Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

Ellen Woodward had a rifle that might have served some soldier fifty years ago, Connell a pistol Ellen had to explain to him, and Auciello a kitchen knife. I told all three to follow me and I kept my game face, though my heart pounded and my bowels had turned to slop. They followed. Ellen’s bullet took their leader in the face as he aimed at me, and we won.

I won’t surrender now. Third time’s the charm, they say. Once more, just once more, and I win. Omnia vincit amor.

Winter had ended, spring had forgotten the city, and the heat had come. A lanky young woman with mismatched hands sweated beside two open windows, under a sodden sheet.

* * *

There was a street carnival, and it was already very late. She dodged a man with the pale face of an absentminded angel; he was juggling too many things to count, balls of silver and gold, painted eggs, a black-and-white kitten, a little brown rabbit that looked dead. The crowd jostled her and she jostled back, glad she was on skates when they had none.

A fire-eater lit his torch with a great puff of orange flame; and the rockets came in as if it had been a signal, rockets that flew without a sound, the explosions throwing stones and bodies high into the air. No one in the crowd paid the least attention. She tried to hit the dirt, to fall facedown and take what shelter she could from the cobblestone street; but the crowd pressed her too tightly, the big, fat, frowning, moon-faced man shoving her aside.

“Where’s Mick?” She had intended a demand and voiced a plea. An exploding rocket shook the ground and somehow harmed her head. “Where’s Mick? I know you know. Please tell me! I’ve got to find Mick.”

The moon-faced man seemed not to hear her and pushed past again, his expression intent and inscrutable.

“Mick! Skip! Skip!”

Someone had opened a cage of white doves, a cage that must have held thousands. They fluttered above the crowd, which fired on them.

“Don! Donny! Where are you, Donny? Where have you gone?”

Something was shaking her shoulders. She trembled, her teeth chattering, as a wounded dove spattered her feet with blood.

“Wake up, Chelle.”

Her face was wet. She blinked.

“That’s better. I’m right here, darling. Don’t be afraid.”

He lifted her, sat beside her, and put his arm around her. “What were you dreaming about?”

She wiped away tears with the edge of the sheet, and for a moment failed to recognize him.

“You were talking in your sleep. Then you started crying, and I thought I’d better wake you up.”

“I’ve got a headache.” Pressing her temples eased the pain, but only a little.

“Sure, darling,” Mick Tooley said. He left, and returned moments later with white tablets and a tinkling glass. Chelle swallowed the tablets without protest and sipped from the glass. Soda water.

“Drink it all,” Tooley said, “that’s what you need.”

She nodded. “Shouldn’t you be at the office?”

He glanced at his watch. “I will be in twenty minutes.”

“About that job…”

He shook his head. “I can’t, and I wouldn’t if I could. How would it look? He’s a senior partner, and he’ll be in the office two or three times a week.”

“If I could earn some money—”

“We’d get a better place and get out of his building. Right. And I’ll find you a job, and we will. Only not at Burton, Grison, and Ibarra. That’s out.”

“How was I last night?”

“Fine. You were fine.” He kissed her forehead. “Now listen up. You drink all of that, then lie back down and go back to sleep if you can. Let those pills work. You’ll wake up again around ten, and I’ll call you if we can go out to lunch together.”

She nodded, and found that nodding hurt. “You can’t say for sure?”

He shook his head. “It’ll depend on how things go at the office. Every day is different. I told you.”

She sipped the soda until the door closed behind him, then held the glass up to the light, which hurt almost as much as nodding. There was no color, but he might have put vodka in it, or gin.

Hoping for vodka, she finished it and carried it out to the kitchen. There would be more soda somewhere, and vodka, too.

Dishes in the cabinet and dirty dishes in the sink. Ice in the little refrigerator, but no vodka and no soda. Come on! It’s just a fucking two-room apartment.

There was vodka in the other room, next to the tele—vodka, but no soda. She poured what was left in the bottle over the ice in her glass, and carried the bottle back to the kitchen; there she ran it through the disposer, where it crashed, clicked, and growled.

No soda. She sipped the neat vodka. It burned her throat, and she turned the tap. There was pressure for a change, but the water smelled like sewage.

She threw the whole mess down the drain.

Army water on Johanna had smelled like chlorine; but once she had found a little trickling creek there, and the water had been cold and clean and good, better than any bottled water.

The screen buzzed. Automatically, she blacked the camera and flicked on the picture. Buckhurst’s face appeared in the screen, big, black, and scowling. “Ms. Blue? Is this you?”

“Yes,” she said, “but I’m not going to turn the camera on. You got me out of bed.”

“Sorry, Ms. Blue. Mr. Tooley, he done gone, so I think you be up, too. Man here say he got a package for you. Say you don’t know him, only you know the man sent him. I say what his name, only he won’t tell. His name Smeedy. He show me his card. Got his name on it an’ say he a musician.”

“Did he say what was in the package?”

“No, ma’am. Say he don’t know.”

“Put him on, please.”

Buckhurst turned away, and a familiar face appeared on the screen. “I’d like to come up, Ms. Blue. All I have to do is hand you this.” The package that he presented for her inspection could easily have been a shoebox wrapped in brown paper. “I’m told it belongs to you.”

“I was up late last night,” she told him, “and I’m sure I must look like hell. It’s twenty-nine eighty-nine, and the door’ll be open. Come in and sit down. I’ll be in the bathroom splashing stinking water and combing my hair. Make yourself at home. I’ll be out in ten minutes.”

Softly: “I can just leave your package and go, honey.”

“Don’t you dare!” Raising her voice, she added, “Let him in, Buckhurst. He’s okay.”

* * *

She had carried a bottle of cologne into the bathroom, and smelled like a flower garden when she came out. He was sitting in Tooley’s big vinyl-covered chair, with the package on his lap.

She smiled. “Hello, Charlie.”

“No thanks?” His eyes—the bright blue eyes she had inherited—twinkled. “I risked prison for you. I deserve a kiss.”

“You didn’t. But you’ll get one anyway.” She bent, and her lips brushed his.

“Since I’m no longer your father, I can ask you for a date.”

She straightened up. “You can, and I might go. Is it a good show?”

“How about a picnic?”

“You’re serious?”

“Entirely serious, honey.”

“I’d offer you a drink if it wasn’t so early. Would you like me to make coffee?”

He shook his head. “We need to talk to you, honey.”

“We?”

“I thought I’d bring my wife.”

She sat on the couch, one long leg drawn up. “You two think I’m getting fat.”

He shook his head again.

“Do you know about her? That’s not really Vanessa.”

“Depends on what you mean by really.”

“Well, I am getting fat. Fat and soft. See, I know all about it, so Mother doesn’t have to make those cream-cheese-and-watercress sandwiches.”