Excerpt: Get Lucky

Unconsciousness was the best. Sweet black velvet nothing. You were never born. You didn’t exist. You could forget. You could forget that you ever needed to forget.

But if you couldn’t be unconscious, the next best thing was those wonderful moments just after you woke up. Everything was right with the world. Maybe there was something just out of your grasp, like a dull sound on the other side of a thin wall. But it wasn’t your problem. It didn’t bother you.

Something sharp dug into my ribs. Unconsciousness lifted up and flapped away like a murder of crows.

“Huh,” a voice said. It was a million miles away. A transmission from another planet. It was no concern of mine.

I felt pressure against my cheek. Smooth, slightly warm, slightly sticky. A little bit bumpy, like the peel of an orange. Linoleum.

I knew in the way you know without thinking that linoleum made this Inky’s. Nulty’s Public still had the wood floors, and peanut shells. The Blue Light was all ceramic tile, cold as a coroner’s slab. I hated waking up at the Blue Light. I loved Inky’s linoleum like my mother’s arms.

If you couldn’t be unconscious, and you couldn’t be newly conscious, the next best thing after that was knowing there was something wrong, something you wanted to forget, but not knowing what it was. You could feel it breathing down the back of your neck, but you hadn’t turned around yet. If you weren’t looking at it, maybe it didn’t exist.

I opened my eyes. I saw two perfect black shiny mountains on an endless white plain. They were fascinatingly beautiful. I shut my eyes.

I heard a scuff, and felt another dig in my ribs. “Hey,” the voice said. “Sleeping Beauty. Up.”

My eyelids peeled themselves back, sticky as a windowpane on a cold morning. The mountains were shoes, beautiful black shoes, shining like a promise. The white plain was Inky’s wonderful warm linoleum.

A housefly crawled across the tip of one of the shoes. He rubbed his front legs together greedily. Somebody owed him money, maybe.

A single fly

The memory came barreling up before I could stop it. So did my last meal. It splashed all over the beautiful shoes. There was nothing solid in it; nothing that even used to be solid.

The beautiful shoes stepped back. Not quick, not frightened. Just deliberate. Containing the damage. “Jesus,” the voice said softly, in a way that didn’t suggest any particular familiarity with the owner of the name.

A steel clamp grabbed ahold of my shoulder and rolled me onto my back. I looked up into the face of a demon.

“Henry Pearl,” the demon said.

“Nice to meet you,” I said. If this was Hell, apparently it still had Inky’s. So that was some comfort. Unless in Hell, the bar was closed.

The demon scowled. He didn’t look so demonic now that I was getting used to him. He almost looked like a man. But there was something wrong with his face.

“No, rummy,” he said. “That’s your name. Henry Pearl.”

“Huh,” I said. “Nice to meet me.” My mouth was dry. I knew what that meant. It needed a drink in it.

“Stay put for a second,” the demon said. He swayed back out of my field of vision. I looked up at the ceiling. The plaster was cracking. I had to talk to Inky about that next time I saw him. A place like Inky’s, you end up looking at the ceiling sooner or later. It ought to make a good impression on a guy.

I heard the demon rummaging around the bar. That lovely sound. The clinking of glass, sweeter than singing angels. He was my kind of demon.

“While you’re up,” I said, not so much with the aid of my tongue as in spite of it, “get me a bottle.”

I heard the demon grunt, and then a whoosh. Carbonation. A seltzer bottle, spraying on linoleum. Seltzer was the enemy. It gave me less of the good stuff. If he was bothering with seltzer, I had to revise my opinion of him. Then again, he was pouring it on the floor, which was about where seltzer belongs.

I heard leather squeaking, and a few grunts from the demon, and then footsteps. His shadow interrupted my view of the ceiling, which was admittedly to the ceiling’s advantage.

“Henry Pearl?” I said. “Nice to meet you. I’m Henry Pearl too. We should be pals.”

The demon chuckled at this, reached down and got half my shirtfront bunched in a paw, and lifted. Somehow I was on my feet. My feet didn’t like it too much, but the demon wasn’t letting go.

Up close I could see now he wasn’t a demon. He had a face carved out of granite, none of the edges sanded down, and some nicks and scars where the chisel had slipped. Blue eyes like a swimming pool on a hot day, serene and glassy and somehow unreachable. Maybe he was good looking, once. Before somebody did that to his face.

He had ink on him. Not like you’d see on somebody’s arm, or somebody’s chest. Not a heart, an anchor, the name of some sweetheart who stayed under their skin. He had fat stripes of black, wild tiger-tangles of curling knifepoints, sprays of dots like blood spatter. Ancient, tribal. Maybe I’d seen something like it in a book once. Maybe I’d actually ever read a book once. I wasn’t sure on that. I was kind of hazy about what a book was, come to think of it.

“Jesus,” I said, to the weird, inked-up tiger face.

“Wrong again,” he said. When he smiled like that, it made the shapes on his face move. It gave me the creeps.

I heard a fly buzzing somewhere. That sick feeling started to crawl up my back on six little insect legs. The man with the ink must have seen it in my face; he took a step back. But his fist didn’t budge from my shirt.

“Easy,” the man with the ink said. “I just cleaned these shoes.”

“I need a drink,” I said. “Be a pal. Get me a whiskey.”

“No whiskey,” he said. I turned my head. It was a risky undertaking, and quite an effort, but it paid off. The shelf behind Inky’s bar was still as beautiful and full as ever.

“Whiskey,” I said, telling one arm to wave in that direction, and trusting it would. “Right over there, see?”

“Not for you,” he said. “Mr. Pearl.” He added the last words with the deliberation of a rubber stamp. Like he was rejecting my loan application, and enjoying it.

“No whiskey,” I said, trying out the words in my mouth. I didn’t like the sound of them. I didn’t like the taste of them.

“Can you walk?” the man with the ink asked me.

“I could walk better with some whiskey,” I said. “We’d be boon companions, the two of us. I’d walk really well. Also with gin, in a pinch.” Although sometimes gin stepped on my toes.

“There’s whiskey in the car,” the man with the ink said. That was interesting. I liked the promise in those words.

“Where is this car?” I asked. I was very interested in this car now. It sounded like a good place. It had whiskey.

“Outside,” the man with the ink said. “Can you walk?”

“I can fake it for a little while,” I said.

He carried me, mostly, along the linoleum, toward the door. It was bright outside. That made it the wrong time of day to be outside. Or awake, for that matter. Definitely the wrong time of day not to be drinking. But there was whiskey outside, in the car. He’d said so. That made it worth the risk.

My head felt too light.

“My hat,” I said, putting a hand to where it wasn’t. My hair felt rougher than a scrub brush. Maybe I should do something about that. What did you do to clean your hair, again? It’d come to me. Maybe after some of that whiskey. I looked back at the linoleum floor, and there was my hat, upended. A sad, brown little thing, crushed like a faint hope.

“We should get my hat,” I said. The man with the ink paused and looked back at it. He sneered.

“Maybe to burn it,” he said. “Maybe not even then." And he dragged me out the door.

Outside it was too bright. The sun punched me in the eyes, both of them at once, and right away they swelled shut. They felt bruised, all the way back into my skull. I fought to open them up again, made them swim through the pain and the shower of dazzling microbes dancing in front of them, until I could see again. If my eyes were shut, maybe I wouldn’t see the whiskey.

It was morning. I vaguely remembered morning. It was like dusk, only turned the wrong way. The air was still cool, a little sweet and perfumed, but cut with exhaust. The street was empty, except for me and the man with the ink and a single blowing newspaper and the car.

It was a car in the sense that a Naval destroyer is still technically a boat. It was as black and shiny as the man with the ink’s shoes, as long as a coffin, as still as a shadow. I didn’t see any whiskey.

I looked back at the man with the ink. In the light now I could see that he wore a tuxedo, crisp and fresh as a new dollar bill. He even had the little tie knotted right. I didn’t see how, given the size of that fist he had making friends with the top buttons of my shirt. It was a little impressive, I had to admit. Maybe he had help.

“There’s whiskey in the car,” I said, hoping for confirmation.

“There is,” he said. I waited for him to open the door. Instead he walked me around to the back of the car, and stuck a key in the trunk. Maybe the whiskey was in the trunk. Maybe there was a whole case of it.

He opened the trunk.

A single fly on a blue

The sickness rolled over in me again, and he saw it coming this time, and spun me away. I decorated the sidewalk a little, and then it was over, and I felt that strange relief that never lasts long enough.

“You said there was whiskey in the car,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my sleeve. It felt thick and wooly, but then, so did my mouth.

“There is,” the man with the ink said. “In the back seat. In a lovely glass decanter. You’re riding in the trunk.”

“Why am I riding in the trunk?” I asked. I whined. I was the saddest little puppy dog in the world.

“Think back about ten seconds,” the man with the ink said. “Bad enough you got it on my shoes. I paid for them. I don’t want to pay for the upholstery.”

The trunk yawned like a grave. Like the barrel of a gun. He pushed me toward it and I started to struggle. “No,” I said, but someone had tied concrete weights to the end of my arms and legs. I took a swing at him, but it was like a gust of wind trying to punch a mountain. Maybe it’d do something. If you kept at it for a couple of hundred years.

“No, please,” I said, as he folded me into the trunk. He wasn’t mean about it. He was tidy. Professional. I’d almost have thanked him for it, if I wasn’t scared out of my mind. I couldn’t tell you why. I didn’t want to remember. I just knew it was a bad place.

“Easy,” the man with the ink said. “Shhhhh.” He started to close the lid.

The world outside was a square, and then it was a rectangle, and then it was a single bright line, and then I was all alone in the dark.

A single fly on a blue cheek.

It was like being unconscious. Just with all the good parts taken away. I wanted to scream. But even though I knew the trunk was empty, had seen it perfectly empty, I didn’t make a sound. I stayed very still. I was certain, absolutely certain, there was someone else in their with me.

The motor started. From here, all muffled, it sounded like the buzz of a fly.

###

I don’t know how long it was we drove. How many turns we took. It was flat most of the way, and then the floor of the trunk started to angle. I tried to make a game of it. But my brain, my body, every inch of my nerves was starting to itch. It wanted some of that whiskey. It was being polite now, but that wouldn’t last long. My mouth was so dry.

And maybe there was someone else in here with me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I whispered it. I couldn’t even hear the words over the motor. I said it again, and again, and I kept saying it. I waited to feel like I’d said it enough.

I was still saying it when the car slid to a stop, and the engine snapped off neat as a lightswitch. The trunk opened, and the sun got in another shot at me, and by the time I could see again the man with the ink had me by the shirt again, and I was out, and the heels of my shoes were dragging across smooth concrete.

I looked back at the open trunk. It was empty. There was no one in there. No one living or dead.

I was somewhere with wide green lawns and a big white house up ahead. Statues by the side of a long, arcing drive. The kind of place that had a head gardener and assistant gardeners and junior assistant gardeners. And somebody to wait on all of them.

“I know this place,” I said, to no one in particular. I did. It was coming back to me now. It was, to my surprise, not entirely a bad memory. But it was connected to one.

I looked off to the right as the man with the ink dragged me toward the white house. I expected to see a neat little cottage there in the middle of the green lawn, just like there had been the last time. Instead I saw a black pit in the ground, the grass around the edges burnt, a concrete foundation cracked and crumbled and scorched, and bits of wood sticking up around the edges like a prizefighter’s last few teeth.

Then we were into the blue shadow of the house’s awning. It was good. It felt cool. The sun was already getting hot. The man with the ink fiddled a key in another door, and dragged me inside. We went down a hallway that was still and quiet as a mausoleum, and almost as bright, and took the first right. The room was cool and musty; there was a bed in the middle on it, the sheets crisp and new when the man with the ink sat me down.

“I’m still waiting for that whiskey,” I said, sourly, and without much hope. I looked around. There were heavy bars on the windows, and a big desk, and an overstuffed easy chair in the corner by the door.

“Lie down,” said the man with the ink, and pushed me before I had a chance to comply. He looped a thick leather strap around one wrist, and then the other, and then both my ankles. He did it neatly and professionally, just like when he’d put me in the trunk.

“Sit tight,” he said, and chuckled a little, and went out through the door, leaving it open.

Someone, somewhere far away in the house, started to play the piano. Maybe it was a ghost. Maybe the piano played on its own. My thirst gave up on friendly chitchat and started to play rough. The bed didn’t feel so steady.

I heard two sets of footsteps coming down the hall. The man with the ink filled the doorframe for a moment, coming in. There was a round little man with him, a fat childish face and a comical little Christmas wreath of graying whiskers fringed under his nose and around his mouth. The round little man peered at me, as if I were on the business end of a microscope.

“Yes, I see,” the round little man said. He had a black bag with him, and he set it down on the desk and snapped the clasp, and took out a hypodermic. He held it up to the light, thumped the side of it a little, squirted a bit of liquid jauntily out the end of the needle. Maybe I should have been afraid, but it didn’t seem real. I half-expected the little man to have tattoos on his face, too. It would have made more sense. But when he turned back to me, he had nothing but dark circles under his eyes, and maybe a little sweat filming his cheekbones.

“Mr. Pearl,” the round little man said, “I’m going to help you.”

“Will you get me a whiskey?” I asked. My mouth was a desert.

The little man chuckled. “Something better,” he said, and that’s how I knew he was lying.

“Hold him, please,” the little man said, when I started to pull against the restraints. He spoke oddly, trying too hard to hide the sharp edges and wrong inflections of an accent. The man with the ink came over and put his hands on my shoulders. When he held you, you stayed held.

I watched the little man roll up my sleeve, and probe my arm to find a vein.

“Don’t do this,” I said. “What did I do? What did I do?” But of course, I knew what I’d done.

“Now, now,” the little man said, and smiled at me. It was the kind of smile that would be a lot friendlier if you kept it safely hidden behind the lips. “This is a good thing. This is a gift I give you.”

The needle slid into my arm, and I watched the plunger glide all the way down, felt something strange moving into me, mingling with my blood. Then the little man pulled the needle out, swabbed the puncture with a cotton ball — even the rubbing alcohol smelled at least a little good; if I could have moved, I’d have licked the inside of that arm — and stuck a little plaster on. Part of me was waiting for him to hand me a lollipop.

He gave me one last Halloween decoration of a smile and stood up. The man with the ink let me go. They moved toward the door.

“How long?” the man with the ink asked.

“Two days,” the little man said. “Perhaps three. If…” There was a long pause I didn’t like. “If he is strong.” He looked back at me, appraising. “He comes from healthy stock, I think.”

Far away, the piano stopped. I opened my mouth to say something, and then the world lurched away under me like a carnival ride. Through a spinning tunnel, I saw the man with the ink looking back at me as he shut the door. I opened my mouth but the words came out topsy-turvy, as dizzy as I was. The chair by the door was empty, but still, there was someone in it now, sitting up. Looking at me. His lips were moving.

A single fly on the blue cheek of a dead little boy.

Somebody started screaming and didn’t stop. If I have to think about it, I guess maybe it was me.