The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) (33 page)

By the time she arrived at
Dabble’s
Books
, Ellen had managed to convince herself that the entire incident was little
more than the ramblings of an obsessed and possibly delusional sanitation
worker coupled with her own overactive imagination. The man had not actually
asked her anything specific, and there was no way he could know about her
dreams of the Wasteland or of the eternal sea. That was hers and hers alone.
Well, hers and Jack’s. But it was not the province of a garbage collector who
lacked the common sense to throw the parking brake before leaping from his
truck.

So why are you still thinking about
it?

Because he
had
asked her about the desert. And about the sea. And no one knew anything about
those things except her and Jack. No one else had read Jack’s book, or believed
that the places he wrote about existed. Jack himself was not supposed to exist;
nor the sea; nor the desert. They were all a part of her delusion. Dr. Kohler
was the only person she had ever mentioned any of these details to.

And what Dr. Kohler did
or didn’t know hardly mattered anymore, did it?

Only now there was a
lunatic garbageman with a glimmer of understanding, and he didn’t really seem
like a lunatic at all. She had seen her share of the deranged and the drug-addled,
people whose minds had slipped in one fashion or another, skewing their view of
the world. She had even been one herself. The garbageman did not look like
that.

He
looked
pissed
.

Maybe you’re just
paranoid.

Dabble looked up as she
entered the bookstore—not his usual sidelong glance, but something more. She
was aware he sometimes looked at her. She saw some of his stares, and knew from
the clever way he concealed them that she probably missed more than she saw.
But this afternoon was different. He simply sat behind the counter, head
lifting as she entered, face tilted to one side in an appraising stare. His expression
defied her; she never could read Nicholas Dabble’s face, or know his thoughts.
His eyes had a way of hiding what was behind them like some kind of dark prism
always bending you away from where you were looking. But she could feel this
look. Unaccompanied by his elderly smile or charming manner of speech, it felt
more intimate. Not as disturbing as Kohler’s way of mentally undressing her,
but not entirely benign either; less the fumbling grope than the indecent brush
of a hand while crowding towards a bus.

But it was something she
never felt from Nicholas Dabble. “What?” she asked.

He met her eyes with the
look of a long time lover,
affectionate and pleasant and unthreatening. But curious. “You’re early,” he
said.

“I finished my lunch so I
thought I’d come back. Is that all right?” She stepped into the store, aware of
the silence that transformed each footstep into a noisome thump, made old
floorboards creak. It was as if the entire world had gone still, waiting on
her, turning upon her next move, her next word, her next thought.

“Certainly, that’s all
right,” Mr. Dabble said, and looked as if he were about to say something else
before thinking better of the matter. Ellen was prepared to dismiss it—the
strange look, the open expression, everything—just as she tried to dismiss the
garbageman when Dabble looked back up at her. “Have I told you what a pleasure
it’s been having you around, Ellen?”

She looked back at him,
not sure if this was some kind of strange and gentle prelude to her dismissal,
or worse, an unexpected expression of romantic interest. But all she saw was
that strange look of adoration in his eyes, a little covetous and a little sad.
It was the look of someone who cannot have something, and has made a kind of
peace with this inevitable loss, even if the craving remained. She fumbled in
her head for the words to reply, wondered if she should reply at all, and
managed only a look of trepidation.

Nicholas Dabble’s hand
slowly crossed the counter, fingers lightly brushing her own as though he were
touching a rare object, or the wings of a butterfly. He brushed against her
flesh as if he thought she might crumble if his touch was not softer than a
whisper. Or maybe he feared it was himself who would disintegrate.

Then he smiled, amused
perhaps by her discomfort, or his own. He withdrew his hand and said, “Well it
has been. I’m very glad you came into my store. I thought you should know.”

She had the overwhelming
urge to pull her hand away, to hold her fingers protectively from him, wipe
self-consciously at them as if she had touched something slimy, or even
dangerous. But she kept her hand exactly where it was, maintaining her
composure with Nicholas Dabble though he had never before placed his skin
against hers in a manner quite like that.

Strange things indeed.

It was no exaggeration
that in all the time she had been with him, he had never touched her, not once.
He had never shaken her hand, never brushed past her in a narrow aisle of
books, never placed a well-intentioned hand against the small of her back, or
touched her arm just above the elbow to elicit her attention. Never.

Until today.

Everything seemed to be different,
as if the world had been standing still all this time, secured in a glass
bubble where nothing changed but the fall of plastic snow. And now it was
changing, revealing the telltale signs of beginnings and endings.

“Ellen.”

Serena stepped into the
bookstore and closed the door behind her. “You’re just the person I was looking
for.”

*     *     *

Arnold Prosser would have
followed Ellen Monroe, learned what she was and how she managed to elude him
for so long, maybe even killed her right there on the spot and been done with
it.

But circumstance
intervened.

He was met at the
drifting hauler by a police officer who, upon establishing that it was in fact
his rig blocking traffic, ordered him back into the truck to “move that goddamn
thing” before he impounded it. He was forced to park back in the alley and
listen while the officer lectured him on safety and leaving a running vehicle unattended.
The speech was long and ended in a rather officious threat of arrest.

The very idea was
ludicrous, but the officer was ignorant to that fact; most were unaware of how
close to death they came on a daily basis. And there was no point in making a
scene. The Garbageman had five unscheduled pick-ups already; a scene would only
make matters worse.

A young man in a black
pickup drove past, flipping him the bird. The man would die in a car
accident—six years, three months, twelve days—slammed from behind by an angry
driver and driven off the road, his chest crushed against the steering wheel
because he didn’t like the government telling him to wear a seatbelt.

A woman drove past in a
champagne Lincoln, thanking the officer for his prompt assistance. She would
die—eleven months, four days—from multiple strokes, the first causing her to
fall and strike her head against the kitchen table, the next three in rapid
succession as she lay upon the floor. The medical examiner would console her
widowed husband, saying she went quickly. It was a lie.

A woman in a red Camero
yelled, “My taxes pay your salary, asshole.” Not true. She would die—seventeen
years, one month, two days—from complications of Hepatitis-C; liver failure and
an insurance carrier that would not support her lengthy stay on a donor list.

Piss on ‘em. He was Arnold-fucking-Prosser, the Garbageman.
What these people thought—that this gaggle of upright simians with their
fucking opposable thumbs actually thought at all—was of no consequence to him whatsoever.
All that mattered was finding the girl and restoring order to the universe.

The officer’s speech
dragged on, threatening arrest, suspension of license, the whole ball of spit. Arnold endured with indifference. The officer’s breath smelled of syphilis. He apparently
lacked the simple sense to cover his cock before pumping a freebie from the
hookers he shook down. Well, she would have the last laugh; that he knew.

He was Arnold Prosser.

He was the Garbageman.

After nearly fifteen
minutes, the police officer ended the tongue-lashing and sent him off with a
final verbal rebuke to the regards of public safety. “It won’t ‘appen again,
officer,” Arnold Prosser told him. “A momentary lapse of reason. You won’t see
no more trouble from me.”

That, at least, was true.

The police officer
returned to his squad car and waited. Arnold pulled slowly into traffic, making
sure to use his turn signal and allow plenty of space. He looked in his
sideview mirror as the first pins and needles of pain struck the officer’s left
arm and shoulder. A few seconds later, it settled squarely in his chest, and it
wasn’t pins and needles anymore; it was
railroad spikes. He passed quietly behind the wheel of his
parked cruiser, and he never saw any more trouble from Arnold Prosser.

Syphilis took too fucking
long.

The Garbageman drove
purposefully towards
Dabble’s Books
, looking for the girl from Freddy
Kohler’s mind. He entertained no real hope of finding her after all that wasted
time, but he was looking all the same. He didn’t know the girl’s name, and he
wasn’t sure he much cared to. It was enough that he knew what she was.

Simply put, she was
something that did not belong. Knowing who she was, how she got here, or even
why she had come at all, hardly mattered. She did not belong.

He was the Garbageman. He
disposed of things that did not belong.

She was the important
piece of the puzzle. She was the key. She knew Frederick Kohler. She lived in
the building where he found two unscheduled pick-ups; it couldn’t be by chance.
And then there was her smell, that mix of aromas that told him what others
disavowed knowledge of, affirming his suspicions, hardening his resolve.
Besides the oily aroma of the doctor—if Freddy’s little cousin had lived past
nineteen, she might have resembled that stripling of a girl—he smelled Nicholas
Dabble; the old salt-licker had had his sites on this girl. As had Serena. And
both had noticeably failed to mention this little cherry tart. Did they think
he was stupid? Did they think he wouldn’t find out? That they could fool him?
Him? The Garbageman?

But she worried him also
, this little stripling, this
trespasser. There was something else on her, something harder to explain. She
had looked at him; she had looked right at him! And she hadn’t been afraid. He
had scared her, sure, all bluster and ranting. But she had looked right into
his eyes and she hadn’t been afraid. She had sand. What bothered him was what
desert that sand came from, and whether or not it was the color of bone.

And the smell about
her!
Untainted, an
aroma of innocence with just the hint of vanilla. It was wrong. It was all
wrong. It shouldn’t be here. Not here on this side. It contaminated the order,
it corrupted the design, and every moment it existed it threatened
everything—everything! Dammit all to hell—that he stood for.

He turned the hauler down
the alleyway that ran beside
Dabble’s Books
. No matter, he thought. He
knew who the girl was now. It was the one piece that he didn’t have this
morning; the one piece that would allow him to put that pompous prig into the
ground, to twist his spine like a fucking rubber-band, to tear off his head and
drink from his goddamned skull. He would settle things. He would see to Dabble.
Then he would see to the girl. Then everything would be right.

He would set matters
straight, no question.

He was Arnold Prosser,
the Garbageman.

*     *     *

“You’re looking much
better today, Ellen,” Serena said conversationally. “Did you try my tea?”

Ellen noted an edge to
the woman’s tone that suggested she might already know the answer, asking more from
a sense of formality. “Yes, thank you. It worked so well I don’t exactly
remember when I fell asleep. It almost made me late for work.”

Serena nodded. “I noticed
you weren’t in for your usual cup of coffee.” The proprietor of the coffee shop
leaned closer, her voice a whisper meant to conceal her remark from Nicholas
Dabble. “I thought maybe you had taken the reins and left town; run from that
charlatan doctor of yours. Tell me you won’t go back to him, Ellen.”

She shook her head.
“There’s no chance of that.”

“Good for you. You look a whole self better than yesterday
when we talked. Actually, that’s why I came to see you.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t know as it makes
any difference, seeing as how you’ve decided to break with that doctor of
yours, but you left your prescription over at the café yesterday.”

Ellen started. “I’d
completely forgotten about that.”