As I Die Lying Page 14

  Act Two was all Loverboy, and he stole the show until the curtain fell.

  The critics raved.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  "Something smells good," Beth said.

  She stood on the landing, my bathrobe held closed over her body with one delicate arm. I dared a glance at her face and she was smiling, her cheeks faintly pinked. So she didn't know.

  But how could she know? Loverboy looked just like me.

  "How do you like your eggs?" I asked. “Scrambled or Freud?”

  "Not only good in bed, but he cooks, too. I could get used to this."

  She stepped down the carpeted stairs and came to me. I stared at the eggs, at chickens that would never be born, while the whites and yolks congealed from the heat. Beth kissed the back of my neck.

  "You were something else last night. That first time..." she whistled lightly. "That was tender and moving. But the second and third times, you were like a man possessed."

  I stirred the eggs with a spatula. Bacon lay cooling on a plate and a gallon of orange juice sweated by the stove. Grits. This meal needed grits.

  "Richard?" Beth asked, worry in her voice. "Is something wrong?"

  I gave her the Milktoast smile. "No. I had a wonderful time."

  She pulled the robe more securely over her body. "For a second there, I thought you were ashamed. I know I'm not as pretty in the daylight..."

  I turned, dropping the spatula in the skillet. “You're beautiful.”

  It wasn't her fault—she wasn’t yet a contestant in the Blame Game. She shouldn't have to suffer for my shortcomings. And if pretending saved her from being hurt, then I would pretend for a thousand years.

  Besides, I was used to taking the blame. Hell, they said I enjoyed it, and who was I to argue with them?

  I hugged her as the eggs sizzled behind me.

  "Why did you sneak off this morning? I wanted to wake up in your arms, Richard."

  Because I wasn't sure whose arms they would be. And that was why I slipped out of half-forgotten dreams as well. Because while I slept, I knew that something else waded through the marrow of the Bone House. And while I was awake, it dreamed. Terrible dreams, sweat-stained pillows.

  We had breakfast and coffee and I drove her to her apartment, concentrating on the road. Beth talked about a test she had tomorrow, biology or some other science. I nodded just enough to keep her talking as the wheels whispered on the asphalt.

  I pulled into her driveway. She said she wanted to change clothes before class. She kissed me again and opened the door.

  "Phone me?" she said, leaning toward me. Her breasts swayed tantalizingly, but Loverboy didn't rise to the yeasty treat. But he grinned from his window. Maybe even winked.

  "Sure, Beth."

  "Oh, and one more thing. Remember when I said I like to be careful?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "I wasn't careful enough."

  Did she mean careful about not falling in love? And that she now meant...

  "Do you mean careful about falling in love?" I asked.

  "Why are you so anxious to talk about that?" She frowned. “We don’t need worries right now, remember? That's not what I meant."

  "What, then?"

  She smiled again, eyes squinting. "Birth control. Protection. I got so carried away that I forgot."

  What I fool I was. Unprotected love.

  It was a missed conception, Mister Milktoast said.

  Shut up, smartass. This is serious.

  "Hey, Beth, I'm sorry. I assumed—"

  “Takes two to tango, handsome. Heat of the moment and all that.”

  "I should have..."

  She shook her head. "I can take a pill when I get inside. Should be okay. Don't worry about it."

  Yeah, Loverboy said. Make like a morning-after pill and get the fuck out.

  "Well, at least you don't have to worry about—um..."

  "Disease?" She laughed. "The upside of sleeping with a virgin. But remember, good things are worth a little risk."

  Which good thing? Loverboy? I didn't want to think about that.

  And Little Hitler? The very embodiment of unsafe sex.

  I looked toward Beth's apartment, the bottom of a two-story duplex. A curtain parted and I saw half of a face watching us. Loverboy twitched. The face was female.

  "Bye, Richard. Call me later." Beth said. She blew me a kiss and then she was gone. Then I was gone, too, deep inside myself, vacuumed into the dead black throat of my own mind. The car door slammed as if it were a door to another universe.

  Loverboy rolled down the window. "When do I get to meet your roommate, Honey Buns?"

  "Sooner or later," she said. Then she smiled again. "Because I plan on having you over in a few days. Maybe to spend the night."

  Loverboy watched as she jiggled up the sidewalk to the door, then she waved and went inside. The pale face in the window stared a moment longer before the curtain dropped. Little Hitler drove to work, ten miles over the speed limit. Bookworm slowed him down when we reached the Shady Valley town limits.

  It was my favorite time of morning at the bookstore, when the sun was at just the right angle to shine fully onto the varnished oak flooring. It lit up the three round tables in the reading corner, where the local poets liked to sit and scratch their beards thoughtfully, with the blank paper staring up into their faces as if daring them to make a mark. The poets never sat there in the morning because the light would give away the pallor of their skin and strip away all mystery. They only came at dusk, when the corner was draped in dramatic shadows, where they hunched like toothless ghosts who have returned to an immolated retirement home.

  The smell of French vanilla coffee filled the store, settling like dust on the rows of books, seeping into the pages as if to make the words more exotic. Miss Billingsly liked to have the coffee on hand for the customers. She believed it kept them in the store longer and sped them around the aisles. But sometimes they spilled on the merchandise. Two days earlier, Arlie Wesson, an elderly local who always wore a camouflaged hunting vest, had turned jittery. He sloshed his coffee over a stack of self-help books.

  I was cradling my own coffee that morning with both hands, leaning over the counter that made a rectangular island in the front of the store. I was thinking about Beth, about skin and sin, about what had happened after Loverboy took over.

  What if it was Loverboy she really liked? What if Loverboy was the one who had connected with her on the most intimate and primal level?

  While I was thinking, Bookworm came out and slipped into my skin. He was usually on duty at work, the one with the excellent memory that kept track of new releases and International Standard Book Numbers. He found joy in the orderly shelves and the hush of readers and the odor of cream paper and ink. And, of course, the lies inherent in fiction.

  He also had the quiet charm that delighted the little old ladies who frequented the store. Loverboy dozed, unless an attractive woman walked in. Little Hitler sulked in his dark corner, plotting revenge for imagined slights. Mister Milktoast hovered, ready to placate unhappy customers. The black shadow behind them stayed silent, sleepy, the most elusive of imaginary friends.

  Bookworm looked around the store. A retiree in a fluorescent blue jogging suit was puttering around in the gardening section, and in the back, a middle-aged woman was busy slapping at the hands of her two little children, who kept reaching for the shiny Thomas the Tank Engine books. Satisfied that all was normal, Bookworm gave my body back.

  The bell over the door rang. I turned, Loverboy a fraction of a second behind.

  She was young. She wore a periwinkle dress with a pattern of yellow flowers. I watched her through the steam of my coffee, trying to fit her into a genre.

  She had skin of mystery, lips of romance, and hair of poetry, but her eyes were science fiction.

  My heart did a tiny somersault as she headed for the horror section. She smiled as she passed.

  Loverboy throbbed to life.

  "Good morn
ing," Loverboy said. "Let me know if I can help you."

  ...out of those clothes and onto my weasel meat, he silently added.

  "Just looking," she said.

  So am I, Sweetbreads. Just keep moving and shaking.

  She walked down the aisle as if through a gauntlet of knowledge, classical literature on the left, philosophy and religion on the right. The flooring creaked under her sandals, but the footfalls were swallowed by the walls of books. She stopped in front of the horror shelves like a worshipper before a dark shrine.

  Loverboy watched as she scanned the rows of titles, which were alphabetized by author. Barker, Campbell, Keene, three shelves of King, Koontz, Lovecraft, Nicholson, Rice, Saul, Straub. The great masters who had wrestled their demons, pinning them onto paper. Plus some hacks.

  She must have felt Loverboy's eyes on her, burning and peering and leering and stripping. She looked back with eyes like a kitten's, quick and gray.

  "Looking for anything in particular?" I asked, walking around the counter. I stepped close enough to smell the faint honey of her red hair.

  "I'm looking for a present for my boyfriend. His birthday is next week." She twirled a strand of hair between her fingers. I would have bet she tossed a mean lariat.

  Fit to be tied, Mister Milktoast said, sounding scarily like Loverboy.

  "Does he like horror?"

  "Not really. But I do, sometimes."

  "You go to Westridge?"

  "Yeah. I'm majoring in English."

  "Liberal arts, uh?"

  "No, not arts. Just, like, reading and stuff."

  A faint whiff of patchouli rose off her neck like a morning mist or a hippie’s hangover.

  "We give a five-percent discount to students. When you find what you're looking for,

  I'll fill you out a discount card. Your boyfriend, what does he like?"

  "How-to. Like motorcycles and stuff. And science stuff." Her lips were in a constant smile, and her science fiction eyes played plot twists.

  "We have an excellent science section," said Bookworm. "I'd be glad to show it to you. Would you like a cup of coffee? It's free."

  "Sure, that would be cool."

  "Actually, it’s warm. Cream or sugar?"

  "Just cream, please."

  Heh heh, she wants some cream, Loverboy said.

  Bookworm showed her the how-to section and the science section, and went up front to get her coffee. The other customers were still browsing, like cattle grazing. Janet Evanovich, Stephanie Meyer, the latest bestselling guide to getting rich quick through the marketing of get-rich-quick books. The cream made white coils in the coffee. When Bookworm carried the mug back to her, she was reading the jacket liner of Carl Sagan's Cosmos.

  "That would make an excellent gift." I handed her the coffee. "Unfortunately, it's fairly expensive. All those color photographs really jack up the price."

  "Steve would really get off on this, though."

  "$49.95, plus tax. That's what I call real love."

  "Well...he's sort of like bad habit that won't go away. You know, like when you scratch when you're not supposed to. It feels good for a while, but then you have to itch some more." She looked down at the open book. "But he'd really love this. He freaks out on space."

  She sipped her coffee. I watched her delicious bicep tighten from the weight of the book. Why was I doing this? I had dipped a toe into the waters of romance with Beth, then dove headfirst without looking into the black river of the heart, and drowned like a rat jumping a sinking ship. Did I still thirst?

  No, not thirst.

  Hunger.

  Hunger that arose from deep inside, away from the cluttered kitchen of the Bone House. Hunger from somewhere beyond, somewhere dark.

  Loverboy? Where was that sonovabitch? I swear, he’s the kind of guy you don’t want to turn your back on.

  "I don't think I want to spend that much money," she said, tossing her hair like a colt tosses its mane. "It's the thought that counts, you know."

  She slid the book back into its space on the shelf.

  "What kind of English Lit do you like?" I asked, as she tilted her head to read the titles.

  "I don't like much of it. I'm up to the American stuff right now. Thoreau is about as dull as watching paint dry, and Twain's okay but they skip through him real fast, ‘cause he says 'nigger' and stuff. Hemingway's a real asshole. And Faulkner, Jesus, what a joke he is."

  “Look up 'enigmatic' in the dictionary, and the definition is 'a Faulkner scholar,'” Bookworm said, shyness giving way to interest. “You can analyze his work into circles. I think 'The sound and the fury, signifying nothing' sums up his career quite nicely.”

  She laughed and pulled out a volume on evolution by Stephen Jay Gould, leaving a gap like a wound on the bookshelf.

  "Why are you studying literature if you don't like it?" I asked, wondering if I should tell her I was a writer. Or was going to be, as soon as I got around to it.

  "Well, I wanted to study music, play the clarinet or something, but the practice time sucks donkey. And then if you graduate, all you can do is teach. I guess it's sort of the same with English, but I already know English. It doesn't have all these scales, you know what I mean?"

  She read the jacket liner of the Gould book. "Huh. This guy says bacteria is the present, past, and future ruler of earth. Bizarre."

  She wrinkled her nose as if an insect had landed on it. "I changed my mind about getting Steve a book. I think I'll buy something for myself."

  Loverboy was wearing his wolfish grin somewhere in his room, probably beating off under the sheets with a flashlight, but Bookworm was taking care of business.

  "There's always the horror," Bookworm said.

  Always the horror? Sounded like a Little Hitler line.

  "I don't know, I'm in the mood for something upbeat. A little pop literature, maybe. Thanks for your help, uh...," She stretched her neck to read my nameplate. "Richard."

  With a swish of her dress, she turned toward the magazine rack. I went back to the counter, where I sat amid a clutter of calendars, postcards, and colorful buttons that had sayings like "Where Books Are Burned, People Are Next" and "Without Word there is no World.”

  My Little People stirred, wandering the halls. Loverboy was chiding Bookworm for blowing a chance to get his rocks off. The trick of perfect failure is to practice, practice, practice.

  "She's one fine slice of white bread, my man," Loverboy said, his voice as smooth as a lizard in mud and about as filthy.

  "She's already spoken for," said Bookworm. "You heard her talking about her boyfriend."

  "And what about Beth?" I thought.

  "Last night's news," Loverboy said. "You think she'll be back? I mean, I know I was damn good, but you, Richie, you're a total waste. What could she possibly see in you?"

  "Hopefully not you."

  "Fuck you, Richie, and the donkey you rode in on. And maybe your slut of a mom while we're at it."

  At the mention of Mother, Mister Milktoast minced out. "Loverboy, don't be a shellfish. We're all in this oyster together."

  "Yee-haw. Mister Milkshit, a.k.a. the Dalai Lama of the Coldiron collective. Brotherhood of man, inner peace, and all that crap. I’m thinking you want Richie here all to yourself, you sugar-wristed little beat boy. Well, this here hunk of American steel likes his biscuits hot and buttery. So don't mess with my action."

  "Here she comes now," said Mister Milktoast.

  "You think I don't notice, Dickwheat?"

  She laid a magazine on the counter. It was a “Rolling Stone.” Keith Richards was on the cover, grinning like a dried skull that didn't know it was dead.

  Loverboy forced my eyes over the front of her dress. Bookworm lifted my gaze with effort and smiled at her. "Found something light?" I asked.

  She looked back into my eyes. I wondered who she saw there. It must have been Bookworm or Mister Milktoast, because she didn't flinch.

  I got a discount card out from under the counter
. Usually, the customers filled out the cards themselves, but someone had ulterior motives. "Name, please?" I asked.

  "Shelley Birdsong," she said. "That's 'Shelley' with two 'L's."

  "Like the poet," I said, scribbling.

  "Who?"

  "One of the Romantics."

  "Oh, with that song about secrets in your sleep. The guys with the big hair."

  "Telephone number?" I wrote it down as she recited it, tucking the numerals away in the back rooms of the Bone House.

  She was turning to leave when Loverboy erupted. "Shelley?"

  She looked back.

  "Nice to meet you."

  She waved and left.

  Loverboy grinned and repeated the line, riffing on the Milkster’s puns. It will be nice to meat you.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  After work, I walked into the October sunshine.

  Something made my feet move. Something looked out of the back of my skull and through my eyes. Something saw the town anew like a traveler who has returned from a long trip. The view from the front door of the Bone House was an everchanging thing, a yard that shifted its seasons, a sidewalk that buckled and roiled, a street without sense in a neighborhood with nebulous borders.

  Cholesterols of traffic clogged the arteries of the highway. The tourists poured into the mountains for the tail end of leaf-looking season. The air stank of spent fuel and rubber. Exhaust for the tired beasts.

  I headed down the sidewalk, toward the heart of town. The highway cut a straight river through Shady Valley, a map dot that didn’t accommodate the curves and swells of the Appalachian geography. Gas stations, fast-food joints, and auto parts stores lined the highway, their brittle steel and glass and hard edges contrasting the mountains that rose gently above. The buildings were like sharp temples at the feet of giants.

  The leaves were changing across the face of the slopes, in blazes of red and purple from the maple, the yellow of poplar, and the orange of oak, with the tufts of evergreens occasionally brushing through. Mingled with the car pollution was the soft decay of leaves and sweet grass. The sky was crayon blue and solid. A few clouds drifted aimlessly, white patches of contentment.

  "Yes, I can find peace here," I thought. “Alone.”