Bullettime (22 page)

“That’s interesting that you saw a girl who looked kind of like the girl you were into, working in the same place and interacting with the same father. Sure it wasn’t the same girl?”

“Yeah, of course,” Dave says. “I’m not crazy or something. I mean, it could have been her, but it was like something was missing.”

“What was missing? Her attention turned to you?”

“Something . . .” Dave searches for the word for a moment, and finds it, thanks to an afternoon spent at St. Mark’s Bookstore a few days prior. “Ineffable.”

“Would you say,” Anne says as she leans forward, over the plates, “that I have a certain ineffable something?” She flashes a little bit of cleavage; a scattering of freckles make it look almost accessible.

“You’re . . .”

“Huh?”

“Her?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Dave says. “I just thought you were trying to say something. I mean, you know things. Your show tonight—secret society?”

“Yeah, that’s a good line,” Anne B. says. “If I do say so myself.”

“She said that,” Dave says.

“I must have read that somewhere,” Anne B. says. “I have a little scrapbook of you.”

“Why?”

Anne B. shrugs. “What a strange question. I mean, it’s a good question, but it’s strange that you ask it. If someone liked, I dunno, Bruce Springsteen, do you think he’d ask ‘Why?’”

“He’s a musician. He tries to get your attention.”

“And you weren’t doing that? If not my attention . . . then that girl’s?”

Dave says, “Well, it didn’t work. And I ended someone’s life. I think about that every day. It wasn’t even anyone who had hurt me. Those assholes are still walking free.” Then he realizes something. “Wait—Erin said that thing about a secret society to me, in my room. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t blog about it. There was nowhere for you to read it!”

Anne B. stands up, palms out. Her voice is slow now—she’s a real actress—and soft too. “Well, let me show you my scrapbook. I’m sure I clipped some article that mentioned it.”

“You know her.” His voice is hard all of the sudden. The months on the street, the growling stomach, the cold that never leaves the bones, the running from the police, the crusty jeans full of piss, all in three little words. There’s the killer, back again.

Anne B. doesn’t answer. She does bend over to rummage through a milk crate. Even that pose is provocative, or maybe I’m just a femtosecond too close to Dave Holbrook, and not a femtosecond too far after all.

“You’re from around here. Maybe you eat at the diner. You heard her talking, or she just sat down one day and told you everything. She has that way about her.” Dave takes a step forward. “Where is she? Did her father send her away? Did she kill herself? You even act like her!”

Anne B. turns around, back straight. She has the receiver to a cordless phone in her hand, her finger on 1. I presume she already pressed 9, and maybe even 9 and 1. “You know, Dave, I wanted to help you out. You’ve been important to my work, and obviously you’re sick. Maybe you shouldn’t blame some girl for your problems. It’s the easiest thing to leave when someone comes up with a great idea to shoot up a school, and even easier to call the police when she . . . or if she actually feels dangerous.”

“It’s more than that,” Dave says. “All sorts of things happened. She’s like a force of nature—”

“She’s a kid. A kid your age,” Anne B. says.

“And look at me! Hell, you wrote a song about me!” Dave Holbrook doesn’t quite know, but he knows enough. He must feel me next to him, feel all of us who have had a glimpse of the Ylem. He starts babbling about Erin. Who she
really
is. The number twenty-three. “Look, even as we speak, it’s two-thirty a.m.! There’s a twenty-three right there. I’ve been noticing them everywhere, and that comes from—”

Anne B. presses 1. “Should I press it again?”

“Look,” he says. No, he doesn’t say it. I say it. Dave sees the phone in her hand, hears her voice in his ears, and he runs away into somewhere deep in his head. Anyone else would be catatonic, but there’s me, just out of phase thanks to Eris, and so I step in. “I can prove it.” I’m not supposed to do this. I’ve seen this film before. Anne B. makes to call the cops, Dave passes out. She has a change of heart and puts him in her bed with the help of a neighbour. He stays for two nights and three days—23!—and Anne B. even puts Dave’s underage murderous cock in her mouth one night after she comes home drunk from another performance of her show. Then he leaves again, with sixty dollars in his pocket and permission to use the shower again if he has to, an offer which he never takes Anne B. up on.

But I’m in the body again, after so many months/years/decades. I can rewrite the script. “I can prove it.” And I walk to the window Anne B. has left open a crack. A few desultory snowflakes drift in from outside. I throw the window open, and step out onto the fire escape. Anne B. shouts at me to come back in her best drama class Nurse Ratched voice. She can really project, but this is the Lower East Side and nobody here has cared about a screaming woman for a long, long time. It’s nice to have a body again, even one half-starved and frozen and drunk. I put my hands on the railing and it’s so cold it burns. I get a foot up, then the others and I feel Anne clambering out behind us. “You shouldn’t be out there! Don’t do it!”

It’s true. I should be on the floor of the apartment, unconscious. Anne should be screaming, but different words. The river of time has already been dammed up. This is a strange new universe—one where we can write our own destinies. One where I can, anyway. I can do anything now. “I shouldn’t be anywhere!” I tell Anne. I don’t turn back to look at her though, so maybe she doesn’t know I’m smiling. “And I can do whatever I like.” I take a step and show her what I mean by walking across the nothing, two stories over the asphalt. Then I cross the street and turn down the block, heading west toward the river, and New Jersey.

END

This book was a long and weird time coming. For a few years there, it seemed that whenever a publishing company got interested in
Bullettime
, there would be a school shooting and I’d receive a rejection letter. So thanks, in the first instance, to ChiZine Publications for being less skittish, and luckier. I’d also like to thank Carrie Laben and Tim Pratt for enthusiastic early reads, and Olivia Flint for more or less everything, as always.

Nick Mamatas is the author of four and a half previous novels, including
The Damned Highway
with Brian Keene, and
Sensation
. He’s also an anthologist—recent titles include
Haunted Legends
, co-edited with Ellen Datlow, and
The Future is Japanese
, co-edited with Masumi Washington. Nick’s short fiction has appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
,
Weird Tales
,
New Haven Review
, and the Canadian literary journal
subTERRAIN
, among many other periodicals and anthologies. A native New Yorker, Nick now lives in California, but first he spent several years living in Jersey City, New Jersey.