Jack Ketchum - Sleep Disorder

Only then did she fix her own eyes on the insert, on the mask within the mask.

What looked up at her was this:

A curved plate in the shape of an inverted pear. The tiniest slit for a mouth. Only a rudimentary bump for a nose.

And two spacious holes for eyes.

"In nearly all cultures, though," he said, "three is the charm." Her own eyes rose, then, back to him.

The wolf leapt.

And as the lamb was finally run to ground, the black muttering rose again from the deep, deep well of her soul.

Much louder this time.

It was nearly celebratory.

Happy Hour at the World Cafe. 69th and Columbus.

At 4:30 after work, that was where we came. Neal from his studio and John from behind his camera over at ABC and yours truly from She Who Must Be Fed — otherwise known as Microsoft Word. Pretty much every day. There were other regulars who'd come and go but we three formed the core of it. We'd stand there talking at the bar, drinking and munching trail mix with Neal feeding the juke a couple dollars now and then to keep the blues and country flowing and so that John wouldn't start in with his goddamn Frank Sinatra.

You had to be careful with John and Sinatra. He'd play a whole CD and sooner or later he'd be singing along.

And we watched the ladies, of course.

Today was Neal's day On Point.

"Eyes left," he'd say.

That was what we did. Stake our claim on the liquor industry, tell jokes and bitch about life in general and listen to sweet blues and watch the women walk by along the hot summer sidewalk. We'd been doing it for years.

The only difference now was that some of the women were dead.

The women. They're the first best reason to love summer in New York City. The sidewalk outside the big plate glass window on Columbus brought along an endless procession of them — almost as though they were walking by just for us, just for the appreciation radiating out from inside. Sure, I know what you're thinking. A bunch of horny sexist pigs. Reducing women to the sum of their sexual parts. But it's not like that at all. At least not for me. For me there's a kind of reverence to it. All that beauty and diversity. All those blessings to our little lonesome planet walking around in shorts and tanks and halters. I'm serious.

You ask me, the best that fifty-one percent of the human species has to offer can be found right here in the City. L.A. just can't hold a candle to it. Neither can Boston or San Francisco. You don't believe me? Come over to the World Cafe some time and sip your Bud and keep your eyes on that window.

Of course it's a little different now.

You can mostly tell the dead by the grayish look to the skin or of course if they've been mutilated in some way but from the distance of bar to sidewalk not by much else. You might notice that the hair had little sheen maybe. That the sun didn't catch it right. But you had to get up close to see the clouded eyes or the blue fingernails and you didn't usually want to get that close. If you did, that was what your sidearm was for. And none of us had shot one in a long time, male or female, old or young, and didn't care to.

The dead walk briskly in Manhattan, just like everybody else. Thing is, they have no place to go. The law protects them now, at least to some extent, but they're not allowed to work jobs or have careers. They get food stamps, welfare, public housing. I pretty much always felt sorry for them. Sure, a small percentage get out of line now and then, would rape somebody, mug somebody, rob a liquor store. But no more than the living.

Most of the bum rap they got came from the cannibalism thing. That's what the crazy ones would do, kill regular folks and eat them. There was a lot of hysteria over that at first. That's when the mayor revoked the Sullivan Law and passed the concealed-carry ordinance. But once the Army retrieval squads rounded up the crazy ones you didn't hear much about cannibalism anymore. Hardly ever.

Fact is, the dead don't seem to fuck up any more than the living. It's a simple, primitive prejudice against a minority, nothing more. Sure, you wanted to be careful, just like you wanted to be careful of a lot of things and people in New York. But I'd stopped carrying my own gun a long time ago. A lot of us did.

Still, it was kind of like a game with us, a bar contest.

Seeing who could pick out the dead ones.

"Eyes left."

This one sure wasn't dead. Chestnut hair tied back long and gleaming, tan shoulders glowing in the sun. Curve City too, if you know what I mean. The silky dandelion-print dress seemed spun onto her. Low cut and no bra.

"Jesus," said John, "are those nipples or fuckin' spark plugs?"

John could be crude but he had a point so to speak. Her nipples were extremely elongated and hard, like they wanted to spike through the fabric. "If they're sparkplugs," Neal said, "maybe they need to be regapped. Know a good mechanic?"

"Notice that nipples are back this year?" I said. "For a while you hardly ever saw them."

John nodded solemnly. "It's a good thing. It's a godsend."

Then she was gone and two pretty smiling Goths walked by dressed in black, chrome nubs glittering in their vampire-red lips. It's eighty degrees out there and they're wearing black. They were holding hands. "You gotta love this town," I said, smiling.

We turned back to our drinks and talked about Tom Waits on the juke. Neal had seen him fall off his piano stool in Nashville. Whether it was part of the act was still open to question.

"Eyes left."

John let out a low whistle. "Can you say chest fruit?"

"No, but I can say mammiferous," I said. "Can you?"

"What she needs," said Neal, "is an exemplary and thorough breast examination, care of Dr. Neal, to be promptly followed by regular pants-sausage injections on a daily basis."

"What if she's a vegetarian?" said John.

"Then I've got a plantain that'll change her life."

"You guys are terrible," I said.

"Listen to him," John said. "We're terrible and he's standing there cross-legged."

Then it was back to the drinks and talk again. Cigarettes had gone up nearly fifty cents. Rent control was once more being threatened in the legislature. ABC grips were considering a walkout. The usual New York bullshit. Then, "Eyes left," again.

"Call it," John said. "Dead or alive."

"Alive," Neal said but then his squint grew narrower.

I knew she was dead before she was halfway by the window. "Dead," I said. Easy on the eyes at first, sure. But then you caught the autopsy staples showing in the gap between the top of her jeans and the bottom of her peach blouse. She glanced in at us and you could see it in the eyes.

"The winner!" said John. "Anna, get this gentleman another Dewar's on me and another Heiny for myself."

"What am I," Neal said, "chopped liver?"

"And a plate of chopped liver for Dr. Neal of the exemplary breast exams."

These guys. I mean, you can't take them anywhere.

Anna knew us all pretty well by then though and poured refills for everybody. No chopped liver made an appearance. We drank.

"Gustavo told me a story last night," Neal said. "About those apartments over the flower shop. Hey, where the hell were you two guys last night, anyway?"

John shrugged. "I was home doing the Sunday Times crossword puzzle and listening to ole Blue Eyes. What, you go out every night? I had to work today. Not everybody's an artiste and makes his own fuckin' hours. Some of us gotta work in the morning, y'know?"

"I was on the computer," I said. "Online from about ten to midnight. They did another Dead Chat last night."

Neal made a face. "Why do you bother with that shit?"

"He's a voyeur," John said, "of the dead."

"No, I just like hearing what they have to say. And let me tell you, they have some stories. When they start writing novels I'm really fucked.”