The Last Hot Time (12 page)

"It was great," Ginny said, laughing. "That crazy wolf—and the dancer! How did they do that?"

"Magic," Stagger Lee said. "The old kind. Weekends there are cartoon matinees. Do they still remember Superman, out in the heartland?"

Danny realized Stagger was asking him. "Sure. 'Truth, Justice, and—' "

"The American Way, right. But come by in two weeks and you'll see him like you never have. And more too. The greatest heroes of American fiction are Huckleberry Finn and Bugs Bunny."

The lobby lights blinked. "You'd better get back to your seats," Stagger said.

Ginny said, "How about you?"

"Oh, I've got a spot in the back. I like to watch the audience, you see. Almost more than the movies." Quietly, just to the two of them, he said, "Have you noticed how many Ellyllon are here today?"

Danny hadn't, but now he looked: the crowd was maybe a third elves, more than he had ever seen in one place.

"They like Buster," Stagger said. "I've overheard them claiming that he must have had some of their ancestry, which is the funniest thing I've ever heard an elf say."

Danny noticed the Truebloods after that. Sometimes they laughed at different spots, or a little before or after the humans, but mostly it all came together, elvish laughter and human, silver and gold.

When the second matinee ended, they paused to look over the coming-attractions posters in the lobby. Danny turned to find Stagger Lee standing quietly behind him. "Ask you something?* 1 Damn said.

"Just my specialty."

"Why are so many of the movies here in black and white? I know the silent ones are from before there was color, but. . ."

"Ah." Stagger looked around; the lobby was mostly empty. "It has to do with Trueblood vision. They don't see colors in the same way we do; subtle combinations turn muddy, can even give them headaches. You ever see an elf wearing more than one color, plus black and white?

"They can get through some of the really vivid Technicolor pictures, and cartoons—and I think they'd watch The Wizard of Oz and the Errol Flynn Robin Hood if they got nosebleeds—but black and white is just naturally more popular." He lowered his voice. "I assume you know the story of Joseph and the many-colored coat? I have a friend at the University of Chicago who believes that's a mythified version of a changeling narrative—elves abducting a human child."

Danny said, "You're kidding."

"My friend isn't. You should see her research. And it's more important than just one story. A lot of people would like to know just when Elfland went away the last time. The Truebloods aren't very forthcoming, so we're hunting for events that indicate the gates were open."

"Mr. Lee?" the woman behind the candy counter said.

Stagger Lee threw up his hands. "The things I do for free popcorn. Th-th-th-that's all, folks." He went into the manager's office.

It was dark outside, and the masks on the marquee were bouncing and spinning with light. Danny and Ginevra went to dinner at a little Italian restaurant a few blocks from the theater. Several people said hello to them, calling Danny by his Levee handle, tipping hats to Ginny.

"It's like I'm somebody famous," Danny said, embarrassed.

"You are," Ginny said. "You're close to Mr. Patrise. Mr. Bird-song wrote about you in the paper. That's what famous is, right?"

"But I haven't done anything."

"You saved Norma Jean's life, and someone said you took care of Cloudhunter. I think that's something." Much more softly, she said, "You're taking me out to dinner, and I think that's something."

After dinner they drove to La Mirada. Ginny disappeared into the back to change.

"Hallow, good evening," Patrise said. "I trust you had a pleasant afternoon?"

"Very pleasant," Danny said.

"Good. Good. We've got a place at the table for you."

There were two elves at a nearby table, Ruthins in bright red leather jackets. White silk scarves, that sparkled in the light, wrapped their throats; with their mirrored sunglasses, whipcord pants, and boots, they looked like pictures Danny had seen of World War One aviators. W 7 ith them were a couple of human kids, not badly dressed for Vamps. Danny could see the butt of a pistol inside one of the Vamps' jackets, but there didn't seem to be any hostility or tension in their look, just the usual moony sucker stare.

Something felt wrong, though. Danny couldn't tell just what. Not the Ruthins, not Patrise's company . . .

Carmen came out, in a loose gold metallic shirt over a short, tight leather skirt, black sandals laced up her calves. Alvah banged out hard fast chords, and Carmen sang clear and uptempo:

Here I go again into the valley of sublimation Flashin syncopation says there's trouble ahead I don't intend to swerve Waitin for a washout or a bridge to freeze Playin ' metal music on the Corvette keys Nothin ' could be easier than slidin ' into Dead Man s Curve

Tell me do you think this is a suitable case for treatment

Are you gonna take me to that beautiful place

Shelter me from the cold

Nobody believes in a one-night stand

Nothing lasts forever on the other hand

Meet me in that faraway land where the good die old

Danny knew what the problem was. It was with him. Or Ginny, or both of them. He was over here at the table, sipping dark beer, and she was over there pouring it.

This was part of his job, he thought—he had his bag, and was supposed to stay ready and sober enough to use it—and she was doing hers, just as Carmen was singing and McCain and Cloudhun-ter were on watch.

Pay gave the last performance, as usual. Danny stayed on through the empty hour after that, when the Ruthin elves led their followers away, and Patrise bid all good night. He played a quiet game of penny poker with Lucius and the Tokyo Fox until two, so he could drive Ginny home. He tried to tell her what he'd been thinking. She said, "I like what I do. The crowd at the Mirada doesn't treat us badly: they know Mr. Patrise can lock anyone out he wants to. And I like seeing you there, having a good time." She touched his arm. "You do have a good time there, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Then so do I."

Once or twice a week after that, Danny met Ginny for a movie. They saw the cartoons Stagger Lee had so insisted on, and Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn at the Biograph—which indeed had a large audience of Ellyllon, who cheered at all the right places. One evening she called, insisting that he must go with her to see somebody called Danny Kaye; the picture was The Court Jester, and over coffee and pie afterward she got him and half the restaurant letter-perfect on where the pellet with the poison was.

They went to The Magnificent Ambersons, because Orson Welles was supposed to be good. Danny watched it all, but he couldn't enjoy it. The small-minded people who couldn't see or think of a world different from their own, wearing their fears and self-righteousness like jewelry, were too much like people he had grown up with. He didn't believe the happy ending at all. Ginny seemed uncomfortable too. He wondered if she felt the same way; but he didn't ask.

Danny spent most of his evenings at La Mirada, watching, listening, learning to hold his drinks, bandaging the occasional kitchen accident. Sometimes there was a worse wound, gunshot or knife, someone he didn't know or had seen only in passing.

By now he was an expert in isolating elf blood— gwaed ellyll, he had learned to call it. One afternoon, Cloudhunter complimented him on how much of the Ellytha Danny had learned; Danny hadn't

really noticed it happening, but the praise warmed him for days.

It no longer bothered him to see Ginevra behind the bar. The more he watched her, the more it seemed that she really did love her work, and the more he liked to watch her do it.

Every time he left her at the apartment steps, or waved good night to her as he went off to a midnight surgery, he wondered why it was so easy to go. Wasn't his heart supposed to break, or at least sink a little, when he said good-bye?

He wondered if he would know what a heart breaking felt like.

About once a week, late at the house, there were dead elves to be dissected, one or two. He worked alone now, cutting and drawing the lead from the dead white meat, pausing for a swallow of coffee or a bite from a sandwich. He was trying to be neat, even elegant; he would close up the incisions with a few stitches, zip the body bag, and call someone to take them away. The bullets went into an envelope for Stagger Lee. Danny wondered what was being done with them, but he did not ask.

One night at Mirada, a Glasa-gang elf in a green leather sheath dress fell through the front doors, cut all up in front—slashed, as if by an animal. Pavel shuttered the corridor at both ends and steered customers to a side entrance. The Ellyll woman bled maybe a quart into the carpet while Danny packed her in gauze, wound her in yards of tape. Hemlock and pressure finally stopped the flow, but the morphine didn't seem to be taking, and she gasped and moaned and arched her back, calling out in Ellytha. Once she got her hands around Danny's shoulders and pulled; Cloudhunter unwound the hands without speaking.

Mr. Patrise watched for a while, then nodded, patted Danny's shoulder, and went back to the main room. Finally two other elves wearing green took the woman away; up to Division, to heal in Elfland, Danny supposed. But he didn't ask.

He asked Mr. Patrise if he could go home. His shirt was saturated with gwaed e//y//; he stripped it off in the Mirada kite hen and buttoned on a clean white cook's jacket. Cloudhunter drove him back, and then followed him to his rooms; Damn was too wound up to offer any objection.

With the door closed, Cloud said, "You followed her words, did you not:"

"Yeah."

"She was unminded. Pain, injury, drugs. She did not know you, nor where she was, nor what she said."

"She called for the Wild Hunt. For me to send the Wild Hunt after her. Does that mean—"

"You are correct. The Hunt is not Death."

Danny nodded. He was shaking. "Cloud," he said, feeling horribly empty, "I cut up the dead ones, and I don't care."

"You saved a lady's life, and you do care," Cloud said simply. "When she crosses the portal, all will be healed. She will not remember what happened, what she said, what you did."

Danny let out a breath, looked up. "Thank you, Cloud."

"Any thanks due are to you, Doc. But if I assisted you, you are welcome." Cloudhunter bowed his head and went out.

Danny stumbled into the bathroom and undressed, checked himself for remaining elf-blood; he turned the shower on hot and collapsed into the sprays.

He knew enough of what the Glasa woman had said. Mr. Pa-trise probably did too. And Cloudhunter would have heard all of it.

He had tried to think of her as just a set of wounds he was closing up, a combative patient. But no patient had ever howled to be hurt again. And to beg for the Wild Hunt—

Was that what he wanted Ginevra to say to him?

He had the kitchen send up a pot of cocoa, sat in his living room with every light on drinking it until well toward dawn.

I he phone woke him. "Hello."

"Happy birthday, to you," Ginny said. "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday, Doc Hallow, happy birthday to you."

"But it's not—"

"Yes, it is, too."

Then he understood. It was two days until Halloween. "Oh. Well, thank you."

"You aren't busy tonight, right?"

"No."

"Then you're busy tonight. See you at six." She hung up.

He stared at the phone for a moment. Then he laughed.

That afternoon, McCain asked to meet Danny in the infirmary.

"What can I help you with, Line?" Danny said, absurdly aware that he was playing the old country doctor.

"It's about not getting—a girl pregnant."

"Well, there's condoms." This was getting more ridiculous by the second.

"I know about rubbers. I have to know if there's anything better. Something that can't miss."

"There are pills—"

"For the guy?"

"No, the girl. And there are those sponges."

"No. Not something for her. For me." Between the topic and the crazy urgency in McCain's voice, Danny was hopelessly out of his depth.

"I don't think anything's absolutely perfect. But if you cover from a couple of angles . . . There's a cream, too, that kills sperm. If you use that with the rubber, you ought to be all right."

"Okay. I guess that's good. Have you got some of that?"

Danny had to hunt around in the cabinet, but there turned out to be four tubes. "You don't have to tell me, Line," he said with what he hoped was quiet understatement, "but why—"

McCain said flatly, "I'm a Vamp. Loop Garou, as if you couldn't guess."

Danny managed not to blurt out anything stupid. "But. . . you don't. . ."

"Not anymore. But they say you don't ever get it all out. The idea of a kid born that way . . . couldn't do that, Doc."

The revelation, from McCain, made Danny feel like whistling in the graveyard. He dispensed the meds and what wisdom he could offer with them.