Stories (2011) (80 page)

"Us? Home?"

"We don't belong here, you know. We never did. We just
got stuck here, that's what Mother said before she died."

"No."

"Yes. Now you must decide. You can either get out of
this rocket or I'll kill you and throw you out and let what's left of the damn
humans eat you for dinner."

Jim pulled out his pocketknife.

Sally pointed her gun.

Little One whimpered behind her.

Sally put one hand on a dull panel that burst into violet
and orange hues that pulsated and hummed. "L21—00-systems go," she whispered.

The rocket thrummed louder, a high-pitched keening. The long
dead rocket had come to life, a silver bullet primed to erupt into the heavens.

"You've got to get out if you're staying. You've got to
decide. You're either in or you're out."

Jim got to his knees and dropped his knife. He couldn't hurt
her. "But this is my home. It's not yours."

"Why can't it be mine, too? Why can't we just share
it?"

"You're stealing my safe place, my home." Jim
tried to knock the gun out of her hand and she hit him. He grabbed her wrist.

"How dare you?" she said. "Who are you?"

They struggled for possession of the gun.

She kicked him where it hurt the most. He let go, groaning.
He had kissed her. He had . . .

…loved her? Love. What did that word mean? Hell, what if she
wasn't even human? Was she a lost wanderer? A gypsy? An alien monster?

"I'm sorry. Oh, Jim, did I hurt you?" The gun slid
down to the smooth reflective surface and they saw their own scared faces. She
kicked the gun and the knife out of the hatch. Their reflections shimmered.

"Yes, you did—but I hurt you first, didn't I?"
Then he understood. If Sally was a lost wanderer, maybe he was too.

"I don't want to be alone. I just want to go
home."

The hatch slid into place. The strangers stared at each
other while the dog licked Jim's hand.

"But where is home? Where are we going?"

Sally didn't know.

He didn't either.

Maybe it was better that way.

At least they could be alone together.

And as far as home went, they'd figure that one out when
they got there.

Sally reached for Jim's hand, the one free of dog slobber. A
half-smile touched her lips. Jim sighed as his fingers curled around hers.
Maybe they were already there.

Home.

When James saw the man in the streetlights, he hated him on
sight because of the coat. It wasn’t fashionable. If the man had been
unfashionable in all other ways he could have ignored it, but no, this was a
man who should have known better. He was a man with a good shirt and slacks and
fine tie, and the best shoes available, and yet, he wore a coat out of style
and certainly one that did not make for a proper appearance. It was an odd coat
of undetermined color and absolutely no substance. It had all the grace of a
car wreck. It flopped in the winter wind at the lapels like bat wings flexing,
caught up in back and whipped backwards like the tail of a swallow.

There was no excuse for it really.

Sure, he saw plenty of unfashionable people, but this fellow
must know better, having acquired the most fashionable and best clothes
otherwise. It was not a matter of being uninformed, he was flaunting a
disregard for the proper and the respectable, and was therefore insulting the
very business James was a part of. Fashion design.

There was no use calling him on it, James was certain. A man
like that knew how things ought to be. A man with his hair perfectly cut and
perfectly combed, and perfectly dressed, except for that horrid coat.

Still, James found himself following the man, deeply
bothered by it all. He was a man that understood fashion, and loved it, and
believed it was more than an expression of self. That it was in fact, a kind of
religion, and here was an insult to his religion.

The man moved out of the street lights and into a dark alley
near a stairwell, and James knew this was a bad place to be walking, but if the
man was dull enough to do so, and in that horrid coat, then he would be brave
enough to do so and call him on the matter after all. He found he just couldn’t
let it rest.

James followed as the man took the dark stairs, and when the
fellow was halfway down, James called out, “Sir, that is an awful coat. I don’t
mean to be rude, but really.”

The man, nothing but a shadow on the stairs now, paused,
looked back. “My coat?”

“Of course,” James said. Do I have on a horrid coat? I think
not, and nor should you, this is the finest and best of this year’s fashion
that I’m wearing. Perhaps last year, next year, it will be out of favor, but it
is all the rage for now, and you, sir, have plenty of fine fashionable coats to
pick from, though I, of course recommend my own brand of coat..”

“What?” said the man in the shadows.

“The coat,” James said. “Your coat. It’s hideous.”

The man came up the stairs and stopped only a few feet from
James, looking up at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I think not. That is one hideous coat.”

The man sighed. “I can’t believe you’re concerned about my
coat.”

“It’s just…how shall we put it, an atrocity against fashion
and against mankind.”

“It was once fashionable.”

“And, I’m quite sure that fig leaves over the testicles were
once fashionable, but in our modern society, in our world, fashion is all, and
it changes. Someone once thought the tie died tee-shirt and bell bottoms were
fashionable, but, times change. Thank goodness.”

“Look, not that it’s any of your business, but my father was
a tailor. He made this coat—”

“Well, it may have been something before electricity,” James
said, “but now, it’s just crude.”

“He made it for himself many years back, when he was a young
man. He is dead now, gone, and though it’s none of your business whatsoever,
this is an heirloom. It may not look like much, it may look thin, but it’s
surprisingly warm, and very comfortable, very flexible. Happy?”

“Not at all. Look, you seem like a nice fellow. It’s one
thing for someone of…well, the lower classes to wear that coat, but for you to
mix fashion like that, that dreadful coat over those fine clothes, it should be
a hanging offense.”

The man threw up his hands. “I’ve had enough of you. What
business is it of yours?”

“I spend a large part of my time designing fashion, trying
to make the world and those who live in it more attractive. Take what I’m
wearing for example—”

“I wouldn’t take it if you gave it to me,” the man said.
“I’m quite comfortable with my heirloom coat, and you, sir, are a weirdo who
needs to go home and run his head under the shower until it clears, or, until
you drown.”

The man turned and began walking down the stairs. James felt
himself heat up as if a coal had been dropped inside his body to nestle in the
pit of his stomach. He let out a sound like a wounded animal and went charging
down the stairway, slamming both hands into the man’s back, sending him sailing
down the steps to bounce on several, and to finally land hard and bloody in a
heap at the bottom.

James stood startled, his hands still out in front of him,
like a mime pretending to push at an invisible door.

“My God,” James said aloud. He eased down the stairs and
stood over the man, called out. “Hey, you okay?”

The man didn’t move. The man didn’t speak. The man didn’t
moan.

James bent down by the man’s head and spoke again, asking if
he was okay. Still no answer.

James looked left and right, over his shoulder and up the
stairs. No one had seen him. He looked about. No crime cameras. It had all
happened suddenly and in darkness. He hadn’t meant for it to happen, it had
merely been an angry response. Insulting fashion was not acceptable. And now,
the man in the unfashionable coat lay dead at the bottom of the stairs.

Well, thought James, dressing like that, talking like that,
and knowing better, he deserved to be dead.

James took a deep breath and rolled the man on his stomach
and pulled the coat off of him, tucked it under his arm, started up the stairs.

He was looking for the first large trash can to deposit the
coat into, but none presented itself. Carrying the ugly coat, even rolled up in
a tight bundle, made James feel somewhat ill. The thing was absolutely without
design, as unfashionable as a hat made from the mangy skins of dead street
rats.

Finally, he saw a trashcan and was about to deposit it, but,
there was a police officer. James paused, realized it would mean nothing to the
officer to see him toss the coat, but then again, he felt very odd about the
matter.

Moments ago he had merely been willing to impart a bit of
fashion wisdom to a man that should have known better, and in the end he had
killed him. You might even call it murder, though that had not been his intent.
The more James thought about it, the more he felt there had been something
inside of him brewing all along, all having to do with that ugly coat and the
man’s blatant insult to fashion.

James passed the officer, still not able to toss the coat,
wearing it under his arm like a cancerous tumor. He walked on, not spying
another trashcan of correct size, unable to dump it. He thought of giving it to
a homeless person. That would be all right. That would fit. No fashion loss
there. But no homeless person presented himself, and frankly, he had come to
hate the coat so much, that the idea he might give it away to someone and see
it worn about the city, even on someone as unfashionable as a homeless drifter,
was not appealing. And there was another factor; it would serve as a constant
reminder of what he had done. Though, the more he thought about it, the more
comfortable he felt with his actions. In fact, it was a kind of prize he had
now, a souvenir of the event, a reminder of the moment when he had corrected a
horrible wrong.

Sometimes, you just had to take the more direct and deadly
route to repair things that were socially wrong, and that coat was wrong,
wrong, wrong.

He made it all the way to his plush apartment with the coat,
and decided he no longer wanted to toss it. His thoughts earlier were correct.
This was an important reminder of a blow struck for the fashionable.

Inside his apartment he unfolded the coat and draped it over
the back of a chair. Hideous indeed, and spotted in places with blood. He
opened a bottle of wine and sat at his table with bread and cheese and ate, and
watched the coat as if he thought it might suddenly leap up and run about the
room. He discovered that what he had hated before about the coat, he still
hated, but now the sight of it gave him pleasure with the memory of his deed,
and the blood on it sweetened his thoughts.

His own father had worn a coat not too unlike that. It
suddenly came to him, and the sweetness he had experienced soured somewhat. He
thought of his father, the poor old bastard, working the fields and coming home
covered in sod, the old coat stained with the dirt of the fields, the same dirt
under the old man’s fingernails. And his mother, and himself, they had never
worn anything but rags. No fashion there. None at all.

But through hard work and part-time jobs, he had finished
school and finished his studies at the University, and gone on to study
fashion. He found he was quite good at design, and as he became known, and was
able to distance himself from his past; he changed his past. He made up his
former life, and it was a better one than the one he had actually experienced.
Cut himself off from his father and mother and their little dirt farm, and when
he heard that the both of them had died, and were buried not far from where his
father had turned up the dirt to plant the potatoes and the like, well, he only
felt a minor pang of regret. He dove deeper into his work, deeper into design,
deeper into fashion, until he hardly remembered his old self at all.

Though that coat, that damnable coat had reminded him. That
was it. That was the whole matter of the thing. He had been reminded of his own
father, not a tailor, but a farmer, a man for whom fashion did not exist, a man
of the earth, a man with dirt under his nails. And his mother, always tired,
always frumpy, a face that makeup had not touched, a back that had never felt
the softness of silk. He tried not to think of the shapeless clothing he had
once worn. Or the coat his father had worn, not too unlike that ugly thing on
the back of the chair, a coat perhaps made by the very tailor who had made this.
Tailor, a man who could design such a wart on the art of fashion should call
himself a butcher, not a tailor.

By the time he went to bed, James felt quite pleased with
himself. A man divorced from his old life, a man who had struck a blow for
grace and poise, and the wearing of better material.

He lay in bed for awhile, ran the incident over and over in
his head, and finally he turned to a book, lay in bed with the reading light
behind him, but the words did not form thoughts, they were merely bugs that danced
on the page.

Finally, he put the book aside and turned off the light,
slowly drifted into sleep.

Until the noise.

It echoed from somewhere distant, and then the echo grew and
thundered, and he sat up, only to find that it was raining and that thunder was
banging and lightning was jumping, and a very cool and pleasant wind was
slipping through his open window, making the curtains flap like gossip tongues.
He slipped out of bed and went to the window, stuck his head out of it and
looked down at the dark and empty street. He felt rain on his neck.

He pulled back inside, considered closing the window, but
decided against it. It was too hot to have the window closed. He hoped that the
rain would soon pass, and with it the flashing of lightning and the rolling of
thunder.