Mercury Man (3 page)

“Sure. Just down from Fabricon, the squeaky clean computer folks. Hang on, will you? This cheap tobacco stinks. I've got to find my Sobranie.” Jack hustled the lunch plates into the sink and left the room.

Suddenly Tom had an idea: what would happen if he sent away for one of the Mercury Man rings? He knew it was ridiculous, and he wouldn't dare tell his grandfather, who would roar with laughter. But the notion had taken hold of him, and it teased and tempted him for no reason he could think of.

He jumped for the pen on the counter, tore off a piece of paper roll, and scribbled down the Harbour Street address of Mercury Man Comics.

He knew if he sent away he would just be wasting a stamp and the post office might not even send his letter back. Or else it would go to the wrong address, or to the old man in the amusement park, who would probably throw it away. But Tom didn't care, because the idea had suddenly taken hold of him that if he sent to the old address he might find a portal that led into the past!

He knew all about portals — or portholes, as he liked to call them — crossing points where you could go from one world to another. Of course they were just
in stories; you wouldn't come across them, except as black holes or some weird aspect of physics. Even so, if they existed in physics they might exist in the world around him, even though no one had ever found one.

Maybe the only way you could find one would be to tap into the right time warp. Without that, you couldn't do a thing. And how would you know if the warp was there unless you tried?

He shoved the scribbled paper into his pocket.
I must be losing my mind,
he thought.

Some mumbling and groaning preceded his grandfather's return to the kitchen.

“Damn it all, where the hell's the Sobranie got to!”

“Want me to go get you some, Grandpa?”

Jack laughed. “Thanks, but you'd have to walk pretty far to get a tin of that stuff.”

Tom helped his grandfather wash up the lunch dishes. In the middle of this there was a knocking at the door — one of the old women owners had come about some problem. He heard Jack joking with her in the background. Carefully wiping his wet hand on his cut-offs Tom pulled out the scrap of paper and read the address.

Harbour Street
. The old amusement park. And Fabricon Computers. An up-and-coming firm, people said, and its motto was
Read the Future in Us
. Tom winced. He felt suddenly ashamed of his crazy notions, of his thoughts of the past and time warps. With a sigh mostly of relief he crumpled up the paper and threw it into the garbage.

When he got back to the apartment Tom found a note pinned to the door. It was from his friend Bim Bavasi.

“Pete told me he got a job,” it said. “I need the money and I came back to check it out. Can't spend the whole time shovelling cow dung, can I? See you later.”

Tom smiled, but at the same time he was a bit puzzled. Bim back in the city? Complaining about being at his uncle's farm? That didn't make sense at all. His uncle didn't make him work that hard and there was swimming and fishing and shooting squirrels, and, above all, an escape from the heat. There was nothing to do in the city that you couldn't do any time. Bim must have come back because someone was pressuring him — his dad, maybe — to earn some money.

Tom had no real sense of what it would be like to have a dad around. Sometimes when he thought of his own dad taking off like he did, he felt as if he could kill
him. But there were times — when he felt free and easy and content — that he was glad not to have anyone around to push him. He saw how some dads leaned on their kids, making life hell over nothing, and he was glad to be out of it, although he knew it made things hard for his mother.

Tom stripped off his shirt, went into the bathroom, and washed his face with cold water. The Mercury Man comics and the magic ring came into his mind. He had thrown away the piece of paper but he remembered the address. Frowning at his own image in the mirror, he thought,
What's the point of having blue eyes with dark hair
? He rubbed his cheeks with his fingertips, checking the acne scars from his bad time, searching for the stubble that never seemed to come. Bim, who was eighteen, was shaving already, making jokes about Tom's baby face. And Tom was always being taken for younger than he was. Even the new kids at Blanchard High looked older than he did.

He stalked out of the bathroom and his eye caught the little table that held the telephone and his mother's notepaper.

Get it over with,
a voice from within said.
Who's going to know? If you want to do it, go ahead!

Tom hesitated, then with a sigh he sat down at the table and began to write out the necessary words: “Please send one Mercury Man Magic Ring. I enclose 25 cents. Yours sincerely, Tom Blake.”

He wrote his address on it, stuck a quarter to a piece of cardboard with Scotch Tape, and found an envelope.
He wrote the Harbour Street address on it and stuck on a stamp. Retrieving one of the
Heavy Metal
magazines from the floor, he carefully hid the letter in it.

If there's a porthole, I'll find it
, he told himself. He smiled at his own obsession. Maybe he didn't really believe there were such things as portholes, but the idea fascinated him, and the game of trying to find one was irresistible. Tom loved the thrill of pretending. He remembered a few weeks before in the city park, throwing a stone at a tree trunk.
If the stone doesn't hit the trunk I'll die tomorrow
, he had told himself.
My mother will die. Terrorists will take over the world. The planet will be hit by a huge meteor.
He didn't believe any of this, but there was a fascination in pretending. It invested the act of throwing the stone with huge excitement. The throw suddenly took on an awesome significance and put him in touch with supreme power. He was transported to the world of the Greek gods, powers who could change human lives by a single gesture and who made up their own rules about the universe. (When the stone missed, he decided on a best two out of three — a godlike privilege.)

In the tiny kitchen he began to wash up the lunch dishes. This was one of his jobs on his days off. Take out the garbage, sweep the floor, keep the kitchen in decent order — his mother wasn't very demanding. Karen Blake worked five days a week, got home at six, and made dinner for them both. On many days she used the microwave, bringing something from the supermarket, but sometimes she spent an hour doing the cooking. Tom didn't like those times — he was happier with the
microwave food — and she was always disappointed when he got impatient or disliked what she fixed for him.

They got on pretty well, although they sometimes had problems. She was always complaining that he never talked to her, but what was he going to talk about? She wouldn't want to hear jokes about sex or any filthy story — which is what the guys passed around — and she wasn't interested in the movies he watched, or in the science fiction books he read. There wasn't much left to get into, really, although they sometimes had talks about his “plans.”

“Do you have any plans, Tom?” she would ask, meaning what did he want to be when he was thirty-five, but of course he had no idea.

He was hoping that Grandpa wasn't kidding, that he really had the money to pay for college or university. Of course he didn't know what he wanted to study — it was too soon for that. And there were still some roadblocks up ahead — calculus and economics, for example.

The thought of calculus made him feel a little sick, so he was glad when the phone rang.

“Hi, it's Pete,” the voice said. Tom perked up. He and Pete played pool, and he waited for the usual “Wanta go for it?” It didn't come, though. Pete had something else on his mind.

“I got a new job,” Pete told him. “Bim might get one, too.”

“I can't believe he came back to the city,” Tom said. “Where are all these jobs coming from? A new McDonald's?”

“Are you kidding? Those are joe jobs. Naw, this is with Fabricon. Haven't you heard? They're hiring all sorts of kids. Steady work, discounts on computers. It's the greatest. You should go for it — all you have to do is call them.”

“I can't believe this. Don't you remember when we tried them at the beginning of the summer? They practically threw us out. They said they only hired through the work-study program. They weren't even friendly.”

“Everything's changed. They're looking for high school students now. Not only the nerds — everybody. You should quit that smelly diner and get over there.”

“I can't do that. They gave me the job because my grandpa asked them to. I can't just walk out on them.”

“Give them two weeks' notice.”

“Naw. … So are we going to a movie tonight?”

“Can't. Gotta go over to Fabricon. There's a presentation. Getting to know the firm. I have to take Bim. Why don't you come? You could get a job. You're crazy to wash dishes in that dump when you can be at Fabricon.”

“I told you, I can't. Hey, I hear my mum. Gotta go now. See you tomorrow, Pete.”

Tom swung the phone down and made a dash for the kitchen. He'd left the water running in the sink and it was nearly overflowing. He cleaned out the slops, and as the water swooshed away, leaving a pile of half-clean dishes, he heard the door open and his mother call his name.

“Hi, Tommy, you here? I've got someone with me tonight.”

Tom stiffened. He turned off the water, ran his hands across a towel, and almost vaulted out of the tiny kitchen.

There stood his mother, smiling uneasily, and beside her, to his dismay, he saw the stocky, bearded figure of Chuck Reichert, the assistant manager of the A&P store where she worked.

Reichert, despite his loosened tie and his rolled-up sleeves, looked uncomfortable and seemed to be sweating heavily. He cradled his sports jacket in one arm and glanced around the untidy room.

“Hi, guy,” he said, not looking straight at Tom. Reichert, Tom noticed, seemed to have an aversion to doing that, just as he had an aversion to using people's names. Instead, he favoured impersonal substitutions: it was “Hi, guy!” or “Right, love!” or “Sure, pal!” as the occasion might warrant. A man in his mid-thirties or early forties — about his mother's age — he had a beer belly and wore flashy ties. Tom hated to come too close to Chuck Reichert because his aftershave smelled like insect repellent.

“We're going to have a bite to eat, then Chuck and I are going bowling,” his mother told him. “I brought you a triple-cheese pizza and some Orangina. I guess you're going to a movie, are you?”

“Good way to beat the heat,” Chuck called out. He had tossed his jacket on an armchair and was already in the kitchen, rattling around in the fridge in search of a beer.

“Maybe. I was at Grandpa's all afternoon and I ate a ton,” Tom lied. “If you don't need me I'll go and play some pool with Pete. He just called me.”

Tom had learned that white lies sounded better if you spiced them with a bit of truth. He would have loved the pizza but there was no way he was going to hang around the apartment with Chuck Reichert there. He could walk around for a while, and when they took off for bowling he'd come back and eat in peace.

“You're going to put a shirt on, I hope,” his mother said. She looked at him intently, as if she was trying to read his mind — it was a look he knew, and it always made him feel uncomfortable.

“Sure.”

He retreated into his room, grabbed a T-shirt from a peg, and slipped it on.

“How's Grandpa?” his mother called out. Then: “Oh, you didn't even finish the dishes!” She was already in the kitchen, tearing open parcels and shifting pots and pans. He mumbled an excuse and moved back into the living room, where Reichert had settled down with a beer. He was watching the television news and scooping handfuls of chips from a bowl.

“Mets losing again,” he announced. “Why don't they get their act together?”

“See you later, Mom,” Tom said. “Sorry about the cleanup.” He could see her in the kitchen, busily making their dinner while Reichert flipped channels and munched.

She turned quickly and came to him. His mother was tall and slender, and she was pretty for her age, he knew. Her dark hair was stylishly cut and, as Grandpa Sandalls boasted, she had “poems instead of eyes.” Tom
noticed that she looked nervous and tired, however — her face was unusually pale and her greenish eyes dark-circled. He couldn't understand why she would waste her limited energy on a guy like Reichert.

She stopped in front of him and looked at him as if she were measuring how put out he was. Then she reached out and patted him on the shoulder.

“See you later, Tom. Don't forget your key. I won't be late. You have a good time. We'll have a talk about your day later.”

“Is that pan out there burning?” Reichert asked.

“Why don't you get up and turn the heat down,” Tom said.

Reichert guffawed, but his mother looked worried. “It's all right, dear,” she said. She patted his shoulder again and retreated quickly to the kitchen.

Tom felt he was suffocating. He had started for the door when his eye caught the
Heavy Metal
comic lying on the floor near Reichert's stockinged feet. He ducked back, picked up the comic without looking at Reichert, and carried it to the door. Quickly, he slipped the envelope out, dropped the comic inside the coat closet, and left the apartment.

He walked down the stairs, grim and close to tears. It was sad that his mother had to hang out with guys like Reichert. But the A&P was a “chummy place,” as she said. She was a great worrier and she seemed to be afraid that if she wasn't sociable she'd lose her job. Although there were other jobs around she had become a section manager at the store and got good discounts
on the groceries. The location suited her well and she was afraid of changes.