Laughing Man (25 page)

W
hen Vetris Gambol woke to the ringing of the telephone, he found that Villain was on his chest, furiously kneading the base of his—Vetris's—neck, purring with great and disturbing enthusiasm, and feverishly licking Vetris's chin, as if it were meat. And when Vetris reached for the telephone, Villain leaped to the floor and slunk off.

"Yes?" Vetris croaked into the phone.

"Vetris?" It was Myrna Guffy. "We got the report on those pieces of bone."

"Uh huh."

"They're human."

"Is that surprising?"

"No. But what is surprising is that they've been partially digested."

"Jesus," Vetris said. "Digested?"

"Partially digested," Myrna corrected him. "I don't think any creature completely digests bone."

"Meaning?"

"They pass it. Most of it. Except the marrow."

Vetris sighed. "Good Lord." He paused. "What time is
it?"

"Very early," Myrna answered.

S
he thought,
A happy death is happy disintegration;
oddly, the thought warmed her, made her feel at a comfortable distance from the ebb and flow of human events that she'd been a part of for as long as she could remember.

It was as if, on this balmy early evening, with the clatter of traffic around her and the taciturn pedestrians avoiding her gaze—for she had always had the habit of catching the eye of people—she had received a letter from a mother and father she had never known, but, through the letter alone, was finding them for the first time, loving them, and needing to be with them. Even if that reunion required a happy death and disintegration. After all, she was not
one
,
she was part of the great pool of life, and returning to it would insure that that life would continue—perhaps in another form, with another personality,
perhaps as another being, but another being who was also aware of herself and her existence—as
she
was now—and aware, as well, of the great pool of life from which she had sprung.

Her name was Elizabeth. She had always liked being called Liz. She remembered brothers and sisters—Constance, Samuel, Valorie—but knew without being able to verbalize it that they were no more real than the mother and father she also remembered.

And she remembered the place of her creation, too—deep below the surface of the earth. Remembered the first moments that she had breathed air and felt hunger. And she realized, with something like joy, that she would experience those moments again, in the form of a creature who was not her, and who had never been her.

A
lthough the knowledge mystified him, Vetris knew that he enjoyed being afraid of Villain. It was like living with a demon that purred and licked and kneaded and bore the exquisite face and form of a cat. A demon that could grace a calendar, be grinned at and fawned over by small children, although he—Vetris—knew the identity and predilections of this creature. The killer with golden eyes.

Vetris set out a plate of tuna for the cat. He always set the plate in the same place—between the refrigerator and the cupboards. And when he left the room and returned ten minutes later, he always found the plate empty. This morning, he had not been able to wait.

Warm morning, just past 5:00, the faint, soft pink glow of sunrise against a cloudless sky. Vetris had his car window rolled down, and the air moving past the side of his face was moist. He guessed that there'd be rain later in the day. He was driving below the speed limit of fifty-five,
and assumed this was because he was in no hurry to begin this particular morning.

Far ahead, he saw someone walking at the side of the road, caught in his high beams. He guessed at once, from the way the person moved, that it was a woman, and as he drew closer, he saw that he was right. He saw also that she was naked.

"Jesus," he whispered, and slowed the car. She was dark-haired. She moved beautifully.

When he was alongside her, he slowed to her walking speed, rolled down the passenger window, and said, "Miss, are you all right?" He could see her just dimly, now that she was out of the glare of the headlamps. She did not answer him, and he repeated, "Are you all right?"

She looked briefly at him, then looked away. He saw her face unclearly through the mask of darkness.

"Miss," he said, "I'm sorry, but what you're doing is illegal." And indeed he was sorry, he thought.

She looked at him again. "Enjoy it while you can," she said, looked away, and continued walking. Her voice was high-pitched, the voice of a woman, but her tone had been brusque and toneless.

"Good Lord," he muttered. "Miss?" he said again, and she turned to look at him.

"You're bothering me," she said, her tone again brusque and toneless. "Don't bother me. You don't know what you're bothering."

Of course I do!
he thought.
I'm bothering a woman who's walking down the road naked.

He pulled fifty feet ahead of her, stopped the car, got out. He saw that her body bore a reddish tint from the car's taillights. He stood silently and watched her approach. She was tall, almost as tall as he, and—he thought in so many words—as graceful as a cat; she wore her straight dark hair to just past her shoulders.

She called to him, in that same brusque voice, "You don't know what you're bothering! This is my own business." He strained to see her face, saw it unclearly.

"Miss," he called back, "I think you're in trouble somehow. I only want to help you."

"I don't need you to help me!" she called back.

She was within a dozen feet of him now, and he could see her face as a reddish mask—large eyes, small nose, full lips, high cheekbones. A mannequin with soft skin, and eyes that reflected the dim early morning light in a harsh and brittle way. Beauty that was too perfect.

He stepped back, uncertain why, as she passed him. He thought briefly that it was fear. And he smelled her as she passed—the tangy odor of moist earth freshly turned, the cloying odor of growth and decay. His hand went for his .38 in his shoulder holster; he touched the grip of the weapon, let it go. Clearly she was unarmed, he thought.

W
illiamson the Loon had done more than a few murders, though he did not think of them as murders. The concept of
murder—
with
its accompanying aura of judgment and moral decay—was not part of the way he saw the whole matter of being alive. You smiled when it was necessary, you fucked when you needed to fuck, you bought shoes when your old shoes wore out, and you killed when the occasion demanded.

Well, his own father had taught him that, and his father had never misled him. His father was a naked, grinning saint, a dirty, naked saint with an erection the size of Betelgeuse and enough sperm to populate the galaxy in Andromeda.

Williamson had learned quite a lot about astronomy because he was—he'd explain if asked—a creature of the earth. He was a spaceman riding starship Earth to realms that were all but invisible, now, but which would become all too visible within the span of his years, which would be innumerable.

He was in a pawnshop. He was looking at watches because he enjoyed the keeping of time, enjoyed the futility of it, in the face of eternity, enjoyed the attempt at measuring a thing which could not be measured because its parameters were limitless, so it effectively had no parameters (Here are three seconds in eternity—so foolish trying to parcel out bits of a thing that had no beginning and no end).

The owner of the pawnshop was a short, fat man named Lewis, and he was growing tired of Williamson's questions. Williamson had been in the shop for almost an hour asking questions—"This timepiece, it looks old. How old is it?"

"Is that real gold? If it's not real gold, I'm not interested."

"Do you have any idea why clockwise is clockwise?"

Lewis said now, "Listen, I've got work to do, so why don't you make up your mind."

Williamson liked this no-shit approach. He smiled at Lewis, which made Lewis a little weak in the knees, because Williamson's smiles were part humor, part malevolence, and mostly bizarre. "Oh," Williamson said, "you have been a pawnbroker for many years, I see, to have cultivated such a direct approach to annoyance. Even if I buy a watch from you—and it's a good possibility that I will—then you will earn too little from the purchase to make your time with me profitable."

Lewis gave a small, nervous shrug. "Yeah," he said. "Sure."

Williamson said, "But there's no one else in the store." He glanced about quickly, then once again at Lewis. "Only the two of us. Two men caught up in an act of commerce, which, I might remind you, is your business. Commerce."

Lewis said curtly, "Please choose a watch."

Williamson smiled again and leaned over the glass counter that separated him from Lewis. "I want many watches. I want all your watches, but I will take only one. And that process, deciding on which watch to take, requires time. Ironic, isn't it? Taking time to select a timepiece." He waited for a response from Lewis and when none came, Williamson went on, at close to a shout, "I said, don't you think that's ironic? Taking time to choose a timepiece. Isn't it ironic?"

Lewis glanced at an area below the counter.

Williamson said, "I'm not going to rob you."

Lewis shrugged again. He'd begun to sweat.

Williamson said, "Yes, yes, I know about your gun. Pawnbrokers have guns. But leave it where it is because I'm here only to buy a timepiece and to engage you in philosophical discussion of the purchase of timepieces. No gun is required for that."

Lewis shook his head quickly.

Williamson said, "I may eat you. I may buy a timepiece from you and then eat you. But I will not rob you." Lewis said nothing. His eyes were wide.

Williamson leaned back. "There you go, taking my words literally when, in all likelihood, you should take them figuratively. Don't think of
eat
in the classic sense of mastication, ingestion, and digestion. Think of
eat
,
instead, as a philosophical term, a term of psychosis, or, for that matter, drama alone. If I were to say to you that I am going to
eat your eyeballs
,
then you cannot really assume that that is precisely what I intend to do. Assume nothing and you enter a world of great possibilities, sir."

Lewis once again glanced at the area below the counter.

Williamson said, "Oh, stop glancing at that gun, Mr. Pawnbroker, and pick out a watch that will suit my needs, much as a tiger's stripes suit its needs."

Lewis managed, "Please leave my store."

Williamson cocked his head. Smiled. "Surely," he said, and left the store, though not before quickly dispatching Lewis with a deft, sharp, and crushing blow to Lewis's windpipe, then eating Lewis's eyeballs, his genitals, his entrails, and the soft tissue of both his hands, and, then, finding a beautiful solid gold pocket watch, circa 1926, with the name "Roland" etched in script on the case.

How interesting, Williamson thought, that the idea, or fact, or knowledge, or premonition—whatever the people in the culture in which he lived might choose to call it—of the end of existence would allow him to know, so clearly, the possibilities and realities of his existence as it now . . . existed. He'd never had any idea of those possibilities, his possibilities. The simple magic of being! He'd always spent too much of his energy on . . . existing, and had left most of the magic trapped inside himself. Now he could use it. All of it!

V
etris Gambol knew what he had to do. He had to confront the naked woman—who now was fifty feet from him and walking briskly—put a coat on her (his own coat, perhaps, though—he realized—he had no coat here, although there was a soiled yellow blanket in the trunk of his car), and take her to the police station for observation. For observation? He grinned.

"I'm sorry, miss," he called, "but you will have to come with me."

She made no reply, and the near-darkness at the perimeter of the headlights was quickly swallowing her up.

"Shit," Vetris muttered, got back into his car, and drove after her.

He pulled alongside her again as she walked, kept the car at her walking speed, said through the open passenger window, "Miss, I'm going to have to ask you to get into the car. I'm a detective with the local police department. My name is Vetris Gambol. . . ."

She broke into a run.

Vetris cursed again, hit the accelerator, caught up with her, kept the car at her running speed—which, he thought, was very fast, almost unnaturally fast—and yelled, "You'll have to get into the car, miss. I'm ordering you to get into the car!"

She quickened her pace.

He nudged the accelerator, caught up with her. "Goddamnit!" But then, impossibly, she was ahead of him. He nudged the accelerator again, caught up with her, pulled ahead of her, veered sharply to the right, hit the brake pedal hard. He heard a dull thumping noise from the passenger's side of the car. "Oh, shit!" he breathed, because he knew instantly what had caused the thumping noise. He cursed again, took a breath, opened his door, got out of the car.