Someplace to Be Flying (6 page)

“No,
Spin
does,” he said, pausing in the stairwell so that they could hear each other talk.

Lily stopped beside him and adjusted the strap of her camera bag. She was earning way too much stuff in there as usual. She doubted she’d used even half of the lenses she’d brought along.

“I’m not talking about a paycheck,” she said.

“I know. And you’re right-I do owe you for getting you into this. But I wanted the best and so, naturally, the first person I thought of was you.”

Lily had to smile. “Flattery’s good-but you still owe me.”

“This is true.”

Lily had known Rory Crowther for years. He was a freelance writer, forever working on the proverbial Great North American Novel, paying the bills with articles and the occasional short story, but mostly with the jewelry he made in his apartment on Stanton Street and sold through various craft stores and at fairs. They first met while working on a piece for
In the City,
Newford’s entertainment weekly. Early on in their relationship, they had explored a more romantic involvement than they shared now, but they soon realized that they got along better as friends. Ten years later, they were still loyal confidantes, getting together at least once or twice a week, maintaining their friendship through any number of ultimately unhappy relationships and, in Rory’s case, a failed marriage.

They were here in Your Second Home for an article on the reemergence of punk on the Newford music scene that Rory was writing for
Spin
magazine. The club was a blue-collar bar during the day, a music club at night.

When he came by in a cab to pick her up earlier in the evening, she’d told him about what had happened last night, but gave him only a bare-bones version, no more than she’d told Donna in an email she’d sent oft this morning: She’d been mugged, but a cab driver had come by in time to help her. Yes, she was fine now, really, and she didn’t really want to talk about it anymore. She just wanted to put it behind her.

She had no idea why she was so reticent about sharing the details of her experience with her two best friends, yet had been willing to blurt out to Joey Bennett that she’d been out walking the streets looking for animal people. It wasn’t that what had happened was so impossible, or at least it wasn’t only that, but she found herself no more able to understand her reluctance than she was able to discuss what had happened in any more detail than she already had.

“Come on,” Rory was saying. He nodded his head back down the stairs where Bitches in Heat were probably shooting up now. “It wasn’t so bad. Be honest. It was kind of like passing the scene of an accident, wasn’t it? You don’t really want to see what’s going on, but you can’t stop yourself from looking.”

“I suppose. But you know what kept me shooting?”

Rory shook his head.

“The thought of how, ten or twenty years from now, they’ll come across these pictures in a scrapbook or somewhere and realize just how pathetic and foolish they really were.”

“If they live that long.”

That took Lily’s smile away. “If they live that long,” she agreed.

They continued up the stairs, a wall of sound hitting them when they reached the top. Helldogz were on stage-it was a canine theme night, Lily supposed, since the third band, who’d played in between the sets by this band and the opening act Bitches in Heat, had been a couple of rappers who called themselves Howl. Helldogz’s lead singer reminded Lily of Henry Rollins-he had that same look of pumped-up muscles topped by a buzz cut, neither of which appealed to her-but she liked the raw honesty of his delivery and the band could really play. There was no posing, no pretense, just solid musicianship with something to say, albeit at an earsplitting, Spinal Tap/amps-set-to-eleven volume.

Rory tried to tell her something and she had to shake her head. He repeated it, leaning forward, mouth almost in her ear. “I said, do you want to take any more shots of them?”

She shook her head again. They waited until the song was over, stood through another, then finally went outside where the usual noise of Foxville’s Lee Street seemed subdued in comparison.

“Share a cab home?” Rory asked. “Or should we walk?”

Lily knew a moment’s nervousness, remembering where walking had got her last night, but she refused to let it take hold.

“Let’s walk,” she said.

“Okay. But let me be a chauvinist and carry your camera bag for awhile.”

“It’s all right.”

“Sure. That’s why you’ve been fidgeting with it all night. If I know you, it weighs a ton.”

Reluctantly, she handed it over. Rory pretended to stagger under its weight, almost dropping to his knees before he laboriously straightened up.

Lily smiled. “You know you’ve probably gone down at least thirty cool points so far as these kids are concerned.”

The kids she referred to stood about like a tide of leather and denim and combat boots, washed up against the wall of the club, pooling in small clusters along the curb and down the pavement, hair spiked here, long there, dark smudges around the eyes of the women, lips bright, the men stony-eyed, looking tough. Some of them probably were, but for most of them it was a pose.

“Screw ‘em,” Rory said.

He headed south on Lee Street and Lily fell in step beside him. The farther they got from the club, the quieter the street became. There was still traffic, but the stores here were all closed and there were no clubs or restaurants until one reached the Kelly Street Bridge.

“So what do you know about gypsy cabs?” Lily asked after they’d been walking for awhile.

Rory shrugged. “What’s to know? The way the city’s got everything regulated these days, it costs a fortune to get a cab license, that’s just saying you can even get someone to sell one, so some people forgo the formalities and operate without the blessing of city council. From all I hear, it’s been going on forever.”

Lily nodded to show she was listening.

“Most of them are two-bit affairs,” Rory went on. “Just some guy with a car cruising the club strips at closing time, maybe he’s selling beer or liquor out of his trunk as well. You settle on a price and he takes you where you want to go. You and me, we never see them-or at least they don’t stop for us- because we don’t look right.”

“How would we have to look?” Lily asked.

“I don’t know. I guess it’s not so much a look as an attitude. These people know each other, even if they’ve never met before-you know what I mean?”

Lily nodded. It was probably the same way she could always tell a serious photographer from someone who was just snapping a shot.

“Have you ever been in one?” she asked.

“No, but Christy has.”

Rory had taken a fiction writing workshop with Christy Riddell a few years ago and they’d hit it off, becoming friends. They didn’t write the same sort of thing at all-Christy specialized in collecting urban folklore, writing it up either as short stories or, more rarely, in a more traditional scholarly style-but they both seemed to suffer from the same block of not being able to write anything longer than a novella. Lily had met him a few times and liked him. She knew some people thought there was something a bit standoffish about him, as though he observed the world, rather than let himself be engaged by it and the people in it, but she’d long since discovered it was only a front.

“I wonder if he’d know this Joey Bennett fellow who helped me out last night,” she said. “I should ask him.”

Rory gave her a considering look. “You know how in fairy tales the princess always falls into the arms of her rescuer?”

“It’s not like that,” Lily said. “I just didn’t get a chance to thank him properly, that’s all.”

But Rory wouldn’t let it go. “Are you okay with this?” he asked. She could hear the worry in his voice. “I mean, you’re taking it all pretty well, but getting mugged-it’s pretty serious business. I know I’d have the shakes for weeks.”

Lily wanted to lie-it would make everything so much easier-but she couldn’t. Not to him.

“I … I’m not entirely okay,” she said. She stopped and turned to look at him. “But I’m not ready to talk about it yet. You understand, don’t you?”

She could see him try to hide the hurt that she wouldn’t confide in him, but it didn’t work. They knew each other too well.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s just a few things I have to work through. I’m not trying to shut you out. Honestly. It’s just … I don’t even know what it is. I guess that’s part of what I have to work out.”

She gave him a wan smile, hoping he’d understand, hoping this wouldn’t change things between them, but knowing it already had. Oh, why did it even have to have come up?

“It’s okay,” Rory told her.

They started walking again, an uncomfortable awkwardness keeping pace with them for blocks as they tried to get past the tension that had crept up and settled in between them. Lily was beginning to feel so miserable that, even though it felt like the wrong time, she was ready to tell him anyway. But they had reached her street by then, turned down it, and had arrived in front of her building. She took a steadying breath and let the moment pass.

“I’ll drop the color rolls off to be developed first thing in the morning,” she said. “The black and whites should be ready by the afternoon, unless I get to them tonight.”

Rory shook his head. “Get some rest,” he said. He handed her the camera bag. “And, Kit?”

She couldn’t find the usual smile that came when he used his pet name for her. Kit, as in Kit Carson, wilderness scout. All she could do was look at him.

“Don’t let this get you down,” he said. “You need to work something out for yourself, that’s all. I really do understand. Okay?”

The words reassured her, but the hug he gave her reassured her more.

“Thanks,” she said into his shoulder.

“Hey, what’re friends for?”

* * *

She meant
to
go right to bed when she got up to her apartment, but she wasn’t tired. So first she developed the rolls of black-and-white film she’d taken earlier in the evening and hung them up to dry on the clothesline she kept in her bathroom for that purpose, then she went into her study and booted up her computer, logging on to her Web server. When she checked for messages, a little box popped up saying, “You Have New Mail!” and she clicked on “OK.” The box went away and she scrolled through messages from the photography listserver she was on, deleting each one after she’d skimmed its contents.

The last message was from Donna.

Lily sighed. She still felt a little wrung out from talking to Rory and now here was Donna who’d be asking all the same questions he had. They weren’t meeting face-to-face, so Donna wouldn’t be able to read her mood the way Rory had, but Donna also wouldn’t let up until she was satisfied that Lily was one hundred percent okay.

Sighing again, Lily began to read. As usual, Donna used snippets of Lily’s previous message in her own letter. Lily understood how it made replying easier, but it was the one thing she missed about regular mail. She never liked having her own words come back to her this way.

Sender: dgavin3tama.com
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 08:31:09 -0500
From: 'Donna Gavin' 
Organization: Tamarack PubLishing
To: Lcarson23cybercare.com
Subject: Tell me more
>I know what you'll think
My God, woman, what did you expect me to think?
Who in their right mind goes walking through the
Zone at that time of night and on her own?
>Life doesn't really flash before your eyes. It's
>more Like everything shuts down. You're still
>*there* but you're watching it happen instead of
>having it actually happen to you. It's the
>strangest experience.
Please tell me that you won't be doing this anymore.
I don't know how I'm going to sleep tonight, worrying
that you might be silly enough to be out there again.
Read my electronic lips: the streets are _not_ safe!!
>came out of nowhere and rescued me.
>Joey Bennett
>one  of  those  ‘What’re  you  rebelling  against?’
>’What have you got?’ kinds of guys.  Like John
>Buchman in our final year at Mawson-remember him?
>except Joey doesn’t have that meanness in his
>eyes.
I remember too well. He used to walk behind me
in the halls with this exagerated limpand then look
all innocent whenever I turned around. He wasn’t just
mean-he was smirky mean.  I still hate him.
Which doesn’t endear this Joey Bennett of yours to
me.  I mean, I’m glad he was there and everything,
but all I can picture is someone too good-looking
for his own good and creepy.
>I still have no idea why I can be calm about all
>of this
I can’t figure it out either, And you’re being _so_
sketchy with the details.  You tell me this gypsy
cabs driver rescues you, but what happened to the
guy who attacked you? Are you sure you’re okay?
What did the police say? How long were you stuck
dealing with them? Was he charged? Is he out on the
street again?
And really, _what_ were you doing in the Zone any
way? Don’t keep me hanging on with this.  I need to
know ASAP
I’d tell you my news, but I don’t have anything
that can even compare with yours and if you want to
know the truth, I wish you didn’t either.  But I did
have lunch with that fellow named Peter that I met at
Miranda's party and he asked me to go to a movie
with him next week. And before you ask, I said yes,
except I don't have anything to wear and I'm about
to get my period and I think it'll be a disaster.
Write back as _soon_ as you read this.
Love
D.

Lily had wanted to tell Donna everything, but she hadn’t known where to begin. It was like talking to Rory. She’d already told both of them about Jack and his stories, but it required a great leap of faith to jump from stories as they were told, no matter how charming, to the idea that things in such stories could be real. She wasn’t sure either of them could make the leap—especially not Rory. One of the things he and Christy were forever arguing about was how Christy wrote his stories of fantastical urban folklore as though the events and things described in them were real.

Maybe she should talk to Christy about it, except she couldn’t even begin seeing herself do that. If she couldn’t talk to her best friends, how could she bring it up with a relative stranger?