The Crash of Hennington (26 page)

—Mmmm, yes, well, no, of course not. I’m not going to shoot anyone.

—You could use swords. Or, what are those things? Rapiers?

—I’m not quite
that
old-fashioned.

—So what’s a gentleman’s revenge then?

—It’s elegant, first of all, and refined. It doesn’t kill them, because, to put it brutally, where’s the fun if they’re dead? It needs to hurt them where pain would be felt the most acutely. It must be done, of course, perfectly legally, because who wants to end up in jail? The target must know who is doing it to them and, here’s the real clincher, be completely powerless to stop it in spite of that knowledge.

—Sounds impossible.

—Difficult, yes. Impossible, no. And the difficulty only makes it that much more satisfying when it’s completed.

—But why even bother? Why go to all that trouble in the first place? Why not just let the Mayor have her life?

—Because I haven’t told you the last step. Truly brilliant revenge ultimately ends in the target recanting and capitulating completely.

—So you’re going to hurt her to get her back?

—In a sense.

—Why would you ever think this would work? She’ll just be more pissed at you than ever.

—You’ll have to trust me.

—But still—

—One day, if you’re lucky, you’ll fall hopelessly in love. If you’re unlucky, that love will be taken away from you. That day, and that day only, will you truly understand. She will see the error of her ways. She will see how much I love her, how right I am for her. She will. You’ll see. She will.

—It’s when you talk like this that I kind of stop listening.

—Never mind, then, Eugene. You’ll see how it will all work out.

—When is this going to begin?

—Starting today, if we’re lucky, and I expect to be lucky.

—It starts here at the country club?

—Yes.

—How?

—Patience, my boy. Patience. Wait for me. I’ll be back within an hour, and then we’ll go and get a whole new you.

57. Fever Dream.

They were after him.

(Were they?)

They had seemed so welcoming up until now, his big gray friends with their hardy hides and warm ‘helios'.
(Or had they ever even said that? There’s a mistake here, hut which side?)
And now they had turned against him. They were merely biding their time. Why was it so goddamned hot? Why did they bring the sun out? What had he done to them?

They were on him.
(No, wait.)
They were on him. Stomping and cheering, calling out his name as they pounded him into the ground. He could feel his body flatten, even his voice when he tried to scream. Then they were laughing, laughing at poor, flat Maggerty, melting into the mud.
(This wasn’t right.)
Grass shot up through his flattened body, and they grazed on him, pulling bits of his flesh away with each mouthful, the caress of their soft, full lips followed by a horrible, painful snap. Then the worst came, the worst of it all. After they had eaten him, pulling him to bits, his bones in rubble, they turned away. They left. They left him behind.

Maggerty woke, or at least he thought he did. He
hoped
he had. It was hard to tell lately. His head felt like constantly boiling soup. Some days he really couldn’t figure out where he was, knowing only that he should stay as close to the animals as possible. Other times he would emerge from a
purplish-orange haze and have no idea what had gone on since the previous day. Once he had opened his eyes to find himself waist deep in a bog with the herd grazing onshore. Another time he was somehow near the top of a tree, two pine cones in one hand, apparently ready to drop them on the animal resting below. Each time, he had rescued himself from his predicament slowly, trying in vain to retrace how he had gotten where he was.

This was worse than his normal cloudiness, much worse. Losing himself in a haze was one thing, but to disappear completely, so much so that he vanished into his own mind for hours at a time, was a different story altogether. His lucid moments, which had never been dependable, were now plagued with fear every time he reached them. A cycle had begun where he either didn’t know what he was doing or was worried about what he had done. He couldn’t even remember where or when all this had started. It felt like it had always been this way, now until forever. During the brief moments of awareness, when he wasn’t too stricken by fear to move from a huddle close to the ground, he did his best to fill his stomach with grass or berries or water. He was terrified that he might die in one of the hazes, and by forcing himself to eat as much as he could, he somehow hoped that he could stave off an unknown, unseen death.

It was a wretched existence, even relative to what he had lived before, and he didn’t know what to do. He had tried communicating his troubles to some of the animals, including the leader. He knew this wouldn’t work, even
he
knew that, but it felt at least like he was doing something, anything to stanch the flow of panic, to try to at least act like he had control over what was happening. It was all so exhausting, too, which was another thing. When he was lucid, he couldn’t sleep, and he didn’t think he slept when he was away from
his senses. There
were
times, like just now, when he felt like he had woken up from a nightmare, but he couldn’t have even said with certainty that he had been asleep then or was awake now.

This must be insanity.

(But I’m as sane as anyone.)

He ripped up a handful of grass and stuffed it in his mouth. It was bitter and juiceless, but he chewed slowly just the same, grinding it into a mulch before swallowing. He pulled another and had it halfway to his mouth when he realized that the herd was moving on, wandering out of the park onto a street behind. How had he missed that? He tore up two more handfuls and got up to run, forcing as much grass as he could down his gullet and trying not to lose the rest in the jostling. They couldn’t be leaving him behind, could they? Was this still the dream?

He ran as fast as he could, but the fatigue that had hugged him tightly for what seemed like weeks now slowed him down. The muscles across his chest began to cramp with the effort, and without realizing it, he let out a strangled series of coughs, green saliva drooling down his chin and across his cheeks. He ambled after them, finally reaching the street in time to see that they had stopped in a group, waiting for individual animals to file through an opening in a wooden fence. He fell to his knees, gasping loudly. And then, before he even noticed it, his grip on himself vanished. He disappeared from his own consciousness, blacking out, consequences be damned.

Waiting at the fence, the herd heard the long cry first. The more curious amongst them near the back turned to see where it came from. They could smell the thin creature’s approach more than they could see it, their noses noting a shocking odor, their eyesight barely registering a growing form. The
first herdmember who was hit was more surprised than hurt. It was difficult for the tiny front foreleg of a thin creature to make much of an impression on the massive hindquarter of one of the herdmembers. But when he hit her again and then again, the middle-aged female swung around to take notice.

The thin creature jumped back to avoid being hit by her horn and with another cry began slamming his forelegs against another member of the herd, flinging himself indiscriminately, trying to strike whatever he could reach, jumping out of the way of an ever-increasing irritation of lunging horns. He hit eyes and mouths and rumps. He kicked under to less-protected stomachs and genitalia. He shouted the entire time, and his stench was almost blinding to the olfactories, throwing some of the animals into confusion. One animal accidentally punctured a neighbor’s side by thrusting blindly into the smell. It was this cry of pain that alerted the leader, standing patiently on the other side of the fence, waiting for the herd to make its way through.

There were gaps in the wood, and when she turned around sharply, she could see that something was happening at the rear of the herd. The sickly sweet dying smell of the thin creature reached her nose. She pushed into the oncoming line. The herd thundered out of her way as she forced herself back to the small opening they had all been walking through so peacefully. She gently, yet hurriedly, pushed a small juvenile male out of the opening and made her way to the other side.

A chaos of sight, sound and smell surrounded her. Animals ran in all directions, some of them clearly panicked at the overwhelming sensory attack. A cloud of his odor hung in the air like a lingering poison. It took her a long, tense moment before she could sort any of it out, before she could even find where he was in that writhing, movable shock that caused the ground to tremble with shifting weight. At last, two members
of the herd parted, and she saw him standing between them, forelegs held high, running after a youngster. She was instantly, instinctively at a run, shoulders dropped, horn low, all four feet leaving the ground at the high point of the step. She saw him see her coming. She saw him stand his ground. At the last second, she turned her head slightly, hitting him with the broad flat of her nose rather than the lance of her horn. He flew off of his feet, and for a brief moment, they were together in momentum, him against her, moving across the pavement at a frightening speed, before she slowed and he separated, tumbling into space. He hit the concrete very hard. She heard a distinct and unmistakable snap as he rolled across the ground in a heap, turning end over end, until finally coming to rest halfway under a thin creature carrying-box.

Maggerty opened his eyes to find himself in immense pain and also upside down, both of which were disorienting. He tasted blood and realized he had somehow bitten through his tongue. He couldn’t move his arm, and the jabs of pain coming from his elbow were what cleared his head enough to notice that he was sprawled up against a parked car. He felt blood pooling beneath him. Pains in his chest kept his breathing shallow. He didn’t have the strength to get up, barely enough to move his head to look for the herd.

He saw the leader standing a little way from him, snorting loudly and pacing back and forth in what seemed like agitation, although he wasn’t sure. After a moment, he heard her let out a low grunt in his direction, and then he watched her turn and walk back to where the rest of the herd seemed to be standing in isolated groups. What happened? Where was he? A grayness started permeating his thoughts. He realized, at last, that he was passing out, really passing out, not disappearing to somewhere else, and as he closed his eyes, he was grateful for the chance to rest.

58. A Most Delicious Proposal.

—And somehow here he is again.

—Surely you don’t mind, Thomas? Am I interrupting something?

—Only my wonderment at your ability to appear here repeatedly, this time without even a warning from my secretary.

—I’m afraid I didn’t give her a chance. You’ll have to forgive me. I
have
been accused of being over-driven. I’ll use the proper routes next time.

—Apology accepted.

—I don’t recall apologizing.

—You just—

—I’ve got something you might be interested in. Are you busy?

—Would it do any good to say yes?

—No. If you wanted me out of your office, you’d have me out. I recognize that I’m here as part of your good humor.

—Appealing to my vanity doesn’t hurt either.

—Shrewd. I knew there was a reason you were the right man for me.

—Right man for what?

—Do you remember my disclosure of my relationship with the Mayor?

—An old flame, if I remember correctly.

—You don’t remember correctly. I never said any such thing, but your inference is smart and your way of putting it even smarter. The Mayor is an ‘old flame’ of mine, an old flame around whom I swirl not an abundance of nice feeling, if you understand my meaning.

—I’m guessing you’re either looking for some kind of revenge or trying to win her back.

—Both, actually.

—Both? This I’ve got to hear.

—Leave that part up to me. All I wish to share on the matter is that I’ve got certain feelings toward the Mayor, and I’ve got a plan, a plan that requires you and one that would bring you many, many benefits.

—All right, but let me say right at the beginning that I don’t know much about the Mayor, but what I
do
know, what
everyone
knows, is that she ain’t leaving her husband. Have you ever heard of a ‘Cora and Albert'?

—It’s ‘Albert and Cora’ and yes, I’m quite sick to death of hearing it, thank you. I reiterate that the plan is mine, and the consequences, pro or con, are up to my calculations. I merely ask you to get involved because your involvement could help us both immensely.

—Fair enough. What do you imagine my involvement to be? Understanding of course, that I’m a very busy man with many irons in the fire. It would have to benefit me in a very large way indeed in order to pique my interest.

—Hear me out.

—By all means.

—The Mayoral election is coming up in four months.

—The one without any candidates?

—So you’ve heard that Maximillian Latham, the presumptive winner, has dropped out.

—I do read the papers, Mr Noth. I know what’s going on in the city.

—Then you might also know that there is speculation that Mayor Larsson will run again?

—It’s only speculation. I don’t see it happening.

—Why not?

—Four terms. She’s nearly sixty. She wants to retire. The most she’ll do is be caretaker until a new election is scheduled early next year.

—I happen to agree with you. So you are aware then of the peculiar power vacuum in which Hennington currently sits?

—Ye-ess. I think I see where you’re heading.

—Do you?

—Yes. You want to run for Mayor against your former girlfriend, showing her, well, showing her God knows what, that’s your affair, and you want me to help you do it.