The spreading, burning warmth of urine was a shock. Ray felt slightly ashamed.
It was getting dark. Soon they’d be sitting under the stars. He was afraid of what he might dream.
Eileen was looking at him again. There was something she wanted to say to him, something that had occurred to her since she became frozen and had nothing but time to think. Or maybe it was his imagination.
She looked away, over Ray’s shoulder; her gaze held steady, just a bit to his right.
“Oh hell. I was hoping you made it.” Walter stepped into view, stopped a few feet in front of Ray. “I’m so sorry, Ray.” He wiped a tear from his cheek.
When Walter noticed Helen, his brow creased. “My God.” He took a step toward Helen, studied her face. “Unbelievable. Jesus, Ray, I wish you could tell me the story.” Folding his arms, he looked from Helen to Ray, then turned and looked at Eileen. “Maybe I can figure it out for myself.”
Ray strained against the prison of his paralysis, willing his jaw to open.
“I guess I’m one of the ‘lucky ones.’” Walter grunted. “I know I shouldn’t be feeling sorry for myself. I know what you’re all going through is much worse. But I’m not feeling very lucky right now. I think I’d rather be dead than see everyone I know suffer like this.” He put his hand over his mouth as a sob escaped him.
“Here.” He went over to Ray, slid his arms under Ray’s armpits and lifted him to his feet. When Walter let go, Ray was sure he would flop back into the lawn chair, but he didn’t; his leg muscles flexed and held, keeping him upright.
Walter lifted Helen from her chair, led her across the lawn toward Ray. She moved as if there was absolutely nothing wrong with her. The easy grace of her steps was astonishing.
Walter stopped Helen in front of Ray. He lifted her right hand, put it on Ray’s shoulder, then took her left hand, raised it high and laced it into Ray’s.
“It’s all I can think to do for everybody. I’m sixty-nine years old; I can’t feed and change everyone on the street forever. I’m not sure you’d all want me to, even if I could.” Sobbing, his nose running, Walter put Ray’s left hand on Helen’s hip. “There.”
Walter attended to Eileen and Justin, setting them in an identical dancing pose.
Ray looked into his Batgirl’s eyes. Her face was flat, expressionless, but he could see the pain in her eyes, the fear. Her Xanax was wearing off, the tequila as well.
Music rose from the screened porch. Tears in Heaven. Eric Clapton. From Eileen’s Blues Love Songs CD. The music broke the weight of the silence, and unleashed a rush of memories in Ray. They’d played the CD constantly on their vacation road trip up Route 66, in 2005. Ray had bought it for Eileen when she was in the hospital with pneumonia earlier that same year.
Over Helen’s shoulder, Eileen “danced” with Justin. Her eyes met Ray’s, and again, Ray couldn’t help feeling that Eileen was trying to tell him something.
Did she want to tell him she’d made a mistake, that she wished she was dancing with him?
I don’t want this lie between us.
The words came to Ray so clearly it was as if Eileen was speaking them. She’d said them right after her confession. Ray had been too shocked and confused to register much of what she was saying at the time, but he remembered the words now.
I don’t want this lie between us, she’d said, and then, If you want me to leave right now, I will. That was what she’d said, wasn’t it? What he’d heard was, I want to leave you right now. I want to face this with Justin, not with you. Will you let me off the hook? Will you let me go? But that wasn’t what she’d said. The words were important. If Eileen didn’t want a lie between us, she’d still thought there was an us.
She hadn’t wanted him to leave; she’d wanted him to forgive her. If he’d only put his arms around her and told her that he still loved her, they’d be dancing together now, without Justin, without Helen. Helen was a kind and wonderful woman even if she didn’t realize it, but she wasn’t his Batgirl.
Ray tried to answer Eileen. He tried to tell her he forgave her, he loved her, that he understood it all now and wished he hadn’t pushed her away. He tried to say all of this with his eyes, and could only hope it was reaching her, as night fell, and Tears in Heaven gave way to I’ll Take Care of You.
Will McIntosh is a Hugo award winner and Nebula finalist whose debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, was a finalist for a Locus Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Compton Crook Award. His latest novel is Defenders (May, 2014; Orbit Books), an alien apocalypse novel with a twist. It has been optioned by Warner Brothers for a feature film. Along with four novels, he has published dozens of short stories in venues such as Lightspeed, Asimov’s (where he won the 2010 Reader's Award), and The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy. Will was a psychology professor for two decades before turning to writing full-time. He lives in Williamsburg with his wife and their five year-old twins.
BY THE HAIR OF THE MOON
Jamie Ford
May 1910
Dorothy Moy stared at the silver dime in her palm for five solid minutes. She touched the tiny inscription, the word LIBERTY, with her soiled fingertips, debating whether or not to spend her last ten cents on a taste of yen shee, or on a jitney cab ride to take her as far away from here as possible. Her mouth watered while she debated, as she dreamed of chewing that ball of resin, savoring the dottle scraped out of the bottom of an opium pipe. She came here to kick the gong around but hadn’t been outside for more than a week. She’d barely been upright all that time and now the morning—at least she thought it was morning—seemed bleak, hopeless, even before she discovered, through a moment of sobriety, that the world was ending all around her.
“Diezen?” She asked the female attendant as she sensed the building gently rocking. Then she heard a muffled booming, like the sound of distant thunder. The Black Candle Inn was little more than a basement warren, thirty feet below the streets of Seattle’s Chinatown, hidden in the center of the newly built Milwaukee Hotel.
“Not an earthquake. It’s okay. Probably just the passenger Zephyr rolling by or a freight train,” the attendant said as she twirled a slender punk, causing the burning joss stick to flare so she could light the pipes of patrons, nursing their flames back to life.
Dorothy could have sworn the building was rocking.
The gentle sway reminded her of her journey to the US: forty-five days in the frigid hold of a merchant airship, packed with sixty other girls. They’d fed her hard-tack, laced with pure yapian to suppress her appetite and ward off dirigible sickness, but even then she knew the opium was being used to build invisible chains, binding servants to their masters. But she also knew that she was one of the lucky ones. The others—the picture brides—sat motionless, their feet confined to lotus boxes. The new contraptions would break and bind the girls’ feet en route, with a single turn of its iron gears each day. Dorothy remembered marveling at the acupuncturist, a man with a long gray beard who numbed the girls’ pain with tiny copper needles carefully placed along their legs, arms, face, and hands. The needles were then wired to an electric generator powered by the Lash of St. Francis, the seasonal trade winds of the North Pacific Ocean.