Elizabeth Hand - Errantry - Strange Stories

“Not anymore.” He glanced at it then shrugged. “Nah, it’s toast. It doesn’t even have the record inside.”

“I bet it’s been rereleased. You should get it, it might give you and Tommy some ideas for Estelle.”

Angus grimaced. “Trust me, Tommy doesn’t need any more ideas about goddamn Estelle.”

The song cycle had been my idea. “You’re like a troubadour, Tommy,” I had told him back when his obsession with the broker had spun completely out of control. “Their whole thing revolved around idealized unrequited love. You would have fit right in.”

“Did their whole thing revolve around stalking women at Best Buy?” I remember Angus asked.

“That was an accident,” said Tommy. “A total coincidence, she even admitted it.”

“Did the troubadors ever get laid?” said Angus. “Because that would clinch the deal for me.”

“I think you should channel all this into something constructive,” I suggested. “Music, you guys haven’t written anything together for a while.”

The first songs Tommy wrote all used the woman’s real name.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Tommy,” I’d said when he played me the CD he’d burned from his computer. “Considering the restraining order and all.”

“But I love her name.” He had appeared genuinely distressed. “It’s part of her, it’s an extension of her, of everything she is—”

“You don’t have a clue as to who she fucking is!” Angus grabbed the CD. “You went out with her once before she dumped you. It was like you dated a blow-up doll.”

“She didn’t dump me!”

“You’re right—you were never involved enough to be dumped. You were downsized, Tommy. Admit it and get over it. Lot of fish in the sea, Tom.”

Tommy got over it, sort of. In the song, he changed the woman’s name to Estelle, at any rate.

It remained a sore point with Angus. He turned and skimmed the album cover towards the lake. I walked to join Tommy on the cabin’s front steps.

I asked, “What’re you doing?

“Mail tampering.”

A stoved-in mailbox dangled beside the door. I watched as Tommy prised it open, fished around inside and withdrew a wad of moldering letters, junk mail, mostly. He peeled oversized envelopes away from sales flyers, releasing a fetid smell, finally held up an envelope with the familiar ConEd logo.

“It’s a cut-off notice,” he said in triumph. Angus had wandered back and looked at him dubiously. “It’s got his name on it. Orson Shemeltoss.”

“Orson Shemeltoss? What the hell kind of name is that?”

Tommy ignored him. The wind sent the screen door swinging; he pushed it away, then knocked loudly on the front door. “Mr. Shemeltoss? Hello? Mr. Shemeltoss?”

Silence. Angus looked at me. We both started to laugh.

“Hey, shut up,” said Tommy.

Angus pushed him aside, cracked the door open and yelled.

“Yo, Orson! Tommy’s here.”

Tommy swore, but Angus had already stepped inside.

“It’s okay.” I patted Tommy’s shoulder. “You’re sure this is his place, right? So he’s expecting you.”

“I guess,” said Tommy.

He pushed the door open and went after Angus. I followed, almost immediately drew up short. “Holy shit.”

The room—and what was it, anyway? Living room? hallway? foyer?—I couldn’t tell, but it was so crammed with junk that walking was nearly impossible. It was like wading across a sandbar at high tide, through stacks of newspaper and magazines and books that once had towered above my head but had now collapsed to form a waist-high reef of paper. Things shifted underfoot as I moved, and when I tried to clamber on top of a stack it wobbled then flew apart in a storm of white and gray.

“Vivian, over here!”

I pushed myself up, coughing as I breathed in paper dust and mold. A dog barked, close enough that I looked around anxiously.

But I saw no sign of a dog, or Tommy; only Angus standing a few feet away, surrounded by overflowing bookshelves.

“It’s better over here.” He reached across a mound of magazines to grab my hand, and pulled me towards him. “C’mon, thatta girl—”

“It’s like the print shop exploded,” I said, still coughing. The smell of mold was so strong it burned my nostrils.

“It’s a lot worse than that.” Angus stared in disbelief. “This guy has some issues about letting go.”

Everywhere around us was—stuff. Junk mail and books and magazines, mostly, also a lot of photos—snapshots, old Polaroids—but other things, too. Board games, Bratz dolls, stuffed animals; oddments of clothing, stiletto heels and lingerie and studded collars; eight-track tapes and a battered saxophone, all protruding from the morass of paper like the detritus left by a receding flood. Vinyl record albums filled a wall of buckled metal shelving. Here and there I could discern bits of furniture—the uppermost rungs of a ladderback chair, a headboard.

And, scattered everywhere, the eerie paper figures that were the Folding Man’s handiwork. I dropped Angus’s hand and picked up one of them, a horned creature made of aluminum foil. Inexplicably, and despite the pervasive smell of mildew, my mouth began to water. It was only after I unfolded the little form that I saw the Arby’s logo printed on it.

“Where’s Tommy?” I asked.

“I dunno.”

Angus turned and began to push his way to the far side of the room. I tossed the bit of foil and grabbed another figure—there were hundreds of them, thousands maybe, so many it was impossible not to think of them as somehow alive, burrowing up through those countless layers of junk.

I wondered if it was like an archeological dig, or geological strata: was there a Golden Age buried under there, before People magazine ruled the earth? If I reached the very bottom, would I find Little Nemo and the Katzenjammer Kids?

I doubted it. I could see nothing but junk. All the magazines seemed to be well-worn, and many were torn or missing their covers. The other stuff seemed to be ruined as well, toys cracked or broken or missing parts, clothes soiled or unraveling. The photos were ripped or water damaged, and a lot appeared to be charred or otherwise damaged by smoke or fire.

It was like the town dump, only worse—you could scavenge things from the dump. But it was difficult to imagine there was anything here worth saving, except for the thousands of origami-like figures. I picked one up. It was larger than most, big enough to cover my palm, plain white paper. It resembled a bird of some sort, a heron maybe, with tiny six-fingered hands instead of wings and a broad flattened bill like a shovel. Its eyes were wide and staring: an owl’s eyes, not a heron’s. I unfolded it and smoothed it out atop a heap of National Geographics. A missing flyer, the kind you see in post offices or police stations, with a black-and-white image of a teenage girl’s face photocopied from a high school portrait. Dark curly hair, freckles, dark eyes. Last seen May 14, 1982, Osceola, Wisconsin.

“Oh,” said Angus in a low voice.

I glanced at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was leaning against a small bare patch of wall, turning the pages of a small red-bound book.

I picked my way carefully to his side. “What is it?”

“I used to read this to Corey when he was little.” He didn’t look up, just continued to turn the pages, stopping to pull them gently apart where they were stuck together. “Every night, it was the only thing he ever wanted to hear. He knew it by heart. I never knew what happened to it.”

I stood beside him and stared at a picture of a rabbit in a rocking chair, cats playing on a rug, a wall of bookshelves.

“It’s even missing the same page,” Angus said softly. His face twisted. He turned from me, reaching for his pocket. Tommy’s alarmed voice came from somwhere across the room.