Something More Than Night (3 page)

Which is how I came to be looking straight into her eyes when she went beneath the tram.

2

MISTAKES WERE MADE, NOW LET’S MOVE ON

Molly Pruett’s dying thought was disappointingly banal:
Is that weird guy following us?

But then she was tipping, tipping, tipping and stars overhead were shining, shining, shining—the strange lights in the sky had faded—and metal was screeching, screeching, screeching, and Martin was screaming, screaming, screaming while Molly’s body came apart.

Cold. Sharp. Pressure. Pain.

Followed by darkness. Followed by light. Light so bright it hurt. So bright it should have gone through her eyeballs and set her hair on fire. She flinched away.

Time didn’t pass. It sidled away, sideways, crablike.

She opened her eyes again. She lay on a canopy bed in the bedroom of a little girl.

A sweet breeze from the open window fluttered the curtains and ruffles of fabric bulging from the closet door. Molly knew that scent. Orange blossoms, from the tree outside her bedroom window. Her favorite smell in the world. It smelled like contentment and warmth. It smelled like a life with everything as it should be.

Molly looked again at the lacey mass holding the closet door ajar. It sparkled with sequins. She recognized the frills of a ballet tutu.

As a child she’d liked dresses and frilly things, but hated dolls. She’d only ever had one doll, and it hadn’t lasted long. But there it sat on the dresser, its pinafore torn and gummy and mottled with silvery flakes. Molly had used transparent packing tape to wrap the doll in aluminum foil as a make-believe space suit. She made up better games than anybody else. Even Martin liked to play space war, but he always had to play the Chinese because he was older. Molly got stuck playing the losing side every time.

The whites of the doll’s eyes gleamed a dull red the color of ink from a felt-tip pen. Her suit had been shredded by debris; her eyeballs had ruptured with explosive decompression. Such were the risks of war in Earth orbit.

It was one of the few times their mother had ever raised her voice in the house. The ruined doll had been expensive. But Dad laughed. He’d chuckled about it for years afterward. It angered Mom because she felt he wasn’t supporting her. He felt she was overreacting. They argued about it, but not in front of the children. Never in front of the kids. So Molly had crept upstairs and crouched beside the closed bedroom door to eavesdrop on the secret negotiations of adults.

Thus came Molly’s introduction to the f-word. There she was, already seven years old, which was more than old enough to know all the bad words. Martin was nine, and so of course he knew all about these things. Or so she thought. But this … this was something adults spoke only to each other, in private, in times of anger so acute it could only be whispered.

This, Molly realized, was a Word of Power. It was awesome.

She couldn’t remember what happened after that, but it didn’t matter. The damage had been done. In retrospect, it was amazing their parents had insulated them from that much for that long.

Mom eventually threw the ruined doll in the trash because the sight of it upset her so greatly.

Molly remembered it all. Then remembered still more.

Wait,
she thought.
That doll went into the compactor over twenty years ago.

Wind ruffled the curtains again. The high, clear ringing of glass bells played counterpoint to the susurration of wind through the orange tree. Dad’s wind chime. That was before Mom had lost her job and they’d had to move way up north to where it was actually cold in the winter and where they couldn’t grow an orange tree. She sniffed the air again. Still orange blossoms, but now there was something else. Something acrid, wrong. Tobacco?

I was ten years old when we moved.
She sat up, looked down. She wore footie pajamas.
How do I fit in this bed? What’s happening to me?

She glanced around the room.
This is impossible,
she thought. But it was all there. Things she’d forgotten decades ago. Things she couldn’t have remembered if she tried. The stuffed animals piled high against the dresser … the crayon marks on the wall … the toy chest …

The man leaning in the door, smoking a cigarette.

Snow dusted the shoulders of his trench coat; his old-timey hat dripped meltwater on the carpet. He’d been standing there for a while, shuffling his feet, because the carpet under his shoes was muddy. His eyes were too old for his face.

He blew a smoke ring and raised his hat. “Good morning, angel. Rise and shine.”

Molly flinched. The room changed.

This was darker. More subdued. An adult’s bedroom. The susurration of wind through the orange blossoms became the buzz of traffic on the interstate a couple blocks away. She knew that if she got up and pushed the drapes aside she’d find the lights of downtown Minneapolis glinting back at her. She turned her head to the left. On a nightstand sat the alarm clock she’d dubbed Satan, and which she had gleefully crushed with a brick when she quit her godawful temp job at the warehouse. Molly rolled to her side beneath cool, smooth sheets that caressed her skin like silk. She realized she was naked. The other half of the bed lay empty yet warm. The covers had been pushed back, and the pillow still held the impression where somebody’s head had rested.

She pulled the pillow to her face. It smelled of Ria. Ria who had dumped her after an epic argument on New Year’s Eve. But that was later. But this, this interlude in the old apartment, it was the happiest time of their relationship. She missed Ria.

It felt so real. But so had her childhood bedroom. These weren’t memories. They were too vivid for that. These were random fragments of her life churned up like flotsam and jetsam on a violent surf.

Oh holy shit,
she thought.
I’m going crazy.
Was it a tumor? Something short-circuiting her brain? Had Martin slipped her something?

She sniffed the pillow again. It still smelled like Ria. A long blond hair tickled her nose.

A toilet flushed. Molly felt a little thrill. She sat up to watch Ria return to bed from the en suite bathroom.

A stranger, a man, zipped his trousers and took a seat on the edge of the tub. He watched her through the adjoining doorway. He looked bored. A smoldering cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. Wisps of smoke curlicued past the tropical-fish shower curtain that Ria had disliked so much. Snowy meltwater had pooled into the cracks between the floor tiles.

He noticed her open eyes. “Hey. You up yet?”

Molly flinched again. “Ah, rats,” he said, and rolled his eyes just as—

More memories. Melbourne. A freak snowfall. A traffic accident. A tram. Martin. A stranger. Falling.

Australia. The funeral. Somebody died—

“Look,” said a voice. “If you’re dead-set on reliving the entire thing, do me a favor. Either do it in order, or let me get a drink first. This jumping around is giving me a migraine. Keep it up and I’ll shoot my cookies on your high school prom.”

I never went to prom,
thought Molly.

A pause, punctuated with a strong whiff of cigarette smoke. The voice said, “And warn me before we get to your first period. You’re on your own for that one.”

Molly remembered. She’d fallen under a streetcar. Hadn’t she? In that case …

Holy shit. There really is a God … a drinking, chain-smoking God.…

“Am I crazy?” she whispered.

“Nah. You’re not having an ing-bing, if that’s what’s got you worried. So relax. You’re dead, angel.”

He flicked the cigarette aside. It sailed into the bedroom and fell smoldering to the hardwood floor. A faint sizzle launched a puff of smoke and a scent equal parts wood ash and varnish. Ria would have taken his head off for that. She’d spent weeks refurbishing those floors. In return their landlord had given them two months off the rent.

The man sighed. He ran a hand under the brim of his hat, massaged his forehead. It was a snap-brim fedora, she realized. Very smart, that and the suit. She’d never seen anybody dressed like this. Only in old movies.

“Well, I say dead,” he said, “but it’s more complicated than that. I guess it’s a decent start.”

“I can’t be dead. We’re having a conversation.”

“Uh-huh. Care to explain how it is you’re lying in bed in an apartment building that burned down at the tail end of the last decade?”

Molly remembered. She’d heard about the fire from friends who still lived in the neighborhood. It seemed appropriate that the happiest place she’d ever lived had been reduced to ashes. She and Ria hadn’t broken up yet, but their relationship was in free fall. All she said when Molly told her about the fire was, “My floors. Damn.”

Molly took a second look at the trench-coat man. Those eyes … “Wait. I remember. The tram stop. You were there. You followed us. There was a taxi, I grabbed Martin—”

“Yeah. Uh. About that.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Real sorry I knocked you under that train. But hey, what’s done is done. No point getting sore about it now. Bygones, right?”

“You—”

“Look, angel. I’m gonna level with you. I made a hash of things. Bad. Meant to tag your boyfriend but, well, things happen. It’s a bum rap, I know, but we’re stuck with one another.”

Boyfriend? Oh.
“Martin’s my brother.”

“For real? Huh.” He shook his head. “Oh. I’m Bayliss, by the way.” He flicked the brim of his hat with his thumbnail. “How’s tricks?”

“What?”

Bayliss shook his head. Sighed. “Never mind. Point is, I need to get you on your feet and up to speed so that I can forget this day ever happened. You need me to show you the ropes before you gum up the works. So, like I said, we’re stuck with one another, angel.”

Molly clamped her hands to her forehead, rubbed her temples. “This is insane. This can’t be real,” she muttered. “This is a dream. It must be.”

But that strange infuriating man, Bayliss, hadn’t disappeared when she opened her eyes again. Instead, he was lighting another cigarette. “Not a dream. If so, we’d be sharing it, and I don’t dream about taking a leak in some strange bird’s apartment while she has a nervous breakdown in the next room. Trust me, it ain’t on my list.”

Maybe it all really happened but the train didn’t kill me and I’m stuck in a coma.
“I’m—”

“And it ain’t a coma, either, so don’t hold out hope on that front. You squiffed out, angel. It was messy.” He puffed on his cigarette and looked away. “Sorry about that. Bygones.”

“Get out of my house you fucking lunatic!”

“Thought we agreed this heap went to ash some years back. So how’s it still your house?”

“Get out! Leave me alone!”

“Don’t get so sore. Look at it this way. You’ve just won the big bad granddaddy of all lotteries.”

Molly tossed the covers aside. Now she wore a nightgown. She knew this one; Ria had liked it so much. Bayliss averted his eyes like a reluctant gentleman, but not before a momentary glance made her feel naked.

“I gotta admit, angel, it could’ve been worse. You’re easier on the eyes than your brother.”

She reached under the bed. He was still smiling to himself and shaking his head when she pulled out Ria’s baseball bat. A remnant from when they’d lived in an iffier neighborhood. The cigarette fell from Bayliss’s mouth and hissed on the wet tiles.

She crossed the bedroom on the balls of her feet, richly varnished oak boards creaking under her soles. Bayliss raised his hands. His heels bumped the bathtub. He toppled backward, sliding down the plastic shower curtain with a grating squeak and the
pop
of broken curtain rings.

“Just calm down, angel.” He wasn’t looking at her legs anymore. All his attention was on the bat. “Okay. You’re still sore about the train. I get that. But let’s not get hysterical, okay?”

“I’ll show you
hysterical,
you sexist prick.”

Molly reared back. The bat knocked against the medicine cabinet; the bathroom was too small for her to put everything into the swing. Bayliss flopped to one side and caught the blow on the shoulder.

His shoulder made a cracking sound like a broken celery stalk, along with a slappy
thud
like a meat tenderizer hitting cheap steak. The reverberation shot up the bat and stung Molly’s fingers. Bayliss’s eyes and mouth went wide. No sound came from his contorted mouth. Just for an instant, something dark flashed in his ancient eyes, but then he found his voice and screamed.

“Ouch! Jesus, lady, are you completely out of your gourd? What’s wrong with you?”

The bat fell from her fingers. A tile cracked.

The grain of the wood against her palms, the smell of Ria’s soap, the special way the floorboards creaked in the winter, the crunch of Bayliss’s shoulder … No dream had ever felt like this.

“What’s happening to me?” she said.

“You’re about to get a hard lesson, sweetheart.” Bayliss stood, rubbing his shoulder. He gasped. “Ah, damn, that’ll take some effort to fix. First things first.” He slid his toes under the bat, kicked it off the tiles, caught it in his free hand. He waved it under Molly’s nose. “Naughty, naughty.”

He reared back. She flinched.

But suddenly they weren’t standing in the Minneapolis apartment. They were somewhere outside, at night. A crowd had gathered, staring at something Molly couldn’t see. Bayliss stood beside her. A thin dusting of pure white snow reflected the red and blue lights of emergency vehicles.

“You’ve been knocked for a loop, so I tried to go easy on you,” he said. “But it didn’t take. So here you go. You want to know what happened?” He paused long enough to fish a cigarette from his trench coat. He lit a match on his thumbnail and shielded the flame behind a cupped hand. After a couple of puffs, he flicked the extinguished match at the bystanders.

“Feast your eyes.”

Sickly dread coated her tongue: she knew this place. Molly approached the crowd of bystanders. The knot in her gut accreted more ice, stole more of her cold blood, with every step. She reached forward to gently nudge the rearmost folks aside, so they would know her presence and let her join them in their silent contemplation of tragedy. But it wasn’t necessary. In unison, half the bystanders took a step to the left, the other half to the right, though their backs were to her. Molly traversed the impromptu path and came to the front of the crowd.