As I Die Lying (19 page)

Guilt for food, a feast of failure, victuals
of victimhood.

And the shadow hungered.

Even Mister Milktoast noticed it, turning his
attention from Beth's soft wet places.

Lo, what dark through yon
window breaks?
he asked me.

More worries, old friend, I said.

I'll protect
us
, Mister Milktoast said.

No. This isn't like it used
to be. You can't just send me away, inside, the way you did when
the boots came. Because, you see,
I’m
already inside
.

And then Loverboy was inside, too, inside
Beth, and the shadow dissolved, perhaps driven away by the bright
wall of sensation. And silent bells rang through the night,
invisible rockets cut their white arcs, velvet waterfalls ran their
course, time swallowed its own ticking heart. But those things were
not for me.

Act Two was all Loverboy, and he stole the
show until the curtain fell.

The critics raved.

CHAPTER TWENTY

"Something smells good," Beth said.

She stood on the landing, my bathrobe held
closed over her body with one delicate arm. I dared a glance at her
face and she was smiling, her cheeks faintly pinked. So she didn't
know.

But how could she know? Loverboy looked just
like me.

"How do you like your eggs?" I asked.
“Scrambled or Freud?”

"Not only good in bed, but he cooks, too. I
could get used to this."

She stepped down the carpeted stairs and came
to me. I stared at the eggs, at chickens that would never be born,
while the whites and yolks congealed from the heat. Beth kissed the
back of my neck.

"You were something else last night. That
first time..." she whistled lightly. "That was tender and moving.
But the second and third times, you were like a man possessed."

I stirred the eggs with a spatula. Bacon lay
cooling on a plate and a gallon of orange juice sweated by the
stove. Grits. This meal needed grits.

"Richard?" Beth asked, worry in her voice.
"Is something wrong?"

I gave her the Milktoast smile. "No. I had a
wonderful time."

She pulled the robe more securely over her
body. "For a second there, I thought you were ashamed. I know I'm
not as pretty in the daylight..."

I turned, dropping the spatula in the
skillet. “You're beautiful.”

It wasn't her fault—she wasn’t yet a
contestant in the Blame Game. She shouldn't have to suffer for my
shortcomings. And if pretending saved her from being hurt, then I
would pretend for a thousand years.

Besides, I was used to
taking the blame. Hell, they said I enjoyed it, and who was I to
argue with
them
?

I hugged her as the eggs sizzled behind
me.

"Why did you sneak off this morning? I wanted
to wake up in your arms, Richard."

Because I wasn't sure whose arms they would
be. And that was why I slipped out of half-forgotten dreams as
well. Because while I slept, I knew that something else waded
through the marrow of the Bone House. And while I was awake, it
dreamed. Terrible dreams, sweat-stained pillows.

We had breakfast and coffee and I drove her
to her apartment, concentrating on the road. Beth talked about a
test she had tomorrow, biology or some other science. I nodded just
enough to keep her talking as the wheels whispered on the
asphalt.

I pulled into her driveway. She said she
wanted to change clothes before class. She kissed me again and
opened the door.

"Phone me?" she said, leaning toward me. Her
breasts swayed tantalizingly, but Loverboy didn't rise to the
yeasty treat. But he grinned from his window. Maybe even
winked.

"Sure, Beth."

"Oh, and one more thing. Remember when I said
I like to be careful?"

"Uh-huh."

"I wasn't careful enough."

Did she mean careful about not falling in
love? And that she now meant...

"Do you mean careful about falling in love?"
I asked.

"Why are you so anxious to talk about that?"
She frowned. “We don’t need worries right now, remember? That's not
what I meant."

"What, then?"

She smiled again, eyes squinting. "Birth
control. Protection. I got so carried away that I forgot."

What I fool I was. Unprotected love.

It was a missed
conception
, Mister Milktoast
said.

Shut up, smartass. This is
serious
.

"Hey, Beth, I'm sorry. I assumed—"

“
Takes two to tango,
handsome. Heat of the moment and all that.”

"I should have..."

She shook her head. "I can take a pill when I
get inside. Should be okay. Don't worry about it."

Yeah
, Loverboy said.
Make like a
morning-after pill and get the fuck out.

"Well, at least you don't have to worry
about—um..."

"Disease?" She laughed. "The upside of
sleeping with a virgin. But remember, good things are worth a
little risk."

Which good thing? Loverboy? I didn't want to
think about that.

And Little Hitler? The very embodiment of
unsafe sex.

I looked toward Beth's apartment, the bottom
of a two-story duplex. A curtain parted and I saw half of a face
watching us. Loverboy twitched. The face was female.

"Bye, Richard. Call me later." Beth said. She
blew me a kiss and then she was gone. Then I was gone, too, deep
inside myself, vacuumed into the dead black throat of my own mind.
The car door slammed as if it were a door to another universe.

Loverboy rolled down the window. "When do I
get to meet your roommate, Honey Buns?"

"Sooner or later," she said. Then she smiled
again. "Because I plan on having you over in a few days. Maybe to
spend the night."

Loverboy watched as she jiggled up the
sidewalk to the door, then she waved and went inside. The pale face
in the window stared a moment longer before the curtain dropped.
Little Hitler drove to work, ten miles over the speed limit.
Bookworm slowed him down when we reached the Shady Valley town
limits.

It was my favorite time of morning at the
bookstore, when the sun was at just the right angle to shine fully
onto the varnished oak flooring. It lit up the three round tables
in the reading corner, where the local poets liked to sit and
scratch their beards thoughtfully, with the blank paper staring up
into their faces as if daring them to make a mark. The poets never
sat there in the morning because the light would give away the
pallor of their skin and strip away all mystery. They only came at
dusk, when the corner was draped in dramatic shadows, where they
hunched like toothless ghosts who have returned to an immolated
retirement home.

The smell of French vanilla coffee filled the
store, settling like dust on the rows of books, seeping into the
pages as if to make the words more exotic. Miss Billingsly liked to
have the coffee on hand for the customers. She believed it kept
them in the store longer and sped them around the aisles. But
sometimes they spilled on the merchandise. Two days earlier, Arlie
Wesson, an elderly local who always wore a camouflaged hunting
vest, had turned jittery. He sloshed his coffee over a stack of
self-help books.

I was cradling my own coffee that morning
with both hands, leaning over the counter that made a rectangular
island in the front of the store. I was thinking about Beth, about
skin and sin, about what had happened after Loverboy took over.

What if it was Loverboy she really liked?
What if Loverboy was the one who had connected with her on the most
intimate and primal level?

While I was thinking, Bookworm came out and
slipped into my skin. He was usually on duty at work, the one with
the excellent memory that kept track of new releases and
International Standard Book Numbers. He found joy in the orderly
shelves and the hush of readers and the odor of cream paper and
ink. And, of course, the lies inherent in fiction.

He also had the quiet charm that delighted
the little old ladies who frequented the store. Loverboy dozed,
unless an attractive woman walked in. Little Hitler sulked in his
dark corner, plotting revenge for imagined slights. Mister
Milktoast hovered, ready to placate unhappy customers. The black
shadow behind them stayed silent, sleepy, the most elusive of
imaginary friends.

Bookworm looked around the store. A retiree
in a fluorescent blue jogging suit was puttering around in the
gardening section, and in the back, a middle-aged woman was busy
slapping at the hands of her two little children, who kept reaching
for the shiny Thomas the Tank Engine books. Satisfied that all was
normal, Bookworm gave my body back.

The bell over the door rang. I turned,
Loverboy a fraction of a second behind.

She was young. She wore a periwinkle dress
with a pattern of yellow flowers. I watched her through the steam
of my coffee, trying to fit her into a genre.

She had skin of mystery, lips of romance, and
hair of poetry, but her eyes were science fiction.

My heart did a tiny somersault as she headed
for the horror section. She smiled as she passed.

Loverboy throbbed to life.

"Good morning," Loverboy said. "Let me know
if I can help you."

...out of those clothes and
onto my weasel meat
, he silently
added.

"Just looking," she said.

So am I, Sweetbreads. Just
keep moving and shaking
.

She walked down the aisle as if through a
gauntlet of knowledge, classical literature on the left, philosophy
and religion on the right. The flooring creaked under her sandals,
but the footfalls were swallowed by the walls of books. She stopped
in front of the horror shelves like a worshipper before a dark
shrine.

Loverboy watched as she scanned the rows of
titles, which were alphabetized by author. Barker, Campbell, Keene,
three shelves of King, Koontz, Lovecraft, Nicholson, Rice, Saul,
Straub. The great masters who had wrestled their demons, pinning
them onto paper. Plus some hacks.

She must have felt Loverboy's eyes on her,
burning and peering and leering and stripping. She looked back with
eyes like a kitten's, quick and gray.

"Looking for anything in particular?" I
asked, walking around the counter. I stepped close enough to smell
the faint honey of her red hair.

"I'm looking for a present for my boyfriend.
His birthday is next week." She twirled a strand of hair between
her fingers. I would have bet she tossed a mean lariat.

Fit to be
tied
, Mister Milktoast said, sounding
scarily like Loverboy.

"Does he like horror?"

"Not really. But I do, sometimes."

"You go to Westridge?"

"Yeah. I'm majoring in English."

"Liberal arts, uh?"

"No, not arts. Just, like, reading and
stuff."

A faint whiff of patchouli rose off her neck
like a morning mist or a hippie’s hangover.

"We give a five-percent discount to students.
When you find what you're looking for,

I'll fill you out a discount card. Your
boyfriend, what does he like?"

"How-to. Like motorcycles and stuff. And
science stuff." Her lips were in a constant smile, and her science
fiction eyes played plot twists.

"We have an excellent science section," said
Bookworm. "I'd be glad to show it to you. Would you like a cup of
coffee? It's free."

"Sure, that would be cool."

"Actually, it’s warm. Cream or sugar?"

"Just cream, please."

Heh heh, she wants some
cream
, Loverboy said.

Bookworm showed her the
how-to section and the science section, and went up front to get
her coffee. The other customers were still browsing, like cattle
grazing. Janet Evanovich, Stephanie Meyer, the latest bestselling
guide to getting rich quick through the marketing of get-rich-quick
books. The cream made white coils in the coffee. When Bookworm
carried the mug back to her, she was reading the jacket liner of
Carl Sagan's
Cosmos.

"That would make an excellent gift." I handed
her the coffee. "Unfortunately, it's fairly expensive. All those
color photographs really jack up the price."

"Steve would really get off on this,
though."

"$49.95, plus tax. That's what I call real
love."

"Well...he's sort of like bad habit that
won't go away. You know, like when you scratch when you're not
supposed to. It feels good for a while, but then you have to itch
some more." She looked down at the open book. "But he'd really love
this. He freaks out on space."

She sipped her coffee. I watched her
delicious bicep tighten from the weight of the book. Why was I
doing this? I had dipped a toe into the waters of romance with
Beth, then dove headfirst without looking into the black river of
the heart, and drowned like a rat jumping a sinking ship. Did I
still thirst?

No, not thirst.

Hunger.

Hunger that arose from deep inside, away from
the cluttered kitchen of the Bone House. Hunger from somewhere
beyond, somewhere dark.

Loverboy? Where was that sonovabitch? I
swear, he’s the kind of guy you don’t want to turn your back
on.

"I don't think I want to spend that much
money," she said, tossing her hair like a colt tosses its mane.
"It's the thought that counts, you know."

She slid the book back into its space on the
shelf.

"What kind of English Lit do you like?" I
asked, as she tilted her head to read the titles.

"I don't like much of it.
I'm up to the American stuff right now. Thoreau is about as dull as
watching paint dry, and Twain's okay but they skip through him real
fast, ‘cause he says 'nigger' and stuff. Hemingway's a real
asshole. And Faulkner, Jesus, what a joke
he
is."