Cri called only my name in the dreams. But I knew more was being said. You see, I owed her one.
Three years back, even before my trip to that Place. A hotel suite in Miami. We were down there for a science fiction convention. We had heard the guy who wrote the Horseclans was going to be there and maybe he was but we never got a chance to see him. Anyway, it was Thursday and the show didn’t start until Friday and Cri had conned her current lover (some writer whose name I can’t recall) into letting us use his suite for a little seven-card stud. By five in the morning, only six of us were left. Myself, Cri, two guys down for the convention to sell old collectors’ comic books, and two Cubans who had just sort of wandered in at midnight and joined the game. We hadn’t much minded. They had been losing steadily. But they were a scary pair, believe me.
They got scarier-looking in a hurry when I won the last and biggest pot of the night. They exchanged glances, visibly deciding whether or not to let it go or just start the rumble right then. Looking at them I had the strong feeling that armed robbery was more than just a hypothetical concept to them.
But then'they relaxed, sighed, said adios, and split along with everyone else but Cri (who was staying there, of course) and me. I sat happily dragging the winnings against my chest and I noticed Cri was staring oddly at me. Or rather, at my cards. I smiled proudly. I had won with a small diamond flush: the nine, the six, the three, and the two fives.
Huh? Two fives? But there they were. I hadn’t noticed it before, and neither, thank God, had anyone else.
But Cri had been hip to them all along.
“Why didn’t you sing out?” I asked.
“Several reasons, my lad. I’m too tired to care, I know you’re not a thief—and I didn’t want that Cuban carving you up.”
“He had a knife?”
“Matter of opinion. Something big enough to paddle all the way here from Havana can still be considered a knife, I suppose.”
I gulped. “Where was it?”
“Inside your standard, everyday, foot-long shoulder holster.”
I gulped again. “Thanks, luv. Want some of the pot?”
“I didn’t win it.”
“Neither did I, apparently.”
“Hm. Good point. I’ll take . . . that hundred.” And she scooped it up off the pile and out of sight down the V of her blouse and scooted me out of there.
“Thanks again,” I said as she closed the door. “I owe you one.”
It was just one of those things you say. But by the morning it was true.
The Cubans came right through the door twenty minutes later carrying shotguns and had her down on the floor before she could scream. They were very disappointed to find only the hundred in her blouse and demanded to know my name and room number. She knew both but wouldn’t tell so they beat her bloody and semiconscious. They hadn’t spotted the extra five of diamonds. They weren’t there to avenge an injustice. They just wanted their money back, and, being the kind of scum they were, they’d decided to steal it.
For the same reason, no doubt, they took turns raping her until seven a.m., when they heard the writer’s wake-up call from the bedroom and ran off.
She was in the hospital three weeks. But when first aroused in intensive care, her only concern was for me. Seems she couldn’t remember if she’d told them about me or not.
She hadn’t. Quite a broad. I definitely owed her one.
Which only means she had a right to call for my help. It doesn’t mean I didn’t still hate her for doing it. I did hate her for it.
Because I could tell she was calling to me not from this world, but from that other one. Cri was in that Place.
2
The ninth dream in as many nights ended at three a.m. and I woke up. I stared at the shadowy ceiling a moment, then swung my feet over the bed and turned on the light. I lit a cigarette. My house felt even lonelier than usual. Even the surrounding woods were silent and thoughtful. I was used to the place being empty; I’d been losing what little family I had for three years. My mother was long gone since I was small, but my father and two of my stepsisters (I was adopted) had all died within fourteen months of one another. The third had moved to New England, of all places, with a new husband; he hated my guts and I his. The grandparents were gone even before my mom and that left only a black sheep Uncle Luke doing three to six for mail fraud.
So, alone. No real family and so no real holidays to mark my life and no real job, either. I’d inherited quite a bit I had quickly sold off. I still kept three bookstores in the city (science fiction, of course), but the college kids who ran them could catch those little comic-book shoplifters without my help.
So what did I do? I worked out with my swords in the woods every day until my lungs and muscles were raw, carving up on trees and sometimes myself. And I maintained my swords. Every day. Sometimes I watched television and sometimes I took a bath and changed clothes and sometimes I reread favorite books or went into town for more cigarettes and two or three times a week I drank myself blind and woke up somewhere on the property.
Everyone should have a routine.
Several times a year I would make plans to attend another science fiction convention or SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms) event but at the last minute I’d get drunk instead. I still loved the things. But those plastic-thonged kids in costume swords are saddening after you’ve been to the blood and back.
I was semi-engaged for a while but she left me. She took the microwave oven, both dogs, and my pool man to Long Beach, California. I thought it was an interesting choice.
Lanny Weaver and I had drifted apart since the Place. My bizarre life-style, or lack of it, depressed him, I suppose. I didn’t blame him. Neither did I consider telling him what I knew in my heart was about to happen. The last time Lanny had gone there, he had “died.” No point in bringing him along again even if I had wanted to risk him, and I didn’t.
This was my punishment. No one else’s.
I wrote him a note, though, and addressed it to him and propped it on the broad hearth downstairs. I owed him that much to keep him from wondering.
By then it “felt” like time to go. I can’t explain it any better than that. I could just feel the transition coming on to my soul, surrounding and enveloping my sense of myself as part of the space around me. Okay?
Well, it’ll have to do.
I smoked another cigarette through and drank a scotch and water. Then I drank another one sitting in the tub. I sat and drank for several minutes. I was trying to come up with a new way to think.
Because this was going to happen. Now. That night. I was going to be there soon. In that Place. And I had to find a way to keep from . . . from what? Panic?
Yeah. Panic the moment my foot touched on those dusty roads. Complete utter panic. Damn. I could see myself throwing my weapons down and running in circles pleading to the heavens to send me back home to ... to what? To passing out three times a week? To whom? Nobody?
To hell with it, I thought suddenly and with that thought the hairs on the back of my arms stood up. To hell with it. If I was going to die anyway, why not die fighting? Why not go out with a little touch of Style?
I could feel my wide grin forming and I knew it would have been a scary sight to anyone who had seen it. I didn’t care. The scotch was helping this bravado a bit. But Style was pulling me the rest of the way.
I rose from the tub, carrying drink and cigarette and grin, and went into the other room to get ready to have at it.
Ten minutes later I was a lethal weapon. Boots, leggings, all my soft armor, the broadsword, the small knife, three daggers—most everything I had that hurt people. Everything “legal,” that is. For I knew once I went over my zippers would change to buttons (as before) and anything else I carried which didn’t “fit” wouldn’t come across with me at all. I carried a leather pouch with goodies in it, metal coins and the like.