Yarrow (13 page)

The Walker was tall and almost bald. He wore a shabby overcoat most of the year and walked everywhere. Ben saw him at least once a day now, anywhere from St. Laurent out in the east end of the city to as far west as Bayshore. But mostly you saw him in the Glebe. Everybody had a story about him, but no one really knew anything about him. Just a harmless old fellow with nothing to do but walk. Well, it sure beat some of the weirdos you could find downtown.

Not that the Dude was exactly in that class. Ben checked his rearview mirror and saw that he was heading into the park. Looked like he was going to be another Central Park regular. Just what the place needed. Some duded-up fugitive from a music video, out putting the make on the boys.

Farley was in the Glebe, hanging out in Central Park with Ron, working on what remained of their last bottle of Brights wine. The sun was high and the air was hot, they were both getting corked, and what the hell, he had no complaints. Farley took a long swig, handed the bottle to Ron, then laid back, his head pressed against the grass, the blue sky immense above. He leaned up on his elbow as the wine came back to him, tilted the bottle back, then froze.

His throat went dry as he saw the young man making his way across the lawn in the distance. For a moment his vision blurred and in place of the man's face he saw a snake's head, topped with a shag of dyed-blond hair. The bottle fell from his fingers.

"Jesus Christ, Farley!" Ron scooped the bottle up before much of its precious contents could spill out. "What the hell's the matter with you?"

"I…" He glanced at Ron, then back to the man. There was no snake's head. The man ignored them, acting as though they didn't exist. But for one moment he'd seen something in those glittering blue eyes…. He shook his head. "Too much sun," he said hoarsely. He grabbed the bottle, Adam's apple working overtime as he tried to kill the dryness in his throat. But the strange feeling that had come over him wouldn't pass. His hands were sweaty, his bowels tight.

"I don't know about you," Ron told him, taking the bottle back before Farley finished it off. "You getting the heebs or something?"

Farley looked down at his trembling hands. He didn't know what the fuck he had, but it was starting to scare him.

You too, Lysistratus thought as he glanced away from the two winos. I remember you, but you were not meant to remember me.

He continued across the park, leaving it in search of easier prey. The wino could wait.

It was shaping up to be a busy night.

It wasn't until midafternoon that Ben headed for the bookstore. Turning onto Fourth, he had to drive halfway down the block before he could find a place to leave his cab. That was the trouble with having the store so close to the post office. There was never any place to park. People just pulled up in the no-stopping zone in front of the squat brown-brick building and left their cars anywhere they pleased. The Green Hornets had a heyday writing out tickets on this stretch of street.

As he walked into the store, Ben thought about this whole weird trip with Cat Midhir. Maybe he'd stake out her house tonight and see if he couldn't catch whomever it was that was bothering her himself. Be a hero. A nice idea, he thought with a laugh. Only what would he do with the guy if he
did
catch him? Magnum, P.I. he wasn't.

Peter was with a sales rep from the newly amalgamated Berkley/Jove/Ace/Playboy when Ben came in. They had a big binder on the counter between them and were going through the new releases for the next month. The binder was full of flat book covers and release sheets, each one protected by a plastic covering.

"Hey, Ben!"

"Hi, Peter."

"Look. We've just got a few more of these to go through. Why don't you get yourself a coffee?"

"Sure. You want one?"

Peter shook his head. He stepped aside so that Ben could get through to the back room. Ben glanced at the shelf just to the right of the door to see what special orders for other people had arrived. That was where Peter stored them, and you just never knew what you might see in there that you might want to order for yourself.

At that moment he realized there was someone else in the back room, sitting in the easy chair near the fridge. Looking over, he thought he'd die. You bastard, he thought to Peter. Curled up in the chair and glancing up from her book as he came in, tousle-haired and big as life, was Cat Midhir. Though she wasn't really all that big, Ben thought. She fit snugly into the chair, bare legs curled under her. Ben could feel his whole body turning beet red.

Peter had really set him up this time.

"Just a second, Tom," he heard Peter say to the sales rep. "I guess you guys don't know each other," he added cheerily as he filled the door beside Ben. "Cat, this is Ben Summer-field, my best friend. And let me tell you, if he stopped shopping here, we'd probably go broke. Ben, this is Cat. Look, I'll be with you in a moment, okay? I just want to finish up with this Berkley/Jove— jeez, Tom, couldn't you come up with a shorter name?"

"You should hear our receptionists try to get it all out in one breath."

"I can imagine." To Cat and Ben: "I'll be about five minutes, okay?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure," Ben said. I'm going to kill you, he thought.

He pulled up a chair before his legs gave way on him, and swallowed nervously. What was he going to say? He had to say something quick or she'd really think he was a jerk, but all that came to mind were inanities. I've always wanted to meet you. I love your new book. I've got everything you've ever written— at least what's in print, ha, ha! Pardon me while I shrink down into nothing and disappear through a crack in the floorboards. Nothing personal, you see. It's just that if I open my mouth I'll probably put both feet straight in it.

"Hi," was what he managed, the word coming out only slightly higher than his natural speaking voice. He cleared his throat. "What are you reading?"

Stupid, stupid. He could see from the dust jacket that it was the new Ellison. The title leapt out of the top right-hand corner of the cover, white lettering against a bright orange background:
Stalking the Nightmare.
There was a big hand coming from the spine, dropping a handful of odd beings. A red-faced man with ram's horns. A cat with cybernetic paws. A woman in a white jumpsuit. Even Mickey Mouse.

"Something that just came in yesterday," Cat said. "I've never really read any of Ellison's stuff before, but Peter insisted that I read the introduction if nothing else. 'Quiet Lies the Locust Tells.' I never knew Ellison could be so… poetic, I suppose. All I ever knew about him was his angry young man image."

For Cat that was a long speech. Especially delivered as it was to someone she had just met.

"A lot of people feel like that about him," Ben said, "until they actually sit down and read something by him. Now I'll be the first to admit that he's written some real clunkers, but when he's good, he's dynamite. And he's more often good than not. You should read something like 'Lonelyache,'" he added, warming up to his subject, "or 'Jefty is Five.'"

"Didn't that win an award?"

"Umhmm. Two of them— the Nebula and the Hugo in the same year."

Listening to them as he went through the last of the new releases, Peter had to smile. He should have thought of this ages ago. It was about time Ben actually met Cat. Maybe now he'd take her down from that pedestal and start thinking of her as a real person. And who knew where it might lead? Dear Abby, eat your heart out. I might be taking over your column.

"How about the new Asprin?" Tom asked.

Peter nodded, ordering thirty-five of
Storm Season
and ten of each of the previous Thieves' World collections.

"That it?" he asked as Tom started to put the binder away.

"Unless you want to go over the backlist…?"

Peter shook his head. But he did want to keep busy out here, at least for a while longer. "How are you and Brewster getting along these days?" he asked.

"You don't want to know," Tom began, and launched into a recital of the latest feud between himself and the cantankerous owner of Brewster Books, which was located downtown at the corner of Cooper and Bank.

This, Peter thought as he settled back to listen with satisfaction, should be good for at least another twenty minutes.

Ben felt like he was walking on clouds when he left the store a couple of hours later. He'd turned down an invitation to dinner, citing work as an excuse, though the truth of the matter was he was just too full of the wonder of it all to be able to stay in Cat's company any longer. There'd been a few awkward moments there at the beginning, but… He had to admit that Peter had been right. All he'd had to do was meet her. And now that he had…

Jesus, he felt good.

When he reached his Buick with its Blue Line Taxi on top, he slid in behind the wheel and then just sat there, enjoying a sense of well-being. What a great lady. What a damn-fine,
great
lady! They'd even got to talking about her books. She'd seemed genuinely flattered that he liked her work as much as he did, and then surprised both herself and him by asking him if he'd like to take a look at the new manuscript she was working on.

Would he? Are bears Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?

Last night's break-in never did come up, but Ben vowed that if there
was
someone watching her house, he wouldn't be doing it for long. The idea of someone harassing her pissed him off in a way that it couldn't have this morning, when she was still a two-dimensional personality he knew only through her books and the articles written about her.

We'll see, he thought as he pulled away from the curb. Tonight we'll see. If Mr. Hide-in-the-Shadows was still hanging around, he'd have more than a woman living on her own to deal with. The ferocity of his feelings startled him. But the more he thought of it, the more he strengthened his resolve to do something about it if he could.

"What a nice man," Cat said when Ben left.

"One of the best."

"He's like a big bear— all gruff and round."

"You should put him in one of your books— he'd probably buy the whole print run."

Cat laughed. Right now she felt so good she almost thought she could go home and write up a storm. Sitting behind the store's counter, meeting and talking to more people in one day than she'd normally see in a week, and finding in Ben a real kindred spirit, her earlier black mood seemed to belong to another person. Nothing had really changed. All the problems were still there, the frustrations and the sorrow. But for the moment she had a different vantage point to look at them from.

"Would you like to eat out somewhere?" Peter asked.

Cat shook her head. "Let me make dinner for us tonight."

"I don't eat squash or beets," Peter warned.

"So who does?"

Stella pulled off Briarhill Drive into Rick's laneway and wondered why on earth she'd agreed to wait for him at his place tonight. He was going to be at another business dinner— read "suck up to Worthington for another bad-risk loan"— until at least ten-thirty tonight. That was if he didn't get too sloshed to find his way home. Stella sighed. She turned, off the ignition and stepped from the car. He'd said he was going to get his act together, and he certainly seemed to have been trying this past day or so. The least she could do was give him a chance to prove himself.

What they really should do was move in together, she thought as she went into the house. The money they'd save on rent alone would make the necessity of another loan redundant. But as she always did when she came up against that idea, Stella wasn't so sure she was ready for that herself. It was too much give on her part. And she'd given a lot already. Too much. First she'd let him prove himself— really prove himself— then they could take it from there and see where it went.

She tossed her purse onto the sofa and wandered into the kitchen to see what she could scrounge up for her dinner.

At five past seven Mick was just finishing with his last customer of the day— a safety check on a '76 Pinto that just barely squeaked by the Provincial standards. Jim had already gone home— tonight was his bowling night. Mick shook his head as he did every Wednesday night. It was hard to believe that people still went in for that kind of shit. He turned off the lights above the pumps and inside the office, then sat down across from Ben.

"If you ever have a problem," Mick had told Ben once, "any kind of a problem, you come and see me. I mean, if someone's hassling you, we'll see if we can't fix it— you catch my drift?"

That had been a couple of years ago, and Ben could remember laughing off the whole mafioso inflection in Mick's voice. He'd replied with something to the effect that he doubted he'd ever need to get anything "fixed," if Mick caught
his
drift. But now he found himself sitting in the garage, eating his words as he told Mick his problem.

"Cat's the writer you're so big on, right? The one who drives the VW and always comes across so hesitant like I'm doing her a big favor by working on her car." Mick gave Ben a grin. "And now you've got the real-life hots for her?"

"It's not like that, Mick. I mean, she was always this unattainable person before— like someone in
People
magazine. I always thought that knowing her would spoil the image I had of her. But now that I've met her…"

"You've got the real-life hots for her," Mick repeated, laughing.

"Will you give me a hand?" Ben asked.

"Hey," Mick said, "would I let you down?" He pulled a switchblade from his pocket, depressed a small button with his thumb, and four inches of blade sprouted from its end with a sharp click.

"Jesus! We're not going to need that."

Mick shrugged, putting the knife away. "You never know," he said. "You know what I mean?"

Rick arrived at the Caffè Italia Trattoria to find Bill and his secretary already there waiting for him. The restaurant was on Preston Street, down in Little Italy— a relatively small dining room with white stucco walls, dark wood beams, innumerable posters and framed photographs of Italy, country-styled ceiling lamps, and seventeen tables— each spread with a red-and-white checkered cloth. Rick grinned as he came in the front door and nodded familiarly to the hostess— a tall, sloe-eyed Italian woman. He shook hands with Bill, then turned to Debbie, giving her an openly admiring look. She was stunning tonight, her pale-blond hair falling loosely to her shoulders, her body sheathed in a slinky black dress, a single pearl on a silver chain hanging just above the low cut of its neckline.