her cheek, and squatted on her left eye. The wind screamed and Melissa screamed with it. It was the cry of a woman drowning in a kind of pain the one-to-ten charts in hospitals can never describe. Melissa's agony was well over one hundred--that of someone being boiled alive. She staggered backwards, clawing at the thing on her eye. It was pulsing faster now, and Kat could hear a low, liquid sound as the thing resumed feeding. It was a slushy sound.
It doesn't care who it eats, Kat thought. She realized she was walking toward the screaming, flailing woman.
"Hold still! Melissa, hold STILL!"
Melissa paid no attention. She continued to back up. She struck the thick branch now visiting the room and went sprawling. Kat dropped to one knee beside her and brought the broom handle smartly down on Melissa's face. Down on the thing that was feeding on Melissa's eye.
There was a splatting sound, and suddenly the thing was sliding limply down the housekeeper's cheek, leaving a wet trail of slime behind. It moved across the leaf-littered floor, intending to hide under the branch the way it had hidden under the bed. Kat sprang to her feet and stepped on it. She felt it splatter beneath her sturdy New Balance walking shoe. Green stuff shot out in both directions, as if she had stepped on a balloon filled with snot.
Kat went down again, this time on both knees, and took Melissa in her arms. At first Melissa struggled, and Kat felt a fist graze her ear. Then Melissa subsided, breathing harshly. "Is it gone? Kat, is it gone?"
"I feel better," Newsome said wonderingly from behind them, in some other world.
"Yes, it's gone," Kat said. She peered into Melissa's face. The eye the thing had landed on was bloodshot, but otherwise it looked all right. "Can you see?"
"Yes. It's blurry, but clearing. Kat . . . the pain . . . it was like the end of the world."
"Somebody needs to flush my eyes!" Jensen yelled. He sounded indignant.
"Flush your own eyes," Newsome said cheerily. "You've got two good legs, don't you? I think I might, too, once Kat throws them back into gear. Somebody check on Rideout. I think the poor sonofabitch might be dead."
Melissa was staring up at Kat, one eye blue, the other red and leaking tears. "The pain . . . Kat, you have no idea of the pain."
"Yes," Kat said. "Actually, I do. Now." She left Melissa sitting by the branch and went to Rideout. She checked for a pulse and found nothing, not even the wild waver of a heart that is still trying its best. Rideout's pain, it seemed, was over.
The generator went out.
"Fuck," Newsome said, still sounding cheery. "I paid seventy thousand dollars for that piece of Jap shit."
"I need someone to flush my eyes!" Jensen bellowed "Kat!"
Kat opened her mouth to reply, then didn't. In the new darkness, something had crawled onto the back of her hand.
For Russ Dorr
Public appearances aren't my favorite thing. When I stand before an audience, I always feel like an imposter. It isn't that I'm a solitary person, although I am, at least to a degree; I can drive from Maine to Florida by myself and feel perfectly content. It isn't stage fright, either, although I still feel it when I step in front of two or three thousand people. That is an unnatural situation for most writers. We're more accustomed to appearing before dedicated library groups of three dozen. That feeling of being the wrong person in the wrong place derives chiefly from knowing that whoever--or whatever--the audience came to see won't be there. The part of me that creates the stories exists only in solitude. The one who shows up to share anecdotes and answer questions is a poor substitute for the story-maker.
In November of 2011, I was being driven to my final appearance in Paris at Le Grand Rex, seating capacity 2,800. I felt nervous and out of place. I was in the backseat of a big black SUV. The streets were narrow and the traffic was heavy. I had my little sheaf of papers--a few remarks, a short reading--in a folder on my lap. At a stoplight we pulled up beside a bus, the two large vehicles snugged together so tightly they were almost touching. I looked in one of the bus windows and saw a woman in business dress, possibly headed home from work. I wished momentarily that I was sitting beside her, headed home myself, ready for a spot of dinner followed by a couple of hours reading a book in a comfy chair with good light, instead of being driven to a sold-out theater full of fans whose language I did not speak.
Perhaps la femme felt my gaze. More likely she was just bored with her newspaper. In any case, she raised her head and looked over at me, only feet away. Our eyes met. What I imagined I saw in hers was a wistful wish to be in the fancy SUV, going someplace where there would be lights and laughter and entertainment instead of back to her apartment, where there would be nothing but a small meal, perhaps taken from the freezer and heated up, followed by the evening news and the same old TV sitcoms. If we could have changed places, both of us might have been happier.
Then she looked back down at her newspaper and I looked back down at my folder. The bus went one way, the SUV another. But for a moment we were close enough to peer into each other's worlds. I thought of this story, and when I got back from my overseas tour, I sat down and wrote it in a burst.
That Bus Is Another World
Wilson's mother, not one of the world's shiny happy people, had a saying: "When things go wrong, they keep going wrong until there's tears."
Mindful of this, as he was of all the folk wisdom he'd learned at his mother's knee ("An orange is gold in the morning and lead at night" was another gem), Wilson was careful to take out travel insurance--which he thought of as bumpers--ahead of occasions that were particularly important, and no occasion in his adult life was more important than his trip to New York, where he would present his portfolio and his pitch to the top brass at Market Forward.
MF was one of the most important advertising firms of the Internet age. Wilson's company, Southland Concepts, was just a one-man outfit based in Birmingham. Such chances as this didn't come around twice, which made a bumper vital. That was why he arrived at Bir
mingham-Shuttlesworth Airport at 4:00 a.m. for a 6:00 a.m. nonstop. The flight would put him into LaGuardia at nine twenty. His meeting--actually an audition--was scheduled for two thirty. A five-hour bumper seemed travel insurance enough.
At first, all went well. The gate attendant checked and got approval for Wilson to store his portfolio in the first-class closet, although Wilson himself was of course flying coach. In such matters the trick was to ask early, before people started getting hassled. Hassled folks didn't want to hear about how important your portfolio was; how it might be the ticket to your future.
He did have to check one suitcase, because if he turned out to be a finalist for the Green Century account (and that could happen, he was actually very well positioned), he might be in New York for ten days. He had no idea how long the winnowing process would take, and he didn't want to send his clothes out to the hotel laundry any more than he intended to order meals from room service. Hotel extras were expensive in all big cities, and gruesomely expensive in the Big Apple.
Things didn't start going wrong until the plane, which took off on time, reached New York. There it took its place in an overhead traffic jam, circling and pogoing in gray air over that point of arrival the pilots so rightly called LaGarbage. There were not-so-funny jokes and outright complaints, but Wilson remained serene. His travel insurance was in place; his bumper was thick.
The plane landed at ten thirty, slightly over an hour late. Wilson proceeded to the luggage carousel, where his bag did not appear. And did not appear. And did not appear. Finally he and a bearded old man in a black beret were the only ones left, and the last unclaimed items remaining on the carousel were a pair of snowshoes and a large travel-stained plant with drooping leaves.
"This is impossible," Wilson told the old man. "The flight was nonstop."
The old man shrugged. "Must have mistagged them in Birmingham. Our shit could be on its way to Honolulu by now, for all we know. I'm toddling over to Lost Luggage. Want to accompany me?"
Wilson did, thinking of his mother's saying. And thanking God he still had his portfolio.
He was halfway through the Lost Luggage form when a baggage handler spoke up from behind him. "Does this belong to either of you gentlemen?"
Wilson turned and saw his tartan suitcase, looking damp.
"Fell off the back of the baggage-train," the handler said, comparing the claim check stapled to Wilson's ticket folder to the one on the suitcase. "Happens once in awhile. You should take a claim form in case something's broken."
"Where's mine?" asked the old man in the beret.
"Can't help you there," the handler said. "But we almost always find them in the end."
"Yeah," the old man said, "but the end is not yet."
By the time Wilson left the terminal with his suitcase, portfolio, and carry-on bag, it was closing in on eleven thirty. Several more flights had arrived in the meantime, and the taxi queue was long.
I have a bumper, he soothed himself. Three hours is plenty. Also, I'm under the overhang and out of the rain. Count your blessings and relax.
He rehearsed his pitch as he inched forward, visualizing each oversize showcard in his portfolio and reminding himself to be cool. To mount his very best charm offensive and put the potentially enormous change in his fortunes out of his mind the minute he walked into 245 Park Avenue.
Green Century was a multinational oil company, and its ecologically optimistic name had become a liability when one of its undersea wells had popped its top not far from Gulf Shores, Alabama. The gush had not been quite as catastrophic as the one following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but bad enough. And oh dear, that name. The late-night comedians had been having a ball with it. (Letterman: "What's green and black and crap all over?") The Green Century CEO's first public whiny response--"We have to go after the oil where it is, you'd think people would understand that"--had not helped; an Internet cartoon showing an oil well poking out of the CEO's ass with his words captioned below had gone viral.
Green Century's PR team went to Market Forward, their longtime agency, with what they believed was a brilliant idea. They wanted to sub out the damage control campaign to a small southern ad agency, making hay from the fact that they weren't using the same old New York sharpies to soothe the American people. They were especially concerned with the opinions of those Americans living below what the New York sharpies no doubt referred to at their fancy cocktail parties as the Mason-Dumbass Line.
The taxi queue inched forward. Wilson looked at his watch. Five to twelve.
Not to worry, he told himself, but he was starting to.
He finally climbed into a Jolly Dingle cab at twenty past noon. He hated the idea of dragging his runway-dampened suitcase into a high-priced office suite in a Manhattan business building--how country that would look--but he was starting to think he might have to forgo a stop at the hotel to drop it off.
The cab was a bright yellow minivan. The driver was a melancholy Sikh living beneath an enormous orange turban. Lucite-encased pictures of his wife and children dangled and swung from the rearview mirror. The radio was tuned to 1010 WINS, its tooth-rattling xylophone ID playing every four minutes or so.
"Treffik very bad today," the Sikh said as they inched toward the airport exit. This seemed to be the extent of his conversation. "Treffik very, very bad."
The rain grew heavier as they crawled toward Manhattan. Wilson felt his bumper growing thinner with each pause and lurch of peristaltic forward motion. He had half an hour to make his pitch, half an hour only. Would they hold the slot for him if he were late? Would they say, "Fellows, of the fourteen small southern agencies we're auditioning today for the big stage--a star is born, and all that--only one has a proven record of working with firms that have suffered environmental mishaps, and that one is Southland Concepts. Therefore, let us not leave Mr. James Wilson out just because he's a bit late."
They might say that, but on the whole, Wilson thought . . . not. What they wanted most was to stop all those late-night jokes ASAP. That made the pitch all-important, but of course every asshole has a pitch. (That was one of his father's pearls of wisdom.) He had to be on time.
Quarter past one. When things go wrong they keep going wrong, he thought. He didn't want to think it, but he did. Until there are tears.
As they approached the Midtown Tunnel, he leaned forward and asked the Sikh for an ETA. The orange turban wagged dolefully from side to side. "Cannot say, sir. Treffik very, very bad."
"Half an hour?"
There was a long pause, and then the Sikh said, "Perhaps." That carefully chosen placatory word was enough to make Wilson understand that his situation was critical going on dire.
I can leave my goddam suitcase at the Market Forward reception desk, he thought. Then at least I won't have to drag it into the conference room.
He leaned forward and said, "Never mind the hotel. Take me to Two forty-five Park."
The tunnel was a claustrophobe's nightmare: start and stop, start and stop. Traffic on the other side, moving crosstown on Thirty-Fourth Street, was no better. The minivan cab was just high enough for Wilson to see every dispiriting obstacle ahead. Yet when they reached Madison, he began to relax a little. It would be close, much closer than he liked, but there would be no need to make a humiliating call saying he was going to be a trifle late. Skipping the hotel had been the right move.
Only then came the broken water main, and the sawhorses, and the Sikh had to go around. "Worse than when Obama comes," he said, while 1010 WINS promised that if Wilson gave them twenty-two minutes, they'd give him the world. The xylophone chattered like loose teeth.
I don't want the world, he thought. I just want to get to 245 Park by quarter past two. Twenty past at the latest.
The Jolly Dingle eventually returned to Madison. It sprinted almost to Thirty-Sixth Street, then stopped short. Wilson imagined a football announcer telling the audience that while the run had been flashy, any gain on the play had been negligible. The windshi
eld wipers thumped. A reporter talked about electronic cigarettes. Then there was an ad for Sleepy's.
Wilson thought, Take a chill pill. I can walk from here, if I have to. Eleven blocks, that's all. Only it was raining, and he'd be dragging his goddam suitcase.
A Peter Pan bus rolled up next to the cab and stopped with a chuff of airbrakes. Wilson was high enough to be able to look through his window and into the bus. Five or six feet away from him, no more than that, a good-looking woman was reading a magazine. Next to her, in the aisle seat, a man in a black raincoat was hunting through the briefcase balanced on his knees.
The Sikh honked his horn, then raised his hands, palms out, as if to say, Look what the world has done to me.
Wilson watched the good-looking woman touch the corners of her mouth, perhaps checking her lipstick's staying power. The man next to her was now rummaging through the pocket inside the lid of his briefcase. He took out a black scarf, put it to his nose, sniffed it.
Now why would he do that? Wilson wondered. Is it his wife's perfume or the scent of her powder?
For the first time since boarding the plane in Birmingham, he forgot about Green Century and Market Forward and the radical improvement of his circumstances that might result if the meeting, now less than half an hour away, went well. For the moment he was fascinated--more than fascinated, enthralled--by the woman's delicately probing fingers and the man with the scarf to his nose. It came to him that he was looking into another world. Yes. That bus was another world. That man and that woman had their own appointments, undoubtedly with balloons of hope attached. They had bills to pay. They had sisters and brothers and certain childhood toys that remained unforgotten. The woman might have had an abortion while in college. The man might have a penis ring. They might have pets, and if so, the pets would have names.
Wilson had a momentary image--vague and unformed but tremendous--of a clockwork galaxy where the separate wheels and cogs went through mysterious motions, perhaps to some karmic end, perhaps for no reason at all. Here was the world of the Jolly Dingle cab, and five feet away was the world of the Peter Pan bus. Between them were only five feet and two layers of glass. Wilson was amazed by this self-evident fact.