Costume Not Included (7 page)

  "Why would I make bets with him? He knows everything that's going to happen."

  Chesney took that as a rhetorical question. "Anyway," he said, "that was Billy Lee Hardacre's theory. There's a book, we're all in it, it keeps getting rewritten, and here and there we come across traces of the previous drafts. Like fossils."

  "Like Limbo," Satan said, looking into the mists that surrounded them.

  "Maybe," said Chesney. "It's not in the current draft, but it must have been in a previous one."

  "Because," said Lucifer, "here it is." He paused. "And here we are."

  "Why show it to me?"

  "Because I like people to be knowledgeable."

  It took Chesney a moment to follow the Devil's train of thought. "I still don't see grounds for a partnership or an alliance," he said.

  "You don't?" Now the hard-featured face produced a knowing smile. "Let me point them out to you. You and I are characters in a book, a book written by someone else. We play roles prepared for us by someone else. The meaning of our existence is that we serve another's will." Lucifer fixed Chesney again with his serpentine gaze. "And that sits well with you?"

  "According to Hardacre's theory, I have free will. So do you."

  "Unless the… someone we're talking about decides to revise the draft. Then maybe I'm a snake again." Chesney shrugged in a way that he hoped showed a certain sympathy; the Devil did not appreciate the sentiment. "And maybe you're your momma's boy again, doing what she wants you to!"

  "No!" The shout could not echo in Limbo, but still it came out loud and with force.

  Another satanic smile, this one to savor a point scored. "What I hear," the Devil said, "is that there
is
a new draft being written. The Book of Chesney. In which you perform wondrous deeds and generally prance about like a latter-day prophet."

  "It's nothing to do with me!"

  The smile widened. "Not now," said Lucifer. "But what if it is the first cut at a new draft of the big book? Then everything changes again. And this time, maybe it's your legs that get taken away."

  "I am not a prophet!"

  "You would not be the first prophet to respond to the initial offer with, 'Who, me?' I believe those were Moses's very words."

  "I will not do it," said Chesney.

  "Not even if your mother says?"

  "Not even then. Especially not even then."

  Satan smiled upon another victory. "And thus it seems we do have something in common." He waited while the young man worked it through. "So," he said, when the thinking was done, "do we have an alliance?"

  Chesney did not answer right away. "What would be my part in it?" he said.

  "First, read the Book of Chesney, and see what you think of it."

  "I don't need to read it. I glanced through it once, and that was enough. It is full of things that never happened, and never will."

  "Know thine enemy's mind," said Lucifer, "always seemed part of a good strategy to me."

  Chesney had to agree. "All right," he said, "I'll read it. Then what?"

  "Then we'll see."

  "You don't get my soul."

  Lucifer snorted. "I wouldn't let your soul anywhere near my realm," he said. "You, young man, are trouble."

  And then he was gone.

  "Xaphan!" Chesney called.

  "Here, boss." The demon emerged from the mist.

  "What do you think?"

  "I don't think, boss. Way I see it, it just leads to trouble."

  "As the sparks fly up," Chesney quoted.

  "Say what?"

  "Never mind. Are Melda and my mother still going at it?"

  "Nah," said Xaphan. "In this place, we're out of time. I can put you back right when we left."

  The prospect of stepping back into the middle of a fight between the two women in his life did not entice Chesney. He thought for a moment, then said, "If I was called away to fight crime, I could just leave them to get on with it, couldn't I?"

  "I ain't gonna argue," said his assistant.

  "Then what have we got?"

  "Crimewise? You mean in that burgh of yours?"

  "Yes."

  "Coupla muggin's. And there's this stock boy gonna swipe some steaks from the supermarket when he gets off work."

  "That's it?"

  "It's a quiet night. It's too bad you didn't ask me sooner. There was a murder just before we come out to see his nibs."

  "What! A murder! Why didn't you say anything?"

  "I wasn't on duty. You was gettin' ready to have dinner with mom and the missus. I didn't wanna–"

  Chesney cut him off. "Wait, when was the murder? When exactly?"

  Xaphan produced the big old pocket watch that was attached to the chain that ran across its waistcoat. The demon flipped the gold case open and studied the dial, then said, "Bout five seconds ago, your time."

  "So is the victim actually dead?"

  Xaphan thought about it. "Depends on what you mean by dead. Heart's stopped. Breathin's stopped. Body's on the floor. Brain is windin' down."

  "So not brain dead?"

  "Nah. But pretty soon."

  Chesney was thinking. "Listen," he said, "when we step outside of the world, we step outside of time, right?"

  "Always."

  "Okay. Now, I've never asked you this, but when we step back in, do we have to come in exactly when we left off?"

  Xaphan's weasel brow wrinkled. "I think we're suppose'ta."

  "But do we have ta?'"

  The demon's brow wrinkled even more deeply. "I guess not," it said, after a moment.

  "So if I said, 'Let's go back into the world just before the murder, just in time to prevent it,' how would that be?"

  Xaphan's brow cleared. "Okay," it said, "I know this one. If someone's dead, they have to stay dead, cause otherwise you're calling a soul back from our place, or the other place, and that's not kosher. Traffic goes oneway, ya see?"

  "Oh," said Chesney, "I guess that makes sense. Too bad, then."

  "Wait," said the demon, "I ain't finished yet. You can… what's the word when you bring a dead body sorta back, so you can order it around?"

  "Reanimate? Zombie? Frankenstein?"

  "That's the one! Alphonse and me, and some of the boys, we went to see that picture. Did I laugh!"

  "But I don't want to reanimate a corpse," said Chesney.

  "You sure? They can be a lotta fun at a party."

  "I'm sure. So, dead is dead, and I can't prevent the murder."

  "Oh, sure you can," said his demon. "I was gettin' to it. If the soul hasn't actually taken a powder, you can deal yourself in a little before the deadly deed. Then the murder don't really happen, so it don't really count."

  "Really? Excellent. All right, get me in costume." Instantly, he was clad in blue and gray, gloves and half-mask in place. "So what's the setup?"

  "Well," said Xaphan, "it's a mom and pop fight. In the kitchen. Same old razzamatazz: he drinks too much, she's always playin' the bingo, blah, blah, blah. He gives her a push, she smacks him with the fry pan, he sees red, stabs her wit' the knife. She goes down, end of story."

  "Except I come in, grab the knife before he gets her, it's all good."

  "You wanna play it like that, we'll play it like that."

  "Let's go."

 

It was a three-room shotgun apartment on the third floor of a walk-up tenement. The kitchen had a view of the window of an identical apartment across the air shaft. It was dingy and lit by a single sixty watt bulb hanging from a globeless ceiling light fixture. The woman was about sixty, gray-haired, with smoker's rivulets all down her upper lip. The man was just old, his hair thin, greasy and lank, dressed in a stained sleeveless undervest and colorless pants over worn-out carpet slippers. Everything he wore was redolent of beer and cigarette ash. His eyes were moist, probably with tears that were the result of the blow he had just taken to the side of his head, where a bump was already rising.

  The knife had been on the table, where the woman had been cutting up cabbage. Now it was in his hand and he was rising from the chair into which he'd been knocked back by the swipe from the frying pan. In another second, the long blade of German steel would be buried to the hilt in her middle, slicing open her heart and piercing a lung, bringing almost instantaneous death.

  Except that the Actionary appeared. His hand flashed out at superhuman speed and, with the strength of ten men, closed about the old man's wrist. The knife fell from his nerveless grasp and seemed to Chesney to float slowly toward the floor. He caught it with his other hand, then as Xaphan returned him to non-emergency speed, he stepped back and, in a dramatic gesture, raised the weapon in both hands and snapped the blade in two.

  For a moment there was absolute silence and stillness in the room. Then the old woman said, "What the Hell do you think you're doin'? That was a hunnerd-dollar knife! Our boy Donny gave it to us on our fortieth anniversary!"

  "He was going to stab you with it," said Chesney, indicating the old man with a sideways motion of his head.

  "I never!" said the husband.

  "It was in your hand! You were getting up! It was pointed at her belly!"

  "I was, whatchamacallit…
gesturin'
with it, to make a point, like."

  "That's right," said the woman. "He likes to gesture and such!"

  "Listen," said Chesney, "I came back in time to prevent him from sticking this in your heart. By now you should be lying on the floor, dead as a mackerel."

  This information caused the couple to pause. "You're from the future?" said the old man. "Jeez, I used to read about that stuff when I was a kid. Ray Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein."

  "Don't start with that malarkey again," said his wife. "This bozo broke Donny's anniversary present."

  "Well, jeez-looeez, Marjorie, the guy did just appear outta nowhere. An' he's dressed like Buck Rogers." The old man gave Chesney the once-over, then did it again, while his nicotine-stained fingers touched the bump on the side of his head. He winced and said, "Hey, what did you do to my head?"

  "Nothing," said Chesney, "She did–"

  "I never!" said the woman.

  "You're still holding the frying pan," said Chesney. She turned and set the pan down on the counter beside the gas stove, then looked at him as if the act was conclusive proof of her innocence.

  Meanwhile, the old man was saying, "So you come from the future to stop me from sticking Marjorie – not that I ever would, baby. Does that mean we're part of some important timeline?"

  "Timeline!" said Marjorie, addressing the ceiling as if it would now confirm the idiocy of her spouse.

  "No," said Chesney. "It's not like that. I only came back by a few seconds, because when I heard about the murder–"

  "I never!" said the old man.

  "When I heard what was going to happen, it was only a few seconds after it happened." That hadn't sounded right. "Wait, I mean–"

  "Never mind all this hoopdedoo," said Marjorie. "What about the knife? That's a Henkel chef's special, cost about a hunnerd and fifty, easy."

  "Yeah," said the old man, "not to mention sennuhmennul value."

  "Xaphan," Chesney said, in a voice only his assistant could hear, in a conversation that took place outside of time, "Can we fix the fershlacklinner knife?" Chesney had long ago taught himself, aided by his mother's soapgargling, never to swear. Instead he made up nonsense words on the spot.

  "Done," said the demon.

  Chesney felt a vibration in the hand that held the knife's handle. He lifted up the Henkel chef's special and showed it whole and perfect again. "There," he said, "it's fixed."

  The old man took the knife, turned it over, examining the blade. "How'd you do that?" His watery eyes brightened. "Did you go into the future and, like, weld it with lasers?" Then he recollected what they'd been talking about before. "Wait a minute, you said you only came back five seconds. So were you, like, already here when I– I mean, when you thought I–"

  "No," said Chesney, "I wasn't here."

  "Were you on some, whatchacallit, alternate timeline? You know, parallel universe. Or did you–"

  "No," said Chesney, "I was in…" And then he thought better of it and said, "Xaphan, get us out of here."

  "Want me to make them forget we was here?"

  "I don't care. I'd rather be in Hell."

  Instantly, they were in his warm and cozy room in the outer circle of Hell. Xaphan went to the drinks cabinet, poured itself a tumbler of rum and got a cigar from the humidor. The demon lit up and blew some complicated shapes of blue smoke. "Couldn't do this on the boss's nickel," it said.

  "Why," said Chesney, "does everything have to be so complicated?"

  "What?" said Xaphan. "You mean those old fuds?"

  "They weren't even grateful."

  The demon blew some more smoke. "You want grateful, don't fix it before it happens. Fix it after it happens, when they'd give anythin' not to have had it happen." It drank half a glassful of the pungent liquor. "And even then, don't be surprised if they turn around and give you the fish-eye."

  Chesney sighed. He recognized that his assistant's view of the world was at an angle to his own, but at this moment he was tempted to share it. Still, he told himself, I did save her life, even if they both denied it. The deed stands. He said as much to the demon.

  "Deed, schmeed," said Xaphan. "So, you wanna go home? Your momma and the girlfriend, they're gonna mix it up if you don't."

  "Guess I'd better. Just let me think a little first."

  The demon poured itself another glass of rum. "Take alla time you need," it said.