Dreams (21 page)

Jimmy Kerr looked at the stack of unpaid bills on his desk, booted up his computer and opened his financial institution's online banking site. Then he read his balance.

He muttered something under his breath and inhaled. Told his heart to slow down. The fight-or-flight reflex might have worked wonders for Cro-Magnon Man facing an angry woolly mammoth on the plains of northern Europe but it didn't seem particularly useful to a guy trying to keep his financial head above water and not having a hell of a lot of luck.

He shut down the banking site, switched to his word processor, and opened a new file. His mind went blank. He had no idea for a story, not even a title. He'd been standing behind the counter at Crazy Crepes, the fast food joint where he put in forty hours a week to supplement his writing income, and . . .

Actually, his minimum wage job at Crazy Crepes was his main source of income. What he made from writing was the supplement. When he made anything from his writing.

But anyway, he'd been standing behind the counter, his French-style beret cocked at the precise angle that the Employee Handbook prescribed and his blue-and-white striped shirt proclaiming his occupation, when Jordan Elster strolled in.

The place was hopping with noontime customers, shoppers stopping in for a bite before resuming their pursuit of the perfect pair of shoes, office slaveys seeking relief from the prison-like surroundings of their workplace, school kids cutting classes and whooping it up in midtown.

Elster waited in line until he reached the counter and for the first time made eye contact with Jimmy.

He made a startled sound. Something like, "Gaak?"

Jimmy said, "Hello, Jordan. You slumming today? What can I do for you? What about our Summer Strawberries and Cream Delight?"

Elster made a quick recovery. Well, fairly quick. He said, "Jim, I didn't know you – " He made a gesture indicating the fast food joint.

"It's just temporary," Jimmy said. "I'm a little behind on my rent and the landlord is getting cranky. And a friend of mine who works here is out sick and he called me to fill in for him."

Right,
he thought,
and I've been here for four years and eleven months and in another month when I get my Five Year Pin my name gets entered in the Win-a-Trip-to-France Lottery.

"Are you okay?" Elster asked. "I mean, this job can't pay very much, and – "

"No, it doesn't."

"Jimmy, I'd like to offer an advance but you know we're kind of tapped out up at Grand Periodicals
.
And you're already into us for a couple of stories that you haven't delivered yet."

"I have one in my computer now, Jordan. It's just about finished. All I need to do is polish it up. You'll really love it."

"That's wonderful. Great, Jimmy. You know I love your stuff. If you're blocked on crime stories why don't you try one of the other mags? You're one of our stars at
Grand Detective Cases
but you can always try a western or a spook yarn. I know you're no Johnny-one-note, Jim."

Jimmy uttered a monosyllable that he tried to make sound positive.

"Anyway," Elster said, "about this new story. Soon as it's ready just zap it to me. Or print it out and bring it by the office and we'll cut you a check on the spot. Boss is feeling pretty good these days. Strike while the iron is hot, Jim."

Jimmy said, "That'll be great, Jordan. Maybe I can come by tomorrow on my lunch hour and deliver the script. I know you'll love it."

"Course I will. And I'll have that strawberry thingie, too, if you don't mind. Summer delight, is it? In the middle of January? Somebody around here has a sense of irony."

Jimmy started building a Summer Strawberries and Cream Delight crepe. Once he'd finished it and put it in its take-out container he turned around and handed it to Elster.

Elster handed Jimmy a bill and told him to keep the change. He started to leave the establishment but instead turned back to the counter.

"Jimmy," he asked, "what's the title on that story? I might be able to get you cover billing."

Don't panic,
Jimmy told himself,
think of something and if it's a lousy title we can always change it.
Even so, what could he call the non-existent story that would satisfy Elster for the moment and hold him until Jimmy could bang out a quickie. He could pull an all-nighter and gin up something, something, and get a check from
Grand Detective Cases
, pay off some back rent, and not get thrown out of his room.

Don't panic,
but he did. He looked around desperately and spotted a female customer standing impatiently in line, wearing a navy-style pea jacket. It had started to snow outside and there were flakes on her shoulders. She was wearing a knitted cap pulled down over her ears. There were snowflakes on the cap, too. She had some kind of pin or brooch on the lapel of the pea jacket. There was a glittering black stone in it.

"'The Diamond Brooch,'" Jimmy stammered. "It's 'The Diamond Brooch.' Jordan, you'll love it. I'll have it for you tomorrow."

Elster frowned. "Sounds kind of old fashioned. You know we go for hardboiled in
Grand Detective Cases.
"

Jimmy felt himself sweating. "Don't worry about that, Jordan. That's just a working title. We can change it. I'll think of something hotter. Or you can change it. Story's the thing, isn't it? Isn't that what you always say? Story's the thing. Rose by any other name, isn't that so? You're going to love this one. I promise."

"Okay," Elster said. "I'll take your word. I'll be in the office tomorrow, Jimmy. Don't let me down, please."

Jimmy felt a tap on his shoulder. He half-turned, saw out of the corner of his eye Pierre Bonhomme, the manager of Crazy Crepes. "Gotta keep the line moving, Kerr," Bonhomme growled. "Customers are in a hurry. Gotta move the product." Jimmy knew that Bonhomme's real name was Peter Goodman. Corporate insisted that every Crazy Crepes manager have a French name, whether he was from Brooklyn or from Bangladesh.

Jimmy grunted and turned back. Elster had disappeared into the crowd. Thirty seconds later Jimmy was building a Chocolate Decadence Love Dream Crepe for the customer in the knitted cap and pea jacket. For the first time he actually noticed her beyond her outfit and jewelry. She was a startlingly skinny teenager with a bad complexion. Couldn't have been more than fifteen.

That was today. Now it was night. Jimmy was sitting in front of his computer staring at a blank screen while the cursor blinked and blinked and blinked at him. He shook his head and surveyed his room. He stood up and walked over to his dresser. Bent over and opened the bottom drawer. Removed some rumpled tee shirts and stood staring.

He picked up a baggie of dried vegetable matter. Held it up to the light and shook it sadly, then laid it back in the drawer, humming a couple of bars of the "Down to Seeds and Stems Again Blues." Looked at a pint bottle of house brand scotch from the corner convenience store. Picked it up, held it to the light, turned around and dropped it in his waste basket.

That left the bottle of Vieux Carré absinthe that Jordan Elster's boss, Zachary Grand, had sent to Jimmy when one of his stories won the Grand Publications Annual Readers Poll Grand Prize. What was that story? "Nashes to Nashes, Rust to Rust." No, that wasn't the one. Oh, yes, ".45s for My Lady." That was the one. He'd scored a great cover painting to go with that story. As soon as the issue hit the newsstands he got all his classmates in Jordan Elster's creative writing class to stuff the ballot box for him.

Winning the contest brought him a cash bonus, too. Which of course was gone before the check had even had time to clear the bank. But the bottle of Vieux Carré – he'd save that. Vowed to open it only on a special occasion, and he knew in his heart that he'd know when that special occasion arrived.

He took the bottle out of the dresser, shoved the drawer closed and went back to his desk. Behind the monitor the city's lights twinkled and pale snowflakes danced in a wintry wind. A brilliant green light caught his attention. It was probably just an advertising sign a couple of miles away. He held the bottle of absinthe in both hands. Viewed through the green liquid in the bottle, the LCD monitor screen took on the same color as the light that Jimmy had been watching out the window.

He heaved a sigh and stood up. Took a couple of steps and started his coffee maker going. He could still afford top-grade Blue Mountain coffee beans. He was able to bring home leftover ingredients from Crazy Crepes at the end of each shift. That was a big saving for his food budget. And at least he didn't have to compromise on coffee.

While he waited for the coffee to brew he sat down at the computer again. He'd dumped the unpaid bills into a desk drawer. No need letting them depress him while he tried to write. The absinthe bottle stood at his right elbow, a few inches from the computer mouse. Every time he reached for the mouse he glanced at the bottle and smiled.

He spaced down to the middle of screen, his the
Caps Lock
button and began to type.

THE DIAMOND BROOCH

By James Otho Kerr

He looked up and studied the city lights and the dancing snowflakes beyond the monitor. The lights out there blinked at him like a herd of angry cursors.
There are a million people in this city,
Jordan Elster had told his class,
and every one of them has a story to tell.

In fact there were several million people in the city. Jimmy had corrected Elster mentally, not wanting to contradict him out loud. And if every one of them had a story to tell, that wasn't much help to Jimmy Kerr. He had not mastered the art of mind-reading.

Even so, it turned out that the instructor, Jordan Elster, BA, MA, Adjunct Professor and Acting Chair of the Contemporary Media and Popular Culture Department, had been an actual magazine editor, and he was known to encourage his brighter students to send stories to his magazines, and as often as not he actually bought them.

The magazine that caught Jimmy Kerr's attention was
Grand Detective Cases
, and Jimmy had wound up making most of his sales to
Grand Detective Cases.
It didn't pay the highest rates in the field and it wasn't exactly a prestigious outlet, but it was a real, professional market and could be a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

Jimmy wondered if Elster had seen through his lie about filling in for a friend at Crazy Crepes. He hadn't challenged Jimmy's story, but he didn't seem convinced, either. And what difference did it make as long as he took "The Diamond Brooch" and cut Jimmy a check on the spot?

He stared at the screen. The cursor stared back at him. He squeezed his eyes shut so hard that little sparkles of light, what the heck did they call them, phosphenes or something, seemed to dance inside his eyelids. An idea, an idea, my kingdom for an idea, he thought.

An image popped into his mind. The skinny teenager with the bad complexion. The girl wearing that pin with the black shiny stone in it. Maybe there was a story there. He tried to bring the image of the girl and of the pin into sharp focus. He'd only seem the pin for a few seconds, he'd been busy making crepe concoctions, but he thought it had been faceted, like a cut diamond. But were there black diamonds? He'd heard of white diamonds, blue or yellow ones. But – black?

And besides, pinned to the lapel of a scruffy teenaged girl with zits on her face? That didn't make sense. It had to be cut glass. It couldn't have been a real diamond.

Never mind. Just assume that there was such a thing. He could always change it if he had to. Make it an emerald or a ruby or something. But for now it would be a black diamond.

What was the story?

Where would a girl like that get a black diamond? It had to be worth a couple of thousand bucks at least. She hadn't looked like a rich kid, had she? Some millionaire's sprout wouldn't go parading around midtown with zits on her phiz. Mama would have dragged her to the dermatologist at the first sign of an adolescent outbreak.

Okay, so she was a poor girl. Maybe homeless. Maybe a runaway. She had some money, she'd bought the Chocolate Decadence Love Dream, hadn't batted an eye when he handed it to her. Laid a bill on the counter and waited for her change. Burned him for a tip, though, the rotten little chippie.

What was a poor kid doing with a diamond brooch? A black diamond brooch. A startlingly rare, fabulously valuable black diamond brooch.

Huh. Maybe he was getting somewhere. He slid his elbows on the battered desk, thumped his forehead onto them and tried to think. Man, was he tired. He'd been up half the night, last night, slamming down shots at his favorite hangout, the Pitcher's Mound Saloon. Owner bragged that it was the city's only all-baseball bar. Twelve months a year, twenty-four-seven, there was always a ball game on the TV.

The Pitcher's Mound belonged to Louis Ransome, Lefty Lou Ransome. He'd been a pro baseball player for twenty years. Been up and down the minors, from the Three-Eye League to the old PCL when the San Francisco Seals and Oakland Oaks used to battle it out in double headers, playing one game in each city on the same day, sharing a ferry ride across the bay between games.

Lou had been called up to the majors for a cup of coffee more times than he could remember. Never stuck but his name and his stats were in the official record book and he decorated his saloon with baseball caps and photos of himself in a whole wardrobe of different uniforms – Boston Braves, Washington Senators, Philadelphia Athletics, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, St. Louis Browns. He had a million stories. His favorite was about pitching for the Bushwicks, a semi-pro team, when he was fifty years old. They were playing the House of David on a night when the fog was so thick the batters couldn't see the ball until they heard it pop into the catcher's mitt. Ransome claimed he'd thrown a no-hitter that night and he had a yellowed clipping from
The Brooklyn
Eagle
to prove it. Had it in a frame and kept it on the wall behind the beer pump where he could point it out to any lush dumb enough to doubt his word.