Gypsy Blood (28 page)

“What do you feel?”

She thought about it and shrugged.

“Not yet.”

“Why didn’t you help him hide the corpse? He’s got to feel he needs you. You’ve got to help him, any chance you get.”

“You don’t know what love is,” she said. “Love has nothing to do with need.”

“And what would you know about that?”

There was another pause.

The blood on her lips suddenly tasted bitter.

“You’re starting to sound like him,” she said.

“Hide this body. Hide it close to him. Hide it in the cellar, under his bed. Give the little gypsy boy something to think about.”

She nodded.

She would do what her master told her to do.

“Do it now,” the wound ordered.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

And in the red tattered cave of the wound that spoke like a mouth, Maya swore she saw a wink.

And then there was nothing but blood and emptiness and thirst.

She drank deeply, and forgot.

The watch on the bald man’s wrist read 4am.

The Tattooed Puppet

T
he needle never stilled.

It moved through the soft soup of what was left of the boy.

All through the long night the tattooist kept his needle working.

It was almost an afterthought, really. He had spent an entire night of working on the young boy. At this point there just wasn’t that much left of the boy. The skull had vanished. Whether he’d worn it down to bone meal and dust with the working of his needle or whether it had been magicked away didn’t matter.

He didn’t know that the skull was hidden in Carnival’s basement.

He didn’t need to know.

Something else had decided where the pieces of the puzzle needed to fall.

So he sat in the dark with an unpleasant smirk on his face, wearing the heavy pair of magnifying spectacles that his aging eyes demanded for such fine work as this, talking through the scrap of mouth that he’d cut from the young boy’s face as he talked to Maya, a woman he’s never met before.

Talking to her and pulling her strings.

The Red Shambler squatted in the red soaked shadows, breathing wetly like an ancient voyeur at an all night orgy, dancing a further set of soft wet strings above the old tattooist’s soulless shell.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” the red beast spoke, not noticing the strings that dangled invisibly above its own gory frame.

The Red Shambler smacked his dank lips, as if he could taste the sweat of someone’s freshly opened throat.

Any Hack in a Storm

“C
all me a cab, Poppa.”

Okay, so you’re a cab.

Carnival cursed himself for not seeing that one coming.

Don’t waste your breath cursing yourself. There are plenty of folks who would be glad to do that for you.

“Don’t mess with me Poppa. You know what I want. I need to get down to the waterfront, and it’s too far to walk at this time of night.”

There’s no cab driver who would be caught dead on this side of town, unless maybe he was dead.

“Call in a favor Poppa. I know you still have a few friends.”

Do you know what this might cost you?

“It couldn’t be any worse than what I’ve already spent. Do what you have to do.”

For my son, I can do this. Should I call downtown, or up?

“Better call up, if you can. I’ve already pissed off one demon tonight.”

Carnival felt a warm glow inside as Poppa began to chant.

I call upon St. Kitt, patron of cab drivers and wanderers who carried the baby with the weight of the world on his shoulders. I call upon St. Eloi, blacksmith patron of the Iron Rom and patron of mechanics. I call upon St. Franziske of the dark night, who carried so travelers lost by night might find their way. I call upon St. Fevre, patron of cab drivers and migrant farmers, who cleared a right of way with a single spade. I call upon the holy spirits who have kept watch over the wheels of the Rom for a thousand years. By my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather, a Rom king is calling for momentum. My son needs a cab, preferably nonsmoking. Secondhand smoke will kill you as fast as any knife.

“Funny, Poppa. Do you think anyone was listening?”

When your Poppa calls for thunder, the clouds shout – “How loud”? Of course, they were listening. Are you?

Fearing another stupid joke, Carnival listened. He heard a soft lowing welling out of the night.

“Cows?”

Look outside.

Carnival looked. There, at his doorway was Mario the Borsch King’s flower cart. Bedecked and dangling with a chain of white roses and two potted funeral lilies. Mario perched above the push-arms, dressed in a pair of teddy bear pajamas. Hitched to the push arms were a team of a half dozen ghostly butchered bulls.

Your vardo awaits, poshrat, mad cows and all.

Down Under

C
arnival held on as tightly as he could.

The potted lilies kept swinging back at him, threatening to concuss his skull. The air reeked of manure and bull blood. The shock absorbing qualities of the wooden cart were dubious at best and put severely to test by the bouncing of a full team of slaughtered cattle.

Mario seemed entranced but it didn’t stop him from singing old Hungarian ballads. To make matters worse, Poppa sang along. It wasn’t a pretty sound. In fact it made Carnival yearn for the gentle fog horn crooning of Chollo and his tattoo show-tune medley.

“I should have known better to trust you with my safety,” Carnival shouted. “These things always happen when I let you drive.”

You don’t know the half of it, my son. Remember, I only give you what you ask for. You asked for a ride down to the waterfront and here you are.

Here he was. Down by the city’s waterfront. It was a good place to be, usually. There was always money down here. Tourists and the leisure crowd, their pockets jingling happily, here to get themselves a gust of the dirtiest fresh air you could imagine. The city pumped sewage into these waters. There were dollar bills swimming in the water and the sea gulls shriek like lunatic cash registers. Tourists and locals, wayfarers all. You could smell the silver jangling in their well sewn pockets.

Listen to the voice of the optimist. I remember when you worked down here. Just like the park. Your belly always growling, always keeping me awake.

Shapes moved in every shadow. People pushed their way down to the waterfront casino, eager to sacrifice their meager offerings to the gods of chance and despair. Half cooked hot dogs and greasy french fries. An old Korean stood in front of a propane barbecue, grilling skewers of marinated pork.

The tribes were all out. A thirty year old woman with hair the color of cotton candy peddled her handmade jewelry on a second hand car blanket. There were three tarot card readers sitting on the grass, eyeing each other like a pack of wary dogs.

Look. All your friends are here. Why don’t you socialize?

Carnival thought about saying hello but they’d just think he was trying to move in on their territory. A painter stood at his easel like Joan at the stake. A caricature artist squatted by his notepad and pencils, enjoying a slow cigarette. The wannabe gypsies were out tonight, and everybody was looking to make a buck.

What a bunch of busy beggars. You fit so well here.

“Save your breath to cool your soup, Poppa.”

A panhandler stood a soldier’s vigil in the sodium halo of a street light. His patter, worn so long, becomes a mumbled litany – gotanysparechangegotanyspare? Over and over, a dying mantra, like waves upon the rocks, beating over and over and over.

A pretty young girl, maybe sixteen, with eyes of fifty three and a tight black leather jacket and nearly matching pants stepped out of a shadowed doorway.

“Want a date?”

Carnival kept walking.

What are you thinking, boy? A woman offered herself to you.

“A hooker, Poppa. She just wanted money.”

A sensible girl offered herself to you and you keep walking. What are you doing? Searching for your vampire?

“I need to talk to someone, is all Poppa. I need to talk to someone large.”

Talk to your Poppa. He knows best. You should have brought that girl home for your Maya. At least ask for a business card. Maybe she had some pretty sisters.

Carnival moved past the crowds, down to the ocean where the waves spoke to the shore.

Fegh. It stinks down here.

“The city’s dumped its sewage into the harbor for the last couple of hundred years. It’s bound to stink.”

Don’t the politicians ever walk down here? Such a stink is bad for business.

“There’d been six studies and eight proposals and the current mayor has appointed an action planning committee. He’s assured the citizens and the media that there was a definite motion towards the construction of a water treatment plant.”

Ah, bureaucracy. Molasses uphill at its frozen finest.

Carnival took a step towards the shoreline, ordering his feet to do what they did best and guide his way down to the water.

Ebb and flow. Ebb and flow.

Don’t stand so close to the water, boy. The waves will make you lonely.

The water moved against the rocks and the rotted piers and rusty anchor chains in a constant siege of erosion. This is where the rot began, down here in the city’s basement, where the trash got thrown.

Your room will start to smell this way, if you’re not careful, boy.

“I know Poppa.”

He didn’t like it down here. There was too much stink. All of the dead in the universe have washed up on these shores. All of the plastic flushed, the latex and sogged out tissues; all the dead babies and all the memories. All of the dead bodies drifting lonely circles and all the regrets.

Try not to think of Olaf. It’s bad luck to dwell too long on the dead. They grow on you, if you’re not careful.

“Thanks for your kind advice, Poppa.”

I’m not trying to be kind. Your thoughts are more depressing than bad elevator music. Try not to think of him down in that water. Rolling in a soft wet tomb. How much of him is left, I wonder. How much is still waiting.

“Poppa I don’t want to think about him. Not now.”

Careful, boy. The night has ears, and can hear your darkest fears.

Carnival moved farther down the waterfront, past the crowds and into the working areas. There’s an old warehouse, leaning against the edge of the water like drunken suicide. Boarded up windows and walls you can see through. Like the ghost of a memory. They’ll tear it down one of these days.

“Hermit?” Carnival called.

A voice echoed out of the shadows of the warehouse.

“It took you long enough to come.”

It was the hermit. Dressed the same way Carnival had seen him dress any other time. Carnival didn’t know if the hermit ever washed, or if he owned that many suits. Wrapped in black, with a long battered top hat, like a poor white Baron Samedi.

The man has class. A regular Fred Astaire. When was the last time you bathed, boy? You’re beginning to smell like the gift that the gift horse left behind.

The wind blew in from the water, chilling Carnival deeper than bone.

“You ain’t been eating enough,” The hermit said. “You’re shivering like a widow’s last D-cell battery.”

How he kept warm was a mystery to Carnival. Perhaps it was a tribute to the insulative capacity of dirt. Everything about the hermit was a bit of a mystery. He’s lived down here for as long as Carnival could remember. He was older than the warehouse, maybe older than the city. Time doesn’t hang anywhere close to the realm of the hermit.

“Come in to the shadow where it’s warm. We can talk in the darkness.”

Carnival shook his head.

“I didn’t come to talk to you old man. No insult intended. I came to talk to her.”

“Did you bring the price?”

Carnival held the bag of bottles out, the price for Benny’s revenge. The hermit took the bottles. There was magic in used items. People left traces of their existence, of their auras, of their very being upon the faded plastic.

“And the ticket?”

Carnival held another bottle out. A dead man’s bottle, Elija’s last, nothing left in it but kissing memory of all Elija’s aching want and need.