Bright Segment (53 page)

“I’m out of grease,” said Eddy to the waitress. “Tina, I don’t like the sound of this guy.”

“Yes, Eddy.”

“See you tomorrow?”

“Yes, Eddy.”

“Stay away from the Mello Club.”

“Yes, Eddy.”

So Tina went to the Mello Club to catch Brokaw’s act.

The Mello Club was a cramped and crowded bistro in which the ceiling, having heard so many customers ask “How low can you get?” seemed to have accepted the challenge. The lighting was of a dimness to which the human eye could not become accustomed, because of its reluctance to recognize such atrocious color combinations.

The dimness was functional, insofar as the place had a function. It kept the customers in obscurity, so that each customer thought his own disgust was unshared, and therefore remained. It kept the customers’ disgust from reaching the master of ceremonies while he created it. It suited the quality of the air, so that taint did not intrude. In short, a fine, healthy place.

Tina fumbled her way down the steps and into the club, sighted a gleam of brass from a trombone bell, pointed her elbow at it, closed her eyes and walked. She was small, but she had the directness of a destroyer escort. She brought up against a table not ten feet from the dance floor, which was, of course, two-thirds of the way to the wall. She sat down.

Hardly had she done so when the up-beat cacophony from the orchestra came to a screaming stop and the master of ceremonies came out, dragging with him a microphone with a head as polished and featureless as his own. Into it and the glare of a ceiling spot which painfully flooded him, he began to recite what had happened to him on the way to the club that night.

Tina rested her elbows on the table as the most comfortable way to keep her hands over her ears, and tried to locate Lee Brokaw in
the babbling gloom. Occasionally she lifted her hands enough to find out if the emcee’s droning obscenities were turning into anything like an announcement.

It was hot. Someone was breathing down her neck. She leaned forward a little and found herself breathing in someone’s armpit. She leaned back again. It must have been then that the announcement was made, because suddenly, shockingly, the lights went out.

For a moment someone with the touch of a fly’s foot seemed to be brushing a cymbal, and then there was not a sound from the tables. Slowly a blue-green light began to glow, so faintly at first that it could have been there for seconds before she noticed it at all. Gradually she became aware of a figure standing in the middle of the dance floor. The emcee? No, for he had been wearing a dinner jacket. This was something bone-white and slender. The light increased, or her eyes sharpened, and she suddenly saw that it was a girl, nude, splendidly if slightly built, and wearing some sort of a tall hat or—a crown. The light steadied, but did not become bright enough to show anything clearly.

The girl began to dance. There was no sonorous music, only a faint, flute-like plucking which she recognized as a melody played solely in the harmonics of a guitar. The girl moved slowly. She took two small steps forward, and then sank to her knees and touched her forehead to the floor.

The music stopped, but the heartbeat drum quickened as she straightened up again. There was a moment when it missed one beat, and the shock of that was followed by a blaze of yellow light and a painful, discordant blare from every brass in the orchestra.

Tina’s aching eyes caught one brief glimpse of the girl’s body as the dancer shook her head. Her crown was hair—real spun-gold hair that cascaded down and around her like water. She knelt there, head raised, wide blue eyes staring, arms up and out, cloaked in shimmering blue-green gold. And only then did Tina see Lee Brokaw.

He was standing behind the girl, looking down at her impassively. It was he who held her white arms up, with his long fingers around her slender wrists. Slowly he brought them together and grasped both wrists in one hand. She turned toward him and rose. Her hair
was impossible—bewildering. It fell to the floor in a mass that was thick and delicate at once. It was liquid fire; it was smoke. It was like no other hair Tina had ever seen. She remembered the name of the act then—Brokaw and Rapunzel.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair …”

The music burst hoarsely into a travesty of the Apache dance. With slow, feline steps they moved about the floor. Brokaw’s handsome, almost beautiful face held the girl’s eyes. Her features were as motionless as wax.

As they danced, he took one of her arms behind her and apparently began to twist it. Her body stiffened and arched backward; and her head too went back. Brokaw bared his teeth in a frightful smile, bent his head and put his mouth to her throat. They danced that way for four slow measures, and when he lifted his head, the marks of his teeth were easy to see.

Abruptly he pirouetted away from her, and around her. She held her arms over her head, her hands touching his, her eyes glassily staring. The tempo of the music rose. Brokaw spun the girl to him and away, to him and away, as the music sped up to its climax. He stopped her in a final pirouette, both her arms pinioned behind her.

In a crescendo of noise and light, he raised his fist and smashed it into her upturned face. She dropped like rag doll, and, as the cymbals crashed three times, and with his face as calm as a sunlit cathedral, he stamped on her head, crushing it flat.

In the silence and the blaze of light, Lee Brokaw stood up, smiled, and bowed from the waist. Then a woman screamed, and applause broke out in one great shout which changed to a roar of bruising palms and stamping feet. Brokaw bowed again, scooped up the limp collection of long limbs and golden hair, and tossed it over his shoulder. Sawdust trickled from the flattened head, and the clever hinging of one white elbow could be seen.

“But—she danced by herself!” Tina said aloud.

“In what kind of light?” said a man next to her, pounding the table. “And him in black!”

The thunder rose, and rose again as the lights dimmed to toxic obscurity. And finally Lee Brokaw came out to take a second bow.

He stepped out to meet the sudden spotlight, and as it fell on him he turned pale and clutched his chest. Something made the ringsiders shrink back from him. Something—the faintest of sounds.

Arrara
 …

“He’s sick!” whispered someone.

A woman half-rose and cried, “His heart!”

“Has he got a heart on the right side?” asked the man next to Tina.

Tina said clearly, “He has a dragon in his cigarette case.” But of course no one paid her any attention.

Brokaw bowed stiffly and went out. The chrome-plated master of ceremonies returned with his pasty-faced microphone, and Tina rose, dazedly made her way to the exit, handed a palm which materialized before her the cover charge plus ten percent, and escaped up the stairs.

The outside air tasted so good it made her sneeze. She was still shuddering inside over Brokaw’s finale. She walked briskly homeward, and gradually the shock of that terrifying performance was replaced by curiosity.

What manner of man
was
Lee Brokaw? With an act like that, why wasn’t he on Fifty-second Street? Or even on Broadway? Why, if he so casually offered that cigarette case around to chance acquaintances was he so profoundly affected when it growled
at him?

How had he been so sure she would see him again? Did he have her figured so well that he had known she would be at the performance? Most of all, what on earth could he want with her?

Turning in at her apartment house, she fingered her cheek and jaw. Maybe he wanted a dancing partner who would spar a little and thus add a certain color to the climax. Of course, she had to admit that all that hair
was
becoming …

III

Tina undressed, went into her pajamas. She felt much better after that. She loaded her night table with sketching materials, a book on design, and two volumes of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
which had plates of shells. Two button sets and an izthatta later, she was happily asleep.

It must have been four hours afterward that she awoke. She opened her eyes very quietly, without moving. Something urged her not to start up, but to relax and look the situation over. The situation was Lee Brokaw’s smooth, imperturbable face, slightly larger than life size. It floated, apparently, in midair between her and the opposite wall. It wore a gentle smile which ended at the cheekbones. The eyes were as steady and as deep as ever.

She said, “Wh-wh—” and the face turned chillingly upside down, got quite pink, then scarlet—a real blood-scarlet, as if it were looking at her through red glass—and then slowly disappeared.

Tina blanched and dived under the covers. In a moment one arm crept out and, feeling along the night table, turned on the lamp. She worked the blanket over her head and face, found an edge, doubled it into a sort of peephole, and peered out.

There was nothing to see.

She took a deep breath, held it, flung the covers off, bounded across the room and switched on the overhead light.

Still nothing. She withdrew into the center of the room and gazed slowly around. A movement caught the corner of her eye, and she cried out in terror as she turned to face—her own reflection in the bathroom mirror!

“Great day in the morning! Is that me?” she muttered, staring in shocked disbelief at the dilated pupils, the chalky countenance.

“Bad dreams,” she told her reflection reassuringly. “Some way or other, sister, you’re not living right.”

She washed her face and went back to bed. She lay a moment in thought, then got up again and located a pair of nub-spiked golf shoes. These she put on the night table. Then she rolled over, tucked herself in, threw back the covers, got up, switched off the bathroom light, the overhead light, and, at last, the night-table lamp.

She was, by this time, much more annoyed than frightened. It had been many a moon since she had let anything throw her into such a dither. She fell asleep angrily, almost by an effort of will, and found herself in a fine technicolor nightmare involving a purring dragon which wanted to stamp on her head.

She came up out of it fighting, only to find Brokaw’s glowing face
staring at her again. This time she was prepared, and in a single fluid movement she let fly with one of the heavy shoes. The shoe struck the face right between the eyes. There was a loud crash and a torrent of profanity from the street below.

Tina turned on the light, peered around her, and went timorously to the window. She peeped out—no difficult feat since her shoe had passed completely through the pane and apparently collided with the head of the policeman who was standing in cold-eyed fury directly below, kneading his skull and looking up. He fell silent the instant she appeared.

She realized much too late that he did so admiringly. There was plenty of light behind her.

A policeman! She’d soon find out how Brokaw was pulling this little stunt! She’d slap him in jail until he begged for mercy and the devil called him Granddad! She’d—

Her brain raced. She’d do what? Say to the officer: “There was a face floating in my room and I threw a shoe at it and it disappeared and I want you to throw Lee Brokaw in the clink.”?

Oh, no
.

She turned to her empty room and screamed, “I’ll teach you to come home at this hour, you heel!”

“Lady,” said the policeman, “talk to him more quietly or I’ll have to take a hand in this.”

“I’m
so
sorry, officer,” she called down, and then even more loudly into the room, “now see what you’ve done!”

As she left the window she thought she could hear the policeman saying sadly, “The poor guy. I wouldn’t be in his shoes.”

The following morning she arrived at her shop a few minutes later than usual. Not only had she overslept but she had been compelled to explain to the superintendent of her building that he had cleaned the windows so very clean that she had gone and stuck her silly head through one of the panes. She felt somewhat less than rested, and probably the least popular person in her cosmos was Lee Brokaw.

She opened the door, glanced around at her displays, and went back to the workroom. With grim deliberation she turned on the
gooseneck lamp and the photocell, and settled down to work.

Then she saw what was inscribed on the black blotter to her right. It had apparently been written with the silver pencil which was bundled up with all the other colors at the back of the table. It said, simply, “Here I am.”

It was written in a neat, possibly hurried hand, with fine lines and an even slant. It was almost a feminine handwriting.

“All right,” she muttered. “Here I am, too.” Tight-lipped, she picked up the blotter.

There was another blotter underneath it—a white blotter. On it, very much less than life-size, was the same face she had seen in her bedroom. It did not turn upside down. It simply faded slowly and disappeared.

Tina sat tensely watching the blank blotter, her hands achingly clasped. She sat like that until the blotter began to blur. Then she closed her eyes.

Aloud she asked herself, “Can I say it now, Tina? Can I, huh?” She nodded in reply. “Go ahead,” she said to herself. “You’ll feel better if you do.” A pause. Then: “All right, I will. I’m really and truly scared, and I should never have listened to Eddy and I should never have gone to s-see that devil last night.”

Tina realized suddenly that this couldn’t go on. Either she got away from Lee Brokaw, Chelsea, New York itself—or she stayed. Going away was impossible from a business point of view and unthinkable from an ethical one. Then she must stay. But if she stayed, she couldn’t just wait for something even more terrifying to happen. She had to smoke out the trouble. If things got worse, at least she’d know what she was up against. If things got better, well—that was what she wanted.

What to do, then?

Find Lee Brokaw, obviously, and get his story. Force him to talk even if she had to pound it out of him with a conch shell.

The chime sounded. She put her face back together and went into the shop. “Eddy!” she exclaimed, and hope he wouldn’t notice how close she was to tears.