Best New Werewolf Tales (Vol. 1) (28 page)

Joe, warm and dry, lay in her arms. “Mr. Patterson. Thanks,” said Amelia. She lowered her eyes.

She locked and bolted the door behind him, not sure if she wanted to talk to him ever again. He had seen the worst part of her—if it was really part of her, and not some alien creature that took her over three nights a month, which was what she told herself, how she lived with it.

Maybe, if she worked fast, she could load everything she really needed into her VW bug and get away, far away. There was still a little left of her mother’s legacy, enough for first-and-last-plus-damage-deposit and another six months of low rent and generic groceries. After that Joe would be old enough to go to daycare, and she could get back to temping.

Of course, there was still the problem of getting a sitter for Joe before tonight.

Joe was sleeping against her breast. She transferred him gently to his crib and closed the closet door almost all the way, then went to the phone.

What had happened to that girl who was supposed to come last night, anyway? Amelia had left Joe with her a few times before when she had to go shopping and couldn’t take Joe. She had found the girl’s number on the bulletin board at the laundromat, and the girl had been clean and prompt and had had no objections to the idea of staying with the baby overnight if necessary. The nights Patty had come when Change hadn’t happened, Amelia had gone out to a movie and then come home, dismissing Patty early.

She checked the pad of paper by the phone and called the number. “Patty?” she said when a young voice answered.

“Patty’s not here,” said the voice, breathless. “There was an accident.”

“Goodness, is she hurt?”

“Yeah, pretty bad. Yesterday she hit a car with her bike! She got a concussion. She had to go to the hospital.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry! Will she be okay?”

“We think so,” said the voice. It sounded uncertain.

“I’m sorry,” Amelia said again. It didn’t seem like the right time to ask the voice to recommend another babysitter. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” said the voice.

She couldn’t trust Joe with someone she had never met, and that included—Him. Adam.

She wished she knew the phone number of the place where Mr. Patterson worked. She glanced toward the closet where Joe slept, then sat on the floor, elbows on the seat of one of the chairs, chin propped on hands. She had to think.

* * *

Kelly was carrying a sack full of Chinese take-out when he knocked on Amelia’s door after he left work. The door opened a crack and she peeked out, then widened the opening just enough for him to slip inside. He glanced at her as she bolted the door behind him, and got a shock. She had done something to her long brown hair—pinned it up somehow, the Search for Sophistication. She was wearing makeup—too much of it—and a nightgown. A flannel nightgown, but the hem was torn off above her knees, and she had rolled the sleeves up to mid-forearm, and left the buttons at the throat undone.

He had a sinking feeling.

She looked at his face, then dropped her gaze. Her pinkened lower lip trembled. “I was afraid— “ she said.

He went to the table and took the white cartons out of the sack, with napkins and two pair of chopsticks. “Have you eaten yet?”

“No, Mr. Patterson.”

“Come on over and sit down. Call me Kelly. You did last night.”

“Last night I was desperate.”

“You look pretty desperate now.”

She sat down in her second chair. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I had this great idea,” she said in a small voice. “When it turned out my babysitter was in an accident. I thought—”

He handed her a pair of chopsticks and a carton of shrimp-fried rice. Savory steam rose from the opened carton. She set the carton down and stared at the chopsticks, still safe in their red paper sheath. “I mean, I could ask you to sit with Joe again, but you must have other things to do with your time. So I thought—,” she said.

He opened a couple more cartons, waiting.

“I know how to get rid of Adam now,” she said.

“How?”

“Get pregnant.” Her glance darted up to meet his, then dropped. After a silence, she said, “I don’t know how it happened last time. How or who. But I thought—”

Kelly swallowed. He let a minute go by. “You know that’s not a long-term solution? You don’t want to spend the rest of your life pregnant, do you?” She had an attractive scent; he had noticed it every time he came into contact with her. It spoke to him, even when all the rest of her was posted No Trespassing. So he knew that what she was asking him wasn’t impossible, but it would probably be damned uncomfortable for both of them. “Besides, you can’t just plan on getting pregnant. Sometimes it takes time and work.”

Her eyes closed. She had done the lids in silver, and her lashes in black. Too much of everything, but the hand that had applied the makeup had been steady and skillful.

“Can you support two kids?”

She took a deep breath and let it out. She looked like a little girl playing Mommy. She opened her eyes and stared at him, and she looked like a wood sprite. “I don’t know,” she said. “There’s welfare, isn’t there?”

“But look,” he said, leaning a little closer to her across the gently steaming food. “You can’t disrupt your whole life just because you want to—you want to get rid of this little fraction of it. Three nights out of thirty, and you’ve got all your days free. What is it? Five percent of your month, that’s all. You can live with it.” It was a set speech. He had heard it from Sonya-the-sudden. That seemed so long ago. He wondered why he had been so upset about the whole thing. As long as he focused during change on thinking he needed to guard his apartment and take care of it, things worked out. He hadn’t done much exploring yet, but he figured there was plenty of time for that.

“You don’t know what he does,” she said, her eyes tear-bright.

“Acts like an asshole,” Kelly said.

“Much worse things than that.”

“How do you know?”

Her lips thinned. She looked away.

“You
do
remember.”

“I do his laundry.”

He reached across the table and touched her hand. “Amelia, do you remember?”

“No,” she said, and her face tightened. In a whisper, she said, “Maybe.” Louder, “Everything he does, he does just to torture me. He knows all the things I hate and he does them all. Things I can’t even think of. Things that make me throw up. Things my mother told me would make God strike me dead on the spot.”

Her mother? How’d her mother get into this? “Still, just three nights out of twenty-nine or so days.”

“Would you say that if I told you I murdered people on my Curse Nights? Just three people a month?”

“Uh—no, nope, I guess you’re right.”

She looked toward the window. It was still light out. In the streets below children played a game that involved shouts, racing footsteps, and the slap of a ball against asphalt or wall.

“Mr.—Kelly, will you help me?”

“I still don’t think this is your final answer, ‘Melia.”

“Maybe I can find some other answer, if I just have this—breathing room.”

* * *

Before moonrise they sat naked side by side on her living room rug and waited, not sure how change would take them. Joe had been fed and diapered and put to bed, the birds circling above him. The lullaby played faintly from the closet behind them. “I don’t know,” Amelia said. She had her knees up and her hair down, concealing everything a bathing suit would have covered, though he had seen and touched most of her already. “Maybe if I just start acting more like—like him, he won’t come anymore. Maybe if I liked doing what he did, he wouldn’t do it anymore because he couldn’t hurt me that way.”

“Do you think that’s possible? That you could like it?”

She slanted a look at him. “You smell good,” she said. A silence. “I almost liked it,” she said. “I’m not supposed to. I know I’m not supposed to. Mother said— But I think—”

Silver flame flared through him. It was Second Night, the night of no refusal. For an instant he tried to resist; but resistance made it hurt. He relaxed into it.

Moonlight spilled into the room through the open window. Wolf and woman stared at each other. She lifted a hand, and he nosed it. She stroked his head. “I think I can learn,” she said.

STEAK

RANDALL LAHRMAN

“Ten years, Norita. Ten goddamn years on the force and I’ve never had a scuffle like this one,” I tried to tell my wife while running my arm under a cold tap.

“It’s not a force honey, it’s just volunteer patrol,” she said, correcting me for the hundredth time. “When you’re on patrol you should expect to run into trouble. Half the time, I think you’re out there trying to get hurt.”

“It
is
a force. I’m out there protecting people, aren’t I? I can’t just sit around and wait to die, Norita. I need to do something with the rest of my life.” The water burned on the wound like acid. Four identical gashes lined the top and bottom of my forearm. I didn’t need to look out the bathroom door to know Norita was coming my way, the slap of her slippers against her heels acted as a queen’s trumpets, alerting all of her presence. A cold, wrinkled hand slid up my back and surfed over each vertebra, followed by a voice as soothing as the ocean.

“Everything’ll be okay, Shiny.”

I hated the nick-name. She nudged me on the shoulder, like a reassuring best friend. “I’ll go make you some soup.” With a kiss on the cheek she headed to the kitchen, hair in curlers like a crown, robe fluttering behind her like a royal cape and slapping slippers faded in the distance. I glanced in the mirror and noticed my eyes tightened in pain, but I couldn’t decipher whether due to the holes in my arm or the years in my face. I always felt I was a fearless man, but the more hair I lost, the more my courage dwindled. For three years now, Rogaine has failed me.

I washed the dirt from my face and headed to the kitchen for dinner.

I hated soup. I hated soup more then I hated the skin that formed on top of the soup if not eaten right away. I poked at it and the brown blob of plasma engulfed my spoon. “I want a steak. I tell you time and time again Norita, I need meat, not flavored water.” I pushed the bowl away and crossed my arms over my chest.

“Bill, you know your colon can’t handle any more meat. Do you want to be stuck on the toilet again?” She pushed the bowl back and grinned at her dominance.

I slurped noisily and hoped I was annoying her. With a smile and a nod of victory, the queen retired to the west wing. Fragile teeth worked slowly into the boiled vegetables and while I ate the soup, I thought back to the day’s previous events.

That evening felt different then the others and I was in the mood for excitement. I decided, after five minutes of debating with myself, that I would leave my normal residential route. I got on the freeway and drove fifteen miles south to Main Street, the artery that led to the heart of downtown. The sun slowly set and I was overwhelmed with excitement. My head darted back and forth like watching a tennis match. I was looking for something, anything, I could do to help. Then, I found it. I found him, crawling down the alley on all fours like a dog. He wore a trench coat that covered his body and he was shaking uncontrollably.

I aimed my car into the alleyway and flipped on the yellow lights. He looked at me and his eyes shined red in the headlights. I got out of the car slowly, armed with my flashlight and a can of mace.

My heart drummed in my chest. The yellow lights created a swirl of shadows down the alley. I contemplated calling the paramedics, but was stopped when I heard the rumble. I looked past the man and half expected to see a semi truck coming at me, but there was nothing but darkness. The rumbling grew louder and when the man looked up at me I realized it was his stomach. His face was covered in a thick knotted beard from which his teeth gleamed like hidden pearls. His hands were pressed to the ground, swollen three times too big and his nails were thick and yellow and nearly two inches long.

I backed up quickly, but his growling followed. When I turned to run to my car, the world blurred around me. All I could recall was a loud grunt, a body forcing me to the ground, then pain in my arm. I awoke on my back and glaring into the full moon. I shook the dizziness from my head, collected myself, got in my car and left while vowing to never venture out again.

The last few spoonfuls of the soup were cold and I swallowed it with the bitter taste of defeat. I put the bowl and spoon into the sink and headed upstairs. Each stair creaked along with my joints and the two argued until I reached the top. I entered my room and the queen breathed easily in bed while I quietly undressed and slid in next to her.

I woke up the next morning with a ringing in my ears and slaps to the head. Screaming her lungs out, Norita drummed the top of my head while mumbling something about a squirrel. Half asleep, I smelled something looming in the room before I opened my eyes. The scent was thick but made my stomach rumble and I licked my lips.

“On your head Bill, it got in the room and it’s on your head!” She beat the clouds of sleep from my mind and I ran to the bathroom to check the mirror while scratching at my head. I discovered she was right. There
was
something furry where my bald spot used to be. Upon reaching the mirror, my nerves calmed themselves. There was no squirrel.

“Holy, shit!” My voice cracked.

“Watch your language, Bill.”

“I have hair. Norita, I have hair again.” I leapt into the room with a brush in my hand and stroked the hair backwards. “That Rogaine finally worked.” I felt my skin stretch to the brink of tearing while my smile continued to widen.

“Well good for you, Shiny. I’m proud all that money didn’t go to waste.” She put on her pink robe and bunny slippers and headed downstairs, her voice trailed up. “Now take your shower and come down for breakfast.”

My excitement died with the loss of her interest, but I smiled again when I looked in the shower and realized I could condition my hair for the first time in years.