The Outsiders (7 page)

He
glanced at the stall, but there was no way the guy could have
grabbed it. He was trashed, and he hadn’t been in a position to
take anything. There was nothing to take. No book.

“
Hey man,” the kid said, slamming back out of the stall, “What
are you, crazy?”

Christopher fled. The hallway was dark and he rushed through
it to the end, only to discover a doorway. There had been a
curtain, but now there was a doorway. Or had he come the wrong way
from the men’s room? He turned back the way he’d come, but the
doorway he’d just exited was opening again, spilling dim light into
the hall, and he didn’t want another meeting with the too-thin,
wild-haired apparition inside. Christopher turned the knob on the
door and pressed inward, slipping through and closing it behind
himself.

It was
dark on the other side, as well, but ahead of him he could see a
light. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he noticed that the wall
to his right was lined with doorways. They were all as dark as the
hallway itself, except the last on the right. Beyond that, at the
end of the hall, was another lighted doorway. The exit?

He ran to
door and grabbed the knob. The door opened easily, and he stepped
through. The knob slipped from his fingers, and the door creaked
shut behind him as he stared. Stretching away into the distance
were shelves, row upon row of shelves, tall, polished and gleaming,
the spines of thousands of books lined up like silent sentinels,
watching him from their shadowed perches. Halfway down the shelf to
his left, a single book was canted out from the others, a colorful
paste-on frontispiece gleaming from it’s cover.

Christopher started to back away. His back struck the door,
then his head as he shook his head in empty negation. Footsteps
sounded, and a moment later he saw the clerk from the front of the
store rounding the far end of the shelves. The man stared at him,
as if in confusion.

“
There you are,” he said with an expression that clearly
questioned why his statement was true.

“
I...” Christopher could only stare as the man came hurriedly
forward.

Halfway
down the small aisle, the clerk reached out and plucked the single
volume protruding from the shelf.

“
This is the last copy of New Leather and Old Cognac,” the man
said, forcing a smile. “I took it up front for you, but you were
gone. I left it this way so I could find it again if you
returned.”

Stepping
closer, the man proffered the book, and Christopher took it in
shaking hands. The cover was different, again, deep green boards
with the color paste-on artwork, Sylvia, curled into a garden chair
beneath a trellis of roses. The garden in this painting was painted
at night, and she read by bright moonlight.

Christopher’s hand shook. He glanced up from the book. The
clerk was gone. No sound of footsteps. No shadows trailing away at
the end of the aisle. Beyond the shelves, he could see the small
oasis of desks and chairs, green-domed lamps waiting with their
small pools of light. Isolated. Empty. The huge fans thrummed like
a heartbeat and Christopher felt his throat constricting, as if
those fans were sucking the air from the room. The life.

He turned
and scrabbled wildly at the door behind him, dragging it open and
diving into the darkness behind. He needed to find his way through
– to where? The bar? The kid in the toilet? The bartender and his
never-ending supply of Brandy?

There was
only one door lighted in the hall – and it was on the left. A
manager’s office, he thought. Maybe he could find someone there
that would explain things – someone who could help to make sense of
it. The book, half-forgotten, was clutched tightly in his left
hand. He reached out to knock on the door, thought better of it,
and grabbed the knob. Better to have the element of surprise, he
thought - chastising himself at the same time for paranoia. What
did he expect to find?

He opened
the door. Inside was a desk with a bronze light on one corner,
topped by a green glass globe that was the only illumination in the
room. She sat, staring up at him wildly, a pen clutched tightly in
her hand. On the desk, a pile of paper sat, skewed to either side,
wadded sheets littering the surface.

“
Sylvia?” he asked, stepping inside.

The door
swung shut behind him but he ignored it. Christopher stepped
forward, the book in one hand, the other reaching out to her.
Sylvia pushed away from the desk, into the shadows with a gasp,
sending the papers scattering away from her. Christopher tried to
stop them, to catch them. He leaned down, dropping the book onto
the desk in his haste and reaching for the falling pages. He
gathered them quickly into his arms and stood.

In the
deepest corner of the room, he saw her silhouette, but before he
could speak – before he could put the pages of whatever she’d been
writing back onto the desk, she faded. One second she was there,
her eyes very wide, her hands reaching to him, and the next she
settled to the floor like dust, sifting down through shadows.
Gone.

“
No!” Christopher cried, dodging around the desk, cracking his
knee painfully and leaping toward the corner. There was nothing
there. For a fleeting moment, he thought he saw words - letters
flowing across the floor, swirling.

He turned
to the desk. There was an ornate fountain pen resting on the desk,
and the disheveled pile of pages he’d dropped there. Exhausted, he
stumbled to the chair and sat, staring at the desk. The book was
nowhere to be seen. Christopher didn’t bother to rise and check on
the floor, he knew it wouldn’t be there. Nothing would be
there.

He pulled
the papers closer and sorted them quickly. Each was covered in
smooth, easy script, numbered in the upper right corner. Once they
were in order, Christopher leaned forward over the desk, smoothed
the stack with his hand, and began to read.

It took
what seemed hours. Christopher never looked up, and though his back
grew sore and his neck stiff from the odd positioning, he continued
to the end without pause. But it was not the end, of
course.

Christopher glanced over his shoulder into the shadows, then
turned back to the page, and began to write.

The front
door to “The Home of the Tome” opened, allowing a soft rush of air
and the entrance of a slender woman. She was clothed in black,
leather complemented by lace. She wore silver jewelry and black
leather boots, and her dark hair was parted in the center, dangled
over her features as she walked, lending an air of
mystery.

As she
passed the clerk, she nodded absently, scanning the store with
interest. She skipped the reading area, skirting along one side and
heading immediately for the stacks. The old books lured her, crying
out to her with the siren-song of untold stories.

The first
shelf was imposing, and she nearly returned to the small rack of
modern novels near the front of the store, but something caught her
eye. A single volume out of place, the spine protruding from among
it’s peers. She stepped forward, sliding it out and turning it face
up in her hand. It was a dark book, black leather binding with the
front decoration etched in browns and gold. The image was that of a
man, hunched over a desk, the fingers of one hand gripping his
hair, those of the other gripping a pen so tightly it looked as if
he were stabbing it through the desktop.

The title
read, “New Leather & Old Lace.” She flipped it open.

The
dedication read. “For Sylvia.”

The woman stared at the words for a long moment, frowning as
if something were itching at the back of her mind, then placed the
book back on the shelf and slid it tightly in, letting it disappear
in a jungle of tangled words and endless tales. In the darkened
hall of an ending far away, she almost heard him
screaming.

MAN’S
BEST FRIEND

Stephen James Price

The
speedometer was registering just over sixty miles an hour, but
Jerry Conway continued to accelerate as they drove down the back
road.

“
Please slow down, Jerry. It’s getting dark and this road is
really curvy.”

“
I know how to drive, Denise. Why do you always do
that?”

“
Anything can happen. I don’t want to chance getting into an
accident just to get home four or five minutes earlier.” She
grabbed the edge of the dashboard as the passenger-side tires
floated ominously towards the shoulder of the road.

Jerry
jerked the steering wheel back just in time.

“
See? The front tire almost went off the road. Now please slow
down!” She still clung to the dashboard with both hands.

“
Damn it. I know how to drive. I really wish you’d stop your
back seat driving. I–”

The
headlights illuminated the two glowing eyes in the middle of the
road. The eyes quickly became a very large brown dog wearing a
bright pink collar. Jerry pushed down on the gas petal and that
same time Denise squealed and pushed down on the imaginary brake
petal on her side of the floorboard.

There
was a loud thud, and the car jumped a little–twice--as the front
and rear tires rolled over the dog.

“
Oh, God. Jerry, stop the car!”

Jerry
didn’t stop. He just kept driving and staring straight ahead. He
was trying his best not to smile.

“
Jerry, please stop the car and go back,” Denise said as she
started to cry.

“
Stopping won’t do any good. The dog’s dead. Nothing we can
do.”

“
We can try to find its owner.”

“
It was probably a stray.”

“
Didn’t you see that collar? It was someone’s pet, Jerry.
Probably some little girl’s judging from the collar.”

“
I didn’t see a collar,” he lied.

“
There were a couple of houses near there that we can check. At
the very least we can get it off the road.”

“
I don’t need to get in a fight with an angry dog lover, and I
certainly don’t need to get blood all over my clothes. We went over
him with both wheels.”

Denise
closed her eyes and put her head back at his mention of blood. The
car was quiet for the next few minutes.

“
You didn’t even slow down,” she eventually said in a voice
just louder than a whisper.

“
I didn’t have time. Didn’t even see him until I hit him,” he
said, pausing for a few seconds to ensure she believed him. “I just
hope he didn’t dent the car.”

They
drove the rest of the way home in silence.

Jerry
woke up to the sound of a dog barking.

“
It’s three o’clock in the damn morning”, he muttered as he
looked at the clock.

Irritation turned to rationalization as the dog continued to
bark.

“
Denise, wake up.”

“
Wha–” she said, still half asleep. “What’s wrong?”

“
One of the neighbor’s dogs is barking out near the garage.
It’s been going at it for almost ten minutes now. Dogs just don’t
bark like that for no reason. I’m going to check out the garage.
Maybe someone is trying to steal one of the cars or
something.”

“
Should I call the police?” Denise asked, now sounding both
fully awake and fully afraid.

“
Not yet. It may be nothing, but I want to check it out. I’ll
be back in a few minutes,” he said as he put on his slippers and
pulled on his bathrobe.

Jerry
went into the kitchen, grabbed a flashlight off the top of the
refrigerator, and checked the batteries by turning it on and off a
few times. The light was strong and bright. He took a deep breath
and went out the back door. He followed the sound of the dog’s
barking. Halfway around the side of the garage, the flashlight went
dead. He shook it a few times, but it wouldn’t turn back on. The
moon was completely hidden behind a wall of clouds and it was pitch
black out.

Still following the constant barking, he walked slowly
forward with his hand gliding along the side of the house. After
about ten steps, Jerry tripped over something and fell face-first
onto the ground. Cursing, he felt around on the ground and found
the garden hose, still wrapped around his feet.
An intense pain flared through
his
left ankle when he stood up. Still cursing under his breath, he
slowly limped around to the side door of garage. The barking seemed
to be coming from all directions now. He listened, but it was
impossible to get a bearing on it. He found the doorknob and tried
to open it, but it was locked.

Of course it was locked. All of the doors and windows were
locked,
he thought.
Why didn’t I go out through the door in the den? Why was I
trying to sneak up on a potential burglar?

He
limped around to the front of the house, tripping over the porch
steps before ringing the doorbell. He rang it several times before
Denise came to the door. Somewhere between the third and fourth
ring, he noticed that the dog had stopped barking.

“
Who is it?” she asked cautiously as she turned on the porch
light.

“
Who the hell do you think it is?” he answered. “Just open the
damned door.”