Among the Living (21 page)

“Thanks, kitty cat.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sure, kitty cat,” he says, just like always. “Any trouble, any at all, and you come get me. I mean, not that you need help.” He smiles at her. “On second thought, if there is trouble, I’ll come get you.” He turns toward his door, and she closes hers gently.

She shoots the bolt and then stares at the wood door for a full minute. Protect her! She is more than capable of taking care of herself. She is strong, fast, a natural fighter who has honed her craft over many years of sweat and pain.

Kate picks up her swords and slips them from their sheaths one at a time. She polishes the steel of the wakizashi and tests the blade against the fine down of her arm. It leaves a bare spot. Then she takes out the longer katana and repeats the process. When she is satisfied, she kneels and spends twenty minutes practicing an iaido move that has her drawing the sword in reaction to a surprise attack from behind. She turns in one swift motion, sword drawn, rotates around without slicing her leg off, defends, comes back to her original position and then sheathes the sword, all in a blur.

She centers herself and does it again, then again until she is one with the movement, with her sword. There is great and terrible beauty in the form. She doesn’t break a sweat, and after a while, her body loosens up, so she rises and goes to bed.

“Is that a sick clown, Mommy?” young Jeff Hallack asks.

Christine glances up at the guy with the painted face and grimaces. He coughs and leans against a wall as if drunk. He presses his hands to the side of his head and rubs them as if the pressure will make whatever is hurting him abate.

The sun is drooping in the sky, and she should really think about getting her son home. He will be cranky if they stay up too late, and tomorrow is his day with Dad.

“Yes, dear heart, that clown might have the flu,” she replies and takes Jeff’s hand in hers.

The Seattle Center is crowded, even for a Tuesday. Frank, her latest in a long line of boyfriends, will be at work for a few more hours. She wanted to take Jeff to the science center so he could play with the exhibit on electricity. He once saw a man with his hair standing on end and thought it was funny. But they spent so much time on the rides that she won’t have time. Not on this visit. Maybe they can come back next month when it is a little bit cooler.

The clown coughs again and reaches down to scratch his leg. He pulls up the bloomed-out pant leg and runs a hand over an angry-looking bite mark. Strange thing to see on someone, Christine thinks. The mark is also round as if given by a person. It has been there for a few days, though. Christine is a nurse, and she has seen much worse in the ER. In fact, she has seen worse bites inflicted by lovers during foreplay.

She doesn’t like clowns, but she feels obligated to check on the man in patchwork clothes. He looks weary, even with all the makeup; his body language speaks of pain. He coughs again into his hand and looks at her as she approaches.

Jeff smiles and waves at the clown. He has never seen a live one before, and as with most new things, he is ready for the experience. Unlike his father, he excels at being outgoing, even at nine—so outgoing that Christine keeps a tight grip on him at all times. Occasionally he likes to wander off and talk to new and interesting people.

“Are you okay?” she asks the clown, who wears the requisite white face paint, black eyes and a bright red smile. He holds a long stream of green faux-dreads and cradles them in his arms like a wounded animal.

“I think so. Damn kid was acting weird, and he bit me,” he mumbles in a smoker’s voice that is deep and raspy. He coughs again, and she can hear the deep rumble of phlegm stuck in his throat and lungs. He wipes at his mouth, and his hand comes away red. It is not just the lipstick; there is blood there as well, underneath the bright crimson of makeup gone wrong.

“You don’t sound too good. Maybe you should lie down somewhere,” she says, and she automatically wants to check his forehead to see if he is hot. She knows he is a performer for the center and probably clean. They probably make that part of their employment contract. She shies away from physical contact. No sense in risking getting herself or Jeff sick if he has some sort of virus.

“Good idea,” he says and sinks to a sitting position. He rubs at the bite mark again, and she sees it is livid, punctured through the skin in a couple of places. These are gray-lined and angry, and she thinks of cancer for some reason, even though skin cancer is usually just spots that are off-color and asymmetrical. At least that’s how the easy-to-recognize stuff starts.

A family wanders by, an older couple with two teenagers in tow. The girls wear dark lipstick and don’t smile. One walks with her arms crossed under her budding breasts and looks straight ahead, since no one can understand the misery she must be feeling at … well, at being a teenager. Christine remembers this stage well—minus the black lipstick.

The family shifts out of the way as if the clown is contagious, and Christine can’t really blame them. He does look very sick, and as he slides down, he sort of slumps and then falls over.

“Cold,” he might have said, but it is so quiet she might have mistaken the words. How could anyone be cold in this damn muggy heat?

She drops to her knees and feels his neck, then his chest, and both tell her he is not breathing.

“Oh fuck!” Jeff repeats the words after her without hesitation.

She doesn’t have time to spare him a glance. She grabs her purse and empties it on the ground. Dragging her pocketbook from the mess of lipstick containers, gum, baby wipes, her iPod, a mass of coins from the games, and a pile of tickets, she tears it open and takes out the privacy guard she keeps there.

She rips open the package and drapes it over his mouth. Then she starts pressing on his chest just as she has been trained to do. Thirty times, counting out loud. Jeff stands at her side and watches. He leans close and touches the clown’s face.

“SOMEONE CALL 911!” she yells to the spectators that gather around. The teenage girl with black lipstick who just passed stops and stares back at the dying man. She stands in place, looking around as if unsure what to do. Others pass and stare, but Christine appears to have things under control, and hey, it’s a nice evening, so why get involved?

She reaches thirty and then leans over and takes a breath. Not her favorite thing here, folks, move along and watch the freak show down the road. Then the briefest of hesitations before she plants her lip over the guard and gives him two quick but strong breaths.

She pulls up but not before she catches the stench from his mouth, something she has smelled before, illness, stomach acid and underlying it all–death. She has seen bodies brought in that defy description when it comes to being mangled. She has seen the dead in all their various guises, and she knows that she is seeing it here.

“One, two, three …” she counts out anyway and then is in for another kiss against those cold, dead, plastic-covered lips. She gags this time and almost throws up, but it must be working, because he moves.

She repeats the count to thirty, and his arm twitches. Then the hand rolls over onto the ground, his palm rubbing at the hard surface. She drops her head to his chest, but there is no sound. She jerks up quickly as if stung. That’s not possible unless it is just postmortem spasm. Then the hand moves again, but this time it is not a spasm. It is a full movement that pulls his hand closer to his body.

She listens to his chest, and there is a loud whump as his heart fires up, but then it is silent again.

“What the …?”

She sits back and starts pumping his chest, but she loses count after three, because the man is staring at her with blood-filled eyes. It’s like the pupils have been swallowed by red. They don’t blink, but his head moves. That’s when she starts screaming.

Her screams don’t finish until he has taken Jeff by the hand and torn out his stomach with his nails and mouth. The only reason she stops screaming is because she faints dead away.

“You are an idiot. You know that, right?” her voice murmurs from the pillow where her head is turned toward mine. She lies on her stomach so that the sheet rides low on her hips. I lean over and kiss her right between her shoulder blades, then kiss down to the small of her back.

“Am I?”

“We could have done this a long time ago.”

“I think it was worth the wait.”

“Me too.”

We are silent for a while. I run my hand over her back where I just trailed my lips. I’m lying on my side, perched up on one elbow. She is slim, in terrific shape, and I am all too aware that I have become lazy over the last year and that there is a layer of extra weight I need to drop. She didn’t seem to care earlier when she took off my clothes in a rush, a breathless rush that had us in a tangle of limbs while we sorted out my pants.

“I need to work out,” I think out loud, looking down.

“Yeah, you do. You can start now,” and her arms are once again around my body. I pull her to me, on top so that her breasts are crushed against my chest, and she discovers that I won’t need much help getting ready for her as she slides her legs down to straddle my chest.

* * *

Later we raid her fridge. She has a bucket of cold chicken and some potato salad. I expected her to stock nothing but health food, so this is quite a surprise. “Weekend food,” she informs me. I’m dressed in a pair of boxers, and she has on a t-shirt that is dangerously short. I can’t take my eyes off her as she moves around the kitchen. I feel free to stare at last; I have denied myself for too long.

Stomachs full, we hit the wine again and get a little tipsy as the evening fades. It’s only nine, and I try not to think of Rita. We are on her couch, me sitting up, her lying against the other side so her legs trail over my lap. I have my hands on her calves and feet, and she teases my crotch with an ankle.

“How long have you looked at me that way, Mike?”

“Like this?” I ask and scrunch up my lips like a fish and cross my eyes.

She falls back laughing and jabs her foot into my side.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do, but I just figured I was too old for you.”

“I’m thirty-one, Mike. How old are you, thirty-seven? I think you’re still young enough to train.”

“It’s not the years. It’s the wear and tear.”

“I like you just the way you are, wear and tear and all. I’ve always liked you. You made me laugh my first day at work when you asked if my purse was made of genuine giraffe.”

“I never got an answer, either,” I state in mock seriousness.

We trade banter for a few more minutes, then she sits up and puts her hand behind my neck and pulls me down for a kiss. I breath her in, taste her, revel in her, and I am the happiest I have been in years.

The show is going well so far. About fifty fans stand around for the first band, a local group called simply Ballard. They play a brutal sludge metal that has the singer-keyboardist jumping into the crowd when they don’t yell loud enough, of which Grinder approves. The smell of pot drifts across the stage.

The next band has double the fans, some of them cheering at the top of their lungs. Anti-Pope-Reviver has a hot female bass player who likes to wear tiny miniskirts on stage. In the light of day, she isn’t nearly as attractive. Face a bit long with a high forehead. Pale skin from being on a bus all day and stage all night. She is slim and trim, and Grinder is pretty sure she is a total cokehead.

Grinder doesn’t do drugs, not anymore. The music is too important to him. Sure, he takes a hit of weed from time to time, but that doesn’t count. If it is natural, from the earth, what harm is it? Hell, half the country smokes it. He does like to drink, though, and he loves to start when the second act is winding down.

He has the bottle of Wild Turkey in hand that he stole from Wil earlier. He sips it while he warms up his vocal cords; this amounts to a lot of humming and then some ungodly howls. One of the roadies has already fetched a pint of ice-cold chocolate milk and dumped a few shots of Baileys in it. What would the fans think if they knew he got his evil growls not from the devil but from chocolate milk, which thickens the mucus in his throat?

The liquor burns a nice line of fire into his belly just as Anti-Pope-Reviver is finishing up. They play the last few beats, and then there is the promise of “See you again soon!” for which the now-full venue cheers.

Half the kids out there are either drunk or wired up on the drug of their choice—most likely both. Some of the girls do ecstasy at the show and get all touchy feely. Grinder will be looking for these after their hour-and-a-half set.

The roadies for the other band are tearing the place apart as fast as they can, since there is only a twenty-five minute window before Corpse for a Day takes the stage. The guys move into the main room with instruments in hand. Eric wheedles on his guitar, Sid plucks at the thick strings of his blood-dripping bass. The thing looks like it could have been carried by a Viking, and Grinder has always thought it was just as cool as fuck.