The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant, Volume IV: The Black Carousel (20 page)

Maybe, he thought, half in a doze, if I sleep
all day it will all go away.

It wouldn’t, though.

It hadn’t yet, even when he’d tried it.

Walking hadn’t worked either, to the park and
around it on the inside, to the Cock’s Crow and a few beers before
walking home again, to the depot out on Cross Valley Road to watch
the trains and listen to the passengers and gossip with the
stationmaster before walking back.

None of it had worked.

None of it had stopped the world from twisting
slightly out of shape.

And none of it had explained why it had
started.

“It’s like,” he said to Flory Sholcroft just a
tick past noon, “there’s this big pot, you see, and I’m sort of
treading water in the middle or standing on something I can’t see,
and then someone comes along with this damn ladle or spoon or stick
or something and starts stirring the damn thing. Not a lot, you
understand. It’s like when you give the soup a quick stir to keep
it from burning, you see? Things start moving around, but I don’t,
and . . .”

He spread his hands away from his plate, then
picked up a fork and jabbed at a piece of his steak. “Estelle
thinks it’s her.” He chewed and swallowed. “I haven’t told her it’s
me.”

“Merry-go-round,” Flory said, long, red-tipped
fingers darting over her plate to rearrange her hamburger, her
french fries, the two leaves of lettuce on which had died a slice
of tomato.

“What?”

“I think merry-go-round is a better image.” She
grinned as she touched the corner of her mouth with a napkin.
“You’re riding around in circles, see, and the rest of the world
stands around watching. They’re there, then they’re gone, then
they’re back but in a slightly different place, or with a different
expression, or whatever.”

He thought about it. “Maybe.”

“All of which makes you think, merry-go-round or
soup pot, that you’re going nuts, right?”

He grimaced. “Hell of a way for a shrink to
talk.”

“Kayman, I’ve been talking to you like this for
years, and you haven’t slugged me yet. You think just because you
come for a little advice in my professional capacity now and then
I’m going to treat you any differently?” Before he could lean away,
she reached over and gripped his arm. “You and Estelle are like my
second set of parents, you great idiot. You helped me when they
died, I’m doing my best to help you now. Okay?”

He supposed it was fair, but it didn’t feel
right.

This woman was half his age, handsome in a way
most men found intimidating, strong in a way that frightened most
of them off. Unlike him, she had never married. Yet she didn’t look
anything like a spinster, her hair still blond and flowing, figure
still heart-skipping full, a face he could put his hands around and
pinch and mold and squeeze until he wept. Hell of a way, he
thought, for a doctor to look.

And a hell of a thing too for him to be here
like this. Sneaking away from home on the pretense of a short
stroll and calling Flory from the phone booth over in the corner by
the kitchen entrance, telling her he’d like to talk again, it
looked like rain today. Then calling Estelle and telling her he’d
met some buddies and would eat at the Crow if she didn’t mind,
maybe walk back to the Travelers after they were done. Did she want
to meet him there? They could blow the budget and have some fun,
ride the carousel, see the ghost house, maybe catch the animal show
he’d heard about from some of the kids in the park. She could get a
cab from Bartlett’s to bring her over, or maybe a neighbor to drive
her. Or should he come back and pick her up?

She had answered no to it all. It was going to
pour any minute, she claimed, and if he had any of the sense left
that God had given him, he’d come straight home after eating. But
then he didn’t have any sense, did he, because he was too damn
stubborn to think he’d ever catch pneumonia, much less a summer
cold. So don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine, I’ve got plenty to do
and none it needs you. He’d hung up much relieved; after living
with her for twenty years come next September, he knew that being
with Estelle in a mood like that would be like riding a witch’s
broomstick with the witch right behind him, seething at the
world.

As he chewed his last piece of meat, he looked
up at one of the wagon wheel chandeliers, and smiled to himself,
remembering a time.

“You made an ass of yourself then,” Johnny said,
leaning over the back from the booth behind.

“Did not.”

“Did so,” a woman declared, poking her thin-hair
head up beside Johnny. Red lips, red cheeks, bloodshot eyes, cigar
mashed into a silver holder. “You took your goddamn clothes
off.”

God, yes, so he had.

“Claimed you were Tarzan,” she continued, holder
clamped between yellowed, horsey teeth. “You climbed up on a table,
jumped from there and hung from one of the spokes.”

“Hanging out, as it were,” Johnny said,
chuckling.

“Shut up,” she said.

“Hey, hey, Brenda, let’s not forget a lady’s
manners.”

She jabbed him hard with a stiff finger, and he
yelped, disappeared below the back, and Kayman could hear him
muttering about medical expenses and lawsuits.

“You ought to leave him alone,” Kayman warned
her gently,

“What the hell for?”

“Because I’ll leave you!” Johnny shouted.

Brenda winked. “No, he won’t. He can’t. He’s in
love.”

“Hell I am!”

“Mind your own business, you fruit.”

His head only to his eyes rose over the booth,
eyebrows waggling. “I was banana enough for you at one time,
sweetie pie.”

Kayman laughed.

Brenda snapped around and vanished, smoke
billowing behind to measure the strength of the insult, and the
embarrassment of the truth.

Still chuckling, and remembering, he emptied his
glass of milk and said to Flory, “They called again yesterday. I
wasn’t there, but they called.”

“Who?”

“Her kids. I told you about them last time.”

Flory pushed her plate to one side, nibbled on a
fry. “They still don’t want you two living together.”

He shook his head.

“The home threat again?”

She knew about the children — Jesus, children!
they were damn near fifty, both of them — and their thus-far futile
attempts over the past five years to put their mother into a
nursing home, down where they lived in suburban Atlanta, To protect
her, they said; to expose her to a better, healthier climate, they
said; to watch over her in her declining years, they had the
goddamn nerve to say last Christmas when they called and refused to
talk to him when he answered. And until now, Estelle had been
strong enough, mother enough, to keep them in their place, slap
them down, turn them around and put a sting to their nosy
butts.

Then the rain began to bring things to the
house.

She became afraid for her mind.

Flory touched his hand.

He didn’t look while she spoke, watching instead
the jukebox over behind the piano; a man stood there, bending over,
reading the titles, a quarter tapping the glass face while he
decided. Kayman knew him. Saw him several times up at the library,
once in a while at the Brass Ring. Big fella. Skinny as hell. Keeps
trying to grow a beard, but it only makes him look like a rug got
at by termites not very choosy about their meals. Played darts
once; the guy had lost badly.

Flory told him it wasn’t right that he should
let Estelle believe she was the one who missed things, because the
things she thought she missed weren’t really there. He knew that.
Fear of what she might think was only being cruel, not to mention
hugely selfish.

What was the bastard’s name, he wondered,
scowling in concentration. Hal? Jerry? He would use the alphabet
trick — go through all the letters, the name would come when he
reached the right one. Al? Artie? Benny?

“Kayman, what you’re doing is wrong. You know
it’s wrong, and you’ll have to stop it.”

A fist rested on the table, knuckles bleeding
white.

This was crazy. How the hell could he forget the
name of a guy he saw only yesterday, for Christ’s sake? Carl?
Danny? Ed?

The man made his selection, turned around, and
as he walked back to his table, saw Kayman and waved.

Kayman returned the wave with a nod.

Johnny and Brenda began to dance by the bar at
the back of the room.

Jesus Christ, what the hell was his name?

Something bounced off his chest.

He looked down at his plate and saw a french fry
skid across and off it. The fist mashed it. The plate bounced. His
empty glass toppled over, and she caught it before it rolled off
the table onto the floor.

When he glared, he could see how hard she tried
to stay unmoved.

“If,” he said, leaning over, voice low and deep,
“she thinks I’m crazy, she’ll leave me.”

“No.”

“If,” he said, feeling the plate’s edge press
into his stomach, “she thinks I’m crazy, she’ll leave me.”

“She won’t, Kayman, I promise. You just say the
word, and I’ll come over and help you. It won’t be easy, but for
Estelle’s sake, you can’t keep this up.”

“They do not,” he said, slapping the plate off
the table and ignoring the crash, “leave me.”

Her lips quivered in indignation, stopped, and
she picked up her purse. “Well I am, Kayman. Right now.” She slid
out of the booth, purse stiff against her waist. “When you’ve
calmed down, give me a call.”

She left ahead of the gunshots of her heels.

He stared at the back of the seat opposite him,
paying no attention to the busboy sweeping up the pieces, not
listening to the song the man had selected, not blinking when a
woman slid into the booth and folded her hands on the table.

She was thin, not pretty and not plain, ordinary
and wearing an ordinary light summer dress with puffed sleeves and
tiny blue flowers somewhat faded from constant washing. Short brown
hair that had always caught the sun in hints of red. Chestnut, she
claimed; he didn’t call it anything but brown. A rounded chin age
promised to point. Dark hazel eyes that didn’t look away when he
leaned back and sighed loudly and used his left hand to force open
the fist. She didn’t blink. Her expression was blank, as if she
were looking right through him, thinking about something else,
something unimportant, something automatic, like shopping or making
love.

He knew the look.

He knew the woman.

He fumbled out his wallet, looked at the check,
and dropped a bill over it.

She didn’t move.

He grabbed a french fry from Flory’s plate and
jammed it into his mouth as he pushed out of the booth.

She didn’t move.

A step away, a step back; he leaned over the
table and said, “Changed my mind, get the hell away.”

She didn’t move.

When he left, yanking the door open and looking
back with a scowl because he didn’t want to, she was still there,
and Johnny and Brenda were still there as well, slow dancing alone
in the middle of the floor.

He didn’t go to the carnival. The sight of all
those people crowding around at the entrance, a sign tacked to the
arch telling them only a few days left, soured his mood further, so
he went to the library instead, read and didn’t see the words,
flipped through magazines and didn’t see the pictures, finally went
to the park where he sat by the pond. Beneath a tree. Flipping
pebbles into the water.

Tears made an effort, but he shook them back,
not really knowing why. He
should
cry, damnit. Hell, he had
a
right to
cry. He had just turned away by his own stupidity
one of the few friends he had left who could still do him some
good. Flory was a saint and he had goddamn stoned her.

A fist pressed to his brow, the other one
smacking his knee.

Why was it so hard anymore?

After all these years, it ought to get easier;
it sure ought to get simpler.

Why was it so hard?

Johnny used to talk about paying your dues. You
learned, you worked hard, with your own two hands you built your
reputation, it didn’t matter where, and these were your dues. So
Jesus Christ, hadn’t he paid enough? Would he still be paying when
they dropped him in his grave?

“That’s not right,” his wife had told him, back
there at the house so long ago, before she’d tried to leave. “You
think that, it means you figure the world owes you just because
you’re alive.”

“No, Ronnie, that’s wrong.”

Nearly a head shorter than he, thin despite all
the food she put away, chestnut hair more often than not wrapped in
a red net so the wind wouldn’t ruin what she’d taken all day to put
together. Which wasn’t, by then, one hell of a lot.

“It’s right,” she insisted, and picked a speck
of tobacco off her lower lip. “Johnny’s talking through his hat.
Dues don’t exist except for those who need excuses.”

“Oh?” He had been a real smartass back then,
carrying a leather briefcase, wearing three-piece pin-striped suits
and shoes shined every morning, working with figures, making people
money in a brokerage firm on Centre Street. “Then what does?”

She had never really understood, had never quite
been able to grasp the fact that the figures he brought home with
him weren’t related in any way to the figures on his paycheck; not
understanding when he tried to explain that the numbers he talked
about weren’t his numbers at all

They got by.

“C’mon, Ronnie, if I don’t have to pay my dues
so we can have some economic security and we won’t have to starve
in our old age, what the hell does exist, huh?”

For the first time in years, her face softened
despite the fact that he’d ended up shouting, and behind the pale
lipstick, the eye shadow, the blush, he saw her the way she was
when she wasn’t being Mrs. Kalb — eyes to sleep sweetly in, a smile
to lie gently in, a way of stroking the back of his hand the way
she crooned to the children when they were babies and sick.