Bedbugs (49 page)

Fucking officer! Always has to look so goddamned good!

Using two cooking mitts, I pick up the steaming wok by the handles and carry it over to the counter. I fetch two plates from the cupboard, put a pile of dried Chinese noodles onto each plate, and then scoop about half the mixture onto each plate.

The smell is intoxicating. I haven’t had this dish in years, not since Ma died, back in ‘79.

I go over to the table and slide one plate in front of Roy, and put one where I’ll be sitting. Then I get two beers from the refrigerator.

Sam Adams I.P.A.

I’ve spared no expense for this dinner party.

I open both bottles of beer and place one at each setting. Then I put a fork on top of a napkin beside each plate.

Before I sit down, I open another cupboard door and take down a small bottle I have hidden way in back. The bottle is filled with a fine white powder.

“This is the finishing touch,” I say.

I can tell that Roy isn’t impressed by my smile.

After unscrewing the cap, I sprinkle a generous amount of the white powder onto one of the plates. It looks like snow on the mountains. Then I sit down, take a long slug of beer, and pick up my fork.

“Should we wait . . . until it’s cold?” I ask.

My voice is shaking terribly now, but this is the moment I’ve been waiting for.

For nearly thirty years.

Although he may not know it, it’s the moment Roy’s been waiting for, too. I’ll bet for him it must have felt like an eternity.

Using my fork, I mix the white powder into the gingered tuna until it dissolves. The additional ingredient doesn’t change the smell. The ginger’s too strong. But as I scoop up a forkful and hold it, steaming, under my nose, I know it will change the taste, ever so slightly.

No matter.

It’s just not gonna be the way Ma used to make it, no matter what.

“I’ve owed you for a long time, buddy,” I say, nodding at Roy and holding my forkful of food out like I’m toasting him. “A very long time.”

The gingered tuna is still steaming as I open my mouth and slide it onto my tongue.

I was right.

There’s a sharp, almost bitter taste that cuts like a razor through the delicious sweet-and-sour flavor of the gingered tuna. I crunch a sliver of water chestnut between my teeth, and wash everything down with another long guzzle of beer.

“Come on, Roy!” I say, still smiling. “Why are you just sitting there? You should try this. I’ll bet it’s the best damned meal you’ve had in . . . probably in thirty years.”

I almost laugh out loud, but Roy doesn’t move, doesn’t even bat an eye as I scoop up another forkful of the food. I can see a large, whitish lump of the rat poison I’ve mixed into it, but I open my mouth and eat it anyway, swallowing the food quickly in spite of its heat.

Another swallow of beer washes it all down.

By now I can feel a prickly sheen of sweat breaking out on my forehead, but I ignore it as I continue to eat.

Roy still sits there, doing and saying nothing.

I notice for the first time that his mouth is hanging open. He looks like he’s hungry and wants to eat, but then—Stupid me!—I realize why he isn’t eating.

His hands are still tied to the arms of the chair; and even if they weren’t, even if he could load up his fork and get the gingered tuna up to his mouth, I’ll bet he wouldn’t be able to swallow because of the belt I have looped around his throat and tied to the back of the chair to keep his head up.

I stare straight into his eyes and try to ignore the sudden, sharp twisting of pain I feel deep in my gut. Without looking. I fork more food into my mouth and swallow it without even chewing. A little bit dribbles onto my chin, but I wipe it away with the back of my hand.

“You know how sorry I am,” I say in a low whisper, “for everything that happened.”

Roy doesn’t even blink. His sunken, staring eyes seem to glow with hatred.

Hatred for me!

“I know I should have warned you when I found out a couple of the guys in the company were plannin’ to frag you.”

By now my voice sounds thick and draggy to my ears, and I have trouble focusing on the crazy swirl of thoughts inside my head.

I have no idea what I’m thinking and what I’m saying out loud.

The heavy humidity and the sharp smell of cooked food fill the room. For all I know, it could be thirty years ago, and Roy and I are sitting in our hooch in the sweltering heat of Vietnam.

“That night, though,” I say, “when we were sitting there, stoned on our asses, and I saw that live grenade roll in through the door . . . I probably shouldn’t have done what I did, huh?”

I stop speaking only to take another bite of the gingered tuna and swallow.

Roy’s blank eyes never shift away from me. I can feel them, peeling back the layers of my soul, staring back at what happened that night, nearly thirty years ago.

“But you see, Roy, I
knew
that grenade was meant for you, not me. I’d been with some of the guys when they were talking about doing it. I know, as your friend, I should have warned you about it, but I still had almost nine months to serve in that fucking country. Those guys were gonna be covering my ass, just like I was gonna be covering their asses. I couldn’t betray them.

“I couldn’t do anything to stop them!

“You have to believe me, Roy!

 
“Jesus, stop looking at me like that!”

Tears are filling my eyes, making it almost impossible for me to see, but I take another forkful of food and, leaning forward across the table, slide it into Roy’s mouth. I push it far back on his tongue, but almost immediately, it slides back out and drops into his lap.

Roy doesn’t react.

How could he?

“But all I could think about that night, was saving my own ass,” I say. “So when I saw that grenade, all I wanted to do was get out of that fucking hooch before it went off. I know I shouldn’t have pushed you out of my way, and I sure as hell didn’t mean for you to fall down right next to it; but I paid for it, anyway. When that fucker went off, a nice hot, jagged little piece caught me in the leg. I felt bad that it blew you apart, but—shit! Like I said. I knew that grenade was meant for you, not me!”

The sharp pain in my gut is getting stronger. There’s a stinging, metallic taste in my mouth that even the beer can’t wash away.

I see flashes of trailing white lights across my vision, like shooting stars.

With a sudden, violent squeeze, my stomach convulses and tries to get rid of the poison I’ve eaten, but I clamp my jaws tightly shut. When I vomit into my mouth, I swallow it back down. Hot chunks of vomit burn in my nasal passages.

“I only moved to this godforsaken town in Georgia so I could be near you, near to where you were buried.”

The pain in my stomach is almost intolerable now. It sure as hell feels much worse than when that grenade fragment ripped into my leg.

I try to stand but lurch forward and bump into the kitchen table, hard. The edge of the table hits Roy’s chair arm, and I watch in silent horror as his body tilts to one side. His head catches on the belt looped through the back of the chair, and I hear a loud crack that might be his spine, or maybe his death-dried tendons snapping.

“I waited a long time until I had the courage to go out there to the cemetery and dig you up, Roy,” I say in what sounds like my last, gasping breath. “And believe me, it wasn’t easy, digging up your coffin or getting you up here into the apartment building.

“It was a bitch, even at night.

“I’m sorry you had to spend all those days out there in the trunk of my car. Especially in a heat wave like this. But you ought to be happy now. You finally did it, Roy.”

Vibrating walls of darkness are squeezing in on me with almost intolerable pressure from all sides. The pain spreads through my body like a raging fire. My vision swirls with trailing sparks and shadowy, shifting smears that move in and out of focus.

“It’s been almost thirty years since you died,” I say, “but you did it . . . you finally. . . got . . . your . . . revenge.

“Come on, Roy. . . . Hurry up and eat . . . before it . . . gets . . .too . . .cold.”

J
ust a quick word or two. . . .

I considered writing a brief introduction to each story, to explain where I got the initial idea, what—if any—autobiographical elements are involved, or why I like or, in some cases, don’t like the accompanying story. I decided against doing this, figuring that ultimately each story (just like all of us in our lives) must stand or fall on its own merits.

That being said, I should point out that each story has been revised—to a greater or lesser degree—from the way it originally appeared in print. One time on a panel at NECON, we were discussing revisions and when—if ever—a short story is truly finished. F. Paul Wilson made the comment that revision is like sex . . . “You know when you’re done.” To which Chet Williamson added: “Or you can’t do it anymore.”

Well, these stories are done. This is their final form. Never again will I go back to any of them and tinker. Which version is the author’s “preferred text”?

If you actually take the time and bother to compare them, I’d have to say whichever one you like better.

Before I go, though, I would like to thank Rich Chizmar for publishing this collection. You are a true friend, Rich. I also want to thank my
compadres
, Matt Costello, and Jim Connolly for their contributions to this collection and for their abiding friendship over the years. And I especially want to thank my good friend Glenn Chadbourne for doing an
incredible
job with the illustrations in the front of this book. I couldn’t be happier with our collaboration.

Thank you, Rich, Matt, Jim, and Glenn.

And so for now. . . for all of you . . . “Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the . . .”

Matthew J. Costello

I
know . . . this is the place where I should give some heartfelt closing words about Rick Hautala, the writer of all the stories in this book. And I will. In a few moments.

But first, some other
words
of some relevance.

When I decided to stop reading comic books and start reading books I . . .

No, I better stop right there. That’s a lie. No decision was involved. It was a
discovery
. Paul on the way to wherever and a thunderbolt knocks him off his DC Comics book horse.

The above, as a side note, is a fragment. Not a complete thought, as the nuns used to opine. As was the sentence just before the one you’re currently reading. Interesting. Become a writer and you can violate rules of grammar.

And you can even start a sentence with “and.”

Not that I would ever do that.

But I digress. My apologies. The point I was on my way to making was this: when I jumped from
Challengers of the Unknown
to
Seven Days in May
not only did I discover the sweet wonder of the world of books, I discovered that there were people behind those books.

More importantly, I discovered that each imagined world, the events, the people, all those words came from someone who walked out to the front yard to get his paper, or was raising kids, or writing lots of other things because we all know how hard it is to be just a novelist. So hard now, to be sure—but yes, even back then.

For example, I love the now-lost adult fiction of John Christopher, books that, for reasons I should really save for a really big digressive essay, were seminal to a lot of what happened in 70s genre.

But those books are all gone. Amazing works. My copies of books like
The White Voyage
and
Not a Blade of Grass
were all destroyed in the Floyd flood and—what the hell is a hurricane doing coming to suburban NYC anyway and washing away my entire library? Jeeez!

John Christopher eventually made a name for himself with his tripod series of YA books, classic SF and fantasy that was as good as it gets in the YA world. Harry Potter should hide himself in shame.

And (see, I did it again!) when I went to find John Christopher, to track him down, to enlist him as a guest for the Horror Writers Association conference, I discovered that his name was really Sam Youd, and that he lived on the island of Jersey, that he still was writing. . . .

Key words there, my friends . . .

Still was writing . . .

Because you see that is what it’s all about. It’s not about hitting those best-seller charts, though, god, we’d all love to be there. (At least those of us who write. I guess readers would feel a bit confused if somehow they landed on the
New York Times
list.) We want the big movie, the success, the people on the beach all oiled up and writhing as we scare and suspense them while they turn nut brown. We want that.

But what this writing life is really about is . . . doing it.