Charles De Lint - Dreams Underfoot

Sue was on the right side of a bad relationship at the moment, while Jilly was simply eschewing relationships on general principal these days. Relationships required changes, and she wasn’t ready for changes in her life just now. And besides, all the men she’d ever cared for were already taken and she didn’t think it likely that she’d run into her own particular Prince Charming in a Foxville night club.

“I like this band,” Sue confided to her when they took a break to finish the beers they’d ordered at the beginning of the set.

Jilly nodded, but she didn’t have anything to say. A glance across the room caught a glimpse of a head with hair enough like Zinc’s badlymown lawn scalp to remind her that he hadn’t been home when she’d dropped by his place on the way to the club tonight.

Don’t be out setting bicycles free, Zinc, she thought.

“Hey, Tomas. Check this out.”

There were two of them, one Anglo, one Hispanic, neither of them much more than a year or so older than Zinc. They both wore leather jackets and jeans, dark hair greased back in ducktails. The drizzle put a sheen on their jackets and hair. The Hispanic moved closer to see what his companion was pointing out.

Zinc had melted into the shadows at their approach. The streetlights that he had yet to free whispered, careful, careful, as they wrapped him in darkness, their electric light illuminating the pair on the street.

“Well, shit,” the Hispanic said. “Somebody’s doing our work for us.”

As he picked up the lock that Zinc had just snipped, the chain holding the bike to the railing fell to the pavement with a clatter. Both teenagers froze, one checking out one end of the street, his companion the other.

“‘Scool,” the Anglo said. “Nobody here but you, me and your cooties.”

“Chew on a big one.”

“I don’t do myself, puto.”

“That’s ‘cos it’s too small to find.”

The pair of them laughed—a quick nervous sound that belied their bravado—then the Anglo wheeled the bike away from the railing.

“Hey, Bobbyo,” the Hispanic said. “Got another one over here.”

“Well, what’re you waiting for, man? Wheel her down to the van.”

They were setting bicycles free, Zinc realized—just like he was. He’d gotten almost all the way down the block, painstakingly snipping the shackle of each lock, before the pair had arrived.

Careful, careful, the streetlights were still whispering, but Zinc was already moving out of the shadows.

“Hi, guys,” he said.

The teenagers froze, then the Anglo’s gaze took in the wire cutters in Zinc’s hand.

“Well, well,” he said. “What’ve we got here? What’re you doing on the night side of the street, kid?”

Before Zinc could reply, the sound of a siren cut the air. A lone siren, approaching fast.

The Chinese waitress looked great in her leather miniskirt and fishnet stockings. She wore a bloodred camisole tucked into the waist of the skirt which made her pale skin seem even paler. Her hair was the black of polished jet, pulled up in a loose bun that spilled stray strands across her neck and shoulders. Blueblack eye shadow made her dark eyes darker. Her lips were the same red as her camisole.

“How come she looks so good,” Sue wanted to know, “when I’d just look like a tart if I dressed like that?”

“She’s inscrutable,” Jilly replied. “You’re just obvious.”

“How sweet of you to point that out,” Sue said with a grin. She stood up from their table. “C’mon.

Let’s dance.”

Jilly shook her head. “You go ahead. I’ll sit this one out.”

“Uhuh. I’m not going out there alone.”

“There’s LaDonna,” Jilly said, pointing out a girl they both knew. “Dance with her.”

“Are you feeling all right, Jilly?”

“I’m fine—just a little pooped. Give me a chance to catch my breath.”

But she wasn’t all right, she thought as Sue crossed over to where LaDonna da Costa and her brother Pipo were sitting. Not when she had Zinc to worry about. If he was out there, cutting off the locks of more bicycles ...

You’re not his mother, she told herself. Except

Out here on the streets we take care of our own.

That’s what she’d told Sue. And maybe it wasn’t true for a lot of people who hit the skids—the winos and the losers and the bag people who were just too screwed up to take care of themselves, little say look after anyone else—but it was true for her.

Someone like Zinc—he was an inbetweener. Most days he could take care of himself just fine, but there was a fey streak in him so that sometimes he carried a touch of the magic that ran wild in the streets, the magic that was loose late at night when the straights were in bed and the city belonged to the night people. That magic took up lodgings in people like Zinc. For a week. A day. An hour. Didn’t matter if it was real or not, if it couldn’t be measured or catalogued, it was real to them. It existed all the same.

Did that make it true?

Jilly shook her head. It wasn’t her kind of question and it didn’t matter anyway. Real or not, it could still be driving Zinc into breaking corporeal laws—the kind that’d have Lou breathing down his neck, real fast. The kind that’d put him in jail with a whole different kind of loser.

Zinc wouldn’t last out a week inside.

Jilly got up from the table and headed across the dance floor to where Sue and LaDonna were jitterbugging to a tune that sounded as though Buddy Holly could have penned the melody, if not the words.

“Fuck this, man!” the Anglo said.

He threw down the bike and took off at a run, his companion right on his heels, scattering puddles with the impact of their boots. Zinc watched them go. There was a buzzing in the back of his head. The streetlights were telling him to run too, but he saw the bike lying there on the pavement like a wounded animal, one wheel spinning forlornly, and he couldn’t just take off.

Bikes were like turtles. Turn ’em on their backs—or a bike on its side—and they couldn’t get up on their own again.

He tossed down the wire cutters and ran to the bike. Just as he was leaning it up against the railing from which the Anglo had taken it, a police cruiser came around the corner, skidding on the wet pavement, cherry light gyrating—screaming, Run, run! in its urgent highpitched voice—headlights pinning Zinc where he stood.

Almost before the cruiser came to a halt, the passenger door popped open and a uniformed officer had stepped out. He drew his gun. Using the cruiser as a shield, he aimed across its roof at where Zinc was standing.

“Hold it right there, kid!” he shouted. “Don’t even blink.”

Zinc was privy to secrets. He could hear voices in lights. He knew that there was more to be seen in the world if you watched it from the corner of your eye than head on. It was a simple truth that every policeman he ever saw looked just like Elvis. But he hadn’t survived all his years on the streets without protection.

He had a lucky charm. A little tin monkey pendant that had originally lived in a box of Crackerjacks—back when Crackerjacks had real prizes in them. Lucia had given it to him. He’d forgotten to bring it out with him the other night when the Elvises had taken him in. But he wasn’t stupid.

He’d remembered it tonight.

He reached into his pocket to get it out and wake its magic.

“You’re just being silly,” Sue said as they collected their jackets from their chairs.

“So humor me,” Jilly asked.

“I’m coming, aren’t I?”

Jilly nodded. She could hear the voice of Zinc’s roommate Ursula in the back of her head There are no patterns.