The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) (4 page)

And suddenly Serena’s
hand curled tightly, withdrawing as her gaze turned up and over Ellen’s
shoulder. Ellen turned to follow her stare, and saw Nicholas Dabble open the
front door and step out into the doorway of the bookstore. He looked up and
down the street with only passing interest then returned his gaze to the front
window of
Serena’s Coffee Shoppe
. It lingered there for a moment before
he turned and went back inside. The sign on the glass door was turned from
CLOSED to OPEN.

“I should probably be
going,” Ellen said.

She put the book back in
her bag, and turned to the condiment station to snap the lid on her coffee.

“I’d love to borrow that
book from you sometime,” Serena said, a trifle too eager.

Ellen turned to her.
“Sure, I guess.” It was a lie, and she was very much afraid that Serena knew
that. The only thing more unnerving than Serena’s unnatural curiosity over the
book was Ellen’s own need not to let anyone take it from her. It was silly, her
hesitation running counter to her compulsion to tell people about it, that hope
for insight into its nature; the book was the kernel of truth that proved she
was sane. If others learned of it, it would confirm her story. But that did not
change the fact that she would not, at any cost or for any reason, let anyone
take the book from her. Her life was all smoke and soap bubbles and wind; nothing
was grounded; nothing was certain; nothing was indisputable fact. Nothing,
except that she must not let anyone take
The Sanity’s Edge Saloon
away
from her. Of that—and maybe only that—she was very certain.

“I should go,” she
repeated, taking her coffee and hurrying out the door, the small chimes ringing
distantly as she left.

*     *     *

Serena’s eyes followed
the girl’s willowy form across the street to
Dabble’s Books
. She stared
long and hard at Nicholas Dabble’s shop, looking at the man on the far side of
the glass. He seemed to be looking back at her, a brief glance before
retreating deeper into the store, disappearing behind layers of shadow and reflection
like the charlatan he was. And Dabble’s look was not kind, a subtle glare that
was a little curious, a little covetous, and a little angry.

What are you hiding
over there, Nicholas?
she wondered.
And what is it about that book? You know every story ever
told, and every storyteller who ever gibbered out some nonsensical piece of
indulgent fluff while the real world flitted by and beyond his reach. Don’t
tell me there’s a new player in town.

She felt a chill pass
through her like she was a kite caught high in the gusts of March, and she
started to shiver.

It cannot be that, can
it? Not now. Not after so long.

Serena reached for a
delicately crafted teacup, the blend of tea smelling faintly of rose hips and
peppermint, but the cup knocked over, tea spilling down on the floor, the small
handle snapping off. She only stared at the dripping puddle of off-green water,
the broken pieces of the teacup, and wondered what it could mean. Wondered what
to make of spilled tea, broken china, Ellen Monroe, and a book called
The
Sanity’s Edge Saloon
; a book that Nicholas Dabble had never heard of
before, and of which he confessed to know nothing about—a fact alone that was
impossible.

Outside, clouds shuttled
across the sun, turning the street dark, and Serena wondered for the first time
that morning what had become of the limping man who stalked Ellen Monroe, the
man carrying a bent lightning rod for a staff.

He had escaped.

No easy feat, defying the
universe. To turn into the whirlwind of God and shake your privates in His
direction was an affront that demanded the utmost of certainty, an absolute conviction
of one’s place in the cosmos.

And lightning reflexes
lest the offender lose said privates as punishment for insurrection and poor
manners.

But that kind of
reprobation really wasn’t part of His milieu anymore. No more floods or columns
of fire or Angels of Death visiting the firstborn of every household not marked
by the blood of the lamb. No, not His style at all.

But while spared his
life, such as it was, he lamented the loss of those simpler times when everyone
had their place: rules to follow, rituals to observe. Men. Gods. Or even one
such as himself.

And simply because he
escaped with his balls intact—he suspected they still worked though there was
no proof of that yet—it did not mean he escaped unscathed. The damp chill of morning
made his hands ache, the joints cemented together with ground slivers of glass.
And his legs wept where the bones had been splintered and poorly healed like
lovers enduring the heartache of prolonged separation. It was dull and
constant, and he wasn’t sure if it would ever go away.

It served as a reminder to
that old axiom: bliss was fleeting, pain eternal.

But he was alive. Others
faired less well, the Wasteland burying their bones and scattering their
tortured souls upon the eternal wind. They were gone from the world, gone from
the mind, gone from reality on all of its separate planes in all the
directions. And he seemed to be following in their footsteps. Limping like a
cripple, his staff as useless as an umbrella in the desert, but he was going
the way of the forgotten just the same, unable even to stop himself.

He still clutched the
paper with its delicate, purposeful folds and its promises of flight. Hope came
in strange places, portents no longer carried by doves or witnessed in
rainbows, but folded into paper airplanes made from old museum flyers. What a
strange world this was; nothing at all like before.

Or maybe you’re just
crazy, eh, old man? Can’t rule out that possibility, can we? No, not when it’s
the most obvious answer, the most reasonable, the most sane. Occam’s razor,
right?

There was that voice
again, that persistent whisper in his head, soft-spoken counsel, deceptively
simple and pure and very possibly true.

Not for the first time,
he found himself on the verge of tears. And he
hated
it. He hated the
salt that begged to spill from his eyes. He hated the tight knot in his throat
that choked this world’s stale air. He hated himself for letting this happen,
and he hated the universe that mocked him, the once-mighty brought low.

Mostly, he hated Jack.

“You aren’t supposed to
be here.”

He looked up as two men
approached; one tall and lanky, skin like black coffee, face etched with the
lines of a life poorly spent. The other’s skin was the color of tarnished
bronze, old and neglected, eyes glazed, the mind behind them faded. He read
them with a perfunctory glance, their stories superficial and unimaginative. He
would have dismissed them outright, but for the simple fact that they were
standing before him and would not go away.

God, how he
hated
Jack!

*     *     *

Lucas Bertram stared
warily at the man squatting in a precarious cave of junked cars, a crooked
staff in one hand, a piece of paper clutched in the other. “Benway don’t like
people hanging around the junkyard. Pays us to make sure of it. Now get lost.”

Lucas stared evenly and
tried not to appear uncomfortable. He actually couldn’t care less if people
hung out in William Benway’s precious world of garbage, but Benway paid them
each ten dollars a week to make sure Benway’s Scrapyard didn’t become a
“hangout for riffraff.” And make no mistake, Lucas and his friends were
included in that category. There were rules: stay out of the yard between ten
and six; take nothing; no drugs, alcohol, or hookers; and the employee washroom
was off-limits. Lucas got the impression that Benway slept better at night
knowing he helped the less fortunate.

But it was easy money; who
in their right mind would steal trash?

The trespasser inclined
his head, staring up at them from under a wide, drooping hat like a traveling
lightning rod salesman. “You’re telling me that you are the guardians of
garbage?” he asked, bemused. “I’ll grant you, that’s a new one on me.”

Lucas continued to stare
at the man atop his throne of bald tires shaded by a canopy of flake board, his
lord’s staff of tarnished copper and iron in one hand, his kingly robes a
battered gray overcoat. But the man held his chin high, and he spoke like an
emperor with an accent that might have been British, or maybe just snooty
American. And while he talked crazy, he had remarkably clear eyes;
different-colored
eyes
.

Crazy Moses.

That was how Lucas knew
him; how everyone on the street knew him.

Honestly, no one actually
knew
Crazy Moses. No one even knew his real name. He never mentioned it,
and everyone was afraid to ask, the man an enigma in the sub-strata of the
indigent.

Like his friends, Lucas was
the residue scraped from the bottom of society’s collective shoe. That kind of
callous disregard made you stick tight to your fellow refugees, if only because
no one else would. He’d grown accustom to them just as he’d grown accustom to
his world, small though it may be. He knew the dealers and the players. He knew
the restaurants that threw out old food and the restaurants that dowsed their
scraps in Clorox—to keep away vermin, they said. He knew the prostitutes who
wouldn’t give his sort the time of day—
high-nosed bitches
—and he knew
the whores he could get a hand job from for twenty bucks. He didn’t have twenty
bucks, but it was always nice to know where a man could get a good hand job. All
except for Marco who had his back this morning; Marco’s pecker was so bad off,
he sometimes cried when he peed. The whores wouldn’t touch Marco for anything,
not even the junkie whores who would do things for a fix that most people, in
good conscience, could not even imagine. Marco wasn’t long for this world, and
Lucas suspected this world didn’t much care. Piss on you, Marco. The world has
eaten you up and shit you out; all that remains is to bury you in the kitty
litter.

“I theen thith guy
before,” Marco chimed in. Marco could not remember his age or even his last
name, and his words were garbled by missing teeth and killed brain cells, but
he remembered being married once to a woman named Tina Barrone—her maiden name;
he could not or would not remember what it was after. That was nearly the sum
of Marco’s memory. Tina, a rare beauty, so he claimed, left him: maybe she died
or maybe she started balling the butcher; Marco’s memory failed him on the
finer points, and the others did not press. What difference did it make now,
anyway? Here he was and here he would stay. That was the extent of Marco’s
story, such as it was.

But no one knew the story
of Crazy Moses. They had all seen him around, of course. Their lives were
reduced to minutia, so they tended the details with great diligence. They took
in the small aspects of the microcosm they scavenged, the world beneath the
notice of the surrounding herds with their clean clothes and their washed hair
and their full plates, going to work, going to the store, going anywhere that
the four who patrolled Benway’s world of garbage were denied.
War in the Middle East? Who knew or cared. Crooked politicians? Not really sure who was in office
anyway; didn’t vote. But ask about a new bum in town, walks with a staff and talks
to himself and is always following that pretty girl from the bookstore? Sure,
we know him. Call him Crazy Moses, or sometimes Mumbling Shepherd or Jesus
Hannibal Christ. Or sometimes just Stalker
. Yes, they knew of him. Nothing
in the neighborhood escaped their notice because no one hid things from them.

No one cared enough to
try.

“I was important once,”
the intruder answered lightly. “There was a time when I made things happen;
tremendous things; terrible things. Shook the earth by its heels, slapped the
collective face of humanity and woke it up. And look at me now.”

“You want sympathy, go
stand near the bus stop and use it to get some change,” Lucas said. “Bring back
a bottle to share and you can stay the night. Otherwise, beat it.” He had no
use for pity seekers. Whether a bum or king, sooner or later everyone came to
the conclusion that they got handed the black end of the stick.
Won’t you
all just please feel sorry for me because my life isn’t everything I wanted it
to be.

Whose was?

“I never asked to be
here,” the newcomer declared. “Not this scrapyard. Not even this earth—if
that’s what this is.” The intruder’s voice lowered to a conspiratorial grumble,
and he glowered at the heavens. “Sky’s probably a blue canvas you could peel
back to reveal the sackcloth and pinhole stars of night,” he sneered. “No, I
never asked to be here, this sick piece of quaint, gothic Americana on
mescaline. Do you hear ME!?!”

“Yeah, yeah, ain’t nobody
want
to be here,” Lucas said, afraid the lunatic’s tirade would attract
the wrong attention, get them kicked out. Lucas had been a teacher once, a long
time ago in a life far removed from this one. There was a girl, sixteen … and
white. He could say she wanted it, begged him to show her. Maybe that was even
the truth. He didn’t remember now, and it didn’t really matter anyway. He spent
his good years in an eight-by-ten that left him as brittle and dry as old wood,
useless. Everyone had a story, and nine times out of ten it didn’t matter to
anyone but the teller. “But here’s where you are, so cough up some rent, or get
your ass out.”

The intruder’s eyes found
his. “When I escaped, I had only the staff in my hand, now useless, and the
knowledge in my head, which is beyond price. Anything else would have been
impossible to carry.” Crazy Moses displayed the backs of his hands, the skin
crisscrossed with a smooth paste of shiny scar tissue, joints swollen, fingers
twisted.

“That happen when you
ethcaped?” Marco asked.

“Yes.” Then the
intruder’s eyes brightened. “But I’m sane and alive, and that puts me at a
substantial advantage over the two who tried to escape with me.”

Lucas peeled the cap from
his head, running a hand across the smooth scalp. He had always worn the gray
woolen cap, protecting his vanity when his hair started receding. It was gone
now, but the habit of the cap remained like an itch on the heel of an amputated
foot. Habits were like ghosts: meaningless recollections of times long gone.
Right now though, his only worry was the possibility that Crazy Moses or Mumbling
Shepherd or whatever the fuck he called himself was a fugitive. Wouldn’t Benway
just shit sideways over that? “Look, if you’re wanted by the law, I want you
gone now. We don’t need any fugitive fuckin’ up our deal.”

Crazy Moses only shook
his head. “I’m no fugitive. At least, not in the sense you mean.” He settled the
staff into the crook of his elbow, examining his palm. “Can you believe that I
nearly held the Nexus in this very hand? Impossible, but true. I could have
been a god.” The newcomer’s expression faded to emptiness, seemingly hypnotized
by the mountains of assorted garbage surrounding him, endless acres of
wreckage. His fingers caressed the piece of wrinkled paper he kept clutched to
his breast as a penitent man might a crucifix. “But when you reach that high,
you can fall a long way.”

Lucas frowned. Crazy
Moses liked to talk: to himself, to the sky, to everyone and anyone who would
listen. A kinder person might say he was addressing God, but Lucas didn’t think
so. The son of a devout Lutheran, Lucas knew that no one who addressed God
would say to Him what this man said to the sky.

“Why the fuck’s he still
here? Let’s just get rid of this asshole?”

A young man, skin gone
the color of washed-out vomit from heroin addiction, stepped forward. His eyes
were sunken and angry, arms scarred from the withered biceps all the way down
to the wrecked veins on his fingers and hands. He’d kicked—by necessity, not
choice; no money to score—and was just a washout who would drink washer fluid
or inhale gasoline fumes to get high. His pores smelled of rot, and his breath of
disease, and he was not long for this world, though he likely did not know it.

The man called Crazy
Moses, however, did. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

“And you won’t neither—”

“His name’s Matty Cho,”
Lucas interjected, throwing the young man a disapproving stare. He was actually
hoping Crazy Moses would cough up half a bottle of bourbon, or even some
day-old rolls. That would be fine. But the last thing he wanted was for a
high-strung punk like Cho to bait the guy into a scrap—no one knew anything
about the man they called Crazy Moses, or what he might do. They only knew he
was crazy.