The Newford Stories

  Her gaze traveled to the corpse. "We should call the police."

  She was taking this well. He reached up and touched his shoulder. Though he wasn't exactly stressing out over it either. Those girls had done more than take away her bruises and the hole in his shoulder.

  "You can call them," he said, "but I'm not sticking around."

  When she gave him a surprised look, he nodded toward the Chev. "Gypsy cab."

  "I don't get it."

  "Unlicensed."

  Now she understood.

  "Then we can call it in from a phone booth somewhere," she said.

  "Whatever."

  Hank just wanted away from here. He'd sampled some hallucinogens when he was a kid and the feeling he had now was a lot like coming down from an acid high. Everything slightly askew, illogical things that somehow made sense, everything too sharp and clear when you looked at it, but fading fast in your peripheral vision, blurred, like it didn't really exist. He could still taste the girl's tongue on his lip, the earthy scent she'd left behind. It was a wild bouquet, like something you'd smell in a forest, deep under the trees. He started to reach for his shoulder again, still not quite able to believe the wound was gone, then thought better of it.

  "We should go," he told her.

  She didn't move. "You've been hurt," she said.

  He looked down at his bloody shirt and gave a slow nod. "But they … those girls … just took it away. I caught a bullet in the shoulder and now it's like it never happened. …"

  She touched her cheek. There wasn't a mark on it now.

  "What's happened to us?" she said. "I feel completely distanced from what just happened. Not just physically, but …"

  She let her hand drop.

  "I don't know," he said. "I guess it's just the way we're dealing with the stress."

  She nodded, but neither of them believed it. It was something the girls had done to them.

  He led her to the passenger's side of the cab and opened the door for her. Walking around back, he stopped at the trunk and popped it open. Between the coolers of beer and liquor on ice, he kept a gym bag with spare clothes. Taking off his shirt, he put on a relatively clean T-shirt and closed the lid of the trunk. He paused for a moment as he came around to the driver's side of the car, startled by the body lying there. He kept fading on it, like it didn't really exist, like what had happened, hadn't. Not really. He remembered the girl's lips again, the taste of them, the faint wild musk in the air around her. Her breath, he thought suddenly, had been sweet—like apples.

  His attention returned to the corpse. Frowning, he nudged a limp arm with the toe of his boot, moving it away from the Chev's tire. Last thing he felt like doing was running over the thing. He picked up the baseball bat from where it had fallen and tossed it onto the backseat.

  "Where to?" he asked when he joined Lily in the front of the cab.

  She gave him an address in Lower Crowsea. Yuppie territory. He'd figured right.

  She was quiet until they pulled out onto a main street and headed west. When she spoke, he started, almost having forgotten she was there.

  "How come you don't get a license?" she wanted to know.

  Hank shrugged. He turned the cassette over and stuck it back in, volume turned way down now.

  "This isn't that kind of a cab," he said.

  He put an inflection in the way he spoke that he hoped would let her know this wasn't something he felt like discussing. She took the hint. "Who's that playing trumpet?" she asked.

  "Miles Davis."

  "I thought so. And Wayne Shorter on sax, right? I love that stuff they were doing in the mid-sixties."

  Hank gave her a quick look before returning his attention to his driving. "You like jazz?" he asked, pleasantly surprised.

  "I like all kinds of music—anything that's got heart."

  "That's a good way to put it. Miles sure had heart. I thought a piece of me died when he did."

  They were on Stanton Street now, the sky disappearing overhead as they entered the tunnel of oaks where the street narrowed and the big estates began. A few more blocks west, the houses got smaller and closer to the road. Most of these had been turned into apartments over the years, but they were still out of Hank's price range. Everything was pretty much out of his price range. He took a right on Lee Street, then another on McKennitt and pulled up to the curb in front of the address Lily had given him.

  "Nice place," he said.

  Her building was a three-story brick house with a tall pine and a sugar maple vying for dominance in the front yard. Hank looked at the long front porch and imagined being able to sit out on it in the evening, drink in hand, looking out at the street. A pang of jealousy woke in him, but he let it go as quickly as it came. Only citizens had that kind of a life.

  "I don't own it," Lily said. "I'm renting a second-floor apartment."

  "But still … it's a nice place, in a good neighborhood. Safe."

  She gave him a slow nod. He put the Chev in neutral, engaged the hand brake, and turned to look at her.

  "So who was the guy?" he asked.

  "I don't know." She hesitated for a long heartbeat, then added, "I was out looking for animal people when I ran into him."

  She had to be putting him on. It was that, or he hadn't heard her properly.

  "Animal people?" he asked.

  "I know what you're thinking. I know how crazy it sounds."

  "It doesn't sound like anything to me yet," Hank said.

  "The only reason I brought it up is I thought maybe you'd know what I was talking about. They're supposed to live on the edges of society—sort of a society unto themselves."

  "Outsiders."

  She nodded. "Like you. No offense, but you know, with this cab and everything."

  "No offense taken," Hank assured her. "I've been an outsider all my life. I guess I was just born that way."

  It wasn't entirely a lie. When you didn't get nurturing from day one, you learned pretty quick to depend on yourself.

  "I thought you might know about them," Lily went on. "Or maybe know where I can find them."

  He'd heard of them, but not as anything real. They were only stories.

  "Animal people," Hank repeated.

  He was thinking now might be a real good time to get her out of the cab and put all of this behind him. It was getting close to six, when he had to pick up Eddie anyway, so he had an excuse, but he couldn't let it go. The whole thing was too intriguing. A good-looking, straight citizen like this, out walking the streets of the Combat Zone looking for animal people like Jack was always talking about. He knew what Moth would say, what he'd do, but he wasn't Moth. Moth wouldn't have stopped in the first place—not unless he'd known her. Then Moth would have given his life for her, just as he almost had.

  "What exactly are they supposed to be?" he asked.

  "The first people—the ones that were there when the world began. They were animals, but people, too."

  "When the world began."

  This was way too familiar, he thought as she nodded. At least Jack knew they were only stories.

  "That'd be a long time ago," Hank said, humoring her.

  "I know. Lots of us have their blood in us—that's what gives us our animal traits."

  "Like the Chinese calendar?"

  "I suppose," she said. "The thing is, there's been so much intermarrying between species—you know, us and real animals—not to mention us killing them off when they're in their animal shapes, that there aren't many pure animal people left. But there are some, living on the edges of the way we see the world, the way we divide it up. They're like spiritual forces. Totems."

  Hank didn't know what to say.

  She sighed and looked out the windshield. "I told you. I know how crazy it sounds."

  Hank knew crazy and this wasn't it. Crazy was Hazel standing out in front of the Williamson Street Mall, trying to tell anybody who'd listen about the video games going on inside her head, how right now, Mario the Plumber
was walking around inside her stomach. Or No Hands Luke who was convinced that aliens had stolen his hands and would only pick things up with his wrists held together. But he thought he knew where she'd picked up this business with the animal people.

  "Do you know a man named Jack Daw?" Hank asked.

  She turned so that she was facing him. "Do you know him, too?"

  Everybody on the street, or who worked it, knew Jack. The only thing that surprised Hank was that a citizen would know him. Jack didn't exactly fit into the cocktail hour/espresso bar set. He lived in an abandoned school bus up on the edge of the Tombs near Moth's junkyard, had the place all fixed up inside and out: potbellied cast-iron woodstove, bed, table and chairs to eat at, big old sofa outside where he'd sit in the summer when he wasn't out and about, cadging coins and telling stories. There were always crows hanging around that old bus feeding off the scraps he fed them. He called them his cousins.

  "How'd a woman like you meet someone like Jack?" Hank asked.

  The smile she gave him transformed her features, taking them from attractive to heart-stopping. Easy, Hank, he told himself. She's way out of your league.

  "So what kind of woman am I?" she wanted to know.

  Hank shrugged. "Uptown."

  "Are you always so quick to label people?"

  "You've got to be—in my business."

  "And you're never wrong?"

  Hank thought about the man that right now was lying dead in an alley back in the Combat Zone. If things had played out like he'd expected, the guy would have taken off and still be running.

  "Once or twice," he said.

  She nodded. "Well, I meet a lot of different kinds of people in my business. I'll take a man like Jack over politicians and the moneymen any day."

  Hank studied her for a long moment.

  "I guess you're okay," he said finally.

  She gave him that smile of hers again, lots of wattage, but genuine. "That's what Jack said, too."

  "So how'd you meet him?"

  "The way I usually meet interesting people: I was working on a story."

  "You said you were a photographer. Doesn't somebody else write the stories?"

  "It all depends. Sometimes I sell a story, sometimes just the pictures, sometimes both. It really depends on whether I've got an assignment, or come up with the idea for the piece myself."

  "And this one you came up with."

  "It wasn't about Jack, but I ran into him and … he's really interesting."

  That he was, Hank thought. He'd listened to more than one of Jack's stories himself, late at night, fire burning in one of the junkyard oil drums, the sky so big and clear up above that you'd never think you were in the middle of the city. The things he talked about sounded almost plausible and stuck with you—at least until you thought about them in the daylight.

  "Jack tells those stories to everybody," he said. "That's what he does. Mo—" He caught himself. "A friend of mine says it's Jack's way of explaining the world to himself. You can't take what he says literally."

  "No. Of course not. It's just …" Her gaze went away again, not simply out the windshield, but to someplace Hank couldn't see. "I need to believe in something like animal people right now."

  Hank didn't ask her why. He just gave her the same advice he'd been given by an older kid in juvie hall.

  "Believe in yourself," he said.

  "I do," she said, her voice soft, as though she were sharing a secret. "But it doesn't always help."

  Before Hank could think of a reply, she shook her head, clearing it, and turned to look at him. Wherever she'd gone, she was back now. She reached into her pocket and pressed a business card into his hand.

  "Call me sometime," she said.

  Hank smiled. He'd been right about the card, too.

  "Sure," he lied.

  He glanced at the card before he dropped it on the dash. She played it safe. The card had her name on it, phone number and email address, and one of those "suite" addresses that people used when they didn't want to make it look like they had a P.O. box.

  "Are you still calling the cops?" he asked.

  She shook her head. "I wouldn't know what to say. Two girls came out of nowhere and killed an armed man and all they had were pocketknives? Besides, I think maybe he got what he deserved. He was going to kill you."

  Not to mention beating on her, Hank thought. But it was hard to get worked up about it anymore. They should both still be in shock, dead or on their way to the hospital at the very least, but the whole thing seemed surreal now, as though it had happened to someone else, or a long time ago. He could see she felt the same way.

  "I think those girls were animal people," she added.

  Hank flashed on the afterimage of wings he thought he'd seen when the first girl had landed on the roof of the cab. He touched his shoulder, feeling the wound that was only a scar.

  "They weren't like anything I've ever seen before," he said.

  She nodded. "Thanks again—for everything. Most people wouldn't have stopped to help."

  "Yeah, well …"

  "And call me."

  "Sure," he said, just as he had the last time, only this time he thought maybe he might.

  He watched her go up the walk to her building, the branches of the pine and maple entwining above her, waited until she was inside before he put the Chev in gear and pulled away from the curb. He got the sense she wasn't like Andrea, the last uptown woman he'd dated, that she didn't look at him as a project, something to clean up the way other people went to garage sales, buying junk that they could polish into antiques.

  But then, Andrea hadn't been the kind to go out walking the streets at night looking for animal people.

  He knew what Moth would say: You've got to ask yourself, what's in it for her? Because everybody's playing an angle, working the percentages. That's just the way the world turns, kid. Look out for yourself, because nobody else'll be doing it for you.

  Except for a couple of kids with switchblades who could rub spit on a gunshot wound and make it go away like it had never happened.

  Animal people.

  Bird girls.

  He wasn't sure whether he would tell Moth about what had happened tonight. Moth wasn't going to believe it anyway. Hank had been there himself and he wasn't really all that sure what had happened. It felt too much like he'd dreamed the whole thing.

  But as he took a sharp corner and Lily's business card began to slide down the dash, he grabbed it and stuck it in the pocket of his jeans.

  2.

  Lily waited just inside the front hall, studying the cab through a slit in her landlady's lace curtains until it pulled away. Without her glasses, the receding taillights and the red reflections trailing behind them on the wet street smeared and blurred. She waited until the cab turned a corner, then moved away from the window.

  Well, she'd certainly made a good impression on Joey Bennett, she thought. She leaned her back against the wall, shoulders slumped. What could she possibly have been thinking, talking to him about the animal people? He probably thought she was ready to check into the Zeb where the shrinks could deal with her.

  When Jack was telling his stories, she hadn't believed in the animal people either. Not really. But she wanted to. She wanted to because, for all that she clearly knew the difference between what was real and what wasn't, those strange animal spirits of his still called out to her. When he spoke, she could almost see them lift their heads to peer at her from the spaces where he took a breath, the idea of their existence resonating against something that ran deep in her own blood. But that didn't mean she actually believed in them.

  I was out looking for animal people …

  She cringed as she remembered saying that. She hadn't needed her glasses to read the look on Joey's face, the polite way he didn't come right out and tell her he thought she was nuts. But he didn't have to.

  Jack could get away with it, telling those stories, believing in animal people. He was such a characte
r, living in that old school bus of his, the way he put himself in so many of his stories, as though he'd actually been there when they happened, no matter how tall the tale.

  Lily understood the temptation, perhaps too well. She might even call it a need because, while she didn't know Jack well enough to be able to say why he did it, she was familiar enough with the process. The stories he related were like the ones she and Donna used to tell each other when they were kids, the two of them thrown together because no one else in the neighborhood wanted to play with the fat kid with the Coke-bottle glasses or her gimpy friend. They were both voracious readers, as much by circumstance as by choice, and the stories they made up were a natural outgrowth of all that reading, born out of the need of two tomboys trapped in bodies that didn't look or work properly, having to make up a place where they could fit in. Because the real world didn't have such a place for them.

  All these years later, Donna still had her limp. She'd moved to the East Coast where she worked as an editor for a small publishing house and was doing well for herself, though she often mentioned missing Newford when she wrote. Lily was no longer fat; in fact, if anything, she was slightly underweight, but inside she was still that tubby little kid and she still wanted to believe. She thought maybe Donna felt the same; that what Donna really missed was being able to believe. But that was something they never talked about in the emails they sent each other every day.

  Lily sighed. Pushing herself away from the wall she made her way upstairs and let herself into her apartment. She didn't know why she even cared what Joey thought of her. It wasn't likely she'd ever hear from him again—she'd recognized that look in his eyes when she'd asked him to call her. It was the same look men always got when they promised something they never meant to do. "I had a great time tonight. We should do it again. I'll call you." And then you waited all week before you realized it wasn't going to happen. And you never learned. You always thought, maybe this time it'll be different.