“Let me,” Stephanie said. The door recognized her key and let them in. “I’m so tired, I could sleep for a week.” She leaned against the wall, looking at him.
“Me too. I haven’t slept since yesterday.”
She headed for the bed, and Dorian was glad because she couldn’t see the change in expression on his face. He hadn’t slept since yesterday, he’d said, but that wasn’t true. He’d slept in the moon room, where he’d dreamed of Stephanie. “You’re so far away,” she’d said in the dream.
How long had he slept?
Stephanie pulled back the sheets. Dorian watched. Was that exactly the way Stephanie unmade the bed? Didn’t she always wash her face first?
She walked past him into the bathroom. Her fingers touched his as she rounded the corner. “You look like you swallowed something gross.”
The sink turned on. Water splashed. Dorian backed up to the edge of the bed, but he didn’t sit down. Stephanie had left the door open. She always closed the bathroom door, even to brush her teeth, even to blow her nose. Her shadow moved on the carpet in the light of the open door.
How long had he slept?
Much, much later that night, long after the woman had fallen asleep, Dorian lay with his eyes wide open, listening. Straining. What did his wife sound like when she breathed? Could this possibly be her beside him, and what if it wasn’t? How long would it be before she noticed? A year? Ten years? Never?
Or could she wake up right now and know? Would she lever herself up on one elbow and look at him in the dark? “You’re not Dorian,” she’d say. Her breath wouldn’t smell like Stephanie’s. Her voice wouldn’t be Stephanie’s. Not quite. Not exact. Not real.
She stirred slightly. Every muscle in Dorian’s body tensed, but she didn’t wake up.
Not then.
THE ICE CREAM MAN
Keegan chose a song from the truck’s jukebox after he crossed 6th Street going south on University Blvd.: “You are My Sunshine.” It was his Thursday route. The music boomed through the loudspeakers, echoing from the late 19th Century houses. Within a minute, doors opened, people wandered down their sidewalks and waited for him on the street. He muted the song as the truck slowed to a stop. Even through his dark sunglasses, the sun was too bright. Every reflective surface bounced the light in painful intensity. He squinted against the intrusions.
An old lady in a broad-rimmed hat that shadowed her face and a lacy blouse that covered her neck to her chin looked up at him. “Do you have strawberry today?”
He handed her a cone with a single scoop.
The tip of her tongue touched the treat. She closed her eyes and sighed. “Best strawberry ice cream in the world.”
He snapped his fingers. “Overripe strawberries are the secret. They’re sweeter. You’re lucky they’re in season.”
The lady put a pint of bourbon on the counter. “Will this do?”
Keegan held it to the sunlight, where it glowed like golden honey. “That’s a couple weeks worth, darling.”
She blushed. “I need a box of .22 longs if you have them. Something’s been in my back yard the last few nights.”
Keegan searched below the counter. “Short rounds, short rounds, short rounds.” He moved the small boxes aside. “Ah, here we go, .22 longs. That would make us even.”
Behind her frowned a middle-aged man with a tiny black mustache like a charcoaled thumbprint below his nose. “Where do you get the ammo, hairlip?”
Keegan resisted the urge to cover his mouth. He smiled instead. “It’s all in trade. I have something someone wants. Somebody else has something I want. What do you want?”
“Nobody trades bullets. They horde them.” He looked suspiciously at the truck. “And how do I know your ice cream is any good?”
Another man a couple folks back in the line said, “Are you going to order, Rich, or are you going to be a pain in the ass? Doesn’t matter if it’s good or not. You can’t get ice cream anywhere else.”
The man scowled. “Vanilla.”
Keegan turned his back to get another cone from behind him. He rubbed his nostril with his thumb, and as he scooped the ice cream he pressed the thumb firmly into the frozen ball before plopping it into place. “There you go, mister,” he said. “Since it’s your first time, it’s on the house.”
The next customer wanted a double scoop of chocolate, which Keegan let him have for a nearly full bottle of powdered cinnamon.
“Can’t get enough good spices,” said Keegan to the man who’d defended him. “How are you doing, Laird?”
Laird leaned on the counter, his tanned arm a sharp contrast to the polished aluminum, liver spots sprinkled across the top of his hand like the map of an island chain. “Pretty good, Keegan. You put a booger in his ice cream, didn’t you?”
Keegan grinned. “I didn’t charge him.”
“Maple-walnut for me, if you have it.”
The ice cream rolled smoothly into the scoop. Keegan liked the cold air caressing his wrists. It felt better than the waves of heat rising from the asphalt outside the truck, and it was only 11:00. Good for business. Hard to work in.
Laird licked a drip off the cone before it reached his hand. “Can’t really blame the guy for his bad temper. He moved in a month ago. No territory. No prospects. Some muta-bastard broke into his house and tore up most of his stores, so he’s feeling pinched.”
“Is he thinking of scavenging north of Colfax Avenue?” Keegan closed the freezer lid. No need to let the product melt, and the truck used less fuel if the refrigerator unit wasn’t working the whole time. “I wouldn’t recommend going alone.”
“You don’t seem to have trouble.”
Keegan swept a damp rag the length of the counter, keeping his eyes down. “I know the area.”
“Speaking of that, did you find the item I asked for?”
“It’s rare. Really rare.” The rag swung loosely in Keegan’s hand as he leaned against the cabinets, squinting through his sunglasses at the sunlight outside the truck’s dark interior. The last two people in line, a middle-aged couple he’d served several times before, wiped their foreheads in unison. Like most folks, they didn’t look at his face. He wanted to cover his mouth again.
Laird sighed. “All right. I can double the sugar for next month.” He leaned forward to whisper, “I found a cache you wouldn’t believe. Geezer who’d filled a double-car garage with goodies before kicking off.”
“Great.” Keegan pulled two boxes of 12-gauge shotgun shells from under the counter. He rattled them before putting them down. “Got a project?”
Laird pocketed the boxes. “Nope. The boys on the Colfax fence say they’re having breakthroughs every night. I want more punch for my dollar. Whatever tore into Rich’s house went through the bars on his window. Something new south of the fence, evidently. One of these days I’m afraid I’m going to stumble on a mutoid that’s all teeth, scales, tentacles and bad attitude, and I don’t want to face it with a popgun.”
“You could move to the country like everyone else.”
Laird turned to look down the street. Many of the houses were boarded up, their windows staring into the street like blind eyes. On other houses, bars covered the windows and doors. Barbed wire separated them from their neighbors. “What, and leave all this? There’s still a lot of scavenging to do before I start scratching dirt for a living. Besides, farms have mutoid problems too.” He licked the last of the ice cream out of the cone. “Could you sweeten this up?”
Keegan dropped another scoop on the cone.
Laird said, “The ammo question was dumb. You know the one I want answered?”
Keegan looked at him through his sunglasses.