Unquiet Dreams (9 page)

She looked at me, eyes narrowed at first, but then smiled. "Change your life, eh? Not enough to play pick-up gigs anymore?"

"Well, for tonight, sure. But I got plans," I said which was a bit of an exaggeration. I had some vague notions. This purpose thing was less than clear-cut, but surely I was heading in the right direction. "And they involve a mysterious Queen of Disks, I am told. Now who could that be but your fine self? That full moon tonight tells me I have to be right." It was clear as a sudden bolt of lightning. Nights Sarannah was boss of the club; days she ran TeaLeaf Records, though there was a never a record to be seen in the warehouse, word was Sarannah ran a tight ship and got people going places. Made some folk rich, I always heard.

My Queen of Disks!

Sarannah laughed, but she looked at me directly, something she seldom did. "You thinking of turning over a new leaf, Sticks?"

I took advantage of her interest to circle that arm more firmly about her midsection. It made for a pleasant view and an even more pleasing sensation. Things were going my way. The Buddha was right. "I am a new man. I am full of purpose and ambition." I tapped my forehead. "I see it all with my third eye, the seat of the mystic vision. You are my destiny, my higher calling, oh beautiful Queen of Disks."

She seemed to be thinking that over. "Come with me," she said at last and we weaved our way through the milling crowd to her office. I hadn't been in it in ages, not for many a month, but I recalled well the green walls covered with browning photographs of old blues and jazzmen. I sat in the beat-up chair in front of her desk as she parked herself on the edge of it, offering a generous view of her silky thighs as her black skirt hiked up. I resisted the urge to slide a palm along that smooth skin, but I could feel my tonsil tickler beginning to rise to the occasion.

"I have a little task for you," Sarannah said at last, lighting a cancer stick and taking a deep drag on it. "If this works out like it should, you could be on to big things. How do you like that notion?"

"I like it fine." I knew exactly what those bigger things would be, too, I thought as I admired the curves of her very tight blouse. But Sarannah was all business now as she laid out the job. I was needed as a kind of courier for a delivery tonight, accompanying Porky on a little trip to the South Bank.

I had a bit of doubt creep up my collar when she mentioned Porky. Not that I took much of dislike to anyone if I could avoid it, but there was something about that wanker you just couldn't trust. He didn't talk much for one thing. "Porky, eh? I don't know that we are totally simpatico, Sarannah."

She waved away my doubts with her ciggie smoke. "You're just prejudiced, man."

I shrugged, but that thigh of hers tried to whisper secrets to me. Think of the Buddha, I reminded myself. "I dunno. I just always saw him as a bit of a dangerous type."

"He's all right," Sarannah said with a wink, hopping off the desk with admirable grace. She reached up and cupped my chin with her hand. "You can trust me," she purred, tickling the skin of my throat as she removed her hand. The little man knew she was right and I had to agree.

So I found myself an hour later standing in the shadowed alley behind a darkened pub somewhere the other side of Lambeth Palace. I tried not to take it as an omen that my lucky moon was nowhere to be seen back here. "Cold night," I said, just to make conversation, but the absurdly tall Porky was morosely quiet. I tried to keep the Buddha's words in mind. There had been something in one of those books about living in the moment. I tried to do that and not let Porky's incivility trouble me. I had greater prospects in front of me.

"Here they come," Porky barked, breaking my train of thought. "Hang on to that until I say the word," he said, nodding at the case in my hands.

A simple business transaction, Sarannah had told me. The two guys coming down the corridor did not look like distributors, or at least how I pictured them. They were so full of scars and tats that I couldn't say for certain what nation had spawned them. The shorter squat one spoke to Porky in some lingo that seemed all staccato sounds like spitting and didn't seem too pleased with something about the arrangements.

For his part, Porky answered back with an equally surly tongue. Surely the Buddha would object. This was simply exacerbating the situation as you might say, but it seemed like maybe it was just a bit of cock-fighting to make sure they were in agreement, because things appeared to be hunky dory once Porky jerked his head my way and I held up the case. Sarannah had it down, she knew her mission.

But when it came down to dealing, more angry words were exchanged between Porky and the squat man. His eyes darted between me and Porky and I tried to send out good thoughts with my third eye. It was all part of my higher calling. It was copacetic.

The squat man seemed to be filling up with some kind of steam, like a kettle about to shriek. I could feel a fine patina of sweat pop up on the back of my neck. I had not envisioned a scene like this. Who would have thought that record distribution was such a cut-throat prospect?

I was disturbed to find the quiet guy suddenly had his gun out and trained on me. Porky's had his piece out, too. I barely had time to wonder why my cohort had thought it necessary to carry a gun and why I didn't have one, too, before I saw that I was definitely the odd man out because the squat guy had his out as well, poking in the general direction of Porky's sunken chest.

For a moment, all was silent. I tried to remember the words the Buddha had left with me like some kind of memento and found they were completely gone and I had no idea really how it was I had ended up here when I ought to have been bashing a kit behind another faceless group of newbies as they tried to make their ragged debut before drunks and chattering Sloane rangers. Despite the Buddha's words, I had a suspicion that I ought not to have been here.

When the bullet came, it made a beeline for my third eye, as if it had been some kind of final message from the Buddha, a lesson that I would have no time to learn. I could see myself falling—at least I could see the rain wet tarmac speedily approaching, and hear, like a distant echo, the sound of the case striking the ground beside me, locks sprung and all the Houblons, Elgars, Darwins and Smiths, popping out like meat from a pie.

Somewhere I could hear the Buddha laugh. It was going to take another round, I guess. I saw Porky hit the pavement but I couldn't hear anything at all, but I took comfort in the knowing that I was not alone. The notes flapped before my two eyes and I sort of thought Darwin kind of winked. Crafty old bugger must have known something. Maybe I'd find out the next time around.

 

 

for the butterfly master

He stared at the pustules crowning her ass and wondered how it had come to this. She had laid claim to forty-two, but the rubious morning light easily suggested that the addition of another five years to that calculation would be appropriate. But that wasn't the real problem.

He wondered if shifting to the side of the bed to look for his clothes would jiggle her phocine form awake. Deciding to risk it, if only to go in search of some aspirin to assuage the wimble boring through his head, he rolled slowly across the surprisingly wide expanse of linen to the edge of bed. This hotel didn't skimp on the king-size mattresses, that was for sure.

Why did his head ache so? Ah, yes -- the "wixey." That had been her pronunciation of the word last night. Was it whimsy or a genuine mistake? He couldn't recall now, although at the time he had been charmed by the usage. He looked over his shoulder at her recumbent shape, a veritable dugong in the unflattering glare. They had left the curtains open when collapsing into their coincidental intimacy. The wixey had not helped his performance, but she seemed unconcerned by his ponderous efforts. Par for the course, her acquiescence seemed to suggest.

Perhaps it would be best to dress as quickly as possible and leave. Other details of the night were fuzzy and he had a bad feeling that she would remember. He eased himself off the bed, willing the springs not to squeal an alarm. At least he had had the good sense to shed his belongings in a single pile. Even his briefcase lay safely at the bottom, still holding the relatively pristine pages of his hopefully-cutting-edge dissection of a lately topical author, the province of all newly minted doctoral diatribes.

Zipping his pants, he turned slowly back to face her. On her back now, a slight snore growing, he had a moment of panic wondering whether it was more cowardly to leave or simply more considerate -- wouldn't she, too, wish to be spared the awkwardness of this auroral charade?

While in uffish thought he stood, however, her eyes blinked open and she smiled up at him. The assurance in her expression flummoxed him for a moment, although it also reminded him why he had come here, wixey or no. "Dr. Lander," she cooed, her whiskeyed voice pleasingly husky. "Phil," she corrected herself, the smile growing to Cheshire proportions. "I'll see you at one o'clock, ne c'est pas? That is, I hope you're still interested in the one year visiting position." Her voice did not suggest this was really a question.

Phil nodded curtly and offered a strained smile. It was that kind of job market.

 

 

This is not the kind of place where these things happen, Margaret thought. It's just not right. The full light of day shone—more than that, the full glare of industrial tubes lit up the seemingly endless rows of cubicles. It was the most normal thing in the world. But something odd was definitely happening.

Not that anyone else had said anything. No one complained even. And it was only when she added up the numbers—well, she could be wrong, she could be mistaken; after all, as Margaret knew too well, there were those days when you could add a column six ways to Sunday and each time it would come out completely different. Best to just leave it and come back in the morning. But this wasn't like that. This was people.

And it had been some time. She hadn't noticed right away. She hadn't really realized it until this month's payroll had been done. It was Margaret's job to do payroll for the revolving corps of temps. And the numbers—well, no, it wasn't exactly the numbers. The numbers were all right, the pay slips just right for the hours worked, that is. But the temps, you see, that was the problem. Several were missing.

It's not as if they had just taken off. Lord knows, they weren't always that reliable, they didn't have to be, that's why they were only temps. People like that can seldom keep a job, Margaret had always thought. You have to want more. There were some, oh sure. Used temping as just a toe-hold, working their way into the corporate structure, clawing up from Job Central here on the sixth floor trying to reach the top of the SIM tower. It could be done, had been done. Many though had fallen, trying to climb too fast, left with their tails tucked between their legs but on the lookout for another mountain to climb.

The missing ones hadn't been that kind.

If their eyes were bright, it wasn't from a kind word that might help them get on that ladder up or from a chance to learn some hot new software. The younger ones had parties and concerts and chatted about them to one another when Margaret was not hovering nearby. And the older ones—they always seemed to be awaiting that next visit to grandkids or gambling with cronies in Atlantic City. Simple wishes, simple work; Margaret didn't mind riding herd on them. After all, she wasn't all that ambitious herself. She liked her job, she was good at it, it kept her busy all day, and it paid pretty well. Smooth sailing—busy days, busy seasons, the rush before summer buying—but mostly smooth sailing, nothing she couldn't handle. Until she added up the numbers today and realized just how many temps were missing.

Margaret had begun to suspect that something was amiss recently but pushed the unwanted thoughts out of her mind. No that wasn't quite true; they lingered in the back of her head, a sort of mental note to check why they were having such a hard time keeping temps, to inquire whether other corporate pools were running shallow recently. It hadn't gone any deeper than that. Nothing so sinister as—

Well, sinister wasn't really right, now was it? But it did give her stomach a bad turn when she sat down with the spreadsheet after the third returned check this week. Mailed to the right address (she had checked) but returned, unopened. Temps need money. Sure, everybody does, but temps usually more than most. Three returned checks this week—that was enough to wonder why, to open up that spreadsheet and see how many "no shows" there had been in the last four weeks, how many temps had not returned to work as scheduled.

Fifteen.

That was a lot. There were always two or three each month, people who just couldn't hack it. The work was either too hard or too boring, and they just didn't come back. But fifteen—Margaret felt it right in her stomach, a pinch and a tremble that she finally called fear. It wasn't just the number, eyebrow-raising as that might be. It was Jeanette.

Margaret shook herself a little and looked warily around her. Wouldn't do to be caught wool-gathering on payroll day with so much to be folded, stapled and xeroxed before the whistle blew. Coffee, that's what she needed. Then she could think a little more clearly, and besides, it was an excuse to get up and walk down to the charmless break room, to shake this chill from her shoulders, her mind. To look for Jeanette.

Usually Margaret had a hard time remembering temps. After all, they were there for a short time, gone before you knew the kind of food they brought for lunch or where they ran out to get it. And they were all sort of blandly similar, mostly white, mostly young. She remembered people who were different: Utit who came from Korea, Marie from New Orleans, Lester with the glass eye. The rest? Too many Davids and Sarahs and Sues. Not so odd, Margaret thought, nodding to co-workers, as she weaved through the maze toward the break room. Not so odd then that she hadn't noticed FIFTEEN missing…