New Title 4 (11 page)

Wylma thankfully didn t stay unconscious for too long. Whatever energy she had expended with her clothing removal spell must have been smaller than it had first appeared to Caleb, but when she woke she still insisted that she wouldn t have the energy to make Caleb s clothes come back until she had something to eat, so in the minutes between Caleb had make do with covering himself up with a series of tied-together bar towels, some of which were still wet with spilled beer.

He d turned off the Open signs as soon as Wylma had passed out and locked the doors so no came in and tried to take advantage of the prone situation the bar was in, and Wylma didn t seem inclined to open it back up now that she was awake again. Caleb had tried searching through the mess on the floor for his cell phone, hoping it hadn t vanished right along with the pocket it had been in, but it had been sort of a lost cause with all the glass and debris everywhere. Partly because he didn t want to try walking through it all with his bare feet and partly because, even on his day off, he still felt very much like a convenience store clerk, so he occupied himself by sweeping up and trying to return Wylma s bar to something resembling functional.

I really am sorry about this, Caleb said again as he dumped another dustpan full of glass into a trash can. Wylma was behind the bar putting the finishing touches on a simple bar burger, and although she was only about ten feet away she wouldn t look at him. He had figured this was because she was angry at him until she finally answered.

Caleb looked up from his sweeping. And how the hell do you figure that? I m the one who started the fight. Sort of.

But I m the one who sold Fluffy the extract. If I d been more careful about who I let be my clients this wouldn t have happened.

Yeah, what s with that anyway? Why would cyborgs need all the powers of werewolves and vampires and things? You d think they would already have all the power they needed without it.

Look, whatever, Caleb said. What s done is done. You can t change it now. Well you could if you had that stupid cube, but I really wouldn t suggest it. If we re lucky, Gloria got the bag back and we can all just put this behind us. No harm, no foul. Well, maybe a little harm and foul. He flexed the hand that had held the smashed beer bottle. All the cuts in the palm still smarted, and he wasn t sure if he had gotten all the little glass slivers out. Then there were the cuts on his back, the bruised ribs, the bruise on his arm that he didn t even remember how he had gotten it

But what if she couldn t get the bag back? Wylma asked.
Well I guess then you can just help us get it back. It can t be much harder than things have been already, can they?
Wylma didn t answer. Caleb left her to eat her burger in silence and continued with his cleaning. He found his cell phone a couple minutes later when it started ringing. Somehow, maybe by being kicked by an escaping customer, the damned thing had ended up underneath one of the booths and Caleb had to crawl on his hands and knees, carefully avoiding all the places that were still covered in glass, in order to get it. He was hesitant about answering it until he saw that the number was Gloria s.
Gloria, please tell me you have it, Caleb said as he answered.
I have it, she said. Her voice came out in a pained rasp. I feel like I m about to keel over, but I have it.
Oh thank the Elder Gods, Caleb said. Are you okay?
Well, my skin started turning kind of purplish, but it s stopped so I don t think I m going to turn into a My Little Pony after all. Which is good, because the werewolves would probably eat me.
Wait, what?
What about you? she asked. Apparently you re still alive.
Yeah, but I m waiting for Wylma to give me my clothes back, and I m not really sure where I should put my death ray.
Wait, what?
I guess we both have some details to fill in for each other, Caleb said.
I guess. She paused for a moment before continuing. We could probably fill each other in as we finish off our date. That is, if you re still up for it.
Caleb s first reaction was to squee and start jumping up and down for joy, glass all over the floor be damned. What he said instead was, Sure, I guess. Any idea where you wanted to go?
Well, I don t know about you but I am freaking starving, she said. I m kind of on the other side of the Hill now, though. Maybe we can meet up at some all-night diner somewhere in between?
Caleb looked at the clock on Wylma s wall and winced. Most of the good places to eat would be closing right about now. The bowling alley and some of the bars served food, but none of them offered a chance for Caleb and Gloria to really sit down and talk. There was one place they could go, one of the few places on the Hill that was only open at night and catered exclusively to the unique denizens of the Hill, but it wasn t the kind of place he liked to go if he could avoid it, especially if he wanted to revive some of the romantic notions he d had when the night had started. But it was better than nothing right now.
Only place I can think of is the Squamous Nightmare Café, he said. You know where that is? He could almost hear Gloria wince from the other end of the phone, and he had the urge to hit himself for making such a stupid suggestion. So he was surprised when Gloria answered. Yeah, I know the place. Some of the girls from the Sin Depot hang there after our shifts. We ll just have to be careful what we order, I guess.
Great, Caleb said. I ll try to be there in like fifteen or twenty minutes. I need to help finish cleaning up here.
Sounds about right. I m five minutes away or so, but there s some clean up I need to supervise here, too. See you in a little bit.
She hung up, and Caleb stared at the phone for several seconds. Disaster was averted, and his date could still continue. He whooped out loud, which startled Wylma as she polished off her burger.
Wylma, I need my clothes back now. I ve still got a date tonight.

Gloria got to the Squamous Nightmare Café first, but she hesitated to enter. It wasn t like the Snake s Sanctum, where someone could tell just by looking at it that it wasn t the kind of place you wanted to enter alone. It looked like a perfectly normal little diner. It sat nestled in between a grocery store and New Age crystal store, both of which were closed at this time of night, and people who saw it during the day probably thought nothing of it. The mundies out there probably didn t even realize there was anything between the two stores. Anyone who looked upon it instinctively wanted to look away, not even acknowledging it existed. Gloria knew from experience that the inside was brightly lit and clean, but none of the angles of the wall looked like they lined up. The inside looked like someone s insane study in non-Euclidean geometry, an obscene and unholy place in ways that the human brain could not comprehend.

Also, the service sucked. But it was the closest place that was open, so for better or worse this was where she was going to have to meet with Caleb.

She slung the garbage bag over her shoulder and walked in, trying not to wince at the tinny tintinnabulations of the bell over the door (that was another thing she hated about this place, the way it made her want to use ridiculously arcane language and purple prose). The waitress behind the counter, identified by her nametag as Wanda, eyed Gloria warily. Her mouth was overly large and her eyes just a little too close together. She looked like she might have some sort of hideous creature somewhere back in her lineage, or maybe she was just inbred. Either way, she didn t look like she was happy to see Gloria, but Gloria knew from experience that Wanda didn t like anybody. There were three other customers in the diner at the moment, each one of them alone and sitting as far as possible from one another. The one nearest the door had his face hidden in the shadows of a hooded cloak, a cultist from the look of it, and he chanted under his breath in between bites of the $4.99 Egg and Hashbrown Special in front of him. The second customer sat at a stool a little farther away, and he didn t appear to be human at all. In fact, he looked more like the result of a human and a frog mating after too much tequila. From the way the frog-creature swayed on his stool and the cup of coffee in front of it, Gloria had to guess that it was drunk and trying to sober up.

The third customer didn t have any food in front of him at all. He never did. In all the times Gloria had been in here she d never witnessed Wanda show any sign that she knew he was here. He was dressed nice enough, if a little old fashioned, and he had a large chin and a balding head. He kept a pen and paper in front of him, always at the ready, as though waiting for any of the customers to do something worthy of jotting down. The only time Gloria had ever tried to engage him in any type of polite conversation he had said a few vaguely racist comments, so Gloria always just did her best to ignore him.

She went to the bathroom before she did anything else, and by the time she came out Caleb was there sitting in one of the diner s two booths. When he saw her he waved her over with a hand bandaged in a bar towel, and he looked too tired to show any of his earlier nervousness. That was good. Maybe it would be enough to keep him from sticking his foot in his mouth for the space of the whole meal, although Gloria didn t plan on holding her breath.

Gloria started to feel a little bit of nervousness herself as she sat across the table from him. She had known Caleb for a while now, and for most of that time she had not felt any urge at all to date him. Their relationship, even back when she had been working with him at the OneStop, had always been one of slightly antagonistic friendship. She just hadn t been able to see herself in a deeper relationship with him. Of course, that was before all the crap with her mother had finished. She didn t like that something completely unrelated like that could so completely change the way she viewed the world around her, even to the point of seeing her loudmouth former-coworker in a new light. The day she actually admitted to herself that she might now be even slightly attracted to him had felt like some sort of defeat.

You look like you were beat to shit, Gloria said as she pulled out one of the menus sitting in the rack behind the ketchup and an ash tray.

You don t look like you had an easier time of it, either, he said. Gloria had to nod in agreement. She d seen herself in the mirror while she d been in the bathroom. She looked like the poster child for abusive relationships. Even with the My Little Pony coloring disappearing from her skin the entire left side of her face was still turning interesting shades of blue and purple from where she had hit the car face first. She was going to need bucket loads of makeup before she could go back to work tomorrow.

I can t tell you how relieved I am to see you actually show up in clothes, she said. I don t know if you were joking or not about your clothes being missing, but if you weren t I figured you might just show up in your birthday suit for the hell of it.

Aw, you re just disappointed you re not going to get to see me naked until later, he said, and as soon as the words came out of his mouth his eyes went wide. Sorry. I wasn t trying to assume anything

You know, I think maybe I actually understand, Gloria said. It s almost like Tourette s with you, isn t it? Like you have a nervous tick that makes you say stupid crap at the most inappropriate moment.

What was that? Gloria asked.
His answer was still nothing more than a mutter, but this time at least she heard it. I said only around you.

Gloria wasn t sure how she was supposed to respond to that, so instead she just concentrated on her own menu. She d been starving after the speeds her body had been forced to run, but looking at the menu made her appetite lessen quite a bit.

I ve never understood why so many things on the menu here have to have tentacles, she said. As Wanda came up to the table she put the menu back.

Dessert for me too, Caleb said. I ll take the Dreamsicle of Unknown Kadath. Wanda grumbled something vaguely affirmative to them both then left.

So I suppose we should compare notes, Gloria said. What exactly happened at the bar after I left?
Um, well stuff. Things. Explosions and nakedness.
You got your ass handed to you, didn t you?
Pretty much.
Did you get any clues as to what Fluffy was doing with all the artifacts?
Not a one. I was kind of too busy getting my face pounded in. You find out anything?
Maybe, but I don t know if that really matters anymore. We got everything back, Gloria said.
Did you check the bag to see that everything was in there?
Yep. Everything you mentioned was accounted for. We re in the clear.
Maybe not completely. It s probably not a good idea for me to be keeping that stuff in my bathroom anymore, not if someone knows now that s where I kept it.
Then we can work on some new place to put them, Gloria said. Somewhere no one would look for it.
What do you mean we? Caleb asked.
Well fine, whatever, if you don t want my help
No, wait. Sure. Sorry. Just kind of a reflex on my part, wanting to do things myself.
You ve always been like that. Sort of a lone wolf thing always going on with you. What s the deal, anyway?
Caleb shrugged and looked down at his hands folded on the table in front of him. I don t know. Or maybe I do. Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Yeah. Six.
Six? Really?
Sure. My parents were strict Catholics. Not big on birth control.
Well I m an only child, Caleb said. Mom and Dad were usually too busy arguing over one pointless thing or another to pay much attention to where I was or what I was doing, and I didn t have a whole lot of friends, either. Just sort of felt easier to me to go off and do things on my own than get anyone else to pay attention to me long enough to hang out.
Hmph. I guess that would explain a few things, Gloria said. But that s not completely true anymore.
What s not?
You not being able to get people to stick around you. I m here, ain t I?
Wanda came back to the table and set a small plate in front of each of them. Caleb s plate had what looked for all intents and purposes like a normal ice cream bar, but Gloria s looked like sort of a squirming chaos under a scoop of ice cream. When she took a bite of it, however, it tasted like apple.
Hmm. Not bad, she said. How s yours?
Not bad either, Caleb said, but I m getting a sudden urge to go questing for lost ancient cities.
I hear there s a pill you can take for that, Gloria said.
There s a pill for everything these days. You know, that s something I don t quite get.
People like to have all their problems fixable in convenient pill form. That s just the way it is.
Not that. I mean what you just said before about you sticking around and being here. I don t get it. Not that I m complaining or anything, don t think that at all, but why would someone like you actually ask me out on a date anyways? We ve always gotten along enough to not fricking kill each other, but I didn t think it would ever get beyond that.
Are you saying you weren t attracted to me?
No, not saying that at all. Definitely not. I m saying you never seemed attracted to me.
It was Gloria s turn to look away, staring at her dessert as she responded. Things can change.
Sure, of course. But they usually have a cause, right?
Maybe. Maybe I don t feel like talking about it.
Caleb sighed, then took a bite of his Dreamsicle. For several seconds neither of them spoke. At the other end of the diner there was the sound of the cultist burping, followed by a flurry of scratches as the balding man recorded the burp on his paper. When the silence started to feel awkward Gloria finally made herself speak again. You re a loudmouth and you think too much of yourself some times.
Caleb looked at her with a raised eyebrow. Yeah. I suppose I can be. Not exactly the sort of thing I ever would have thought you would find attractive, though.
It isn t. But you seem to be a survivor too. She stopped, hoping that would be enough explanation. Caleb stared at her for a long moment. From the way his hand rested on the table she thought maybe he was debating trying to reach forward and take her hand. Before he could she took her hand away and used it to pull out her pack of cigarettes.
So what changed, Gloria? he asked again. Gloria didn t answer right away. She shook out one of the cigarettes and took her time lighting it. Most restaurants in the city were smoke free now, but the advantage of a place like the Squamous Nightmare Café was that the people in charge of checking on such things tended to stay away. She pulled the ash tray in front of her, took a long drag, then spoke.
It kind of feels stupid. Like this sort of shit shouldn t affect me. We see dead things all the time. We ve seen people and creatures die. We ve seen some return from the grave. You then serve them coffee and Froztees, and I give them a show. You d think death wouldn t mean the same thing for people like us, right?
Caleb hesitated. He looked almost pained, and Gloria had to suppress a laugh when she realized he was fighting like hell not to say something snide and inappropriate. Strangely, just the knowledge that he was trying meant something to her. I don t think so. We don t really see death. We see un-death. Not the same thing.
But we ve seen people die, people who don t come back, Gloria said. Not everyone ends up like Sue, and even the way she is, that s not coming back completely. No matter what Phil thinks he can eventually do for her, the person she used to be is gone forever.
Caleb spoke quietly. His voice was almost tender. Gloria, who died?
Gloria took another long drag. Somehow she had managed to smoke almost the entire cigarette already, and she pulled out another one which she lit on the remains of the first. It was my mother. Caleb nodded slowly. Part of Gloria wanted him to open his mouth now and let something slightly rude come out, something she could hold against him right now. She didn t want to actually feel grateful to him for paying attention and listening and maybe even caring. He said nothing, and instead Gloria continued.
Dad left her for another woman when I was nine. She was the one who raised us. One woman with seven kids. You know how much that had to suck. But I never heard anything like a complaint from her. As tired as she looked sometimes, she seemed to enjoy it almost. Like it was a game she thought she could beat. She continued to act like that even after we were mostly grown and she developed Parkinson s Disease.
The funny thing is I never even thought it was a big deal. I mean, she went through her share of crap when she was bringing us up, so a disease that just makes people shake? I thought that would be fucking easy. Except that s not really all it does. That s just what people think it only does. Most people don t realize that it slowly screws up a whole bunch of crap in your body. In the end you end up completely bed ridden, unable to take care of yourself at all. My mother, the one person who would always be able to take care of everything, couldn t take care of herself anymore.
Caleb nodded. When did she die?
Three weeks ago. My youngest sister and one of my brothers were the ones who took care of her in the end. I couldn t make myself visit her most of the time. I was there at the end, though. It was like she wasn t fighting it anymore. More like she had finally had enough and actually wanted to go. And I couldn t wrap my head around it. Still can t, really. How could she just not want to keep playing the game anymore?
Gloria stubbed out her cigarette in the ash tray and let her hand come to a rest on the table. Caleb hesitated again, but this time after a moment he reached out and let his fingers touch her hand. Gloria let him, just for a few seconds, before she no longer felt so comfortable with it and drew her hand away.
Sorry, she said. Didn t mean to put a damper on things.
No. Don t be.
You know, usually I m up for the whole night, but considering how much action we ve already seen tonight, I think I m ready to call it a day. You don t mind, do you?
She could tell from the pained look on his face that he did indeed mind quite a bit, but he didn t actually say it out loud. No, not at all. Did you at least want me to walk you home?
Gloria bit her lip. Actually, she didn t. Seeing much more of him tonight would just be a reminder of things she didn t want to feel. She didn t want to feel like she needed anyone right now. She wanted to feel like she could handle things on her own. But she didn t want to just push him away, either. This had hardly been the greatest first date ever, but she wasn t adverse to the idea of a second one. The strange thing was she had actually enjoyed herself tonight. Maybe having him along a little bit longer wouldn t be so bad.
Sure. I guess. She grabbed the garbage bag as Caleb paid for their food, and he let her go first out the door as they left. She noticed the bald guy writing furiously between glances up at them as they were going, almost as though he saw something important that had passed between Gloria and Caleb that they had not. Whatever. The damned writer was a creepy wacko, anyway.