Roger Zelazny: Trumps of doom

It is a pain in the ass waiting around for someone to try to kill you. But it was April 30, and of course it would happen as it always did. It had taken me a while to catch on, but now I at least knew when it was coming. In the past, I'd been too busy to do anything about it. But my job was finished now. I'd only stayed around for this. I felt that I really ought to clear the matter up before I departed. I got out of bed, visited the bathroom,showered, brushed my teeth, et cetera. I'd grown a beard again, so I didn't have to shave. I was not jangling with strange apprehensions, as I had been on that April 30 three years ago when I'd awakened with a headache and a premonition, thrown open the windows, and gone to the kitchen to discover all of the gas burners turned on and flameless. No. It wasn't even like the April 30 two years ago in the other apartment when I awoke before dawn to a faint smell of smoke to learn that the place was on fire. Still, I stayed out of direct line of the light fixtures in case the bulbs were filled with something flammable, and I flipped all of the switches rather than pushing them. Nothing untoward followed these actions.

Usually, I set up the coffee maker the night before with a timer. This morning, though, I didn't want coffee that had been produced out of my sight. I set a fresh pot going and checked my packing while I waited for it to brew. Everything I valued in this place resided in two medium-sized cratesclothing, books, paintings, some instruments, a few souvenirss, and so forth. I sealed the cases. A change of clothing, a sweatshirt, a good paperback, and a wad of traveler's checks went into the backpack. I'd drop my key off at the manager's on the way out, so he could let the movers in. The crates would go into storage.

No jogging for me this morning.

As I sipped my coffee, passing from window to window and pausing beside each for sidelong surveys of the streets below and the buildings across the way (last year's attempt had been by someone with a rifle), I thought back to the first time it had happened, seven years ago. I had simply been walking down the street on a bright spring afternoon when an oncoming truck had swerved, jumped the curb, and nearly combined me with portions of a brick wall. I was able to dive out of the way and roll. The driver never regained consciousness. It had seemed one of those freak occurrences that occasionally invade the lives of us all.

The following year to the day, however, I was walking home from my lady friend's place late in the evening when three men attacked me - one with a knife, the other two with lengths of pipe - without even the courtesy of first asking for my wallet.

I left the remains in the doorway of a nearby record store, and while I thought about it on the way home it did not strike me until the following day that it had been the anniversary of the truck crash. Even then, I dismissed it as an odd coincidence. The matter of the mail bomb that had destroyed half of another apartment the following year did cause me to begin wondering whether the statistical nature of reality might not be under a strain in my vicinity at that season. And the events of subsequent years served to turn this into a conviction.

Someone enjoyed trying to kill me once a year, it was as simple as that. The effort failing, there would be another year's pause before an attempt was made again. It seemed almost a game.

But this year I wanted to play, too. My main concern was that he, she, or it seemed never to be present when the event occurred, favoring stealth and gimmicks or agents. I will 'refer to this person as S (which sometimes stands for «sneak» and sometimes for «shithead» in my private cosmology), because X has been overworked and because I do not like to screw around with pronouns with disputable antecedents.

I rinsed my coffee cup and the pot and set them in the rack. Then I picked up my bag and departed. Mr. Mulligan wasn't in, or was sleeping, so I left my key in his mailbox before heading up the street to take my breakfast at a nearby diner.

Traffic was light, and all of the vehicles well behaved. I walked slowly, listening and looking. It was a pleasant morning, promising a beautiful day. I hoped to settle things quickly, so I could enjoy it at my leisure.

I reached the diner unmolested. I took a seat beside the window. Just as the waiter came to take my order I saw a familiar figure swinging along the street - a former classmate and later fellow employee Lucas Raynard: six feet tall, red-haired, handsome in spite, or perhaps because, of an artistically broken nose, with the voice and manner of the salesman he was.

I knocked on the window and he saw me, waved, turned and entered.

«Merle, I was right,» he said, coming up to the table, clasping my shoulder briefly, seating himself and taking the menu out of my hands. «Missed you at your place and guessed you might be here.»

He lowered his eyes and began reading the menu.

«Why?» I asked.

«If' you need more time to consider, I'll come back,» the waiter said.

«No,» Luke answered and read off an enormous order.

I added my own.

Then: «Because you're a creature of habit.»

«Habit?» I replied. «I hardly eat here anymore.»

«I know,» he answered, «but you usually did when the pressure was on. Like, right before exams - or if something was bothering you.»

«Hm,» I said: There did seem to be something to that, though I had never before realized it. I spun the ashtray with its imprint of a unicorn's head, a smaller version of the stained-glass one that stood as part of a partition beside the doorway: «I can't say why,» I finally stated. «Besides, what makes you think something's bothering me?»

«I remembered that paranoid thing you have about April 30, because of a couple of accidents.»

«More than a couple. I never told you about all of them.»

«So you still believe it?»

«Yes.»

He shrugged. The waiter came by and filled our coffee cups.

«Okay,» he finally agreed. «Have you had it yet today?»

«No.»

«Too bad. I hope it doesn't pall your thinking.»

I took a sip of coffee.

«No problem,» I told him.

«Good.» He sighed and stretched. «Listen, I just got back to town yesterday…»

«Have a good trip?»

«Set a new sales record.»

«Great.»

«Anyhow… I just learned when I checked in that you'd left.»

«Yeah. I quit about a month ago.»

«Miller's been trying to reach you. But with your phone disconnected he couldn't call. He even stopped by a couple of times, but you were out.»

«Too bad.»

«He wants you back.»

«I'm finished there.»

«Wait'll you hear the proposition, huh? Brady gets kicked upstairs and you're the new head of Design-for a twenty percent pay hike: That's what he told me to tell you.»

I chuckled softly.

«Actually… it doesn't sound bad at all. But, like I said, I'm finished.»

«Oh.» His eyes glistened as he gave me a sly smile. «You do have something lined up someplace else. He was wondering. Okay, if that's the case he told me to tell you to bring him whatever the other guys offer. He'll try like hell to top it.»

I shook my head.

«I guess I' m not getting through,» I said: «I' m finished. Period. I don't want to go back. I'm not going to work for anyone else either. I' m done with this sort of thing. I'm tired of computers.»

«But you're really good. Say, you going to teach?»

«Nope.»

«Well, hell! You've got to do something. Did you come into some money?»

«No. I believe I'll do some traveling. I've been in one place too long.»

He raised his coffee cup and drained it. Then he leaned back, clasped his hands across his stomach, and lowered his eyelids slightly: He was silent for a time.