Nebula Awards Showcase 2013 (18 page)

just to get that drip going

down, down,

sweets her elbow with the slip of it,

wears it like perfume.

 

I say

she's got a ways to go yet, that girl,

just a blossom yet herself, still bashful 'round the bees. I say

no way a girl can tease like that

who's been bit into once or twice.

 

So I come 'round with just a little bit of honey,

just a little, little lick, just enough to catch her eye,

creamed peach honey, just the thing to bring her by.

 

And I know she'll let me tell her how the peaches lost their way

how they fell out of a wagon on a sweaty summer's day,

how the buzz got all around that there was sugar to be had,

and the bees came singing, and the bees came glad.

They sucked—she'll blush—I'll tell her, they sucked that fruit right dry,

'till it all got tangled up in the heady humming hive.

they made it into honey and they fed it to their queen,

and she shivered with the sweet, and she licked the platter clean,

and she dreamed of sunny meadows and she dreamed of soft ice cream—

 

I'll see her lick her lips, and I'll see her bite a frown,

and I'll see how she'll hesitate, look from me up to the town

and back, and she'll swallow, and she'll say “can I try?”

and I'll offer like a gentleman, won't even hold her eye.

 

Because she'll have to close them, see. She'll have to moan a bit.

and it's when she isn't looking

when she's sighing fit to cry,

that I'll lick the loving from her,

that I'll taste the peaches on her

that I'll drink the honey from her

suck the sweet of her surprise.

The incident in the story's penultimate scene comes from something I stumbled upon several years ago—a message from a defunct e-mail discussion list that had been copied to a website (by now, also defunct).

In his 1996 message, Mike Beauchamp described a concert he'd just attended at the Brantford (Ontario) Folk Club. During one song introduction, musician Michael Doyle related an anecdote about reassuring an earlier listener that travelers always come back. Someone a few rows behind Beauchamp commented, “Sometimes they don't come back.” Sitting in that section was Ariel Rogers, widow of legendary Canadian singer/songwriter Stan Rogers—victim of a 1983 airplane disaster.

“I think,” Beauchamp wrote, “there is a song in there somewhere to be written.”

301

The guy mentions a town that means nothing to you, but the remark topples Paul into laughter. Into his big, rumbling belly laugh, the one so deep and generous that during a gig it never fails to convince the audience that they're all in on the joke with you and him.

The three of you have lingered outside the darkened club an hour beyond the show's end. Your palms rest atop your guitar case, which stands vertical before you on the cracked sidewalk. Standing not quite as vertical, Paul steadies himself by pressing a hand against the club's brick wall, just below a photocopied poster bearing an image of his face looking very serious. (Dynamic singer-songwriter Paul Muroni! says the poster. Your name appears lower down, in smaller type.) One corner of the poster has come loose. It flips back and forth in the unseasonably warm gusts that blow down the narrow street.

“But really,” says the guy, some old friend of Paul's whose name you've already forgotten, “why should you two spend tomorrow driving way up the coast for one damn gig, and then all the way back the next day? I'll fly you there tonight in my Cessna—tomorrow you can sleep in as long as you like.” His arms sweep broad arcs when he speaks, the streetlamp across the road glinting off the near-empty bottle in his grip.

Paul rubs the back of his hand against his forehead, the way he always does when he's tired. You're both tired, three weeks into a tour of what seem like the smallest clubs in the most out-of-the-way towns along the twistiest roads in New England.

Paul looks at you, his eyes a bit blurry. “What do you think?” There's a blur to his voice, too. “I'm in no condition for decisions.”

You're not sure that your qualifications for decision making are any better than his, given not only your sleep deprivation, but also the beers during the gig and the fifth of Scotch that the three of you have been passing around since.

If you ask Paul's friend to let you both spend the night here in town on the floor of his apartment, go to section 304.

If the thought of sleeping in until noon is too tempting to pass up, go to section 307.

304

This would be a different story.

Go to section 307.

307

The third time the little plane plummets and steadies, its propeller's buzz nearly lost beyond the pounding of rain on the cold aluminum hull, you turn to Paul.

“You know, maybe this wasn't the best decision.”

But Paul's snores continue uninterrupted.

Usually you're the one who can sleep anywhere, anytime. Tonight, though, Paul has achieved a blend of exhaustion and inebriation that's vaulted him into a league beyond even your abilities.

“Hey,” shouts Paul's friend, twisting around from the pilot seat, his head a silhouette in the dim glow of the control panel. “You ever used a parachute?”

For an instant you're aware of nothing but your own heartbeat.

Then the friend cackles. “Just kidding! Flown through worse than this, dozens of times. You two just sit back and enjoy the scenery.”

You peer out the dark porthole. The only scenery is the shivering wing above, illuminated ghost-like in the fan of the plane's lights.

The plane bounces again. You picture aerial potholes.

If you unstrap yourself to check on your guitar in the back of the cabin, go to section 310.

If you pound on the pilot's seat and demand that he turn the plane around, go to section 312.

310

Go to section 324.

312

Go to section 324.

324

Ice-cold water splashes your face.

If you keep your eyes shut tight and try to ignore the water, go to section 325.

If you're confused about where you are and how you got here, go to section 326.

325

Ice-cold water splashes your face. You're terribly cold, except for your arms. You can't feel your arms.

If you wonder why you're so cold, go to section 327.

If you wonder what's wrong with your arms, go to section 328.

326

This is not the choice you make.

So this section doesn't really need to be here. If it were omitted, its absence wouldn't affect your story.

Go to section 325.

328

Ice-cold water splashes your face. You open your eyes to blackness.

You're floating in freezing, heaving water. You spit out a mouthful of brine as you realize that your numb arms are wrapped around something. Whatever it is, it's the only thing keeping you afloat.

You remember the plane, and the storm. It's still raining now, the drops plinking against your scalp even as ocean sloshes into your mouth.

The last thing you can remember is aerial potholes.

You realize that something is tangled really tightly around your arms.

If you try to work your arms free, go to section 335.

If your consciousness fades,
go

338

“Now
that
is a guitar case!”

You open your eyes. A few inches away, blue medical scrubs wrap somebody's legs.

“The lining's not even damp.” It's a woman's voice. The scrubs turn and she says, “Well, good morning, Sunshine! Joining us at last, are you?”

You blink and roll your head to look up toward her face. On the way you see the metal bed railing. Hospital, you think. The woman—in her early thirties probably, tall but pudgy, her brunette hair pulled into a ponytail, a stethoscope slung around her neck—is grinning at you. Nurse, you think.

She points to a bedside table on which your guitar case lies open. Your head is too low to see inside.

“Coast Guard brought it over this morning,” she says. “Figured you'd like to keep it close, the way it saved your life and all.”

You see the case's shoulder strap—tooled leather, custom-made, presented to you by a lover three, no, four years ago to replace the case's broken handle—dangling in two jaggedly truncated scraps from each of their rivets.

Maybe the nurse notices the direction of your gaze. “They had to cut you free when they got you out of the water. That strap was so tight that your hands—”

She stops, as if she's caught herself saying more than she intended.

You look at your hands, resting atop the bed covers. They're wrapped in so much gauze that they look like two cantaloupe mummies. Both arms are also thickly wrapped, nearly to the shoulder. You try to bend one, and then the other. They don't move. Your arms don't move. What the hell—

“Calm down!” says the nurse. “Just relax. Those splints have to stay on for a week. They spent a whole night working on you in the OR. You don't want to put all that effort to waste now, do you?”

You let your head settle back into the pillow.

Your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth for a second when you try to talk. “Working on me?”

“Well.” She reaches down to adjust the covers over your chest. “Your hands got really banged up in the crash, and you were hypothermic, of course. And then that strap got tangled around your arms, choking off the circulation.”

“So they had to, what, restore the circulation?”

For a second she doesn't answer. She reaches up and pulls her ponytail over her shoulder, and then slowly runs her fingers through its end.

“Yes,” she says. “That's right.” A brunette curl wraps around her finger. “Also—”

She straightens and takes a step away. “I should tell the doctors that you're awake. They'll give you a full report.”

If you insist that she stop and tell you everything right now, go to section 341.

If you wait to hear what the doctors have to say, go to section 344.

341

“Well,” she says, “your right hand is going to be fine. Except that they had to amputate the end of your pinkie finger. Just the last joint.”

It takes you a moment to understand that word. Amputate.

But okay. Just the pinkie. You don't need that one to hold a pick. Not even finger picks. So that's okay. You'll still be able to play, no problem.

If that makes you think of Paul, and you ask how he's doing, go to section 350.

If you realize that the nurse hasn't said anything about Paul, nor the other guy, and you guess what her omissions must imply, and you recall that it was you who decided that flying would be the right choice, go to section 356.

356

“Okay,” you say. Your voice is louder than it needs to be, and you speak quickly, as if you're drowning out some other voice. “And my left hand?”

Her finger tightens in her ponytail. “You're right-handed, aren't you?”

You nod. You're busy trying to not think, so you don't wonder why she asks that.

“There was more damage to your left hand. I'm afraid that they couldn't save all the fingers.”

She has freckles across both cheeks. You hadn't noticed that before. Her eyes are green, like the eyes of the cat you had as a kid.

“You still have your thumb, though. And your middle finger should be fine. So you'll—”

If you think about Django Reinhardt, the Gypsy guitarist renowned for his prowess despite half his left hand being crippled by a fire, go to section 362.

If the only thing you can think about is how, just the other night, your biggest priority had been sleeping in until noon, go to section 373.

373

You stay in the hospital for three weeks. There's a lot of pain, and two more surgeries. You don't have insurance, of course, but the hospital's social worker says that they'll work out a payment plan for you. You meet her eyes when she says that; after a second she looks away.

This afternoon a therapist is making you squeeze a rubber ball with your left hand, but you keep dropping it. Each time he picks up the ball, without speaking, and puts it back into your hand. The two of you repeat this cycle for five minutes, glaring at each other.

Somebody punches you in the shoulder.

“Ow!” you say.

It's your nurse, the one with the freckles. You didn't notice her entrance.

“Get out,” she says to the therapist. Her eyes, though, are locked on your face.

“Look at your hand,” she tells you.

“What?”