After a week John decided to call on Frank. He went to the market and bought a selection of gourmet teas, five pounds of sugar and a fancy mug. He went up to Frank’s apartment and knocked.
There was no answer.
He came back a few times in the afternoon. About five he was worried. He asked the young Korean man, who sold the cell phones shop if he had seen Frank. The man said that he had not seen Frank in a couple of days, but that was nothing unusual. Frank often spent three or four days alone in his room. John said he was going in, and the man said OK.
The door was unlocked.
Frank lay on the floor near the bed. It looked like he might have fallen. There was some blood, sticking his few white hairs to the greasy yellow linoleum. His eyes were open. The police spent two hours talking to John and the shopkeeper.
Jeff had left town.
He apparently left the night after he spoke to John.
It wasn’t clear if violence was involved, and the police weren’t very interested. A small article graced the Austin American Statesman focusing on Frank’s involvement with the alternative press. John was surprised to find out that he had also ran a club in the seventies, which seemed to have been the high tide in his economic life. Club Zothique had burned to the ground in mysterious circumstances. Hints about organized crime were dropped in the article.
A week later the Korean man came to the New Atlantis shop.
“No one has come for his things. I asked the landlord and he said that you could have his things. I saw you cry when you found him, so I thought you were good enough.”
John borrowed the key. He went with Haidee that night. Downtown is fairly quiet at night. They parked their van in front of the cell phone store. John unlocked the door and they went upstairs. The apartment hadn’t been cleaned or organized in any way. No one had even washed away the small bloodstain, which seemed really sad. Haidee hugged him a moment and then they began putting books into a giant garbage bags. They would drop them off at the self-storage unit that John rented, on Sunday he would sort them out, and price the ones he thought he could sell. He’d give the rest to Goodwill.
Even though the little apartment had seemed full of books, certainly as crowded as the New Atlantis, it only filled two garbage sacks full. They were mainly old paperbacks—mysteries and SF. There was some hardback poetry and histories.
They were quiet during the sacking up of the books.
Haidee asked. “Would you like to be alone here for a while? I could go down the street to the Decline and have a cup.”
“Yeah. I would.”
She nodded and left.
He carried the two sacks full of books downstairs and then went and sat on the bed. It wasn’t a clear ending. Had Jeff killed him? Killed him for the book, or angry because there was no book? Had Jeff found him? Had Jeff just left his enthusiasm for Communist Yoga passed like all the others?
Had Frank had a good life?
He looked about the desk. He got up and opened it. Inside was a pile of mail. Junk mail and unpaid bills, and a big brown envelope with his name written on it in pencil. Inside was a small book, a cheaply made leather-bound book, and its title once golden had become verdigris-green. It was Yoga for Bolsheviks by James M. Cassutto.
Always leave ’em guessing.
John sat on the bed again, he would read for a few minutes and then join Haidee for a cup of tea and a slice of chess pie.
WHAT ARE BEST
FRIENDS FOR?
Steve wasn’t surprised when Joan hit him up for a loan. Joan had been in and out of work for three years (and there was the custody thing), and rent was due in two days. So Steve lent her three hundred dollars against her computer. Steve drew up an elaborate paper of lien—he wasn’t worried about the money, but he thought Joan might take her four-year-old son and split, and he wouldn’t have a claim on the computer. It was a better machine than the piece of crap on his desk at home. But how good a computer did you need to visit porn sites and Robot Nine?
More importantly Joan was Sally’s best friend, and Sally and he were beginning to look like a permanent alliance. Steve handed Joan three Benjamins and got her to sign the lien papers. Joan drove off to court to continue her eleventh hour custody battle, and Steve drove to work.
Texas Data Systems filled a three-story red-brick-and-gold-anodized-window building on a tree-shaded quiet street. Steve’s “office” was a windowless cubicle near the center of the second floor. He began inputting changes on his manual, a novella-length description of a nine-pin to eighteen-pin interface. Juan, his chubby cube mate, sauntered in a few minutes after one.
Juan said, “Guess what?”
“What?” asked Steve.
“I sold the story I showed you to Weird Tales.”
“Hey, congratulations.”
Juan and Steve and a couple of other people, who had since moved on from TDS, had started writing or at least playing-at-writing two years ago, after taking a class at the New Atlantis bookstore. Well Juan had, Steve had only produced the beginnings of short stories, which remained in a manila folder in the bottom drawer of his desk. Steve stood up and shook John’s sweaty pudgy hand. Steve didn’t like fat people; they smelled. He had to be friends with Juan—he didn’t want people to say that he was prejudiced. Steve and Juan made the rounds from cubicle to cubicle spreading the good news. People said all the things they say to people making their first sales. Be sure and tell us when it comes out. We’ll all get a copy. We’ll throw you a party. Someday there’ll be a plaque on this building, “Juan Martinez worked here.” Juan glowed all afternoon and Steve printed out his manual. Steve had his fun with this again that night, telling Sally at the Hunan Dragon.
“Juan was floating about two inches off the ground after he got the word.”
“Whatever happened to your literary efforts?”
“Well. You know.”
“Is that laziness or block?”
“Hey. You’re supposed to be on my side, remember. I make more with technical writing than any fiction freelancer I know. I may start up again anytime. Anyway I was able to loan Joan three hundred.”
“Against her computer.”
“Well it’s not like it’s worth it. She’s the one who insisted. I was willing to lend it to her against her word. She’s your best friend.”
“You kept her from getting evicted. Currently she tells everybody that you are her best friend.” Said Sally.
“Her best friend would be anyone that could give her a job. Maybe if she leaves town. The employment picture here sucks. And you know she’s not leaving if she has to leave her kid entirely in the hands of her ex. She’s licked.”
“He’s a real creep.”
“Yeah. I’ve met him. Here comes our Chicken Kung Pao.”
“That will all be over this Friday. The court decides custody then.”
“I hope Joan copes if the court cuts Mickey out of her life. She was pretty wide-eyed at lunch.”
Friday came. The court decided. Joan did not cope. Joan had purchased a cheap pistol at Snooper’s Pawn for protection some months back. She discharged a bullet through the top of her soft palate.
Joan’s father called Steve on Sunday afternoon. He’d found the lien and wanted Steve to come by and pick up the computer. Steve said that under the circumstances it would be O.K. for them to keep the computer. But they said they had no use for the thing—and it would help them clean up things if Steve got it. Besides Joan had told them what a good friend he was.
Steve was surprised how old Joan’s parents looked. Death of an offspring must really suck away the years.
Joan’s computer represented a step up from Steve’s old machine. He had planned to upgrade for a while, but he was the sort that never spent a nickel unless necessary. Years ago when he did therapy, his shrink told him that he was cheap because he had no self-worth. He looked up a couple of college buds on Facebook, then before he went to bed he thought he should look for any really personal files and delete them. He wouldn’t want someone reading his diary entries, or that bad love poetry he wrote for Sally, or finding the urls of his favorite porn sites.