It could make things disappear. Ricky thought about the Demon Princes and about what you could do about someone who looked like a squid. A smile began to spread across his face.
"Hey, guys," he said. "I think I- got an idea."
WINTER'S CHILL
By George R.R. Martin
The day arrived at last, as he had known it would. It was a Saturday, cold and gray, with a brisk wind blowing off the Kill. Mister Coffee had a pot ready when he woke at half past ten; on weekends Tom liked to sleep in. He laced his first cup liberally with milk and sugar, and took it into his living room.
Old mail was strewn across his coffee table: a stack of bills, supermarket flyers announcing long-departed sales, a postcard mailed by his'sister when she'd gone to England the summer before, a long brown envelope that said Mr. Thomas Tudbury might already have won three million dollars, and lots of other junk that he needed to deal with real soon now. Underneath it all was the invitation.
He sipped his coffee and stared at the mail. How many months had it been sitting there? Three? Four? Too late to do anything about it now. Even an RSVP would be woefully inappropriate at this date. He remembered the way The Graduate had ended, and savored the fantasy. But he was no Dustin Hoffman.
Like a man picking at an old scab, Tom rummaged through the mail until he found that small square envelope once again. The card within was crisp and white.
Mr. amp; Mrs. Stanley Casko request the honor of your presence at the wedding of their daughter, Barbara, to Mr. Stephen Bruder, of Weehawken. St. Henry's Church 2:00 p.m., March 8
Reception to follow at the Top Hat Lounge
RSVP 555-6853
Tom fingered the embossed paper for a long time, then carefully set it back on the coffee table, dumped the junk mail into the wicker trash basket by the end of his couch, and went to stare out the window.
Across First Street, piles of black snow were heaped along the footpaths of the narrow little waterfront park. A freighter flying the Norwegian flag was making its way down the Kill van Kull toward the Bayonne Bridge and Port Newark, pushed along by a squat blue tugboat. Tom stood by his living-room window, one hand on the sill, the other shoved deep in his pocket, watching the kids in the park, watching the freighter's stately progress, watching the cold green water of the Kill and the wharves and hills of Staten island beyond.
A long long time ago, his family had lived in the federal housing projects down at the end of First Street, and their living-room window had looked out over the park and the Kill.
Sometimes at night when his parents were asleep, he would get up and make himself a chocolate milk and stare out the window at the lights of Staten Island, which seemed so impossibly far away and full of promise. What did he know? He was a project kid who'd never left Bayonne.
The big ships passed even in the night, and in the night you couldn't see the rust streaks on their sides or the oil they vented into the water; in the night the ships were magic, bound for high adventure and romance, for fabled cities where the streets shone dark with danger. In real live, even Jersey City was the land unknown as far as he was concerned, but in his dreams he knew the moors of Scotland, the alleys of Shanghai, the dust of Marrakesh. By the time he turned ten, Tom had learned to recognize the flags of more than thirty different nations.
But he wasn't ten anymore. He would turn forty-two this year, and he'd come all of four blocks from the projects, to a small orange-brick house on First Street. In high school he'd worked summers fixing TV sets. He was still at the same shop, though he'd risen all the way to manager, and owned almost a third of the business; these days the place was called the Broadway ElectroMart, and it dealt in VCRs and CD players and computers as well as in television sets.
You've come a long way, Tommy, he thought bitterly to himself And now Barbara Casko was going to marry Steve Bruder.
He couldn't blame her. He couldn't blame anyone but himself. And maybe Jetboy, and Dr. Tachyon… yeah, he could blame them a little too.
Tom turned away and let the drapes fall back across the window, feeling like shit. He walked to the kitchen, and opened a typical bachelor's refrigerator. No beer, just an inch of flat Shop Rite cola at the bottom of a two-liter bottle. He stripped the foil off a bowl of tuna salad, intending to fix himself a sandwich for breakfast, but there was green stuff growing all over the top. Suddenly he lost his appetite.
Lifting the phone from its wall cradle, he punched in seven familiar numbers. On the third ring, a child answered. "Hewo?"
"Hey, Vito," Tom said. "The old man home?"
There was the sound of another extension being lifted. "Hello?" a woman said. The child giggled. "I've got it, honey," Gina said.
"G'bye, Vito," Tom said, as the child hung up.
"Vito," Gina said, sounding both aggravated and amused. "Tom, you're crazy, you know that? Why do you want to confuse him all the time? Last time it was Guiseppe. The name is Derek."
"Pfah," Tom replied. "Derek, what kind of wop name is that? Two nice dago kids like you and Joey, and you name him after some clown in a soap opera. Dom would've had a fit. Derek DiAngelis-sounds like a walking identity crisis."
"So have one of your own and name him Vito," Gina said. It was just a joke. Gina was just kidding around, she didn't mean anything by it. But the knowledge didn't help. He still felt like he'd been kicked in the gut. "Joey there?" he asked brusquely.
"He's in San Diego," she said. "Tom, are you all right? You sound funny."
"I'm okay. Just wanted to say hello." Of course Joey was in San Diego. Joey traveled a lot these days, the lucky stiff. Junkyard Joey DiAngelis was a star driver on the demolition derby circuit, and in winter the circuit went to warmer climes. It was sort of ironic. When they were kids, even their parents had figured Tom was the one who'd go places while Joey stayed on in Bayonne and ran his old mans junkyard. And now Joey was almost a household word, while his old family junkyard belonged to Tom. Should have figured it; even in grade school, Joey was a demon on the bumper cars. "Well, tell him I called.
"
"I've got the number of the motel they're at," she offered. "Thanks anyway. It's not that important. Catch you later, Gina. Take care of Vito." Tom set the phone back in its cradle. His car keys were on the kitchen counter. He zipped up a shapeless brown suede jacket, and went down to the basement garage. The door slid closed automatically behind his dark green Honda. He headed east on First Street, past the projects, and turned up Lexington. On Fifth Street, he hung a right, and left the residential neighborhoods behind.
It was a cold gray Saturday in March, with snow on the ground and winter's chill in the air. He was forty-one years old and Barbara was getting married, and Thomas Tudbury needed to crawl into his shell.
They met in junior Achievement, seniors from two different high schools.
Tommy had little interest in learning how the freeenterprise system worked, but he had a lot of interest in girls. His prep school was all boys, but JA drew from all the local high schools, and Tom had joined first as a junior.
He had a hard enough time making friends with boys, and girls terrified him. He didn't know what to say to them, and he was scared of saying something stupid, so he said nothing at all. After a few weeks, some of the girls began to tease him. Most just ignored him. The Tuesday-night meetings became something he dreaded all through his junior year.
Senior year was different. The difference was a girl named Barbara Casko.
At the very first meeting, Tom was sitting in the corner, feeling pudgy and glum, when Barbara came over and introduced herself. She was honestly friendly; Tom was astonished. The really incredible thing, even more astonishing than this girl going out of her way to be nice to him, was that she was the prettiest girl in the company, and maybe the prettiest girl in Bayonne. She had dark blond hair that fell to her shoulders and flipped up at the ends, and pale blue eyes, and the warmest smile in the world. She wore angora sweaters, nothing too tight but they showed her cute little figure to good advantage. She was pretty enough to be a cheerleader.