Дэймон Найт - Orbit 4

Click, clack, click. Staccato tattooed on the ponderous night. The sky is still ambiguous. '

(Remembering a night we sat talking, drinking halfcups of coffee as we watched stars sprinkle and throb and fade, then saw dawn all blood and whispered thunder. I remember how your eyes were, pink like shrimp, pink like the sky when it caught the first slanting rays and held them to its chest. And as morning opened around us we were talking of Thoreau and men who sailed the soul, of ways and reasons to change, the old orders, and of why things break up. Outside our window it was growing between them, people were letting go, were wanting their Waldens, their Innisfrees, their Arcadias, they were falling away from the town like leaves, like scaling paint, by twos, by ones. Even in our house, our hearts, it moves between us. Between us. We feel it turning, feel it touching. But we care, we love, we can’t let go . . .)

Hoover drew up short, listening. The shepherd beside him cocked its cars, trembled happily.

It happens like this . . .

A drone, far off. Closer. Becomes an engine. Then a swelling of light blocks away. Then a rush and churning and soon two lashing white eyes. Loudest, chased by a dog. A roar and past, racing. A thrown thing. Neil’s car . . . and silence again.

And minutes later, the shepherd’s body went limp and its head fell back onto his lap. Hoover took it in his arms and walked out of the road, its head rolling softly along the outside of his elbow. In the streetlight his face glistened where the dog had licked it.

Crossing the walk, kicking open a gate that wind had shut, Hoover surrendered his burden into the lawn. Ten steps away he looked back and saw that the dog’s body was hidden in deep grass, secret as any Easter egg.

Three hundred and some-odd steps. Two turns. Five places where cement has split its seams, heaved up, and grass is growing in the cracks. Pacing this map . . .

(The sea grew tired one day of swinging in harness, ticking in its box of beach. One spark in the flannel sea, possessed of fury, gathering slime like a seeded pearl, thinks of legs and comes onto a rock, lies there in the sun drying. It seeps, it slushes, it creeps, it crawls; it bakes to hardness and walks . . . All to the end: that I am walking on two feet down this corridor of black steel and my hand is turning like a key at this found door . . .)

The door collapse-returned. He looked around. A single light cut into the cafe through a porthole of glass in the kitchen door; powdery twilight caught in the mirror. In the dim alley before him, neon signs circled and fell, rose and blinked across their boxes like tiny traffic signals. Profound, ponderous grayness, like the very stuff of thought. . .

Decision failed him; he had turned to go when he heard the door and saw light swell.

“Dr. Hoover . . .”

He turned back.

“Didn’t know for sure you were still around.” Nervously. “About the last ones, I guess.”

Hoover nodded. “Any food, Doug?”

“Just coffee, sorry. Coffee’s on, though. Made a pot for myself, plenty left.” He stepped behind the counter and knocked the corner off a cube of stacked cups, burn scars on his hands rippling in mirror-bemused light.

“Sugar, cream?” Sliding the cup onto crisp pink formica.

Hoover waved them both off. “Black’s the best way.” “Yeah . . . No one been in here for a week or more. I ain’t bothered to keep the stuff out like I ought to.”

Hoover sat down by the cup, noticing that Doug had moved back away from the counter. “Like you say, I guess. Last ones.”

Doug scratched at his stomach where it depended out over the apron. Large hands going into pockets, rumpling the starched white.

“Reckon I could get you a sandwich. Or some toast—• then it don’t matter if the bread’s a little stale.”

“Coffee’s fine. Don’t bother.”

“You sure? Wouldn’t be any trouble.”

Hoover smiled and shook his head. “Forget it, just coffee. But thanks anyway.”

Doug looked down at the cup. “Don’t mind, I’ll have one with you.” His penciled monobrow flexed at the middle, pointed down. It was like the one-stroke bird that children arc taught to draw; the upper part of a stylized heart. “Get my cup.” Over his shoulder: “Be right back.”

Light rose as the kitchen door opened; died back down, leaving Hoover alone. He turned his eyes to buff-flecked white tiles; let them carry his interest across the floor, swiveling his chair to keep up. Light picked out tiny blades of gleam on the gold bands that edged formica-and-naugahyde. A few pygmy neons hopscotched high on the walls. The booths were empty as shells, humming with shadow; above them (showing against homogenized paint, rich yellow, creamy tan; sprinkled among windows) were small dark shapes he knew as free-painted anchors.

(All this shut in a small cafe, sculpt in shades of gray. Change one letter, you have cave again . . .)

Doug came back (light reached, retreated), poured steaming coffee. He squeezed around the end of the counter and sat two seats away.

“Neil left today?*

“Yeah, I saw him up the street on the way here.”

“So that’s whose car it was. Wasn’t sure, heard it going by. Going like a bat out of hell from the sound?’ He drank, made a face. “Too hot. Wonder what kept him? Said he was going to take off this morning.” He blew across the mouth of his cup, as though he might be trying to whistle, instead breathing vapor. He ' tried another taste. “Will came through, you know . . ?’

Hoover’s own cup was sweating, oils were sliding over the surface. It was a tan cup; the lip was chipped. They weren’t looking at each other.

“That big cabin up on the cape. His grandfather built it for a place to get away and do his writing, way the hell away from everything. Now it’s his.”

“I know. My sister called me up last week to say goodbye, told me about it, they thought it was coming through. Wonder when she's leaving?”

Doug looked up sharply, then dropped his head. “Thought you knew. She left about three, four days ago.” Doug belched, lightly.

“Oh. I guess she went up early to get things ready, he’ll meet her there. You know women.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s probably it.” He went for more coffee, poured for them both. “Coffee’s the last thing I need.”

“You too.”

“Yeah—lot worse for some, though. Been over a week for me, lost about twenty pounds. Catnap some . . . Thing you wonder about is, where’d they find a lawyer? For the papers and all. Didn’t, maybe, guess it don’t make much difference anymore, stuff like that. Anyhow, they’re gone.”

(And the wall’s a wedge. Shove it between two people and they come apart, like all the rest. . .)

Hoover shrugged his shoulders, putting an elbow on the counter and stecpling fingers against his forehead.

“Almost brought a friend, Doug . . .”

The big man straightened in his chair. His mouth made “Friend?” sit on his lips unspoken.

“But he was indisposed, disposed, at the last minute.”

Doug was staring at him strangely.

“A dog. Neil hit it. I was going to see if I could talk you out of some food for it.”

“Oh! Yeah, there’s some stuff, meat and all I’m just gonna have to throw out anyway. What isn’t spoiled al-ready’s getting that way fast. Didn’t know there were dogs still around, though? Whose is it?”

“There aren’t now. I hadn’t seen it before. Was it: it’s dead.” Extinct.

“Oh. Yeah, Neil was going pretty fast. Dog probably wandered in from someplace else anyway, looking for food after they left him.” Gazing into the bottom of his cup Doug swirled what coffee was left against the grounds, making new patterns, like tiny cinders after a rain. “Always been a cat man myself. Couldn’t keep one, though, haven’t since I was a kid. Sarah’s asthma, you know.”