400 Boys and 50 More (77 page)

He didn’t slow down for her. She had to drop into the seat while he was running. The chair sloshed as she sank into it, but there were hard things in the gelatinous pads, things that shifted as she moved and then reasserted themselves. She didn’t want to think about what the chair must do to take care of the old vet, day in, day out. They turned a corner and she saw a steady stream of cars, a block ahead. But Rog didn’t go that way. He kept on the parallel street, which was darker and depopulated and would eventually get them back to the offices of Szilliken Sharpenwright.

Megan closed her eyes, trying to decide if there was anything else she ought to be doing to save her own neck. But her thoughts were scattered all over. Those omnichairs back in the alley. More old soldiers? Sleepers? Did they wait there, drowsing in the cold and dark, like dormant ticks waiting for blood-warmth to draw near?

Something groped her from beneath.

"Jesus!" she cried.

"Stop moving!" He pushed down on her shoulder as tubes pressed up between her legs like intelligent, insistent catheters, trying to find their way in.

"No! It’s this chair! It’s…doing something to me…"

"Megan, sit still."

"God damn it, no!" She gave up trying to fight off the chair’s advances, and jumped out completely.

Rog came to a stop. "What?" he said.

"You sit in it. Let me push."

Sigh. "Don’t complain when you’re the one with sore feet."

Rog dropped into the chair. His eyes widened. Then he shrieked and leapt back to his feet.

"You see? I'd rather have sore feet than…"

"Never mind! I'll push."

He took the chair handles again and didn’t say another word about anyone riding.

They ran through the night, toward the office towers. Megan tried not to think about the fact that Mr. Szilliken was bent on the same destination.

After awhile she realized that Rog was muttering something under his breath.

"What’s that?"

"He…he saved me, Megan. He gave his life for me."

"He doesn’t even know you exist, Rog."

"Yes he does. He knows me. He…he wouldn’t have done that otherwise. Sacrificed himself like that."

"He just snapped because he’s programmed for it…it was something he knew. You heard the cabbie. He was all wound up."

"It was more than that, Megan. He did it for me. Maybe for us. I’m sure of it. Sleepy Joe cares for us."

"You’re slowing down," she said.

* * *

As they approached the building, reality snapped into sharper focus, and she began to worry about their immediate situation. On the outside chance that they might beat Szilliken to the office, they had to get their story straight.

"We…we have the chair," Rog said. "We’ll just put it back by the elevators and say, say, we were working away, we—"

"—we went downstairs, that’s what I told him," Megan finished. "We went downstairs for some exhibit folders, and when we came up he was gone."

"That’s good, that’s fine. Exhibit folders. And we didn’t call because…"

"Well, we freaked. We’ve been looking for him."

"Freaked! That’s good. We can definitely pull that off."

They rushed through the deserted street-level plaza beneath the building, boarded the elevator, and tried to catch their breath as the car rose 40 floors. Megan’s ears popped repeatedly.

Ding!

The doors opened.

She had prepared herself to find Mr. Szilliken waiting for them with a look of certain doom on his battleship grey face. But he wasn’t there, and for a moment she felt herself overcome by relief. The conference room was empty, the tables still piled with their unfinished tasks.

Then relief was replaced by shock.

There was someone in the waiting room, seated on the couch.

The old soldier had beat them to the office. He’d come home by some shorter route and resumed his sentry post at the elevator bank. He sat there with the same sleepy-lidded face he always wore. Eyes like raisins, face a lump of dough. Just as before. Except…

Now he was naked. A few tatters of his old clothes clung to his collarbone, fastened around his throat by the one remaining button. His pale, mole-ridden body was covered with colorless hair, streaked with grimy welts, blood smears and dark scabs. A huge gash ran like a gaping skull suture across his shaved scalp. Worst of all, his arms were glistening red all the way up past the elbows, and a butcher shop reek rose from the gore-clotted sofa cushion.

"Oh my god," Rog said quietly. "I…I don’t believe it. We’re saved!"

He pushed the omnichair forward, and Megan, still speechless, joined him at the couch. Rog started to pull the vet up from the cushions.

"Give me a hand, let’s get him back in his chair."

"Are you crazy? We have to get him cleaned up…and dressed! Where the hell are we going to find clothes for him? And look at these cushions! What are we going to do about…"

Ding!

"We are so…dead," Megan whispered. That was the only sound for a moment.

She turned around slowly.

Mr. Szilliken stood there with his briefcase dangling. It slid to the floor after a moment, but the lawyer didn’t move; his finger remained crooked on nothing. His eyes went to the conference room table, taking in pile upon pile of unfinished work. Then they fixed on the old soldier. Ignoring the blood, ignoring the scarred naked frame, he seized upon the most outrageous detail: The rubber pig snout still clinging to the dreamy face. It must have been the simplest part of the scene to comprehend.

Szilliken crossed the lobby in three strides and snatched the snout from the sentry’s cheeks. The band snapped with a twang.

The lawyer spun toward Rog, waving the snout in his face.

"You!" he screamed. "How dare you abuse my property!"

"He's not property," Rog said quietly.

"Shut up! You'll be lucky if I don't kill you!"

"Please don’t say that," Megan said.

"Do you hear me, Roger?"

But Roger didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

Behind Szilliken, the old vet was rising, straightening from the couch, shuffling forward slowly with a look of devotion in his warming eyes. When he spoke, his voice was creaky with disuse, like an ancient engine turning over, shedding flakes of rust.

"Don’t worry, kids," he fondly croaked. "Let me take care of this."

* * *

“Sleepy Joe” copyright 2001 by Marc Laidlaw. First appeared online at
The Infinite Matrix
, edited by Eileen Gunn.

CELL CALL

He wasn’t used to the cell phone yet, and when it rang in the car there was a moment of uncomfortable juggling and panic as he dug down one-handed into the pocket of his jacket, which he’d thrown onto the passenger seat. He nipped the end of the antenna in his teeth and pulled, fumbling for the “on” button in the dark, hoping she wouldn’t hang up before he figured this out. Then he had to squeeze the phone between ear and shoulder because he needed both hands to finish the turn he’d been slowing to make when the phone rang. He realized then that for a moment he’d had his eyes off the road. He was not someone who could drive safely while conducting a conversation, and she ought to know that. Still, she’d insisted he get a cell phone. So here he was.

“Hello?” he said, knowing he sounded frantic.

“Hi.” It was her. “Where are you?”

“I’m in the car.”

“Where?”

“Does it matter that much?”

“I only meant, are you on your way home? Because if you are I wanted to see if you could pick up a pack of cigarettes. If you have money.”

“I’m on my way home, yes.” He squinted through the window for a familiar landmark, but considering the turn he’d just taken, he knew he was on a stretch of older suburban road where the streetlights were infrequent. There was parkland here, somewhere, and no houses visible. “But I don’t think there’s a store between here and home.”

“You’ll pass one on the way.”

“How do you know which way I went?”

“There’s only one way to go.”

“No there isn’t.”

“If you have any sense, there is.”

“I have to get off. I can’t drive and talk at the same time. I’m driving the stickshift, remember?”

“If you don’t want to then forget it.”

“No, I don’t mind. I’ll take a detour.”

“Just forget it. Come home. I’ll go out later.”

“No, really. I’ll get them.”

“Whatever. Goodbye.”

He took the phone out of the vise he’d made with jaw and shoulder. His neck was already starting to cramp, and he didn’t feel safe driving with his head at such an angle, everything leaning on its side. He had to hold the phone out in front of him a bit to be sure the light had gone out. It had. The read-out still glowed faintly, but the connection was broken. He dropped the phone onto the seat beside him, onto the jacket.

The parkland continued for another few blocks. The headlights caught in a tangle of winter-bared hedges and stripped branches thrusting out into the street so far that they hid the sidewalk. It would be nice to find a house this close to woods, a bit of greenbelt held in perpetuity for when everything else had been bought up and converted into luxury townhouses. If all went well then in the next year, maybe less, they’d be shopping for a house in the area. Something close to his office but surrounded by trees, a view of mountains, maybe a stream running behind the house. It was heaven here but still strange, and even after six months most of it remained unfamiliar to him. She drove much more than he did, keeping busy while he was at work; she knew all the back roads already. He had learned one or two fairly rigid routes between home and office and the various shopping strips. Now with winter here, and night falling so early, he could lose himself completely the moment he wandered from a familiar route.

That seemed to be the case now. In the dark, without any sort of landmark visible except for endless bare limbs, he couldn’t recognize his surroundings. The houses that should have been lining the streets by now were nowhere to be seen, and the road itself was devoid of markings: No center line, no clean curb or gutter. Had he turned into the parkland, off the main road? He tried to think back, but part of his memory was a blank—and for good reason. When the phone rang he’d lost track of everything else. There had been a moment when he was fumbling around in the dark, looking at the seat next to him, making a turn at a traffic light without making sure it was the right light. He could have taken the wrong turn completely.

But he hadn’t turned since then. It still wasn’t too late to backtrack.

He slowed the car, then waited to make sure no headlights were coming up behind him. Nothing moved in either direction. The road was narrow—definitely not a paved suburban street. Branches scraped the hood as he pulled far to the right, readying the car for a tight turn, his headlights raking the brittle shadows. He paused for a moment and rolled the window down, and then turned back the key in the ignition to shut off the motor. Outside, with the car quieted, it was hushed. He listened for the barking of dogs, the sigh of distant traffic, but heard nothing. A watery sound, as if the parkland around him were swamp or marsh, lapping at the roots of the trees that hemmed him in. He wasn’t sure that he had room to actually turn around; the road was narrower than he’d thought. He had better just back up until it widened.

He twisted the key and heard nothing. Not even a solenoid click. He put his foot on the gas and the pedal went straight to the floor, offering no resistance. The brake was the same. He stamped on the clutch, worked the gearshift through its stations—but the stick merely swiveled then lolled to the side when he released it. The car had never felt so useless.

He sat for a moment, not breathing, the thought of the repair bills surmounting the sudden heap of new anxieties. A walk in the dark, to a gas station? First, the difficulty of simply getting back to the road. Did he have a flashlight in the glove box? Was he out of gas? Would he need a jump-start or a tow? In a way, it was a relief that he was alone, because his own fears were bad enough without hers overwhelming him.

He started again, checking everything twice. Ignition, pedals, gears. All useless. At least the headlights and the dashboard were still shining. He rolled up the window and locked the door. How long should he sit here? Who was going to come along and…

The phone.

Jesus, the cell phone. How he had put off buying one, in spite of her insistence. He didn’t care for the feeling that someone might always have tabs on him, that he could never be truly alone. What was it people were so afraid of, how could their lives be so empty, and their solitude of so little value, that they had to have a phone with them at every minute, had to keep in constant chattering contact with someone, anyone? Ah, how he had railed at every driver he saw with the phone in one hand and the other lying idly on the steering wheel. And now, for the first time, he turned to the damned thing with something like hope and relief. He wasn’t alone in this after all.

The cell phone had some memory but he’d never programmed it because he relied on his own. He dialed his home number and waited through the rings, wondering if she was going to leave the answering machine to answer, as she sometimes did—especially if they had been fighting and she expected him to call back. But she answered after three rings.

“It’s me,” he said.

“And?” Cold. He was surprised she hadn’t left the machine on after all.

“And my car broke down.”

“It what?”

“Right after you called me, I got…” He hesitated to say lost; he could anticipate what sort of response that would get out of her. “I got off the regular track and I was looking to turn around and the engine died. Now it won’t start.”

“The regular track? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that I, uh—-“

“You got lost.” The scorn, the condescension. “Where are you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Can you look at a street sign? Do you think you could manage that much or am I supposed to figure out everything myself?”

“I don’t see any,” he said. “I’m just wondering if something happened to the engine, maybe I could take a look.”